Jacaranda Books

I learned in time that your lips were as sinful in action as they were to look at.

I was furious at the world for turning us into cockroaches, only comfortable in dark places.

PART 1
Seven
I was six years old the night I was born. I woke up, eyes wide open, a black kid uncannily alert to something coming. My twin brother was with me. He was always with me. I was always with him. We slept in the same bed. Perhaps he was born then too into the same pool of fear I was sitting in. I don’t know what it was exactly that forced us up. Perhaps it was our sister calling, or maybe it was that sixth sense, our survival instinct, which kicked us out of a deep sleep. Or maybe it was the heat, the smoke, the fire brigades and police sirens howling from outside as they approached our house. Whatever it was, we were staring up at a long dark cloud of smoke that covered the ceiling above our heads. It seeped in from the cracks around the door and ran along the ceiling to find its wa