Screen of Deceit

by Nick Oldham

  He heard the front door open. With a snarl on his face, he pushed himself away from the wall and ran out of the bedroom. He was going to confront Bethany and have it out with her.

  Mark was in her face the moment she stepped through the door.

  ‘What’re you doin’ with that piece of crap?’ he yelled at her.

  She looked at him strangely, forehead furrowed, her expression perplexed. Her eyes were watery and seemed distant, the pupils dilated unnaturally. She was looking at him but it was as though he wasn’t actually there, she wasn’t actually seeing him.

  She screwed up her nose, gave a sort of shrug and shouldered past without saying a word, brushing him out of her way as though she was passing someone she didn’t know in a crowd.

  Astounded, he grabbed her, spun her round. ‘I said, what’re you doing knocking round with Jonny Sparks, you idiot? He’s trouble.’

  She wriggled free from his grip. ‘Leave me alone,’ she protested. ‘What the hell’s it got to do with you?’

  ‘He’s a shit,’ Mark said fiercely. ‘He’s no good and you’re my sister.’

  ‘What?’ she spat. Her face told him exactly what she thought about that sentiment. ‘Just get lost, Mark. Leave me be. I’m having a good time, OK?’ She swayed where she stood, as if drunk. Only thing was, Mark couldn’t smell booze on her, so he knew she hadn’t been drinking. Mark wasn’t thick. He could add up the sums – and the simple maths came to only one answer: drugs. ‘Just piss off, you pathetic dick-head,’ she snorted.

  Mark took a step away from her. ‘You be bloody careful,’ he warned her with a dangerous whisper. ‘And he’s only fourteen. You’re seventeen.’

  ‘I’ve got along fine without a dad this long; I don’t need one now,’ she sneered. ‘It’s none of your business. Stay out of it.’

  He regarded her critically for the first time in a long time, standing under the bare light in the hallway. What he saw scared him. There were changes he’d not noticed before that moment.

  Beth used to be on the chubby side. Not fat, but some of Mark’s mates had passed lewd comments about the size of her boobs. As Mark quickly scanned her, he now saw a thin, pasty ghost of the girl who had once been a picture of health. She looked like a skeleton. Her cheekbones stuck out against her skin and her face had deep valleys in it, with gloomy shadows on it. Her eyes were sunk in, surrounded by unhealthy bags. Her mouth had become thin, almost lip-less and her neck was like a scrawny turkey. She looked dreadful. Mark knew intuitively that her condition was not because of smoking a few spliffs or going on a diet. Cannabis alone did not do this to a person. She was into hard drugs.

  Why hadn’t he seen the change?

  He swallowed. ‘Please.’ It was all he could think of to say. The word was barely audible.

  It had no effect on Bethany. She shook her head. ‘Do me a favour – piss off and leave me alone. I’m old enough to know what I’m doing.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’ His tone was sarcastic.

  She ran upstairs and banged into her room, leaving Mark standing in the hall, staring after her. He sat down on the second step, elbows on knees, head in hands. He began to cry softly, somehow believing all this was his doing, his fault. If only he’d seen the signs.

  The tears lasted maybe five minutes before he crept quietly upstairs. On the landing, he paused outside Beth’s door, listening but hearing nothing. A few steps further and he was outside his mum’s room. He tapped gently on the door and pushed it open, poking his head inside.

  Her big double bed – unmade – was empty. He knew it would be. She was probably out at her latest boyfriend’s. Mark would be lucky to see her even in the morning. She’d most likely be out all night. He slid into her room and perched on the edge of her bed, running his hands over the sheets, thinking about her. He had vague recollections of sneaking into bed with her when he was a lot younger. He had felt warm and protected and she had held him close against her in those days. That was just after his dad had done a runner. Those days hadn’t lasted long. Soon, there was no chance of getting into bed with her unless you wanted to curl up with the latest ‘uncle’.

  But now, sitting there, Mark wasn’t too upset about the dim, distant past.

  It was the here and now that terrified him.

  Four

  Next day, school was a bit of a haze.

  It began solemnly, with assembly, when the whole school was asked to stand for a minute of silence to show respect for a sixth-former – a girl called Jane Grice who had died from a drug overdose a fortnight earlier; today was the day of her funeral. The head teacher said a few words about her, warned everyone of the dangers of drugs and then led the school in an incantation of the Lord’s Prayer after the minute’s silence – during which there was a lot of farting, pushing and giggling going on. Some respect.

  Mark went along with it, the little tirade about the dangers of drugs hitting a chord within him. He didn’t know the girl who had died, though, and wasn’t really affected by her demise. But he could see others who were. Some of her friends were openly weeping. He had a vague sort of memory of seeing her knocking around with Jonny Sparks before he got excluded.

  After assembly, the kids all trooped to their classes as if nothing had happened.

  Mark actually enjoyed school, couldn’t understand anyone who didn’t. He had some good mates here, had a laugh and sometimes even knuckled down and did some work and usually enjoyed the subjects. He was half-good at maths and sciences, not so brilliant at metalwork, adored Spanish, was ace at English – literature and language – and history … and, of course, sport. His perfect day would have been a morning reading and an afternoon playing footie.

  He knew he would have liked school even if he didn’t have any ambitions, but even at the age of fourteen he was planning ahead and saw school as the best way to cut free from Blackpool. He didn’t want to end up in a dead-end job. He could easily have got work around the resort when he left school, even without any qualifications, but he had a different life planned.

  First off, he was going to stay on for ‘A’ levels, then he was going to go to university. Part of what he earned from his paper rounds was already going towards those costs. Yes, university, in a town or city far, far away.

  Then a job in London, or New York, or Madrid.

  At that moment he wasn’t sure what sort of job. That would come, he thought.

  For now, he was dreaming with his eyes open.

  Except, in Mrs Fletcher’s history class, he was actually daydreaming with his eyes open, staring out at the football pitch. And he wasn’t thinking about London and the future. Nor was he thinking about the Victorians and the past, which he should’ve been doing. He was thinking about Bethany. And Jonny Sparks. And how to split them up.

  A nasty crack on the head made him jump back to the reality of the classroom. Mrs Fletcher’s ‘dink’ with a pencil on the skull – her favourite means of getting someone’s attention. His head spun around and he looked stupidly up at her, rubbing his head and saying, ‘Ow.’

  ‘Away with the fairies, Mark Carter?’

  The rest of the class giggled.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Fletcher.’

  She regarded him warmly. She quite liked him. ‘So,’ she asked, ‘what did the Victorians ever do for us?’

  ‘Brought sanitation?’ he responded hopefully.

  She blinked. ‘Yes, you’re right. They got rid of poo.’

  Inwardly, Mark was relieved, thinking he’d got off lightly. He shuffled cockily on his chair. But Mrs Fletcher wasn’t to be put off by a lucky answer – even a good one. ‘And what else?’

  He groaned and shifted in his uncomfortable chair, his mind now a blank.

  ‘Jet engines?’ he guessed – an answer that received another pencil crack on the bonce.

  Word travelled fast. Before he knew it, Mark Carter was a bit of a celebrity, albeit an infamous one.

  He picked up the vibes during lunchtime as he walked with Bradley from the fo
rm classroom towards the dining room. Some year eight girls saw him and started giggling and whispering behind their hands; next a couple of year nine lads moved quickly out of his way, giving him more respect than he’d ever had before.

  In the dinner queue, some guys behind him, who were in the year above him, scrutinized him strangely.

  In the end, Mark gave up, turned and said, ‘What?’

  They backed off a couple of steps.

  ‘What?’ Mark demanded more fervently.

  ‘Sorry,’ one of them said. He had real fear in his eyes. Mark didn’t even know the lad’s name, just knew he was a head taller than Mark was and pretty hard with it.

  ‘What you sorry for?’ Mark shook his head and turned away.

  Bradley laid a hand on Mark’s arm.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mark asked.

  The dinner queue moved on a few feet. Mark and Bradley made up the distance, but not before a couple of year tens had seen the opportunity and cut rudely in.

  ‘Oi!’ Mark snarled.

  They spun with ferocity, ready to put him firmly in his place. Then they saw who he was, who they’d just transgressed. They mumbled some sort of pathetic apology and scurried away like mice.

  Mark looked askance at Bradley, who had an amazed grin on his face. Mark gestured with his hands as though he was trying to grab something that wasn’t there. ‘Help me here.’

  ‘Word is you battered Jonny Sparks, mate.’

  Mark blinked.

  ‘Word is, he dissed you and you leathered him.’

  ‘Word is wrong,’ Mark said quietly.

  ‘I know that … rumours grow. The real story gets twisted. Y’know – the fact that what you actually did was hit him and run for your life. Somehow that seems to have got lost in the mists of story-telling.’

  Mark was thoughtful as he collected his tray and moved across the serving hatch, picking up his Jamie Oliver-inspired dinner of healthy stuff. Mark desperately needed a burger and chips, not rabbit food. He chose lasagne and boiled potatoes and sticky toffee pudding for dessert, which was the unhealthiest thing on the menu.

  He ate in silence. The buzz, chatter and laughter of the other kids in the room was just background. He didn’t even hear it. Bradley sat opposite him, knowing it best not to disturb his pal’s thinking.

  Mark was brought back with a bump when a year ten lad walked past him, again, someone he hardly knew, and gave him a slap on the shoulder.

  ‘Way to go, mate,’ the lad said. ‘Respect to you. The twat deserves all he gets.’

  ‘Cheers,’ Mark responded dully.

  ‘New-found fame,’ Bradley smirked when the lad had gone. ‘How you going to handle it?’

  ‘Mm,’ Mark mumbled doubtfully. Thing was, though, as he thought about it, the respect was pretty cool and he was beginning to enjoy the notoriety a little, even if the story of what really happened had been twisted. Trouble was, it could all go wrong once everyone got to know the real truth, or when another lad found the courage to challenge him and discovered that Mark wasn’t really much of a fighter. So, as much as it was a good feeling to have guys cowering under his gaze, Mark wasn’t foolish enough to believe in his own press. He knew he had to put an end to this – and fast. Particularly before Jonny Sparks found out and got extra mad at him for embellishing the truth, even though he wasn’t the one who had. It had just happened.

  But … just for a few more minutes, maybe even for a few hours, Mark decided to bask in the glory.

  He pretty much kept his head down for the rest of the day: maths and science, his two poorest subjects. A few people gave him sidelong glances which were a mixture of awe and respect and not a little fear.

  Thinking about it, Mark could perhaps see where they were coming from.

  Jonny Sparks had been – still was – one of those kids beyond anyone’s control. His background made Mark look as though he’d been brought up in a wealthy, caring family with all the privileges imaginable. Jonny’s parents were smack-heads, real heavy-duty drug addicts who were in and out of the police station on a weekly basis for stealing stuff to feed their habits. The only bit of luck Jonny’d had was not to be born a heroin addict. He’d been brought into this world before his mother, who was seventeen when he was born, had staggered down that path.

  Jonny had grown up into a hard, streetwise kid with no social skills whatever. He terrorized other kids and disrupted lessons (when he was actually in school); when he beat up the PE teacher, ambushing the guy in the changing rooms, attacking him with a dumb-bell and putting him in hospital, he’d finally been excluded for good. Most of his life had been spent in and out of children’s homes, being chased by the courts and social services.

  But – in Mark’s estimation – none of this excused Jonny’s violent behaviour.

  It had been a good day for the school when he was kicked out, but rumours still abounded, as rumours did, that Jonny might come back because that was the way the ridiculous system worked. If you were out of control, it seemed, they bent over backwards for you.

  So, yeah, Mark could see why he was a bit of a hero. Few people liked Jonny, most were scared of him, and anyone who got the better of him was to be applauded. Unless they became like him, which Mark had no intention of doing.

  He was relieved when the bell rang: 3:30 p.m.

  Mark hurriedly packed his books into his shoulder bag and did a runner.

  Even though it seemed a cliché to Mark, the bike sheds tucked away at the back of the school were where lots of iffy things happened. Pre-arranged fights, for instance, smoking, snogging and one of Mark’s mates even claimed he’d once had a hand job here from the girl known as the school bike, appropriately enough. A used condom had even once been found and the school idiot, a dim, bespectacled boy called Fosdyke, had blown it up when encouraged by the crowd who had gathered to gawp. He had then managed to get it on to his head like a swimming cap. Mark had witnessed this and the thought still made him shiver with disgust. A used condom? It would have been bad enough using one straight out of the packet.

  Mark’s BMX was in the shed, secured by two thick chains with sturdy padlocks.

  He was hunched over unlocking it when he became aware of someone standing behind him. Dread moved inside him, like a reptile. He rose slowly and turned, his fears being realized, that fear emptying his mouth of all moisture. He knew his tenure as king of the castle had just come to an end.

  The Kong and Rat-Head, Jonny Sparks’s lackeys, aka Eric King and Sam Dale, aka the Hyenas, were towering there with menace.

  Mark stood up on weak, creaky knees, the bike chains in his hand.

  They looked tough and ferocious.

  ‘Jonny wants to see you,’ Sam said. For the first time Mark noticed that Eric had an occasional twitch, which made the left hand side of his face jump about, his eye wink and his lip curl like Elvis. Mark supposed it was the first time he’d ever been this close to Eric. It wasn’t a regular twitch. It was sporadic, but quite noticeable once you knew it was there.

  ‘I don’t want to see Jonny,’ Mark retorted.

  Sam gave a ‘Don’t care what you want’ gesture. ‘Get your bike and push it and don’t try anything funny.’ He twitched, but with the twitch he stepped suddenly forward, quicker than Mark could react, and drove his fist hard into Mark’s guts. The move, the blow, took him entirely by surprise. The breath shot out of him like from a steam pipe. He doubled over, clutching his stomach, knees bending, head drooped low.

  Sam stepped back and flat-footed the side of Mark’s head, sending him crashing against his bike, knocking it over, then falling on his side in agony. Sam stood over him. ‘That was just for fun, mate,’ he snarled. ‘Now get up, get yer bike, stand between us and walk out of school nice ’n’ easy as though you love us.’

  Teeth clenched, Mark rolled on to his knees and, using the frame of the bike shed, heaved himself painfully to his feet, reluctantly standing up and pulling his bike up with him. He wrapped the steel chains ar
ound the neck of the saddle and put his hands on the handlebars.

  ‘Ready,’ he said.

  Eric and Sam smiled wickedly at him. Sam grabbed an arm and they began to walk out, one either side of him.

  Tears of pain welled in Mark’s eyes.

  ‘I got a Stanley in my pocket,’ Eric hissed into Mark’s ear. ‘A three-blader. You try anything and I’ll slash your face with it, just the once. You won’t even feel it for a few seconds, but the doctor won’t be able to sew it up. Understand?’

  Mark nodded, blinking back the tears. He knew about triple-bladed Stanley knives and the damage they could do.

  Most kids had gone home, but there were a few left dotted around the school. There were no members of staff around who could’ve helped him.

  Mark’s girlfriend, Katie Bretherton, was waiting at the school gates. She always did and they usually walked to the newsagent’s together, where Mark did his paper rounds. Katie was a year older than him and, to be honest, not really his girlfriend in the truest sense. She was a girl and they were friends. They had a laugh together and that was about it. They’d had a kiss once, but nothing more. Mark lived in hope.

  Katie and Mark’s eyes locked as he approached her flanked by his escorts. Her expression betrayed that she was appalled by what she saw – on the face of it, Mark and two bad lads in cahoots. Her face, wordlessly, asked him what the hell was going on.

  He replied with a little shake of the head, diverting his eyes from hers.

  ‘All right, fittie?’ Sam leered at her.

  ‘Sod off,’ she responded. She was exceptionally pretty, but the look she was pulling screwed up her little nose like a scrimped-up piece of paper, as if there was a stink on her top lip. She looked worriedly at Mark.

  ‘It’s OK,’ he said, trying to reassure her, though his own face told a different story. ‘Can you tell Aziz I might not make it?’

  The trio walked past her, Sam continuing to leer. She held his gaze, trying to appear unafraid.

  They paused at the front gates where Sam and Eric exchanged a look across Mark.

  ‘Down by the Swannee,’ Sam said.