‘They don’t need to.’ Marcus now. A neat, practised handover. ‘They’ve already made it. Four of them, all very successful in their own way, and now they’re looking for a way of giving something back. So they’ve had the idea of a scholarship. They, we, are looking for the leaders of tomorrow. The thinkers. The movers. The people who will make a difference. We’ve made a list of eight candidates, and there are four scholarships available. Hence the interviewing process.’
‘I can save you some time there,’ I told them. ‘I’m not who you’re after.’
Lucinda’s left eyebrow arches higher. My mother looks as if she is about to choke.
‘And why do you say that?’ Lucinda again. A quick amused look between the two of them, like it is exactly the response they were expecting. It’s unsettling, and for a moment I think about taking it back. But it’s obvious there’s been a mistake. They’ll discover that themselves soon enough.
‘I’m not exactly your model student. I got kicked out of school, I’m not particularly good at anything, and my grades have always been average. I mean I’m not running myself down, I’m just being realistic. I’m an also-ran, that’s all, same as most people. I’ve just had a bit of weird shit happen lately, but most of my life I’ve just been average.’
Okay, not the whole truth. Average isn’t easy for me. I work at it, like any disguise.
‘So what do you think it is that drew our attention to you?’ Marcus asks.
‘I don’t know,’ I shrug. ‘The news and shit.’
‘The news and shit.’
Repeated like this it is the greatest of understatements. It isn’t. What I have done is nothing, it was only that the news got hold of it. So the news did it, not me. Someone rang a news desk, someone’s instincts told them this would rate, the cameras were dispatched. I, and my news, were created. And after that, well, shit had simply happened.
‘You launch the sort of peaceful, positive and imagination-capturing protest that hits national headlines, you utilise the technology of the moment to turn the protest international (Rob not me), you follow up with a piece of ironic street theatre, you launch a harmless attack on a corrupt qualifications system (again, Rob) that hints at but does not use your latent powers, and if we judge you rightly, you’ve done other things besides, which the world is not yet aware of. You’re there, Pete, right in the thick of it. You’ve cut straight to the heart of the bullshit. If I was to ask you to explain exactly what was wrong with the world in which you live, I do believe you could provide me with the perfect example (as if they knew). You have clarity. Imagination, charisma, an ability to get things done. You are who we are looking for.’
He looks to Lucinda, tags her in. Mother sits stunned, revelling now in the future glory of the boy who so recently appalled her.
‘This is no ordinary scholarship, Pete.’ She speaks with quiet confidence. To argue with her would be to rail against nature itself. ‘There are thousands of grants already, rewarding the very people you judge yourself against. The high achievers. You know the type. Top marks at school, probably play a musical instrument, captain of some sports team, some charity work there on the CV, helping out with peer support programmes in the college, a lead role in the school production. Every year, all around the country, we churn them out by the hundreds, maybe even the thousands. But you know what I see when I look at them, the model student output of the education factory?’
She does a fine sneer, Lucinda. I sneer along with her, I can’t help it. She has a point. My head fills with the pictures of the school-magazine-hogging faces I’ve always secretly hated, without properly understanding why. Laura Adams, who never did anybody any harm, but who the teachers all adore because of her quiet, agreeable charm, her clever way with words, her quick grasp of algebra, her ridiculous flute, her seamless fucken cowardice. Gary Phillips, Wynton Smith, Annabel Lang. People I never believed really mattered.
‘I see compliance. I see a dumb, helpless need to please. And that’s what they take with them out into the world. That is the gift education endows them with, the so-called successful. A nervous, endless, impossible need to look to others for opinions, directions, approval. Neutered. It’s what school does. It’s what it’s designed to do. And the only ones who get out unscathed are those who escape both the paralysis of success and the lobotomy of failure. The in-betweens, who the world so resolutely ignores. You show me a person out there who is well adjusted, successful and confident, and I’ll show you a person who failed to shine at school. We don’t want the scholars, Pete, we want you.’
She says it with such force, such conviction, and her message shines such a good light on me, that like my mother I find it impossible to resist. The world is full of people far stupider than I am. And they do annoy me. Maybe I am different. It is possible. Maybe I’m just what they’re looking for. It would explain a lot of things. The Sadness, the prickly dissatisfaction, the sense of living in a skin not made to measure. Imagine it. Not just valuable, but most valuable; better than my betters, dripping with potential. Not a lost cause, a cattle class ticket to mediocrity, but a mind without a home.
‘So what do I have to do?’ I ask, and three clear, strong smiles break out on cue.
‘You have to come away with us,’ Marcus says. ‘Four days of testing and interviews. The sponsors haven’t got where they are without being thorough. I’ll pick you up this time tomorrow. Your mother knows what you need.’
I don’t want them to go. The room without them will be such a disappointing place. But I can’t think of anything to say that would make them stay any longer. I stand with them and smile, shake hands. Lucinda’s is cool and smooth, and her grip just strong enough. I watch their car reverse back down the drive through the kitchen window. She is driving.
Twenty-four hours of waiting. During that time the following things happen.
Mother’s excitement grows. I’ve never seen her like this before. It is the sort of surprising show of happiness that makes me think how disappointed she must have been, with the rest of my life. It’s good that she hides these things from us.
Dad’s excitement is more muted. He doesn’t ring friends. He doesn’t hug me. He doesn’t sit opposite me at dinner and stare wordlessly at this little miracle of potential he helped bring into this world. He does smile once, and offer a quiet sort of congratulation, and there is the same look of relief when he hears, but he thinks about it too, in a quiet, sceptical, fatherly way, and asks questions we can’t answer. Like who are these people exactly? And what are the tests they’ll be doing? And where will they be doing them? And, without wanting to be rude about it, why me?
And my excitement? My excitement comes and goes. I think about Lucinda, more than once. About living in a world where people like Lucinda have conversations with people like me. Where they pay us attention, share their jokes and understandings with us. I think about being one of them.
And there are things I don’t think, too, which are important. I don’t think about Rob, not once. I don’t think about school, my old friends, or PBs. I don’t feel Pissed Off and I don’t feel The Sadness either. I just feel impatient, as the clock slows down.
And then they return, punctual to the second. Actually it’s just Marcus, but he tells me Lucinda is waiting for us. I take my bag, carefully packed, I say my goodbyes, and I climb into the passenger seat of the humming Z4. I leave.
14 APRIL
My hands are still now, almost. Just the little fingers twitching, giving me away. It was the streetlight I noticed first. Watching my feet on his carpet, familiar. Settling down in my square of orange. The light was brighter, harsher. The curtains pulled back. I hadn’t even checked from the street. Stupid. I looked to the bed. For a second I thought he’d be there, awake. Dark eyes watching. But it was empty, neat. Sheets turned over blankets. Not even a dent in the pillows.
Sick feeling in the bottom of my throat. Even then I didn’t think it was innocent, that he could just be away for the night. We kn
ow too much for anything to be innocent.
I imagined men in dark suits, from the corporation. Me still paralysed in the orange light, pinned. They had him. They’d get me. Could be watching the house. A trap. Stopped breathing. Only eyes moving. Silence. On hands and knees, stomach-crawling to the wall, hard up against the window frame. Peering out past the curtains. The street was still, shadows frozen hard on the ground.
His desk was empty. Computer gone. He could have taken it with him, but how likely was that? And if he was away for a while, why hadn’t he told me? An ache inside. Too late. To see him. To save him. Too cautious. Not cautious enough. My fault again.
It had to be about the email. There are only so many coincidences in this world. Pressed against the wall as a car buzzed along the street. He is my responsibility. I got him into this. I have to help him. And he knows that.
I ran home in the dark. There were no messages.
Checked my inbox every hour. No new messages. Stayed home from school in case he tried to contact me. He didn’t.
Desperate. Not thinking. I can admit that much. We were there. We had it. Had something. A door slammed shut just as I was about to take the first step forward. I didn’t think I would feel it like this. Something inside, gone. Sliced out. Sat in front of the screen all morning. Watched the twisted patterns of the screen saver. Pete. Gone.
I read his old emails. Poking a bruise.
I found the answer there. Back to that first excited chat. The sharing of secrets. His parents. His mother, all disappointment and disapproval. And his father. His father was soft, he’d said. So I went back to his house. The bus shelter. Waiting for a car. I am not above smiling shyly at a man who can tell me where his son has gone. Or lying to him.
He came home first, my last chance. Beeping the lock over his shoulder. Striding up to the front door, wine bottle in his hand. He didn’t look like a man whose son was missing. Black suited men faded back into the hedges. Still I had to know. Now. Before the mother arrived. Like a swing at the top of its arc; turning, swooping down, nothing to lose. Almost forgot and went round the back. Odd, walking up the path in the sunlight. I didn’t belong. Hands sweaty, sliding on the bell. Feet thudding down the hall.
He has the same eyes as Pete but apart from that you wouldn’t know. He did look soft. Squashy. Like he’d been trodden on a bit too much. Tie off. Collar undone a couple of buttons. Grey woolly socks. Looking down at me. At Jess, from school, who was just wondering if Pete was in. He wasn’t? Well, she’d come round to see how he was after, you know, everything, and if he could tell Pete when he got home… Then I was being asked if I wanted to come in. Parents are always so pleased to meet their children’s friends. Maybe they think that if their kids aren’t complete losers, then they aren’t either.
Don’t know how we really reached that point, but we were in the kitchen, him humming as he scooped the instant into a couple of mugs. Asking what classes I had with Pete, what I was thinking of doing next year. I don’t like coffee, but there’s something about steam across a kitchen table that invites confidences. And he wanted to tell.
He wasn’t meant to, he said, but he didn’t see how it could hurt. My son. He said that an awful lot. Proud, perhaps, or just trying to reassure himself. He always knew his son would pull through. Pete’d gone off the rails for a bit there, the expulsion, the computers being stolen, had felt like he didn’t know his own son sometimes, but that wasn’t that the way with teenagers, eh Jess? And now. Now his son had been offered a scholarship, was at this moment in the process of being tested. Representatives had come to the house, lovely people, two days ago. Anonymous benefactors. Pete had left yesterday. No, he didn’t know where. They’d said it was important to have a neutral environment. Words tumbling out his mouth. Smiling. His son made good.
Stomach dropping away as the swing climbs higher. I forced myself to smile, to share his enthusiasm. That’s really excellent, Mr Ball. I’m so pleased for Pete. Does he have a cellphone or something, that I can ring on and congratulate him? No, he didn’t, they hadn’t let him take one but, he told me, there was an email address, for family contact only, but I’m sure they wouldn’t mind, such great people, and seeing as how you’re his friend. I wouldn’t myself of course in case Pete thought I was intruding…
Out to the front door. Panic building inside. Waving from the hall. Been lovely to meet you, Mr Ball. He seemed shy for a moment. Send him my love, will you Jess? Really thought that Pete would be okay. I wish I could be so certain. Down the footpath to the end of the street. Round the corner. Started to run. Bag thumping into my spine. Hotmail address burned into my head. My only chance. Pete’s only chance.
7
‘Like the car?’ Marcus’s first words, post-hello. Sitting in third, the air rushing about our designer cocoon, pushing and whispering at its edges. The stereo silenced, so that the schoolboy fantasy of an engine can sing its song uninterrupted.
‘It’s alright.’
‘Just alright?’
‘Well, you know, I feel a bit of a wanker sitting in it, to be honest.’
And he laughs.
Here is my plan. I have nothing to offer these people, not a thing. Luck, good and bad, has brought me here, and this will be my point of difference. I will remain unimpressed, in the face of the most impressive man and impressive machine on this very impressionable planet. And that might stand out, in their heads, when it comes to the decision. Not much of a plan I know, but what else do I have?
‘Don’t worry,’ he tells me, just when I think I’ve got my worrying well hidden. ‘It’s not like school tests. We’re just going to spend some time with you, get to know you a little.’
‘Whatever.’
A bus up ahead. We are out and around it so quickly it might not have happened at all.
Hedges blur into shopfronts, into cyclists, a taxi, another bus. We head up to Karori through the backroads. Green spills up from every gorge, tumbles down off every bank, fighting back.
The engine talks to us, a deep restained growl. Take me out of this place, it says, of pedestrian crossings and parallel parks. I have work to do. We go south, past the mountain bike park and into the tight turns of the Makara hill. At the top he indicates politely and pulls to a stop on the roadside gravel. He looks at me. He’s enjoying my nervousness. I’m not.
‘Wanna drive?’
‘I’m on my restricted.’
‘Yeah, so that’s fine.’
‘I don’t … yeah, okay. You got life insurance?’
What the hell else am I going to say?
We get out, stalk each other around the car. He stalks me. I’m just pretending. I try to relax into the seat. Feel the wheel in my hand: thick, surprisingly small. I slide back the seat a fraction. I am taller than Marcus; in the final analysis my only advantage. I look at my passenger. He is doing something with his watch.
‘Away you go then. Let’s see what you’ve got.’
I put in the clutch, try out the feel of the gears. I am Pete. Good shit/bad shit, definitely weird shit, rains down upon me. I am past thinking what this might mean.
‘Come on,’ he urges. ‘Go.’
Power. To be able to take this world by the neck, force it to look you in the eye, pay you some attention. To hold a gun, turn a crowd, seduce a woman, release the clutch at the top of the hill, feel the thrill of a hundred years of automative design deliver themselves up to you. To know, in the too-fast approach of the first rush of rock, that this life will never be yours, that the brand will always win, Mother will never be proud of her little boy.
The steering wheel twitches, trying to overrule my inexperienced hands. I stab at the brake, feel the back end move out, feed the accelerator, feel a mighty corrective push (still only in first) through the line of the corner. Second gear, a panicked, clumsy shift. Left, too slow now, more power. A blur to my left, a wall of dirt closer than it should be, then backing away. Sharp in the foreground: Marcus, unflinching, unconcerned. Shitting myse
lf for both of us then. No problem there. Still too slow, I know it, try to relax, find a rhythm, listen to the car. The fifth corner comes more smoothly, using the throttle to straighten out a gentle S, braking messily, down to second, sharp U, too wide if there’s oncoming traffic. There isn’t.
I sit forward, having a real go now. Momentarily into third, spurt, cut back to second. Jesus, I feel alive. My senses sharpening, my body and brain negotiate dosage. Anything is possible. The steering wheel stops fighting me. A tractor. The smallest of gaps. Don’t look at the tractor, concentrate on the gap. Full throttle, the quicker you pass the smaller the danger. Dealt with. Next to me Marcus whoops. I feel the same, but my breath is spoken for. I am part of the machine, the last few sweeps to complete. Rubber, metal, machinery and me, a hard-on of hi-speed meant-to-be. Fuck school. Fuck the internet. This is it. The moment its own reward. Powerful. Goodbye cemetery. Lurch, flick to correct. We hit the bottom of the hill, the road straightens, Marcus points for me to pull in opposite a small white church.
My heart beats fast, my eyes are wide, my head is crystal clear, sharp, beaming. I begin to laugh. Marcus does the same.
‘Excellent isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
Nonchalance bailed at the first bend. There’s no pretending now. Marcus, big brother, claps me on the shoulder.
‘Okay, my turn.’
He drives just as quickly, but with less drama. We weave along the valley, melt through the scenery, turn left onto a little road I have never seen before. I am happy.
Lucinda is there to greet us, and I am happier still.
And if I notice her first, which I do, the scenery rushes in for a close second. I expect shearing sheds and sheep shit, broken down tractors and breaking down old men, leathery skin and hairy white chests. This is farm country, or used to be. Things change. Off stage and out of view, because that’s the point.
Deep Fried: A Novel Page 9
