The Suicide Club

by Rhys Thomas

‘How was Christmas apart from what happened to your hand?’

  ‘Not very good.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘My parents told me Father Christmas doesn’t exist.’

  Emma didn’t respond because I was being arrogant and ugly.

  ‘What’s happened, Rich?’

  Everything bad from my life flashed through my head but there was so much crap that I couldn’t focus on anything. My neck was feeling heavy.

  ‘Some bad things,’ I choked.

  ‘Do you want to tell me?’

  As the conversation was moving forward, I felt myself opening up. My emotions were boiling up and bubbling over.

  ‘I’m glad you’re my counsellor and not Sylvia.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘Because I like you,’ I said honestly. ‘And I didn’t like Sylvia.’ I stopped for a moment. ‘You’re young and I feel like I can talk to you.’

  ‘Do you think that our sessions will help you?’

  I brought up my good hand and, with my second finger, scratched the top of my forehead, just below the hairline.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  ‘Why not?’

  I didn’t feel like I could explain without offending her so I lied. And besides, if I told her about Freddy’s theory of motivation and how it doesn’t exist, she wouldn’t understand.

  ‘My friends found out that I’m in counselling,’ I started. ‘Do you know what happened to me?’ I stared her right in the eye as I spoke. ‘In the school disco, I had about thirty people stood around me in a circle’ – I knew how bad this must have sounded, it was bad – ‘laughing at me because I was crazy.’

  I could see that she was shocked. If you think about it, if you imagine it had actually happened to you, think how you would feel.

  All Emma could say was, ‘Children can be cruel sometimes.’

  ‘You have no idea.’

  I looked at her and, right there and then, and without prior knowledge, I poured out my heart to the girl in front of me. As I spoke I was determined not to start crying but it was just so hard. I won’t start getting all metaphoric about how it was like a waterfall pouring out of me, but let me just say that it felt great to finally speak about this stuff to somebody who might understand everything. Life is so hard sometimes that you have to share your bad stuff with someone or you’ll collapse.

  When I think about it now, I reckon I probably said all that stuff about Clare, about my humiliation, about Toby and my mother, about hurting my hand, because, in some weird way, I thought Emma might feel sorry for me and fall in love with me. How crazy is that?

  When I had finished my tears had gone back into their ducts and I felt amazing.

  ‘Richard, listen, let me say this to you as a person, not a counsellor.’

  I sat there, deflated and exhausted.

  ‘I think that you are going to be fine. I know you’ve done a lot of bad things, but I also know that you’ve done a lot of good things as well. Shall I tell you what I think?’

  ‘Don’t bother, you’re just going to say that I’m a self-loather. But I’m not.’

  ‘Actually, Richard, you are. You’ve got two sides to you. One is the good side, the side that helps people and is kind and sensitive. The other side is the one that does the bad things, such as what you did following your parents’ split, and the side that you say you can feel returning.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘But you’ve also got this hinterland in between the two.’

  I didn’t expect her to say that.

  ‘That’s the place where you have these deep-rooted emotions. It’s the place where you think too deeply about everything, and where you beat yourself up over everything. What you said about you being a self-loather? That’s interesting,’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because most people don’t think about that sort of stuff.’ She sighed. ‘There’s no doubting your intelligence, Richard, but intelligence and being a good person do not necessarily go hand in hand.’

  ‘I know that. I know I’m intelligent, but I still try to be a good person as well.’ It felt strange to talk about this sort of stuff, because I kind of hated psychoanalysis.

  ‘The very fact that you think about self-loathing means that you have it in you.’

  I rolled my eyes.

  ‘But don’t worry, it’s healthy to question yourself. You’re lucky because, although you think deeply about things, you can still act in the real world. You still put yourself out there. Let me explain. When you were at the school disco, and you kissed that girl who you thought you loved, that was a brave thing to do. A genuine self-loather would never do something like that. They would never put their innermost emotions on the line like you did. For all you knew, that action could have led to you and her going out. You could have been happy. Self-loathers don’t usually give themselves a shot at happiness, even if it’s right there in front of them for the taking.’

  ‘So what’s wrong with me?’

  She smiled.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Richard. A lot of people would love to be you. You seem to attract drama.’

  A tingle ran up my spine when she said the word ‘drama’.

  ‘But this emotional hinterland that I mentioned also houses a strong self-destructive part of you. You like to experience exciting things and at the same time you don’t like to hurt people. So the only way you can get a rush is to hurt yourself.’

  I stopped listening at that point. Maybe because she was getting too psycho-analytic, maybe I was bored, or maybe she was getting a little too close for comfort. I already felt better now than I had since before Christmas, so that was enough for me.

  She kept talking and I just used the time to look at her. She was so pretty it was almost unreal. I don’t think I was ever actually in love with her or anything like that, but I was infatuated with her. I imagined having sex with her, which I know is crass but I think it’s important to say because you should know the sort of relationship we had. As I’ve said before, I’m quite good-looking, well, I’m not horrendously ugly anyway, so my thoughts of having some sort of affair with her were not totally unrealistic, even though I was fifteen and she was, I guessed, twenty-one.

  But, nevertheless, I’d had enough. The screen doors came down.

  I left the room feeling a little bit like a soldier who’s near a bomb going off. My body was going hot and cold. It seemed strange that a person I had only met a handful of times was able to know me as well as Emma. In truth, it freaked me out a little. I didn’t want somebody to understand my head through textbooks and lectures. It wasn’t special, or human.

  I wandered up the staff corridor in a daze. The bell hadn’t gone for morning break yet and it seemed like I had the whole school to myself. I looked down the corridor ahead of me and listened to my shoes on the floor. The fact that I was soon going to have to face my classmates was numb in my head. It was there but I couldn’t think about it for too long.

  I made my way to the boys’ toilets and hopped up on to the wooden table at the end of the washbasins. The toilets looked smaller than usual. I started wondering if Jenny was back from America yet, and what she would think about what had happened, and just then the bell started ringing and I jumped with shock. My back faced the door and I dramatically put my head in my hands, waiting for the first of the kids to arrive.

  ‘He’s in here,’ a familiar voice said behind me.

  I turned around and climbed down from the table.

  ‘We thought you’d be in here.’

  It was Matthew. His hair had grown over Christmas and he looked much scruffier than normal. He had always been so neat and tidy, ever since I had known him.

  ‘I didn’t feel like going outside,’ I said in a flat voice.

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  I shrugged.

  ‘I’ve just been in counselling.’

  ‘So I heard.’

  My breath jumped out of my mouth. How had h
e heard?

  ‘I’m joking,’ he smiled.

  I did a big sigh. ‘I don’t like this new sense of humour of yours.’

  Matthew laughed.

  ‘Sorry.’ He looked into the corridor and smiled to someone who had come into the toilet.

  Freddy looked incredibly healthy. There was colour in his face for the first time ever and there was a sense of, I don’t know, cleanliness about him.

  ‘Hello, Richie,’ he chirped.

  There was ten feet between them and me.

  ‘Hello, Freddy.’

  ‘So, Clare feels bad for what she did.’ He came right out with it.

  I didn’t like the way that Freddy had clearly talked about me to her when I wasn’t there but I was too deflated to think about heavy things like that at the moment. I looked at my shoes, at the lace that had started to come undone.

  ‘My life is a mess,’ I said suddenly. I instantly felt small and pathetic for having said it. I could feel them pitying me.

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ said Matthew.

  I climbed back up on to the table and watched my feet dangling in mid-air.

  ‘I can’t believe she did it, Matt. I can’t believe how cruel it was.’ I didn’t realize at the time that I hadn’t called him Matthew.

  The atmosphere was unbelievably depressing and heavy. Freddy jumped up next to me and Matt stood opposite. A couple of first years came in to use the toilets.

  ‘I suppose you heard about the kids finding out I was in counselling,’ I said.

  I felt his hand on my shoulder, his fingers gripping.

  ‘Fuck them. We don’t need them.’

  Matthew agreed. ‘They’re just sheep. And I’m not just saying that to make you feel better, I’m saying it because it’s true. They’re a bunch of pricks.’

  I looked at him, at Matt, and couldn’t think of anything to say. Was this figure standing in front of me really my best friend? The boy who I loved because he never had a bad word to say about anyone?

  ‘So what are we going to do to get Richie his cred back?’ said Freddy, trying to lighten the mood.

  ‘My cred?’ I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and smiled.

  ‘Cred is OK to use.’

  ‘We should turn into the trench-coat mafia,’ Matt laughed.

  Freddy took his hand away from my shoulder. ‘The best thing we can do is carry on as normal, show them that we don’t care about them.’

  ‘Yes!’ Matt exclaimed. ‘Your mate’s band are playing in the Egg and Train on Saturday.’

  ‘Johnny?’ I said, starting to feel sick. He hadn’t told me about any gig.

  ‘Yeah, there was a poster in the window for it.’

  ‘Right, we’ll go to that,’ said Freddy.

  I shook my head.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean, you don’t know?’

  ‘I mean I don’t know if I fancy it.’

  Freddy sighed, exasperated.

  ‘Come on, Rich. You’re starting to sound like Craig.’

  I saw what he was getting at. I was being a little bit emo. I was moping.

  ‘I haven’t seen Craig in ages.’

  ‘He’s OK,’ said Freddy. ‘I went to his house last night.’

  I was glad to be off the subject of me.

  ‘What? His father let you in?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied, surprised that I would say that.

  ‘But he hates you. He hates all of us after what we did to Bertie.’

  Freddy smiled.

  ‘Yeah, but I spoke to him about it and grovelled for forgiveness. He’s OK.’

  ‘So what did he have to say for himself? Where’s he been?’ I pushed my hands into my pockets because they were cold.

  ‘Nothing, he’s pretty much the same old Craig. I think he’s a bit better. He’s started hanging around with that boy from the airbase. Chad, is it?’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said with a slight laughter in my voice. ‘Craig prefers that moron’s company to ours?’

  Freddy just shrugged.

  ‘I guess so.’

  After that, there was a bit of a pause as we all digested the atmosphere in the room. Although Matt and Freddy were trying to act positive to cheer me up, there was an obvious sadness in the air. It was freezing and the rusty old pipes and cold tile flooring mirrored the way I felt.

  ‘You know what?’ Freddy said. ‘Maybe we should try and push the Suicide Club along.’

  Matt and I looked at him.

  ‘What are we? Two months down the line? Let’s try and push Craig into doing it,’ he said matter-of-factly. His voice was still chirpy when he said it. He was grinning. I couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic. It was kind of evil.

  I suddenly started to realize something. Deep down in my belly something dawned on me.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We don’t need him any more. He’s with Chad now. Let’s see how far we can go.’

  Is he being serious? I thought. But there was no need to ask myself the question because I already knew the answer. The façade had cracked. The real Freddy was finally with us. My skin went all clammy. Something in my head seemed to click into place. I looked at Freddy but he wasn’t there. The boy I knew wasn’t there, at least. I saw the mask on his face again, the same mask I had seen when he had killed Bertie. A stupid voice said, What is this monster I see before me?

  ‘Freddy, you shouldn’t say stuff like that,’ Matt said.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Craig would be better off dead. He’s fucked for life and we all know it, so what’s the point in him?’

  Something started to lift in my gut. A pressure was being relieved. I should have been feeling terrible because of what Freddy had just said, but the opposite was true. I was feeling better. Suddenly everything was clear.

  I jumped down from the table, my thoughts having now resolved into a solid idea. Freddy would not manipulate me this time. This time I had had enough.

  ‘Well,’ I said loudly.

  Freddy and I were face to face. His blank stare and insincere smile just confirmed what I thought. He was a desert underneath. I waited for a second, allowing the moment to mushroom around us.

  Then I said, slowly and deliberately, right into his mask, ‘I’ve . . . got . . . to . . . go.’

  My meeting with Emma, me telling her about all of the things that had happened to me, had loosened something that had been stuck inside me. Freddy’s words had dislodged it completely. Suddenly everything made sense. Everything bad in my life was because of the Suicide Club, not despite it. Freddy had pulled down a screen with his version of the world on it, and I had fallen under his spell. The world wasn’t the bad place that he said it was. I had believed him because I had wanted to. I had believed that Freddy was showing me the way, but he wasn’t.

  My fall from grace had actually taken place since meeting Freddy. I thought he had come in and changed my life for the better. But that wasn’t the case at all. He had wrecked my life, but had done it with style and a smile on his face.

  Before Freddy, I hadn’t been the best guy in the world but at least I respected things. Now I didn’t. I had been moving away from my bad side but Freddy had steered me back round to face it, said that it was OK to embrace. It was easier to follow him because he knew my insides and knew what appealed to me and I had been too stupid to see. So I made a decision right there and then, as I walked away along the corridor full of kids, to pull myself out of the quagmire and back to the real world.

  I wouldn’t have had the strength to act had nothing forced me into action. In my screenwriting book it said that the main character had to have enough resolve to keep trying to get over his problems. But I wasn’t in a story, I was in real life and real life isn’t so easy. I would have kept getting lower and lower had it not been for what Freddy said in the toilets about trying to get Craig to kill himself. I guess in that respect, he had sort of saved me.

  Break was almost over. I made my way to my next lesson, which
I remember being geography. It would be the first time I had seen Clare since the Christmas party. The other kids were still in the yard and I was the first person to arrive at the classroom. I took a seat right at the back, as far out of the way as possible. Through the windows I could hear all the kids talking and laughing. Their voices were being filtered through the silence of the empty room. The bell rang to signal the end of break and I started to feel nervous as I took out my books and pens.

  I pretended to be reading as the first of my classmates bowled into the room. They were talking loudly about something but stopped suddenly when they saw me sat at the back of the class. I pretended to carry on reading as they went to their seats but I was watching them through the tops of my eyes.

  As more and more kids arrived I could sense them looking at me and thinking, What a freak. I think the worst thing about it was the way in which none of them said hello to me. Not one. I had known them for years but here I was being ignored, an outcast. I realized that it was going to be a long way back but I had done it before and I was sure I was strong enough to do it again.

  And then I saw her. She drifted into the classroom on her own, her bag slung lazily over her left shoulder. She glanced around the room and suddenly our eyes met. My heart leapt into my mouth. Her lips formed into the tiniest of smiles and I looked down at my book again. A few seconds passed before I felt a presence approach and stand over me.

  ‘Can I sit here?’ she said.

  My heart was beating like mad. Her black hair looked lank.

  I moved across so that she could sit down. I wanted to tell her that I no longer wanted anything to do with her, and I wanted to do it like a man, by having a conversation. After what she had done to me at the Christmas party, there was no going back. But when she sat down a waft of her scent spiralled up my nostrils and I was catapulted back to the acid kiss that she had delivered to my lips. I knew then that I was doomed because, even though she had done that to me, I was still in love with her. I was weak.

  ‘I can’t believe I did it,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe I did it to you. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said pathetically.

  She sat next to me and I went back to staring at my book.

  ‘Rich . . . I will never do something like that again.’ Her words were naked and honest. We weren’t playing our little games any more.