‘You better go,’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘It’s getting late. See you tomorrow?’
‘No, Monty. You won’t.’
She hurried out of the pool and into the house. Kristen and Allegra met her inside, along with Becky McDormond. I hadn’t seen her arrive, but that was no surprise; I’d spent the whole night dancing on autopilot. Becky handed her a towel and seemed to ask a lot of questions. They conversed silently. Pippa kept her head low in remorse. They all looked my way. I knew this meant trouble.
*
‘How was the party?’ asked the dog.
‘Why’d you tell me to go?’
‘I told you no such thing. Eliza told you to go. She didn’t want you, remember?’
‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ I told the dog.
‘I know,’ it said.
We sat together in my darkened room for what seemed a lifetime. Finally it walked up to me and pressed its dark fur against my hand. It was the first time I’d actually touched it, and my hand reflexively recoiled. Not because it wasn’t soft or anything, just that, up until now, I wasn’t actually sure if it was really there. But it was real. It was warm and alive and its body rose and fell as it breathed. It eased its sad head into my lap to comfort me. I had lost everything. Now there was only the dog.
‘There is a way,’ it said.
‘For what?’
‘For the pain to go.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘Come to my world. Leave this place, this torture. Come live with me where there is nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing that will hurt you. Never, ever again.’
It sounded nice. A place with no pain. A place where I didn’t mess things up, where I could just float and be free. Forever.
‘What about Eliza?’
‘What of her?’
‘I love her,’ I said.
‘You don’t love anything,’ it told me and disappeared.
I was alone. Even that one exit had been denied me. It made me want it all the more.
Chapter Thirteen
It turns out my family is distantly related to a British lord who lives, to this day, in an actual castle and owns about a hundred square miles of green, lush, English farmland. This guy, in turn, is distantly related to the royal family and is about 114th in line to the throne. All this, according to my mother, is the solid truth. If, by a terrible series of events, all those other people in line to the throne were to die, then I’d become King of England. My mother has empirical proof of all the genetic twists and turns, the swings and roundabouts and multiple dead-ends that would result in my coronation if such a catastrophe were to occur. She was firm on this. She’d done all the genealogy, apparently. Of course, all this had nothing to do with me; she just wanted to prove that she was important, that she occupied a rightful place in this world. Of course, if it were true, she would be crowned before I was.
For years she had painstakingly researched files in the library, sent overseas for strange people’s birth certificates, and spent many hours putting the epic puzzle together. It took up four volumes and when spread out on the kitchen table looked eerily similar to something a serial killer might put together on his next victim.
‘Here! This red line takes us to the Earl of Cornwall,’ she’d rant. ‘And this red line here brings us back to the Spencers in 1863! See what I mean! You see?’
My father and I didn’t. He would politely excuse himself to tinker about in the shed while I would be stuck at the table to have the entire encyclopedic set read out to me in overzealous tones. It made no sense to me at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t share a passing interest; it was just so incredibly boring. I mean, really boring. I’d rather eat a bowl of my own nostril hairs than listen to three hours of family history.
The only thing that barely interested me was the idea that people used to marry their cousins. And not just one or two oddballs from the backwaters: a lot of them got married, all the time. The further you’d go back, the more common this incestuous practice seemed. I began to see a pattern, at odds to how my mother saw things. Where she saw honourable arranged marriages, I saw a disastrous clash of incompatible genes. Our family lineage was strewn with twisted misconceptions, mistakes built upon mistakes, and I was the net result. I was literally created from centuries of faulty DNA. No wonder I didn’t stand a chance.
I woke up the next day and felt disgusting. My head throbbed and my memory dripped away elusively. Worst of all, the texture of my tongue resembled something like a hundred-year-old carpet. I shuffled into the kitchen and gulped water straight from the sink like some lost desert wanderer, finally finding oasis.
My mother watched me out the corner of her eye, peering through her cigarette haze.
‘You came in late.’
I grunted and wiped my mouth with the dirty tea towel. She looked at me harshly but her gaze softened into some kind of flat resignation. She drifted away with her smoke.
‘I don’t know who you are anymore Monty,’ she exhaled.
I was incredulous. Infuriated even. What the hell did she mean by that? She didn’t know who I was? When did she ever take the time to get to know me? And then she had the gall to accuse me of holding back the truth all these years. This was her home, I thought. She ran life here exactly the way she wanted. If she wanted to know me, all she had to do was ask.
‘You want some breakfast?’ she offered.
‘Since when did you make breakfast?’ I asked belligerently.
‘You look like you need something,’ she said. ‘After your big night.’
‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. Really. I had one sip, that’s all. You don’t believe me?’
‘There’s plenty I don’t believe.’
She exhaled, deep and soulful, calming herself against the situation. I stood by the sink and wanted to dive down that drain. I’d escape that house, my mother, Middleford and the whole damned lot. I’d flow out with all the wastewater into that wide blue ocean. Damn. Not the ocean again.
‘You’re only fifteen. What’s your father going to say?’ she admonished.
‘Him? He never says anything.’
I leaned in to peer through her smoky, blue haze. I wanted her to see me up close, so she could finally see me for real. I was no phantasm. I was no ghost. I was there. I was a living, breathing person. Her son.
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I intoned. ‘You don’t know who I am. That’s just the way it is. You and me, we’re strangers. We’re nothing.’
She gulped uneasily. It was the strangest thing: I could see she feared me. My own mother feared me, despised me even, as if I were some foul creature she’d accidentally made from the sickly mud of her womb. She gazed at me with a mix of regret and horror. She wanted to exorcise me, I could see. She’d created a monster, and now she was stuck with it.
The video went viral.
In just a few hours it went from one inbox to twenty, to sixty, to four hundred, to over five thousand and counting. Lots of little thumbs up. Everyone seemed to like it. People from all across the globe had commented and shared it. It was even trending above some video of a Korean cat that couldn’t be bothered catching a mouse because it was so fat from eating noodles. It had wormed its way into many lives. Even though I still only had three friends on SpeedStream, this video went all the way to New Zealand and back just to find its way home to me.
There I was, in the pool with Pippa. We were making out. And the whole time I was bawling my eyes out like a spoilt toddler who dropped an ice cream. The girl in the video keeps trying to kiss spoilt-toddler Monty, to seduce him, and all he does is cry like a baby. I suppose everyone likes a good comedy. It attracted a lost of posts:
Alias: @Fearless22
Date: Saturday August 2, 12.55PM
What a doofus! Share to everyone you know #CryBabyPool.
@CrazyCowMan
; If I had a chick like #CryBabyPool, man I wouldn’t be crying!
@Anon-e-mouse
I love the look on his face at 2.35. #CryBabyPool looks like he’s just crapped himself!
#CryBabyPool is such a total jerk!
Yeah, what a moron.
Waste of space.
Can’t handle it.
Loser.
Must be gay.
She’s so hot.
Yeah. A bit funny looking, but still hot.
Who is this guy?
I want to beat him up so bad.
Yeah, slap him.
No way! Kick him in the head.
Then steal his girl.
He’s not good enough for her.
Get ME in that pool.
I’ll show her how it’s done.
Come on, baby.
He should just end it, man.
Yeah, do it.
End it.
I would.
Go on.
Die.
*
Thousands of posts like this, all the same. I read them all. In all but a few, I was seen as the stupid fool who, for whatever reason, couldn’t get things together. I was pathetic. I missed my one good chance. And for that, I did not deserve to exist. They were scathing. I thought I had a pretty thick skin, but the abuse was relentless. If everyone thought of me like that, perhaps they were right? I thought. Perhaps they saw the real me? Maybe this was all I was? A blathering cry baby who didn’t know how to live life.
I didn’t know what to do. I waited for the dog, but it didn’t come. I wished I hadn’t cut down the roses. I would have gladly spent the day in there, tucked away under those protective barbs. Anyone trying to get me would have to fight through those formidable defences. I would have stayed in there until I couldn’t move. Eventually the postman would smell something bad and come looking and see my remains tucked inside, curled up in the foetal position. They would have to send in the fire brigade to cut me out but all they’d find would be an empty shell. Everything inside of me would have turned to dust. I’d leave nothing behind but a thin, papier-mâché version of myself. As they dragged out my frail corpse, I’d disappear into a shower of grey dust, never to be seen again.
I suspected Becky was somehow instrumental in all this, but there was no way to prove it. Whether my night with Pippa was some kind of set-up or not didn’t matter. My actions were there for all to see. Was that what I really wanted? I wondered. Did I go there willingly, knowing this would happen? I had openly slain any connection I had with my mother. Did I want to do the same to Eliza? Did I want to hurt her? Could she even be hurt? So many questions.
Eliza waited by the bus stop. She didn’t look up as I approached. She looked so beautiful I could have died right there on the spot.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said.
‘What for?’
She gauged me with the coldest of looks. I knew she’d seen it. Everyone had.
‘It looked like you were having fun.’
‘No,’ I told her.
‘You didn’t like it?’
‘It wasn’t what I wanted.’
‘Liar,’ she said coolly.
‘So what does this mean?’ I asked tentatively.
She regarded me, devoid of all emotion, and made things eternally clear.
‘It means the end, Monty.’
The rest of the day was a blur. School was a tide of derision. Kids teased and mocked. They gave me whatever was my due. I tried to take it all in my stride and walk through the wall of contempt with my head in a cloud. But it still got to me. I was jostled at every corner. I was harassed in every class. I had nowhere to hide. All eyes searched for me. My camouflage skills meant nothing. I was laid bare before them all. The pressure was intense. Fight or flight kicked in. I had to run. But where? I thought of Amy Fotheringham; the supermarket beckoned.
Even the teachers had seen it. I was taken to Ms Finch’s office and lectured on my rights and responsibilities. She went through a checklist for online bullying, designed by some well-meaning departmental psychologist. I muttered the right answers and she ticked all the right boxes. She wanted to know if I understood the consequences. She told me it wasn’t going to easy, because the operator was an overseas company, but there was a way for the video to be pulled. She took pity on me, I guess, and helped me fill in the right forms and call the right numbers. After one long, agonising hour, the video was deleted, along with the scorn of a generation.
I left her office and sat on that long, hard bench, eager for its punishment. Sure, Ms Finch had done all she could, and I appreciated her for it, but it wasn’t going to be enough. Yeah, kids from Sweden to Montreal would forget all about that bawling guy in the pool and go back to watching Korean cats, but school was another thing. I’d never be like Tim Smith again.
My thoughts lingered on conspiracy. My mind began to twist under the weight of paranoia. It had to be the only explanation. It was all planned, not in an effort to assault me, but Eliza. They had meant to flush her out in the open. They wanted to strike at her heart, to push her jealousy. They assumed she would react. Seeing me with another girl would crush her, they thought. She would cry at school and all would be revealed. Eliza loved Monty, the lowest of the low. Her fall from grace would be complete and her heir would seize the throne. Yet none of them counted on how cold Eliza’s heart would be.
Eliza stood among them, holding court as if nothing happened. The sun shone. Girls giggled. They shared stories and complemented each other’s clothes. Eliza smiled, unaffected. Becky, Kristen and Allegra could only watch in quiet awe. She was stronger than any of them. They couldn’t touch her. She was immune. I noticed their group didn’t contain Pippa.
*
‘Ms Finch told me you pulled it down?’ she asked.
Pippa had found me between classes. The bell sounded and the hall was empty of life, except for us. A momentary reprieve.
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘She was really good about it.’
‘Did she call your parents?’
‘Yep.’
‘What’d they say?’
‘Nothing. But that’s not unusual,’ I said.
‘I wish my dad was like that. He’s totally gone off. Says I’ve disappointed him.’
She began to tear up at the thought. She was moments away from dissolving under the pressure, I could see. I watched her silently. I suspected her collusion. She had done all this on Becky’s orders, I was sure.
‘He’s going to send me to a private school. He thinks I need to learn some boundaries. So I guess we won’t see each other anymore?’ she asked.
‘That’s what you wanted, remember?’
‘I know. I didn’t mean it to turn out this way. I’m sorry.’
‘Did Becky tell you to invite me?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘Did she tell you to ask me over? Did she tell you to … you know. In the pool.’
Her face froze in shock as if I’d just slapped her clean across the cheek. I knew I’d gone too far. Pippa burst into tears, deep and sorrowful. She hid her little rabbit face in her hands and began to shake all over. I could do nothing but stand and watch. Part of me wanted to hold her and tell her I was sorry but, mostly, I was detached and cold. I knew then what it was like to be Eliza. I took no solace in Pippa’s pain. It just didn’t exist.
I had heard about this kind of psychological disorder before. Plenty of people had become detached from the world, in order to deal with it. It was called compartmentalisation. If you were unlucky enough to experience a true horror, like seeing your entire family hacked to death with a meat axe or being tortured for ten years in your mad uncle’s basement, then compartmentalising was a wonderful survival strategy. All you had to do was put all the pain away in a small, sealed-off section of your brain. All the horror was locked away in a vault, unable ever to be heard again. It would still always be there, and would call to you in the dead of night, but you’d have control over it. It was exorcised from you, no
longer part of you. Your every debilitating torment would be rendered meaningless. Sounds good, right? Except to do this would force you to become a cold, wreck of a human being, unable to connect to another living soul. But if you hadn’t imprisoned these emotions, they would drive you as crazy as that mad uncle in his basement. It was the perfect deceit.
So as I watched Pippa, I felt as cold and devoid of emotion as Eliza. Empathy meant nothing to me anymore. I understood she was crying but that suddenly had no connection to me. Her pain was an abstract concept, like a bunch of numbers. Her emotions became a simple set of information. She was in a negative mind state. How low she would go could even be calculated on a graph, I thought. One vector would chart the scale of her agony and the other, time. As time went on, her pain would subside. She would forget me. She would move on, go to a new school, and form a new identity. But the graph was a lie. I had no idea of the hidden dips and vortices that could trap you. If you found yourself in one of those downward spirals, it was almost impossible to rise above it.
Weirdly, as Pippa cried, what caught my attention was the sight of her little pigtails bobbing up and down in time with her tears. They looked like happy little puppy dog tails wagging away, full of joy. The thought made me smile. She looked up and was horrified to catch me grinning stupidly at her.
‘You don’t care how I feel at all, do you?’ she spat.
‘What? No, I was thinking about something else.’
‘You’re not the only one affected by this Monty,’ she said. ‘We had a good time. I thought you were nice.’
She thought I was nice? I could feel the vault begin to crack open. I held the pain back. I feared I would drown under its torrent.
‘I was wrong,’ she said. ‘You’re worse than the lot of them!’
The Hounded Page 14