“Wesley! You gave me such a skrik man. What are you doing here at my place, skulking in the bushes like that?”

“Fabian,” I said, “you’ve got to help me. I’m in so much trouble. I can’t even go home.”

“What’s going on?” he said, staring at me. It calmed me down a bit just to see him standing there. I realised how much I’d missed him. We’d been good buds till that stupid argument. Out of all the guys I knew, he was the one I could trust in a crisis.

I held out the poster with my face on it for him to see. It wasn’t an actual photo, but one of those computer-drawn, identity-kit things, like the police did. Whoever the ‘witness’ was had a good eye for faces. It was a perfect likeness.

“Jeez man! What did you do to get your face on there?” Fabian asked.

“Nothing,” I snivelled. “It was all a crazy mix up. I lost my sister and took someone else’s kid instead.”

The look on his face was so classic I would have burst out laughing any other time. But I wasn’t in a laughing mood.

“That isn’t the worst of it,” I said. “Look at the name, next to the number at the bottom.” I started blubbering. I couldn’t help it.

Fabian looked up slowly. “Oupa G? It was Oupa G’s son that you kidnapped? Serious?”

I nodded, wiping snot and tears away with the back of my hand.

“Well, it’s nice having known you,” he said.

The Oupa Gs were the Boss gang in our neighbourhood. Everybody, even the other gangs, were terrified of them. The G in their name stood for Graveyard. Which was where you went, double-quick, if you got on their wrong side. Oupa was their head. His name was another in-joke. He was only about twenty something. But he’d already lived enough to fill a long life.

***

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