Beneath the Earth

by John Boyne

  I haven’t seen Dad much since he went. He blames me too. Everyone blames me, or so it seems. But at least they can turn their attentions to someone else now that Lizzie is the laughing stock of the whole country. They’re even talking about her in America. I saw a piece about her on the Huffington Post. They’ll probably find a way to blame me for that too.

  The first day back at school was just as bad as I’d expected. There were two empty seats: Lizzie’s, of course. And Geoffrey’s. Tommy Devlin, who I love, was in his usual spot and he was the only one who didn’t burst out laughing when I walked in. Even The Smileys started giggling, their faces pressed together, probably wondering whether they could get away with snogging the heads off each other in the middle of the classroom.

  As it turned out, Geoffrey had been away from school all week, just like me. His parents had taken his phone away and they’d confiscated his computer, so no one had got anywhere near him to offer their congratulations.

  A few of the lads did that cough-talk thing, where you bark into your hand and then mutter something like ‘Your sister’s a whore’ and then look all innocent afterwards as if they hadn’t said a word. I’d expected that. I’d expected worse, to be honest. A lad who was always being bullied threw M&M’s at my head, one by one. I’d say he was only happy that someone else was getting picked on instead of him. I’ll get back at him when this is all over. Every time he threw one, I picked it up and ate it. In the end, I think I ate half his pack. So I got the last laugh there.

  ‘You’ve been off for the last week, Danny?’ asked Benji Dunne, who sits in the seat in front of me and has terrible spots. ‘Were you helping out in the fields, was it? There’s a terrible smell of hay off you.’

  And then he started laughing and he high-fived the prick next to him, who said, ‘Good one, Benzer, good one’, the big suck-up. I’ll get him too. I’ll get the both of them.

  When Mr Hunter came in, he seemed surprised to find me sitting there and he started blushing. The poor fella is always blushing for no reason. That’s why we call him Blusher. Poor old Blusher, he’s harmless really and he’s had it awful rough. His wife’s dead, his son’s an alcoholic and his dog’s got cancer. Anyway, he took one look at me, the face went scarlet, and then he turned around to write some old nonsense on the board about William Wordsworth and the spontaneous overflow of blah blah blah. That’s what he does whenever he starts blushing, because then he can turn his back on us and wait until the redness goes out of his cheeks. Only we’re all on to that trick and Patsy Cole said, ‘Mr Hunter, look, I’m after cutting myself with my compass, there’s blood everywhere!’ Which meant that he had to turn around to take a look and everyone started laughing at the state of him. I didn’t laugh. The poor man has an affliction and I’m not cruel in that way. Tommy Devlin didn’t laugh either. Tommy Devlin would never laugh at another man’s misfortune.

  So anyway, Blusher’s standing there and he looks like his head is going to explode and Patsy says it was all a mistake, sure he doesn’t even own a compass, and then he asks Blusher what colour the traffic lights go when the cars are supposed to stop but before he could answer the door opened and in walked Geoffrey, a nervous smile on his face, and the place erupted in cheers. It was like in those gladiator films when the lads walk into the middle of that big round thing in Rome and everyone goes mental, even though they just want to see them suffer and have the heads eaten off them by lions.

  ‘Leg! Leg! Leg! Leg! Leg!’ everyone shouted, banging their fists on their desks, and that doesn’t look right when I write it down. They weren’t saying leg as in the thing between your waist and your foot. They were saying ledge as in short-for-legend. Geoffrey, to be fair to him, looked a bit sheepish at first but then he grinned even wider and he even gave a sort of professional bow, like he’d just come out for his curtain call and was surprised to find that the audience had hung around this long instead of going off to the lobby for a drink. He strolled down to his usual seat, practically whistling in his nonchalance, but then stopped when he saw me sitting there and, to give the lad credit, he looked a bit ashamed of himself and turned around, hoping for another empty place, but the only spare one was Lizzie’s and he could hardly sit there. He was a bit lost, poor fella. Did he think I was going to beat him up or something? Sure I haven’t got a muscle anywhere on my body.

  ‘Geoffrey,’ shouted Don Wichford, who’s just a blowin as he only came over from Clare this last term so he shouldn’t have been shouting at anyone until he’d earned his stripes. ‘You’ve got hay in your hair!’

  ‘You’ve got some in your arse too,’ said Steven Crawley.

  ‘You’ve got some in your mickey,’ roared Sharon Lewis, who had officially been a slut until about four weeks before, when she’d started going out with Graham Rushe and become respectable. Everyone broke their sides laughing when she said that and Geoffrey pretended to be embarrassed but I could see that he was eating it up. He didn’t want to sit down in case they stopped.

  None of this is really Geoffrey’s fault but I’m going to get him one day too. And when I do, he won’t see it coming.

  Anyway, when Sharon made that crack about Geoffrey’s mickey, Blusher went even more scarlet than before and I swear I thought he might have a heart attack or spontaneously combust.

  ‘Boys,’ he said weakly. ‘Girls.’ But that did no good. He’d have needed a whip to tame that room.

  I read somewhere that you can get an operation for blushing. If I was him, that’s what I’d do. I’d save up all my money and go on up to Dublin to see the top doctor and I would hand across every penny I owned and say, ‘Here, fix this for me like a good man.’ I mean it’s only chronic.

  There was a right commotion going on at the house.

  I was trotting along the road, feeling a little more relaxed with every step I put between me and the school, when I saw Mam charging out to the gate, dragging this blonde-haired piece by the arm and practically launching her into the street. The blonde was asking something, holding a tape recorder out in the air to catch the reply, while a young lad standing next to her was taking photographs. I heard the front door slam as Mam disappeared back inside and when the reporter turned and saw me coming towards her, she almost levitated off the ground with excitement.

  ‘You must be the brother,’ she said, wielding her tape recorder at me like Harry Potter’s wand.

  ‘Why must I?’

  ‘You look just like Lizzie.’

  ‘I look nothing like her,’ I said, disgusted by the very idea.

  ‘You do so,’ said the photographer. ‘She’s a good-looking girl.’

  I turned to stare at him and for once I was a bit lost for words. Did he mean that he thought I was a good-looking boy? No one had ever said such a thing to me before and it caught me off-guard. He was good-looking himself, with curly dark hair and a bit of stubble. Really white teeth too. He half-smiled at me and I felt my stomach tumble a bit. He was probably only about six or seven years older than me too. No harm in that.

  ‘Is it true that your sister has moved up to Dublin?’ asked the blonde, and I turned back to her, trying to compose myself.

  ‘She’s not in Dublin,’ I said. ‘Sure Dublin wouldn’t have her. She’s gone to London.’

  ‘London, right,’ she said, and I felt like a right eejit for allowing myself to get trapped like that. It was the oldest trick in the book. ‘And what’s in London?’

  ‘Piccadilly Circus,’ I said. ‘Big Ben. Prince Harry.’

  A clicking sound to my left made me turn again and there was your man, snapping away as if his life depended on it. I gave him a big smile and he took the camera away from his eyes for a moment and stared at me with what I suppose you would call an interested glance. The perv.

  ‘My left side’s better,’ I said, turning around to prove my point. I would have preferred to say take a picture, it’ll last longer, but sure he was already taking pictures, so the joke would have been lost entirely.

 
‘I meant who does she know in London?’ asked the reporter. She’d had some work done on her forehead. There was something there that wasn’t quite right. A bit too Nicole Kidman, if you know what I mean.

  ‘We have an auntie there,’ I said.

  ‘Can you give me her name?’

  I thought about it for a moment. My poor auntie had done nothing to deserve any of this, even if she had thrown me out the previous summer and called me a peculiar article. The last thing she needed was the tabloids landing on her doorstep. ‘I can’t remember,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t remember your own aunt’s name?’

  ‘I want to say … Fidelma?’ I began, shrugging and smiling for the photographer, who sniggered, which practically did me in. My aunt’s name isn’t Fidelma at all, of course. As I’ve already told you, it’s Dolly. Dolly Dunne.

  ‘Do you have her address?’

  ‘Do you really think I’d give that to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Come on, Daniel,’ she said, bored now. There was something in her expression that suggested she’d rather be up there in Kildare Street lobbing grenades at the Minister for Finance than down here in the arsehole of nowhere talking to a famous slut’s twin brother.

  ‘It’s Danny,’ I said. ‘I don’t like Daniel.’

  ‘Do you know how many hits the video has received now?’

  ‘A fair few, I’d say.’

  ‘Over two million worldwide.’

  ‘There’s a lot of sickos out there,’ I said.

  ‘Are you ashamed of your sister?’ she asked, switching on the empathy. She must have thought I was an awful fool. ‘She’s your twin sister, isn’t she? Do you feel embarrassed by her? Would you say that you couldn’t stand to look at her right now?’ I might have answered, only then she said this: ‘Is Lizzie the reason your father left home?’

  ‘Shut up, you old wagon,’ I said, leaping at her, and she jumped back in fright. The photographer grabbed me and put an arm around my waist to still me. You can leave that there if you like, I thought.

  ‘Take it easy, Danny,’ he said and, Christ, I felt an urge to just let my body relax back into his and fall asleep. I didn’t though. I have self-control. Which is more than I can say for my twin sister. Who is officially a slut.

  ‘You’re very angry, aren’t you, Danny?’ asked the blonde, putting her tape recorder back in her bag, but I didn’t have time to answer for just at that moment the front door flew open and Mam stormed out to drag me back inside the house before I could say another word.

  ‘Do not speak to those people,’ she said, wagging a finger in my face. ‘They’re low-lifes, every one of them. Bottom feeders. And they’ll destroy us if you give them half a chance.’

  I shrugged and went upstairs. I had a desperate urge to play with Mussolini, our dog, only Mussolini was dead a year already so there was no chance of that happening. So I got into bed and had a wank over the photographer instead.

  Lizzie laughed at me when I told her I was gay. She literally started laughing like I’d made some great joke.

  This was about four months after Dad left and she was sitting in her room listening to some old shite on her CD player and crying. I could hear her through the walls but no matter how hard I banged, she wouldn’t turn the music down or put an end to the waterworks. So I went in without knocking and there she was, sitting on the bed like a Buddha in cheap make-up, looking through old photo albums like she was in a film or something. Pictures of the four of us from years ago, when Lizzie and I were just kids. Holidays over in West Cork. The time we went to Leisureland in Galway and I fell off the slide and hit my head. Mam and Dad at the school sports day.

  ‘Can you keep it down in here, do you think?’ I asked, and she looked up at me with pure hatred in her eyes. She’d changed a lot since Dad skipped out. She’d got a tattoo on her ankle, started drinking and staying out late. Getting off with lads. Not officially a slut yet but getting there.

  ‘You keep it down,’ she said, putting the album aside and scrolling through the messages on her phone instead. ‘You’re such a prick, you know that?’ she said after a bit. ‘There’s something wrong with you in your head.’

  ‘There’s something wrong with you in your head,’ I repeated, mimicking her.

  ‘Oh, stop it.’

  ‘Oh, stop it.’

  ‘Jesus, it’s like talking to a child.’

  ‘Jesus, it’s like talking to a child.’

  And then she took a paperweight off her bedside table, a big glass heavy yoke that she’d won in some stupid essay competition a couple of years before and flung it at my head. Had it hit me, I’d have been out for the count, for that thing was a weapon of mass destruction. As it was, it just grazed me, stinging my left ear as it sailed past and crashed into her wardrobe. But it gave me a terrible fright all the same. Even Lizzie looked a bit alarmed by this sudden act of violence.

  I sat on the ground and put my head in my hands. I needed a moment to compose myself. I was the victim of an attempted murder. And all because I’d asked her to turn the music down.

  ‘What’s the matter with you now?’ she asked, the smallest amount of concern seeping into her voice. I’d say she felt a bit relieved that she’d missed me. She might have been up on manslaughter charges. ‘Danny, are you all right? It didn’t even touch you.’

  Out of the blue, the tears came. They were as big a shock to me as they were to her. And the fact that I was crying made me cry even more because I was so surprised by the whole thing.

  ‘Jesus, Danny,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just so angry with you for what you did. You’ve never even apologized. You’ve never even admitted your part in it.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything,’ I said, between sobs.

  ‘Well what’s wrong with you then? Stop crying, for fuck’s sake!’

  ‘I’m gay,’ I told her, and, for all the tears, I felt a sudden rush of relief at saying the words out loud. I’d said them to myself hundreds of times over the last few years, almost always in disbelief, but here they were now, out in the world, setting off on their own adventures. ‘I’m one of them homosexuals,’ I said again, looking up at her.

  ‘You are not,’ she said.

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘One hundred per cent,’ I told her.

  And that’s when she started laughing. Maybe she was laughing because I wasn’t going to tell Mam that she’d tried to murder me with a paperweight, or maybe she was laughing because now she had something she could hold over me. She tried to stop but the more she tried, the more she laughed. I stared at her, torn between humiliation, anger and confusion.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ I asked finally.

  ‘What do you think I’m laughing at? I’m laughing at you.’

  I frowned. ‘But why?’

  ‘Because you’re gay,’ she said. ‘It’s funny.’

  ‘Why is it funny?’

  ‘Hold on there,’ she said, turning away and picking up her phone again and starting to tap away at it.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

  ‘Telling Rachel.’

  Rachel was her friend. An awful dog of a girl who’d been lurking round our house for years and who always looked at me like I was a bad smell in human form. I caught her once trying on my sister’s underwear when Lizzie was in the shower and she’d made me swear not to tell. She said she’d blow me if I didn’t and kill me if I did. I said no thanks to both offers but never said a word about it to anyone anyway.

  ‘Don’t!’ I roared, grabbing the phone off her. ‘Give me that.’

  ‘Too late,’ she said, smiling.

  I stared at the screen. The message was green; it was sent. Danny’s gay, it said. He just told me. ‘Why would you do that?’ I asked, looking across at her in bewilderment. ‘Why would you do that to me?’

  She shrugged. ‘I told you,’ she said. ‘It’s funny.’

  ‘How is it funny?’

  ‘Oh sorr
y, Danny,’ she said, sitting back and smiling sweetly at me. ‘You don’t think it’s funny when people text other people’s secrets to each other? I thought you did.’

  I had nothing to say to that and couldn’t think what else to do. I just stood up and left, went back to my own room and sat on the bed and thought about Josephine Smiley and what she’d do if Joseph Smiley told her he was gay. She’d probably stop riding him, for starters.

  It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was worse. That Rachel lezzer forwarded Lizzie’s text to everyone in our class, who in turn forwarded it to everyone in our school, who in turn forwarded it to everyone in the county. A part of me didn’t care. Better out than in, as they say. But still and all, I thought it was a nasty thing to do and I couldn’t make sense of it. First she tries to murder me, then she tells the world my deep, dark secret. And does anyone tell her off for it? Do they fuck. All right, she’d got it into her head that I was a bad lad and had told Mam all about Dad when I should have kept my mouth shut but none of that was my fault and even if it was, to do something like that in retaliation? It was beyond the beyonds.

  In fairness to Lizzie, she seemed a little remorseful the next morning but she didn’t apologize. She said nothing to me over breakfast but she kept looking over as I ate my corn flakes and finally she turned her phone off because it was practically dancing off the table with all the texts she was getting. And then later, she watched as all the lads made a laugh of me in school and she didn’t open her mouth once to defend me. Normally I wouldn’t care about something like that since I can give back as good as I get, but it isn’t easy when you’ve got fifteen boys jeering you and another hundred out there in the corridors making kissy faces as you walk past.

  Joseph Smiley came over and put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘I hear you’re a homosexual, Danny. Is that right? Are you a homosexual? Are you not worried about your eternal soul?’ and I didn’t have an answer for him. He was hardly in a position to have a go at me with all the things he was doing with his own sister.