Bitter Sixteen

by Stefan Mohamed

  On the first Friday back after Christmas I was in the playground, sitting on my bench and reading The Rules of Attraction. There was a small crowd a few metres away made up of boys and girls from various years, all standing in a circle around two sixth formers who were freestyling. I listened with half an ear. They were quite good. One (Wayne, possibly?) was dissing the other because of his lacklustre performance as Dandy Dan in Bugsy Malone, which was pretty tame when you consider how heated and personal the battles get in real places. When Wayne had finished, his opponent – Doug? – stepped forward and launched into a tirade of rhymes that insulted Wayne’s clothes, his haircut, his poor standard of homework, his bad luck when it came to women, his house, his possessions, his parents, his taste in music and the spot on his nose. When he’d finished the crowd erupted in cheers and the two boys shook hands and started to wrestle. I switched off at that point and lost myself in my book.

  The next lesson was Chemistry, and as usual I sat on my own at a desk at the back paying no attention, drawing zombies in my exercise book. Mr Jones Chemistry had always affected the disposition of someone who knows an awful lot about their chosen subject but isn’t particularly interested in communicating his knowledge to younger generations, and as spokesperson for the younger generation this suited me fine, as I had no plans to ever need the secrets of molecular bonding for anything. I quickly drifted away, lacking even the energy to mess with the blinds or snap chalk, the atmosphere was that oppressively dull.

  I don’t know what kind of music you’d have for Mr Jones Chemistry. Some comedic but slightly pathetic tuba, possibly? Or maybe not even music at all, just some insistent white noise with a slight irritating whine around the upper frequencies.

  Anyway. Mr Jones Chemistry stands at the front of the class and reads to us from a textbook published in 1983. The kind of book that has cute little pictures and jokes and rhymes to appeal to ‘the kids’ and be self-referential and tap into the zeitgeist. The kind of book whose supposedly kid-friendly schtick fell embarrassingly flat when it was first published and now functions better as a historical curio than as an actual educational aid. Mr Jones reads. And he reads. And he reads. And he puts one of the annoying diagrams on the overhead projector and tells us to copy them down. He’s a very tall thin man with tweed skin, and listening to him is like being in a car travelling at the same speed down a barren motorway with no variation for hours. And hours.

  Finally I pop up at the back of the class and raise the pump-action shotgun that has spontaneously appeared in my hands. It’s always a pump-action shotgun. I offer a suitable B-movie quip as I cock the weapon – hey deadhead, ker-chack, etc – and fire. My teacher has conveniently become a member of the living dead and his head explodes in a shower of —

  ‘Stanly!’ said Mr Jones, sounding as though he was repeating himself.

  I snapped out of my daydream. Everybody was staring at me. Some were laughing because they thought I was deliberately pissing the teacher off, some of them were mocking me and doing zombie impressions, which was kind of fitting. I blinked stupidly. ‘Mm? Sir?’

  ‘Would you like to answer the question, for the benefit of the room?’ His face was blank. It was a lot like my mind in that respect.

  I blinked again. ‘Um . . . fifty . . . newtons?’

  Mr Jones nodded. ‘When potassium is exposed to water the result is . . . fifty newtons?’

  ‘No?’

  My teacher took off his glasses and cleaned them. ‘Stanly. Your habit of disappearing for long stretches of time in my lessons is becoming more and more annoying and in the end it’s only hurting you. It makes no difference to me what mark you get in your exam. I’ll still . . .’

  He kept talking but his words were drowned out by comedy organ music in my head. I nodded and apologised in time to his droning, but I heard nothing that he said.

  I was rehearsing my duel with Tybalt that lunchtime and I went to the Drama hall five minutes early. The only items of costume I had so far were a black trenchcoat (there was a sort of gangster motif when it came to the feud) and a pair of black fingerless gloves, but I did have the prop gun I would be using in the real thing. There was a screen at the back of the stage onto which various things such as cityscapes and building interiors would be projected, and Mr Hooper the IT teacher was doing something complicated with flashing lights and sound effects for the guns. Technically the whole thing was quite complex, and that was before you even got to the dialogue.

  I practised the choreography that Miss Stevenson had meticulously prepared, spinning around and firing, ducking behind chairs. It was great fun. I was tempted to try doing it while flying, maybe lift up some desks and bits of scenery as impromptu shields, but if somebody saw me then I would have a lot of explaining – and possibly fleeing – to do. Daryl and I had agreed that it was imperative for me to keep my powers a secret, and I had no problem with that. It was quite cool. Plus, nearly being seen by that random guy in the woods had spooked me a bit.

  Mark came in. His Tybalt costume consisted of a smart white suit and two guns. The way he moved was amazing, like Chow Yun-Fat or something, and he delivered his lines with a cold malevolence that some of the younger players actually found quite intimidating. It’s funny because when he wasn’t in character he was the nicest guy you could ever meet. He was a year older than me and one of the few cast members that I considered a friend. ‘Aiit killer,’ he said. ‘Ready?’

  I nodded. He shook his head and laughed. ‘Why so serious?’

  I shrugged, but allowed myself a small smile.

  Now Miss Stevenson came in, juggling a folder, a bag, a clipboard and a cup of coffee. ‘OK guys . . . oh good, glad you’re ready. Nice to see a bit of initiative. Let’s get going, shall we?’

  That evening I got home and found my dad sweeping up broken china. I ignored him and went upstairs where Daryl was lying on my bed watching The Usual Suspects. ‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

  ‘I just heard them arguing,’ said Daryl. ‘Then something smashed and the door slammed. I think your mum’s gone out.’

  I threw my rucksack down and punched the wall, ripping out a cloud of dust and leaving a fist-shaped dent. The walls in our house were crap. ‘This is so . . .’ I couldn’t finish. I hit the wall again, then threw myself into my computer chair and began to move random things with my mind, twirling stuffed animals and sharpening pencils, removing CDs from their cases and putting them back in again. Daryl switched off the DVD and watched me. Finally I lost control and yelled ‘Shit!’ and everything fell out of the air.

  My mother didn’t come back until after dinner. I’d made myself some rice and shoved some chicken nuggets under the grill. My father didn’t talk much, just sat outside on the bench and smoked. I asked Mum if she was OK and she shook her head and went to bed.

  Then, strangely enough, I went outside and sat by my dad. He looked at me and continued to smoke. ‘That’s bad for you,’ I said.

  He chuckled ruefully. ‘So I’ve heard.’ He took several more drags before flicking away the butt and chuckling again. ‘That’s my last one.’ He didn’t look at me.

  I cocked my head. ‘Really?’

  He nodded. ‘No more.’

  ‘How many times have you said that before?’

  ‘Never. Bit scary.’

  We sat in silence for a few minutes. Then he said, ‘Things aren’t good right now.’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘It’s my fault.’

  An unusual moment of self-awareness. I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. It’s everyone’s fault, probably. It’s mine. It’s yours. It’s Mum’s. The only innocent person is probably Daryl.’

  My dad looked up at the moon, which was slinking out from behind a cloud. The stars, dead thousands of years ago, flashed and winked like sequins in oil. ‘That dog. Bloody talking dog. I can’t believe I’ve never mentioned him to anyone.’ />
  ‘No-one’s ever asked?’

  ‘Why would they? No-one ever comes round any more. Except for New Year.’

  ‘I . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’re not angry.’

  I was not equipped to be having this conversation. ‘Can I have another driving lesson soon?’

  ‘You don’t need many more,’ he said. ‘I only gave you two over Christmas and you can do just about everything you need to do. You’ll need to have official lessons of course, when you’re seventeen, but . . .’

  ‘You said I had a knack.’

  ‘You’ve got more than a knack. Took me twice as long to get used to it.’ He stood up and his tone changed from thoughtful to decisive. ‘I’m going to apologise to your mother.’

  At that moment I wanted to tell him. I wanted to tell both of them. I wanted to levitate a china cup or a slice of bread or a chair or a table or Daryl. I wanted to run up the side of the house and dance from our chimney to the neighbour’s chimney. I wanted to show them the amazing things I could do.

  But I didn’t.

  Later on, I was sitting on my bed. Daryl was watching the end of The Usual Suspects. ‘So,’ he said, as the credits rolled. ‘I have a question.’

  ‘Yeah, Kobayashi is a mug,’ I said. ‘We’ve had this conversation before . . .’

  ‘Not about the film, jackass,’ said Daryl. He switched off the TV and the player and turned to me. ‘Your folks,’ he said, sounding conspiratorial. ‘They’re . . . making up.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘Please don’t suggest what I think you’re —’

  ‘I’m just sayin’.’

  ‘Bleargh,’ I said, recoiling at the idea that Daryl had forced into my head and fighting the accompanying visualisation with every ounce of mental strength. Think pink elephants. Think pink elephants. Think pink elephants. A herd of pink elephants trotted through my mind, shielding me from someone else’s hideous and highly personal montage, and I threw Daryl a look that, had it been accompanied by a similarly dirty telekinetic attack, might well have killed him. ‘Bleargh,’ I repeated.

  Daryl shrugged. ‘Just. Sayin’.’

  ‘You are filthy and evil and depraved and disgusting.’

  ‘You say that like it’s a bad thing.’ Daryl jumped off the bed and padded over to the shelf. ‘Now . . . let’s see. Ah! Hard-Boiled. Looks like fun.’

  Black frame. Superimposed white titles: FRIDAY. Fade up on me sitting in the playground minding my own business.

  Ben King walked over to me and stood in front of my bench with his arms folded. ‘We should talk,’ he said. He sounded fairly diplomatic but it was obviously an act. The concerned eyes, the friendly smile, the level tone. It was all cancelled out by his body language. He was itching to punch me.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘Can I sit down?’

  ‘Dunno. Can you?’

  He shrugged and sat down next to me. ‘I know we don’t get on very well.’

  ‘Don’t we?’

  He laughed. ‘You’re really defensive, aren’t you?’

  ‘Only when attacked.’

  ‘I’m not attacking. I just want to . . . clear the air. You know. Make peace, call a truce, whatever you want to call it.’

  ‘I don’t really want to call it anything.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘What is your problem?’

  ‘I don’t have a problem.’

  ‘Is it because of Angelina still? That was ages ago, I’m not even with her any more. We’re just good friends.’

  I nodded. ‘That’s nice.’

  He stood up. ‘God! What is your problem? What is it that you have against me? What are you jealous of? Is it because —’

  ‘I’m not jealous of anything,’ I said, mildly, keeping my poker face on. ‘I am not having a psychodrama about you. OK, I’ll admit it, I don’t like you very much. I think you’re egotistical and two-faced. And it’s not because I’m jealous of you. I couldn’t give a piss that you’re in the top set for Maths and play the violin. Whoop-de-frigging-do. I’m doing great, feelin’ fine, and the only reason that our little differences have escalated into this is because you wanted to be Romeo and I got the part. And that’s a pretty lame grudge to break to new mutiny.’ Wow. That almost sounded like you never rehearsed it.

  Ben was obviously seething. His face was red and his fists were clenched. I felt an eruption of triumph that was almost immediately buried by shame. Cut yourself some slack. He’s a tool.

  ‘OK,’ said Ben. ‘Fine. I tried to be reasonable but you’re obviously not into that.’

  ‘Nope,’ I said, with a happy-go-lucky grin. ‘I’m an enemy of reason.’

  ‘If I see you outside of school I’m going to beat the shit into you,’ he said. His entire façade slipped away, his protective layer of self-righteousness became ashes and the ashes crumbled around his ankles.

  ‘Out of me, surely?’ I said.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t people beat the shit out of people, rather than into them?’

  ‘Whatever! I don’t give a shit!’

  I shrugged, and grinned widely.

  ‘What are you grinning at?’ he said. ‘I mean it. I’ll break you in half.’

  ‘OK!’ I said, extending my smile to manic proportions.

  He left, fuming, and I reached into my bag and took out my book and didn’t think about him again. Probably.

  Fade out.

  I was still awake at one o’clock that night, unable to sleep but unable to properly concentrate on anything either. I’d remembered Smiling Joe, the creepy thing that Reuben and Jack had been discussing at Christmas, and spent a fairly diverting twenty minutes looking it up on the Internet. It was quite cool, at first. Most ­people online seemed to call it Smiley Joe rather than Smiling Joe, and inially it looked sort of like online folklore, a creature that wandered the UK’s cities doing evil deeds, accompanied by dodgy Photoshopped images and exclamation-mark-strewn blogs discussing its origins. I liked the weirdness, the conflicting stories people came up with, and the entertainingly gruesome artists’ illustrations of the creature, which ranged from grinning spider creatures to a tall, spindly-limbed witch covered in mouths (Smiley Jo, naturally), but after a while it started to look as though the stories had sprung from real events, a series of kidnappings and murders in the Eighties and Nineties, and I lost my appetite for research. Once you knew that there was real tragedy and horror there it was a lot harder to enjoy the creepy stories, or laugh at unconvincing videos of ‘sightings’ that made Loch Ness Monster recordings look like Oscar-winning documentaries.

  Stupid Internet.

  Time to go out.

  Leaving Daryl to sleep, I slipped out of the window and floated unsteadily along the road, past trees and houses outlined by orange and tinged with the sensual silver of the full moon. Somewhere, something howled. I reached the end of the road and crossed the bridge, my breath lingering in the chilled steel air. I needed to warm up so I began to run and fly, using low walls and fences and trees as springboards and leaping as far as I could, pushing my limits, trying to combine the movement with the rising technique that I’d almost perfected. At one point I reached an alley between two houses and bounced upwards from wall to wall, ending up on the roof of the bank. I ran along, ran, ran, and – no, no, maybe not, maybe not, ah sod it – leapt. My hair went whoosh and gravity gave up as I sailed through the air, landing on the roof of the off-license at the top of the high street. I sat there for five minutes until my breathing was back to normal and was about to descend when I noticed something.

  Tref-y-Celwyn was built on hills, the steepest of which was also the main street. At the very top was a pub called the Horton Arms, and at that moment a girl of about nineteen was walking down from it, dressed in improbably little clothing considering how cold it was. She was walking
pretty fast and a guy was chasing her, yelling her name. ‘Julie! Julie! Come back here! Julie!’

  She got to the clock tower, the guy still following her. He looked quite a bit older than her. I kept out of sight, watching, hoping it wasn’t as bad as it looked, sneaking along the parapet. I chanced a glance back towards the Horton but nobody was coming.

  The guy grabbed Julie and pushed her quite roughly against the phone box by the clock tower. She started to cry. ‘Richard, just leave me alone . . .’

  ‘What are you playing at?’ he said, his voice low but quite terrifying. ‘Carrying on with that prick from the Lion like some tart!’

  ‘Let me go . . .’

  He raised his hand. I couldn’t believe there was nobody. Nobody could hear, or worse they could hear but couldn’t be bothered to come and check. I was filled with fury at how uncaring this town was, and it mixed with the different strain of rage that I was feeling against this Richard bastard like two volatile chemicals, and I acted. I lashed out with a tentacle of mental energy, stopped his hand with my mind and threw him, and he slammed into the front of the antiques shop, hard. Julie screamed. The guy quickly regained his composure and rounded on her, spluttering. ‘How the hell did you do that?’

  Still nobody came. This was unbelievable. I kept my hood up, and as he advanced on the girl I took his feet out from under him, made a grabbing motion with my fist and psychically dragged him away from her. Julie wasted no time and bolted. I pulled my hood down over my face, darted along the roof, leapt across to the clock tower and ran down. Richard was still on the floor, looking shellshocked. ‘If I see you try to hurt her or anyone again,’ I said, adopting a deep, gravelly Welsh accent and trying not to think about how stupid it sounded, ‘I will end you, boyo.’

  ‘Who the bloody hell are you?’ he snapped, sounding more Welsh – and more intimidating – than I did.

  ‘Y Ddraig Ddu,’ I said.