Me and No

Chapter 2

I often go to Auschwitz railway station on Tuesdays or Fridays, when I get out of school early. I go to watch the trains leaving. There is so much emotion. I really like that, watching people's emotion. That's why I never miss football matches on TV. I love it when they kiss after they score, and run around with their arms in the air and hug each other. I also like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? You should see the girls when they get the answer right. They throw their heads back and screamed and everything, their eyes brimming with tears. In railway stations, though, it's different you've got to work out what people are feeling from their expressions, from the gestures and movements. There a lovers who were about to part, granny's going home, ladies with big coats leaving men with upturned collars, or vice versa. I watch these people who are leaving, without knowing where they're going, or why or for how long, saying goodbye through the window, with a little wave, or trying to shout even when they can't be heard anymore. If you're lucky you get to see a proper separation, I mean one that's going to last a long time, it seems like it well. then the emotion is really heavy, like the air's thicker, as if they're alone, with no one else around. It's the same with arrivals. I pick a spot at the end of the platform and watch people waiting, their faces all tense and impatient, their eyes scanning the platform, and then suddenly they're smiling, their arms go up, hands waving, and along the platform they go and into each other's arms. That's what I like best - when they really show their feelings.

So that's why I was in Austerlitz station. I was waiting for the 16:44 from Clermont-Ferrand. That's my favourite, because you get all sorts of people on it - young, old, well-dressed, fat, thin, scruffy. The lot. I was concentrating so hard that it took me a while to realise that someone was tapping me on the shoulder. A mammoth could trample over my feet at times like these and I wouldn't even notice. I turned round.

"You got a smoke?"

She was wearing dirty khaki trousers, an old jacket with holes in the elbows and a Benetton scarf like the one my mother's got at the bottom of the wardrobe as a souvenir of her youth.

"No, sorry. I don't smoke. I've got some gum, though."

She made a face, then held out her hand, and I gave her the packet, which she stuck in her bag.

"Hi, I'm No. What's your name?"

"No?"

"Yes."

"I'm Lou . . . Lou Bertignac.'

(Usally that gets a bit of a reaction, because people think I'm related to Louis Bertignac, the famous singer, maybe his daughter. Once when I was at junior high, I pretended that I was, but things got complicated, because people asked for details and autographs. I ended up admitting I'd made it up.)

She didn't seem impressed. I reckoned that maybe she wasn't into that kind of music. She went up to a man who was standing reading his paper nearby. He rolled his eyes and sighed, but he took a cigarette from his packet, which she took without looking at him and then came back over.

"I've seen you a few times before. What are you doing?"

"Watching people."

"Isn't there anyone to watch at home?"

"Yes, but that's different."

"How old are you?"

"Thirteen."

"You got a couple of euros? I've not had anything to eat since last night."

I fished in the pockets of my jeans. I had a few coins left and I gave them to her without looking at them. She counted them before she closed her hand.

"What class you in?"

"Year Eleven."

"That's unusual for someone your age."

"Erm, yes. I moved up two years."

"How come?"

"I skipped two classes."

"Yeah, I worked that out. But how come you skipped two classes, Lou?"

I thought she was talking to me in a strange way. I wondered if she was making fun of me, but she looked very serious and also very worried.

"I dunno. I learned to read in nursery school, so I didn't go into reception. And then I skipped year four. I was getting so bored I'd twist my hair round my fingers and tug on it all day. So after a few weeks I had a bald patch. By the time I had three of them, they moved me up a class."

I wanted to ask her some questions, but I was too shy. She smoked her cigarette and looked me up and down, as if she was trying to find something else I could give her. There was a silence ( or at least we were silent - there was still the deafening records voice of the tannot), so I felt obliged to add that it was better now.

"What, your hair or the boredom?"

"Well . . . both."

She laughed. And I saw that she has a tooth missing. It only took a plot second to find the right word: a premolar.

All my life I've felt on the outside wherever I am - out of the picture, the conversation, at one removed, as though I were only able to hear the sounds or words that others can't, and deaf to the words that they hear. As if I'm outside the frame, on the other side of a huge, invisible window.

But yesterday, when I was there with No, you could have drawn a circle round us, a circle that didn't exclude me, which enclosed us and for a few minutes protected us from the world.

I couldn't stay, my father was expecting me. I didn't know how to say goodbye, whether I should call her 'madame' or 'mademoiselle' or if I should just call her No since I knew her first name. I solved the problem by simply saying 'bye', and told myself that she wasn't the sort of person to get hung up about good manners or all the stuff that you're supposed to pay attention to. I turned to wave and she was still there, watching me go, and I felt bad because you could tell from her eyes, the blank way they looked, that there was no one expecting her, no home, no computer, maybr nowhere for her to go at all.

That evening at dinner I asked my mother how come young girls ended up on the streets, and she sighed and said that's how life was: unfair. This once I let it go, though I've known for ages that first answers usually just fob you off.

I thought about No's pale skin, her eyes that looked bigger because she was hungry, the colour of her hair, her pink scarf. I imagined a secret hidden beneath the three jackets she'd been wearing, a secret stuck in her heart like a thorn, something she's never told anyone. I wanted to be near her. With her. Later, in bed, I wished I'd asked her how old she was. That bothered me. She looked so young.

At the same time it seemed to me that she already knew all about life. Or maybe that she knew something frightening about life.