by Rhys Thomas
We walked away from the group of girls. I wanted to ask Clare why she even bothered hanging around with such nasty people, but I didn’t want her to flip out on me so I just grabbed a hold of her hand and made sure she didn’t get run over when we crossed the road. Amazingly, she didn’t pull away.
We went to this little place that has big windows so that we could look out on to the street. We both ordered a coffee and I looked at her.
She was slumped down in her chair.
‘So, Harper, what’s up?’
I shrugged.
‘I just wanted a coffee.’
From where I sat I could still see the war memorial. The girls were still milling around, and messing with each other’s hair and all that sort of thing.
‘That T-shirt you gave me is great,’ I said. This was more awkward than I had thought it was going to be.
Clare didn’t even answer me, her good mood having dissolved now that it was just us.
‘It’s cold out?’ I said it as a question to let her know that I was making an effort.
‘Are you looking forward to the Christmas party?’ Clare said suddenly, and in a chipper voice.
It was turning into one of our games. I wondered if she was being like this to me, kind of distanced, for the same reason that she had had sex with a large number of boys – whatever that reason was.
‘This Wednesday? I suppose so.’
‘Are you going to dance with me?’
I closed my eyes and sighed.
‘You know how I hate that stuff.’
Clare shrugged.
‘But I like dancing. Don’t you want to make me happy?’
The conversation was already over.
‘I’ll make you happy when we get married. I promise,’ I said.
She looked at me. It could go either way. Now that I was onboard with the game she might turn it around and become sullen again. All I could do was wait.
‘Will you buy me a castle?’ she said.
‘I’ll buy you a castle that goes up into the clouds and we’ll live in a chamber at the top.’
‘I’ll want a moat around it.’
‘Of course. I’ll fill it with acid.’
Her eyes went wide with excitement. ‘And we can invite our friends round and when they turn up, you can take your bow and arrow and shoot them all from the tower, one by one.’
I laughed. ‘I’ll grow roses in window boxes and do you know what will surround the castle for miles and miles?’
‘What?’
‘Ash. Nothing else will grow around us.’
We both started laughing, but I was hollow. I didn’t want this sort of conversation at this point. It was a brilliant idea, killing all of our friends and living in an evil castle, but it wasn’t exactly healthy. In a way I was relieved that I didn’t have to go through another argument, but in another way I felt bad because it was so fake. There was definitely something in the air between us, something unspoken, a heaviness.
Suddenly I saw a figure heading for the war memorial and my heart froze. Freddy. A mass of thoughts started piling through a bottleneck in my brain. Clare had been with Freddy and they hadn’t called me? Did he see me coming and hide?
‘That’s Freddy,’ I kind of coughed.
Clare turned in her seat coolly and stared out across the dark street. I just caught a glimpse of the birthmark on the back of her neck, the one that we don’t mention. I wanted to ask her about Freddy then, but I couldn’t. I just . . . couldn’t.
After our coffee I went back across the road to the war memorial. The girls saw us and started whispering and laughing.
Freddy had a magazine rolled up into a tube in his hands, and when he saw me he waved it in the air.
‘Richie,’ he called.
‘Freddy,’ I shouted back, pretending that nothing was up, even though I was being eaten up inside.
The next day, Tuesday, all the talk in school was of the Christmas party. There were only two days left until we split up for the holidays and I couldn’t wait. The day passed quickly and most of the lessons consisted of quizzes and puzzles and Christmas-card making, which is always fun, even when you’re fifteen. My Christmas card was a rip-off of Toby’s idea with people skating around a lake. I’m always disappointed when I draw, not because my pictures are pathetic (which they are) but because drawing is one thing that I would love to do but can’t.
That night I left my house and headed over to Freddy’s. I just had to ask what he had been doing out with Clare without asking me. It had been playing on my mind all day, niggling away at me. Surely they weren’t having some sort of relationship behind my back. Freddy must have known how I felt about Clare. Surely.
It’s about a half-hour walk over to the school dorms and Craig Bartlett-Taylor’s house is on the way. I walked down his street, but had no intention of calling for him. In his drive, though, was his father. He was clearing frost from the windscreen of his car with one of those plastic scraping things.
‘Hello, Mr Bartlett-Taylor,’ I said nicely, because I liked him.
He looked up and adjusted his old glasses. He saw it was me and scowled before returning to his windscreen.
I knew why. It was because of what had happened to Bertie. Everybody knew about what we had supposedly done and everybody pretty much hated me.
‘Is Craig in?’ I asked.
‘He’s gone to see his friend,’ he said coldly.
His friend? He didn’t have any friends. He had us, the Suicide Club.
‘Freddy?’ I asked.
‘That boy who lives over on the airbase. The American lad.’
I nodded my head, even though I didn’t have any idea who he was talking about.
‘Well, can you tell him I called by?’
He stopped scraping the ice off his windscreen and sighed.
‘I don’t think so, Richard.’
I paused and my gut churned because I knew what was coming.
‘I don’t think that it would be a good idea for you to see Craig any more. I don’t think that you and your friends are a good influence.’
I bit my lip. Not a good influence? This was a perfect example of what the Suicide Club was all about. The mediocre trying to stop the exceptional – this old guy (who I still liked) was taking Craig away from the only thing that could save him, just because he didn’t understand. It hurt because it meant even those who you think are OK can turn out to be snakes. I didn’t want to feel this way, but it was like I didn’t have a choice. The fact of the matter is that we weren’t a bad influence on Craig. We loved him and had helped him after his suicide attempt. But because of the bird thing our die was cast. I hadn’t killed the bird, yet here I was completely guilty in the eyes of Craig’s father. It wasn’t fair and I had had enough.
‘Mr Bartlett-Taylor, I don’t—’
‘Please, Richard.’ He held his hand up in the air. ‘What you and your friends did to that bird . . .’ He trailed off. ‘You’re all trouble.’
I just stood there and took it. He wasn’t going to listen to me.
‘I know all about it. And don’t think I don’t know what else you get up to.’
I looked at the old man and my opinion of him changed. Not in an instant, more like over a period of about three seconds, like a landslip running down a hillside and revealing the truth. He wasn’t such a good old guy. He judged people just like everybody else.
‘Well, I’m going to go now,’ I said. ‘Make sure you don’t go sliding around on the ice – it’s a cold night.’
He didn’t say anything back, which I sort of wish he had.
I carried on my way and shook my head. I hope he didn’t mean what he said about not allowing Craig to see us. I hadn’t seen Craig outside school for a while, now that I thought about it, and I wondered if that was the doing of his father. I also realized that I didn’t like the idea of Craig having friends outside the Suicide Club. It was us who had taken him under our wing after he tried to kill himself with th
e pills and I didn’t want to share him.
Anyway, there was no point in letting it get me down and I was soon at the old, ivy-encrusted school dormitories that were sickeningly old-fashioned.
I skipped up the stone steps and went into the foyer. There was a bunch of kids milling around wearing baggy jeans and hoodies, sitting on their skateboards and using their feet to gently roll back and forth on the clean stone floor.
I went up to the desk and signed myself in. As I made my way up to Freddy’s corridor I tried to calm myself. I wasn’t angry at Craig’s father (actually I kind of was), but I was both nervous and excited because of what I was about to ask Freddy. It would be just me and him so there wouldn’t be any distractions.
I was running by the time I reached his corridor because sometimes you can’t even waste fractions of a second from your life. I rapped on his door and, after about five seconds, he answered.
He was wearing a Nirvana T-shirt, which I thought was a bit of a cliché and not in tune with Freddy’s personality because Freddy was no nihilist. Not that Nirvana were nihilists.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
‘Not bad. I just ran into Bartlett-Taylor’s father,’ I said.
‘Oh yeah? What did he have to say for himself ?’
I shrugged and explained.
Freddy sighed.
‘It’s a shame. I should very much have liked to have had him on our grand romantic adventure.’
We went inside his room. The posters on the walls were mainly of sports teams and clearly belonged to his younger room-mate, who I remembered was called Anthony. Freddy slumped down on to his bed and rolled his desk chair over to me with his foot. I sat down and spun around in it for a second.
‘So what’s up?’ he said.
‘You are,’ I answered honestly.
‘That’s good because you also bother me.’ He paused. ‘Deeply.’
‘Listen, Freddy. I’m sorry to ask you this because it’s pointless, but’ – I sucked in air (not really) – ‘is there anything going on between you and Clare?’
‘Me and Clare? What?’
‘I don’t know, it’s just, you know, I thought you two might be seeing each other or something.’
He laughed a little.
‘What?’
I adjusted myself uncomfortably in my seat.
‘Why, um, were you with her last night without asking me?’
‘What? You think boys and girls can’t be friends? How weak.’
I nodded and breathed through my nose because I knew what he meant. He meant that shallow people can’t be friends with members of the opposite sex. It’s weird.
‘It’s not that. You can’t deny that you’re . . . very . . . close.’
‘Why do you ask? Do you like her?’
I looked at him. Before I had met Freddy, my life had been nowhere near as colourful as it was now. I admit that my emotions were all over the place nowadays after everything that we had been through but at least I was at the end of the spectrum, whatever end that may have been.
‘I’m in love with her,’ I said, slowly and deliberately.
Freddy made it easy for me. If it had been Matthew I had been speaking to, then he would have ribbed me for ages, but Freddy knew that love is a serious matter. As if.
‘There’s nothing going on between me and Clare.’
You have no idea how good those words sounded. The last day had been strange, doubting Freddy. I didn’t want to feel like that because I wanted Freddy to be perfect. He understood.
‘So, my friend,’ he said. ‘You knock yourself out.’
‘Do you think this is the point where I should ask you what you think she thinks about me?’
We both laughed.
‘I’m going to ask her out tomorrow night,’ I said.
‘At the Christmas party?’
‘Yup. You going?’
‘Of course I’m going. My mother wanted me to go home but I told her to go fuck herself.’ He closed his eyes, like he was cursing himself for being so teenagerish. ‘No, she said I could stay until Thursday morning and get the train back then.’
‘She’s not coming to pick you up?’
I remember very clearly that he didn’t flinch at all when he said, simply,’ No.’
I became suddenly aware that the floor was tiled and not carpeted.
‘Doesn’t this floor get cold?’
Freddy shrugged and looked at me.
‘So how long have you liked Clare?’
‘I don’t know. Always, I guess. I think I actually fell in love with her that day you saved Craig’s life.’
‘She is amazing.’
I paused.
‘Do you think she likes me?’
Then we both paused. And then started laughing.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Freddy, ‘some people are just so pointless.’
21
THE NEXT DAY in school my head was in a blur. I had decided that I was going to ask Clare out at the Christmas party. This had gone on long enough. I kept getting extremely nervous and my palms would get all clammy. My heart would go crazy with palpitations and my field of vision would burn white, as though someone had turned up the brightness-levels in my eyes. It’s those teenage hormones that are the best – the ones where there’s so much feeling in every pore that you think you’re going to collapse.
Because it was the last day of school before we broke up for Christmas, it was a non-uniform day so we could wear whatever we wanted. I wore my bees knees T-shirt with a scarf, and I felt good. My dress sense was more pretentious nowadays; I will concede that.
When I was sat in class I couldn’t stop my legs shaking. I tried not to think about what she would say if I asked her out because it would make no difference to the outcome anyway. I saw Clare here and there, but I wasn’t in any of her classes that day so I didn’t manage to speak to her until lunchtime. She was with her friends who, as usual, laughed when I went over.
‘Do you like the game, Rich?’ one of them said. This was a girl called Darlene, for Christ’s sake.
‘Let me just remind you of something, Darlene,’ I said quickly. ‘I had five As and six A-stars in my continuous assessment, whereas you only had seven As and two Bs, so why don’t you make like a tailor . . . and button it?’ I said the last part of the sentence in an American accent so that everybody would laugh. Which they didn’t. I guess what I said was a bit harsh. But she was a bully so I think it was OK. I had had enough with people like her, manipulative people, so I decided to stand up for myself. That’s all.
‘You’re bad,’ Clare said, coming over to me and dragging me away from her friends.
‘Yeah, well.’
‘Are we dancing tonight?’
I lowered my voice.
‘So what’s this game? You said something about it the other night at the war memorial.’
‘The game?’
I tried to absorb all of her features in my brain so that if, for whatever reason, I never saw her again, I would be able to remember what she looked like.
‘You want to know about the game?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘But if you know about it, the game is wrecked.’
I sighed.
‘Whatever.’ To be honest, I didn’t really care about their game because her friends were stupid and soon Clare would leave them behind and just be with us. ‘I’ll see you tonight,’ I said.
The afternoon went fairly quickly with quizzes and sitting around talking about Christmas. I heard some of the boys talking about – oh God – fingering girls and I actually went red because it was so crass.
When I got home I tried watching TV and listening to CDs but nothing was any good; I couldn’t get Clare out of my head.
At one point Toby came into my bedroom, and I cursed myself for not locking the door. He was carrying a notebook.
‘Richard,’ he said, pen in hand. ‘I just need to confirm what time we’re going into the city tomorrow.
’ He wasn’t even looking at me because he was looking at his notepad.
I stared at him incredulously and left a dramatic pause.
‘Half ten,’ I said at last.
‘Hmm,’ he answered, as he wrote something in his book. ‘That’s excellent timing.’ I noticed that he was still wearing his brown leather sandals with his grey school socks.
‘I’m getting you a pair of Converses for Christmas,’ I said. ‘Here, give me that.’ I took two quick steps forward and pulled the notebook out of his hand and looked at what he had been writing. That boy is the living end, I swear to God. This is what he’d written:
And I’m not even making it up. He’d written it all down in his book.
‘Tobe,’ I said. ‘Why do you do stuff like this?’
‘Like what?’
‘Like this.’ I held my right hand over the book, which was resting in my left. ‘You’ve written what your plans are.’
‘So?’
‘Well, what’s the point?’
Toby looked at me and crumpled his face.
‘I find it useful.’
‘Well, I think you and I need to play some cricket.’
I knew his face would light up and he ran off to his room to get his bat and a tennis ball. In our house we have quite a long landing that makes a great cricket pitch. Toby doesn’t really like sports but he’ll do anything if I’m involved. I played for about five minutes (I declared not out) and decided it was time to get ready for the party. Toby was upset that I had only played for a short time, but I didn’t mind too much because I’d be spending the whole day with him tomorrow anyway.
I got showered and went online. I checked my emails and something incredible had happened. Play had emailed me saying that my My Chemical Romance album had been posted, which made me feel awesome. At last it would arrive. And it was about time too.
Matthew and Jenny were both on their computers so we quickly exchanged schedules for getting to the party. After that I ran downstairs and ate a couple of packets of crisps.
‘Don’t eat those, your dinner’s almost ready,’ my mother said.
I wanted to make a witty quip and sweep out of the house but things were still frosty between us after Bertie so I said, ‘I told Matthew I would meet him in five minutes. I have to go.’