The Knife That Killed Me

by Anthony McGowan

  “Get back, let me see,” she said. “Has he done this before?”

  “No, miss.”

  “What did you say?”

  “No, Mrs. Eel. Really sorry, Mrs. Eel. It was him freaking out like that.”

  Then I thought I’d done enough. I stopped twitching and just lay there.

  “He’s stopped, Mrs. Eel.”

  “I can see that, you stupid girl.”

  “Peter, Peter, can you hear me?”

  “His name’s Paul, Mrs. Eel.”

  There was a small silence. I imagined the look that Mrs. Eel was sending out.

  “Paul! Paul!”

  I felt her hands on my shoulders. She began to shake me. That probably wasn’t the recommended treatment for an epileptic.

  I groaned.

  “Mrs. Eel. We should put him in the recovery position.”

  I recognized the voice. It was Maddy Bray’s.

  “Well, go on then, girl.”

  I was on my back. I felt new, softer hands on me, rolling me over, moving my legs. I felt her breath on my cheek. I opened my eyes. Her face was so close it covered up everything. When she saw my eyes, she looked startled for a second. And then at long last, after all these years, I did the right thing, did a cool thing. I winked. And Maddy Bray smiled quickly back at me. She shared my secret. She knew what I’d done.

  EIGHT

  I was in the sick bay. The sick bay was a horrible little room where you got sent if you puked or had a headache. There was a kind of bed to lie down on, a special sort of medical bed covered in black plastic, and a bucket to throw up in, and another bucket full of sand. There was also a dummy person in there. It didn’t have any legs, just the head and the middle bit with the arms attached. I don’t know what it was for—maybe teaching about the human body or for learning the kiss of life or something. But someone had drawn a dick going into its mouth. I say “it,” but it was really a she. You could tell from the head, which still had long hair, although a lot of it had fallen out. They’d tried to clean it off—the dick, I mean—but you could still see it. So now she just lived in the corner of the sick bay. She looked a bit sad. Yeah, a bit freaky.

  I was lying on the bed, not really knowing what to do with myself. The vinyl covering of the bed had burn holes and tears in it, and I really wanted to pick at them.

  Mrs. Eel had obviously been glad to see the back of me. I don’t think she liked the idea of someone dying in her classroom, even though by then I’d recovered—I mean, pretended to recover. I even climbed back onto my chair. But Mrs. Eel said I had to go to see the school secretary, and that was that.

  It was the secretary, who was called Miss Bush, who sent me to the sick bay. She asked me if it had happened before, and I said it had, quite often, and it was always fine after a few minutes. Then she’d told me to lie down and stay quiet. I said that, really, I was all right now, but she seemed to think that as long as she got me to lie down in the sick bay then she’d done her duty, showed that she was caring and all that. Probably covered herself against getting sued. Lying down and staying quiet was as far as medical treatment went at our school. I’m pretty sure that if you turned up with your head under your arm, Miss Bush would still tell you to lie down and stay quiet.

  There was a creak, and I looked over at the sick-bay door. A head peeped round. I didn’t know what to expect, and if I’d had a hundred guesses I would never have got it right. It was Shane, the leader of the freaks.

  “Can I come in?” he asked in a soft voice. “I mean, I know how ill you are, and I don’t want to, like, put back your recovery.”

  He said it with a completely straight face, but he got across the message that he was joking. It made me laugh.

  “Did you bring me any grapes?”

  “Nah, just monkey nuts and hard-boiled eggs.”

  I didn’t understand that, but I knew it must be a joke, so I laughed again.

  “I heard what you did. Maddy told me. That was cool.”

  “Yeah, well, I couldn’t just … couldn’t just, you know.”

  “Well, most kids would have just … you know.”

  Again there was a kind of mockery in what Shane was saying—I mean, making fun of my clumsy words—but it didn’t bite, because it was like, even though it was me he was sort of mocking, he also seemed to be on the same side as me. As though we were both taking the piss, and both having the piss taken out of us at the same time.

  “Your name’s Paul Varderman, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “My name’s Shane.”

  “I know. I think everyone knows who you are.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “That thing with Frisco.”

  The thing with Frisco was famous. Frisco was the scary little Irish PE teacher who only spoke in two ways: a sinister, quiet voice and a bellow. One rainy day when the year was all in together for PE, Frisco tried to get Shane to do something—can’t even remember what it was now—using his quiet voice, and Shane said, “I’m sorry, sir, you’ll have to speak up,” and then, when Frisco screamed at him, he said, “There’s really no need to shout.” It all sounds a bit tame now, but it was fantastic at the time, and no one had ever dared talk back to Frisco like that, even if everything Shane said was actually quite polite. Frisco marched him off into the room where all the gear was stored—beanbags and hoops, that sort of thing—and we all heard more shouting, and a bumping sound, and then a scream from Frisco of “YOUR HEAD IS GOING TO BOUNCE OFF THAT WALL!” And then Shane walked out of there as if nothing had happened at all, not a bit ruffled or bothered, but Frisco came out looking like he’d been the one who’d bounced around the walls, with his hair and eyes all wild. It was like Frisco was a storm and Shane was a lighthouse. A lighthouse that smiled.

  It’s hard to get across how great that was. It was a little victory for the kids against the teachers, but not the usual one, where hard kids intimidate the soft teachers. There are plenty of victories like that and they don’t count for anything. No, it’s worse than that: they make everyone’s life a bit shittier. This was different: this was a kid standing up to a bully, but in a way that you just had to describe as cool.

  It’s one of the reasons the hard kids never went after Shane. Everyone still hated the freaks, but if Shane was around, they didn’t bother them as much.

  “Mrs. Eel really is an old bitch,” I said. “Well, not that old.”

  “But a bitch. Yeah, Maddy said. And, well, guess what, she’s here.”

  “Mrs. Eel?”

  “Ha ha. No, Maddy. She just didn’t want to come straight in.”

  I felt myself begin to blush. Shane smiled at me. Then Maddy’s face peered round the door.

  “Hi,” she said, looking as awkward as I felt. “I just wanted to say thanks.” Then she looked down at the floor. She was still half in and half out.

  “It was nothing, really.” My heart was pounding and my voice sounded weird in my ears. But I made myself carry on. “Anyway, at least it got me out of the lesson.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah.”

  After a bit of a pause Shane said, “We’re meeting up at my place after school, if you want to come round.”

  “Who’s ‘we’? You mean the fr—?”

  “The freaks?”

  “I didn’t mean …”

  “Hey, sure, you’ve probably got something better to do. Anyway, see you around.”

  “No, no,” I said, trying not to sound too desperate, “I’ve got nothing on. I’d really like to, you know, come round and hang out. Where do you live?”

  “Up in Halton. Manston Gardens. Know it?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been up there. Posh houses.”

  “Not really. After tea then, anytime. I’m number seven.”

  Then there was a bit of confusion, because Mr. Boyle was trying to get in, which meant squeezing past Maddy, and bumping into Shane, and putting his glasses straight, which was all quite a lot for him to manage.

&nbs
p; “We’ll see you,” said Shane, and he and Maddy disappeared.

  “Thought I’d stop by,” said Mr. Boyle. “Feeling better?”

  “Yes, sir, fine, sir.”

  “OK, good, good, good.” Then a pause, before he went on, stumbling over his words. “Is this anything to do with what happened earlier?”

  “How do you mean, sir?”

  “I thought you might have been, er, agitated. You know, in a state.”

  I felt a bit crap about that. I mean, Mr. Boyle being nice, taking time out to see how I was, trying to join things up, when I was just faking it.

  “No, sir, it just happened. No biggie.”

  “Well, that’s good. And nice to see your friends dropping in on you.”

  Friends. Well, I couldn’t really call them friends. But, yeah, it was good.

  “And maybe we’ll see you in chess tomorrow? They’re not so bad, you know.”

  “Who do you mean, sir?”

  “The chess nerds.”

  That made me laugh.

  “No, sir.”

  No! I did not concentrate. I thought about death as a word, and not about death as a thing, the thing coming closer. I check back to the knife. Is it nearer? Yes, of course it is. The ghost trail of outlines shows that the knife has moved, carrying the boy with it. The water behind me has surged. Hearts have beaten, blood has flowed. The end is closer.

  NINE

  I stayed in the sick bay all afternoon. I think Miss Bush had forgotten I was there, and no one else looked in. I could have gone home. I could have gone back to class. It was metalwork in the afternoon, and I don’t mind that. I’d been making a car out of cast-off bits of metal, just the crap lying around, and Mr. Robinson thought it was quite good. Mr. Robinson was one of the teachers who was nice if you stayed on his good side. But if you did something wrong—say, messed up on the lathe or didn’t pay attention when he was telling us about safety—then he could turn savage.

  So I could have done either of those, but I was liking it there in the quiet room, even if it smelled a bit of old sick. And if I’d gone home, I’d only have had to explain things to Mum.

  I liked waiting to hear the bells at the end of each period, and the other sounds—the rush of feet, the loud voices. Usually the space in between lessons is a time of danger, when someone would smash you into a corridor wall, or trip you up, or take your bag and fling it down the stairwell. But I was safe from all that. And it was pleasant to think about going round to hang out with Shane and his friends. Pleasant, but also a bit scary. Whenever I tried to imagine what we’d do together, everything broke down. I didn’t know them at all, didn’t know what they’d want to talk about. I was always shy with new people. Sometimes with new people I’d clam up. Sometimes I’d say too much. There were all kinds of ways it could go wrong. They might think I was boring. Or I might come out with stuff they thought was stupid.

  I decided I wouldn’t go.

  No, I had to go.

  Things weren’t right in my life, I knew that. Ever since coming to this school things had been going wrong. No, not going wrong, going off. Like something forgotten at the back of the fridge. I didn’t know how or why, but I had an instinct that Shane was a way out of things, a way back from the edge.

  So, when the end-of-day bell rang, I waited a few minutes just for things to calm down outside, and then got up from the sick bed and set off home.

  There were still a few kids messing about in the playground by the back entrance. I usually went out the front way, because there were more teachers around and it felt safer. But I was in a hurry, and the back way was quicker.

  They jumped me a couple of meters outside the gates. They’d been hiding behind the wall of the social club. It was Miller and Bates. They grabbed an arm each and dragged me over the grass and down toward the beck. The beck is the stream that flows past the school. It’s dirty and it stinks and you get rats there. My dad says it was worse when he was a kid, and that if you fell in it you’d die—not from drowning, because it wasn’t deep enough (unless someone held you down), but by being poisoned.

  I knew more or less what was in store for me. They were going to chuck me in—something like that. I thought it was because Bates wanted to get revenge—I mean, for me pulling the stupid scissors on him, and it must have been frustrating that Roth didn’t smack me earlier. Weird how Roth had protected me. But he wasn’t here now, and these two were going to make me sorry I’d even thought about standing up to them.

  Except Roth was there. I saw him when we got closer. There were steep banks down to the water, so he’d been hidden from where I was. He had his back to us, and he was sitting on a coat—not his, he was wearing a leather jacket, so it must have belonged to Bates or Miller. I’m not really into fashion, but I could tell that Roth’s jacket wasn’t that cool. Wasn’t cool at all, really. It looked tough, though. I mean, tough like an armadillo skin.

  “Got him, Roth,” said Miller. “He come out late. Been hiding somewhere. Little poof.”

  “I wasn’t hiding,” I said. Then Bates twisted the arm he was holding behind my back. It hurt. But I didn’t cry out. It would take more than that to make me cry out.

  But I was afraid. If it had just been Miller and Bates I would have known what was in store for me. Like I said, they’d have pushed me in the water. Chucked bricks at me to keep me there for a bit. Then they’d have run off laughing at the great joke of it all. I could endure that. I’d endured worse. But with Roth you just didn’t know, and I felt my guts turn soft inside me.

  He turned round to look over his shoulder. He was so massive the movement was awkward, as if the muscles got in the way.

  “What you playing at?”

  I thought he was talking to me, and I was trying to think of an answer when Miller said, “Nothing, just like you said, asked him to—”

  “Dunt look to me like you asked him. Looks like you told him.”

  “Yeah, we told him but—”

  “Let him go.”

  He was facing forward again now, looking at the water’s bubbling brown scum.

  “Come here.”

  A hand at my back pushed me hard.

  “Have a sit down.”

  The grass was wet. There was no question of sharing the coat. I felt the wetness seep through my trousers.

  “Sorry about them nutters. I just said ask you to come along for a little chat.”

  “It’s all right. They don’t bother me.”

  He turned toward me, giving me a full, black-eyed stare. “Maybe they should.”

  Was that a threat? Or was he saying I should stand up to them more? Up to his own henchmen?

  I shrugged. This was getting weirder. What did he want with me? Part of me still thought that this was a setup, that any second he was going to join in with Miller and Bates and chuck me in the water, or maybe just smash my face in. Then I saw that Miller and Bates had wandered off along the bank. There was a narrow path—not planned, just made by thousands of kids’ feet. Miller had a long stick and was jabbing it into the mud at the bottom of the beck, stirring up old filth. Clouds of the greenish muck floated, billowing down to where we were sitting, bringing a stink like some foul mix of eggs and shit.

  “I wonder about them two,” Roth said, in a friendly, confiding sort of way.

  “You’re right to,” I replied.

  Roth chuckled. “I couldn’t trust them with anything important. Couldn’t trust them to tell me what they had for breakfast unless they were still eating it.”

  That made me laugh. I felt myself getting sucked into something. Something over my head.

  “And the thing is,” he said, turning those black eyes on me once more, “I’ve got a little job I need doing.”

  “A job?” I smiled weakly.

  “Yeah, nothing much. A little delivery.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t panic.” Roth slapped me on the back. “Not heavy. Just stick it in your bag.”

  It was
then that I noticed for the first time that there was a parcel on the ground next to Roth. It was the size of a shoe box, wrapped in brown paper and then covered all over again in Scotch tape. There was something slightly insane about the Scotch tape. It was everywhere, wrapped round and round the package like bandages round a mummy.

  “I’m not sure I can—”

  “Look, here’s something to make it worth your while.”

  He felt in his pocket and held out a tenner. I didn’t reach out to take it from his hand. The thing with Roth was that when he was mad, his face did the opposite of what you’d expect. Rather than showing the lines of rage, his face would become more blank. For a second that happened now, the human lines on his face smoothing away to an implacable, machine soullessness. But only for a second. Then he grinned, and shoved the note into the breast pocket of my blazer.

  “Good lad,” he said.

  Had my face betrayed me? Told him, in response to his own, unspoken threat, that I would do whatever he wanted? I don’t know, but I think that if he’d really tried to force me, I might have resisted, or might have said yes, and then thrown the package away. But his assumption that I’d agreed, his acceptance of it as natural, as inevitable, destroyed my will to resist. I told you Roth was deep.

  But I had one last, feeble go at refusing.

  “Can’t you get one of them to take it?”

  “Look at them,” he said, and I followed his line of vision. Bates had hold of the stick, and had dredged up some of the weed and slime from the bottom and was waving it at Miller, the two of them whooping and laughing. “A cretin and a nigger. Too dumb to fart and walk at the same time.”

  The casual brutality of Roth’s language stunned me, and I hated it, and hated him. I didn’t think even Roth would say “nigger” like that, as if it was a word like “idiot,” one you could drop into a conversation. But it was another part of his plan to draw me in. For a second I was part of the inner circle, just me and Roth. The safest part of the hurricane is at the eye.

  And hell has its circles.

  And then my voice said: