by Rhys Thomas
‘What the heck were you thinking of ?’
‘I . . . I . . .’ I wasn’t being dramatic.
‘Christ, be a man. Stop crying this instant,’ he said sternly.
I looked at him through my bleary eyes.
‘I’m not going to shout at you just yet. Did you do it deliberate—’
‘No.’ The word rang out. ‘Of course not.’ I couldn’t help but let water leak out of my eyes, although I wasn’t sobbing. ‘It wasn’t me.’
‘What would you think if you were me?’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘I mean, after all we’ve been through with you, and we forgave you for it all. If this was an isolated incident then I could believe you. But what do you expect me to think, given your past? Do you think I should believe you?’
‘But I’ve tried so hard,’ I cried. My voice shook and broke. I couldn’t help it. I guess it was the Straw that Broke the Camel’s Back. Everything that had happened had caught me by the throat and I was broken. My dad just sat where he was. How could he not believe me? I had been so good. It was like the end of the world for me. The bond between me and my father was being severed and it was unbearable.
‘Listen to me, son.’ He leaned forward over the kitchen table. ‘Let me talk to you as an adult. I think I owe you that much. You see, I have to look at this from two sides. On the one hand, I have to have sympathy for the school. This is the institution that is educating you and, if rules are broken, then the transgressors have to face the responsibility. As a parent, I should support the school because they only have the best interests of their pupils at heart.’
Hearing my father use words such as ‘transgressor’ was awful. Because it meant I had lost my innocence. I was no longer a child if he was using big words.
‘If you’ve done this thing, then I have to see it from the point of view of the school. I’m not going to be one of these parents who can’t see the facts.’ I could feel his soul standing tall. ‘But on the other hand I’m also a parent.’
His voice was kindly now; I had never heard him speak quite like this, addressing me like I was an adult.
‘If you say that you didn’t do it deliberately, then I’ll trust you. The school could be wrong.’
‘They are wrong,’ I pleaded.
‘Are you sure?’
‘No, yes. It was . . .’ I tried to breathe. ‘We didn’t plan it. It was just an accident.’
‘But, Rich, you’ve lied to me before.’
When he said that it was like a soap bar wrapped in a towel had been smacked into my chest like in that movie Full Metal Jacket. My father had just revealed to me an irreversible truth. He thought I was a liar. Or at least capable of telling lies. Which I’m not. Not any more. I can’t lie about serious things.
He was talking about the time I went off the rails, he was talking about my Bad Thing, the incident that set me apart. I should tell you it now. You should know what happened. It’s only fair.
I had been with an old group of friends (who refused to hang around with me after what happened) and I kind of threw a brick through a shop-front. We went to run away but an old man had seen us and stopped his car. My adrenalin was pumping so hard I thought my veins were going to burst. He came towards us and he was on his phone to the police. I was really drunk and got really scared all of a sudden so I picked up a piece of metal that just happened to be lying on the pavement. It was kind of like a pipe but there was no hole in the middle; it was solid. I paused. My mind said, Go on, Rich, take this as far as you can. My brain was howling at me. Just see what it is you are capable of. In one awful moment I swung the metal pipe at his head and just at the last minute a piece of common sense opened up in me and I changed my swing, smashing the phone out of his hand. I could feel the crunch of metal on bone. The man gasped and swore at me, and said that I was evil but his voice was scared and shaky so I pushed him in the chest and he fell backwards on to the pavement. I towered over him and the look on his face was awful. It was like he was looking at the devil. I walked past him quickly, towards his car. The door was still open and I ran up to it and, with the sole of my foot, smashed it closed. I felt the metal cave under my blow as the door slammed shut. My chest was going up and down, up and down. I turned back to my friends with a smile on my face, looking forward to seeing how impressed they were. But all I saw were six frightened children looking at someone they didn’t recognize. I remember the metal pipe feeling heavy in my hand just before I dropped it to the ground.
I don’t tell you this expecting any form of forgiveness – I know that I can never be forgiven for what I did. I tell you it because it happened. I was drunk and I did something that 99.9% of the population would never even consider. I can’t say it could happen to anyone, or that it was a terrible mistake, because it’s not true. Only a certain type of person can do something like that. Only a certain type of person can go to such extremes purely to see what would happen. It was a true act of evil and most people cannot perform such acts. It is as simple as that. I despise myself because of it and whenever something good happens to me I remember what I did and my happiness drains away. The police were called in and I told my father that I didn’t do it. But I did do it. And I was found out.
‘Dad . . .’ I said. I was sniffling now. So pathetic.
‘Son, I want to believe you, I really do. I know you’ve been trying very hard to get back on the right track, and I have to say that as your father I do believe you. But this . . . killing a helpless animal—’
‘It was an accident.’
‘I’m going to take your mother and your brother out for dinner. You’ll stay here. And not go out. All right?’
I nodded.
He got up from his seat. As he walked past I expected him to ruffle my hair as a show of solidarity. He always ended things on good terms. But he didn’t do it. He left without even looking at me. I could feel that he couldn’t look at me. I felt sick. I couldn’t believe what my parents were going to have to go through again; all of the worry and fear.
When he shut the door it was like my mind had opened the floodgates. Inside my head was like a war zone. I felt like the line in the song where I could blow through the ceiling, you know? I was literally devastated that they were going out for a meal and I wasn’t. I hoped that they wouldn’t tell Toby what I had done – it would break his heart, which I imagined to be vulnerable in the first place because he was so frail.
But at the same time I was glad, which I know sounds stupid because how can you be sad and glad at the same time? Well, I was. I was glad that my father had spoken to me in the measured way that he had. I felt more respect for him than I ever had before. And that just made me feel worse about Bertie because it must have been such a let-down for my dad. I was in a cold sweat and I dried my eyes with the sleeves of my school sweater that I sometimes wore beneath my blazer in the winter.
I suddenly had a Worst Case Scenario in my head, a really bad one, roaring out of the darkest corner of my brain. My parents were driving to the restaurant and they took a corner too fast. A car was coming the other way. It was too late. When the two cars hit, Toby’s body was thrown clean through the windscreen. I saw his face get sliced apart by the glass, his outstretched arms not saving him. He always wears these stupid sandals with grey socks and I saw them hurtle past my dead parents’ heads. So tiny, so small, rounded like bulbs over his child’s toes. His skull smashed into the other driver’s windscreen and his neck got snapped like it was made of balsa wood. His eventual resting position was with his head stuck backwards at a sickening angle, almost ninety degrees, to his neck. The driver’s windscreen was shattered where Toby’s head had hit, and looked like a spider had spun a web over the surface of the blood-smeared glass. Toby was face down and his arms were by his side. If you were hovering low in a helicopter, you could see the soles of his stupid fucking sandals. And if you looked closely, you could just see the side of his face, all covered in blood. And his eyes, do you k
now what they were? Closed. He was still, oh so still. My whole family was dead. I was alone, a broken man with nothing but pain, just like Craig Bartlett-Taylor.
Freddy got sent back to his parents and so when I was asked to go to the headmaster’s office to watch the video with my mother and father, I had to go it alone. I knew their appointment was at two thirty and when that time arrived I was summoned. This was a shock as I didn’t know that I was going to be in attendance. My father had requested my presence because he wanted me there when they were shown the tape.
It was an uncomfortable experience for all of us. We watched on as I saw my back turn away from camera on the headmaster’s television set. Then we saw the dead bird in Freddy’s hands and the footage was just as ambiguous as I remembered.
When the show was over, the headmaster told my parents that I had been very well-behaved during this school year, and that this sort of activity was abnormal.
‘I think it might be prudent to keep Richard and Freddy separate for a while,’ he said at last.
‘I don’t even know who this Freddy is,’ said my mother (who was still ignoring me), her eyes burning into me as though I should tell her about everybody I knew.
In fairness, the headmaster went on to explain that Freddy had come clean about killing the bird.
‘He’s been sent back to his family until he can accept what he’s done. I haven’t suspended him officially, but he won’t return to this school until at least next week. And like I say, when he does come back, Richard and he should stay apart.’
‘Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,’ Mum said. ‘He won’t be seeing anybody for a while.’
I listened, not really thinking much. My mother was talking as if I were a child, and she was being a bit stereotypical. If she was going to react like this, then I wasn’t about to start caring what she thought. At least my father had treated me like an adult.
When the meeting was over I was returned to my lesson. I sat next to Clare.
As the teacher spoke, I whispered, ‘Freddy’s been kicked out.’
She looked at me. ‘I know. I heard this morning.’ She paused. ‘My mother says—’
‘Clare!’ The teacher had heard us. ‘Have you got something to say?’
My God, why do some teachers have to use such awful clichés?
‘No, sir,’ she said meekly.
I loved her for that.
She started writing on a piece of paper: My mother says I’m not allowed to speak to you anymore.
I took the paper from her. Are you going to listen to her?
We glanced out of the sides of our eyes at each other. Her black hair was the entire background. In the last two days, since Bertie’s death had become public knowledge, Clare had sort of distanced herself from me. She had gone back to hanging around with her old friends all the time. My old friends had also distanced themselves. Jenny simply hadn’t spoken to me at all. Only Matthew was still on my side and things were all going bad. I was glad to have the chance to sit next to Clare. I waited for her to write her reply. Finally, she smiled at me and brought the pen down to the paper.
I looked at her scribble, and then looked up at her, and that was it. I was in love with her. With Clare. My heart started beating fast as I looked into her big wide eyes. I don’t know what processes happen in your heart when you’re falling in love, but they had just finished in mine. The machines had stopped. I was fallen.
*
I had been friends with Clare since I was eleven. We hadn’t gone to the same primary school but I remember seeing her around town when I was a kid and thinking how pretty she was. So when I turned up for my first day at secondary school I was ecstatic that she was in all of my classes.
I can’t really remember how we became friends, but we did. For a while we were the talk of the year because we hung around together so much. But we were always only friends. That was just the way it was with us.
Back in those days we were still innocent and we had some great times together. We’d go into the city and hang around over each other’s houses and go into town to eat chips on the war memorial. We were so innocent that we even went for bike rides together. Sometimes we spoke about how the other kids perceived us, and we had a good laugh about it.
In our first summer holiday, we used to hang around in the park with the other kids our age and eat ice creams whilst the lazy sun dipped behind the hills.
After my first kiss, Clare was the second person I told after Matthew. She didn’t have her first kiss until she was thirteen, the same year that she lost her virginity. That was our third year of school. At that time, Clare started hanging around with the older boys and, although we still spoke, it was far less often and we found ourselves drifting apart outside school. When we did go round to each other’s houses, we would mostly listen to music. She had an older brother and it was from him we got our impeccable music tastes. Clare loved this band called the Smashing Pumpkins, from America. Her favourite song was theirs:‘1979’. It’s a beautiful song. My favourite song also happens to be by the same band, but mine is called ‘Today’.
When she finally got her first boyfriend our friendship ceased to exist. I was a little hurt but we had been growing apart so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. It was roughly at the same time that I started going out with my first girlfriend. But whilst I was standing on corners and having a fluttering heart because I was in love, Clare was out having sex and smoking marijuana.
Then my parents split up and I joined Clare on the slippery slope to the loss of innocence.
It was strange how we both came out of our wild phases together. One day in school I remember Clare approaching me and we basically apologized for dissing each other for so long and agreed to go back to the way it was before. Of course it never got back to being exactly the same because we both knew that we had our secrets and they were irreversible.
Because we both had our dark pasts, they caught up with us emotionally. We were scarred from our experiences and, eventually, we slipped into playing our mind games. At first it was just a bit of fun, but as time went on it got to the point where we could not have a normal conversation without having it slip into Drama.
I think we both felt bad that we had got to such a point, but we were too afraid to back down because it would be too much like losing, even though I don’t like to say that because I hate the ‘games’ that get played between boys and girls, when the power of unbridled love is a much better thing.
So, although we had a strange relationship, it was built on a foundation of solid rock. Why I fell so suddenly in love with her I have no idea – maybe it was because of the Drama with Craig on that day when he swallowed those pills, or maybe it had happened by degrees across the time that had elapsed since. I don’t know. Whatever the reason, it happened and there was nothing I could do about it.
After school, me, Matthew, Jenny and Clare went over to visit Craig. None of them had been to his house before. I thought about warning them how weird his bedroom was but I decided against it because, if I had said it was weird, then I would have been judgemental.
On the way over, Jenny grabbed me.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘Can we talk?’
‘Uh, sure.’
We dropped back.
‘So what you and Freddy did to that bird was pretty fucked-up, Rich. I know it was Freddy who, you know, but still . . .’
I suddenly went all emo.
‘I know,’ I whispered, my throat too heavy for volume. I didn’t want Jenny to hate me. She was a good person, and I didn’t want to lose someone like her. She was right, of course. She always was. Freddy had done it, but I had helped.
‘Are you OK?’
I nodded.
‘Rich?’ She put her hand on my arm. ‘It’s all right, Richie. I was just going to say . . .’
I focused on a red postbox that was fastened to a lamp-post at the end of the street.
‘. . . I forgive you.’
I did
n’t say anything because I didn’t feel that I could. My emotions really were starting to fly all over the place. Losing many of my old friends after the Bertie incident was starting to catch up with me, and any sign of warmth towards me, such as that being shown by Jenny, was setting my feelings off like fireworks.
‘You’ve been punished enough, by the other kids and stuff, and I know that it was an accident so I just want to say that it’s in the past. I know you’re one of the good guys.’
I closed my eyes for a second and opened them again.
‘Thanks,’ was all I could manage. I loved how American her forgiveness speech was.
We walked a little further, not saying anything, and I slowly regained my composure. Jenny went on ahead to talk to Clare, and Matthew slowed down so that I could catch up.
‘I’m going to turn over a new leaf,’ I said to him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘All this stuff with the bird has shown me that I’ve got to stop being such an asshole.’ We often said the word ‘asshole’ like the Americans because it rubbed off from the kids on the airbase. ‘If I’m not careful I’m going to end up like I did before and I really don’t want that. To be fair, with this bird thing, I’ve sort of gotten off lightly.’
‘Are you joking?’ Matthew said. ‘You have to see a counsellor.’
‘So? That’s better than detention.’
‘What if the other kids at school find out?’
I had thought about that before but blocked it out of my mind because it was so horrendous. They would think that I was nuts. Not funny nuts, just regular nuts and that’s not good. ‘They won’t find out. I’ve only got to do six sessions anyway.’
He sucked in air through his teeth.