by Rhys Thomas
I kicked a twig into the fire with my trainer.
‘I don’t care.’
Freddy adjusted himself on his seat.
‘I don’t want to say anything bad about your parents, Matt, but don’t they realize what’s going to happen to you in the comp?’
‘I don’t know.’ He sounded deflated.
‘They only want what’s best for you,’ Clare said.
Freddy laughed smugly.
I gave him a stern glare.
‘What are you doing, Freddy?’
His eyes were lasers in my face.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why are you trying to poison him?’
‘Hey,’ he snapped, but then recovered. ‘Jesus, Rich.’ His eyes and face went all emotional and I was lost because you could never tell what Freddy was thinking deep down. His expression would make you want to hug him like a father hugs his son, but at the same time you knew just how calculating he was. Just when you thought you understood him, had him pinned, he would slip away again. ‘What do you think I’m doing? Engineering this whole thing? Planning your demises?’ He laughed nervously.
I threw my stick into the fire.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, making a decision. I had lost everything else; I couldn’t lose my remaining friends. I had forgiven Freddy in the past because I saw me in him, but I don’t know if that was still the case now. I gave Freddy the benefit of the doubt this time because, basically, I had to.
He sighed and gazed into the fire.
‘We can’t let everyone else get to us. We have to stick together, OK?’
‘OK,’ I repeated.
‘OK,’ Clare echoed out of nowhere.
Instinctively we all looked to Matt.
‘OK,’ he said half-heartedly.
It was all melancholic. Things were coming to an end and we all knew it. Matt and I were already separated from Freddy and Clare after having been taken out of school. After today, after we’d all gone missing together, we’d find it more and more difficult to sneak off and spend time with each other. The police, the school, our families would all be formulating plans to keep us apart. And soon the world would have its way with us and we’d go off to university, think of each other less and less often until, in the end, we’d be nothing but bad memories of an unhappy time. That was what the world had in store for us. Unless, of course, she were to return for one of us once again with beating wings.
Just like the daylight, our conversation got darker and darker and because we were with each other we had no idea how much damage we were doing to ourselves by going to these places. We talked about such fragile things with such mellow ferocity that all I could feel was my bone mass increasing exponentially whilst my body stayed the same. A million kids under a million stars had said this stuff before, stuff about feelings and the meaning of life and how there’s so much sadness, but that doesn’t mean that every time you say it it’s any less important.
40
IN THE END we promised to meet up in the forest again on Friday whilst everyone else attended Jenny’s funeral. She would be buried in America but there was going to be a special service for her friends in the local church – even though her real friends, us, weren’t allowed to go. We decided that we’d get drunk and stoned in the woods like animals without a care, just one last time for us, for her; one last blowout.
By this time the twilight was dropping over the horizon and the canopies of the trees were sucking all the light so we made our way back home, single file. When we got off the mountain the stars were out and the sky was purple, with the last rays of sun spraying the western sky orange. We left Clare at the bottom of her drive, just a quick look back and a ‘See you’.
When she was gone Freddy pulled up alongside me, the sound of our tyres gripping the road drifting quietly with us.
‘You really do like her, don’t you?’ he said.
I stopped my bike. We were at the junction where Freddy would split away and head back to the school. He was going to get in trouble because he had been banned from leaving the school grounds but, just like in the song, he didn’t even care.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘You know I do.’
For the longest moment Freddy stared at me. A few strands of hair in his fringe were caught in the wind.
‘What?’
He shook his head.
‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter. I have to go. Say bye to Matt for me.’ He wheeled his bike around and rode off.
‘OK,’ I said. To myself.
Now it was just me and Matt. We pedalled all the way to my house, Matt unable to bear even the thought of going home. He wanted to stay out for ever. I put my bike away and wiped my hands on my jeans.
‘So, school tomorrow?’ I said.
‘Yup.’
It was unbearable. I tried to imagine just how messed up seeing Jenny’s body was going to make him during the dark stretches of the night. I couldn’t comprehend how awful it must have been for him.
‘Don’t go,’ I said. ‘Cut class. I haven’t exactly got anything to do.’
We smiled but it didn’t hide our true despair.
‘We can hide out in the city.’
Matt sighed.
‘Fuck it. OK.’
‘Yeah?’
‘I’ll pretend to go to school and call you in the morning. Are your parents going to be at work?’ I knew he didn’t mean it. He wasn’t going to call me at all. He was just saying it to be nice.
‘I think so.’ I felt incredibly emotional. Matt was my best friend and his life had stacked itself against him in such a way that it was all a dead end.
‘Rich,’ he said. ‘You’re a really good friend. You do know that I think that, don’t you?’
‘Why does this sound like you’re saying goodbye?’
Pause.
‘I’ll call you at eleven,’ he said. ‘And we’ll tear the world apart.’
Pause.
‘Fine . . . so, do you want to hug this out?’
‘Do I fuck,’ he laughed suddenly, jumping on his bike and burning away like a meteorite. ‘So long, sssssucker,’ I heard him shout down the lane.
I laughed out loud. Just for a second there his old self was in him – that pure-of-heart child that could never be corrupted. It was so great to see it rise to the surface like that, so out of the blue. I watched him ride down to the bottom of the lane, round the corner, out of sight. That was the last time I ever saw him.
When I got inside it was like my whole house breathed a sigh of relief. My parents had been tearing their hair out, pacing up and down in the twilight.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not dead,’ I said bitterly and needlessly.
‘Where have you been?’ said my mother, hardly able to stop herself shaking. She wasn’t wearing make-up, which she always does, and she looked old, like her skull had shrunk and her skin had gone all saggy. She didn’t even tell me off for saying flippantly that I wasn’t dead. Rather she said, ‘Where have you been?’ flatly, as though if she had injected the slightest inflection of emotion into her voice I would have jumped on it and hurt her like I had hurt her before. She was now aware that she couldn’t square off to me any longer because I would call her bluff. So, instead, she just showed me without meaning to that she still loved me.
‘I’ve been out riding my bike,’ I said, trying to apologize.
‘Oh.’ She sat down in her chair and looked at her knees as if I wasn’t in the room any more.
Just then a policeman entered the conservatory. He was wearing the uniform and holding a glass of water, which he handed to my mother.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it then.’
As he walked past, he looked at me with really reproachful eyes, like I was responsible for something very, very, very bad. I couldn’t believe that the police had come round because I was missing. It seemed so surreal. I knew what this would mean though. It would mean that, after this, I was never going to be allowed to see my friends again. The
adults, in all their wisdom, would see to that.
‘Will you tell us when you go out in the future?’ my father asked politely, thinking he was treading on eggshells.
I felt a bit ashamed.
‘Sure,’ I lied. I couldn’t tell him that we were going to try and meet up the following Friday when Jenny’s funeral was going on.
We all stayed still for a moment. I thought about what I could do next, like there were two roads in front of me, one dark, one light. To put it dramatically, I had to try and make a choice.
‘Did you see what I built for Toby?’ I said and I pointed across the room, through the window to the Stevenson Screen stood proudly in the middle of the back garden. I tried to bring myself to smile to show them that I was OK, but I just couldn’t do it.
41
THE NEXT MORNING arrived and I awoke to the sight of my mother. She was sat on the end of my bed. Behind her, sunlight was blasting through the crack running down the centre of my curtains again.
‘I need to tell you something,’ she said, echoing Clare’s words from yesterday.
My head was still muffled by sleep. I closed my eyes, my mouth dry. I knew what she was going to say; she was going to tell me that I wasn’t allowed to go to Jenny’s funeral. I felt sorry for her but it still didn’t stop me getting annoyed at her having to tell me so dramatically – sitting on the end of my bed until I woke up, Jesus.
‘Mum.’ I opened my eyes a crack and squinted at her, the sun burning my retina. ‘I know I’m not allowed to go.’
‘Matthew’s parents came here this morning.’
Jesus, I thought. He’s dead. Suddenly everything went cold and I couldn’t feel my arms and legs. My heart was throbbing like a pulsar, shooting shock waves out through my body. I didn’t want my best friend in the whole world to be dead.
Oh God, Matt, I thought. What have you done? I remembered him up on that motorway bridge with Jenny before she killed herself; the image burning itself on to my memory. This was why he did it. My heart yawned open, a big hole appearing in its centre, visceral and exposed to the big bad world that had driven us all to this.
‘Richard?’ My mother had placed her hand on my leg. ‘Are you OK?’
I couldn’t answer.
‘They gave me this letter,’ she said.
I opened my eyes slightly and regarded her, the bright sunshine from the curtain crack lighting the back of her hair. In this strange light her face looked weirdly sallow.
‘Letter?’
In her hand she held a white envelope. Delicately, she placed it on my duvet. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and squinted to focus. A letter? Brought by his parents? I ripped open the envelope and started to read.
A moment passed, my mother still sat on my bed, only there to enjoy the drama of my despair.
‘Richard, are you OK?’
I had closed my eyes.
‘I’m fine.’ I swallowed. ‘Just leave me alone.’
Silence. Her hand was still on my leg.
‘This is the best way.’
‘Please just leave me alone, Mum.’
‘I can’t,’ she choked. She thought I was going to commit suicide.
‘Mum, I’m not going to do anything stupid . . . today.’ I winced when I said it.
‘Richard . . .’
‘Mum, please.’
She waited for a moment and then I felt my bed lighten as she stood up. And left.
My bedroom had that sci-fi silence in it, you know? So this would be how everything started to unravel. There was a darkness inside me, something bad; a thought. Was I really thinking that his non-death was an anticlimax?
I felt cold. Matt was a coward, a snivelling little rat. No, he was a snake. A fucking snake. He had succumbed utterly, capitulated entirely. How could he be so fucking stupid? How could he just fall in line with the mediocre like this? The whole point of the Club was not to fall in line, right? I resented him for being such a coward, for deserting us. Since Jenny’s death, everything had been intense, melancholic and beautiful. But now, with this, all that had been zapped away. Matthew had wrecked everything. I didn’t care that he was still alive, that meant nothing to me. All that mattered was that he had left me.
As usual, I knew that this anger, this one feeling that I had let through the barriers, was only there to take away the attention from the second, deeper feeling. There’s no point in hiding it any more. The truth is, I do one thing, feel one way, so that I don’t have to accept another feeling, a deeper, more painful experience. Maybe you’ve already picked up on this. When I was horrible to the counsellors in school, it was because I didn’t want to listen to what they were telling me. This is so hard to write. When I threw the computer monitor and got expelled it was because Emma had rejected me. My God, I can’t believe I’m about to tell you this but when I signed the Suicide Club Charter it was – oh God – because we had killed Bertie and I couldn’t handle the fact that I was becoming unpopular so, rather than allow my friends to leave me, I left them. That’s the truth, unblinking and deadly. You see? Shit. I’m sort of crying as I write this.
And here I was doing it again. I was pretending to be angry with Matt because the real truth was far too painful. I was not ready for that yet. The information that I had read off that letter, the deep meaning, was being carried by electrical impulses in the outer regions of my brain. It was pushing in on me like a planet trying to get through my bedroom window, so much gravity like a star in collapse.
The message was skipping from synapse to synapse, biding its time, encroaching on me, swimming around me. Circling sharks. But these neon-blue tadpoles of information didn’t come any closer. Before reaching the centre of my brain they stopped, like soldiers in an army taking up positions in anticipation of a deadly, synchronized attack that could come at any time. But not yet – I wasn’t ready. If they attacked now it would be too early. They knew that they could cause more damage later. So they waited.
Numb, I picked up the phone and called Clare, concentrating hard on each key that I tapped. I had to do something to take my mind off Matt. I had to speak to somebody who still loved me. At the other end I got ringing.
Click. ‘Hello?’ Her voice was tinny, distant.
‘Hey.’
‘He’s gone.’ Her voice was trembling.
‘I don’t care. He’s a traitor,’ I said half-heartedly.
‘Don’t say things like that.’
‘Why not? I should have known he’d do something like this. He was never as good as us at anything.’ I hated saying it, but I had to say it because the real truth would have hurt too much. ‘Are you in school?’
She hesitated.
‘No, I’m at home. My father won’t even let me out of the house after yesterday. Not even for school.’
I lay in bed, my eyes closed as I spoke.
‘Can I ask you something?’
There was silence at her end.
‘Matt told me that you’ve felt bullied by the other kids in school.’ I paused. ‘Clare?’
‘I’m here.’
‘Is that true?’
The faint crackle of static sang into my ear. And then, through the electric hiss, I heard a sob.
‘Clare?’ My heart burned. Surely this couldn’t be happening. Clare was in the Suicide Club – why was she letting normal people get to her?
‘I . . . just . . .’
I felt unable to speak.
‘They’re just so mean to me,’ she said, trying not to cry, her voice wavery.
‘Is that why Jenny killed herself, do you think?’
She sniffled.
‘I don’t know.’
‘So’ – this was hard – ‘did you only hang around with us in the end because you had nobody else? Not because you wanted to?’ My skin felt hot.
There was a long pause.
‘No . . . I don’t think so . . . I don’t know. Maybe. God, why do you have to say stuff like this?’
‘I thought you liked me.�
��
Really quickly, she said,’ I do like you.’ There was a slight delay. I was back in her bedroom, trying on my bees knees T-shirt, watching her face glow with happiness.
We stopped right there and recomposed. I hated that she was almost crying at the other end. Had I really not noticed the way that the others were responding to all this suicide/bullying/reaction stuff? Had the others been going through a whole different experience to me since Bertie, since Craig? Had they been going through hell? Some friend I was if I didn’t notice that. We were supposed to be together for reasons of friendship and love, not desperation. If they had felt like that, then the Suicide Club had failed.
I suddenly remembered something that me and Clare used to do before all this mess. Back then, if I was feeling down, I would text her a sad face , and she would do the same to me if something had made her upset. Then, we would reply to the sad face with a smiley face . It showed that we were there for each other. To finish it all off, to show that the text had cheered me up, I’d reply . That was how it worked. But not any more. I had destroyed my phone, just like everything else. There were no more smiley faces.
I suddenly heard a noise in the background of Clare’s line.
‘Who’s that?’ a voice said. It was her father, the evil oil baron. ‘Nobody,’ I heard her say before turning her attention back to me. ‘Rich,’ she sighed,’ I have to go.’
‘Wait,’ I said quickly. ‘Clare, I’m always going to be there for you, no matter what. You’re never alone, OK?’ My heart was beating really fast but I just thought it was important that I told her that.
There was a brief pause at her end.
‘I’ve really got to go.’ And she clicked off.
42
I SPENT THE next three days in a weird hinterland of existence, all of the colours bleaching to grey.
In the early hours of the morning, when I was in bed, my parents had started arguing again, just like they had done before they split up when I was younger. They would try to keep their voices down but occasionally they would explode and their hate would blast through my floor and into my head.