Hideous Beauty

by William Hussey

  I finish my tea and help her with the washing-up. We don’t say anything else but I can feel the guilt radiating off her. I hate it. Can’t stand it. I’m like a poison here, and she’s right, I have to go.

  I’m just heading upstairs when Big Mike comes panting through the front door. He’s about the only dad I know who can pull off Lycra. He shoots me this look and I know he’s wondering if Carol and I have had “the conversation”. I give him as carefree a grin as I can.

  “Hey, been for a run?”

  He looks down at himself.

  “Gay bar.” He winks. “Just don’t tell Carol.”

  I laugh and start again for Mike’s bedroom, but Big Mike calls me back.

  “I was passing your house and your dad waved me over.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Not much, kiddo. He just wanted me to give you this. Said it arrived this morning.”

  Big Mike hands me a familiar brown envelope. Whoever our mysterious journal-sender is, he clearly isn’t keeping up with my accommodation arrangements.

  “Everything all right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “all good.”

  I take the envelope from him and race upstairs. In Mike’s room I turn on his desk lamp and drop into his chair. How long is this going to go on? I wonder. How many more brown envelopes containing single yellow sheets containing terrible secrets? Each step I take with these pages feels like walking on a turntable, an endless, soul-destroying merry-go-round that only appears to move me forward but actually keeps me stuck in the same place.

  And then I open the envelope and unfold the sheet and look at the drawing you made, and I know, straight away, that this isn’t like the others.

  Finally, El, we’ve reached the end.

  In this single, crashing moment, I know what happened to you in December, and the horror of it is almost unimaginable. And yet it all makes sense now. Why you withdrew from me at Christmas. Why you acted so strangely at the dance. Why you wouldn’t tell me what was going on with you. Because, more than anything else in the world, you’d want to protect me from this. Because if I knew, then your pain would be my pain too.

  Because you were raped.

  The drawing: you’re on the floor of the school art studio, naked. It’s night. Surrounding you is your sculpture; a beautiful winged harpy, her body a see-through wire mesh, her insides a helix of red ribbons. Your main A-level project, finally completed. Your fingers reach through the mesh, the ribbons wrapped around your wrists and taped across your mouth, binding you, silencing you. The details are so painstaking it hurts to look at them. Your sculpture, this beautiful monster, has become a prison.

  It was such an awesome piece; I never did understand why you destroyed it after Christmas. Thought it was just you being tough on yourself. Now I get it. Because his fingerprints are all over her.

  A frosty moon glares behind the windows of the studio. There’s no one around to see, and so the featureless man looming above you, towering over the sculpture, has no fear. He’s smaller than you in real life, weaker, but none of that matters. Words circle the image, writhing around your tortured face. Words I know he must have implanted in your head: IF YOU TELL, NO ONE WILL BELIEVE YOU.

  Your face is slack, your eyes huge. Haunted windows looking out at me, asking where I am. Playing video games with Mike? Watching TV? I don’t know. I can’t remember.

  No one will believe you.

  But I would have believed you, El. Of course I would. So why didn’t you tell me? Because he got inside your head? Because he made you believe that you were somehow to blame for what happened to you? You were raped, El. None of this was your fault.

  Why didn’t I understand what you were going through? Why didn’t I put the pieces together? It all seems so obvious now. But when you came back after disappearing on me for that week in December, I was just so relieved to have you back that I stopped looking for answers…

  Okay, stay calm. Think it through. What are you going to do?

  But I can’t stay calm. My hands can barely hold the yellow sheet. Cold beads skate down my back. My mouth and throat and tongue are like bits of roadkill roasting in the sun. I can’t breathe or swallow. All I can do is sit and stare at the trembling devastation in my hand.

  Oh God, Ellis. I get it now. It’s like Raj said, you cared about me too much to bring this darkness down on me. And Jesus, this is the worst kind of darkness I could ever have imagined. I want to cry and scream and rage against it. Christmas makes sense. Easter makes sense. You pulling away from me, filled with all that misguided shame; I understand everything.

  I don’t know how long I sit there, frozen, screaming inside my head, but suddenly I’m moving, slowly, deliberately, pulling fresh clothes from my backpack and changing into them. The internal screams continue all the while. They follow me into the bathroom, where I mechanically brush my teeth. They echo round and round as I splash cold water on my face and watch the droplets cascade in the mirror. They almost drown out my voice as I speak to Carol and Big Mike in the living room:

  “Hey, guys. I’m going over to see Julia. I can probably stay with her a few days. Will you tell Mike I’ll see him later?”

  “Honey, are you sure?” Carol asks.

  “I can drive you if you like?” says Big Mike.

  I shake my howling head. “No need. I could do with a bit of fresh air.”

  Outside, I huddle inside my jacket, every part of me shivering as I make my way down the road. A George Ezra tune you played on the Nissan’s stereo randomly invades my thoughts. I don’t know the title or the lyrics. Why didn’t I pay more attention to the things you loved? Too late now.

  Birds caw overhead. Blackbirds, eyeing me from twisted branches. It’s strange. Despite the screaming in my skull and the sickness in my stomach, I feel floaty and elated, like in the very last seconds of the very last exam before school breaks up forever. We’ll never know that day, Ellis. Never know that giddy wonder as we burst out through the fire doors, setting off alarms, consequence free, grabbing at each other’s autographed school shirts, running and sliding across the football pitch only to catch each other, laughing and hiccupping, dreaming dreams of that little university flat that awaits us. This mad lightness I feel now is the closest we’ll come.

  My phone rumbles. It might be Mike or my mum or Carol. I don’t want to talk to any of them. I whistle George Ezra and watch the blackbirds in the trees.

  The only annoying thing is that I have to wait. Reaching the edge of the woods that border Ferrivale High, I hunker down, elbows planted on my knees. My watch tells me it’s 12.36. Three hours, maybe four, and finally I’ll have my answers.

  I watch the rhythms of the school day from my vantage point. Lunch is over and kids swarm out onto the field for twenty minutes of texting, bullying, consoling and running around in pointless circles. Then they crowd back in, only for some to swarm back out again, a few scrambling about like puppies, others dawdling towards the unbelievable agony of PE. I catch a glimpse of Ollie as goalie, an unusual position for him. He barely moves during the game and concedes four goals, winning the middle finger from his teammates. Then Mr Highfield whistles them all back inside and I watch an hour of Year Nines trying to stay awake as Mrs Gupta reads aloud from Of Mice and Men. I know it’s Steinbeck because Gupta always stands on her desk to read the Lennie parts.

  The end-of-day bell makes my heart leap into my throat. Flexing the cramp from my fingers, I call Mike. Kids are flooding through the gates as the call connects. I think I see Gemma and the committee girls, but maybe I’m imagining things. It would only be right to glimpse them before the end.

  “Dylan,” Mike blurts. “Where the hell have you been? Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, mate. I hope it will be.”

  “What…” I hear him swallow. “What does that mean?”

  “I know who it was,” I tell him. “The person who scared El at the dance. The one who…” I can’t say it. I don’t want to put the image
from the yellow paper in Mike’s head, so I simply say, “I know what happened to him at Christmas. It was someone from school. They did something very bad to him and I need to ask them why.”

  “Okay,” he breathes, “but, Dylan, you shouldn’t be doing this on your own… Dylan?”

  “I love you, Bitch.”

  “Dylan? Dylan! Talk to me. Whatever you’re thinking of doing, just—”

  “You can’t help me, Mike. Carol and Big Mike would never forgive me if I got you mixed up in this. But things might get a bit crazy after today, so I just wanted to say thanks. For everything you’ve done this past week. And I wanted to tell you…” I rub my eyes with the back of my hand. “Mike, you were always my best friend. Even when El came along, you and me…” I grip the phone, force myself to keep going. “You were never second-best to him, you know? You were always my brother.”

  “Dylan, you need to listen—”

  “I have to go.”

  “No! Dylan!”

  I end the call. Then I thumb quickly through my apps, select the one I need, and rise. Pushing my way through the undergrowth, I emerge onto the field. The sun throws my shadow like a cloak, draping it across Ferrivale High.

  Some dawdling Year Seven kid with half his shirt tail hanging out emerges from the science block just as I reach the main building. I ask him to hold the door. Year Sevens usually obey sixth-former commands, even if the older kid does have a strange look in his eye.

  I pass quickly through the corridors. I don’t think there’s anything quite like that echoing, eerie emptiness of a school at five-to-four on a Friday afternoon. I jog past abandoned classrooms, my ears keen for a teacher’s step or a cleaner’s trolley. I have to be fast now. You told me how he hovers late on a Friday, unloading the kiln, placing pottery projects in the drying room.

  And this is where I find him.

  “Hello, Mr Denman.”

  Your old art teacher jumps, his claw-like hand sweeping across a drying shelf, knocking red clay bowls to the floor, where they shatter like fragments of frozen blood. He turns to me, breathing hard.

  “Dylan, what the hell? You don’t just come into a room like this without warning. Look at the mess. Who’s going to—”

  “Clean it up?” I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  His gaze cuts from the shattered fragments to my eyes. Maybe he sees something there. Anyway, he gives this tremulous little smile and I wonder how I ever thought he was attractive. Slowly, I move across to him and place my hand on his arm. Touching this man, being anywhere near him, makes my skin crawl, but I force myself to lean into him, my lips close to his ear.

  “I’ve been thinking about your offer, Mr Denman.”

  “Wh-what offer?” he says.

  I pull back and smile. “Coffee. And a chat. About how I’m feeling? About Ellis.” A tiny bubble of saliva foams at the corner of his mouth. I should be afraid. I’m not. “Maybe we could take our drinks up onto the roof?”

  He swallows hard. Hesitates. “Yes, of course. Coffee. I keep my own private stash in my office. Special blend. Teachers are notorious when it comes to stealing each other’s coffee. It’ll only take a second to brew.”

  He squeezes past me and I let my hand trail across his lopsided shoulders. That accident at Christmas? It really did a number on him. At the door, Denman looks back.

  “But why the roof? You know it isn’t allowed.”

  “It’s private,” I say, leaning as casually as I can against one of the drying shelves. “El and I used to sneak up there all the time. And I’d like to talk to you where no one can overhear us. You see, Mr Denman, there’s something that’s been worrying me. About El. About what happened to him last December. I really think you’d be interested in hearing what I have to say.”

  “Of course.” He gives a sharp nod. “Of course. I understand perfectly. Be right back.”

  I follow him, quietly, discreetly, none of my usual Dylan-clumsiness. Through a crack in the office door, I see what he puts into my coffee, then head back to the drying room where I wait. And although I don’t know what exactly will come next, I feel strangely serene.

  When Denman returns, I reach for the mug in his outstretched hand, making sure my gaze doesn’t linger on that dark, swirling surface. The drying room is at the back of the largest art studio, miles from the rest of the school. No one sees us as we head to the stairs, steaming cups cradled in our hands.

  I lead the way. As we go, I try to shut out the memories of the last time I mounted these steps. You were with me then, and everything in my life had seemed sweet and perfect. Now when I push through the door marked ROOF ACCESS, all I sense is the steady tread of darkness behind me.

  The metal door opens and a wash of daylight floods my face. I pull down a huge breath. The door slams shut behind us. Crossing the flat roof, I give in to this single, shining memory of you:

  A tartan blanket thrown over the gravel at the very edge of the roof. Our view is the football pitch, scene of a hundred Ellis Bell victories, the trees swaying gently beyond. You unpacking the hamper, me complaining about the food. What even is quinoa? The setting sun in your hair, gold rippling in a black and shining sea. A hand, a touch, our mouths pressed together, eyes closed, hearts in sync, the cherry of your lip balm on my tongue.

  “Forever’s a long time, Frecks.”

  It’s a memory, an echo, a romcom acted out in my brain. It has no weight or reality or value to anyone else, but in this moment I will treasure it. Stay with me, El. I need you now.

  Moving to the edge of the roof, I place my cup on the shallow parapet. There’s a snap of gravel behind me; Denman approaching.

  “We were happy here,” I tell him, my eyes skirting the distant trees. “The night before he died, we were so happy.”

  And then I reach into my jacket and take out the drawing from my inner pocket. I know what’s sketched on this sheet, I don’t have to look at it again. It’s an image that won’t leave me while my heart still beats. Turning, I hold it up to Denman.

  “The last time we met I felt really sorry for you,” I tell him. “There you were, scrabbling around on the floor for your precious bits of charcoal. Poor Mr Denman, I thought. What shitty luck he had with that hit-and-run over Christmas. Your recovery must have been very slow and painful, sir; over three months before you could come back to school. But what I didn’t realize until today was that El never uttered a word of sympathy for you, even though before the holidays he was your favourite pupil and you were his favourite teacher. I must admit, I used to get a bit jealous sometimes.”

  The art teacher has stopped dead, his coffee mug dangling from his finger. His eyes are rooted on your drawing, El. A nerve jumps in his neck and he passes his tongue over his teeth.

  “Yeah, El was a great tease,” I continue. “Don’t you think Mr D has the cutest bangs? Have you seen Mr D’s eyes? You could just drown in them. But that’s all it was. Teasing. Problem is, I don’t think you understood that. Well…” I shrug. “Even if you did, you didn’t care.”

  “What is this?” Denman laughs.

  “It’s the truth. Or as much of it as El could ever face. You raped him.”

  He jabs a finger at the unidentifiable figure lurking behind the sculpture. “You think that proves something? I mean, I don’t even know what that’s supposed to be. Look,” he draws his hand across his mouth, “you have to understand, Dylan, Ellis always had a very vivid imagination. It was a wonderful thing. But…but obviously it could get the better of him.”

  I start to refold the drawing, replacing it in my pocket. “So you’re saying he made this up?”

  “Well…” Denman juts his chin at me. “It isn’t true, that’s all I know. I mean, whatever it’s supposed to represent, it isn’t real. Now listen, if you leave here right now we can forget this ever happened. I won’t tell anyone what you’ve said today, I swear.”

  I stare at him. “But why wouldn’t you, if the drawing’s a lie? I’ve just accused you of a serious
crime, Mr Denman. That must mean I’m dangerously deluded. If the drawing’s a lie.”

  “I feel sorry for you.” He tries on a shivery smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “It’s awful, what you’ve been through. Watching the boy you love drown. Blaming yourself for not being strong enough to save him. That’s what you’ve been thinking, isn’t it? All that guilt, Dylan, it’s bound to have an effect.”

  I won’t listen to this. I change tack.

  “You know something, sir?” I give him a long up-and-down look. “You really are an awful mess. Remind me, how did you get so spectacularly fucked-up in the first place? Crossing the road, wasn’t it? Hit-and-run? Did they ever find the driver?”

  “Dylan, listen…”

  “Listen? Did you listen when El begged you to stop?” I’ve had enough. It’s time to end this bullshit. “I agree, the drawing proves nothing. It’s too abstract, too vague to ever stand up in court. But the coffee you just gave me? What exactly is in your special blend, Mr Denman?”

  His gaze darts to the mug resting on the low parapet.

  “I think the police will be interested in the contents of that cup, don’t you?”

  He threads his fingers together until his knuckles stand out, sharp and white. “There’s nothing distinctive about that mug,” he says. “Nothing to connect it directly to me.”

  “Isn’t there?”

  Reaching into my trouser pocket, I take out my phone and show him the screen. A red circle flashes and a counter marks the thirteenth minute of the recording. “I started this just before I entered the school,” I tell him. “It’s being automatically uploaded to a file-hosting service. The recording will cover our entire conversation up to this second, including your offer of coffee. And when the police analyse whatever’s in that cup? Well, I think that’ll be enough to put you under suspicion for at least the attempted rape of a student. Then the police will probably get a warrant to search your house. I wonder what they’ll find there?”

  You used to love my klutziness, El, but I think you might have been even prouder of my lack of it now.