I know that if I breathe right and relax, I’d be able to see things more clearly. Focus on the goals. But it’s too tempting to stay wrapped up in my rage, too easy. Everyone’s always saying how much better it is to keep on the right side of things; what they don’t mention is how hard it is to bring yourself out of that state just so you can behave correctly. It’s harder than just flicking a switch. I’m a mass of fine electrical wires, powered to cooking point, brain preparing to sizzle.
She asks me again if there’s something I’d like to tell her. That ordinarily an assault on a teacher, no matter how small, can result in immediate suspension, but that under the circumstances my behaviour this morning would be overlooked. But – and there was a big but – I had to open up and tell her what was going on. She’s hearing the stories but doesn’t know who’s behind them; the gossip has gone way beyond its remit at this point. She also wants to know if there’s any truth in them, because the seriousness of the allegations makes it something she cannot ignore.
‘There isn’t anything to ignore,’ I tell her. ‘Sour grapes ’cos the running’s going good. No one seems to like it when the Paki gets the spotlight.’
‘Veerapen, don’t talk like that. Never talk about yourself in that way.’
She obviously hasn’t seen any hip hop videos made in the last ten years.
Also, I can’t respect anyone who’s only learned to pronounce my name properly in the last six weeks. Year Head’s stumbling over a few basic syllables makes Brendan’s efforts sound natural.
I’m only getting her riled up because I don’t want her to start some discussion about how a kid may get confusing feelings about members of the same sex as he moves into adolescence. I’m fifteen, I don’t need those kind of lectures. Especially from a woman who’s a lesbian on the quiet. Make a sentence with these words: calling, pot, kettle. Why are adults all such hypocrites?
Mum had a similar conversation with me a few months ago after some twat I didn’t even know called out a name while we were queuing at the car park machine in the Bentalls Centre. Walked right up to my face and said it. I didn’t get out of that chat as easily. I had to swallow my smirks and pretend to open up, something that I won’t be doing again.
We sit in silence for what feels like an hour. I concentrate on Jase’s blood stain, which still hasn’t been cleaned from the carpet.
‘You’d better get going or you’ll be late for registration,’ she says finally.
Knowing that it’s safe to look up, I see she’s out of her seat and pointing to the clock.
‘I’m going to ask your teachers to keep a close eye on you this afternoon, and if there’s any more trouble you must come and let me know.’
‘OK,’ I go, not ’cos I’ve got any intention of blabbing or sharing any information with her. Not ’cos I want to let someone who isn’t a family member know how I am falling out of my depth into something that feels frightening and uncontrollable, but ’cos it’s the easiest thing to say.
‘OK. Most definitely. Fo’ shizzle m’nizzle.’
I slip into the library on the way back to class and check my emails. Figure I can scrounge a couple of extra minutes and blame it on Year Head. There are two. One sent bulk to the whole of our year, the other one comes up as private. Both JPEGS. The bulk: one with me and Casey with my tits out down the track. Doesn’t bother me as much as it should. They’re already talking about it, this isn’t gonna change that. It’s only when I think of Moon that I get the hard knot in my stomach that threatens to turn me inside out. Knowing that, quite willingly, she felt that she had to pass that evidence on, and to him. In the glare of the second JPEG, my own worries are nothing, they don’t even compare. Possibly why I got it privately. Pearson has guts, but not that much guts. A picture scanned from the local paper archives, of Jason’s dead sister being carried into the ambulance. She’s already in the bag, but that doesn’t make any difference. I know what I’m looking at. Sick bastard.
Send him a txt to wash over the sick feeling: his dad on the floor in the street with the toe of my trainers in his face. It ends now.
64
Gwyn takes me for lunch at the Italian place. It’s expensive, so no one there knows us. She walks with me extra slowly ’cos the bandaged leg has got infected and is hurting like hell. I’m saying nothing about transference either.
She doesn’t tell me how much she likes me, only that she saw me snogging Peter Platinum, the runner who’s all eyes and teeth, after that race meet in Guildford. She’d come to pick us up from the station, and saw how I was straggling behind, waiting for my opportunity to get my three seconds of tongue whilst the others were getting their shit together. If I tell her that was the first time I’d ever touched a guy’s lips, she wouldn’t believe it. And he was the one who’d made the moves. The way he’d been checking me out in the changing rooms. One of those times when you think, fuck it. Let him have what he wants. I know he’s an old ugly fucker, but there’s no other candidates round here. I don’t even like the guy. I just wanted to know what it would be like.
‘But how come Moon never knew about it? I would have seen from her face, if she did.’
‘Because I knew how obsessed with her you are . . . were. How obsessed with her you were. How you tried so hard for her to think that you were perfect. That’s the reason she was into Pearson, in case you didn’t get it – ’cos he’s riddled with imperfections. You try too hard to conceal yours.’
‘Are you really that easy talking about Pearson like this?’
She’s ordered a half bottle of wine for herself, and because they’re new and foreign, the staff let it go. She polishes it off almost in one.
‘Not really. But as long as he gets what’s coming to him, I’ll just about be OK.’
‘Which is?’
‘Nothing less than a long and painful stretch. He killed my sister. He needs locking up.’
65
The first time I see Pearson is at next lesson, English, but Mrs Doe runs her class like a concentration camp, so you can’t make the slightest attempt at desk-to-desk conversation unless you want to get killed. We both sit in the centre: me far right by the window, him far left nearest the door. Three desks between us. I have my registration in this room, so haven’t moved an inch since I got here. He makes class by the skin of his teeth as usual, so there’s no opportunity to exchange pleasantries, which is a big shame. I’m so angry, I’m ready to pull his teeth out.
We spend forty minutes detachedly discussing some book that no one’s interested in. Mrs Doe is usually good at reading the code amongst the kids, but she’s too busy terrorising us to pick up on our simmering. Also, she was probably late from having a last-minute fag in the language lab with Mrs Fletcher, and so didn’t get her ear pulled by Year Head about putting me into witness protection.
I write Jase a note and slip it to him via Chinese Peter.
We all talk about this Rob Fleming guy and his record shop like he’s under the microscope, like none of us have ever fucked-up in our lives. Like, ever. And Pearson is the most scathing of the lot. And because he’s talking so much, because he’s actually read the book for a change, Mrs Doe is nodding her head excitedly and lapping it up. It’s enough to make you sick.
‘It’s not like real life. Who buys records any more?’
‘You’re such an expert on real life,’ goes Jase. ‘You’re a regular documentary-maker.’
‘And he moans all the way through. He’s such a loser.’
‘Stop interrupting, Jason. Daniel’s making an interesting point here. Don’t stop, Daniel, please carry on. What makes, him moaning d’you think?’
‘A bad technique with women. Those lists. They’re not even interesting.’
No one’s laughing. Mrs Doe’s not picking up on anything. Eyes too blurry with the joy of teaching. Focusing on Pearson like he’s her private student or something.
‘How about this, Daniel. Here’s a man whose life is littered with so many disappoin
tments that he’s become paralysed with fear. That if he makes a mistake, any happiness with the girl of his dreams will disappear. Do you think his moaning is more or less understandable in this context?’
I’m looking at Chinese Peter, but he’s ignoring me. The note is under his book and isn’t moving from there, not whilst Mrs Doe is in the vicinity.
‘He goes on about lists all the time because it’s the only thing he gets right,’ I pipe up, making as much noise as possible. ‘Makes him feel good about himself.’
‘He’s hiding,’ Pearson barks back, eyes locked. ‘My parents taught me to have a low opinion of anyone who hides away from their problems. People like that deserve a slap.’
The only sound in the room comes from Jase scraping his chair back. Note received. He’s two seats away from Pearson and could have him eating parquet in a minute. The temperature shifts. The atmosphere becomes thicker and gets caught in my throat. Everyone in class is less interested in Mrs Doe and her legendary temper, and more intrigued by the current exchange of opinion. They all know that we won’t be talking about soppy books for much longer.
It’s not nails down the blackboard, but it comes close: Jase still seated and pushing his chair slowly back. A plan formulating behind those pinched eyes.
‘No one’s interested in this book, miss. Why can’t we read that one on The Krays, like the other class?’
Pearson continues to lecture but, like the rest of the room, has his eyes on the chair legs as they move closer to the desk behind. Jase is no longer holding his text open at the page we are supposed to be examining. His fist is wrapped around his pen, nib out. Even Lizzie Jennings, who’s supposed to hate him after he dumped her outside Tesco, is fixed on his every move.
‘I would hardly call The Krays literature,’ goes Mrs Doe, who, with her sixth sense that all of the older teachers have when they sniff an ounce of trouble, moves to a space behind our row of desks, at a point equidistant between the two of us.
She stands legs apart, arms behind her back like a high-kicking FBI chick who kills truculent boys with her bare hands. This would be funny if she wasn’t nearly sixty and so sharp-tongued.
‘Has anyone else got any thoughts they’d like to share? We can talk about any book you like, so long as it’s fiction.’
Only me and Pearson raise our hands.
He’s up on his feet. I wasn’t ready. For once I was actually thinking about the book. The sound of more chairs sliding back, a symphony of screech as everyone prepares themselves for what they think will come next.
It’s all very quick. Mrs Doe doesn’t get a chance to move out of her FBI-agent-on-alert position. Everything that happens is down to Jase.
In years to come, if we are all still alive and haven’t been fried in the electric chair, Jase’s dive will become legendary: a sudden leap downwards that most goalies would kill for. It helps that his arms are so long and rubbery, shooting past the statue that is Mrs Doe, and reaching for Pearson’s legs.
Both of them are on the floor. Jason on top of Pearson and going for his throat. Pearson struggling to break free, his hands uselessly flattened under him. He wriggles like a half-alive fish in the fryer and makes use of his legs instead, giving one high kick after another. Most get Jason in the back. Only one manages to hit the target and get him in the head. Gives Jase a hint. He stops strangling Pearson and starts bashing his head against the floor instead.
Mrs Doe is getting her hands dirty during all of this. She doesn’t quite step between the boys, but does a job in trying to get Jase off Pearson. She looks like she’d like to slide between them and act as a buffer, if only she wasn’t wearing a skirt. She stands to the right, closest to the boys’ heads, and pulls at Jase’s shoulder, hefty pulls that wouldn’t look out of place on a farm, country wife pulling calf out of a ditch, that kind of thing. She gets Jase up a couple of times, but isn’t able to see it through. As soon as he senses her tiring, which comes after each great heave, he dives back downwards, the full weight of his body falling back on Pearson. His arms still locked around the bastard’s neck means that Pearson is granted a similar window.
Everyone by this point is up on their feet, including me. With Mrs Doe taking the head, I stand at their feet as they flip back and forth, feeling useless and not relieved. It should have been me choking the breath out of Pearson, not Jase. It should have been my call. Pearson continues to twist around, making it hard for Jase to maintain a firm grip, but seeing his face contorted like a fucker, childbirth sounds replacing all the words of earlier, cheeks puffed out with the sheer exertion it takes simply trying to breathe, I still wished it was my hands round his throat. As it was, the way they were thrashing about, I couldn’t get involved without looking like Jase’s boyfriend, even if you counted all the stuff that had happened earlier. I’m useless. A spare part that’s good for nothing.
I do something with the legs, push them about a bit, so that it looks like I’m doing something. If you were standing over me, I’d look real busy the way I rolled my sleeves up and got my hands dirty. You wouldn’t guess that my heart wasn’t in it.
‘Pull him towards you! See if you can make a gap!’ shouts Mrs Doe, pointing at Jase with her spare arm. She thinks I’m trying to break them up. I take everything back about the sixth-sense stuff. She’s thick.
She yells something else a couple of times, but I can’t hear her over the noise from the rest of the class, who are now circling us and screaming all kinds of stuff. No one names names, in case it implicates them later on, but reading between the lines it’s mostly shit about Pearson asking for it. Aside from the predictable stoner stuff mouthed by the pretty girls who wished they were at a school where they had cheerleaders, there isn’t a bad word to be said about Jase. He’s safe, totally.
I’m still pissing about with the lower half, unable to get a punch in, especially now Mrs Doe has christened me her special envoy. I don’t feel angry now either, for some reason. Being the gooseberry fighter seems to have drained it out of me. Either that, or any feeling I have is being transferred over to a now-colourless Pearson.
The bell goes, five minutes early. Everyone stops a second, including Jase and Pearson. He loosens his grip on his neck and lets Pearson get some breaths in. The way Pearson gulps for air so noisily, like he’s either going to cry or be sick, is so undignified. It makes me embarrassed for him. The bell rings too loud and too long to be a lesson bell. We all stand like statues, not sure of what we’re hearing. Fire practise? At a time like this?
Mrs Doe regains her scary element and howls at everyone to clear the room.
‘Get out! Get out!’ she shouts, like she’s just found her husband boffing the neighbour or something.
Jase and Pearson are already up on their feet. They’re not stupid. They want to kick the shit out of each other, but neither wants to fry to a crisp unnecessarily. Also, a persistent fire bell gets us all off the hook. Mrs Doe is too busy counting heads and shooing us out to do anything else.
66
We do the sensible thing and hide in the second-floor loos: me, Jase, and a now-breathing Pearson. Moon, who’s been txted, is already waiting for us. It’s times like this that you need some privacy to handle your business.
67
Gwyn corners me when I’m taking out the bins.
‘I don’t want you getting any ideas, but I want to make a go of it, us being friends. I don’t care what anyone will think. Life’s too short.’
‘You don’t know how happy that makes me,’ I go, hugging her in the middle of the drive, not caring whether my mum or her mum sees us.
‘This doesn’t have anything to do with you telling me about Moon in those last moments. That’ll come when you’re ready. For now, let’s just enjoy things.’
She moves her mouth to my cheek, but I keep her in the hug. Grateful, uncertain. Looks more convincing this way.
I tell her again how happy this makes me, but not how good it will make me look if anyone starts to dig too d
eep into what I did and didn’t do when Pearson had his hand on the knife.
68
There’s a whole load of things we shouldn’t have done:
– Jason shouldn’t have left to retrieve his iPod
– We shouldn’t have given up on words
– Moon shouldn’t have come between me and Pearson
– Pearson shouldn’t have been tooled up
– I shouldn’t have gone for Pearson’s wrist once he’d got the knife out, and started twisting it
– Pearson shouldn’t have kept hold of the knife
– I shouldn’t have kept twisting his lower arm, and pushing, slamming his back against the sink
– Pearson shouldn’t have kept hold of the knife
– Moon shouldn’t have tried to prise us apart, not while I still had a hand on his arm
– Pearson shouldn’t have been tooled up
– Moon shouldn’t have spoken when she did
– I shouldn’t have still been twisting Pearson’s arm
– Pearson shouldn’t have lunged towards me
Graffiti My Soul Page 21