If he does, I don’t know what I’ll do. I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself grabbing him and shoving his face into the sick, grinding it as hard as I can until he’s breathing it in and choking on it. I’ll press his nose into the ground till it bleeds, so his blood mixes with my puke and he has to swallow both. I won’t care what he does back to me. I won’t even care.
It’s ages before he speaks. Finally, he lifts his gaze from the vomit and stares right into my eyes. The way he looks at me these days, I feel like he knows what I’m thinking. He probably doesn’t, or he’d kick me out, but the idea that he might – the idea that he could know how much I hate him – is petrifying.
‘That stinks,’ he says. ‘Let’s go.’
I sit next to Olly in class again now, with special permission from Mrs Dickson, but we don’t always walk in together. Sometimes I call for him, often I don’t.
When it’s just the two of us, without Carl, things are a bit strange. We can’t quite keep up all the attitude, but we can’t let it drop either, or we’d look like frauds. You don’t want it to seem like the whole thing’s just a mask you can take off at will.
I’m no different at home. I’m just the same as always. I reckon Olly is, too, so we probably could be normal with each other, but it never happens.
Once it almost does. We’re walking back from school, and we’ve both stamped on Coke cans, which we’re wearing clamped on to our shoes like big, clompy heels. We’re clattering around, making noises with our feet, and I start trying to kick his cans off, so he goes for mine, and we have a bit of a scrap, which makes a huge racket with all the clanking and scraping of the metal against the path, and we both ended up on top of each other on the grass behind the busted water fountain, laughing.
It’s only when I stop laughing that I realize how strange this is. Then I think the really strange thing is that it’s strange. It used to be completely normal to be just mucking around and having a laugh, but now we never do it any more. With Carl, things aren’t a laugh. He makes us do scary things, or exciting things, and sometimes we’ll laugh at each other, but it’s never like this, just playing and laughing.
When I look at Olly, I know he’s thinking the same thing. And I know he isn’t going to say anything about it.
Just at the moment when the feeling’s about to snap, I say, ‘Carl’s a bit…’ I can’t think how I’m going to finish the sentence, and end up just saying, ‘… nuts.’
Olly shrugs.
‘D’you ever think we were better off without him?’ I say.
Olly stares at me. He doesn’t move a muscle, but I can see he’s fizzing inside.
It’s a while before I realize what he’s thinking. I know what he wants to say, and for a minute I can’t figure out what’s stopping him. Then it hits me that he thinks it might be a trap. He doesn’t know if he should tell the truth because he thinks I might be asking so I can rat on him to Carl. It’s incredible he could think this, but I can see it in his eyes. He’s trying to figure out if he can trust me.
‘I won’t tell him!’ I say, but it doesn’t come out right. It’s like I’m shouting at him.
‘Tell him what you like,’ he says. ‘I’m not hiding anything.’
‘I didn’t say you were,’ I say.
‘Well, I’m not. He’s my mate.’
‘I know.’
‘Why?’ says Olly ‘Are you saying you don’t like him?’
‘No.’ It’s not safe to tell the truth now. The moment’s gone.
‘So what are you talking about, then?’
‘Nothing. I was just asking.’
‘Asking what?’
‘Nothing. Forget it.’
‘Maybe I won’t.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Just that maybe I won’t.’
‘Won’t what?’
‘Won’t forget what you said.’
‘I didn’t say anything.’
He raises an eyebrow at me, like he knows he’s got one over on me, and walks off. I go after him, but don’t say anything, and we get all the way back to his house in silence.
When he says bye, it sounds a bit like an apology, but I can’t be sure. You can’t tell where he stands any more. You don’t really know what he’s thinking.
The Ironmonger’s
I wouldn’t say Carl’s exactly scary. After the game of knuckles, he doesn’t hit me once. But he doesn’t have to. It’s not like you can ever forget he’s bigger.
He has a way now of heading off challenges before they even happen. If you say something he doesn’t like, however small, he uses it against you, twisting it, going on and on about this tiny thing, bouncing it off the other person to grow it and mock you for it, and you can end up spending hours or even a whole day as the brunt of everything, just because of one little comment, so it becomes simpler to say only what you think he’ll like. If you make things easier for him, you make things easier for yourself. That’s just how it is.
But there’s one day – a bunking day – when he turns up at McDonald’s and he really is scary. He’s all jumpy and his eyes are flashing, and he keeps standing up and checking himself in the mirrored wall, again and again, so many times that it begins to seem a bit crazy, and me and Olly have to pretend not to notice. There’s something really hyper about the way he keeps smoothing the same bit of hair over and over. It reminds you of a zoo animal.
Neither of us wants to ask him if he’s OK because we know he won’t like it. For ages he doesn’t say anything, and neither do we. Eventually he stops hopping around and stares at us – first me, then Olly, then me again.
‘Let’s steal a knife,’ he says.
‘A what?’
‘A knife, you div. A knife and some rope.’
He’s not joking. You can tell by the look on his face. I’ve never seen him more serious.
‘Why?’
‘There’s something we have to do,’ he says.
Then he stands and walks out. There’s no option except to follow him.
‘Robert Dyas – The Ironmonger’, it says, which makes you think of an old man in front of an open fire, hammering out horseshoes on an anvil, but it’s nothing like that inside. It’s just a big, deep old shop full of the kind of stuff that dads keep in sheds.
Carl’s made a plan. Me and Olly are going to go in and buy some rope. He’s already scouted it out and he says there’s lots of different kinds, and we have to keep on asking to see all the different strengths until the shop guy is confused, and that’s when Carl (who’ll come in with us, but go straight to the back of the shop) will grab a knife and do a runner, preferably unnoticed. Even if they do notice him, he reckons he can run faster than them. And if he can’t run faster than them, he’ll have a knife and they won’t. So nothing can go wrong.
He says if the shop guy asks why we want the rope, we should say it’s a present for our dad. I’m not sure if that means we’re pretending to be brothers, which I don’t think will be very convincing, but it doesn’t seem like that’s an important question, so I don’t bother him with it. He gives us fifteen quid, which he’s got from I don’t know where, to pay for the rope. He gets a bit aggressive when I ask how much rope he wants, and says he doesn’t know, so I suggest we just get fifteen quids’ worth, and he tells me to stop asking spastic questions because that’s what the fifteen quid was for, so he doesn’t know why I was even asking. It’s unfair because he started off saying he didn’t know, then ends up acting like I’m an idiot because I don’t know. It was me that thought of the answer, not him. But things are often like that with Carl. He twists things round so it’s always the other person who’s the stupid one, and it’s never worth arguing.
Strange thing is, the plan works. The old guy behind the counter gets so annoyed with us looking at all the different kinds of chains and ropes that he loses track of everything else, and a big queue builds up at the till, so the only other person in the shop has to come over and deal with it,
and by the end there’s so much bustle around us that even we don’t know if Carl’s got out all right. But he has.
Half an hour later, we’re all in the park together, him with a long, serrated kitchen knife, us with about a ton of rope. Turns out fifteen quid goes a long way when you’re buying rope.
When he sees it, Carl laughs at us and says we’re idiots because we only need enough to tie up one person, but he never said that originally, so how were we supposed to know? Carl loves his knife, and for ages we chuck it around the park, seeing how many revolutions you can get it to do in the air and still land point downwards. Then we start just chucking it straight up, as high as we can, and running away to stop it landing on our heads, which is a good laugh.
It’s Carl’s idea to play chicken, where you stand with your legs apart and throw the knife into the grass between the other player’s legs. You have to move your foot to where the knife went in, so with each round the gap gets smaller and smaller, and you end up aiming the knife at just a tiny piece of ground between the other person’s feet.
We start with me v. Carl, and when we’re down to a gap of less than a hand I win because Carl misses and gets my shoe. It doesn’t hurt too much but as winning prizes go, getting a knife in your foot isn’t a great one. I only realize after I’ve won that it might have been better to lose. Olly says he doesn’t fancy playing and, because it’s Olly, Carl doesn’t make him.
That’s when I ask what the knife’s for, and Carl tells us the plan.
‘My dad lives in Swindon,’ he says. ‘I want to visit him. I have to show him something.’
‘What? A knife?’ I say.
‘The knife’s for his girlfriend.’
‘Your dad’s got a girlfriend?’
‘I just said so, didn’t I?’
‘How come?’
‘He ran off, didn’t he. Years ago. Then he rings up Mum yesterday and tells her he’s having a baby, in one month, with the girlfriend in Swindon, and he wants a proper divorce.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to get her.’
‘Get her?’
‘She can’t just take him. We’ve got to show her.’
‘Show her what?’
‘Teach her a lesson. Cut out her baby.’
‘You’re going to cut out her baby.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I’m just going to scare her. That’s what we’re going to do. All of us. We’re going to go up there and scare her. Let her know she can’t smash up my family.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll work it all out.’
‘What do we have to do?’
‘Are you too chicken? Are you saying you’re too chicken?’ He stares at us, his eyes going from one to the other, pinning us back with their glare.
Olly shakes his head first, then me. There isn’t any way out of it. Neither of us contradicts Carl any more, and now would be the stupidest time to start, with him looking more scary and serious than ever. We don’t have any choice.
By now my foot’s tingling, and there’s a bubble of blood coming up inside one of my shoelace eyelets, so I tell them I’m going home. Carl says we have to divvy up the stuff for our trip. He’s going to take the knife, and Olly, he says, can have the rope. He cuts off the length we’ll need, sawing at it while me and Olly hold it taut, like a mini tug-of-war, then he chucks the rest into a bush.
It makes me feel wary, being left out like that while Olly gets to look after the rope. It means I’m the one he trusts least.
‘What about me?’ I say.
‘What about you?’ he says.
‘What am I in charge of?’
He thinks for a bit, then says, ‘Tape.’
‘What kind of tape?’
‘Like in films. For putting over someone’s mouth. To stop them speaking.’
‘The stuff for parcels?’
‘Yeah. You got any? In your house?’
‘Probably.’
‘Well, you can bring that.’
‘Bring it where?’
‘To do the thing.’
‘When?’
‘Dunno. Next week.’ Then he sees that Olly’s got the rope wound into a loop and slung over his shoulder. ‘In your bag, you div! You’ve got to hide it!’ he snaps, shoving him in the chest.
‘I know!’ says Olly, even though he didn’t.
There’s not much to say as we all walk home. Having a secret makes it hard to talk about anything else that isn’t secret. Neither of them notice I’m limping.
As we shuffle along, I try and figure out if Carl really means it about the plan. It could be like the Wembley trip again, but further, and better. It could be fun, the three of us, going somewhere together, on a mission. I know it won’t be, though. Not with Carl acting strange and taking funny equipment. It really won’t be fun.
I don’t want to go. I don’t want to be his friend. I want to tell Mum that Carl’s got a knife and is talking about using it.
I couldn’t, though. He’d kill me.
The Bathroom
I forget to lock the bathroom door. I wouldn’t normally be that stupid. It must be the pain in my foot, from where Carl’s knife got me. Donny walks in just as I’m trying to put a plaster on. I haven’t even started getting the blood off my shoe and sock yet, so the evidence is right there for him to see.
He’s got a sixth sense for when I want to be left alone, and that’s when he comes and finds me.
‘What are you doing?’ he says.
‘Hurt my foot.’
‘How?’
I shrug. ‘Just hurt it.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You were doing nothing, and your foot just sprang a leak?’
‘LEAVE ME ALONE!’ It’s at the top of my voice. I didn’t even know I could shout that loud.
Donny stares at me, like he thinks I’m crazy. ‘Are you OK?’ he says.
‘LEAVE ME ALONE! LEAVE ME ALONE!’ Even though I’m shouting, I’m hoping he won’t do it.
For ages he doesn’t speak, then he says, ‘It was Carl, wasn’t it? Show me.’ He tries to pull my hands away from where they’re hiding my foot, but I tense up and don’t let him. He’s too strong, though, and I can only hold it for a few seconds. Once he’s prised my grip loose, I give up and let him look.
Donny stares at the cut, thinking.
‘Was this a knife?’
‘It was an accident. We were playing a game.’
‘I’m going to have to tell Mum and Dad.’
‘DON’T!’
‘I have to. You’ve been cu –’
‘DON’T TELL THEM! THEY WON’T UNDERSTAND!’
‘I don’t understand,’ he says.
‘Yes, you do. It’s just games. Just stupid games. Sometimes they go wrong.’
‘It’s not normal, what he does to you. It’s not safe. You have to stay away from him.’
‘I CAN’T.’
‘You have to.’
‘I CAN’T.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because.’
‘Because what?’
‘Because he’s my friend. Him and Olly are my friends.’
‘So get new friends. Get friends who are nice to you.’
‘I can’t!’
‘You can.’
‘I can’t. You can’t just change friends. It doesn’t work. I tried, and it doesn’t work.’
‘It takes time, but you can do it. You have to.’
‘IT DOESN’T WORK! IT DOESN’T WORK! YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND!’
‘I do understand.’
‘You don’t. You don’t know what it’s like.’
‘What what’s like?’
‘See? You don’t understand.’
‘Ben – listen. I’ll do a deal with you. I won’t tell anyone about this if you make me a promise. If you promise, on your life, that you won’t see Carl again, and that you’ll try, properly, to change friends, I’ll keep quiet. OK
? If you see him once more, I’m telling Mum and Dad.’
He’s got me cornered. I can’t have them knowing. They’d start prying into school stuff and might find out about the bunking, then that would be the end of everything. I have to make the promise. It’s only words, after all. They don’t really mean anything. They’re just what I’ve got to say to stop my world falling apart. He can’t make me mean it, and he can’t make me do it. I’m not going back to Blob. There’s no way I’ll ever let myself become a nobody again.
I nod.
‘Say it,’ he says.
‘I promise.’
‘Promise what?’ he says.
‘To not see Carl.’
‘Say the whole thing.’
‘I promise not to see Carl.’
‘And look at me while you’re saying it.’
‘IpromisenottoseeCarl!’
‘Good.’
He stares at me for a bit, then turns and leaves.
From the corridor, just his head peeking back into the room, he tells me not to be an idiot, and that he’s going to keep an eye on me.
I kick the door shut, which makes the cut zap me right up the leg.
The Station
It’s Wednesday, a week later, that Carl sets as the big day. He’s got money for train tickets from somewhere, and he’s figured out how to catch a Swindon train, and he seems to know everything. Sometimes he seems stupid, but often I think he might be the cleverest of any of us.
The plan is that we’re going to meet at the Tube station at nine. Carl will have the knife, Olly the rope, and me the tape. We’ll get the Tube into London, then change on to an intercity that goes to Swindon. After that it’s all just in Carl’s head. He says he knows what to do, and he’ll tell us as we go along.
It’s not like we discuss it. There’s never even a moment when he asks if we want to go. He just tells us the plan – what bits we’re allowed to know – and we do as he says.
I’m scared of going, but I’m more scared of not going. I’m in Carl’s gang now and, once you’re in, you can’t pick and choose what you’re up for. You’re all in or all out. I made my choice when I went back to him. If I don’t turn up, or tell on him, he’ll get his revenge. Whatever you do to Carl, he does back to you, twice as bad. It’s never worth it. I have to go.
Bad Influence Page 12