by Rhys Thomas
‘How long have you been thinking about this?’ I said, barely audible, mist coming out of my mouth like I was in a film.
She looked at me and took my hands in hers. ‘I think I’m falling in love with you.’
I genuinely almost fainted. We looked at each other for a second. Her face was like, well, I can’t even describe it. I went to speak but just as I did the edges of her mouth curled up. Just for a second.
I suddenly got it. Drama. Although disappointed, I had to play along because otherwise I would lose face because I had let my guard down.
Falling to my knees, I whispered quickly, ‘You have to marry me. Let’s go to Paris. Meet me in the railroad café at six o’clock tomorrow morning.’
Then she fell to her knees.
‘You’re so amazing,’ she swooned. Bitch.
Sometimes I wished we hadn’t set up such intricate rules for our relationship. It was like walking on a tightrope your whole life. We could never say what we truly meant. It was Self-destructive, blah, blah, blah.
I so much wish she had been serious when she told me she loved me. Maybe she was but then resented it because it would have meant her guard had been let down so she had to change tack and pretend that she was being dramatic all along. It really was that complicated.
Upset, I said, ‘Let’s split up. We’ll get caught if we stay together.’
She looked at me long and hard, and shrugged.
‘Whatever,’ she said, as if I had just done something incredibly offensive. And she ran off. I sighed. Why do I always have to spoil things?
I padded stealthily back up the hill to my original hiding spot and looked out. Jenny was running along a line of graves and suddenly, from nowhere, Matthew lunged at her, sending her sprawling across a patch of grass. To be honest, it seemed a bit rough. She lay on the ground, back against the turf. Laughing like a hooligan. Matthew pulled her to her feet and they looked at one another. Then he was gone and Jenny remained where she was, legs apart like a triangle, frozen. She was so great.
As Matthew ran off, hurdling the graves as he went, Freddy came out of the shadows and freed Jenny. They both set off. I looked back to the direction in which Matthew had run but he had disappeared. I watched Freddy and Jenny split up and then I heard a noise behind me. I spun round but it was too late. Matthew dived at me and grabbed me round the waist. I slipped backwards and the back of my legs bumped into a low headstone. Over I went and I still can’t believe I didn’t break my back.
‘Agh. You bastard,’ I hissed.
He got up and smiled.
‘Tag,’ he said. And he was off. I got to my feet and dusted myself down. Condensation on the grass left my clothes soggy and cold. I spread my legs, hoping that someone would come save me.
‘Psst,’ I heard.
I looked behind me. There was a scary-as-hell crypt that I hadn’t seen before. At the side I could see Clare’s sweater.
‘Free me,’ I whispered. ‘Matthew’s over the other side. Come on.’
She stepped out from her hiding place. The bottoms of her jeans were soaked. She was smiling at me. With her moonbeam skin she looked like a sylph. I don’t mean to be melodramatic about her appearance, but I was falling in love with her and you see everything through a soft-focus filter when that happens. She moved towards me like she was floating. There was a smile like the Mona Lisa’s on her face. Her eyes were catching the moonlight.
‘Come on, free me,’ I said again.
Without taking her eyes off me, as if to emphasize the gravity of what she was doing, she took a side-step away from me. She kept moving away, putting distance between me and her, fully intending me to understand her symbolism. Which I did. Loud and clear. But it only made me want her more because maybe I’m a bit Self-destructive. I nodded knowingly as she slipped away into the darkness.
8
A CRACK OF yellow light cut a swathe across the horizon. Dawn was coming from the east although most of the sky was still dark. I had called my parents to say I was sleeping over at Matthew’s house when in truth we had stayed out all night. We’d even persuaded Craig to call his parents, which was great because, even though he wasn’t showing it, he must have been enjoying himself. Freddy was going to get in trouble but he didn’t care, said this was what he had meant by not being restricted by anybody.
And now here we were, on the edge of the school grounds, peering over the low wooden fence. Mist was coming up off the lawn, the air was cold and you could hear the crows cawing in the bare trees.
None of us were saying anything because we were so exhausted, but we had one thing to do before we could go home. Kidnap a peregrine falcon.
‘Listen,’ I said to Clare quietly. ‘I have to ask, it’s been bugging me all night.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Where did you go before the party?’ I had to ask, even if it did mean giving her the upper hand in our little game.
‘Over Matt’s.’
She came right out with it, like she hadn’t been hiding it at all. Which she had. ‘So . . .’ I felt so pathetic saying this. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’
She couldn’t look at me when she answered. ‘Because we thought you were over Craig’s.’
I knew it was rubbish.
‘Anyway,’ she added,’ what do you care?’
‘OK,’ Freddy interrupted. ‘Let’s do this.’
I suddenly caught Clare looking at Freddy like he was a god.
The six of us clambered over the fence and ran across the lawn. It was probably around six in the morning. We thrashed over the outer defences and I pretended we were about to storm the keep. I had a sick feeling in my gut because I knew that I would get in trouble for doing something stupid like this, but my monster was getting the better of me. Anyway, it was exactly like Freddy had said – keeping falcons as mascots was plain pretentious.
The aviary was next to the school gym. The falcons were enclosed in a small paddock at which we were now stood. I could see their cage up against the wall. We waited on the fence, trying to get up some courage.
The plan was to get the smaller one, Bertie. After we had him we’d keep him somewhere safe and send death threats to the headmaster using letters cut out of newspapers. It was quite evil I know but we weren’t actually going to harm the bird itself, so what did it matter?
‘I don’t know about this,’ said Matthew. ‘If my parents find out, it’ll be the end of me.’
The two girls remained silent. Craig, as usual, wasn’t saying anything either. Freddy and I tried to coax Matthew round, but he had made his mind up before we had even reached the school. He wasn’t coming. And that first dissent led to more. Jenny and, to my dismay, Clare both backed out.
So it was going to be down to me and Freddy. Operation Free as a Bird. Deep down I was actually glad it was just me and Freddy. This was the first time that it had been just us doing something. I could feel the golden rope of a bond forming between our souls.
We snuck across the lawn like a couple of cat burglars and as we went I clearly remember thinking about him. Running across that grass, the back of his head bobbing up and down in front of me, might as well have been in slow motion. I had never met anyone like him before. I remember thinking that in the short time we had been friends he had saved Craig’s life, taken us to the school lake under the white light of a full moon, taken us to the graveyard to play tag, and now, here we were about to kidnap the school falcon. It was as if my life had shifted up a gear in fun since we had met.
Added to this, I loved his philosophy. I know at our age lots of people spout their teenage musings, and there was an element of that to Freddy, but it didn’t dampen the impact of what he said. What he believed rang true in me. He saw the world as a beautiful, poetic place where anything was possible, just as long as you didn’t let anything get you down. If you looked into his tunnel of belief you didn’t have to worry about what was going on to the right and the left. There was no room for explanation, for science, for coldness. Humans couldn’t b
e explained.
I needed to believe that. I had always felt the exact same way but had never been able to put it into words. Freddy had done that for me. When he had told us about how he wanted to make a connection between all of the lost souls, and about how he never wanted to succumb to the world, he might as well as have put his hand down my throat, ripped out my hardwire, held it above his head and said, ‘Here is what Richard Harper believes and wants more than anything. Let me read it to you.’
And it wasn’t just me. The others were enraptured as well. I think we all got the sense that we were holding on to his coat-tails to see where we would go. Yes, I remember having all of these thoughts as we crossed the paddock to the falcons’ cage.
Those were the good days. Those were the days that I remember with great affection. I often wonder if things could have gone differently, or if it was all pre-ordained from the start. Was there anything any of us could have done somewhere along the line that could have sent our course in a different direction? Or were our stars always aligned for what happened?
It was all going to change. That yellow line of dawn could just as easily have been a line drawn between everything that went before and everything that went after.
The cage was on a set of waist-high stilts. We got closer and I caught the first glimpse of the greyish down of the birds. They were so silent, sat amongst their straw beds. I had held the birds in my first year but I was wearing one of those big leather gloves so I had never actually touched them. Their feathers were apparently amazingly soft.
We were in front of the wire mesh.
‘Look how beautiful they are,’ Freddy whispered, in a trance, his eyes fixed on them.
I nudged him to snap him out of it.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘You pull the hatch open and I’ll grab it.’
‘Got it.’
My heart was off, beating hard. Bertie’s head was bobbing back and forth. His little round eyes looked like they had the wisdom of ages in them. I whipped the door open and Freddy lunged in. All I saw was an explosion of feathers in his face. I jumped round to the front of the cage.
‘Grab him,’ Freddy called, laughing. Bertie was in my face, flapping like crazy. His eyes were glaring at me but he didn’t try to peck my face off or anything.
‘Get a hold of him, Rich,’ I heard Freddy call again.
The other bird, Burlington, had his head up against the mesh and was squawking in panic. I was laughing like mad at the whole scenario. The flapping of Bertie’s wings was creating a wind that washed through my face like a fresh ocean storm.
Freddy grabbed Bertie from behind and took him out of my hands. He calmed down immediately when Freddy held him. The wind from his wings was gone. We had captured the bird! I opened my mouth in silent glee, really chuffed with our little prank. Inside the cage, Burlington fell silent. I pictured the headmaster’s face when our first joke death threat arrived on his desk. But then Freddy turned his body away from the others, who were watching from behind the fence about forty feet away. His body was also turning away from me and I just about caught the grimace that flashed across his face. But he didn’t turn far enough away that I couldn’t see what he did next. Which was to take the bird’s neck in his hands and snap it in two.
9
WE WERE IN an aeroplane and the doors had suddenly blown off. The pilot came on the PA screaming,’ Everybody brace! We’re going down!’ All the air was being sucked out. I closed my eyes. Freddy had killed the bird.
Not flapping any more, Bertie was limp in his hands. Dead.
I took a step backwards and opened my mouth. Not because I was being dramatic, but because I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. I was sort of totally horrified by what was happening. That poor bird.
But then Freddy realized that I had seen what he had done. His face went blank and his whole body became incredibly still. There was a deep, deep silence.
‘I think he’s dead,’ he whispered. ‘I think I killed him.’
‘Yeah,’ I said timidly. I didn’t want to give away that I knew he had done it deliberately. I was scared of what he might do to me.
‘You don’t think I did it on purpose?’ He looked like he was about to burst into tears.
‘What?’ I said.
He was biting his lip now and the blood had drained from his face.
‘Hey.’ Clare was calling us, sort of whispering, sort of shouting. ‘What’s happening?’
‘Nothing,’ I called. ‘It’s fine.’
‘What are we going to do?’ said Freddy. He looked really upset now, like he was about to flip out.
I didn’t know what to do. We had just killed one of the school falcons. No, Freddy had just killed the falcon. But I had helped him. I had tried to grab the bird when it was getting away. If I hadn’t got in the way it would have escaped and it would still be alive. I was equally responsible. I swallowed hard.
‘We’ll put him back,’ I said a little too coolly for my liking. My mind wasn’t tumbling any more. I was calm and it was awful. I didn’t want to react to such horror with such placidity.
‘Put him back?’ He was whispering fast. ‘How can you be so cool about this? The poor fucker’s dead.’
Yeah, I thought, you killed it.
‘Well, what do you suggest, Frederick?’
He nodded quickly.
‘OK, let’s get it back in the cage.’
We turned away from the others so they couldn’t see.
‘Hey, what’s happening?’ Clare scowled.
Turning my head to face them I saw Craig looking blankly at us. He didn’t care what was going on. But, and there was no mistaking it, he was looking at the dead bird.
I am suddenly at the school gates, eleven years old, my first day at school. My new uniform feels heavy, my blazer a little too big for me. A beautiful day. Nerves tingling in my belly. A white flash.
I’m in the paddock, leather glove on my hand. Mr Thatcher, the man who looks after the falcons, his hand on my shoulder. The smell of grass. The sudden explosion of wings beating. A silhouette of a figure in flight against the sun. My arm suddenly heavy, I’m readjusting my weight to stop from falling over. Serenity. The falcon on my arm; still, proud. A white flash.
I stared at Bertie’s corpse. Freddy placed it heavy-handedly back in the cage and closed the door. Burlington hopped over to Bertie and prodded him with his beak but Bertie’s body didn’t move.
Freddy looked me in the eye.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
My calmness was leaving me again and a different feeling impacted my chest hard. It was heavy and evil. It was guilt. I felt a little better because I was reacting in a more human way but it didn’t help much.
‘Let’s get away from here,’ I said.
We weren’t trying to be clever or dramatic or ironic any more. All that was stripped away and we were left exposed, our emotions naked.
We sprinted across the paddock and vaulted the fence.
‘Run,’ Freddy said to the others.
I didn’t even look at them; I was going home. My lungs were on fire as I ran, eating up the grass and the roads with my legs as they rolled beneath me, the light of a new day coming over the edge of the curved earth, catching up with me all the way, screaming at me that I was a bad person, evil. The guilt was consuming me like a worm in an apple but by the time I was halfway home it was taken over by yet another feeling: fear. Fear that, by the time I got to my front door, had ballooned into terror.
Terror of what would happen to me if I got caught, of course, but more than that, terror of the act in which I had been involved – terror at what I had done and who I was. Oh God, the monster was coming.
The vision of the murder replayed in my head. The way Freddy had done it was so cold. It was like he wasn’t even human any more, just a fleshy machine going through the motions. He was looking straight at the bird as he wrung its neck, no expression on his face whatsoever. The expression you
have when you do your shoelaces up? That’s what Freddy looked like when he killed the bird. In fact, it was even weirder than that, it was like another face’s skin had been pulled taut over his own and you simply didn’t know what was happening underneath it. That was the very first time I saw that nothing expression on his face and it stays with me even now.
How could he have done that? I had felt like I knew him, but I can’t have. I was being torn up inside because I thought I had met someone who could show me the direction in which I had to go in my life. He had murdered a helpless animal. That’s kind of what psychopaths do.
But then, after he had done it, it looked as if he was going to cry. The enormity of the situation, his blurred emotions, my blurred emotions were too much for me to comprehend. I had done some bad things in my life, my Bad Thing, but I would never have done something like that. Perhaps he wasn’t so much like me after all. Perhaps I was wrong.
I got my keys from my pocket and ran inside my house. The grandfather clock in our hallway said it was just gone seven. I snuck up the stairs with as much stealth as I could manage and got to my bedroom. Shutting the door quietly I slid the lock across and lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling just like Craig Bartlett-Taylor had been doing when I called for him. I think I started to know how he felt – what it was like to be trapped with no way out. My chest heaved up and down like a wave out at sea.
I didn’t feel like throwing up and I didn’t feel like crying – the two feelings I would have said somebody would have if I was writing a book about somebody who wasn’t real. In truth, now that I was home and lying on my bed, locked away from the world, all I felt was tired. I crawled over my bed, reached my CD player, put on Damien Rice, and clambered under my sheets, still fully clothed, the bottoms of my jeans still cold and wet from the grass over which I had run so fast.
10
I ONCE WROTE a story for my English teacher as part of an assignment. My story was about a French artist called Pascal. He was a landscape painter, and he was very good. But he was never good enough to be great. His trouble was that he could never get the colour of the sky quite right. He fretted over this for years, but no matter how much he mixed his paints he could never get the right blue. So he asked his muse for advice. She thought for a moment and declared that the perfect hue was in his eyes. Pascal had the most beautiful blue eyes, and his muse said that, whenever she looked into them, they reminded her of the sky. So Pascal set to work trying to get a blue that would mirror his eyes. But still he failed. His life fell apart and he went mad. His muse left him and he became a recluse. In the end, nobody saw him for weeks. They broke into his studio and found him dead next to his easel. Mounted on the stand was the most beautiful landscape that anybody had ever seen. The sky was perfect – Pascal had done it. The irony was that in his mad state Pascal had cut out his eyes and painted them into the canvas and so had never actually seen his life’s masterpiece.