Candle Eyes tripped as he approached the counter. He retracted some of the vines he used as legs, and although his glowing smile grew broader, the flame inside his face flickered with embarrassment.

"Hey, See Through!" he recovered, greeting his ghostly pal who had been handing out roller skates behind the counter. See Through gave Candle Eyes a little salute and passed a pair of size nines to Six Gun.

From the back office arose a cheerful cackle. Cauldron Lady shook a bag of silver coins, their muffled clinking almost drowned out by the woman's exuberance.

"Thirty-one tonight!"

On the skate floor, Rag Doll and Crow Spooker held hands as they glided around the rink. They parted to avoid Headless Ballerina, who scrambled like a cartoon cat before finally falling on what might have been her face, if only her head could be found. Arr Matey shifted his patch to his other eye and roared laughter.

Nibbling candy corn at a table in the far corner of the snack bar, Little Bobby sat by himself. He watched Rag Doll and Crow Spooker couple skate to Eternal Flame.

He thought, "They never kiss."

They never did. They skated together all night, every night, but never kissed. See Through never spoke to Candle Eyes, and Arr Matey only ever hung out with Six Gun. Cauldron Lady didn't speak to anyone; she just muttered spells from the back office. Nobody talked to Little Bobby.

Cauldron Lady had turned thirty-one at least fifty-seven times: that was Little Bobby's count at least. Time passed differently here, and he couldn't quite tell if that translated to fifty-seven days, or hours, or some other measure of time entirely. Besides, fifty-seven was only Bobby's count since he arrived here--he couldn't say how many times the people around him had lived through this day, this thing. He hadn't walked into the rink, he had appeared into this neon-lit purgatory one minute, the memory of death evading him.

He had to presume he had died entirely unceremoniously, no legendary quirk to make a myth of him. He supposed he would turn into a local legend, as was typical for boys of his age, an urban legend that would turn to kids daring each other to run across the street where he had been hit, betting pocket-money and penny chews on where his ghost would turn up. Maybe his name would be muttered solemnly by mothers and older siblings to scare their children to look both ways or hold their hand as they crossed the road. Little Jimmy had sat on a hard plastic bench in the corner, wearing skates far too big for him, chewing his way through a plate of chips that had never been hot, and always been soggy.

A lot of things in this place were like this.

If he moved, no one looked. Candle-Eyes never stocked anything but size nones behind the counter, and See-Through had never once thanked him. Cauldron-Lady, of course, was always turning thirty-one, purse never sounding fuller or emptier once. Little Bobby had memorised the sound of coins in the bag, a jingle, a soft clink, the rustle of the fabric. Then there was the Headless Ballerina, skating over the same spot every night, and never quite learning the right velocity to hit, or bump to avoid without falling, just like that, flat on her not-face. Rag-Doll and Crow-Spooker's slow circuit around the rink to the same, sappy 80s love ballad, where they would never quite meet each other's eye, never come closer than an arm's length at all. They reminded them, Bobby thought, of his older sister and her boyfriend, Jenny and Dennis, who Jenny kept insisting they would stay together forever, choosing to ignore all the signs that said 'Dennis is going to university soon, and will meet someone new', even if it meant never looking him in the eye again, as if the truth would suddenly spill out and destroy her if she ever got as close to him as they once were.

Now that he thought about it, Candle-Eyes and See-Through reminded him of someone, too. His mates, if he could call them that, Tommy and Sam. They did all the things best mates did, high-fived and slapped each other on the back and called you a prat and laughed at you when you fell off your skateboard, but without warmth. There was no intention behind the gesture, not to support, or comfort, or even intend to see you after school and bring you chocolate because his hamster died.

There was, Little Bobby thought, no life in this place at all.

Until the fifty-eighth night, where Little Bobby decided that, tonight, he would warn the Headless Ballerina of the bump in the lino.