Road Safety

    We're standing on the kerb just here and we're waiting, a lot of waiting. Step backwards, it's a foolish long time. He takes my hand and I'm thinking of instruction: my school,my babka too.But mostly my school.
    A row of seven year olds wearing reflective tabards, too close or something.
    "Not so near the edge" she says:
    "Mischa! Aisha! Pay attention!"
We could be best friends because our names rhyme. We look at her with these wide and liquid eyes.We are the very good children. Cuckoos, changelings that dream in sugar highs and world domination.What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up? Gets written across a white board in green ink.Taller, she writes in her book, inscrutably.
    Marcus is this solid kid, all pink and yellow. Aisha and I squat over heating pipes lunchtimes, behind screens of coats, plotting elaborate schemes for his demise. We map them out with minute, closely detailed comic strip drawings. We say nothing. We stand tight close behind him, his hair smells of milk sugar. Aisha trembles with possibilities, squeezing my fingers until the veins buzz. Anticipation hits me very hard in the bladder. He could be mangled beneath wheels, spread out like melted marshmallow across the tarmac.He really could.
    Crossing this road here seems equally momentous. Our main obstacle the lack of actual traffic because cars are too stealthy. Stop. Listen. Look left, look right.Wait for the cars to pass. Cross at a steady pace. I keep forgetting how to breathe and in the centre of our palms that meet we cradle two bee stings like stigmata. His is real, mine is a mirage. I want to check that mine is still imaginary but I'm afraid to let go.
    Five minutes later we're still waiting. Ten minutes? I don't know, time curves in on itself. A white BMW shimmers in the sun.