Falling by Debbie Moon Page A

down the city, was dozing in front of the Self-Education For Wealth channel, secure in the proximity of a child who was actually out on the frozen street, screaming dares and throwing paintbombs in an unofficial Night of Misrule.
    Jude shivered, tugged the coat zipper right up to her throat, and took a good look around.
    She was sitting on the steps of the SideRide terminal, directly opposite her current abode, the vast grey silhouette of Block 24 of the Prescott Social Housing Development.
    Squinting up past the pseudo-Victorian streetlamps, she could just make out blue TV flicker at the window of their main room. Mum was still up, then. Better hope she gave up on Self-Education and went to bed before Jude tried sneaking back inside, or there’d be hell to pay.
    Block 24 was an Exemplary Residents block: separate living and sleeping quarters, hot water on tap and wall to wall carpet, an unheard-of luxury. But any serious misdemeanor – like the one she was currently considering committing – would get them transferred back to one of the basic blocks in an instant.
    The threat stirred faint resentment in her, and a flush of guilt. Mum had worked hard to get them classified Exemplary Residents, and Jude didn’t want to go back to a bare concrete room any more than she did.
    Standing up, she pushed the thought aside. Just one answer to that, kiddo. Don’t get caught.
    She checked the street, registering flickers of movement in the alleys or along the glazed-in fire escapes. Adults came out to play on Frost Night, too. Dangerous games involving knives and strangling cords, thefts, contracts and old scores.
    No danger to her, though. Bankside kids knew better than to get involved; Bankside adults knew better than to tangle with cocky streetwise brats who could scream like divas and knew every short cut and escape route for twenty blocks around.
    No police. No movement from the automatic cameras that were supposed to monitor the street ‘for your security’. They hadn’t worked in years. No ‘copter lights visible between here and the neon-hazed horizon.
    It was looking promising.
    Sitting right here, she was safe anyway. The steps of the SideRide were neutral territory. If some suicidally dedicated police officer did happen along, Jude could say she’d just disembarked. Slipped on the ice, maybe, and sat down to rest her ankle before limping home. No danger there.
    The danger lay in accepting Lazy Jay’s challenge.
    Lazy Jay, currently leaning out of a third floor window in Block 23, watching the night’s events with open disdain.
    He was nine, a whole year older than Jude; a scrawny Nigerian boy descended from some long-overthrown tyrant, raised penniless, bitter and utterly convinced of his natural superiority to the ragamuffins of the Bankside. He’d thrashed most of the other aspiring bullies and gang leaders in the Prescott into submission years ago, and established himself as leader of the most unruly and admired pre-teen gang, the Electric Volunteers. Even Jude, who thought him an arrogant racist poseur, had to admire his determination.
    â€˜Well, Jude?’
    He was wearing a coat – fake fur, fashionable, if a little camp – but he wasn’t coming out to play. In a flash of premonition, his parents had a disabling switch installed in the prosthesis that reinforced his withered leg, and when it was off, he couldn’t do much more than hobble around clinging to the furniture.
    Jude looked up at him; a tall, taut silhouette against the thin pink light of the standard bedroom fittings. ‘Wassa matter, Lazy Jay? Lost your crutches?’
    Even from the other side of the street, she heard him snarl in fury.
    Dangerous game she was playing. They’d had a scuffle or two already, the usual schoolyard disagreements. Jay was good with his fists, but Jude was faster on her feet, and her mother’s last boyfriend had taught her some unorthodox kick-boxing