by Tony Bradman
Alicia must be reading my thoughts. “Hey Gordon, man. If you make it to the end, you get to be a queen.” She laughs this rich laugh as bright as an orange Slush Puppie. I laugh. The copper just shakes his head at us and moves two squares up and three squares over.
What a wanker.
I tell the gang what happened with Jenny and Roger. I tell them about the chessboard, too.
“Pawns,” says Crawley. “That about sums it up.”
“I’d have bitten his head off,” says Carla. “Fag.”
“The guy’s dying,” I say.
“Yeah, and that’s our fault?”
I shrug, look away.
Crawley – mind-reader – says, “You thinking about your grandad?”
I nod.
“His grandad got all mental angry before he died,” he says.
Carla rolls her eyes. “Sorry,” she says. “About your grandad.” But you can tell she’s still pissed off about how Roger treated me. Which is nice. I poke her in the arm.
She pokes me back. Sweet – we’re on poking terms.
Hicks gives me grief for slouching.
“Out defacing property last night, Gordon?”
“What?”
“Sit up, boy. Pay attention.”
I sit up. Pay attention.
“And wipe that glower off your face.”
Which is when Carla pipes up. “A really close friend of his is dying, OK?” she says. “Cancer.”
For a moment Hicks looks like he might give a shit. Then he smirks. “Pull the other one,” he says and turns back to the board.
Carla’s mouth hangs open. She looks at me like, What are you going to do? I glance at Crawley. He’s shaking his head. He can see right inside my brain and he’s warning me don’t do it, Gordon. Don’t give the bastard any more ammo.
But it’s too late. A pawn’s gotta do what a pawn’s gotta do.
I get up, gather my stuff together.
Hicks stops writing. His head swivels to watch me as I head towards the door.
“Giving up?” he says. “Got an appointment with your probation officer?”
I wonder for just one split-second how many years you’d get for Hickicide, but I shake it off. “Just a call of nature,” I say.
He glances at the clock. “Well, nature can wait for ten more minutes, Gordon. Sit down.”
I shake my head. “I’m not sure it can wait – nature, I mean.”
“Sit. Down.”
But I won’t. I’m thinking about what Alicia told me: Go forward. One square at a time. It’s a game, right?
The bell over the door of the craft shop jingles. Roger’s at his post behind the counter, writing in a ledger. He looks at me and then up at the ceiling – where the god of craft stores hangs out, I guess – like he’s thinking, Cancer, and now this.
“Shouldn’t you be in jail?” he says.
Such a charmer.
“I wanted to ask if you need any help,” I say.
He’s taken aback. But he’s wary. He looks at me like there’s some kind of angle, a punchline, a trick. What’d Jenny say about him? He’s always been grumpy.
“You want work?”
I shake my head. “We have to do community service. It’s this thing at my school.”
He stares at me. “Are you serious?”
I nod. “It’d have to be after-school hours. I could, you know … whatever.”
He closes the ledger. “I can’t pay you,” he says.
“It’s community service. Free. I volunteered to paint the town red, but the council wasn’t interested.”
There is the smallest hint of a smile. He crosses his arms and gives me the evil eye. “What are you up to?” he says.
I want to say, “About here,” and hold my hand very near the top of my head. Because I am so tired of being ‘up to something’. He really, truly is a dickhead. I think, Why bother. I think, who cares? I want to serve him up a few choice obscenities, a mention or two of where he might shove various sharp articles in the shop. But I’m tired of stepping away from the car.
“I reckon it would be a good opportunity to rob this place blind,” I say. “It was Jenny’s idea, actually.”
“Jenny Moore?”
I nod. “I phoned her just now. Phone her yourself if you don’t believe me.”
He just stares as if he’s never talked to a pawn before, just passed them by on his way up the board. Didn’t know they spoke the same language.
“In case you need, you know, time off, or whatever.”
I’m not saying any more. I’ve said enough.
He blinks. His eyes get watery. “Is this…?” He doesn’t go on, but the tone of his voice is different now, and I can guess where he was going and why he didn’t want to go there.
“Yeah,” I say.
He doesn’t say anything. So I find a pen and write my name and phone number on a scrap of paper. Then I turn and head towards the door. I stop and turn back.
“I just want to look at something,” I say.
He nods, manages a watery smile.
I head to the back of the shop and the sacred glade, where the chess set sits. The pieces are all over the place, like last time, but this time I realize that it’s a game in progress. Two or three of the pieces are lying on their sides beside the board, with this expression on their face like, What happened? Meanwhile, the black queen looks like she’s getting close to putting the white king in checkmate. Maybe Roger plays against himself when no one’s around.
I find Alicia. She’s three-quarters of the way down the board and her path is clear towards becoming a queen.
“Good on you,” I say, just to her.
She looks up at me and winks.
MEAN,
MEANER,
MEANEST
Keith Gray
WE WERE AS BAD AS EACH other, so people said. Denny and Jake; Jake and Denny. People knew us. We had a reputation. We lived up to it. Fizzing with attitude like skinny sticks of dynamite, one of these days we were going to explode.
A rubbish and boring October Saturday afternoon, cold and wet, and we were skint. But Denny had a plan. Denny always had a plan. Now we were outside the newsagent’s on Karras Street, staying out of the rain as best as we could, keeping an eye on the main doors to the swimming-pool across the other side, waiting for a pair of suckers to come out.
Cars blew by on the road, throwing up spray. We were wearing our leather coats – long, black and mean. I liked the way the wind flapped them at our legs as we stood there. Mine hung a bit baggy on my shoulders but I reckoned it still looked cool. It was my older brother’s, and Tam was taller than me, wider than me. He was seventeen, I was fourteen, but I still filled it pretty well. Tam didn’t know I wore it, would probably kill me if he found out. I didn’t care. It made me feel cool. Denny had bought his new a few weeks back and he’d been sleeping in it at night to give it the proper creased look. We knew we looked mean wearing them, standing side by side – like mafia, like gangsters. They were our trademark. People saw us coming.
Someone banged on the newsagent’s window behind us. It was an old bloke and he pushed his gargoyle face up against the inside of the glass, glaring around the edges of a WE SELL STAMPS poster. He waggled a wrinkly hand at us, wanting to shoo us away. I looked to Denny, but he just shrugged. We turned our backs on the old git. We weren’t fussed. We knew we looked like trouble.
Two little kids came out through the swimming-pool doors.
“That them?” Denny asked.
I craned my neck and squinted to see between the traffic. The kids pushed their way out of the heavy glass doors and came up the short path to the gates. They pulled up hoods and turned towards town.
Denny was ready to follow but I shook my head.
“You sure?”
“I know those two from school,” I said. I gestured at the plastic bag Denny was holding. “These kids I’ve never seen before.”
Denny tugged at the collar of his coat and hunched his shou
lders, tutted. “We should go in, get them to hurry up. Tell them we’re getting cold here.”
I nodded. “Tell them we’re getting ready to rip them off for every damn penny they’ve got, and we can’t hang around all day to do it.”
Denny grinned. “Something like that.”
“Every damn penny,” I repeated, grinning his grin, trying to make him laugh.
I hadn’t really believed we were going to do this at first. I’d sort of said so. But I’d seen the look in Denny’s eyes and wasn’t going to have him call me chicken again. So I’d done everything he’d told me to. And I knew, just like Denny said, these poor suckers would never want to go swimming again.
Karras Street Pool is a square block of dirty concrete with square windows and square doors. They put trees and flowers around the outside and along the path to the gates, trying to hide how crap it looks. In primary school we were brought here once a week to learn how to swim, but that all stopped as soon as we moved up to George P. High. I reckoned if you hadn’t learned how not to drown by then, it was your own stupid fault. For lads like me and Denny, secondary school was all about sinking or swimming. We might not be any good at Maths or ever get to be top of the class for Science, but we knew we were a couple of the best swimmers around.
We watched as a gang of lads burst out through the pool’s double doors together. There were maybe about ten of them, all pushing and shoving against each other, swinging their bags, messing around and acting up. But there were two younger kids trailing behind who weren’t joining in. The big group came out through the gates onto Karras Street, headed for the bus shelter on the corner, still swinging their bags, trying to trip each other, bowling along. The two younger kids kept their distance, heads down, not talking, dragging their bags behind them up the path from the pool.
“That’s them,” Denny said.
“You sure?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Definitely. That blond one in the red coat? That’s the coat that was in the locker. I remember it.”
“OK,” I said, but waited for him to make the first move.
He grinned massively. “Look how pissed off they look. Come on, let’s go completely mess up their day.”
There was a gap in the traffic. We strode straight across the road. I stayed at Denny’s shoulder. I knew our leathers looked cool as they whipped around us. We hurried to catch the two kids before they made it out through the gates, wanted to cut them off before they could get to the others at the bus stop.
They saw us coming. I didn’t blame them for looking worried. Denny’s taller than me, and I was taller than them. Denny’s harder than me, and I reckoned I was harder than both of them put together. And I’m mean. But Denny’s so much damn meaner. If I’d been them, I would’ve run a mile.
Weird thing is, before Denny and me got together, I reckon I probably was them. Not so long back there were these lads at school who thought they were mean, used to think they could push me around, thought they were hard, funny, whatever. But when Denny moved to our school and we got to be mates, all those lads knew they’d better just leave me the hell alone. I wasn’t going to be pushed around any more. No damn way. Not with Denny there.
My brother still has a go at me every now and again. Tam’s got fists like cannonballs. I’ve never seen anyone stupid enough to stand up to him. I used to tell people he was my brother and most of the time it made them back off. But now me and Denny are best mates and I don’t need to say anything to anyone any more. Now I’m fourteen, I reckon even Tam’s going to have to admit how mean I am.
Denny and me made it to the gates first, stood side by side, blocked the way. Denny still held the plastic bag by his side. He grinned at the blond kid in the red jacket, but the kid didn’t smile back. His mate was a skinny little runt in glasses and a green cagoule. When he saw us, he stopped dead, half turned away, got ready to run if he needed to. And I got ready to grab him if he tried.
“Catch your death,” Denny said to the blond kid, who scowled at him. But Denny pointed at the kid’s wet hair. “That’s what my mum always says when I don’t dry my hair properly.”
“We don’t want trouble,” the kid in the glasses said. His lenses were spattered with rain.
“Who wants trouble?” I asked. “We’ve just got an offer for you, OK?”
The blond kid was cocky for his age. He looked us up and down. “Who d’you think you are in those coats?”
Denny raised an eyebrow, turned to me. “Big mouth for someone so short,” he said. “I used to be like that, you know. Real full of it. Used to think I was tough.”
“Yeah?” I asked. “So then what happened?”
“Some bigger kid came along and kicked the shit out of me.”
We both grinned at Blondie. His mate took a step backwards, a step away from us. That made us grin wider.
I checked over my shoulder, wanting to know what the other kids at the bus stop were doing. But the bus had just turned up and they were all piling on board. I saw Glasses watching them too. I reckoned he’d also noticed the people hurrying by on the road, noticed not one of them bothering to look our way, their heads down against the rain. The bus pulled away, disappeared around the corner. I shrugged at Glasses. He tugged on Blondie’s sleeve.
“Come on, let’s just go.”
“Don’t you want to hear this offer we’ve got?” Denny asked. “I bet it’s something you’re gonna be really interested in.” He held out the plastic bag he’d been carrying.
“We don’t want anything you’re…” Blondie began but shut up when he saw what Denny pulled out of the bag.
It was a smart little mobile. One of those that flipped open, sci-fi silver, looked expensive. The shock on Blondie’s face was a treat. He glanced quick at his mate. Glasses forgot his nerves and stepped closer to get a better look.
“What d’you reckon?” Denny asked. “Yours for fifteen quid.” He handed me the silver phone and took a smaller black one out of the bag. He scrunched the plastic bag up around the screwdriver that was still inside and shoved it into his pocket.
“Tell you what,” he said. “Do you a real deal: twenty-five for the pair.”
Glasses had dared to come even closer. He pointed at the silver mobile I was holding. “That’s… That’s mine.”
Denny acted confused. “Yours? Honest? You sure about that?”
“It’s my brother’s really. He let me borrow it.”
“And that one’s mine,” Blondie said, pointing at the black phone.
“How about that?” Denny said to me. “Reckon it’s damn lucky we found them.”
“Where’d you find them?” Glasses asked.
Blondie turned on him. “Are you stupid? They’re the ones who broke into our locker. They stole them, didn’t they?”
Denny held up his hands. “Hey there! Whoa! Hold your horses. That’s a hell of an accusation, you know?”
Blondie tried to burn holes into Denny with his glare. “You broke into our locker and stole our phones while we were in the pool, and now you want to sell them back to us.” He spat at our feet. “How low is that?”
I did a quick check over my shoulder. There were two older lads at the bus stop now, one in a denim jacket and the other in just a T-shirt even though the rain was getting heavier. But they were too far away to hear the blond kid mouthing off. He made me nervous. To get so tough so young he’d probably had to learn it from someone. Like Tam had inherited his cannonball fists from our dad. Like I knew I’d one day be as mean as Tam. But this kid could only be about eleven. If that.
I sometimes wondered who Denny got his meanness from, because he didn’t have any brothers and his dad wasn’t around any more. But he said his grandad was Italian, so liked to tell people he had Mafia blood in him. He watched old gangster movies called The Godfather and Scarface and Goodfellas over and over again. He knew bits of them off by heart. I reckoned he’d made himself mean on purpose.
Glasses said, “Can we just have them back? Please
? My brother’s gonna go mad if I don’t give it back.”
Denny shrugged. “Twenty-five the pair. That’s the offer.”
Glasses’ face began to crumble behind those rain-spotted lenses. “I haven’t got any money.” Then, pleading, “Look, my brother’s really going to kill me…”
“What about you, Blondie?” Denny asked the other kid. “How much have you got?”
Blondie didn’t answer. Just scowled. But Glasses turned his pleading on him. “Yeah, come on, you’ve got enough to buy it back for me. Please, yeah? I’ll pay you back later. Please. Next week definitely.”
I almost felt sorry for him. But only for a second. Not even that long, probably.
I suddenly wanted to punch him. His squirming was embarrassing.
And Blondie didn’t answer him.
“Come on?” Glasses begged. “Come on? Yeah?”
Denny rubbed a hand over his wet hair. “Miserable day. All you’re doing is making me and Jake feel even more miserable.”
Blondie’s stare was pure venom. I thought he might actually try to go at us. He had his fists clenched and everything. And I was thinking, He wants so bad to be mean. But he was going to have to realize just how much meaner me and Denny were.
Denny hunched his shoulders against the rain, pulled his leather coat closed. “That’s it then, Jake. Can’t say we didn’t offer, right? Their choice, I suppose. Let’s go.”
But Blondie was digging in his pocket. He brought out a scrunched twenty pound note and gritted his teeth as he shoved it into Denny’s hand. I checked again over my shoulder to make sure no one was watching. The older kids at the bus stop might have been looking our way, but they didn’t seem bothered. And there was another bus just pulling up. None of the passers-by on the street could have cared less underneath their umbrellas.
Denny looked at the note. “I said twenty-five.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
Denny looked to me. I shrugged, nodded. Denny gave Blondie his mobile. He didn’t say thank you, just shoved it in his coat pocket.
Glasses came towards me with his hand out, all eager now. His glasses were so spattered with rain he had to peek over the top of them to see anything. He was trying to smile but looked so scared. His fringe dripped water down his face. I suddenly hated him. I used to wear glasses until Denny said they made me look feeble, so I never put them on outside the house any more. This kid reminded me of how I used to be. And he was almost begging me now. He was the really feeble one. Really pathetic. I flipped the sci-fi silver phone open, snapped it in two, and shoved the keypad into his outstretched hand.