Tyler dribbles a scrunched-up Pepsi can across the playground. The metal sound reverberates around Connor’s head along with the one single thought that spins its never-ending loop.
You shouldn’t have come back.
They are not wanted here. And that’s without everyone knowing the full story. After it happened, the boys had been separated but had recited statements full of half-truths and omissions. Connor sick with shock. With shame. Sick at the way they had all cobbled together a matching account so they couldn’t be blamed.
They were to blame.
The other kids know it.
All future trips had been cancelled as well as the end-of-year ball.
His little group of three, once so popular, hadn’t received any invitations over the summer. No swimming in the local lake. No barbecue at the country park. No parties in houses with out-of-town parents, kids left behind to study for their A levels.
The teachers know it.
He’d missed the last few weeks of school. Shell-shocked, Connor had sat his mock exams at a nearby college rather than here, in the familiar sports hall which always smelled of rubber and feet. His body was present but his mind was somewhere else entirely. On autopilot he’d picked up his pen, his hand working independently from his brain. He’d scrawled his answers to the questions but his head was only full of one thing.
Hailey.
Frequently, he’d had to bite down hard on his lip to stop himself from crying.
Afterwards, there was no cursory call from his school to see how he’d got on. There was no prep for next year sent home. No reading lists. No visit from his form tutor to see if he needed anything.
The head teacher knows it.
They’d always taken the piss out of him – Mardy Marshall – his fixation on league tables, and results. Behaviour both in and out of school – I don’t care if it’s Saturday, boy. You’re still representing Kings Park Academy. Your behaviour is a direct reflection on the school and also a direct reflection on me. His standards were impossibly high. He was ex-military and sometimes the school felt like an army camp.
Or a prison.
‘Our last year then.’ Ryan breaks the silence as they climb the grey stone steps.
‘Thank fuck for that.’ For Tyler there is no staring at his shoes, no rounding of his shoulders, trying to make himself disappear the way that Connor and Ryan were. He put on a front half of the time. Mouthy and opinionated at school, he cowed in the shadow of his mum’s boyfriend, Liam, at home. It wasn’t unusual for Tyler to have a split lip, a black eye. It’s how they first became friends. He and Ryan feeling sorry for Tyler, always sitting on his own at lunch, the way he often didn’t seem to have any food. Ryan had offered him a crisp and they’d discovered that this boy, who was taller, louder, brasher than most of the class, was actually really funny and surprisingly ambitious. Connor assumed Tyler would end up in a dead-end job, or out of work, but Tyler had dreams.
‘Gonna be a teacher,’ he said after they’d hung out for a few weeks.
Connor and Ryan waited for the punchline.
‘Nah. Seriously. I am.’ Tyler shrugged. ‘Education… it gives you opportunities, doesn’t it? Gives kids who might not otherwise make something of themselves a chance.’
‘What do you want to teach?’ Ryan asked.
‘Not sure, either History or Sociology. It’s important, the way things were. The way they’ve changed. The changes we’ve yet to make. Anyway,’ he straightened his collar. ‘You can call me Mr Palin.’
They all brought out the best in each other. Tyler made Connor and Ryan braver and Connor and Ryan calmed down Tyler, recognizing that his sudden flashes of anger came from a desire to be taken seriously, the way that he wasn’t at home.
‘Got into a scrap at the park.’ He’d shrug as they’d probed about his bruises. ‘You should have seen the other kid.’
Ryan and Connor would exchange a glance, their years of shared friendship meaning they could often communicate wordlessly. They didn’t believe him. They’d seen the way Liam treated him. They’d stood outside his front door, hand fisted, knuckles poised to rap on the reinforced glass, hesitating when angry shouts came from inside. Tyler would run out of the door. ‘Tosser,’ he’d shout. Liam would chase them as they’d leg it down the six flights of stairs. Tyler’s mum standing silent, watching.
‘That’s it. Run away with your loser mates like the cowards you are.’
Cowards. That word strikes a chord with Connor now. He wants to run away. He stops walking, drags his sleeve across his forehead to wipe away the sweat that’s formed.
He can’t go inside and face everyone. He just… can’t.
‘You okay, mate?’ Tyler says. ‘You look like someone has—’ He shakes his head. ‘Shit. Sorry.’
‘I can’t do this.’ The air is damp, the sky grey, but perspiration still gathers in Connor’s armpits. Trickles down his back.
‘Me neither. Everyone’s staring at us.’ Ryan’s breathing is laboured as he leans against the wall. ‘We should have changed schools.’
‘I couldn’t have done. My mum couldn’t afford the bus to send me to Parkfleet,’ Tyler says. ‘People will soon forget. Today’s gossip is yesterday’s chip papers.’
‘Tomorrow’s chip paper,’ Ryan corrects.
‘Whatever.’ Tyler shrugs.
‘And when have you ever seen chips wrapped in newspaper?’
‘When have you ever not acted like a tosser?’ Tyler nudges Ryan. ‘Come on. We got this. Safety in numbers. Year Thirteen is our ticket to freedom.’ Tyler more than any of them talked frequently of life after this. School. Parents. He was desperate to go to university far, far away and never return.
Connor flexes his fingers, the memory of Hailey’s warm hand in his when they thought nobody was watching. She will never be full of last day euphoria, the ritualistic burning of school ties in the park, never shyly offer her wrist to his to fasten a corsage on the night of the school prom. She will never do any of those things.
‘I can’t…’ He loosens his tie.
‘Come on.’ Ryan claps him on the back. ‘We’ve got this.’
Ryan encourages Connor with his eyes, the way he had on their first day at primary, their first evening at Cub Scouts, the football tryouts after Ryan had spent hours coaching Connor, Ryan not joining the team until Connor was good enough.
His mum’s words float back to him: ‘Kieron would give anything to start back at school today,’ and he knows that he can do this, not only for Ryan but for his brother.
He ascends the steps flanked by Ryan and Tyler. It isn’t the same as having Hailey next to him. Their fingers brushing against each other. He misses her.
Still misses her.
‘Right, losers,’ Tyler says before they go to their separate lessons. ‘Shall we head into town at lunchtime? Chippy? Something to look forward to?’
‘Nah.’ Connor shakes his head. ‘Don’t have any cash.’
‘I’ve got you covered. Both of you.’ From his pocket Tyler pulls out a roll of notes.
‘What the…’ Ryan leans forward for a closer look. ‘All twenties? Where did you get them?’ Tyler is always skint.
‘That’s for me to know.’ Tyler taps the side of his nose. ‘But there’s more where this came from.’
The sound of the bell – shrill and piercing – makes them walk a little quicker. They pass Amber, Hailey’s best friend. Connor doesn’t know what to say, so he doesn’t say anything at all. Instead, he slopes down the corridor, head hanging low, until he reaches his locker. Stuck to his locker door on an A4 sheet of paper is a printed-out image of Jennifer Love Hewitt in a low-cut vest top, pouting, from the movie poster for I Know What You Did Last Summer. Scrawled in a thick red marker, the colour of blood, across her cleavage, ‘I know’.
Fucking hilarious. Connor mutters as he screws it into a ball and stuffs it deep into his pocket.
I know what you did last summer.
He clenches his jaw to stop his teeth from chattering. It’s impossible for someone to know, isn’t it? Not all of it? If they do, he’s fucked. He glances at Ryan and Tyler.
They’re all fucked.