A CRACK OF yellow light cut a swathe across the horizon. Dawn was coming from the east although most of the sky was still dark. I had called my parents to say I was sleeping over at Matthew’s house when in truth we had stayed out all night. We’d even persuaded Craig to call his parents, which was great because, even though he wasn’t showing it, he must have been enjoying himself. Freddy was going to get in trouble but he didn’t care, said this was what he had meant by not being restricted by anybody.
And now here we were, on the edge of the school grounds, peering over the low wooden fence. Mist was coming up off the lawn, the air was cold and you could hear the crows cawing in the bare trees.
None of us were saying anything because we were so exhausted, but we had one thing to do before we could go home. Kidnap a peregrine falcon.
‘Listen,’ I said to Clare quietly. ‘I have to ask, it’s been bugging me all night.’ I took a deep breath. ‘Where did you go before the party?’ I had to ask, even if it did mean giving her the upper hand in our little game.
‘Over Matt’s.’
She came right out with it, like she hadn’t been hiding it at all. Which she had. ‘So . . .’ I felt so pathetic saying this. ‘Why didn’t you call me?’
She couldn’t look at me when she answered. ‘Because we thought you were over Craig’s.’
I knew it was rubbish.
‘Anyway,’ she added,’ what do you care?’
‘OK,’ Freddy interrupted. ‘Let’s do this.’
I suddenly caught Clare looking at Freddy like he was a god.
The six of us clambered over the fence and ran across the lawn. It was probably around six in the morning. We thrashed over the outer defences and I pretended we were about to storm the keep. I had a sick feeling in my gut because I knew that I would get in trouble for doing something stupid like this, but my monster was getting the better of me. Anyway, it was exactly like Freddy had said – keeping falcons as mascots was plain pretentious.
The aviary was next to the school gym. The falcons were enclosed in a small paddock at which we were now stood. I could see their cage up against the wall. We waited on the fence, trying to get up some courage.
The plan was to get the smaller one, Bertie. After we had him we’d keep him somewhere safe and send death threats to the headmaster using letters cut out of newspapers. It was quite evil I know but we weren’t actually going to harm the bird itself, so what did it matter?
‘I don’t know about this,’ said Matthew. ‘If my parents find out, it’ll be the end of me.’
The two girls remained silent. Craig, as usual, wasn’t saying anything either. Freddy and I tried to coax Matthew round, but he had made his mind up before we had even reached the school. He wasn’t coming. And that first dissent led to more. Jenny and, to my dismay, Clare both backed out.
So it was going to be down to me and Freddy. Operation Free as a Bird. Deep down I was actually glad it was just me and Freddy. This was the first time that it had been just us doing something. I could feel the golden rope of a bond forming between our souls.
We snuck across the lawn like a couple of cat burglars and as we went I clearly remember thinking about him. Running across that grass, the back of his head bobbing up and down in front of me, might as well have been in slow motion. I had never met anyone like him before. I remember thinking that in the short time we had been friends he had saved Craig’s life, taken us to the school lake under the white light of a full moon, taken us to the graveyard to play tag, and now, here we were about to kidnap the school falcon. It was as if my life had shifted up a gear in fun since we had met.
Added to this, I loved his philosophy. I know at our age lots of people spout their teenage musings, and there was an element of that to Freddy, but it didn’t dampen the impact of what he said. What he believed rang true in me. He saw the world as a beautiful, poetic place where anything was possible, just as long as you didn’t let anything get you down. If you looked into his tunnel of belief you didn’t have to worry about what was going on to the right and the left. There was no room for explanation, for science, for coldness. Humans couldn’t be explained.
I needed to believe that. I had always felt the exact same way but had never been able to put it into words. Freddy had done that for me. When he had told us about how he wanted to make a connection between all of the lost souls, and about how he never wanted to succumb to the world, he might as well as have put his hand down my throat, ripped out my hardwire, held it above his head and said, ‘Here is what Richard Harper believes and wants more than anything. Let me read it to you.’
And it wasn’t just me. The others were enraptured as well. I think we all got the sense that we were holding on to his coat-tails to see where we would go. Yes, I remember having all of these thoughts as we crossed the paddock to the falcons’ cage.
Those were the good days. Those were the days that I remember with great affection. I often wonder if things could have gone differently, or if it was all pre-ordained from the start. Was there anything any of us could have done somewhere along the line that could have sent our course in a different direction? Or were our stars always aligned for what happened?
It was all going to change. That yellow line of dawn could just as easily have been a line drawn between everything that went before and everything that went after.
The cage was on a set of waist-high stilts. We got closer and I caught the first glimpse of the greyish down of the birds. They were so silent, sat amongst their straw beds. I had held the birds in my first year but I was wearing one of those big leather gloves so I had never actually touched them. Their feathers were apparently amazingly soft.
We were in front of the wire mesh.
‘Look how beautiful they are,’ Freddy whispered, in a trance, his eyes fixed on them.
I nudged him to snap him out of it.
‘OK,’ he said. ‘You pull the hatch open and I’ll grab it.’
‘Got it.’
My heart was off, beating hard. Bertie’s head was bobbing back and forth. His little round eyes looked like they had the wisdom of ages in them. I whipped the door open and Freddy lunged in. All I saw was an explosion of feathers in his face. I jumped round to the front of the cage.
‘Grab him,’ Freddy called, laughing. Bertie was in my face, flapping like crazy. His eyes were glaring at me but he didn’t try to peck my face off or anything.
‘Get a hold of him, Rich,’ I heard Freddy call again.
The other bird, Burlington, had his head up against the mesh and was squawking in panic. I was laughing like mad at the whole scenario. The flapping of Bertie’s wings was creating a wind that washed through my face like a fresh ocean storm.
Freddy grabbed Bertie from behind and took him out of my hands. He calmed down immediately when Freddy held him. The wind from his wings was gone. We had captured the bird! I opened my mouth in silent glee, really chuffed with our little prank. Inside the cage, Burlington fell silent. I pictured the headmaster’s face when our first joke death threat arrived on his desk. But then Freddy turned his body away from the others, who were watching from behind the fence about forty feet away. His body was also turning away from me and I just about caught the grimace that flashed across his face. But he didn’t turn far enough away that I couldn’t see what he did next. Which was to take the bird’s neck in his hands and snap it in two.