Big Man

by Matthew J. Metzger

  I’m so uncomfortable right now.

  Max blinked at the text and then side-eyed the sender.

  Who was serenely ignoring him, staring out of the window like he was lost in his own head.

  Why? Max replied.

  Water.

  What about water?

  It’s inside me, that’s what!

  Max choked back a laugh.

  Salt water is not okay inside.

  I’ll take your word for it.

  Next time we find a hot tub.

  Max rolled his eyes. Uh good luck with that.

  Thanks :)

  Max blinked, the humour dissolving.

  For what?

  Listening.

  You didn’t say anything.

  Yeah, but you listened. So I didn’t have to.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  FRENCH.

  Sweat was running down Max’s back in thick, disgusting streams. It was obscenely hot in the corridor, and the dull drone of Mr Ryhill’s voice was like a bluebottle kissing a microphone. Annoying, repetitive, and just grating enough to keep Max on edge.

  Chemistry.

  He’d come straight from his exam. Just like Mr Ryhill had said. Only now, sitting and sweltering in the corridor, Max had to ask himself why he was bothering. He only had a few more weeks to go at the gym. Then he’d have a guaranteed apprenticeship with Aunt Donna. Followed by a steady job. So it wasn’t glamorous, so what? Somebody had to sell screwdrivers.

  Maths.

  But that euphoric feeling from the beach had still been with him when he’d got up to go to his exam that morning, and Max had shoved the options form into his bag without thinking. Now he was clutching it in one clammy hand and wondering why the hell he was even thinking about two more years at this place.

  History.

  Mrs Pellow. Cian. Lewis. Aunt Donna. Mr Ryhill.

  It was all their fault, Max tried. But that didn’t stick. It wasn’t theirs. He was his. He ought to have learned his lesson about dreams by now.

  The bell rang. He jumped, the paper shivering in his hand. Chairs scraped in the classroom behind him. Mr Ryhill’s voice rose.

  And then the corridor was filling with students, and Max’s body was on autopilot. Standing.

  “Ah, Max, come in.”

  Max stuck out his arm, holding the form out like it was a bomb in front of him.

  “Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, take a seat. Let’s have a look.”

  Mr Ryhill plucked the paper from Max’s hand like it didn’t matter, and Max wanted to snatch it back and tear it up. He had to be crazy. Two more years of this? He’d only fail. He failed at everything else; what made him think that he could do A-Levels? What made him think they’d change anything?

  “Now, I had a word with someone at the recruitment office in town,” Mr Ryhill was saying, and Max fought to tune in, “and they emphasised practical skills and fitness above academia, unless you have a specialist degree such as mechanical engineering. Are you thinking of university, Max?”

  “What? No!”

  “You should.”

  Max was brought up short.

  “I talked to Mrs Pellow after you came to see me last week,” Mr Ryhill continued, blithely flipping through his folder and not looking at Max whatsoever, “and she’s convinced you have the aptitude for an excellent history degree.”

  “History—history won’t get me into the Navy.”

  “No, but the Officer Training Corps would.”

  “The—what? That’s the army.”

  “And many of their students go into the RAF and the Navy as well,” Mr Ryhill said, finally looking up. He peered over his glasses at Max and smiled. “It’s practical training—paid as well, so it helps with the cost of a degree—and it’s an excellent fast-track route. You should seriously think about it.”

  “Um. Maybe just think about the A-Levels first,” Max mumbled.

  “All right. Mrs Pellow has said she’ll make room in her classes if there isn’t any, so that will be fine. There’s always space in maths, though Mr Gregory warns it’s a big jump from the GCSE, so you might struggle. He suggests getting hold of the textbooks over the summer and putting in some early practice.”

  Yeah, like Max was going to do that.

  “I don’t think French is going to work in here though,” Mr Ryhill said, tapping the form. “It runs alongside most of the sciences, so that’s going to clash, I think. Have you another option in case you can’t take French?”

  “Um. I don’t know.”

  “Well, is there another subject that interests you?”

  “I dunno,” Max mumbled, feeling his face flush. “I’m good at geography, I guess.”

  “Well, we’ll put that as a secondary option if French doesn’t work out, eh?”

  Max shrugged awkwardly. None of it was going to work out. He was crazy for even thinking—

  “And Mr Fraser wants to see you.”

  “What?”

  Oh no. No-no-no-no. Not Freaky Fraser. He was the creepiest teacher in the entire school. He looked like Gru and was about as friendly as Lurch. What the hell did he want to talk to Max for?

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t say, Max. He wants you to pop along to his classroom after you’re done here—S4.”

  “I—I have to—”

  Mr Ryhill pinned him with a stern look, and Max shrank back in his seat.

  “I’m pleased you’re finally showing some initiative about your future, Max,” he said, “but it has to last. Don’t mess us about, now.”

  “I’m not—”

  “I know you’ve had issues at school—”

  Max wanted to ask what the school—any of the schools—had ever done about it.

  “—and it’s affected your academic performance, but you have to recognise that we’re giving you a chance here. Normally, I would say if your form wasn’t in on time, tough luck. We’re making an exception for you, and it’s going to take a lot of work to get you into these classes. Some of the teachers have already made up their lists and won’t hear of new additions, you know.”

  Part of Max wanted to demand they put that effort into getting Jazz and his stupid mates off his back, instead of making sure he could take freaking A-Levels to be a qualified failure. But the other part—the part that shrank back from boys shorter than him with sneers wider than his streak of cowardice—wilted.

  “Sorry, sir,” he mumbled instead.

  “Now, these are all contingent on your exam results just like everyone else. If you pass them all highly enough, then the only question mark I would have is French. But if not, geography. All right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mr Ryhill handed over a pale grey photocopy of the form and smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes.

  “Now go and see Mr Fraser before you head off home.”

  Max let himself out of the classroom with a sick feeling in his gut, two parts misery and one part anger. Who was Mr Ryhill to have a go at him anyway? Nobody ever kicked Mr Ryhill in the head at school. Nobody threatened Mr Ryhill’s boyfriend just for being associated with him. Nobody ever—

  “Oi! Fatso!”

  Shit.

  The shout arose the moment he’d stepped into the courtyard between the humanities block and the science block, and he ducked his head and hurried forward. The cool shadows of the science corridor washed over him as he rushed inside—but the school was quiet, the next exam having begun and all the other classes in progress, and the bang echoed behind him.

  The hand that seized his belt was hard. The slam of the toilet door on his head was harder. And then he was on his knees on the cracked tiles, dizzy with the speed of it all, and a pair of boots were in his eyeline.

  Timberlands.

  His gut seized up.

  “Kiss ’em then, Fatso.”

  Max pushed himself back on his hands and shakily stumbled to his feet. Tom was leaning against one of the sinks. Arms
folded. Scowling.

  And when he turned to go, Jazz was against the door—with Max’s options form in his hand.

  “What’s this, Fatso?”

  “My—my options form.”

  “Your options are a stroke or a heart attack. This shit says French. You gonna learn to speak French, Fatso?”

  “It’s for A-Levels.”

  “I know what it is, you fucking retard!” Jazz exploded.

  Max flinched back, and then a savage blow to the back of his legs brought him to his knees again. The bone cracked painfully on the tile.

  “I don’t think that’s fair,” Jazz said, his voice suddenly even again. “You got Tom expelled, and now you’re trying to stick around another couple of years. You’ve got some nerve.”

  Max shivered. His gut hurt. His knees were fat slabs of blubber on the floor. When the next blow came—a blur of tan and a heavy thump into his kidneys—he was catapulted forward.

  Then a weight pressed down on his back.

  A boot.

  “Apologise.”

  “M’sorry, Tom—”

  “Better than that.”

  “I’m sorry, Tom.”

  God, look at him. Lying on the floor begging Tom Fallowfield for some shitty forgiveness. Who was Max kidding? No Navy in the whole world would take someone so pathetic, so useless, so—

  The sound of Tom’s zip coming down was awful. Max screwed up his eyes and mouth and held his breath. He knew what was coming next.

  It was hot, vile, and stinking. And when Tom had finished pissing on him, he just zipped up and washed his hands like it was okay. Like it was normal.

  Paper rained down on his wet face like confetti.

  “Feel free to come back next year,” Jazz said, “but that’d be an insult to Tom. And you’d not want to be insulting Tom, right?”

  “Right,” Max mumbled.

  “So knock it off with this options bollocks. And knock it off with this girlfriend shit too, while you’re at it.”

  His heart stopped.

  “What?”

  “Fat fuckers like you don’t get girlfriends, not even crazy ones who think they’re boys. So leave her alone, yeah? Anyway, Tom likes blondes. He’s going to show her what a real man looks like next time we see her.”

  Max’s heart squeezed tight.

  Cian. That sweet little smile in the sea. The shadows and shapes under his T-shirt. The determination to be brave.

  “He’s not crazy.”

  “She. Fucking hell, Fatso, you even know what makes a girl a girl? She got a cunt or don’t she?”

  Max shoved himself to his feet.

  “Don’t fucking talk about Cian like that!”

  The sneer widened. Aidan laughed, barking and hollow in the echoing room.

  “Why not, Fatso? She the kind of sicko who spreads her legs for fat—”

  Red. In his vision. And on his knuckles. The impact of Jazz’s jaw was hard. Harder than any pad or glove in the gym. Harder than the jarring burst of his elbow on Cian’s forehead. It shuddered up Max’s arm. He heard the crunch. Heard the yowl.

  And heard his own trainers squeaking on the tile as he shoved past Jazz and stormed out into the corridor.

  He walked into Mr Fraser’s classroom, soaking wet and stinking of piss, and said, “Tom Fallowfield’s in the toilets, sir. And he’s not allowed to be here.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  BY THE TIME Mr Fraser had come back, Max had washed his hair in one of the cavernous sinks in the chemistry lab and dried off laboriously with half of the giant blue toilet roll.

  He was still shaking.

  It had felt—good.

  God, more than good.

  He couldn’t pull his mind off the wobble and crunch of Jazz’s jaw under his fist. And he wanted to do it again. And again and again and again, until Jazz didn’t have any teeth left. Until he broke Jazz’s jaw, and Jazz couldn’t say a single damn thing about Cian ever again.

  But by the time Mr Fraser stalked back into the classroom, the reality of what he’d done had started to sink into Max’s brain too.

  He ratted to a teacher.

  He’d never—not once, in all the years he’d been bullied—ratted to a teacher. It only ever made things worse. He hadn’t even really told Mum and Aunt Donna about any of it since that first school either. Oh, everyone knew—but Max didn’t tell.

  But this time, he’d sent Mr Fraser after Tom Fallowfield. On purpose. After punching Jazz in the mouth.

  It couldn’t get much worse than being pissed on and kicked in the head, but—what if they decided to take it out on Cian instead?

  “Fallowfield has been removed from school premises,” Mr Fraser said dryly as he strode back in. He was an exceptionally tall, very thin man who looked like he’d been stretched, with long limbs and a long nose to match. He tended to scowl down that nose too. But there was something like bored disinterest on his face as he seated himself opposite Max and steepled his fingers. “I take it there was an altercation?”

  Max shrugged, picking at the dried blood on his knuckles.

  “I shall simply have to assume, then,” Mr Fraser droned. “But may I suggest, Farrier, that you are not so clumsy as to get red paint on your knuckles when Coles is about? People might assume.”

  Max jumped and glanced up at Mr Fraser’s wrinkled, cold face. That dead, reptilian stare bore into him.

  “Paint,” he echoed faintly. “Um. Yeah. Paint.”

  “I do believe I saw you earlier today with an art project involving red paint, did I not?”

  “Yes, sir,” Max said slowly. “Art project. Yeah. Must have…smudged it.”

  “And where it is now?”

  “Binned it, sir. Because I smudged it.”

  An eyebrow rose, and the faint traces of a smirk lurked on the corners of his mouth. Max stared. Mr Fraser was smiling.

  “Uh. You…wanted to see me, sir?”

  “Yes. Jack Ryhill informs me that you’ve put in an options form.”

  “Uh—”

  “And you wish to do chemistry.”

  Max felt his face heating up.

  “Why.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a demand. A harsh bark of a demand, and Max’s face exploded in a blush.

  “I—”

  Why indeed? He’d just been pissed on by a guy who was half a foot shorter than him. And he’d just lain down and let it happen. Who was he kidding?

  “Because,” Max said, “I let my boxing instructor and my boyfriend and my Aunt Donna talk this stupid idea into my head that I might actually be able to join the Navy after all. But Jazz is right. I’m nothing but pathetic Fatso Farrier, and I may as well give up on it. So. Sorry to bother you, sir, but I won’t be needing a place in your class after all.”

  “I believe the phrase is ‘tough shit,’ Farrier.”

  Max flinched. His eyes flew up to his teacher’s impassive, stony face. Mr Fraser swore? But Mr Fraser never swore! He’d once given a kid a month’s worth of detention just for saying crap in his class.

  “Jeremy Coles has never been right a single day since he stepped into this school,” Mr Fraser said sharply. “I take no pleasure in saying it, but the boy is a moron, and his only skill appears to lie in terrorising other children.”

  “You—you can’t call kids stupid,” Max blurted out, his shock overriding his survival instincts.

  “I think you’ll find that I can, Farrier. We teachers do not stop functioning when the gremlins are released from the school. We socialise. We talk. And we talk about our students. So imagine my surprise when Jack Ryhill, hardly your biggest fan, walks into the staffroom one lunchtime and declares that Max Farrier has decided to actually put his nose in his books for a change and sign up for some A-Levels.”

  Max reddened.

  “So why, Farrier, the change of heart?”

  “I told you,” Max mumbled uncertainly. “I got this crazy idea—”

  “That you might actually have some p
rospects after all?”

  Max flinched.

  The steepled hands came down. Mr Fraser leaned forward, those cold eyes boring into Max’s face like drills.

  “Your aunt, your boyfriend, your boxing instructor—they are correct.”

  Max stared silently back.

  “Since you walked into my classroom for the first time, I have watched you deliberately fail every test put in front of you. You’re not as clever as you think you are. I know full well you understand my lessons. Nobody naturally makes the errors that you do: you have a tendency, Farrier, to do perfect calculations and then miraculously write the wrong solution.”

  “I—but—”

  “I will not tolerate the same attitude in my A-Level classes.”

  Max flushed hotly.

  “I do not care if you genuinely do not understand something. What I will not tolerate is playing dumb.”

  “N-no, sir…”

  “You will attend every lesson, and you will turn in honest homework and exams. If I even suspect that you are lying to me about your comprehension of a subject, you will be removed from my classes. If you cannot be bothered to put some effort towards your future by then, then I cannot be bothered to waste my time attempting to help you reach it.”

  “I—I’m sorry, sir.”

  “You can apologise by performing honestly.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I understand from Helen Pellow that you wish to follow the family line and go into the Navy?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “A perfectly fine thing to do,” Mr Fraser said quietly and then steepled his fingers again. Peered over the top of them. Stared. “But bear this in mind as well, Farrier. If you put the effort in, you could easily attend university. Not something any of the Farriers—and I taught them all, more fool me—could ever have hoped to have achieved.”

  Max’s jaw sagged.

  “You—you taught my dad?”

  “From John to George. I taught the lot. And they might have made good sailors, good men, but they were poor students. You have the opportunity to be all three. Don’t throw that away.”

  Max reeled. Be—what? The first Farrier to do a degree? Be more than his dad had been? Be—

  Better?

  “Yes, sir.”