The next day I had a choice: go to school and take whatever punishment awaited me there from Amanda or Uma or Tierney or fate. Or stay at home and look at Mum trying to keep herself together, with nothing to take my mind off Jack T. and the other crappy things in my life except for Celebrity Antique Challenge(or was it Challenge an Antique Celebrity?) and the other muck on daytime telly. Caught between the poo and some soft stuff.
Despite Mum’s protests and Clytemnestra’s claims that we could have a fun day together, I opted for the poo. I mean, school. I was going to explain everything to Amanda. She would understand. Who wouldn’t? I had a brain tumor. They were about to crack open my skull like a walnut and spoon out bits of my brain. Of course I was acting strangely.
I decided to try to enjoy my last couple of days, so I kicked a stone to school. I didn’t care if it wasn’t cool.
HEY, HECK.
Hello, Jack. I mean, goodbye, Jack. You’ve done enough damage for one lifetime, haven’t you?
DON’T BE LIKE THAT. I’M HERE TO MAKE IT UP. I’VE BEEN THINKING. I WAS WRONG ABOUT AMANDA. I’M BIG ENOUGH TO ADMIT THAT NOW. IF THAT’S THE BEST YOU CAN DO, THEN WE’LL HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT.
Will we?
WILL WE WHAT?
Live?
NO MORBIDITY, NOT TODAY. LET’S HAVE SOME FUN.
I don’t see how. Tierney still wants to kill me, even if you don’t. And I can’t even imagine how to make it up to Amanda. She’s probably taken an overdose herself.
VERY ROMEO AND JULIET.
Yeah, I’ve seen the movie.
YOU’RE FORGETTING MY PLAN.
Yeah, well, I was thinking about that. I know Tierney’s a dog but, well, isn’t what we planned a bit . . . serious? And you heard what Stan said about bullies. If I beat him, then I am one, because he must have been weaker. QED, he said.
TRICKS WITH WORDS. FIGHTING EVIL NEVER MAKES YOU A BULLY.
Well, I don’t really care. It all seems a bit . . . unimportant now. Compared to the other stuff. Amanda. You. What they’re planning to do to me in hospital.
US.
Eh?
DO TO US.
Then I realized I’d forgotten about my stone and it was nowhere to be seen. But I was at school anyway. On the way in to the gates I got jostled a bit by the bruisers there. And when I looked back I saw why.
The huge knob was gone.
A fresh layer of gray paint covered it up like a pair of giant underpants. So they hadn’t just let it fade away, dwindling to a shadow and then a memory. No, they had to kick a knob when it was down. I felt as though I’d lost a friend.
And then I found a few more. Stan, Gonad, and Smurf were all there, and I slotted into the group. There was none of the usual piss-taking and messing about, but nor was there any obvious sympathy. They’d probably worked it all out in advance.
“Didn’t think you’d come in today,” said Stan.
“Couldn’t stay away. You know, double chemistry, head kicked in at break, what’s not to like?” And although I piled on the sarcasm, I wasn’t joking about the double chemistry.
But for once I wasn’t really in the mood for Mendeleyev and his marvelous periodic table. I was desperate for break, so I could go and find Amanda and try to explain things. And then I saw that the rain had started, drops as big as crab apples hitting the windows, and then hail, and then a steady, drenching shower, and I knew that we’d be confined to our form rooms.
I was on my way down there when I suddenly found that I wasn’t on my way down there. I was going in the other direction altogether. I was heading for the language rooms, and I knew which one.
IF WE’RE GOING TO DO THIS, WE’RE GOING TO DO IT RIGHT.
Whatever you say.
Amanda’s form teacher was the dreaded Mrs. Allworthy, recently promoted to head of French. Her base of operations was the language lab, a sad and desolate place, and not just because Allworthy was such a callous witch. Half of the space was taken up with the soundproofed audio booths where kids were supposed to be able to hone their conversational skills, using what was probably cutting-edge technology in 1972. They hadn’t been used in living memory, or at least not for the teaching of languages. Now they were isolation cells where All-worthy sent the kids she didn’t like to look at. The booths were made of nice crumbly asbestos, and some of the school drongos were convinced that if you ground it up and snorted it you could get reasonably high before you perished from asbestosis.
I pushed open the door without knocking. Mrs. Allworthy had her back to the class, with her feet up on the windowsill. She was smoking a thin cigar and had on a set of earphones. She had once been, it was said, an attractive woman. Now her short sleeves showed off her granny flaps, and her eyes were lined with resignation and contempt. She didn’t know I had come in. Or didn’t care. The class all stared at me. Fights were frozen mid-punch. Pencils poised mid-stab. Even by the standards of the Body, this was a rough class.
I looked around. There were many faces, glittering like the facets of a diamond, and I couldn’t take them in. I couldn’t see Amanda. But I did see a couple of the members of Tierney’s gang, and one of them was Murdo.
DON’T GIVE UP. WE HAVE WADED SO FAR IN BLOOD, IT’S AS WELL TO GO ON AS BACK.
Blood?
FIGURE OF SPEECH.
I strode through the desks to the booths at the back. There were four rows of them. I found her in the third row, in the far corner. First I saw the back of her head with its strawberry blonde hair, and then the side of her face, the left side, the side without the birthmark. She was biting her bottom lip and looking down at an exercise book, her whole being absorbed in what she was doing. It was only when I was almost upon her that she saw me, or felt me, and she turned towards me, startled, and she began to rise, but I came down to her, and knelt by her and took her face in my hands and kissed her and whispered into her ear that I was sorry, so sorry, so sorry, and I felt her tears flow over my hands.
“It’s okay,” she whispered in my ear. “Stan told me. Stan told me you were sick.”
And then I heard the loud jeering. I stood up and turned around. Murdo was there, and the rest of the class was behind him, clustered into the narrow spaces between the lines of language booths. Hard faces, both boys and girls. Some showing spite, some disgust, some still neutral.
Murdo was trying to get the class on his side, trying to get them to join him in ridiculing us. Ridiculing, and then worse. A year before it would have been easy. A year ago most of the kids didn’t have girlfriends or boyfriends, or even particularly want them. Sex was funny or filthy or shameful. It was something other people did. Now, although there was still a residue of that, it was normal, or at least within reach. But still, Murdo wanted blood.
“Givin’ her one, eh? At it like polecats. Go on, shag her, shag her. No one else will, ugly slag.”
Murdo was big. And he was hard, and his fists looked like huge iron gauntlets at the end of his long arms. I decided then that I was going to try to land one punch before he got me. One punch would be worth it. My muscles were tensed, ready to spring.
IN CLOSE. MAKE HIM FLAIL.
Yes, get in close, one punch. Didn’t care after that. He could do what he wanted.
And then a sharp face appeared over the top of one of the booths. It was Flaherty. Just what I didn’t need—I mean, he was hardly going to add to the dignity of the proceedings. I imagined he was going to make some mad chattering commentary on what was happening, taking the piss out of everyone there, including me.
I was wrong.
He was carrying a wastepaper bin and, with as much force as he could muster, he slammed it upside down over Murdo’s head.
“Stop looking, you dirty pervert,” he said in his singsong way. And then he jumped down next to Murdo and started whacking the bin with the wooden edge of a chalkboard eraser.
It was funny. It was very funny. The class joined in pushing and belting Murdo, and he was bellowing inside the bin, lashing out blindly with his fists.
I took Amanda’s hand and pulled her towards the back of the classroom where there was a second door, and soon we were out and running along the deserted corridor, suddenly free and full of joy. Down the stairs, two flights, and then we were outside into the rain, and still running.
“Where are we going?” Amanda shouted, smiling, rain drenching her face and hair.
“Nowhere,” I said, and we stopped in the middle of the playground with puddles all around us, and I didn’t know what to do next. But Amanda did. It was her turn to kiss me, and I felt the presence of a thousand pale faces clamped to the windows and I didn’t care.