WE CAME OUT from the trees and there in front of me was the most surreal landscape I had ever seen.
‘God,’ I gasped, non-ironically.
Apart from a rim of green pines hemming us in, the whole world was shiny and grey. Clare was right. We were standing on the site of an old slate quarry. There was something cold and sad about the place that told me that nobody had been here in years.
The quarry was like a perfect circle, not a semicircle, so I have no idea how they got the slate out. There was no sign of a road anywhere where the trucks used to come and go. It was like somebody had come along with one of those circular pieces of metal that you use to cut rounds out of pastry, a massive one, and taken out a chunk of the land. It was totally weird. I suspected that it was an alien landing site because the hundred-foot circular chasm would have been the perfect place to hide a craft. Probably the strangest thing about it though was that, when you peered over the edge, at the bottom, sixty feet down, was a green, green lake like molten emeralds.
‘How crazy is this place?’ she said and she stepped out towards the edge of the cliff.
Instinctively I grabbed her arm.
‘Don’t go so close.’ I pointed to a beat-up old sign that said, Danger! Loose rock.
She took another step out, my arm lifting in the air. I took a step forward with her, my heart racing, an eerie detachment in my head. I didn’t want her to jump.
From the cliff the green lake seemed to have a milky texture, all full of chemicals from the rocks like the Egg Well had been.
The walls of the quarry were sheer, lines scored into its sides running straight down into the water. If you fell in there, you wouldn’t get out.
‘It’s so beautiful,’ she whispered.
I couldn’t argue; the shiny grey walls and the dense green water were like part of another planet. It was mesmerizing. I pictured the headlines: Teenage Lovers Drown in Secluded Lake.
‘I have to tell you something, Rich,’ she said, facing away from me.
I took a deep breath and, for the most terrible moment of my life, fixed my eye on her back, and thought about pushing her forward. It would be so easy, so poetic. I saw frogmen harnessing our sodden corpses to a bright-yellow helicopter and lifting us into the sky. I could do it right now. It would take just one moment of insanity, nothing else.
‘What?’ I said, my focus centred entirely on the small of her back. Was I really going to do this? If I was, then it would not be because I was evil, but because I was swept away by a moment. I didn’t know if I was seriously considering it, or if I was fantasizing.
‘What is it?’ I heard my voice say again. My heart was still now, the lines between good and evil a fuzzy blur, not even existent, in fact.
And then . . .
If you asked me what happened next, I would have to say that I don’t know. I like to think, have to think, that I decided not to push her, but the truth is I genuinely don’t know. When Freddy placed his fingers in his mouth and let go of that whistle from the other side of the quarry I can’t say that the whistle stopped me, or if it was me, myself. It still tears me apart, which I guess it should.
But there they were, Matt and Freddy, on the opposite side to us, their hoodies so colourful against the grey and green world.
‘What did you want to say to me?’ I asked half-heartedly, trying to put what had just happened out of my mind.
She was looking across to Freddy and Matt and waving, not smiling. ‘Nothing,’ she answered. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
I cursed myself. Maybe she had been about to tell me that she loved me and I had been too busy to listen because I was thinking about doing something so bad that just thinking about doing it meant that I could never be redeemed. But deep down I don’t think that that was what she was going to say.
Clare and I, and Matt and Freddy started to make our way round to meet each other, the slate slipping away under our feet, some of it tumbling over the edge and splashing quietly into the lake below. We met halfway and all the way there I thought about who the bad guy really was. A sinking, lead feeling told me that it was not Freddy at all.
‘Where have you been?’ he said, looking at her, looking at me, almost as if he was jealous.
‘Nowhere,’ I said as calmly as I could. It was almost like a stand-off. I was glad it was me who was stood next to Clare and not Freddy.
‘We’ve started a fire over there,’ he said, in such a hurt way that I actually felt sorry for him. ‘Then we heard you two through here.’
Matt picked up on the tension that had risen between us out of nothing.
‘Come on,’ he started,’ let’s get over there before it spreads.’
Matt and Freddy’s fire was pretty good. They’d cleared all the dead leaves away and made a circle out of stones, inside of which was a pile of logs and scraps of an old newspaper that they had found.
The forest was silent, the trees bent over us like a roof.
We helped each other drag some large logs over from a pile of timber so that we could sit and stare into the fire, each of us lost in our own thoughts. I don’t want to go into mine because I was WCSing Clare’s murder by me; thinking about what I could have done, wondering why I had thought about doing something so evil.
‘I can’t believe she did it.’
We all looked at Matt. Our attentions, wherever they had been, were now on him. In his hand, Matt was holding a long, thin stick which he used to prod some wood inside the fire.
Past the flames, I saw Freddy staring at Matt. ‘She did it because she had no choice.’
My whole body shuddered. It seemed like such a cold thing to say. I knew he was trying to manipulate Matt. I hoped to God that Matt would stand up and storm off, tell Freddy that he was an idiot. At least that would show me that he was still strong and that he wouldn’t kill himself. But Matt didn’t react. He kept staring into the fire.
‘You should have seen her body.’
A crackle of cold shuddered up my skeleton. I suddenly remembered seeing Matt climbing down the motorway embankment after Jenny had thrown herself off the bridge.
‘It was like, not even her. It was just mush.’ His words were slow and quiet and horrifying. ‘She didn’t even have a face.’
‘Matt, don’t,’ Clare said quickly. ‘Please stop.’
He glanced at her and breathed out through his nose.
‘Sorry.’
The hairs on my arms were standing on end. The image of Jenny, her face ripped off, was branding itself into my brain. I could feel bile in my stomach. It was too hard to take. Two tears fell out of my eyes, and I’m glad that the others didn’t notice. I turned away and wiped them clear.
‘Would you miss me if I was gone?’ he said.
Clare gasped.
‘Matt . . .’ she spluttered.
He just kept staring into the fire.
I had to say something, I had to stop this.
‘Matt, I know this is all fucked up but you can’t talk like—’ I stopped in my tracks.
Matt was looking at me and his stare was so terrible that I could not continue speaking. His eyes were looking at me like I was something alien, like I wasn’t his best friend. I remembered the time on the airbase when Craig had threatened to shoot me and I had gone mental on him. Matt had looked at me in the same way then, like I was an animal. But this was more extreme, more concentrated. This was awful.
‘Matt?’ A shadow moved behind his eyes. ‘Matt, Jenny wouldn’t want you to do anything—’
‘What do you know about Jenny?’ he snapped. ‘You didn’t even notice—’
My heart turned to ice, my ribs liquid nitrogen.
‘You think that because you’re in this club that you’re invincible, that we’re better than everyone else. But it’s not the same for the rest of us. You think’ – he was pointing at me – ‘that we’re in the right. But the rest of us—’ He stopped. ‘Forget it.’
I felt like crying. We were better than everyone else, I knew this was true. I didn’t like Matt saying that we weren’t because it wasn’t true. Everyone else was horrible. We were nice. We understood. I knew unfalteringly, as we sat around that fire in the woods, light dappling our faces, that I loved my friends. Even the dead ones who were waiting for us in our heavenly chamber that nobody else could enter. I loved that I was in this group of wonderful people and I didn’t like the way that Matt seemed to be faltering. The Suicide Club wasn’t about killing ourselves, it was about being nice people protected from the cold world by each other. I desperately didn’t want him to kill himself. If he did, it wouldn’t be anything to do with the Suicide Club. No, if he killed himself it would be because he couldn’t stand life any more, not because he loved life. If any of us were going to do it, I thought that Clare would have been next, but now, as I watched shadows warp across his face, I knew that it would be him. Everything had been taken away from Matt – his friends, his school, his Jenny, his soul.
Across the fire we stared at one another and I think he felt sorry for me, like I had gone crazy and was in the wrong. But that’s OK because I felt the same about him. I guess it was just his way of dealing with Jenny’s suicide. We all had our own ways of dealing with it – Matt was angry, Clare was sad, I was numb. Only Freddy seemed to be happy about it. Or indifferent at least.
I caught Freddy’s eyes moving back and forth between me and Matt and I never wanted to punch him in the face more than then. My heart was starting to beat faster and I was losing my grip.
Clare looked at me.
‘Stop being such a fucking idiot and you’ – she looked at Matt – ‘you stop being such an idiot as well. You’re supposed to be best friends.’
My lips were wet because the moisture from all of my emotions was getting the better of me again.
Then none of us spoke.
I felt bad because I didn’t want Matt to hate me.
Jenny was dead and he was somehow blaming me. But we were best friends and that was all there was to it.
That’s why, after five minutes, and finally ending the standoff, he said,’ I can’t believe that neither of us are going back to school.’
I kicked a twig into the fire with my trainer.
‘I don’t care.’
Freddy adjusted himself on his seat.
‘I don’t want to say anything bad about your parents, Matt, but don’t they realize what’s going to happen to you in the comp?’
‘I don’t know.’ He sounded deflated.
‘They only want what’s best for you,’ Clare said.
Freddy laughed smugly.
I gave him a stern glare.
‘What are you doing, Freddy?’
His eyes were lasers in my face.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why are you trying to poison him?’
‘Hey,’ he snapped, but then recovered. ‘Jesus, Rich.’ His eyes and face went all emotional and I was lost because you could never tell what Freddy was thinking deep down. His expression would make you want to hug him like a father hugs his son, but at the same time you knew just how calculating he was. Just when you thought you understood him, had him pinned, he would slip away again. ‘What do you think I’m doing? Engineering this whole thing? Planning your demises?’ He laughed nervously.
I threw my stick into the fire.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, making a decision. I had lost everything else; I couldn’t lose my remaining friends. I had forgiven Freddy in the past because I saw me in him, but I don’t know if that was still the case now. I gave Freddy the benefit of the doubt this time because, basically, I had to.
He sighed and gazed into the fire.
‘We can’t let everyone else get to us. We have to stick together, OK?’
‘OK,’ I repeated.
‘OK,’ Clare echoed out of nowhere.
Instinctively we all looked to Matt.
‘OK,’ he said half-heartedly.
It was all melancholic. Things were coming to an end and we all knew it. Matt and I were already separated from Freddy and Clare after having been taken out of school. After today, after we’d all gone missing together, we’d find it more and more difficult to sneak off and spend time with each other. The police, the school, our families would all be formulating plans to keep us apart. And soon the world would have its way with us and we’d go off to university, think of each other less and less often until, in the end, we’d be nothing but bad memories of an unhappy time. That was what the world had in store for us. Unless, of course, she were to return for one of us once again with beating wings.
Just like the daylight, our conversation got darker and darker and because we were with each other we had no idea how much damage we were doing to ourselves by going to these places. We talked about such fragile things with such mellow ferocity that all I could feel was my bone mass increasing exponentially whilst my body stayed the same. A million kids under a million stars had said this stuff before, stuff about feelings and the meaning of life and how there’s so much sadness, but that doesn’t mean that every time you say it it’s any less important.