by Rhys Thomas
‘Oh my God,’ she breathed, just behind us, putting her hands over her mouth. I turned around and her face was in mine; we almost bumped into each other. I watched her eyes swell with water as she looked past me to the wall. I turned to look and the breath left my lungs.
Somebody had ripped her photography project off the wall. She had always been so proud of her photography on display. I remember the day when she found out about it; she hadn’t been able to keep still. But now there was nothing but a patch of white paint, a blank void where her pictures had once hung. It was never revealed who had pulled it down, it may even have been the teachers, but whoever it was I hold responsible for what happened to Jenny.
‘Jenny,’ I said.
The bell suddenly sounded and kids started trooping in through all the doors like robots. The mass of bodies swarmed past us like bees, the occasional sting coming from somebody’s tongue. I saw Jenny getting knocked forward and back, mostly deliberately. How could the kids be so cruel? Somebody called her a stupid American cunt, but I couldn’t see who it was, there was so much abuse, aimed at all of us. Any restraint that had been shown before was now gone. Everything had bubbled over. It was like a feeding frenzy. Jenny’s eyes closed when they said that, like she was trying to compose herself. I was hardened to it but I could see Jenny’s defences were taking a battering. She was such a gentle soul. She wouldn’t be able to take something like this. I wanted to reach out to her but couldn’t. Nobody could. I had to stand by and watch as she fell apart, which she did practically in front of our eyes. I was amazed by Matt’s reaction. He was just standing there, looking at some first year’s crappy pictures of unicorns.
There was a gap growing between me and Jenny as more and more kids jostled for position. I felt like I was being pulled away from her.
After she died, of course, we all got blamed for her death, but it wasn’t our fault at all. We hadn’t been the ones who had ripped her pictures off the wall, we hadn’t been the kids who beat her up in the alley after Craig’s funeral, we hadn’t been the kids who had shouted malevolent, spiteful abuse in the corridor, we hadn’t been the teacher who shouted at her later that afternoon, and we certainly hadn’t been her friends who refused to speak to her at all after Craig’s death because somebody had to be blamed. Whoever it was, it . . . wasn’t . . . us.
33
THAT NIGHT WE agreed to meet up after school. Jenny told us that she wanted to take some photographs of traffic trails and we didn’t want her to be on her own.
And so it was that on that night I threw on my red hoody and pulled it over my head. The air was warmer than usual for that time of year. It was one of those nights where the air seems heavier than normal, like it’s pregnant with rain. I trekked across town in silence because, inexplicably, I had forgotten my iPod.
We met at the war memorial and made our way silently up to the motorway bridge on the edge of town. Not even Freddy was speaking much.
Jenny set up her tripod and clipped her camera to its mount. She played with some dials and, for the last time, I saw her rainbow sweatbands beneath the sleeves of her overcoat. She didn’t say a word as she adjusted the settings.
‘Are you taking one of those long shutter-speed photos?’ I asked.
She nodded.
‘So that the car headlights will come out as lines of colour on the picture?’
She nodded again and looked at me, her face like a ghost. When I returned her stare she looked away. Matt didn’t seem to notice.
It was all so unreal, like a blanket was filtering out normality for us.
Underneath us the cars drummed past. They always look bigger from above. I went to stand by Clare, whose hair was blowing in the wind like it was alive. Jenny looked into the viewfinder and moved the tripod around a little to compose the frame. At last she stood up slowly and stepped back from the camera.
I still wish Matt had said something to her to make her feel better because she was clearly in torment.
Then Jenny clicked the button on top of the camera and the shutter was released. Light flowed in through a needle-prick of a hole and on to the film. It burned into its surface to leave that moment scratched into history. Jenny stepped in front of the camera and leaned against the railing. The sound of the traffic was like a hissing. She stood where she was for about five seconds until enough light had reflected off her body so that, when the photograph was developed, her ghostly image would be there, see-through and ethereal.
She turned and faced out over the river of cars and light. I can’t remember if the stars were out.
We all looked at each other and Matt finally took a step forward.
‘Jenny,’ he said. He stepped into frame. Photons of light were pinging into him and bouncing off – into my optic nerve, into Clare’s, into Freddy’s, on to the photographic film. ‘Are you OK?’ he whispered like a lullaby.
Which I guess it was. One last soothing sound for her ears. She didn’t look back, she didn’t say anything, she just threw herself off the bridge.
Clare looked away and I grabbed her, not fully understanding what I had just seen. Below us and out of sight I heard a screeching sound and a loud thud of bones on metal. Matthew was leaning over the barrier, looking down on to the road, whilst Freddy . . . Freddy stood right where he was with that look on his face.
Something inside my head, like a little bell ringing, told me that I had to see the road. I had to see what had happened. I released Clare. The sound of brakes screeching and clashing metal did not register any more. A snake of traffic had already built up, all lanes static.
Sound was nothing any more, the past, the future, all nothing because in that moment I was alive. I was so wired into the universe that I thought I was going to explode outwards as shards of divine light. I could hardly breathe but it didn’t matter because I had no lungs, my blood stopped but it didn’t matter because I had no heart – I was purely . . . just . . . there.
I had no sense or feeling as the slow reveal came to me. The barrier receded and inching itself into my field of vision was the road that opened up like a panorama before me: crumpled cars that had ploughed into the back of others, steam rising from their insides, horns sounding, folded steel like a newborn mountain range. And then, just a line in the road, lit up for all the world in the headlights of the first car, bonnet bent into an inverted ‘v’ from where her body had hit, a line of blood running under the bridge, out of sight, where I could not see.
Matt came into view for a second. He had climbed down the embankment to the road, to the bridge, into its underbelly and gone.
Sound came back into my ears, the whooshing of cars, the trees swaying in the wind, Clare screaming wildly and uncontrollably.
Me? I stepped lightly and slowly over to Jenny’s camera, unhooked the door on the back and took the film, slipped it into my pocket. I then folded her tripod away so that nobody would ever know that the whole thing was on a photograph. Jenny’s moment was ours and nobody else’s.
Then I called the police on Clare’s phone.
People started coming out of the houses across the road to see why Clare was screaming. As soon as they saw the jammed motorway they knew that something was badly wrong and they ran over to us like people run across wheat fields towards the lights of a flying saucer.
I could hear the sirens approaching and those blue lights came to collect her soul, just as they had come for Craig. The police asked us what had happened and when we answered Freddy and I kept glancing at each other, but not smiling.
I guess if you pushed me to describe how I felt when that whirlwind danced around me I would have to say serene. I felt serene. In some twisted way I loved Jenny for what she had done. She had taken us all to the next level. She was the first person to kill herself when she didn’t have to (Craig didn’t have a choice). She didn’t have mental problems, she would have overcome her troubles but she had been strong enough to do it. She had had the guts to say ‘Fuck it’. It was amazing.
/> Do you know what I mean? What I mean to say is that, before Jenny jumped off the bridge, we had got to the point where we were in love with the idea of the Suicide Club but we couldn’t actually do it because there was an invisible barrier in our way. Suicide was not the important factor. We loved the idea of killing ourselves to teach the rest of the world a lesson, but we were scared at the prospect of actually being dead. Jenny had smashed through the barrier and left a big hole in her wake.
I remember, when I was a kid, there was this big mansion near our town. This horrible old couple lived there who were in league with the devil. One night we all cycled out there with the intention of climbing over the wall, pegging it across the lawns and diving back over the wall at the far end to safety. We all huddled and crouched behind the first wall. All we wanted was for someone to go first and then, at last, Matt had made the break and that set us all off. Well, that’s what Jenny had done. She was on the forbidden lawn right now, sprinting headlong across it at full speed, the wind blowing in her hair, free. We just had to follow.
I knew that this time round, I would definitely be taken to the police – there was no escaping it. But that was fine with me. This time round the media and the questions would be ramped up to a new level. Because this time round, it had been only us who were present – the Club. If people had hated us before, they were about to reach new levels. I felt like I was in a spaceship about to blast off into chaos.
The police took me home and I had to sit in the living room with my parents as they explained what had happened. My mother gasped.
‘Oh my God, she was in my house just yesterday,’ she said.
My father kept fidgeting in his seat, clearly not entirely sure what I was involved in but worried sick none the less.
‘Are you sure you don’t know anything more?’ the policeman asked.
I shrugged.
‘I guess she was fed up with the way everybody treats us,’ I said, making fun of him. His face was all concern. ‘And, you know, with what happened with Craig . . .’ I trailed off dramatically.
The policeman’s eyes shifted across to my parents.
‘Will you be all right?’ he asked them.
‘Yes,’ said my dad,’ we’ll be fine. Thank you.’
‘We’ll contact you again soon.’ And the policeman left. I heard the door close behind him.
My parents came back into the living room. I sat back in my chair and stared at them.
‘What’s going on, Rich?’ my dad asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Rich, you know you can tell us anything.’
‘What is there to tell? She’s dead.’
They looked at one another. An unspoken urgency linked them, a sense of confusion, fear, a growing unsettling panic.
‘Can I go upstairs? I need some time to myself,’ I said, making fun of them, of course.
I got up and went to leave.
‘Rich,’ said Dad,’ don’t lock your door tonight, eh?’
I smiled.
‘OK.’
My room looked alien when I got in there. Like my version of reality had been warped. The colours were not as sharp and I could take everything in with an all-consuming expanse of detached, soulless brain power.
I lay on my bed and tried to get my head straight. Was she really gone? Had I just seen that? I knew that she’d been feeling bad lately but I really didn’t think that she would actually kill herself. Not Jenny. Out of all of us she and Matt were the most grounded. Freddy had said that he didn’t believe human behaviour could be explained away and now, with Jenny, his words had burned up bright and clear.
The house phone started ringing. Something told me it was for me so I bolted up off my bed and answered without looking at the caller ID.
‘Jenny?’ I said, which was incredibly weird.
‘Rich?’
‘Johnny?’ My voice wasn’t full of joy this time.
‘I just heard about your friend.’
He paused, waiting for me to speak. But I couldn’t get anything out.
‘Are you OK?’
I didn’t answer. Because I suddenly realized something. I wasn’t OK. Something awful was happening. Jenny had died and I wasn’t feeling sad. I was feeling flat, maybe even, what? Happy? No, not happy. I don’t know. Whatever I was feeling, it was Not Natural and I knew that I was not being a good boy.
‘Johnny,’ I started. ‘I can’t be friends with you any more.’
Static.
‘What?’
I swallowed and closed my eyes.
‘I can’t do it. You don’t want to be friends with someone like me,’ I said.
‘Rich, what are you—’ He stopped himself.
‘Please, just . . . leave me alone. You’re one of my best friends and I can’t wreck your life for you.’ I knew that I had to do this. Everything I touched became poisoned. I couldn’t let that happen to someone innocent like Johnny. Matt was already destroyed and I couldn’t face Johnny being broken as well.
‘Rich—’
I hung up.
He tried calling back but I didn’t answer. I went to the top of the stairs and told my parents not to answer. This was the only way.
34
THERE WAS A knock at my door. It was my mother. With a look of absolute terror on her face.
‘What?’ I said.
‘There’s a detective downstairs.’ She swallowed but seemed to be having trouble doing it, like her throat was dry. ‘He wants to talk to you.’
I went downstairs. My father was stood up against the door frame that led to the kitchen. He could hardly look at me. He wandered into the kitchen. I followed.
At the table was a slightly obese man of about forty with a moustache, thinning hair and dishevelled clothes. His moustache looked fake it was so lopsided. As it should have been, his top button was undone and his tie was loose. I dreaded to think how much coffee this man drank just for effect.
‘Richard,’ he said coldly. ‘My name is Detective Berryman. Please sit down.’
I did as I was told. He wasn’t messing.
‘I think you probably know why I’m here.’
I felt numb.
‘Jenny,’ I muttered.
‘Yes, the young girl, but there’s more than that, isn’t there?’
I looked at him. Sweat was glistening on his chin. I glanced at my parents, who had faces on that I had never seen before. Seeing your parents so filled with terror is scary.
‘Tell me about the Suicide Club,’ he said.
My heart seized.
‘I don’t know—’
‘We found your little . . . charter . . . or whatever you call it. On Jenny’s body.’
I sighed. That was so sweet of her. I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to go and sit on the shore of that river with Clare and talk gently about the stars.
‘It was just a bit of fun,’ I muttered, knowing exactly how he was going to fly off the handle and say something like, ‘Fun? Two kids are dead. Do you call that fun?’ Which he did, of course.
‘Do you?’ he reiterated.
‘No, the fact that they’re dead isn’t fun. The Charter was a bit of fun. We didn’t expect anyone to actually do it.’
‘But you knew that Craig Bartlett-Taylor had tried this sort of thing before, didn’t you?’
‘I guess,’ I whispered.
‘Your friend.’ He flipped through his papers. ‘Frederick Spaulding-Carter? He says that you wrote the Charter.’
I looked at the detective and, unfortunately, he saw a flicker of fear shadow-dart behind my eyes.
‘He said it was all your idea because you didn’t like Craig Bartlett-Taylor.’
I paused. This was a trick. Was this even legal?
His tone of voice softened.
‘We know that it was just a joke that went wrong, but the justice system dictates that there have to be consequences.’
‘I didn’t write the Charter,’ I sort of choked, a rush of blo
od going to my head.
‘I know you didn’t,’ he laughed. Why was he doing this to me? Where was his compassion? He should have been trying to help me. ‘Tell me who did.’ He was a reptile. I bet he had a fork in his tongue.
‘Can I ask you something?’ I said timidly.
‘Shoot.’
‘Did your job crack your marriage in half?’
There was a pause as Detective Berryman folded his arms. ‘You think you’re big because you say something like that? Do you know the sort of people who act like this towards me? Like they don’t care? Criminals.’ He breathed loudly through his nose and stared at me. ‘Criminals are always the smart-arses.’
I could feel him glaring at me, trying to intimidate me, and so I put on my doe eyes, which are excellent, and looked at him as if he had beaten me. I sighed sadly.
‘I’m telling you this only because I want to do the right thing.’
‘Just tell me.’
I breathed out.
‘It was Craig. After he tried to kill himself we all tried to help him.’
His eyes gave nothing away. I couldn’t tell if he believed me. I said it because I didn’t want to get Freddy in trouble. This thing had caused enough misery for enough people already. I didn’t want to add more to the list. The way I saw it, I had to protect my friends. They were all I had left in the whole world now.
‘We spent loads of time with him, trying to cheer him up and stuff like that. He seemed to be getting better as well. And then he turned up with that thing.’ I stopped.
‘And?’
I shrugged.
‘We signed it. We were only messing around. You know, trying to be nice to him.’
He shifted and the kitchen chair creaked.
‘So Craig wrote it?’