THE AMAZING SUNNY weather lasted through to Sunday. I heard a weather report saying that it was set to last for at least another week and probably longer because there was this rare weather condition called a Blocking High which sinks down from Russia and stops all the rain and wind and stuff coming in from the Atlantic, which was awesome news because I love the sun.
I didn’t eat breakfast or lunch and I found it difficult to think back to the last time I had eaten a meal. It was a long time ago, literally months, but I definitely didn’t have an eating disorder or anything like that so I didn’t care.
I was in my room when something smacked into my window. I sat up on my bed, where I had been lying. Then something else smacked into the glass, this time with a loud crack. It took a few seconds for me to realize that somebody was throwing stones. I jumped off my bed and went to the window. My heart soared when I saw who it was.
Freddy and Matt were out there on their BMXes. They looked like the kids from the film ET in their colourful hoodies pulled over their heads. I smiled massively and waved like a madman.
Incredibly, I hadn’t spoken to Freddy or Matt since Jenny’s death. My computer had been seized and my phone was smashed up so there was only the house phone, which would have meant me calling Matt’s landline and running the risk of his parents answering. Which I couldn’t have faced.
I crept downstairs and snuck out of the back door of the conservatory. I tore across the lawn and wrenched my bike out of the shed with pure being.
‘Let’s go,’ I breathed and we burned down to the bottom of the lane where my parents wouldn’t be able to see us.
We pulled up at the end of the lane and looked at each other for a long time. Matt’s black eyes had all but gone. All that was left were two red crescents under his eye-sockets. There were so many things that I wanted to say to him, my best and longest friend. But I couldn’t articulate any of my thoughts. My mind was going so fast that I couldn’t keep up with it.
‘I’m so sorry about Jenny,’ I said. What a pathetic thing to say. This one chance I had of saying something beautiful, and I blew it.
He smiled a little.
‘Matt,’ I said, trying to make up for it. ‘I don’t know what to say.’ I was having difficulty saying anything as I looked at him, just a fifteen-year-old boy sat on his BMX. So much of his old life was gone. It wasn’t just Jenny. It was so much more. Even his goodness had leached.
‘It’s OK.’
I think that what I wanted to say was that Jenny was amazing, that she had killed herself and opened the door for us, that she was so brave. But I found myself holding back. The thought was too radical to speak aloud, even for us. Matt needed more time before we started talking like that.
Apart from that though I wanted to tell him that I was there for him, to help him through this, just like he had been there for me countless times in the past. But I couldn’t. I didn’t like the way that I couldn’t tell him how I felt deep down. If he was my best friend, I should have been able to tell him anything. Instead, all I could do was look at him with a stupid smile on my face because all of my words had jammed.
Freddy interjected.
‘So. Expelled.’
I waited for a moment, trying to order my thoughts.
‘Expelled,’ I confirmed, glad for some normality to return. If expulsion can be called normal.
‘We all heard what you did. You know that everybody thinks you’ve gone nuts.’
I huffed.
‘Well.’ That was all I could offer.
‘I thought it was awesome.’
I sighed and picked at some of the rubber that was coming off one of my handlebars.
‘I couldn’t handle that school any more.’
‘Have you heard about Matt?’ Freddy asked.
Matt was sat on his saddle, one foot on the ground, the other on a pedal at the top of its arc.
‘My parents have taken me out of school,’ he said.
‘You have got to be kidding.’
‘Nope. It’s good though because it’s just what I need after my true love just threw herself off a motorway bridge,’ he said sarcastically. ‘Anyway, whatever, as of Monday morning, I will be an official student of the comprehensive.’
‘Holy shit.’ I laughed at the horror, trying to cheer him up. ‘They’ll tear you to bits.’
Matt nodded. He was trying to put on a brave face.
‘Hopefully. My parents reckon they don’t want me to hang around with you lot any more.’
We all laughed because he had already broken their wishes.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Fuck it. If you’re going to have your life torn apart, you might as well do it right, right?’
Matt was undoubtedly going to get beaten up at that school. His parents probably thought that they were doing the right thing for him by keeping him away from us, but they were wrong. They had basically thrown him to the lions.
Freddy sat on his bike with a slight smile playing on his mouth.
‘But that’s not all. You realize that we’re not going to Jenny’s funeral, right?’
‘What?’ I coughed.
‘Her parents have said that they don’t want us there. Not even Matt. Can you believe it?’
‘I haven’t heard that,’ I whispered, reeling. If Jenny would have wanted anyone there, it would have been us.
‘The school will call your parents soon.’
This was so wrong that I thought that the world was going to stop spinning and we’d all turn into monkeys or something. I felt like I’d just been stabbed.
‘I can’t believe it. What are they doing? Trying to get us to kill ourselves?’
‘You can’t believe it?’ said Matt. ‘What about me? How do you think I feel about it?’ He laughed a little when he said it because what was happening was so ludicrous. ‘I was in love with her.’ I saw his eye-line shift to the floor.
‘Fucking idiots,’ Freddy laughed. ‘I love the way everybody’s blaming us.’ He was speaking in his calm voice again, the one he used when he tried to get a point across. ‘Just because we signed the Charter. If they actually read the thing they’d know that it’s their fault, not ours. It’s all there in black-and-white but nobody can accept it because they’re too stuck in their ways.’
‘They’ll never get it,’ Matt sighed. ‘That’s the point, isn’t it?’
We all digested that.
‘She’s not coming,’ answered Freddy quickly.
‘Not coming where?’
‘With us.’
‘With us where?’
‘The forestry,’ he said with a smile.
‘The forestry?’ I moaned. ‘Jesus.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
I huffed.
‘It’s just so . . . uphill.’
Freddy laughed and patted my back.
‘Come on.’ And he zipped off up the street, the bright sun shining off his back.
Now that Freddy was gone I could talk openly to Matt. The atmosphere turned melancholy, the unspoken presence of Jenny weighing down on us. When Freddy had been with us the mood had been lighter. But it was fake. This was real.
‘Are you OK?’ I said.
His voice snagged.
‘Not really.’
‘Matt, you do know she’s waiting for you in the chamber, don’t you?’
He couldn’t look at me and I buried a thought that had crept into my brain – Matt didn’t believe. If Matt didn’t believe in the chamber then I had lost him. If he didn’t believe in the chamber then he didn’t believe in me, didn’t trust me. My best friend. I had to change the subject.
‘Where’s Clare really?’ I said, knowing that I would get an honest answer out of him.
‘He wouldn’t let me ring her.’ He looked down the road to Freddy.
I thought about this for a second. I knew what Freddy was doing. He was isolating Clare so that she’d be next. If she found out that we had gone to the forest without her she’d be really upset and then Freddy might try something else, something more, to push her further, to force her into doing something stupid and I couldn’t bear thinking of her like that.
‘Give me your phone,’ I said, looking up the street, seeing Freddy as a black speck a hundred yards away.
I dialled the number. When she answered, her voice sounded just so beautiful that all of my feelings suddenly burned up inside me. Her voice was all crackled and distant.
‘Clare, it’s Rich,’ I said enthusiastically, trying to make her feel better because I could tell she was down just by the way she answered.
‘Oh,’ she said, surprised because I was calling from Matt’s phone. ‘Hi.’ Her voice actually perked up when she found out it was me, it really did.
I was hopelessly gone for her. I hoped all this could fade away so that I could tell her I loved her, she could tell me that she loved me and we could live happily ever after.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Nothing.’
I switched hands.
‘This might sound a bit weird but we’re going for a bike ride up to the forest. I don’t suppose you’d fancy it?’
‘Who’s going?’
‘Me, Matt, Freddy.’
There was a pause. She was reticent, which I think means hesitant.
‘Please come,’ I said genuinely.
She thought about it for a second more.
‘OK,’ came her voice and I pictured her up in her bedroom, devastated like a smouldering crater, cross-legged on her bed, alone.
‘I know it’s childish,’ I started.
‘I want to go,’ she interrupted. ‘I’ll borrow my brother’s bike.’
‘OK.’ I didn’t know what else to say. There was a lump in my throat that I didn’t understand. ‘We’ll come and get you,’ I recovered.
‘No,’ she blurted. ‘If my father catches you near the house he’ll kill you.’
‘Not if I kill me first,’ I said, trying to make light of the fact that we were in an active suicide pact. ‘Shall we meet you at the war memorial?’
She paused.
‘No. I don’t want to see anyone.’
I felt bad when she said that because what she meant was everybody hated her. Everybody.
‘Well, what if we meet at the bottom of your drive, where it meets the main road?’
‘Yeah, that’d be good.’
‘Can you be there in ten minutes?’
‘Sure.’
I looked up and panic fizzed into my chest. Freddy was coming back.
‘OK, I’ve gotta go.’ And I hung up. It was a weird reaction because it wasn’t really founded on anything other than a feeling. It was difficult to picture Freddy as a monster, even after everything that had happened, so why did I feel like this? That’s instinct, I guess.
‘What are you doing?’ he said.
I was suddenly nervous.
‘Asking Clare to come.’
‘What?’ He raised his voice. ‘What for?’
‘Why not?’ I asked, trying to be brave.
Freddy shrugged and wheeled around the back of me where I couldn’t see him. When he was behind me I held my breath, expecting I don’t know what. He seemed to be behind me for a long time, during which I was genuinely terrified. He reappeared on my other side, standing on his pedals and leaning over his handlebars. ‘Whatever.’ He started pedalling. ‘Come on.’
We were soon at the entrance to the drive that led up to Clare’s house, which was at the top of a steep hill. She was wearing these pink sandal-things with white socks, reminding me again of the harsh reality – we were still kids, even though her shoes were a fashion thing.
Weatherwise it was still insanely bright but the air was death cold. We snaked through town like we were all tied to a piece of long thread, and reached the forest in about fifteen minutes, which I was happy with because when I was a little kid it used to take me about an hour to get up there.
We were all shattered when we reached the narrow road that leads up between the pine trees. You know how you think of Transylvania? That’s what the forest was like. Well, a mixture between that and the wildlife programmes set in Canada with all the bears and lakes, you know?
We started to climb up the steep, bendy road until we came to the bike track that we always take up to the top of the mountain. Matt sped up it like a dog off its lead, Freddy on his heels all the way. Clare had already dropped behind. She must have felt so left out it hurt and when I saw her round the shoulder of asphalt and head for me, still going, not giving up, a slick of tragedy leaked into my ribs. She had lost everything.
When she finally caught up with me, she said, out of breath,’ Can we stop riding these fucking bikes now?’
I instantly cracked up with the way her words had cut my melodrama in half, and a few seconds after that a smile creased across her cheeks like it wasn’t supposed to be there, like her smiles were finished but one last piece of joy had stolen out of her heart and shot into her face.
We hid our bikes in some trees and walked up the path.
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘You know how it’s been at school.’ She paused. ‘Does it seem weird? Not having her around, I mean?’
‘Jenny?’
She nodded ever so slightly.
My hand suddenly exploded like stardust because Clare had taken hold of it.
‘Can I be honest with you?’ I asked.
She didn’t need to answer.
‘I don’t know what’s happening to me. When Craig . . . you know . . . I was devastated. I kept thinking about how he’d never do anything ever again, you know?’
She squeezed my hand as if to say that she didn’t have the strength to speak.
‘But with Jenny, I don’t know, it’s like I’m empty. I can’t even feel sad. Just numb. I don’t know why. I think I might be going nuts.’
I felt her head rest on my arm and my left shoulder slumped a little because she was leaning on me gently, a tiny redistribution of weight between us that meant the world.
‘Let’s go down there,’ she said, her head snapping up quickly, reinvigorated. She let go of my hand and darted across the gravel path to a trail that led into some baby pines. I had never seen this trail before, which was weird because I’d been up and down that bike track hundreds of times.
‘What about the others?’ I protested, wary.
‘We’ll catch up with them later.’ She disappeared into the trees and I had to follow her.
The track led off down the hillside. I had never been on this part of the mountain before. The little pines were so delicate, like gossamer spread over a mist, an unnatural greeny-blue. I could hear Clare ahead of me and whenever I went around a corner there was a flurry of pines floating to the ground where she had just brushed past. I quickened my pace a little, looking down so that I didn’t fall, and finally caught up with her.
She was standing over a secret, hidden pool of creamy white water that nobody had ever seen before. That’s how I saw it anyway. Secret and our own, like our feelings.
‘Whoa,’ I breathed, then, ‘WHOA!’ Suddenly the most disgusting stink stuffed itself up my nose. ‘What the hell is that smell? Ergh!’ It was like rotten eggs.
Clare smiled again, for the second time. Before today I hadn’t seen her smile for an age and had totally forgotten how it made me feel.
‘I know what this is,’ she said, staring dramatically into its depths. ‘This is the Egg Well.’
I made the few steps it took to get across the small clearing and joined her at the water’s edge. On the far side, about ten feet away, a little stream gurgled in from a more ancient part of the forest, the underside of which was pitch black and primordial. The stream itself was only about two metres long before it disappeared underground into a carpet of mossy bracken.
‘It’s a spring from inside the mountain. That rotten-eggs smell is chemicals from the rocks dissolving.’
‘It’s disgusting,’ I said crassly.
Her arm hooked under mine.
‘It’s magical,’ she said. ‘My dad used to bring me here. My God, I totally forgot about this place. The water has healing properties.’
I turned my head so that I was looking at her. Her hair had split in two around her ear. Her cheeks were red from the cold and exertion of the bike ride. I wondered if she was nervous like I was.
‘I used to lie in bed and imagine it was full moon and all the forest animals would bring out the sick animals and let them drink from the spring.’
All the world was bending over us, warping up and over to see the two of us by the side of the spring, talking nonsense.
‘How do you know it has healing properties?’ I whispered.
‘Clive told me.’ That’s what she sometimes called her father.
Then she was looking at me and the whole planet was ablaze with the polyphonic colours that we used to drown in before everything went black. We were back from the dead and kids again.
‘Shall we drink from it?’ she said, excited like a little girl.
‘From that?’ I said, eyebrows up, disdainful finger pointing.
‘We’ll be immortal.’
‘I already am.’
She punched my arm.
‘Come on.’ She crouched on the shore, her pink shoes sinking half a centimetre into the soft silt. Turning back at me and looking up, she said,’ Shall we do it?’
‘I’m not drinking that. It smells like someone’s shat themselves.’
She stood up and tutted, came close to me, eyeball to eyeball, mockingly threatening that if I didn’t drink from the spring she’d do something bad to me. And then the threat faded, the meaning of her gaze changed, and everything was shifting. I thought back to our kiss at the Christmas party when she had sucked out my insides and I found myself wanting it again. As if I was submerged in water, my ears throbbed. How had it come to this?
‘You feel free to take a taste,’ I said.
‘Not if you won’t.’
‘No,’ I said. I suddenly jumped behind her and grabbed her round the waist. I lifted her up and dangled her over the water. She was strangely heavy, given how small she was. Extra gravity or something. ‘I insist.’
‘Agh,’ she screamed playfully like girls do. ‘Put me down.’
I did and we looked at each other like in a movie. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to say that I put my hand on the side of her face, swept her hair to one side, made a tentative, nervous inward move, waited for her to respond, and then our lips met. But I can’t say that because it would sound too perfect. And, more than that, it wouldn’t be true. That’s not what happened.
Instead, my eyes broke for the milky water and I said, ‘I didn’t even know this place existed.’
Clare nodded, maybe with a disappointed look on her face, I couldn’t tell. Whatever, the moment was over.
‘I think there’s a quarry around here somewhere.’
And that was that. Without acknowledgement that it had ever happened, we changed the subject as if we were saving face or something bad like that. Like adults do.
‘It’s around here somewhere,’ she said.
I saw a line of even newer pines near the far edge of the pool.
‘What’s that?’
We scrambled around the water, over the jagged rocks.
‘It looks like they’ve planted over an old path,’ she said Sherlock Holmesishly.
At the base of the trees were remnants of gravel mixed in with mud.
‘Come on.’ She went into the trees.
Even though it hadn’t rained for over a week, the pine needles were wet and I could feel my hoody and jeans grow heavy as we plunged deeper. We moved quickly, like it was urgent, she in front of me. Our disturbance released the scent of pine all over us and I found my vision coming into sharp focus; the colours deeper and vivid, the world fresh, new, clean.
A tranquillity descended on me, like gravity had edged forward ever so secretly, like that feeling you get when the weight of a duvet sits on you in the night. I was happy. I had honestly forgotten what it felt like. Genuine happiness. I felt something spark up inside me: hope. I looked at the girl in front of me, thinking that nothing could spoil this sensation: Clare’s back, her hair, her hood . . . the hood being pulled down her back, needles snapping at her, our heads dancing clear of branches, her hair glistening like silk, slipping to one side.
But suddenly a darkness came over me and my smile faded into my cheeks. A welling of tears crushed my throat and I thought I was going crazy to flip-reverse like this. But I couldn’t help it because I was witnessing the world’s end. I was looking at my Clare, the girl who was so amazing it made me numb, and I could see the death of all of us, including you, because we’re all in this together. Her bare neck. Naked. Just there. She didn’t even know about it being exposed. Or at least she did nothing to hide it, which was how she usually reacted when the wind got up and blew her hair away. But whatever, there it was – sour, malignant, devastating: her birthmark. It seethed out at me like it was alive – black, brown, indigo, bruised, spreading, burning, scarring, hurting, breaking, forcing her into loneliness for ever. It meant that she could never get through this, I just knew it deep, deep down where the bottom of my soul sloshes in the bile of my gut, I just knew it. Jesus Christ, stick another coin in my soul.