Bad Influence

by William Sutcliffe

  ‘Come back,’ she says.

  ‘WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DO THAT?’

  ‘Come here, Ben.’

  ‘WHY DID YOU DO THAT?’

  ‘Because I had to.’

  ‘What did you say to them?’

  ‘I just told him that, if he thinks I’m going to keep it from his mother that I’ve seen him smoking, he’s got another thing coming.’

  Part of me is furious – that she’s butted in and embarrassed me – but part of me is relieved that at least it wasn’t about staying away from Carl or about her figuring out that Olly has betrayed me by being with him in secret. She’s known Olly since he was three, so it could have been anything.

  ‘And I told him what cigarettes will do to him. In no uncertain terms.’

  Then she suddenly stops walking, and yanks me up close. She stares at me, eyeball to eyeball.

  ‘Have you done this?’ she says. ‘Have you smoked?’

  She’s so fired up and mental she’s almost making me forget that I want to kill her.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  ‘I haven’t. I promise.’

  ‘Good. Because I’d never forgive you.’

  ‘Well, I’ll never forgive you.’ I’m trying to be angry again, but it doesn’t really work. She’s outdone me. ‘He’s my friend! It’s none of your business.’

  ‘I’m not joking, Ben,’ she says. ‘I’d be so disappointed in you. Whatever the other boys do, you don’t have to join in. You’ve got to be yourself.’

  She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand anything about what she’s just done, and there’s no way I can explain it to her. There’s no point in even trying. Anyone who thinks you don’t have to join in is too stupid to even talk to.

  Even though she’s staring right at me, waiting for me to speak, I don’t open my mouth for ages, then I scowl at her and mutter, ‘What did you say to Carl? At the end?’

  ‘I just told him that what he did to Rachel was unforgivable. That he should be ashamed of himself.’

  ‘What did he do to Rachel?’ I want Mum’s version. Donny’s doesn’t add up.

  ‘That’s none of your business.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘It’s none of your business.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  She strides off.

  After this, neither of us is in the mood to shop. We try for a bit, but it’s all faked. We can’t do it. It’s probably the shortest trip to Brent Cross ever.

  The red Mercedes is still there when we leave.

  The Bush in the Playground

  On the drive home, I don’t say a word. I just stare out of the window, thinking. Mum stays quiet because she knows I’m cross.

  My plan to win Olly back from Carl hasn’t even got started. I should have known it wasn’t going to work. There were plenty of signs. Clothes were the most obvious one. Only a couple of weeks into term, people had started talking about baggy trousers like they were an infectious disease. I always thought Olly didn’t care about that kind of thing, but suddenly, without even mentioning it, his trousers all changed, and now he only wore drainpipes. The old ones never appeared again. He also chucked out his parka and changed to a leather jacket, which was a completely new thing for anyone to wear to school, but in a good way.

  There was only one other boy I’d ever seen who had anything similar. I should have realized straight away, but I didn’t notice until it was right in front of my eyes, at the Brent Cross fountains, the two of them, together, both in leather jackets.

  There’s no way in a million years I’ll ever be allowed a leather jacket, but as we turn on to Kenton Road I decide that, as soon as we’re home and Mum’s put the kettle on, I’ll make a bid for new trousers. She listens best when there’s a cup of tea in her hand.

  ‘We’ve just got back from the shops!’ she says.

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘But I only just realized I need them.’

  ‘We’ve been home two minutes! You decided in the last two minutes?’

  ‘I was thinking about it in the car.’

  ‘Unbelievable!’ she says. ‘Well, you’ll have to wait. There’s nothing wrong with what you’ve got, anyway.’

  I try to tell her about drainpipes, but I’m too embarrassed to explain it properly – to say that I’m the last normal person not wearing them – and she tells me to grow up and stop making a fuss. ‘Your trousers are almost new,’ she says. ‘You chose them yourself. At the end of the holidays.’

  I can’t say what I want to say, which is that everything’s changed since then. I know it’ll sound stupid.

  ‘When you’ve outgrown them, you can have a new pair in whatever style you fancy,’ she says, in a slow sing-song voice, like even she’s making fun of me for behaving like a girl. I haven’t explained that trousers are just the start. They’re only the basic emergency, and there are other things I haven’t even mentioned yet.

  I end up using tricks I’ve learnt from Rachel, shouting and slamming doors and refusing to eat.

  It’s when I won’t swallow any dinner that Mum finally takes me seriously, and with my plate sitting there between us, going cold, she agrees to a compromise. She says she’ll take in the trousers on her sewing machine.

  I make her do it right then, with me standing there in my pants, watching and eating. It’s lucky she gives in because I’m starving and couldn’t have held out much longer. Ten minutes, max. I don’t know how Rachel does it. She can go days.

  The trousers look a bit funny – they go out on the way to the knees then in again down to the ankles – but it’s at least an improvement and will get me off the hook at school (see fig. 9). It’s maybe even the best outcome because it means I can look normal without Olly thinking I’m copying him.

  I reckon that’s the first time in my whole life I’ve worried I might be copying Olly.

  Clothes were just one of the signs of him changing. The worst thing was that, even though he acted like my best friend in school, he’d started making excuses about the weekends. He kept saying he was busy, seeing cousins, or going on family trips, or running errands for his mum, and I believed him. Until Brent Cross, when I realized it was all lies.

  FIGURE 9.

  THE TROUSER SITVATION

  So on the Monday after, I don’t ring his bell. I go right past, for the first time ever, and walk all the way to school on my own. If Olly wants Carl, he can have him, but he can’t have me as well.

  I won’t make a fuss about it, either. Moving desks is the best way to say I don’t want to be Olly’s friend any more, but it’s too much. It’ll make me look weak. I decide to just stop ringing him and stop visiting. At school, where I can’t avoid him, I’ll be normal. Cool, but normal. I won’t argue, or accuse him of anything, or even tell him what I think. He’ll just have to figure out that I’ve given up on him. And he’ll never know I’m upset.

  He gets in late, probably because he’s been waiting for me, and Mrs Dickson gives him a telling-off that makes him go bright red. It’s not very difficult to make Olly go red. The easiest way is to tell him he’s blushing when he isn’t, then he just does. On cue. It’s funny every time.

  Watching him getting told off, I realize that I hate him. The way things have changed is his fault. Carl’s nasty, but he wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t for Olly. Olly’s the one who’s let everything go so wrong. He’s the one who’s betrayed me.

  He’s still red when he comes and sits next to me, and for the whole of maths we don’t speak, but I can’t tell if it’s because of what’s happened or just because he’s already in trouble and doesn’t want to get caught talking.

  At playtime I walk off without saying anything. It’s for him to try and get things back to normal, not me. Martin and Scott are picking teams when Olly comes over and says hi.

  I say it back.

  ‘Your mum rang my mum,’ he says.

  �
��Really?’

  ‘Said what she saw.’

  The way he says it, I almost say sorry. He’s not acting cross, though. He’s just telling me.

  ‘You get in trouble?’ I ask.

  He nods.

  ‘How badly?’

  Then I get picked and have to go over to Martin’s team. Olly ends up on the other side, and the game takes the whole of playtime, but at the end Olly comes over and stops me before we go into class.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ he says. ‘I know it was her, not you.’

  ‘OK,’ I say.

  ‘So we can just forget it happened,’ he says.

  What he’s saying doesn’t mean much, but the way he says it is a surprise. It feels as if this is his way of apologizing for lying to me. It’s like he’s asking to stay my friend.

  He stands there, looking at me, waiting for me to speak, so I give him a big shove, pushing him into the bush that we always push each other into on the way to class.

  He’s not braced for it, so he goes right in, disappearing into the leaves. As soon as he’s got his balance back, he dives out at me, but I’m already running away, laughing my head off. I let him catch up, and he drags me back, both of us grunting and yelping, and he takes his turn to shove me in, but it’s not nearly as good as mine, then Mrs Dickson appears at the window, calls us ‘horrible little vandals’ and shouts at us to hurry up.

  As we race up the stairs to the room, pulling each other back to make the other one last, I realize that perhaps in school things can stay the same. Perhaps we can still be friends.

  Maybe I shouldn’t accept it. Maybe I shouldn’t let myself be relegated so easily. But that’s not how you think. I’m too pleased he’s being nice. I can’t just throw it back at him.

  Olly’s Room

  I have to test it out, though. I have to know what the weekend situation is. So, on Saturday, I call round. I don’t ring up and see if he lies, or play any stupid games like that, I just go.

  It’s Olly’s mum who answers the door. She’s wearing a plungy top that makes her boobs look like two perfect scoops of ice cream. I reckon it would be really weird to have her as your mum. You wouldn’t know where to look.

  ‘Go on up,’ she says.

  I give her my best smile as I climb the stairs. It freezes on my face when I walk into Olly’s bedroom and find Carl sitting there on the carpet. Olly’s opposite him. They’re in the middle of a game of cards.

  Olly goes red straight away, and doesn’t even say hello. Carl just grins, like he’s pleased to see me, but in a scary way – in the way a dog would be pleased to see a steak.

  ‘All right?’ I say.

  Carl nods. No one says anything. We just stare at each other, the silence getting longer and longer.

  ‘What are you playing?’ I say, eventually. It’s the only thing I can think of.

  ‘Nothing,’ says Carl.

  He’s lying. You can see from the way the cards are laid out that they’re in the middle of something. They’ve got a hand each, and the pack’s between them, mostly face down, with a smaller, messier pile face up.

  ‘Is it rummy?’ I say.

  Carl shakes his head and dumps the cards he’s holding on to the floor. He takes Olly’s, too, puts all the cards together and starts shuffling them. ‘We were just going to play knuckles. D’you know knuckles?’

  I shrug a yes, even though I don’t. Carl stands and walks towards me.

  ‘It’s supposed to be two players, but you can play with three,’ he says, and holds the pack out to me, flat in the palm of his hand, so you can tell he’s not passing it over, but wants me to cut.

  I do it and get the nine of hearts.

  ‘What’s the rules?’ I say.

  ‘I thought you knew,’ says Carl.

  ‘They might be different from yours,’ I say.

  ‘So you tell me what you think, and I’ll say if it’s the same.’

  He’s almost got me, but not quite. ‘Mine doesn’t start with a cut, so it’s already different. We might as well play yours.’

  ‘How does yours start?’

  ‘JUST TELL US THE RULES, YOU IDIOT!’

  He smiles, like he’s already winning. ‘Everyone cuts,’ he says. ‘The winner has the highest card. Loser the lowest. Picture cards are ten. Ace is eleven. The loser holds out his fist. The winner hits the loser on the knuckles with the pack of cards, as many times as the value of the winning card. The winner’s the one who bottles out last. The loser’s whoever bottles out first. And you can’t bottle out in the middle of a round.’

  I look at Olly. Olly looks at me.

  ‘That’s not a card game,’ I say.

  ‘What is it, ballet?’ he says. ‘You’ve got a nine.’

  He holds the pack out to Olly. Olly hesitates. ‘What if it’s a draw?’

  ‘You have a play-off,’ he says. ‘You recut. Come on.’

  Carl jabs Olly in the belly with the pack of cards. Olly cuts.

  ‘Four!’ says Carl. ‘Bad luck.’

  Holding the pack up high, Carl theatrically lowers his hand on to the thin pile of cards and pauses for effect, looking from me to Olly. With a flourish, he cuts, and sweeps his card round in front of our eyes before looking at it himself.

  ‘Ooooooooooooh! Eight!’ he says. ‘You win.’

  Carl and Olly both hand me their cards, and I shuffle them all together into a pack. I don’t really know what to do.

  ‘Come on. Hand out,’ says Carl.

  Olly does as he’s told.

  ‘In a fist. In a fist,’ says Carl.

  Olly forms a fist, fingers down, and points it towards me.

  ‘Go on, then,’ says Carl. ‘Nine.’

  I grip the pack, not too hard, but not so loosely that I might drop any, and bring it down on the back of Olly’s hand.

  ‘One,’ says Carl.

  Carl counts them all off. I don’t hit too hard, but at the end of it Olly’s first two knuckles are red and a bit puffy. By the last few hits, I’m quite enjoying it.

  As the winner, it’s me to offer the pack for the next round. Olly gets six, Carl a Queen, then me a nine.

  ‘Unlucky again!’ says Carl, so excited he’s almost singing it. He grabs the cards off me, positions Olly’s fist where he wants it, and gives him ten, about the same hardness as I did. He angles the pack slightly to get different knuckles to the ones I got. By the end, Olly’s skin isn’t broken, but you can see it’s sore.

  Next round, I draw first and get an ace. I can’t help dancing round the room and gloating because I know I’m safe straight away.

  Olly’s next and gets a king, which sets me off dancing again. It’s so perfect. It’s going to be me on Carl, with eleven hits.

  ‘It’s a king!’ I shout. ‘It’s a king!’

  Carl, cutting as flashily as ever, gets a three. Extra humiliation.

  ‘THREE! Come on, Carl! You’ve got to do better than that!’ I say.

  He hands over his cards and holds out his fist straight away, not looking down at it like Olly, but staring straight into my eyes, like he’s daring me. It’s a brilliant moment. I take my time over getting the pack in order, and do to Carl what he did to Olly, positioning the fist exactly where I want it to get a good swing at him.

  The sound of the first hit is completely different. I’m doing it about twice as hard as on Olly. The first one brings up a little blip of skin, like a tiny blister, on Carl’s middle knuckle. Carl doesn’t even look down at it. He just eyeballs me, blinking slowly like he’s never been calmer.

  ‘One,’ he says, in a tone of voice that sounds like he’s saying one-nil to him.

  My second one’s a bit harder, aimed at the same knuckle, but I don’t get as good a connection.

  ‘Two,’ says Carl, still with a slightly gloaty ring.

  By number eight, there’s a proper flap of skin that’s lifted up, and you can see red underneath. By ten, it’s not just redness, but proper blood. With the last hit, I even get a l
ittle smudge on the bottom card. I show it to Carl.

  ‘Well done,’ he says, in a way that’s doubly sarcastic because he doesn’t say it sarcastically, but as if he means it.

  My heart’s beating fast now. I’ve got that total focus and concentration which blots out everything in the world except the game you’re playing. I know I’m going to win. I really feel it’s my day.

  I hold out the pack.

  Olly – five of clubs.

  Carl – eight of diamonds.

  This is so easy. I’m not even scared.

  I do a Carl-style cut, lifting up and out so the others see my card before I do. I can’t believe it when I flip my hand over and see the two of spades. A two! With only eight to beat!

  ‘Unlucky,’ says Carl, quietly. Not gloating.

  Carl gathers the cards and positions my fist where he wants it. While he’s doing this, I notice his grip on the pack. He’s not holding it flat, but vertically, the way you’d hold a knife if you were going to stab it down into a table. As he gets ready, I can see he’s going to hit down on me like that, with the edge of the pack, not with the flat of it, like before.

  ‘You can’t do it like that,’ I say.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You just can’t.’

  ‘There’s no rule about how you hold the pack.’

  ‘That’s not how we’ve been playing.’

  ‘I can do it how I want.’

  ‘It’s not fair.’

  ‘It’s not cheating.’

  ‘I’m not playing if you’re going to do it differently.’

  ‘Can’t bottle out in the middle of a round.’

  ‘You can’t change the rules in the middle of a round.’

  ‘I’m not changing the rules. You’re the one that’s trying to change the rules by bottling out.’

  ‘I’m not bottling out.’

  ‘Good. So hold out your hand.’

  ‘Not if you’re going to hit like that.’

  ‘Olly?’ says Carl. ‘Was there anything about how you hold the pack in the rules?’

  Olly looks from Carl to me to Carl again. He shakes his head.

  ‘And he can’t bottle in the middle of a round, can he?’

  Olly doesn’t look at me this time. He doesn’t even really look at Carl. He just shrugs.