by Jackson Lear
James headed back inside and slammed the door behind himself. He heard the three boys get out of their chairs and head down his garden. He watched them carefully as they climbed up the tree and hoisted themselves over the wall. As soon as they were gone, James chuckled with an ingenious idea.
He went to his garage, pulled out an old box of rat traps, and set them up at the end of his garden, so that if those boys or anyone like them ever returned they would get a nasty surprise.
18
Josh
Josh pushed open his front door, lugged a couple of cardboard boxes inside, and dumped them on the floor by the dining table. Hannah sat up from the sofa and peered over.
“Do you need a hand?”
“There will be a second trip, but I can manage,” said Josh, puffing away. “Back in a sec.”
He went to the car and pulled out another couple of boxes, brought them inside, and dropped them on the floor next to the first lot.
“All done,” he said, with a quick gasp for breath.
Hannah laid her tablet onto the sofa and sauntered over to have a look at Josh’s efforts. “What have you got?”
“Mostly yearbooks and photos,” said Josh. He kicked off his shoes and went to get some water.
Hannah followed him into the kitchen. “Yours, or just random yearbooks for the hell of it?”
Josh poured himself some chilled water and guzzled it in one go. “So, Amanda was over at my mum’s the other day.”
“Why?”
“I’m getting there,” said Josh. “Amanda used to live behind Anthony’s house and Anthony and I used to live next door, so Amanda was always over and she and my mum got along well. Because there’s not much to do in Luxford, Amanda went for a stroll around the old neighbourhood and went to have some tea and bickies with my mum. Mum, being Mum, wasted no time at all in pulling out some of my old yearbooks, some old photo albums, so that she could point out her son with his embarrassing choice in fashion and hair style. When Amanda was finally able to escape my mum called me up, told me of the great day she just had, and asked if I would finally unburden her with the four boxes of nostalgia that I made her promise to never throw out. So I went over, picked them up, and now if you like: the embarrassment and shame of Josh Barton may continue.”
“Good!” said Hannah, smiling at her boyfriend. “But you left out most of the details.”
Josh craned his head to one side. “You what? That’s twice as many details as I’d give someone else.”
“Jeez, and you wanted to be a detective once? With no sense of detail?”
“I also wanted to be Batman but my parents insisted on not become billionaires.” Josh ignored the eye roll from his girlfriend as best he could. “So what did I miss?”
“First of all, how’s your mum?”
“Oh. She’s fine.”
Hannah rolled her hand forward, encouraging Josh to continue.
Josh poured himself another glass of water. “She has a trip to the dentist coming up so she’s flossing like crazy. She spent half an hour talking about her plants in the back, the tomato trees, the carrots, the cauliflower.”
“That’s better,” said Hannah. “And how is Amanda?”
“She’s fine. She wasn’t there when I went, but she spent half of the afternoon laughing at all of the old photos, so we may have to spend the rest of the night destroying all traces of evidence. And, not to alarm you, but we may have to kill Amanda as well. She’s seen too much.”
“I’ve seen too much as well,” said Hannah, grinning at her boyfriend.
“Then work quickly and we can do you as well. I know a spot near the train tracks. No one will ever find the two of you.”
“I’m not spending the rest of eternity buried next to your old crush!” Hannah’s eyes drifted dreamily towards the ceiling. “I’ll be buried next to Kevin Lowe from Justice Group.”
Josh let out an audible groan. “They went out of style twenty years ago.”
“I know, but once you promise an eternity with some boy band hunk there’s just no going back.”
Josh clicked his fingers and hit a pose as though he was the lead singer. “By the way, I never had a crush on Amanda.”
“Why not? She’s gorgeous.”
“Because she’s an over achieving workaholic.”
“That doesn’t stop you from having a crush on her,” teased Hannah.
“She was never around for long enough. Anyway, we can keep the photos because Mum digitised as many as she could, in case there was a fire. There’s even my old school reports in there. So, surprise! We now have more clutter!”
“I’m now kinda thrilled that you didn’t get that exercise bike.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get through everything and figure out what to do with it later.”
“Sure,” said Hannah. “Or, in a year, when those boxes still remain lying on the spare room floor, we can just blindly throw them away.”
“Shush you.”
Later that night, Josh went to prove Hannah wrong. He lifted the lid to the first box and breathed in dust that had laid dormant for ten years. Inside was far more than just photo albums. Josh picked through the various odds and ends and lifted out a couple of school yearbooks. It seemed as though this box was mostly his last few years of high school with a pair of photo albums on top as a way to make best use of space. Josh removed everything and set it all aside.
Much to his surprise, he found a scrapbook for his final year at St. Bart’s, a time capsule of sorts, with his class schedule, photos of friends with messages to and from each other, and photos with the teachers. He had a separate page for each of his friends where they could write a message to him. He suspected his grandiose plans had fallen to reality, especially when he read the first message from Anthony.
One page? I only get one page? Fuck you Josh! I deserve at least a page and a half!
That was the message in its entirety. The others, from Josh’s more eloquent friends, were a paragraph or two. Some doodled drawings that didn’t make sense anymore, others had jokes in there relating to some TV show that Josh couldn’t remember.
The second box was just as dusty and tickled the inside of Josh’s nose. He braced himself for a sneeze and spent the next thirty seconds frozen, wondering if his sinuses were going to react or not, before finally deciding that the sneeze could wait. This box covered his earlier school years with more school photos, more yearbooks, and another couple of notebooks. Josh picked out one of the diaries and flicked to the front page. It was dated 19th March, his birthday. Grandma Sue always sent two presents for his birthdays. One was something simple like a toy or whatever was requested that year, the other was always a scrapbook or diary to fill in. He flicked to the last page and read over the final entry.
I just got my new journal. Farewell old book.
In another book, pictures jumped out at him, mission plans and statements were drawn up next to designs of forts, booby-traps, and haphazard sketches of shadowy people. One in particular grabbed Josh and kicked him in the chest. There was a scribbled drawing of a little boy with a shoebox next to him, staring back at Josh. He was named ‘Suspect 100’. Josh wondered why he wasn’t Suspect One or even Suspect Zero.
Josh tried to focus on the face of the drawn kid but it was useless. He didn’t remember who drew it but it was clear they were no artist. The drawing also took a few liberties and demonised the kid more than Josh could remember. He had fangs like vampire’s teeth and smelly squiggle lines running off him. Still, the kid was little and thin, with a pointed chin. Josh rolled his eyes up the ceiling and tuned out, trying to remember the kid in question, and seeing if he matched the man they saw in the beer garden the other day.
He sighed and gave up. It was almost impossible trying to remember the weird little boy, especially since he only saw him once or twice in his life. Josh had met a thousand people since then and forgotten most of them in the process. Even tying the drawn kid to the gangly adult in the pub was us
eless. Aside from the pointed chin there was little else to go on.
Except ... Anthony recognised him almost immediately, Josh thought. They were both thin. They both had something very wrong with them as though they were barely chugging away on whatever IQ points they had, and no one would be surprised if that kid ended up as that adult.
Something crept over Josh. Perhaps he should show this to Anthony. He would have to brace himself for the triumphant cry of, “There! I told you it was him!” Josh looked back to the details written about the kid, which were more in depth than the drawing.
Probably lives in Portal Close. Weird toad boy. Doesn’t go to school. Smells. Looks up skirts.
Josh looked up again and had no recollection of that. These days if someone did that they would be put on a sex offender’s list just for lifting up someone’s skirt.
He had a flashback to hearing Nancy in his last year of school pointing at him and shouting, “Sex offender!” He had never heard those combination of words before but he knew they were bad, not the good kind of bad where you can wear them with some pride as a badge of honour, but the sort that would mean no one in school would ever talk to him again.
Josh strained as he tried to remember Nancy’s last name. He couldn’t. He wasn’t even sure if he wanted to go through the yearbook to find out. What he did recall was that she had been tall, fat, and overly protective of her friends. One night there had been a party. Someone brought whiskey. Josh and Harriet fooled around a little and Harriet claimed to not remember the next day. Her precious reputation of being a high strung straight-A student was on the line, so it was either feign a complete lack of knowledge or risk being called a slut. The flipside allowed Nancy to accuse Josh of taking advantage of a drunk and unconscious Harriet, earning him the label of ‘sex offender’ from Nancy.
It surprised him that he was still pissed off about that after almost twenty years. He dug out his graduating yearbook. The quality was horrendous and the school-approved text was mightier than thou. He glanced over the first couple of pages and found the statement from the school captain.
We’ve learned so much and have so much more to learn. We are truly grateful for all of the sacrifices the staff and teachers have put in as we head along this journey of life, ready to take the next step.
Josh wondered what the school captain was up to these days. He flicked forward to find the photos taken earlier that year, long before the whiskey induced sex offender craze took off. His eyes fell onto the first of many pictures involving himself and people he vaguely recognised.
I look like a stick, he thought. Even Anthony was desperately thin. Josh looked around and found Nancy, the tallest in her class, scowling at the photographer.
I bet she still hates being photographed, Josh thought. He had seen her just twice since leaving school, once at some random party which didn’t involve a single high school friend, and another when she walked across the road and glanced at him. She was fat then and was probably fat now. And probably still a bitch.
Somehow, Brooke jumped back into his mind. He pictured her golden hair, her smile as she did the splits on the kitchen floor, and that sultry look she gave him as she bounced up and down saying, “See? All the way down.”
He glanced off to the wall as his eyes fell out of focus. Worst case scenario, he would end up single, paying Hannah back whatever she had put into the mortgage, in trouble at work with a bad reputation, and Brooke would have to move on because of the shame of being caught with her legs in the air. But the worse case scenario rarely happened. Certainly bad scenarios were ever present, but the worst would involve just a minor set back.
The splits. All the way down. And that little bounce as she reached the ground.
19
Josh
Josh was on the treadmill next to Brooke, determined to keep up with her pace. After the first kilometre their conversation petered out as they ran neck and neck.
“Josh, my love?” Brooke said.
He nearly tripped over himself. Brooke hit the button to speed up to increase her lead. “Slippery road there, Brooke. Slippery road.”
The next two hundred metres were silent as they both fought off a stitch. “Josh, my love?”
The smile didn’t fade from Josh’s face. “Brooke, dear?”
“Tell me about the first girl who broke your heart.”
Josh scoffed and shook his head. “Sure. Get me into a long story as I’m trying to out run you.”
“Then don’t try to out run me.”
“I could give you the very short version.”
“I need details,” said Brooke.
“Very well,” said Josh. “I was sixteen. Fell in love with a girl called Lara. We eventually went out. She started seeing someone on the side. I confronted her, she denied it. A while later she told me it wasn’t working out between us and she went out with the other guy right away. Broke my heart. I should’ve learnt my lesson, but didn’t. A year later Lara and I made up, went out again, and like before she started seeing someone else on the side. Lara dumped me and broke my heart again. I tried to win her back so I went over to her place that night. I could hear her having a little too much of a good time with her new guy. It killed me. I also saw her mum in the kitchen playing music loudly, trying to block out the noise from her daughter upstairs.”
Brooke nearly stumbled over herself. “Really?”
“Your turn,” said Josh. He accelerated his machine. Brooke did the same.
“I was in love with my best friend. He was gay. One night he fooled around with a girl and it killed me. Of all the girls he could have made out with it should have been me. I think that was the only time he ever locked lips with a girl.”
“And that broke your heart?”
“I went a little crazy. He said we shouldn’t see each other again. And we didn’t. So you lost a slut, I lost a best friend.”
Josh felt his chest nearly burst from fatigue. “I’ll make you a deal, my dear. I’ll concede defeat on this machine if you tell me - yes or no - if you’ve ever thought about someone else while you were with your husband.”
Brooke kept on running.
“No deal?” Josh asked.
“I’m not answering that one.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not answering that one, either.”
“Then I’ll just have to assume I know the answer.”
“Assume away,” said Brooke. “Who have you thought about?”
“That all depends on if we’re friends and if I can trust you.”
“You can trust me.”
“But we’re not friends?”
Brooke shot him with a calculating smile. “You don’t tell friends that you had a dream about them.”
“Honest question, then. Can I trust you?”
“I don’t think you even trust yourself, let alone me.”
Josh looked to one side. “I guess you shouldn’t fall in love with me, then.” He glanced to the side to catch Brooke’s reaction. She simply winked at him and sped up.
20
Amanda
Perhaps it was the jetlag playing havoc with her body. Maybe it was the lack of any kind of schedule. Either way, Amanda hadn’t been this disorientated in years. Three days ago she went to bed at one a.m. and woke up at two thirty in the afternoon. That kind of shock threw her into a head spin that teetered on a return to downwards spiral. The kind of spiral where she needed to see a doctor if she couldn’t pull herself out of the present lack of life.
Yesterday she was able to get up when her alarm sounded at six a.m. She made it all the way to the sofa before having a five hour nap. Since she couldn’t trust her lazy ass any more she moved all of her clothes to the spare room and slept with the curtains open.
Today was better. She got up at six, drank half a litre of near freezing water, got into her gym gear, and went for a jog through Portal Close. As the sun and adrenaline both kicked in, Amanda’s sleepache faded and she was able to push through t
he stitch in her side. She headed along the scenic path towards Blyth Street and found the cute little bridge a couple of miles farther south.
She hadn’t been for a run in the open for years. The best she could manage in New York was forty minutes on the treadmill in the gym, but that was nothing compared to the brisk English morning slapping her in the face.
Amanda reached the bridge as a burst of exhaustion struck in an instant. She slowed and panted, held her hands on her hips as she circled around the side of the road, and was glad to see the stream down below.
She promised herself that she would run to the bridge everyday for as long as she was in Luxford. One day she hoped to be able to run back as well. But, as this was her first time, she had to walk back home. It did give her some time to figure out how to reclaim a life that had slipped almost effortlessly away.
Ninety four people saw Amanda that morning. Sixty forgot about her the moment she left their vision. Thirty three had a quick perve and wanted to see her naked. One wanted to see her tied to his bed and beg for his mercy.
21
Daniel
Daniel, Ian, and Warrick stood beside James McIntyre’s wall as they added up the money they had taken from their parents as well as everything they had from their own hordes of pocket money.
“We’ll give it to him together, one hundred and fifty pounds,” said Daniel.
“He said fifty pounds each,” said Warrick.
“And he’ll just shout at us one by one. This way he knows we’re in this together. All he wants is the money.”
“All he wants is to shout at us some more,” said Ian.
“If he does we can run away. He’s too crazy for anyone to believe. And he won’t go to school and say he knows us. We’ll just say we don’t know him.”