Page 59 of Not Quite Dead Yet

‘I get it, Billy,’ she said, feeling his eyes. ‘You’re stuck because you want to help, because helping is what you do. But you can’t help me now.’ Jet wiped her sleeve across herface, beads of sweat prickling her nose. ‘You still have to think about consequences. But I don’t. It’s OK. You cover me. Save me from more angry builders.’

She swung again.

Again.

Stopped to remove her jacket – too hot already – and swung again.

Billy wasn’t there when she glanced up; he was gone.

Jet sniffed, letting go of the sledgehammer, dropping to her knees to clear some of the debris, chucking it behind her, out of the way.

She stood up and started again, digging toward the outer boundary now.

Swung.

Thud.

Looked up.

Billy was back.

Crossing the trench, a blue sledgehammer gripped in his hands.

He came to stand beside her, didn’t look at her, looked down instead.

‘Only you,’ he said.

He raised the sledgehammer above his head and brought it down, the sound so loud it shook the world beneath Jet’s feet, a huge pit where he’d struck the concrete.

‘Always getting me in trouble,’ he muttered, swinging again.

‘I am not!’

She waited for Billy to go again, then took a turn.

‘What about the time you made us put red food dye in your parents’ pool because you wanted to make a shark movie?’

Jet removed a huge slab of concrete, dragging it out of Billy’s way.

‘Let’s not talk about the pool,’ she grunted. ‘Actually, let’s not talk at all. This is fucking hard work.’

Jet swung, made a dent, then Billy swung, his dent twice the size of hers.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘your sledgehammer’s better than mine. Switch.’

It wasn’t the sledgehammer.

Billy took a turn, and then Jet, one strike then two, while the other reared up, ready. Like a broken clock, the ticking uneven, too slow then too fast, counting down to something, seconds and minutes Jet would never get back.

‘Stand back, Jet. Let me do a few.’

Billy smashed, once, twice, and again, concrete breaking up, springing free. ‘We’re at the bottom here,’ Billy panted, dropping the hammer to move the rubble.

They’d done it: cleared a jagged passage in the middle, about three feet wide and three feet down to the soil underneath.

‘Let’s check it,’ Jet said, dropping her hammer, standing directly over the channel, one foot on the concrete either side. ‘Billy, grab that spade over there.’

He handed it to her and Jet raked the spade through the exposed mud, driving the tip in and loosening the soil. ‘Nothing here. Let’s keep going.’

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