by Rhys Thomas
‘I just hope nobody finds out.’
‘Nobody will find out,’ I assured him. But I now had a sick feeling in my gut.
It was a shame that Matthew had said that because I felt like I was just coming out from the tunnel.
We got up to Craig’s house and I could see everyone having a good look round.
Craig’s old man looked at me like I was the devil and that made me feel terrible. Everyone knew about Bertie, but hardly any of them were aware that it was Freddy who was to blame for the actual snapping of the neck. As far as everybody was concerned, Freddy and I were one and the same. It was a shame because I really liked Craig’s dad but now he hated me. It was the first time of many that people would look at me with absolute disgust. I’m surprised he even let me in. Let us in.
I sat in the corner of Craig’s room and listened to the others telling Craig how much they’d missed him, and how Freddy was gone. Craig just sat on his bed with those glazed eyes of his and looked out the window.
I noticed on his bedside table that there was a fresh cup of tea and I imagined how it had got there. His father had probably shouted up from the bottom of the stairs. ‘Craig, darling,’ he would have called. ‘Your mother and I are having a cup of tea. Would you like one?’ There’s no way that Craig would have answered, but his father made one anyway. I imagined how he had clambered up the stairs on his old legs and shuffled across the landing before taking the cup to his beloved and tormented son.
Suddenly I was on my feet.
‘Craig,’ I said. I pointed to the parrot poster on his wall. ‘I’ve got a joke for you. Why is there no aspirin in the jungle?’
Still no response.
I delivered the punchline and nobody laughed, of course, but I felt like I had to try and lighten the mood. This visit was excruciating.
‘I like parrots.’ The words reverberated around the room. Craig was speaking. ‘I like all birds,’ he added. Then his head started turning. Towards me. He was looking at me. ‘And you killed Bertie.’
Whoa. Of all the things that had happened since Friday – Bertie’s murder, the guilt, being caught, facing the headmaster, facing my parents, the counsellor – none of them were as bad as that. The worst thing about it was the simplicity and clarity of Craig’s thoughts. He liked birds. I killed birds. It was childlike and undeniable in its logic and it nearly knocked me down.
‘Craig,’ I said, my voice all craggy. ‘It was . . . Freddy.’
Suddenly he smiled at me and it was horrible.
‘I know, Rich,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate what you’ve done for me over the last few weeks.’
This was totally weird. Really totally weird. His eyes were still glazed but he was speaking like he used to, before he had tried to commit suicide. Too friendly. I suddenly had an awful premonition: he was recovering. This, I hate to say, was definitely a bad thing. If he recovered he would turn back to his old weird self that nobody really liked. There was simply no solution to his problem – every road was a dead end.
‘So,’ said Jenny to break the awkwardness, ‘there’s a disco on at the base this weekend for Thanksgiving.’
Thanksgiving is an American holiday that I don’t quite understand. And I have no intention of learning. The others started talking about going to this disco but I, for some reason, started thinking about Freddy. It suddenly struck me that he had gone. I wondered if he would ever come back. I know I hadn’t known him that long, but he had made a massive impression on all of us. I don’t think that he would have ever become my best friend or anything like that because he was too crazed, but he was just so interesting. I still wanted to be a part of his great romantic adventure he had told us about on the very first day we met him, where life would be about poetry and love, nothing else. Even after Bertie, I still believed in him.
That night was Toby’s birthday and to celebrate we went tenpin bowling. Because he didn’t have any real friends at school, it was just me, him, my mum and my dad.
The atmosphere in the car was frosty. My mother was still ignoring me and my father was driving. Toby was wearing a pair of red corduroy trousers and a bright-yellow shirt, tucked in. I remember looking across at him and thinking absent-mindedly just how tiny his body was beneath his clothes.
We got to the bowling alley and took our rink. I programmed in all of our names and my dad went first. We had to have one of those rinks with rubber tubes down either side because Toby couldn’t reach but his face lit up whenever he hit over some pins and he’d come running over to me asking if he had ‘done a good bowl’. Good old Tobe.
At one point my mother went to the bar to buy drinks and when she did my father grabbed my arm.
‘Get over there and apologize,’ he said quietly.
My heart instantly started beating. I didn’t want to do this. I was too weak.
‘If we’re going to get past this,’ he said, ‘you’re going to have to break the stalemate, Rich.’
He was right, of course he was right. I had to be a better person. I took the three low steps in a leap and went into the drinks area. My mother was at the bar, passing four glasses of Sprite on to a tray.
I went straight up to her.
‘Mum.’
She turned to me but didn’t say anything.
‘I’m sorry.’
She slowly placed the last glass on the tray but still didn’t say anything.
‘You know we didn’t plan it, don’t you?’ I considered adding, ‘We were just supposed to kidnap him,’ but luckily realized in time just how bad that would sound.
She lifted the tray with both hands.
‘I need more time, Richard.’ She turned and we went back to the rink. ‘But I do appreciate your apology,’ she said.
It wasn’t going to be that easy, but I didn’t really expect it to be. My mother thought that I had killed Bertie and it would take more than a quick apology to make things better. I hoped that I wouldn’t let her down. Even though, I think I knew, I would do just that.
Craig wasn’t the only thing that changed. It’s funny how people can be so fickle, you know? My initial fame after the death of Bertie, after turning slightly sour, was now turning very sour. The ‘do-gooder’ girls had done a hatchet job on me and I found people giving me funny looks. Some of them actually said things to me but I just ignored them. One boy who I had been sort of friends with said,’ You think that just because you’re clever you can do whatever you want, but that’s not the way it is.’ I was only halfway through my sessions with Sylvia and I had no intention of getting into a fight and having them extended. My secret was still safe for the time being.
Another change that took place was that myself, Matthew, Jenny, Clare and Craig found ourselves hanging around with each other even more than before. Although Clare had initially distanced herself she had now come back, despite the fact that her parents had strictly forbidden my company. You see, there was a reason that we were all hanging around more. Me.
A lot of the kids ostracized me. It upset me at first because I wasn’t used to it but I knew that I deserved it. There were a few occasions where there would be a big group of people and I’d go over and everyone would walk off. Moments like that made me feel like crying. But Matthew and Jenny always stayed on my side, no matter what, and as a result, after a while, they became tarred with the same brush. I loved them for what they were doing, but I wished they had kept at arm’s length so that they wouldn’t be dragged down with me. I was OK anyway. I was strong and determined to be a better person so I knew that I’d get over this temporary blip.
There was also a second bond growing between us, born of the fact that we had been through so much together. Apart from the whole Bertie thing, we had been the ones to help Craig. We had smoked cigarettes at the lake that night. We had played tag in the graveyard. We had been there when Freddy had run away from the headmaster and because of that we stuck together.
I guess, after all of this, what I’m trying to say is this: Yes, I was trying to be
good, that’s one thing. But the second thing was, and I hate to say this, it . . . wasn’t . . . working.
I realize now that we were cutting ourselves off. We must have looked like a gang of kids who thought they were better than everyone else. Which, and this is where the acid kicks in, we genuinely were becoming. Even though I wanted to be a better person, I really did, the fact of the matter was that, after a while, I started not to care that the other kids in school were trying to mentally bully me because I had my small group of friends. That was all I needed. It’s often the case that when you’re in the middle of something very harmful, you don’t realize it. We were the emo kids who had killed the bird and we thought we were special. We were unapproachable and intimidating. And you know what? I was beginning to like it.
14
IT WAS THE evening of the Thanksgiving party at the airbase. My MCR album still hadn’t turned up, so I sent Play an email asking them what had happened. I was starting to get fed up with it all, to tell you the truth.
Anyhoo I called for Matthew and we walked to the base. We had agreed to meet Clare, Jenny and Craig there. The airbase is on the outskirts of town. It’s surrounded by huge fences and the inside is like a town in itself. On a miniature scale. There are funny little suburban American streets with little white houses, clipped lawns and American flags fluttering from flagpoles in the gardens, all the sort of stuff that you would absolutely expect. There was even a little high street with little shops. We were going to be in the main hall that they have there – I think it’s called the mess hall or something.
The night was bitterly cold and I was glad that I was wearing my fashionable new scarf. The gates up ahead were lit up like a piece of heaven had snapped off and landed at the entrance – incredibly bright. A few people were filing in and I wondered how the hell they could call this security. Clare was right there with Jenny and Craig. She had on a pair of jeans with a shirt, tie and a cool-looking tank top. Around her wrists were white bandages that made her look like a self-mutilator. Which she wasn’t. She looked awesome; the quintessential little MySpace emo girl.
Jenny was dressed in a big winter coat and scarf which made her look tiny. She took us to the security booth where we were issued with passes and we headed in.
Beyond the security gates was a main thoroughfare where all of the shops were. It was a really bizarre place, but I liked it. It was like a microcosm of America right here in my English town. McDonald’s, Starbucks, Gap, they were all here with their shiny shop-fronts. To get to the mess hall you had to walk through the residential area.
It was as we were walking past the houses that we heard a shout.
‘Hey, Ricardo.’ We all turned and looked down the street. It was empty. ‘Up here,’ came the shout again.
We craned our necks up to the bedroom window of a house to our left. It was Chad, an American kid who lived on the base.
‘Come up and have a drink,’ he called. ‘All of you guys.’
‘Aren’t you going to the mess hall?’
‘Sure,’ he called. ‘Later. Come on, get your asses up here.’ He was such an American meat-head, but I still liked him. He was one of the few kids who were still talking to me after what had happened to Bertie. I could tell that he had a good heart somewhere beneath his muscles and efficient haircut.
Have you ever noticed how American kids seem so much bigger than us Brits? It’s always struck me as odd and I put it down to differences in climate affecting our genetic make-up over many generations.
His house looked like something out of the fifties but I won’t go into it because that would be pointless. We went up to his room, which was a little more modern, even though he had loads of dumb-bells and that sort of thing to feed his biceps, which he probably called ‘guns’ non-ironically.
‘Sit down,’ he said. I suddenly realized he was drunk. His words were slurred and his eyes were a tad off-kilter. Upon closer inspection I saw a half-empty bottle of vodka on his desk sat next to a tube of plastic cups, which he used to pour us drinks.
I took a sip and almost choked with the heat of the vodka.
‘I’ve got to show you guys this,’ he said. His arm reached over the side of his bed and he opened the lowest drawer of a chest of drawers. When his hand reappeared I felt a shard of panic in my ribs. Chad was holding a gun. It was one of those quite old-fashioned pistols that have six chambers, you know the type. The metal was dull, dark-grey, and it looked really solid. My initial jolt of fear died away almost immediately and was replaced with curiosity. I had never seen a gun before in real life.
‘Jesus,’ said Clare, acting like Chad was a stupid little kid.
‘Do you know where I got this?’ he said, smiling and waving it around. As he washed it through the air, it criss-crossed the line between my eyes and the light bulb so my world was suddenly all light followed by dark shadow.
‘Is it loaded?’ I said.
‘Hell yeah,’ he said Americanly, like it was impressive. ‘Do you know where I got this little puppy?’ he asked again.
‘Your mother?’ Matthew said quickly.
‘Hey, man,’ he retorted, looking drunkenly at Matthew. ‘What did you say about my mom?’ He raised the gun and pointed it at Matthew’s face. The atmosphere suddenly changed in the room and I could feel a cold sweat under my clothes. Everybody recoiled, even though Chad was clearly playing around.
‘Chad,’ said Jenny quickly. ‘Put it down.’
‘Ha,’ he said. ‘Whatever,’ and he lowered his aim.
I breathed a sigh of relief. Really. You never know, the gun might have gone off of its own accord.
‘I found it,’ Chad said. ‘I found it at the side of the road. Right on the sidewalk.’
‘Don’t you think you should hand it in?’ I said.
He flopped back against his headpost. ‘Nope. I think I’ll hang on to it.’ He took a swig from his drink.
‘So if you found it on the base, how come there are no signs up saying that it’s gone missing?’ Jenny, being a resident of the airbase, was clearly talking about some sort of protocol that came into operation if a weapon was lost.
But Chad just shrugged. ‘Like I give a fuck.’
‘Can I hold it?’ It was the first thing that Craig had said all night. I didn’t think that giving a loaded pistol to a boy with clear mental problems was a good idea but it was in his hand before any of us could say anything. Now the room started to descend into panic again. It was a calm panic, just like what I imagine a plane crash to be like – nothing hysterical, just silent dread.
Craig was fingering the barrel of the small pistol.
‘It’s heavy,’ he said hollowly. And then he pointed the pistol at me, held it square at my heart. ‘Bang,’ he said calmly.
I’ve got to say it, I had never felt anything like this before. I had a loaded gun pointed at my chest and my terror was turning loops in my stomach. I was getting the feeling that Craig really hated me. I guess he still blamed me for Bertie. His face, even though he was talking, had that indifferent glazed look of his. Everybody was silent. And then Craig did something that made my bones tighten. Slowly, purposefully, he lifted his thumb into the air and released the safety clip.
‘Shit, Craig,’ I said.
‘Craig, baby, put it down,’ Clare said. I’m sure she said it patronizingly so that he would be antagonized and shoot me. She was cunning like that. I kept my eyes on his trigger finger so that I could at least try to get out of the way of the bullet should it happen to get fired out of the gun.
‘I’m not putting the gun down,’ he said, neither calmly nor maniacally. ‘Why shouldn’t I shoot him?’
I hated the way he was talking about me like I wasn’t in the room. He had probably forgotten that I was a person in his crazy brain.
‘I could shoot him in the face,’ he said.
That chilled me. The seconds dragged on like a shovel being scraped along concrete. I found myself physically unable to speak. My guts were loosen
ing and I started to feel tired. I always feel tired when I’m in dire trouble. I’m just glad I didn’t feel like crying.
‘Craig,’ said Matthew. ‘Craig, please put it down. Stop messing around.’
He cocked his neck so that his right eye was aligned directly over the barrel of the gun. He was looking straight at me. I could feel the light bouncing off me and burning into his retina.
‘Chad. Do something!’ Jenny shouted.
It must have jolted something in Craig’s brain because he suddenly brought the gun down and tossed it on to the bed. Nobody grabbed it and nobody said anything. I think we were all too stunned. Eventually Chad leaned over and took it in his hands, put it back in his drawer.
I didn’t feel suddenly relaxed, I felt angry. Extremely angry. In fact, I was shaking and I sort of lost control, which I don’t do very often. I was on my feet and on Craig in a second. I didn’t punch him in the face or anything, but I pushed him up against the wall and started screaming at him.
‘What the fuck are you doing, you fucking idiot!’
His face went blank like it always does and that made me even more angry.
‘Don’t you go inside your shell, you stupid bastard.’ I wasn’t being too harsh – this boy had just threatened to murder me, for crying out loud.
Matthew and Chad pulled me off and the girls took Craig away.
I was kept in Chad’s room for a few minutes so that the others could get to the mess hall without me going nuts again and trying to kill Craig.
‘What the hell was he doing?’ I said to Matthew.
‘You know, he’s . . . mental.’
I shook my head. I was feeling a little calmer now as common sense returned.
‘I know, I know. Christ, did I go over the top?’
He didn’t say anything but I suddenly felt a separation between us. Usually, Matthew would tell me exactly what he thought. But he wasn’t doing that. I felt like he was holding something back that he would have normally said. I wondered if the murder of that stupid bird had left a deeper impression than he had let on. A terrible feeling was creeping into my gut. Was Matthew afraid of me? I could hardly blame him, given my past and how the old Richard seemed to be resurfacing. But I couldn’t stand that thought so I stopped thinking about it.