Inside My Head

by Jim Carrington

  I get up off the floor and walk over to the window. How can they even call that a garden? When Mum said that we’d have a house in the countryside with a garden, I thought it’d have a thatched roof and roses. But the reality is the ugliest house you’ve ever seen. It’s like the kind of house a little kid makes out of Lego. Only much worse.

  It’s doing my head in. This room. This house. Mum. Dad. The baby. Everything. There’s only one thing for it. I head down the stairs to our new tacky white plastic front door and I open it.

  And just as I’m closing the door behind me, I yell out, ‘I’m going out.’

  And I’m gone before anyone can stop me.

  .

  David

  I’m already on question four as the bell goes.

  ‘Hand in your books when you’ve finished,’ Mr H calls over the noise. ‘Then you can leave.’

  Mills and me hand our books in and walk out of the lab, to the cloakroom.

  About thirty seconds later, Knaggs joins us. ‘D’you see Wood?’ he says. ‘I thought he was gonna start blubbing!’

  I nod my head. ‘Yeah, I know,’ I say. ‘He looked like he was gonna explode.’

  ‘Leave it now, though,’ Mills says. ‘You know what he’s like.’

  I nod.

  Knaggs shrugs. ‘He won’t do anything. He’s a pussy!’

  No one answers him. I avoid Knaggs’s eyes.

  We all set about looking for our blazers and bags on the floor of the cloakroom. I find my blazer, brush the dust off it and start looking for my bag.

  Then there’s a noise. SMACK! Loud and shocking.

  The whole place goes silent and we all turn to look. Knaggs is lying on the floor of the cloakroom, holding the side of his face. His mouth is open. He looks stunned. For a second, I’m confused. But then my brain starts to fill in the missing parts and I look around for Wood. But he’s not there. The door out of the cloakroom swings shut.

  We all crowd round Knaggs.

  .

  Mr Moore comes and gets me out of literacy, next lesson. He doesn’t say what it’s about. He just walks me through the empty corridors in silence. But it’s obvious what he wants me for.

  When we get to his office, I expect to see Knaggs sitting there. But he isn’t. Neither’s Wood.

  ‘Take a seat, David,’ Mr Moore says. He points at a comfy green chair.

  I sit down in it and sink back. But I feel awkward, so I sit up straight instead. My hands are sweaty. My heart’s pounding.

  Mr Moore starts off, going on about how I’m a responsible boy and that he trusts me to tell the truth and all that stuff. I just sit there feeling weird. See, I know what he’s gonna ask me to do. He wants me to point the finger. He wants me to grass someone up. Knaggs or Wood. It’s what teachers always want – some mug like me to make their job easier. I have a decision to make, I know. I can tell him the truth and keep the teachers’ rules. But the thing is, then I’d be breaking the kid rules. I’d be breaking the biggest kid rule of all: grassing up my best mate. Or I can lie. It’s the kind of choice where I have no choice.

  ‘Tell me what happened in the science lab, David,’ Mr Moore says.

  I sit and think for a moment. The truth’s easy. I know exactly what happened. We were messing about all lesson, like normal, and Knaggs started taking the mick out of Wood. The rest of us just encouraged him to do it. But Knaggs pushed it too far. Anyone could see how angry Wood was getting – he was about to explode. And then Wood went mental. But I can’t say any of that, not the stuff that actually happened. Knaggs would get into trouble. I’m gonna have to lie, bend the truth a little. Otherwise my life won’t be worth living. I shift uncomfortably in my seat. I’ve got a nervous guilty feeling in my stomach and I haven’t even started lying yet.

  ‘Was there an argument, David?’ Mr Moore says. ‘Tell me what you remember . . .’

  I look up at him. He’s looking straight at me, almost smiling but not quite. I take a deep breath. ‘It started when Gary came into science late, sir,’ I say. No lies yet but my heart’s still beating like crazy. ‘Gary and Knaggs – I mean, Paul Knaggs – well, they were having a laugh, taking the mickey out of each other, just winding each other up.’ My voice is shaking slightly. It doesn’t sound like me talking.

  Mr Moore picks a notebook up off his desk and then a pen. He writes something down. And then he stops and looks up at me again. He smiles. ‘It was both of them, you say?’

  I nod.

  Mr Moore makes more notes. Then he looks up at me. ‘OK. How were they winding each other up, David?’

  I look down at my feet. ‘Don’t know. Just the usual, really. They always do it. Just calling each other names and that. It was nothing serious, sir. It was just a bit of give and take.’

  I look up. Mr Moore’s writing more things in his notebook and nodding his head. Over his shoulder I can see a signed cricket bat and an old photo of the school team. I stare at them. God, I wish I was outside playing cricket instead of sitting here.

  ‘Go on,’ Mr Moore says.

  I look back at him with a start. I must look guilty as hell. So I look at my shoes again. See, I’m a rubbish liar. People can see it in my eyes straight away. I can’t hide it. ‘Well, then we all got on with our work. Tried to get it all finished before the end of the lesson. Except Gary. He just sort of sat there and stared at the desk. He looked angry. And then he tried to start it all up again,’ I say. And I hate myself for saying it. I think of Wood sitting there in the lab, with that angry face, taking it all. I should be telling Mr Moore about that. But I can’t. I can’t grass on Knaggs. That’s the rules. The kid rules. He’s my mate. I have to stick up for him. ‘Gary kept trying to start it all off again, calling Paul short and that. And so Paul took the mickey back a bit. And that’s when Gary started to look really angry, like he couldn’t handle it any more.’

  Mr Moore raises his eyebrows. ‘I see,’ he says. ‘Can you remember exactly what was said?’

  I stare back at him. The ‘sort of’ smile has gone from his face. He looks serious now. I feel like he’s about to rumble me. I shake my head. ‘Not exactly, sir,’ I say. I look up at the cricket bat again, to avoid looking in his eyes. ‘Gary was taking the mickey out of Paul for being short. And Paul was taking the mickey back, saying Gary’s head looks like a cheese puff. And then Gary just got really angry. He said he was gonna kill Paul – that sort of stuff.’

  Mr Moore raises his eyebrows again and notes something else down in his book. He underlines it three times, then looks back at me. ‘You’re sure that’s what he said, David . . . ?’

  I nod. ‘Yeah.’ My heart’s thumping so hard I can hear it in my ears. I feel sick. I want to be out of this room.

  ‘Absolutely sure . . . ?’

  I take a breath. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Thank you, David,’ Mr Moore says. And then he shows me to the door.

  .

  Zoë

  There’s not much in this village. But there is a shop. When we came here to look a few months back – when Mum found out she was having a baby and decided we had to get out of London – she bought me an ice cream and took me to the park, like I was a little kid.

  The shop’s about five minutes’ walk away, on the village green. I have to walk on the road, cos they don’t seem to have heard of pavements in the countryside. There’s just a grass verge that’s soaking wet. When I get near the shop, I check my purse: 31p. I look both ways. No traffic. So I cross.

  There’s a sign on the door in neat handwriting: Only two schoolchildren are permitted to enter the shop at any one time. It makes me think of Morden. There’s a shop near my school. My old school. There’s a sign there as well. Not quite as neat, though. Or as polite. It got put up after Jodie started stealing sweets and giving them away. That was back in year seven. She doesn
’t do that any more.

  Inside it’s tiny, like a corridor with shelves on either side. Everything looks old and shabby, like a museum. The sweets are near the counter, at the end of the corridor. Behind the counter there’s an old lady, wearing one of those old-lady aprons, the ones that are more like coats. As I take a look at the rack of sweets I can see her out of the corner of my eye, staring at me down her nose. She’s probably looking at me in my black hoodie. I know what she’s thinking: Teenager + Black Hoodie = Shoplifter. I ignore her, concentrate on the chocolate. There isn’t much to choose from here: Mars, Snickers, Twix, KitKat, Turkish Delight, Bounty Dark and Chomp. Every single bar has a price sticker on it. 31p isn’t enough for anything except a Chomp bar. I pick one off the shelf and hand it to the old lady. She smiles as she takes it.

  ‘Not at school today, dear?’

  My stomach turns over. I look up at her. She’s still smiling. I shake my head. ‘Haven’t started yet,’ I say. ‘We just moved here yesterday.’

  ‘Oh, how lovely,’ she says. Then she picks up the bar code scanner. She holds it like it might bite her. She waves the Chomp bar in front of it until there’s a beep. ‘Fifteen pence, please, dear,’ she says.

  I hand her the money and she hands me the chocolate.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  She smiles again. ‘You’ll like it round here,’ she says. ‘There are lots of nice young people in the village, lots of things to do.’

  I smile at her, put the chocolate in the front pocket of my hoodie and then leave the shop.

  .

  David

  We’re all in the playground, with our backs against the chain-link fence, eating our sandwiches. All except Knaggs. He’s been in with Mr Moore for ages. Hope I didn’t say anything by mistake that’s got him in trouble. Don’t think I did. Probably Wood has grassed on him. I mean, what’s Wood got to lose? He’s pretty much the lowest of the low anyway. He has no friends, so it’s not like he can lose any. And most people are too scared of him to try and fight him, cos of the way he loses his temper. Or maybe Mr Moore saw through the lies that I was telling him. Even teachers can tell when people are lying, surely. Sometimes. I mean, Mr Moore must know that there are kid rules, that I wasn’t gonna grass on Knaggs, that he’s my mate. He’ll probably call me back in, give me a bollocking for lying.

  But as I’m eating my cheese sandwiches, the double door out to the playground swings open and Knaggs walks out. He swaggers over towards us. He looks pretty happy with himself for someone who’s been smacked in the gob. I guess he can’t have got into trouble after all. I get up and walk towards him. Joe and Mills follow.

  ‘What happened? You in trouble?’ I say.

  Knaggs grins. ‘You won’t believe this,’ he says. ‘This is so funny.’ He pauses.

  We stare back at him, eager to hear.

  ‘I didn’t get in trouble at all!’ he says. ‘Mr Moore made Wood apologise to me!’

  We laugh. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Knaggs says. ‘Wood’s in so much trouble. Mr Moore said it was cos of what you said to him, Davey-boy.’ Knaggs looks straight at me and smiles. ‘Nice one. You’re my star witness!’

  I smile. Then I look away. In my head I can picture Wood sitting in the science lab, his eyes bulging, the veins in his temples pulsing.

  ‘What did you say to Mr Moore?’ Mills says. ‘How did you manage to get Knaggs off the hook? He was as guilty as a dog with a string of sausages hanging out of its mouth.’

  I shrug. ‘Just said that Wood went a bit over the top, that’s all,’ I say.

  Mills laughs and spins round on his heels. ‘Well, whatever you said, you should be a defence lawyer. You’d earn millions if you can get a man as guilty as Knaggs out of trouble!’

  ‘Shut up, Mills,’ says Knaggs. ‘Anyway, I haven’t got to the best bit yet. I had to wait in the office while Wood’s mum came and picked him up. He’s been excluded till next week! And they’re gonna try and get him sent to a shrink! I swear he was crying.’

  We laugh again. But I don’t laugh very hard or very long. It doesn’t feel right.

  ‘Why are they doing that?’ I say.

  Knaggs looks like he thinks this is the funniest thing that’s ever happened in the history of the world. ‘Well, duh,’ he says. ‘Maybe it’s because he’s a complete frigging psycho! I’m not the first person he’s hit for no reason, Davey-boy. He hit a year seven kid the other day!’

  I should say something. Someone should. Why doesn’t Mills tell Knaggs he’s being a div? Why doesn’t he tell him that he wasn’t hit for no reason? Why don’t I tell him?

  Kid rules, that’s why. Standing by your mates is more important than knowing what’s the right thing to do.

  I walk back over to the fence and sit down. I close my lunch box. I’m not all that hungry any more.

  .

  Gary

  As soon as we get to the house, I can hear Patch barking from the back garden. Poor sod gets left out there every day. Mum and me walk up the path to the house. I stand on the step as Mum tries to open the front door – Dad still hasn’t mended it. Mum turns the key and then forces the door with her shoulder and her foot. It needs planing and sanding down, cos it sticks whenever it’s damp outside. Mum’s been at Dad to do it for ages. She might as well save her breath.

  Mum wipes her feet on the mat. She holds the door open for me, staring at me, silent. She’s got this look on her face. I don’t know what it means. She looks fed up with me, though. Ashamed, most likely.

  ‘Wipe your feet, Gary,’ she says as I walk in.

  I shuffle my feet on the mat.

  ‘Now, Gary, I want you to go upstairs and get changed out of your school uniform,’ she says. ‘And while you’re up there, you can have a think about what you’ve done, young man. Do you understand me?’

  I nod.

  ‘I’ll come and get you when your lunch is ready.’ She turns and walks towards the kitchen.

  I stomp up the stairs slowly, imagining each one is Paul Knaggs’s ugly fucker little head. By the time I get to the landing I’m sobbing. No tears, only sobs that sound like geese honking. I sink to my knees, bury my head in my hands and just kneel there, in a little ball outside my room. I can hear Mum downstairs, in the kitchen. She’s put the radio on. Bloody country and western music. She’s banging around in the cupboards, getting plates out and stuff. And all the while I kneel there, thinking about Paul Fucking Knaggs. He’ll be with his smug friends at school, taking the mickey out of me. I saw him waiting outside Mr Moore’s office when Mum took me home. He was smiling. Bastard. I wish I’d killed him. Moore would have to kick me out for good then. I’d never have to go back to Wendham High School.

  I’m grinding my teeth – I can feel it. But I can’t stop it. My jaw aches like mad. Feels like every muscle in my body is twitching, angry, tense. My fingers ball up into fists. I want to hit something, I want to hit someone. I want to hit Paul Knaggs, knock that smug grin off his face for good. But I punch the carpet instead – one, two, three, four times. And then I stand up. I can feel real tears now, running down my face. They’re hot, feel like they’re burning my face. I open my bedroom door, go in and slam it behind me. My shitty cheapo trainers are on the floor right in front of me. I take a swing at one of them, kick it. It flies up and across the room, hits the window and then falls to the carpet. It leaves a mess of dried mud on the carpet. I look at the other trainer lying there, and I kick that as well. It skids across the floor, hits the wall and leaves another mess.

  I feel like hitting something else. Smashing it to pieces. But there ain’t anything else around, apart from my clothes. So I take a deep breath. And another. And another. Try and calm down. I get on to my bed and sigh. I start thinking. My brain starts rushing. A million things rush through it. Who the fuck does Knaggs think he is? He don�
�t know anything about me. All that shit about cheese puffs and farmers. He makes me so bloody angry, acting like everything about him is good and everything about me is shit. Well, maybe he’s right.

  I close my eyes, put my head in my hands and sigh. The tears have dried on my cheeks now – I can feel little dried-up bits of salt where they ran. I just sit here, on my bed – head in my hands, eyes closed – and I do nothing. I can’t even think straight. I sit and make a kind of growling noise. Don’t know where it comes from. My jaw clenches up. It feels like there’s a balloon inside my head, filling up with air, squashing the insides of my skull. It feels like it’s gonna explode, cover the room in little bits of my stupid ginger cheese-puff brain.

  I hear Mum clomping up the stairs. And I don’t want her to see me like this. I take my head out of my hands and stare in front of me at nothing. Mum knocks twice on my door. She opens it and stands there in the doorway. She has her hands on her hips. She’s looking straight at me, I can tell, but I don’t look back at her. I can’t. I’ll cry or something.

  ‘I thought I told you to get changed out of your uniform,’ she says.

  I don’t say anything. I just stare in front of me, like she ain’t there.

  She tuts, then says, ‘Come on, Gary. Your lunch is ready.’

  I don’t say anything, don’t look at her. And after five seconds of standing there staring at me, she tuts again, turns and goes back downstairs.

  I clench my fists and close my eyes. I can feel a sob coming on. But I screw my face up and ride it out. And after a minute, I get off the bed and follow her downstairs.

  Mum’s sitting at the table in the kitchen with a cup of tea in her hands. Patch is sitting on the kitchen floor, at Mum’s feet. He wags his tail when I come into the room. Mum looks up at me. She gets up, goes over to the sideboard and comes back with a plate. There’s a cheese sandwich on it. And next to the sandwich, there’s a pile of cheese puffs. I’m not hungry.