The Knife That Killed Me

by Anthony McGowan

  And then he put his hand inside my blazer and began to feel me, and then he moved his hand down to my trousers, and then up again, and then he said, “You sure you haven’t got it, my little girl, my baby?”

  “I told you, no, it’s not here,” I said, squirming under his grip.

  “Yeah, well, that’s good, good. But I told you what a friend that knife could be to you. And you haven’t got many, have you?”

  “He’s got them weirdos,” said Bates.

  “They’re not really your friends, you know, Paul. They don’t care about you. You’re not one of them. When push comes to shove, they won’t watch your back. They’ll leave you in the shit.”

  I should have defended them, but it was easier to say nothing.

  “But tomorrow, you’ll bring it?”

  “The knife.”

  “Yeah, the knife. Bring it. Use it. Make everything right.”

  I nodded my head. But in my heart I said no.

  TWENTY

  I opened the door. The telly was on in the living room, but there was nobody there. I once asked my mum why she left the telly on all the time, even when she was out. She said she liked it, that it felt friendly. I turned it off.

  I went up to my room. I hadn’t spoken to anyone for the rest of the day. At lunch I went to the library and sat in a corner and opened a book. I don’t know what the book was about. I didn’t try to read it. For a while I thought about what Roth had said. About the Temple Moor kids saying bad things about me. About my dad being a coward, and not brave at all. About him being a liar. To say that I thought about it gets it wrong. I didn’t think about it: it was just there in my head like a cancer or something. Yeah, a brain tumor. And it’s not as if you can do anything about a brain tumor by thinking about it. Hey, brain tumor, I’ve decided you’re a bad idea, so why don’t you go away now? Oh, OK, if you say so. Bye then. Yeah, bye.

  I looked around my room. Ever since I’d got to know Shane and his gang I’d begun to feel funny about lots of things in my life. I mean, funny in a bad way. Feel that they weren’t right, weren’t good. My clothes, my hair, my things. There was nothing good about my room. The walls were plain. I don’t even know what you’d call the color. It wasn’t gray, but it was grayish, and with something a bit yellow in the gray, and maybe something a bit pink. The curtains were blue with lines on. The lines were black. There was a chest of drawers that was older than me, but not old enough to be interesting. There was a wardrobe with a tall mirror on the inside of the door. So you had to open the door to look at yourself. That was stupid.

  I opened the door and looked at myself. I didn’t like what I saw. I wasn’t ugly. I wasn’t good-looking. I was nothing. My hair was like the walls—no real color. There was still something unformed and babyish about my face. I squeezed it with my hands, the way Roth had squeezed it. Wanting to hurt myself, wanting to squeeze out the thoughts.

  And then I remembered, and the thoughts of Roth and my dad, the coward, shitting himself when he should have been fighting, were blown away like leaves in an autumn gale.

  Maddy.

  I was going to the cinema with Maddy.

  And suddenly I was happy and excited, and looking back at myself in the mirror, I thought that maybe I didn’t look too bad.

  I changed out of my school clothes. I had some OK jeans—nothing special, nothing great, but not embarrassing. And I had an OK shirt. It was actually an old one of my dad’s. It was a creamy color, and the thick cotton was smooth with age, and it only had buttons down to the middle, so you had to put it on over your head. I suppose it was kind of old-fashioned, but I thought it looked timeless. Jeans and a shirt and trainers. The trainers were OK too, just a pair of standard black and white Adidas. You wouldn’t notice them either way, to love or to hate.

  I brushed my teeth and washed my face. I got some water on the front of the shirt and some toothpaste on my jeans, and I felt stupid for not getting washed before I got dressed. But my mind was all full up with the excitement and the fear of seeing Maddy.

  And when I was washing, I decided that I wasn’t going to go to the fight tomorrow, wasn’t going to have anything to do with Roth and his thugs. Let them fight. I didn’t care what the Temple Moor kids had said. And I didn’t know what my dad had done all those years ago, and didn’t much care about that either. None of it mattered, not compared to seeing Maddy.

  I heard voices and smelled food. I hadn’t noticed my parents come in. I went downstairs.

  “Got fish and chips,” said my dad.

  I didn’t want to meet Maddy stinking of chip fat. Anyway, I wasn’t hungry.

  “I’m off out.”

  “Have something first,” said Mum. She was smoking as she unwrapped the fish from the paper, glistening translucent with the fat.

  Dad was sitting at the kitchen table. He had already started to eat his chips, picking some off the paper as he rolled the rest onto his plate.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, son?” he said, not looking up. The bald top of his head was pointing at me. It also glistened, as if he’d rubbed it in the chip paper.

  I was glad that Maddy and the others weren’t here to see this. Because there was another thing that they had taught me: to be ashamed of my parents, and our house, and the way we lived. And, still looking at the strangely soft, vulnerable, glistening head of my dad, the skin pink and blotched with brown freckles, the shame I’d felt was replaced, slowly, by guilt. My mum and dad had worked hard all their lives. When they weren’t working, they were tired, and what they liked to do was sit and watch the telly eating fish and chips. It wasn’t a crime that they didn’t like opera or talking about politics.

  Suddenly my dad looked up, his face puzzled and quizzical. “What’s up, Paul? You look like you’ve lost a penny and found a pound.”

  “Other way round, love,” said Mum.

  “Oh yes, lost a pound and found a penny.”

  But by then the moment for talk was past, and they were back to their fish and chips, and slices of bread and margarine, and their cups of sweet tea, and so I left them there, and went to meet Maddy at the cinema of dreams.

  And there is another way in which the scene before me is like a game of chess. There is a word, a truly excellent word. Zugzwang. It means coming to a place in the game, usually toward the end, where you are safe as long as you don’t move. But it is your turn, and you must move. And if you move, you will lose.

  Zugzwang.

  Zugzwang.

  Zugzwang.

  Zugzwang.

  Zugzwang.

  TWENTY-ONE

  I got the bus into town. It was dark and the streetlights were on and it looked beautiful. I couldn’t understand to begin with, but then I saw it was because of the fine rain falling, which made everything shine. Even the cars going by seemed to smile at me.

  I tried to think of some things to say to Maddy. She was into books. I used to read books when I was younger—the Famous Five and Biggles, stuff like that. But then I stopped. I don’t know why. In English we’d been reading a book called Kes, about a boy who has a pet kestrel. It wasn’t exactly cheerful. The people are poor, and the main kid gets bullied, and then he gets caned by the teacher for something that wasn’t his fault. His mum’s a slut. The only good thing in his life is the kestrel. But his brother kills it. I liked the book a lot, but I didn’t think it would impress Maddy, because it was just a school book, and even worse than that, it was what they gave you to read in the thicko class, because it was short. Maddy probably liked Shakespeare and that kind of thing. So, best steer clear of books.

  Then I thought about something I’d read in a magazine while I was waiting at the dentist. It said that clever girls are always being told that they are clever, and pretty girls are always being told that they are pretty. So, if you want to impress them and make them like you, you should tell pretty girls that they are clever, and clever girls that they are pretty, because then they’ll be surprised and think you’ve seen righ
t into their soul. I liked the way Maddy looked, but I didn’t think she was what most people would describe as pretty. But she was definitely clever. So it meant I had to say how nice she looked. I thought of different ways of saying it. I could tell her how nice her hair was, and her eyes. I could tell her I liked the way her body moved. But I wouldn’t say it in a way that made it sound like that was all I was after—I mean, touching her and stuff.

  It was a ten-minute walk to the cinema from the bus station. I was early, so I dawdled, looking at the shop windows. The rain was still in the air, but the drops were so tiny it was like a cold mist, and I loved the feel and taste of it and, even better, I always thought my hair looked best when it was wet from the rain.

  I walked through the big department store on the main street, which was open late on Thursdays. A woman who looked so perfect she could have stepped straight out of a magazine smiled at me and asked if I wanted to try some aftershave. I suppose she was bored. I blushed, and let her spray some on me. It smelled nice—of lemons mixed with flowers. I’d never smelled like this before. It made me feel good, and I didn’t mind that I was being followed by three store detectives.

  There was a section where they sold amazing chocolates. You could select each one, and then they put them in a box for you and wrapped it up for you by hand. I checked my money. I had nearly forty pounds. It was all my money, taken from under the paper in my sock drawer. The tickets for the cinema were six pounds each. I decided to spend ten pounds on chocolates for Maddy, which would leave eighteen pounds for emergencies. A nice lady helped me choose, and when she asked if they were for my mum, I laughed and said no, and then blushed again, and she smiled at me, and I think she put extra effort into wrapping them up nicely, with the box first inside some cellophane, and then in thick pink paper, and then tied with a ribbon in a bow, and finally put into a paper bag with handles made of what looked like straw twisted into a kind of string. It felt like the most precious thing I’d ever held, even if there weren’t very many chocolates in it.

  I couldn’t remember exactly where we’d arranged to meet—I mean, inside or outside. I went into the foyer and made sure she wasn’t already there, checking every place she might have been. Then I waited outside for a while, but I got a bit cold, because by now my shirt was soaked. Back inside, I looked at the electronic board with the films scrolling across it in angular red letters. I didn’t go to the cinema very often; in fact in my whole life I’d probably only been about five times, and I was looking forward to that part of the evening too. I thought about buying the tickets, but I was worried I’d choose the wrong film. Three different films started at eight. It was nearly that now, but I knew the adverts and trailers went on for ages. I walked up and down in the lobby, checking the big clock every few seconds as people, young and old, scruffy and smart, most laden with huge buckets of popcorn and paper cups of Coke the size of wastepaper bins, flowed around me.

  I didn’t have a mobile to call her, but that didn’t matter, because I didn’t know her number. At five past eight I began to get worried. At quarter past I began to feel sick. More films began at half past. Then half past went, and then nine o’clock. By then I was in a weird sort of trance, not really expecting her to show, not able to move in case I missed her. And if I left, then, well, all hope would be gone. If I stayed, there would always be some hope.

  At half past nine people began to come out from one of the earlier sittings. I recognized one of them. It was Kirk. I was in the middle of the foyer, and there was nowhere to hide. At least I thought to hold the fancy bag behind my back.

  “Hey, Paul,” he said, in an unexpectedly friendly way. “What are you doing here?” He was with a girl. She was from the year below, and I didn’t know her name, and Kirk didn’t introduce her. She had straight black hair and black eyeliner and a black dress that went down to the floor. She was pretty, but she looked very young, and maybe Kirk was a bit ashamed of her and that’s why he didn’t introduce her. Or he was ashamed of knowing me.

  “I was … I mean, I’m … I’m waiting for someone.”

  Then Kirk talked about the film they’d seen, discussing the cinematography and stuff I didn’t really understand. It was a French film called La règle du jeu, showing as part of some arty movie season they had on. The little girl looked bored out of her skull.

  Finally Kirk seemed to be ready to go. As a parting shot he asked, “Who is it you’re waiting for, anyway?”

  “No one,” I said. “No one, really.”

  “No, go on, tell me,” he said, and he sounded so friendly I thought that maybe I’d got him wrong, and that he was OK. And I felt like an idiot, standing there, obviously waiting for someone and then denying it. And so, stupidly, I told him.

  “Maddy. We arranged to see a film.”

  His face did something odd—a quick smile, followed shortly by a look of grave concern.

  “Maddy? But don’t you know?”

  “What?”

  “She’s with Shane tonight.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They’re having an evening in, together.”

  Kirk said it slowly, sounding each word, making it sound like something special and different.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Well, you know what his mum and dad are like—they let him do anything down there. They’re really laid-back about it. As long as they use condoms. Reckon they’ll bring them coffee and cigarettes on a tray afterward. Wish my parents were more like that.”

  “C’mon,” said the girl. She was looking at her feet.

  “Yeah, yeah,” said Kirk, and gave me a gee, what is it with these chicks kind of look. Then he creased his face once again into an expression of concern. “You did know, didn’t you? I mean, about Maddy and Shane? About them shagging?”

  “Yeah, course,” I said. “We were just going to see the … going to the cinema. There was a film … She must have …”

  “Yeah, forgot or something. Women, eh!”

  And then the girl gave him a playful slap and dragged him away, and he called out, “See you tomorrow,” over his shoulder.

  I waited till they were gone, and then went to sit on the steps leading up to the screens on level two. I sat there for about twenty minutes. To begin with I played over and over what Kirk had said. Then I imagined Shane and Maddy together. I could see them kissing, talking with their heads together. So close that they could stop talking and start kissing without having to move. And I heard them laughing at me, laughing at the geek who’d thought he could become just like them. Who maybe thought he could get into that tiny space between them, a space so tight that even a kiss could span it.

  I threw the chocolates in the bin and walked home through the rain.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I got home at about eleven. My dad was still up, watching the telly.

  “You’re late, son,” he said, his eyes flicking briefly from the screen to me, and then back again.

  He didn’t notice that I was soaked, that my teeth were chattering. Didn’t notice that I’d left a trail of my guts all the way from the center of town.

  I went and turned the telly off. My dad stood up and began to splutter. Turning the telly off wasn’t something you did in our house. Then he saw my face and the spluttering stopped.

  “It was all lies, wasn’t it, Dad?”

  “What are you talking about? Have you been drinking? Is that where you’ve been?”

  “You’re a liar, Dad, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, son.”

  “About that big fight, all them years ago, up at Temple Moor.”

  My dad’s face went suddenly blank and loose.

  “Who have you been talking to?”

  “What difference does that make? Tell me the truth. Were you a hero? Did you save those kids? Because I heard you shat yourself.”

  Then my dad slapped me across the face. He hadn’t hit me for years. It stung, but I didn’t flinch. I’d
taken many worse slaps at school.

  “I don’t want to hear language like that in this house,” he said, but already I saw that he had no real fight in him.

  I wanted to hit him back. I didn’t, but not because I was afraid to. The opposite. It didn’t seem worth it.

  “You ran, didn’t you, Dad. You didn’t stick up for anyone.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Then you should have left it there. Why did you boast about it? Why did you lie?”

  “Son, come here,” he said, his voice broken, his face soft, melting, almost, from the bones. “I’m sorry I hit you—let me …” And as he tried to touch me—hug me, I think—that’s when I did hit him. Not really hit, more sort of shove. He fell back onto the settee, and I turned and ran up the stairs, and sat on the floor in my bedroom with my back to the door so no one could get in.

  I stayed there all night like that, as wide awake as I’ve ever been in my life, and slowly the shirt dried upon my back.

  But no. Players have not abandoned the board. A hand moves the piece. A knight is taken. And the knife is closer to me.

  TWENTY-THREE

  The next day at morning break I went to chess club. I thought it was a good place to be invisible. Mr. Boyle smiled when he saw me.

  “Good man,” he said, and introduced me to some of the other kids there. They were all ages—little ones from Year Seven, gangly Year Tens, fat boys from in between. There weren’t any girls at all.

  Mr. Boyle sat me down next to one of the young kids.

  “Simon’ll give you a game. Do you know how the pieces move?”

  “Yeah.”

  Simon was too small for his clothes. When he wriggled, they stayed still. He had round glasses, and he stuck his tongue out when he concentrated.