The Knife That Killed Me

by Anthony McGowan

  “I don’t even know what you’re saying. Don’t know and don’t care.”

  “Listen to me! Kirk was lying when he said that Maddy and Shane were together. I mean, together like that. They aren’t. They never could be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How could you not know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Shane. Maddy. Couldn’t happen.”

  “Of course it could. I’ve seen her look at him. Kirk’s right. I was stupid to think … Just get lost, will you, Billy, I’ve stuff to do.”

  “He’s gay.”

  “What?”

  “Shane’s gay.”

  Then came the sort of silence that pounds in your ears. And then I laughed. And then I cursed. And then I said, “You’re taking the piss.”

  “You know what this school is like. Do you think I’d joke about it? Imagine being gay here. Imagine what would happen to you if it got out. Imagine what that does to you, inside. Maddy’s got a brother who … Well, that’s for her to tell you. Anyway, she understood better than anyone. She was a shoulder for him to cry on. And maybe she felt things for him, I don’t know. Would be a bit weird, if you ask me, but that’s not the point.”

  “So what is the point?”

  Everything Billy had said made a kind of sense, and maybe it should have cheered me up, but it didn’t. I was too confused, too heartsick. I didn’t know what to think about Shane being gay. It made me feel queasy and embarrassed. It made me think in a different way about things he’d said and done. I know it shouldn’t, but it did. And the knowledge that Maddy hadn’t deliberately stood me up got lost in the fact that she hadn’t noticed me enough even to realize that I’d asked her out.

  There was too much, so I blanked it out, made it go away.

  “The point? The point?” said Billy, almost shouting now, his arms waving around for emphasis. “The point is that you don’t have to get mixed up in all that bullshit after school. The stupid fight. Acting like Roth’s right-hand man. We can just forget about the past couple of days, get on with life. And you never know, you and Maddy—”

  “Shut up about Maddy.” I surprised myself with the concentrated spite in my voice.

  “OK, whatever …”

  “It’s too late.”

  “It’s never too late.”

  “Everything’s … in place.”

  “So what? Just don’t go.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “Damn right I don’t understand.”

  “Go away, Billy. Go away and play your silly games. Pretend that your lives are interesting. Pretend that you’re special. Pretend there’s some great tragic drama that you’re part of. You lot are pathetic. You think you’re better than everyone else, you think you’ve got more depth. But you’re not deep, you’re stupid. You don’t get it—don’t get how the world works. You read books and you talk about them but you never see what’s around you. Well, Roth does. Roth sees everything. And you’re not even much good at being a freak. You’re too fat and you laugh too much.”

  And then smiling Billy’s round face, so wrong for a freak, so right for a clown, suddenly looked gaunt, and it was as if I was seeing through the flesh to the skull beneath. He got up slowly, like an old man, and I felt sorry for what I’d done.

  “Look, Billy,” I said, “I appreciate you coming here, saying what you said. But things are different now, and that’s all there is to it. Anyway, how’s Shane?”

  When he answered, his voice was empty.

  “Maddy called him. A couple of stitches. He’ll be back in school in no time.”

  And then he was gone, his bulk swaying its way into the corridor, like an old-time sailing ship leaving a small harbor.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I had geography with Mr. Boyle in the afternoon. His heart wasn’t in the lesson, and he didn’t even bother to stop the kids talking among themselves. He just droned away, pausing sometimes to write stuff on the whiteboard in his unreadable handwriting. As usual, Roth and Bates and Miller were behind me, but they didn’t throw chewing gum today. We were on the same side now.

  Despite the boring lesson, you could sense the excitement build up as we got nearer the time of the fight. It was an excitement I didn’t share. The anger I’d felt about Maddy and Shane was gone. What was left behind was a kind of gray sludge. Not really what you need to get in the mood for a fight.

  I’m trying to find the right word for what I felt; trying to find a big word, a good word. But maybe the right word is a simple one: I felt sad. My time of being a freak was over. For a while I’d almost become one of Roth’s nutters, but that was never going to work. I wasn’t hard enough, and I didn’t enjoy other people’s pain. But there was no way I was going to back out of the battle. I didn’t want to live with the shame of it, like my dad had done, hiding it beneath lies and bluster. I’d said I’d be there, so be there I would.

  “Stay behind, will you, Varderman.”

  The lesson was over, and Boyle was talking to me.

  I heard a hiss from behind.

  “Make sure you’re there, or we’ll come looking for you.”

  I turned, ignoring Mr. Boyle. “I’ll be there.”

  When the rest of the class were gone, I went and stood by Boyle’s desk. He was writing something, and made me wait for a couple of minutes. Finally he put down his pen. It was a chewed Bic biro, same as a kid would use.

  “What’s going on, Varderman?”

  “Don’t know, sir.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot, Varderman?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then tell me what’s happening. Because something is. The whole school’s buzzing with it.”

  “Nothing’s happening, sir. It’s going-home time, sir, that’s all.”

  Then Mr. Boyle picked up his pen and wrote some more. I twisted and squirmed and fidgeted, terrified in case Roth thought I was trying to get out of the fight.

  “I was talking to Shane on the way to the ER,” he said after a while. “Oh, don’t worry, he wouldn’t tell me anything either. But he said that he thought you needed help. He said he thought that you could do things with your life.”

  “It’s not up to him what I do with my life, sir.”

  Then Boyle looked at me properly for the first time. “I used to go to school with your dad, you know.”

  “I know, sir.”

  My dad had told me. He laughed when I told him I had Mr. Boyle for geography. He said everyone thought Boyle was a joke, because he was brainy and clumsy and was always falling over his feet. My dad said they called him “Boyle on the bum.”

  “He helped me once. There was a scrap, and the big lads were getting rough, and your dad helped me and a few others to get away. It was up at Temple Moor. I was only there because that’s where I lived. I was scared stiff. But your dad was pretty cool. He wasn’t stupid enough to stay for the fight, but he didn’t just run off and leave us. It’s a long time ago. I don’t know why I’m telling you this.” He looked at me again, holding my eye. “Your dad, he was OK.”

  I knew why he was telling me this. He knew that there was going to be a fight. He knew I was mixed up in it.

  “Sir, can I go now?”

  Another pause. More writing.

  “No, Paul. I’m giving you a detention.”

  “Detention, sir?” I said, outraged. “But I haven’t done nothing.”

  “Anything, Paul.”

  “What, sir?”

  “You haven’t done anything, not nothing.”

  “I know, sir, but, sir …”

  “Go and sit back at your desk. Write me an essay. Write me an essay about history. About what we can learn from history.”

  But I didn’t go back to my desk. I gave Mr. Boyle one last look—a look that was meant to say: Sorry, and I understand what you’re trying to do, and I think that maybe you’re OK too, but probably didn’t get any of that across, and then I ran out of there way too fast for him to catch me or do an
ything more than utter an exasperated bellow of “Varderman, come back.”

  This boy who is coming to hurt me. I know you. How could I not have seen it before? It is a relief to know that I am not to be killed by a stranger. I test to see if knowing him, knowing the truth of him, can help me to stop his progress. Because knowledge is power, and power is what I need. Power to stop the world. Or, if not stop, then to divide the world into that infinite number of steps. Half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth … I know you, and you will never reach me.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was OK—nothing had happened yet. There were at least forty kids in the gypsy field, all clustered around Roth. The drizzle was steady now, filling the air, but there weren’t many coats. Just wet kids, hair plastered down on their white foreheads. As I got nearer, I could see that there were two distinct groups. The first group was made up of the tough kids from our year, and the hardest from the two years below. Not the kind of kids you’d want to get on the wrong side of. The bullies and thugs and meatheads. The ones who took your dinner money and knelt on your chest and spat in your face. Not nice boys. Not nice boys at all.

  And then there were the others. Smaller, mostly, but with a few gangly beanpoles and some roly-poly fatties. These were the ones who’d come because they’d been told to, or who didn’t know what was really going on, or who thought it was their only chance to make a mark, to worm their way into the approval of the top dogs. Some looked frightened already, and others were trying to work themselves up into a bloodlust, but it still appeared fake, like little kids playing at war.

  “Paul, good,” said Roth, and drew me to him, through the mass, as if by sheer force of gravity. “You’ve got a mission. You’re the most important person here.” And while he was saying it, while he was murmuring into my ear, pressing me close, I believed him.

  “You know what to do?”

  I nodded uncertainly.

  “One more time. You keep this lot here”—he gestured toward the bait—“you keep this lot together, over there, where the beck bends back.”

  He pointed to where the beck made a U-shape. Once the Templars came, there’d be no way for us to escape—we’d be completely trapped against the beck. But then, so would they. That was the idea.

  “I don’t want any runners,” Roth said to me, but loud enough for the others to hear. “Anyone runs, and the plan fails. If the plan fails, I’m gonna hurt someone. Have you got that?”

  I nodded.

  “And you know what you’ve got, if you need it?”

  Again I nodded, ashamed, excited.

  “Right then, quick, before they get here.” And then Roth began to turn to the hard kids.

  “Wait,” I said.

  Roth turned back slowly to me. “What?”

  “It’s going to be bad if you don’t … if you don’t come.”

  Roth smiled. “Don’t come? We’ll come. And we’ve got some surprises.”

  Then Roth opened his jacket. A big black handle stuck out of the top of the inside pocket of his blazer. And the pocket itself was almost bursting at the seams. There was something big in there, bigger than a knife. And around him, the other thugs also moved clothing and showed some of what they had. There were metal bars and chains and rocks and knives. The kids I was there to lead saw this, and they shouted and cheered, but I felt sick.

  “Anything else?” Roth said to me.

  I shook my head, and walked with the rest of the bait—about twenty kids altogether—over the uneven wet grass of the gypsy field to our place.

  Looking over my shoulder, I saw Roth and the others stalk off until they reached the part of the beck that dipped beneath the level of the field, and one by one they dropped down out of sight, like devils returning to the underworld.

  Despite the fact that there were still about twenty of us left, it suddenly felt very lonely. And now I looked at them again, the kids I was with seemed even more insignificant and scrawny than before. There weren’t many kids from my year—the hard ones were all hidden down by the beck with Roth, and the rest were clever or cowardly enough to know not to get mixed up in this. I’m not tall for my age, just average, but I saw that I was the biggest there. It made me feel strange, and it took me a few seconds to realize that it was a good strange, not a bad one.

  I felt a tug at my sleeve.

  “Do you know what’s happening?”

  I looked down. It was the annoying Year Eight urchin whose ball I’d booted away. The same one Roth had been about to grate against the wall before Shane saved him. It seemed like years ago.

  “What?”

  “I was at the back. I couldn’t hear. Where are we going?”

  “Why ask me?”

  The kid’s face stared up at me. The other faces were also turned to me. I had a powerful urge to wave my hand at them and leave, walking away across the field—away from them, away from the school, away from Shane, away from Maddy, away from everything. But something inside me knew that you can’t walk away from stuff like that, that it follows you and ruins wherever you go. And there was something else. These pathetic losers needed me.

  “What was your name again?”

  “Skinner.”

  “Well, Skinner, that’s where we’re going.”

  I pointed to the loop in the stream, twenty meters ahead.

  “And what do we do when we get there?”

  “We wait.”

  “What are we waiting for?”

  The others were listening in now. I wondered what Roth had told them.

  “The Temple Moor lot are going to come across the field. They’ll see us and charge. We stand there until Roth and the others arrive.”

  “Oh.” The kid thought for a minute. “But then they’ll be behind them.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And we’ll be in front of them.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But there’ll be nothing in between us and them.”

  “What did you think was going to happen? Why did you come here, anyway?”

  “Everyone said that we had to. They said it was the honor of the school. Is that not right?”

  I didn’t know what to say to him. But something was needed.

  “Look, it’ll be OK. When Roth and the others attack them, the Templars’ll ignore us and try to fight against them. That’s if they don’t just run for their lives.”

  Well, it was possible.

  We reached the place, and I found that I was leading them.

  “What now?” said someone.

  “I’ve already told you. We wait.”

  “But should we get ready or something?”

  I stared at the rabble. It looked like a decent belch would blow them all down. Roth could have picked them all up and crumbled them like a bouillon cube. I was torn between a kind of contempt and pity. But their young faces were all upon me. I had become their Messiah, their hope.

  I went through them, picking out the bigger ones, the ones who looked like they might be able to take care of themselves.

  “OK, you lot,” I said, “you’re in front.”

  I lined them up, facing away from the beck.

  “The rest of you, you’re to stay back here.”

  “I’m not going at the back,” said Skinner.

  “That’s up to you,” I replied, half annoyed, half impressed by his gumption. “Stand wherever you want.”

  Then I went and checked out the beck. The banks here went straight down, without any kind of path or flat bit along the edge. It was a half-meter drop into the water. The stream itself was quite strong, flowing smooth and brown. I didn’t know how deep the water was. A meter maybe. In an emergency we could escape across it, but it wouldn’t be nice.

  “I can see something,” said one of the boys.

  We all looked up the hill. Yes, there they were. A purple cloud. Couldn’t tell how many yet, but it was plenty. I glanced over to where Roth and his mob were lurking. I saw a head bob up, stay for a moment and then duck down agai
n. He’d seen them too.

  The kids around me began to fidget.

  “I’ve got to go home,” said one kid. He was the smallest one there. “Me tea’s ready. Me mum’ll kill me.”

  “You can’t. You heard what Roth said. You want him to hurt you?”

  “But I don’t like it here.”

  Someone laughed mockingly, and a rough hand pushed the little kid in the back.

  “Anyone else want to go home?” I asked.

  A couple of them looked at each other, but then there was a general shaking of heads.

  “OK, you,” I said to the little one. “The only way you can leave without Roth seeing you is to go through the beck.”

  “No chance,” he said, wide-eyed with terror. “There’s rats …”

  A lot of the kids were scared of the beck. Scared of the filth in it and the rats, and the stuff you couldn’t see under the surface.

  “Well, you’ll have to stay then.”

  And then the tears started to roll down his face, and he began to whimper.

  It was turning into a disaster. If this kid really lost it, then there was no telling what effect it might have on the others. I grabbed him by the jumper.

  “Shut up,” I said. “Get on my back.”

  “What?”

  “Up. Get up.”

  Then, with him pushing and me pulling, I got him on my back and stepped down into the water. The kid weighed nothing—I’ve eaten bags of chips that had more substance—but the current almost whipped my legs from under me, and I stumbled and I felt the boy cling to me, the way you sometimes see a baby monkey holding on to its mother’s back. But I steadied myself, and we were set.

  The water was up to my knees. I could feel the ooze and slime under my trainers. I walked on, grunting with each step. Then the water was over my knees, and lapping against the kid’s feet. But it was fine, we were getting there. Until the next time I put my foot down, and it seemed as if it would never reach the bed of the stream, and I staggered and lurched. The boy clung even tighter, his arms around my neck, cutting off the air. The water was around my waist, pulling me, nagging me, urging me to fall. But we did not fall. I tottered on and reached the far bank. I didn’t have the strength to climb out with the boy on my back, so I twisted and threw him down.