Here I Stand

by Amnesty International UK

  I can’t locate the moment and it panics me. I need the beginning so that when I come to the end, I can join the ends together and tie them in a knot.

  Then I can slip inside the loop and take it with me.

  It’ll come to me.

  Or maybe it won’t. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I have plenty of memories without it, and enough of them are clear and sharp.

  Sharp enough to cut myself on. Sharp enough to make me bleed. Deep, thick, red blood running out of me, taking you out of me, taking it all away.

  Do you remember the day it started? I do.

  Year Six. Autumn term. We thought we were so big. Top of the school. We felt so old, so confident. We had it all: the best of best friends.

  Remember?

  We were walking home from school. You were quiet and I asked why. It wasn’t like you; we were never quiet. The teachers used to have to separate us in order to get any work done. Every waking moment we could spend together, we did – and yet we never ran out of things to say.

  But you weren’t speaking that day.

  Eventually I pushed hard enough and you came out with it.

  “Jess, d’you ever think it would be fun to try kissing?” you asked in a rush. “Like, with me? We could see it as practice, so that when we’re ready to kiss boys, we’ll know how to do it.”

  I was taken aback. I had never thought about it, not once. Now it was my turn to be struck dumb.

  You saw the shock on my face and recovered in less than a second.

  Maybe that was my first clue.

  Do you remember what you did?

  You punched my arm. It didn’t hurt. Not that time.

  “Just kidding!” you yelled. And then you ran home and wouldn’t let me talk about it any more.

  But you’d planted a seed on fertile ground in my mind and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

  A few days later, we were in my room doing our history project together. The Victorians. My parents were out; we had the house to ourselves. Something was itching inside me, pressing on my heart, making it beat so hard it was hurting my chest.

  I leant towards you and whispered, “I want to.”

  You looked up and I saw it in your eyes. You knew what I meant. How long did we hold each other there with our eyes? Who was going to blink first?

  It was you.

  You leant closer to me. Just a tiny bit. Enough to pull back and pretend you hadn’t moved at all if you needed to. Enough to tell me you hadn’t stopped thinking about it either.

  I shuffled forwards so our faces were so close our noses almost touched. I closed my eyes. A moment later, I felt your lips on mine.

  My bedroom spun around me.

  We were both breathless when we pulled apart.

  I wanted to do it again. I knew you did too; I knew it better than you did.

  Remember what you did then?

  You ran away. You always ran away. Packed up your school bag, made up some rubbish about remembering your mum had booked you a haircut. No more words. You left; you always left.

  But you always came back.

  We did it again a few days later. I wanted to do it all the time. I didn’t want to do anything else. I wanted to scream it out, wanted to run down the road dancing around people at bus stops, tell them all.

  I terrified you.

  All too quickly, we started secondary school and we stopped, for a while. We’d been put into different forms and we moved apart. We never mentioned it to anyone – not even to each other. It was as if it had never happened. It was as if we had never happened.

  Our lives moved in separate orbits for a couple of years. And then it was Year Nine and we were both in drama club. We started getting the bus home together on Tuesdays, and soon fell into a pattern of spending the rest of the evening at one or other of our houses.

  It was at your house this time. We were talking about boys, about who we fancied. You told me all these names. Reeled them off.

  I didn’t have any names.

  I remember waiting till you’d got to the end of the list. Then I asked if you wanted to kiss any of them. You shrugged.

  I asked if you thought you’d be any good at it. I asked if you needed to remember how to do it.

  “Remember what we used to say?” I asked. “That we could see it as practice, so that when we were ready to kiss boys, we’d know how to do it.”

  As soon as the words were out, I knew it was all still there. For both of us.

  That was the first time it became more than kissing.

  After that, we were inseparable again. Outside of school, anyway. In school, we had our own paths, and mostly we followed them.

  I sometimes wonder what might have happened if that had been enough for me. But it wasn’t. You might have been happy living a double life, but I wasn’t.

  You were my lover. I loved you. Why should I have to hide it?

  And so I tried to jump lanes, tried to join your gang. Hovered around the edges of it.

  I made you uncomfortable; I cramped your style; I was blind to your discomfort.

  I had no shame.

  You had enough for us both.

  The first hints were subtle. The slightest turning of your back. Just enough to show them you were with them, that you chose them over me.

  You’d still talk to me at that point.

  I remember the day that stopped. Do you? Is it burned into you as though with a branding iron, as it is imprinted on me?

  I could see that Janie was talking, but I needed you. Drama club was starting and I wanted to know if you were coming. You hadn’t been for three weeks.

  Janie was the leader of your pack and she didn’t like people interrupting her. She stopped her monologue and stared at me. “Gabby,” she said, without taking her eyes off me. “Please can you tell your girlfriend I’m talking.”

  I’d never seen someone crumple before. I saw it happen behind your eyes, the internal collapse. You recovered in about two seconds.

  “Fuck off – she’s not my girlfriend. Don’t be so disgusting,” you said.

  Then you turned your back to me, completely. You were in the circle and I was firmly out.

  You didn’t speak to me in public again.

  Actually, that’s not strictly accurate, is it? Perhaps I should clarify.

  You didn’t have a conversation with me. You didn’t engage with me. You didn’t meet my eyes. But you spoke to me. Oh yes, you spoke. You said lots of things to me in front of your precious friends.

  You said, “Fuck off, dyke.”

  You said, “Stop trying to get off with me, you filthy lezzer.”

  You said, “Touch me again and I’ll touch you right back – with my fist.”

  The laughter grew every time you said something. And your status grew with it. You fast-tracked through the ranks and before long you were Janie’s second in command.

  Even then, I was blind; I wanted to be blind.

  I was jealous of Janie. Why couldn’t I be the one you wanted to please? Why wasn’t I the one you sent notes to, the one you hatched plans with? I would still have done anything for you, anything to swap places with Janie.

  You knew that.

  That was how you got me to do it.

  I can still barely believe you did it.

  We hadn’t spoken for months, not even in private. But you sought me out at school. You came to me. I should have known it was a trap, but I was too full of desperate, naive hope, even then.

  You told me to meet you at the toilets after school. Said we had to talk. I got there first, and when you joined me, you told me to go into a cubicle. We went in together.

  You said you wanted to start again.

  Remember what you did then? I’ve asked myself so many times if you meant this part. It felt like you did.

  You kissed me so hard I couldn’t breathe. But I didn’t care about breathing if it meant you were kissing me. I mistook it for passion.

  I think it was hate.

  Y
ou told me to take off my clothes.

  “What, here? Why don’t you just come back to mine?” I asked. I should have known. I should have fucking known.

  You shook your head. “I want you now,” you said. “I can’t wait.” You wouldn’t look at me.

  So I did it. Even after what you’d put me through. I did it for you. I told you – I would have done anything for you.

  I took my clothes off and stood there for you.

  I remember smiling at you. If I close my eyes now, I can still remember that feeling. It takes the breath out of me, even now. The last moment of innocence.

  And then the door was open and you leapt away from me.

  The phones in my face. Cameras on. Click click, snap snap.

  The laughter. The girls. The laughter still echoes inside me. It follows me everywhere, even now, even here.

  I dressed hurriedly and ran from the laughter as if it could propel me home. I arrived sweating, breathless. Told Mum I was sick and went straight to bed.

  And then that evening. My phone, pinging with notifications. One after another after another. Eventually, I dragged myself out of bed and looked at it. There was an invitation to join a new Facebook page.

  The page was called: This is what a dyke looks like.

  I should have deleted the notifications, switched off my phone, thrown it in a river – done anything but look at it.

  Instead, I clicked on the link.

  The banner photo: my naked body. My eyes wide with terror and shock.

  The page already had over three hundred likes.

  I refused to get out of bed the next morning. And the morning after. How could I ever face anyone again?

  Eventually, Mum suspected it was more than a stomach bug. I told her a fraction of the truth. That some of the girls had been calling me names.

  She sat on the side of my bed and stroked my hair. “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me,” she said.

  The well of pain inside me was too deep for me to clamber down and bring it up to show her she was wrong. If I reached the bottom, I would never get out again.

  I wanted to tell her that at least broken bones mend.

  Though I found that out the hard way too, didn’t I?

  You were on first lookout. I sometimes wondered how the roles were divvied up between you. Did you draw straws, or were the jobs all assigned by your leader?

  I’ll never know.

  Doesn’t matter now.

  Here’s what I do know.

  After nearly a week of refusing food, company, daylight or conversation, I couldn’t hold Mum off any longer. She took a few days off work and wouldn’t leave my side. She made me talk to her. Not about … it. I couldn’t do that.

  But I think she found out. And I think she did something about it. I heard hushed phone calls. The notifications died down. Eventually, I forced myself to look at my phone.

  The page had been removed.

  So, after nearly two weeks, I went back to school. I even got through the first few days. I lasted as far as the journey home on day four. Much of that journey is a blank. Not enough of it, though.

  I remember being on my own, someone calling my name, turning round. The fist in my face.

  I remember hearing, “Fucking grass us up, did you, bitch?”

  I remember being curled in a ball, on the pavement. The cul-de-sac two streets from my house. I remember the kicks. I remember begging.

  I remember her voice. Janie. “Go on, Gabby. You can have the last kick.” Like she was doing you a favour. Saving the best bit for you.

  I remember you saying, ‘Take this, you fucking gay bitch,” and thinking it was the first time you’d used the word gay. I remember thinking you were going to kill me.

  I remember it flashing through my mind that there were some countries around the world where it was still illegal to be gay. Some countries where it was punishable with the death sentence. We’d done it in PSHE.

  That was the moment I realized there’s more than one kind of death sentence.

  It was the last time our eyes met. You saw the pleading in mine; I know you saw it. And then your hatred – of me, of us, of yourself – took over, and you started. Your foot in my stomach. And then again. Again.

  Three kicks before Janie stopped you. “OK, come on, let’s go.”

  I was left alone on the pavement, curled up, crying, dead inside. No one saw me.

  It was a Thursday evening. Did you plan that? You knew my parents were always out on Thursdays. Did you make sure there would be no one home to question me?

  I have so many unanswered questions. I’m going to start throwing them into the river. Soon.

  I dried up inside after that. Turned cold. Switched off.

  You know why? It’s funny, really.

  It turns out that if you have three cracked ribs, it really, really hurts to cry. So I didn’t.

  I told my mum I’d tripped on a towel and fallen down the stairs. I even crumpled up a towel at the bottom of the stairs to convince her.

  I was off school for three more weeks. Every cloud and all that.

  I didn’t have much to do in those weeks. Everything hurt. Everything was always going to hurt.

  It came gradually, the thought. The idea. The plan.

  At first, I glimpsed it as if at the edge of my mind, a tiny black dot in the distance that I refused to look at. But it came closer, it developed a shape. It took over. I became the blackness. I craved it. It was my way out. My only way out.

  I couldn’t take another day of it, never mind the remainder of my school years. There would never be another exit.

  And so I decided. I planned. I formulated.

  And then the day came.

  That day is today.

  I wait for Mum and Dad to go to work.

  I can’t think about them. I can’t bear it. You have stolen my parents from me. You have stolen everything.

  I close the front door behind me, pull my coat around me and make my way to the bridge. The one where we used to play pooh sticks when we were little. Remember?

  Remember?

  And I get ready to finish writing you this letter. My goodbye letter.

  My suicide note.

  I have the envelope ready and everything. There’s a post box just past the other side of the bridge.

  How handy is that?

  And then I get to the bridge, and something crazy happens. Something that you’d expect to happen maybe in one of those mushy romantic comedies we used to laugh at and take the piss out of. Not something that happens in real life. Definitely not something that happens in my life.

  Someone’s already there. Throwing a stick into the water.

  You turn as I approach. The shock in your eyes gives way to something else. I can’t work out what it is at first.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. My voice is metal.

  “I…” You drop the stick you’re holding. I watch the river carry it away. You shrug, turn to me. “What are you doing here?” you reply eventually.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” I mumble.

  “Well, yes, actually. I would like to know. I—”

  “No you wouldn’t.” The words come out of my mouth like fire. “Anyway, you’ll find out soon enough.”

  There’s a moment. A beat. You take a step towards me. “Jess, you’re crying,” you whisper.

  I step instinctively away from you. Swipe my sleeve across my face. I’m almost shocked at the tears. I didn’t realize I had any left.

  “Oh God,” you say, reaching out to me. “You’re…”

  I shake you off. “Just leave me alone, Gabby.”

  There’s a wriggly wet track running down each of your cheeks. “I’m sorry,” you say, so softly I can barely hear you over the rushing of the water below us.

  I stare at you. You know. I can tell. I don’t care.

  You edge closer to me. “Jess. I’m so sorry. Please, please don’t do it.”


  I recoil.

  “Please, Jess. I just – I’m ashamed. I’m ashamed of myself, of what I am. I hated you for not being ashamed. I blamed you for all of it. I was wrong.”

  Your face is streaked with tears now. There’s snot hanging out of your nose. You don’t even wipe it away. “Please. Please! Forgive me. Please, Jess.”

  I keep staring at you.

  “I love you,” you say. As if this is enough. As if it can undo anything. As if it can undo me. As if it could unpick the lock inside me, the bolt holding together the metal bars around my heart. The ones you helped me build, the ones with the nails driven in so hard I felt every strike of the hammer.

  And maybe it can.

  As if in a dream, I let you take my hand. I let you start walking me home. I let you speak. I let you apologize. Over and over and over again.

  We nearly make it.

  We so nearly make it.

  A couple of roads from my house, the bus comes past us. One of the girls is in the window. Not Janie. One of the others. I don’t even know her name. I see her, and so do you. And without missing a beat, you flinch and drop my hand.

  That’s when I know.

  So I let you walk me home. I let my mum feed me. I let my dad tell jokes over dinner. And when I go to bed that night, I hug them both extra hard, tell them both how much I love them. I guess I’m grateful to you for that. For that extra night – for the memory that I’m giving them.

  I let the dark come.

  I creep out of the house like a burglar who operates only in darkness and shadows.

  I walk slowly. Might as well. There’s no rush.

  I have never felt so calm.

  Every street is silent and empty. I feel as if the world has laid out a blanket for me to walk on. A path leading me to my destiny.

  And yes, there are tears this time. Tears for those two little girls who knew only their own pleasure and desires and weren’t tainted by the judgement and rules of the world around them. Who hadn’t yet been told it was wrong. Who still had the chance to decide it wasn’t.

  Tears for my parents.

  And tears for you. Because in your sick, warped, fucked-up way, I know you do love me. I don’t think you will ever forgive yourself for what I am about to do.

  Please do one thing for me, if I’m right, if you really love me.