Concentr8

by William Sutcliffe

  One day I want to go in a plane. Just once. It ain’t never going to happen, but that’s what I want, just once in my life to be up there in the blue and I wouldn’t even look down – I don’t care about that – I’d look out and up and around and just knowing that I was flying that would be enough. People act like it’s normal, like flying is normal, but it ain’t. Just once before I die I want to know what it’s like.

  So it was a day like that, a good sky day in the sky and also in my head, just everything popping good and sharp. And when the riot kicked off we all went for a look and I didn’t even feel like I was in it, like I was really there, I just thought we’re floating through this, we’re here and we’re not here and it was so beautiful, the fires and the people all working together smashing up the shops and the police cowering under their shields, just peak, and the floating was so fine, but also like I was in a bubble. Thing is, I didn’t want to float, didn’t want to miss it, I wanted to be in it, inside it, feeling it, cause it might never happen again, then I thought it’s stupid just smashing stuff up and nicking crap, and it came to me like a lump of gold landing in the palm of my hand, I just knew that I had to do something real, something extreme, something that weren’t copying everyone else, but was an actual idea from my own head.

  An idea ain’t one thing. It’s two. Two quiet slow sleepy things in different places, woken up by a flash of electricity that jumps from one to the other, bringing them to life. That’s the idea – the zing of the connection. There was the riot, the anger, the burning stuff, the revenge, the release of knowing that even though you’re trapped and you’ve got no hope and no chance you’re in a place where for once you’re fighting back – that was thing one. Thing two was a place. Me and Matchstick found it a few weeks before. Just exploring. Crossing railway tracks to look for weirdness, forgotten spots, abandoned factories, it’s something we do, I don’t know why. Like a dare, but not really. Just checking stuff out for no reason.

  You can figure the rest. Lightning flashed from one to the other, and that’s why I’m here, now, staring out a guy tied to a radiator. That’s why it happened. Or maybe it’s a how rather than a why, but who knows if there’s really a difference anyway? Stuff that happens happens cause there’s an opportunity for it to happen. Who says anyone’s actually choosing for it to happen or making it happen?

  Yeah, looks like I chose it, like I caused it, but that ain’t how it felt at the time. Didn’t feel like I was having the idea, felt like the idea was having me. It was electric, man, powerful like you wouldn’t believe. You know those guys on TV, on the screens in betting shops, riding horses full gallop, I mean, are they really in charge? Are they really telling the horse where to go? Don’t look like it. That’s what it felt like for me with this idea, and if you don’t know what that feels like, if you never been lifted up and carried off by a buzzy plan for something bad you just got to do, then I feel sorry for you.

  I knew the others would come with me. They can’t resist. When I’m on fire, when it’s all going on, nobody can resist, I’m king. It’s just a fact, people follow me, I don’t even got to ask them, they just do. Half the time I wish they didn’t, half the time I think it’s a curse, but there’s nothing I can do about it, that’s just how things are. I ain’t being arrogant it’s just the truth.

  Them days, them clear days when everything makes sense and your brain just speaks in one voice, and it’s a calm voice taking you from step to step like a song where every note just has to be the one that it is, after the last one and before the one that comes next, them days are special and they don’t last. There’s always an afterwards, when everything looks different, and the confusion comes back and what seemed obvious and true and right suddenly makes no sense.

  That’s how it was waking up on the sofa, next morning, slices of sunlight coming in through the blinds, striping over me and Karen, stripes that were straight and not straight, wobbling over the curves of our bodies. It was a good night, a sleep night, but waking up then I knew this whole thing weren’t so clever, and it all got done proper fast but that didn’t mean it could be undone, not fast, not slow, not no way at all. Straight off, with a new day ahead, I saw there weren’t no way out, no way forward or back or nothing. We did good to get this far, but even if we set the guy free and ran off, they’d get us. I just woke up knowing we were done in, all of us. We’d jumped into a deep hole and there weren’t no ladder.

  I don’t know how many years you get for something like this, but I know the time we got here in this warehouse, with the hostage, the time we got between now and the first set of handcuffs, that’s the only freedom we got for a long time. Pretty soon, I ain’t never going to breathe free like this, not for years. I better drink it in while I can.

  The guy’s shut his eyes again. He can’t look at me. Don’t blame him.

  I walk away, don’t even know where, just walking.

  My beautiful idea, my galloping horse, now it don’t look so slick, but it brought us here so all I can do is try and decide what next. Ain’t no point giving up, cause screwed is screwed. Whatever they got in mind for our punishment, as long as we don’t hurt the guy, there’s nothing we can do now to make it worse or better. What’s coming is coming, so we might as well enjoy the time we got left. But that don’t mean I got a plan. That don’t mean I got a clue.

  I had some beautiful hours with Karen on that sofa. There’s something about the warehouse, about being locked in with this guy, makes the whole thing feel like a holiday. Never had one, but I seen the pictures, adverts of it everywhere, smiling people just cotching on the sand, no work, no worries, nothing. That’s why it’s like a holiday cause it feels like time’s stopped – like day and night has drifted together. Even with the feds right outside. That just makes it stronger, knowing we’re surrounded, and we’re living in a bubble that ain’t got long before it bursts. It’s sort of like feeling brand new, made fresh, and also right about to die all at once. Sometimes, boxed in here, nothing happening, I feel like I can actually hold a second, each second, as a thing in the palm of my hand, a little smooth pebble of time. Just catch one, and feel it, and drop it, then catch the next one.

  But now Troy’s showed me the news on his phone, the Concentr8 story, everything’s flipped into a new place. Took me a while to digest it, had to hide away and think, didn’t even want Karen or nobody, then I just burnt the stuff and everyone except Troy looked at me like I’d lost my shit.

  Maybe they still think I’ve gone mental, cause nobody’s asked why. Femi had his little flip-out but he still didn’t ask why I burnt the stuff. Troy doesn’t need to ask, but them others, they’re too scared, too dumb. Sheep.

  Sometimes I see that look, that way people look at me, almost cringing with fear like I’ve made a part of them shrivel up, and it’s a surprise cause I don’t even know what’s going on or what they’re afraid of. I know I get angry, but I don’t hurt nobody, hardly ever. Weirdest thing of all is that sometimes it scares me when people do it, cause it makes me wonder if there’s something going to come along and grab me and make me do bad shit I don’t even want to do.

  That time I got excluded, for what I did to the Turkish kid in the playground, honestly, I hardly even knew what was happening. He was asking for it, and he basically made me do it, and I just weren’t powerful enough to hold back the surge that took me over. Blaming me is like blaming the sky for raining. If I weren’t carrying the shank it wouldn’t have been nothing serious, but I ain’t safe without it, and that ain’t my fault.

  After I burnt them pills there was a weird atmosphere, everyone quiet, kind of suspicious, just not such a laugh no more. Different vibe took over, flat and cold and almost boring. There’s message after message on my phone from Mum – on and on about what am I doing, where’s Matchstick, where am I, then after that tons of chat about all the journalists outside, hassling her, trapping her in the flat, on and on. I ain’t really told her what I done – just too much grief trying to speak to
her – but after I saw the Concentr8 story I told her there’s one journalist I will talk to. Just one. Told her it might get them off her back, but don’t even know if she heard cause she’s too busy telling me to turn myself in, but that’s Mum, ain’t it? Always fretting.

  Then today after I got Femi off the roof she called and said the person was there. The journalist. I swear she’s pushy cause that lady been calling and calling all afternoon, leaving a message every time. I ain’t answered, not yet, I ain’t an idiot, but I listened to the messages, listened again and again, till I got that posh voice buzzing in my brain, stuck there.

  Didn’t know what to do about it – all afternoon thought maybe the whole thing was a stupid mistake – but you can think clearer in the dark – when you know you’re on your own and ain’t nobody going to interrupt you or hassle you – and suddenly I get that sparky tingle in my head and it’s almost like I’m riding something again, like something’s carrying me out of this weird misty place to somewhere else where the air’s clear and good, cause out of nowhere I get this feeling of a direction ahead of me – an idea of what I can do.

  Can’t even wait till morning, neither – cause everything always looks different in the mornings and I don’t want to lose the feeling – don’t want to change my mind. It’s the middle of the night, but she ain’t going to complain, is she?

  Take out my phone. Dial.

  ‘You called me.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Her voice is sleepy. Confused.

  ‘You called me. My mum gave you the number.’

  ‘It’s you! God! Er . . . hi . . . great. Thanks for calling back. That’s great! I . . . er . . . what time is it? Have you got a minute to talk?’

  ‘You want to meet?’

  ‘Meet? I thought you were –’

  ‘There’s a way out. Can’t tell you how, but I can get out for about an hour, I reckon. You know the KFC in Hackney?’

  ‘Er . . . not off hand, but I can find it.’

  ‘Few doors up from the Empire.’

  ‘I’ll find it.’

  ‘You’ll come alone?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You ain’t gonna fuck me over.’

  ‘I just want to talk to you.’

  ‘If you ain’t alone, you won’t find me.’

  ‘I’ll be alone.’

  ‘Tomorrow. Ten.’

  Hang up. Don’t know why but I’m smiling. For all I know she ain’t who she says she is. For all I know she’s a fed and they’re going to jump me soon as I show up. But at least I done something, at least I got a plan, got something to do. It ain’t a way out, but it’s a way forward, and that feels sweet, feels better than the flatness that’s squashed us down all day, and I don’t even notice climbing the stairs or choosing to go there, but now Karen’s in front of me, peaceful like a sheet of fresh snow, naked and perfect, and I kiss her, not much more than just brushing against her lips, and at first she’s asleep but then she ain’t and she puts her hands on my cheeks and looks at me and I swear that for once she really is looking at me, looking right into me, then she pulls my face towards hers and we’re kissing again and my Calvins are off, and I got my hands all over her, all at once, don’t know how that’s just what it feels like, and she’s all around me like water, wrapping me into her, and I’m lifting her but she don’t weigh nothing, and I’m pushing her into the wall, pushing into her, and I swear it’s like we’re one person and I can’t hear nothing but I can also hear everything, and feel everything, and it’s like there ain’t nothing in the universe except the feeling of this, building and building till it’s almost too much to take, too much to believe, too much for a body to hold without exploding.

  Those lines of sun, straight but not straight, are on us when we wake, don’t know how much later, tangled up together on the floor. There’s a pigeon gargling on the windowsill outside, the London dawn chorus. I ain’t scared, I’m feeling proper good, but I got a feeling it might be the last one I ever hear.

  DAY FIVE

  I can’t tell you how many teachers and school nurses have told me how concerned they’ve become at the volume of kids they see every day at their schools who are on ADHD medication ... and with 13.2% of boys being diagnosed compared to 5.6% of girls, I started to wonder if boys were being medicated for simply being boys, and if their ‘disorder’ was really just a very normal phase of development.

  Bronwen Hruska interviewed by Jasmine Elist, LA Times

  THE JOURNALIST

  Questions jitter through my head as I ride the Tube, then the bus, towards Hackney. How do I approach him? What am I looking for? A motive? The story of his life? An insider account of the riots? A voice of the people or the voice of the devil? Blaze is this week’s public enemy number one, so should I look for evidence to back up the story everyone wants to hear, or use my access to find a more surprising angle – a way to pitch the guy as something more than just a feral yob? Maybe planning what I want to write before the interview is the wrong approach. Perhaps I just need to be alert, be receptive, and trust my instincts. Talk to him. Draw him out. Dig for as much material as I can get, then worry about the angle later.

  But if I don’t know what I’m looking for, how do I know which questions to ask? I need to approach this professionally, with a plan. This is my moment, my scoop. I have to do my job, think on my feet, and get it right.

  The bus sets me down outside the Hackney Empire on Mare Street. There were major flare-ups here earlier in the week, but the last couple of nights things seem to have calmed down. Nobody quite knows why. The police are saying that saturating the streets with officers from around the country has done the trick, but this claim feels like a stretch. Almost as if the whole thing was a natural event, a storm that simply comes then goes in its own time, the chaos seems to have subsided, moved away without explanation or warning, just as it arrived.

  Most of Mare Street is still shuttered up. The carcass of a burnt-out double decker bus, skewed as if in the middle of a U-turn, blocks two lanes. An ashy burnt-plastic smell is still hanging in the air. A few shopkeepers seem to have drifted back to the battlefield, and can be seen sweeping up broken glass or examining the wreckage of their shops. Some outlets have been picked clean, others left untouched. A solicitor’s office has been comprehensively torched; a pawnshop trashed beyond repair. Vengeance, perhaps, alongside the theft.

  People used to make burnt offerings to appease the gods. Something in the nightly performance of these conflicts, set up at specific locations with an evening commencement and a daytime lull, reminds me of this. It feels like a ritual, an outbreak of seeming chaos choreographed to unspoken rules, drawing to a close when catharsis has been achieved. However real the anger, however real the damage, on some level the whole thing felt like a performance.

  That’s just my opinion though, and no use whatsoever as journalism. What I need is a clutch of juicy quotes from this guy ‘Blaze’. Something inflammatory; something offensive; a gory anecdote from his childhood. That’s journalism.

  I step into KFC and scan the room for anyone who might be him. There are plenty of teenagers, plenty of black kids, but nobody alone, and nobody who looks up at me. If he were here, he would have spotted me immediately. White, middle-class, I stand out in the Hackney KFC like a pig in a field of cows.

  Blaze chose this place well. If I brought anyone with me, even if they arrived separately, it would be easy to spot.

  I order myself a coffee and, as an afterthought, a bag of chips, more because I want something to do with my hands than through any genuine desire to eat them. I also get the feeling it will make me look less out of place if I’m eating something, rather than perching tensely at an empty table clutching a drink.

  There’s an old saying that you shouldn’t order food in any restaurant which has more items on the menu than there are chairs. Hackney KFC passes this test – it’s a small menu – but falls down another old maxim of dining lore, which says that any restaurant where the furnit
ure is bolted to the floor probably isn’t so great either.

  I take a seat on the least greasy table, choosing one set back away from the window, and wait.

  Why do they bolt the chairs down? Has anyone ever stolen a chair from a restaurant while it was actually open? And if you did want to steal a chair from a restaurant, is KFC the place you’d choose?

  I bite into a ‘chip’. It crumbles into a paste that is both gooey and dusty, filling my mouth with wafts of overpowering tastelessness.

  The instant he walks in, I know this is Blaze. He looks straight at me for one thing, but it’s not just that. It’s the way he carries himself. He’s got that stride you see on sportsmen who can conceal their speed. It’s a way the body moves when it’s perfectly balanced, seeming to have more time than the rest of us, every movement sculpted from faultless curves and arcs.

  He sits and wordlessly reaches out a hand to shake mine, looking at me, right into me, with dark, heavy-lidded eyes that seem older than the rest of him. His hand wraps right round mine, and I can feel the strength in his fingers, even though he gives my palm only a gentle squeeze.

  ‘How old are you?’ he says as he sits.

  ‘What?’ This is the last thing I was expecting him to say. I haven’t been greeted like this for more than twenty years.

  ‘I just mean you ain’t as old as I was expecting.’

  ‘You want something to eat?’ I say, dodging the question.

  ‘I’ll have a bucket of wings.’

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Coke. You can meal it.’