The Suicide Club

by Rhys Thomas

  Armies of memories vied for my attention, swamping me, smothering me, forgotten windows of bliss with Matt that I hadn’t even known were happening at the time. From my neck to my belly button was like lead. I hadn’t been able to grasp the concept of Matt’s betrayal but now it was on me, unblinking and ferocious. On the floor, I dug my fingernails into the hard stuff that carpet fibre gets fused into and tried to bend my nails backwards, snap them off. My teeth clamped tight and I ground them down. I started making weird gagging, moaning sounds and my jaw hurt. I was in freefall.

  Matt’s disappearance was worse than death. All death is is a wall that you can’t get past to see your loved ones. But Matt was still alive. He could still speak to me. But he wouldn’t.

  The reality was that Matt had left for boarding school because he wanted to get away from me because I was bad. He hadn’t left because the mediocre had beaten him – that simply wasn’t true. He had chosen to stay alive and cut me out of his life like I was a cluster of diseased cells and nothing more. That was the real reason he left. I had tried to deny it to myself but the truth had finally taken a hold of me.

  I had thought that I could be a better person but it wasn’t true. The boy who had attacked that old man had never gone away and never would. I was that boy; any approximation to being good was just that. Like when a robot wants to be human. It can never happen. Matt was right to leave me. He was right.

  My breathing became forced again as I tried to comprehend this.

  As I thought about it, images of Clare, her eyes closed in ecstasy underneath Freddy, his hair falling in front of his face, half damp with sweat, half dry, ripped at my imagination. I saw Matt on a train to Scotland, relief all around him. They were all gone. Gone, gone, gone. I was alone and I had been left behind because I was evil. That was that. I knew this now.

  My heart wanted out, didn’t want to be part of this faulty soul any longer. There was one option left to me; the only option.

  I opened the door to my bedroom and padded lightly across the landing, a silver river of moonbeams leading the way. I went slowly downstairs and into the living room where, in the pitch blackness, I found a lamp and threw circles of orange light across the walls. I went to the mirror and brought my face up close. I dried my eyes because I wanted to look into them. I took in every facet; every fleck of colour in my iris, every red vein straggling across the surface near the duct, the deep, dark hole of forever that was my pupil. Finally I had seen enough.

  I left the living room and went into the kitchen. I felt like my emotions were all gone, like the amount you are given when you are born is finite, and mine were spent. I had nothing left, nothing. I was just tired, busted up and hollow.

  I opened the kitchen drawer and took out a steak knife. If I was going to do it, it had to be horrendous. I could have gone for a straight blade but I went for the serrated edge instead because I wanted to saw. In my head I imagined the steak knife running heavily back and forth, my wrists open and the flesh wriggling like it was alive with every thrust.

  I placed the blade on to the surface of my skin and looked at metal on pink for a second, my heart rate slowing until I was ready. I could hear myself breathing and in my head I kept telling myself, Go on. The muscles in my right arm, the arm holding the knife, tensed as I pulled the blade down into my left wrist. The skin sank into the flesh and bulged outwards until the seams failed and the first drops of red trickled out either side of the silver steel. Whatever happened from now, I would always have the marks.

  I hesitated, waiting for the freight train of release that you hear self-mutilators talk about. It didn’t come. I kept looking at my skin, the serrated edge of the knife out of sight underneath the torn surface. I changed the angle of my right arm so that the blade was diagonal to the cut. My mind was working like a clock, mechanical and calm, no emotion. There was no feeling left, not even physical pain. I knew that all I had to do was cut deep.

  ‘Richard?’

  I whipped my neck around and looked at the figure in the kitchen door. My mother.

  The feeling that pumped into my chest was like when an emergency generator kicks in during a power cut. First there’s darkness, then there’s that surge of power and the lights come back on and everything hums back to life.

  The kitchen lights came on. I saw her eyes move down to my wrist, the knife still in it.

  ‘Oh no,’ she exhaled, extinguished.

  My hand dropped the knife immediately. The blade held in position for a second before getting sucked out of my inner forearm, falling to the floor with a clang. The blood started to flow. The artery wasn’t severed, the blood came from nothing but a few ruptured capillaries.

  She was suddenly across the tiles and on me like she hadn’t even had to move to get there. Pulling my arm up, she took me from the counter and over to the sink. Running the tap, she put her finger underneath to check the temperature for me. The hand that was holding my arm up she pulled towards her and placed my wrist into the flow of the water to wash away the blood. Not a word was said.

  If you had asked me what her reaction would have been if she had caught me slicing my wrist up I would definitely have said that she would have flipped out, collapsed on the floor in tears. Not this. Everything she did was so methodical, like a field nurse in a war.

  As the water thrummed over my wound I looked at her face. It was tired and drawn and all because of me. She saw me looking at her, turned her head and smiled.

  ‘We’ll find a way through all this, honey,’ she said, with a voice that she used to use when I fell off my bike or got stung by a bumblebee when I was seven. She was my mum. My body buzzed with that weird security that only a mother can offer.

  Just before, I had woken from a dream where I couldn’t see any way out because there was nothing to save me. The story had run its course for me and I was utterly destroyed. Everything I had had before it all started was gone. My friends, my school, my girl, my family, even my beliefs. My parents were arguing again and I didn’t even know if they’d get to keep each other after all this was over. Even though they had tried to save their marriage, it had never fully recovered.

  But that night my mother bandaged my arm and made us both a cup of hot chocolate. We sat at the kitchen table in the depth of the night and forgave each other for everything we had done, in silence. Outside the window was the night but it couldn’t get in past the glass because it knew it wouldn’t beat her. Not my mother. I had obliterated my relationship with her and even though we would try to patch it together, it would always be broken. But even so, sat at that table, seeing her out of the corner of my eye, I knew that she was there and that was enough. Even though I had thought that there was no answer to anything, that nothing was there to save us, I saw then that I might just have been wrong. There was always my mum.

  45

  I WOULD HAVE thought that waking up the next morning would have been like, cathartic. The blazing sun was still with us but I still felt just so sad. It was going to take more than one night to get better from this, I realized. Which was depressing.

  The story was all but over. I went downstairs and made myself some toast – four slices I was so hungry. I went through the whole process in silence, my parents watching me from the table. This was the first time I had eaten anything substantial in a long time. As I buttered my toast I couldn’t help but notice how cool my bandage looked around my arm. I had to shake that thought clear. I dropped the toast on to the plate and sat at the table, all eyes on me.

  ‘You OK, champ?’ my father said.

  I nodded and ate, not sensing that something was wrong.

  ‘The police called us this morning.’

  I stopped chewing.

  ‘Richard, tell us honestly, do you know where Clare and Frederick Spaulding-Carter are?’

  The saliva in my mouth suddenly retreated back into its glands and the toast turned to asbestos in my mouth. I couldn’t swallow it.

  ‘They didn’t go home last n
ight,’ he added.

  Jealousy tore across me. If they had run off together, I don’t think I could handle it. If they had killed themselves together it would be even worse. How could they leave me like this with nothing but a bland road to Healthy Recovery?

  ‘I don’t know where they are,’ I muttered.

  ‘You would tell us if you knew, wouldn’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Of course,’ I lied. ‘I have to go and get changed.’ I left my toast on the plate.

  It was Friday morning, the day of Jenny’s funeral, so I knew that they could only be in one place: the forest. I had to find them, even if I didn’t know what for.

  In my room I pulled on whatever came to hand, apart from my My Chemical Romance hoody, which I grabbed with purpose. With knowing, full-circle symbolism I pulled it over my head. I had worn this hoody that night way back when we had sat in the folly, the first night I had met Freddy.

  I went through to Toby’s room and opened the window, below which was the roof of the conservatory. The sill was slippery with grime and I almost lost my footing. Dangling my whole body down the side of the house I felt with my legs for the roof. This escape route was not a new one and I knew that the PVC columns would hold my weight. Dropping lightly to the dewy grass I danced across the lawn to the shed where I found my bike.

  I reached the forest in ten minutes, my lungs burning. I hid my bike in the same place that I had hidden it last time with Clare, and found the gap in the little Christmas trees that led to the Egg Well.

  As I ran I got the terrible feeling that Freddy had killed Clare. It was irrational but I couldn’t get the idea out of my head.

  The path was drier than before because there hadn’t been any rain and I guess it was quite serene with the sun shining down, me wending my way through the foliage. Once I got past the Egg Well, the forest got denser and darker. I started stumbling over the roots, having to close my eyes where branches threatened to rip them out. And then, just as it had before, it ended and I was in the alien grey-and-green world of the quarry. The sun was blinding and I had to squint to see.

  I looked around but there was no sign of Freddy or Clare. Maybe I had been wrong and they were on their way to California or something. Or maybe she was in the side of the road with stab wounds in her.

  I skirted the edge of the chasm, occasionally peering over the edge into the green waters in case there were floating corpses in there. The lake was empty, at least on the surface.

  When I got about halfway round I heard a disturbance up ahead and my heart instinctively started pumping blood faster and harder.

  Freddy and Clare came out of the darkness hand in hand, from the same place that Matt and Freddy had come the last time we were up here. An instant relief smashed into me. They were still alive. But when I saw them holding hands the terrible realization that she would never love me like she loved Freddy hit me. It would have knocked me down but this is real life and things like that don’t happen. Instead I got that feeling of desperation where you know that, no matter how much you want something, you’re never going to get it. Just seeing them come out of the woods together, that sense of easiness between them, told me everything. She might have loved me in a sweet, teenage way, but it was Freddy she yearned for. He was the one who would get her lust and you can’t beat that, no matter how Nice a Person you are.

  They saw me immediately but didn’t wave. They just headed over. I took a deep breath because it was clear that this was going to be the final confrontation. After this, there would be no going back. I found myself tensing my muscles, pumping myself up, getting ready in case a fight broke out. Freddy looked taller and leaner, more athletic, more animal. But he looked tired as well. Both of them did.

  The air was unreal somehow, the atmosphere cloaked in something weird.

  ‘Everybody’s looking for you,’ I said.

  Clare’s eyes were red and she was a million billion miles away from the full-of-life force of nature she had been a few months ago.

  I stepped towards her.

  ‘Clare.’

  Her lips were shaking and I almost burst into tears because I could never be with her even though I wanted it more than anything.

  I looked at Freddy. His hair looked different somehow, not as full. His skin was dry and a few spots had broken out around his mouth.

  ‘Why can’t it go back to the way it was, you know?’ he said. He didn’t say it sadly, he said it loudly. He had reached a point beyond sadness. He was in the final stretches of wherever his journey was taking him. I suddenly saw him in a new light. Now that I knew about his mother I was looking at a whole new person. So many questions had been answered now that the enigmatic last piece of the puzzle had been filled in. Freddy was like a magic-eye picture: suddenly I got him.

  All three of us stood there in silence, a triangle.

  ‘What are you doing up here?’ I said.

  Freddy glanced at Clare. ‘We’re up here for a reason.’

  ‘There’s always a reason,’ I muttered to myself. I looked at Clare but she couldn’t look at me. ‘You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?’

  ‘I’m not,’ he answered. ‘We are.’ It was like the devil was in him when he said it.

  I suddenly realized how cold the weather was, despite the sun. I was scared. We were miles from anywhere. Freddy’s face was that expressionless mask.

  ‘Clare?’ I pleaded, hoping that she would say something to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rich,’ she said, taking a step towards Freddy and putting her arm around him. It almost crippled me to see that. It was an echo of that night in the graveyard playing tag, when she should have freed me but instead receded into the shadows.

  ‘I don’t want to live any more.’

  I couldn’t handle much more of this. The words were so clinical and to the point.

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘Why?’ she said, trying not to cry. ‘I mean it. Nobody likes me any more.’

  ‘I do,’ I blurted. ‘I love you, Clare. I just . . . love you.’ My face was pleading. ‘Please don’t.’

  ‘Don’t tell her what to do,’ Freddy said.

  It suddenly struck me that I had no idea how this was going to end. The most surreal thought entered my brain: was I living the last few minutes of my life? It seemed like a stalemate. Freddy had beaten Clare but how was he going to get her to kill herself and stay alive himself ? Maybe he was going to kill himself after all. To be honest I didn’t care. All I wanted was to save Clare.

  ‘Please, Clare, just get away from him.’

  ‘There’s nothing left, Rich. Don’t you get it?’ she whispered.

  ‘Of course there is,’ I lied, thinking frantically. ‘We’ll run away,’ I said. ‘We’ll go to London or Edinburgh and get jobs. We’ll rent a bedsit and watch TV in the nights on our sofa. And nobody will know where we are, we’ll just sink into the city.’ Emotions coursed through every sinew, soaring like meteor storms. I actually believed what I was saying. It all came out of nowhere. ‘We’ll save our money and open a clothes stall in Camden Market and you can make all the clothes and all the cool people will come to buy your T-shirts and only cool people will know about it. Normal people will see your logo and wonder where they can buy them but they’ll never know.’

  ‘Shut up, Rich. We don’t want to go on,’ Freddy said, almost pathetically.

  ‘Don’t listen to him, Clare, he’s not what you think. He’s only doing this because his mother died and he’s fucked up.’

  The scene was at breaking point, chaos roaring at us from its secret dimension.

  ‘What?’ he said. ‘My mother’s not dead.’ But he stumbled over the words. I was winning.

  ‘Your mother is dead. That detective told me.’

  ‘What? How can you listen to that greasy bastard?’

  ‘Because he was telling the truth,’ I said with unblinking certainty. ‘You’re a fraud. You don’t love life at all, you’re just a fuck-up,’ I said ha
rshly. ‘And you told him that I wrote the Charter.’

  ‘Well, I had to say something,’ he smiled. ‘I didn’t want to get into trouble.’

  Clare removed her arm from around his waist.

  ‘Is that true?’

  He looked at her, stunned.

  ‘No,’ he choked and I saw his face change imperceptibly. Something indefinable had slipped out of him.

  ‘Your mother’s dead?’ She looked at him intensely. I saw her expression change to one of complete sorrow for Freddy.

  He could barely look at her.

  ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ he said forcefully.

  Clare reached her hand out to him.

  ‘Freddy—’

  ‘Just fuck off!’ he said, and took a step away from her instinctively so that she couldn’t touch him. ‘I’m not a fucking freak.’

  Clare took two steps towards me and turned so that now we were stood against the trees and his back was to the quarry.

  I felt guilty for what I had said to Freddy because he was my friend and I had just wrenched his guts out, but I had to save Clare. This was the first time I had seen him since he told me he had slept with Clare and I thought I was going to feel hatred for him, but I didn’t. Seeing him in the flesh like this, and knowing that he had lost his mother, brought me the pity that I had lacked. Everything was so much clearer now. He was my friend, and he was in trouble.

  Clare looked at Freddy.

  ‘Let’s just go home,’ she said, still trying not to cry.

  ‘What? No!’ he shouted. A flock of birds shot out of the trees in shock. ‘We can’t go home. Don’t you see? My home is a fucking school. That’s not a home. Please,’ he said. ‘Please come with me.’ There was no sign of a tear in his eyes but I knew that he was going through hell. ‘I can’t go on like this. Please. We had a deal. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Rich,’ he said, looking at me with his big lost eyes, ‘doesn’t the Suicide Club mean anything? Were their deaths just a game?’