Zoë nods. She takes a couple of deep breaths.
‘When? To who?’
‘To me . . . a few times,’ Zoë says.
Mr Moore leans back in his chair again. He looks up at the ceiling, runs his hands through his hair, like he’s thinking. Then he looks back at Zoë and me. ‘What exactly did he say?’ Mr Moore says.
Zoë doesn’t say anything straight away. The phone rings in the office outside. The clock on the wall ticks. ‘I can’t remember exactly,’ she says. ‘But yesterday, I went looking for Gary after school and I saw Paul Knaggs on his way back from the bus stop. I asked him where Gary was and he said that Gary had probably killed himself. He said once before that he hoped Gary was dead.’
Mr Moore sighs. He raises his eyebrows. He picks his notebook up off his desk again. ‘OK,’ he says. He pauses. I don’t think he knows what to say. ‘Do you know why he said that?’
Zoë shakes her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I wasn’t at school yesterday. But something happened, I think.’
It’s quiet again for a few seconds. Just the ticking of the clock, the squeak as Mr Moore moves in his chair. Then he sighs and sits forward again. ‘How about you, David? Were you at school yesterday?’
I can hear my heartbeat in my temples. I can feel it in my ears. I look up at Mr Moore. ‘Yes,’ I say. It comes out like a croak.
‘Do you know what happened yesterday? Do you know why Paul might have said that about Gary?’
They’re both looking at me. Mr Moore and Zoë. I look back at Mr Moore, cos I can’t look at Zoë. I can tell that her eyes are begging me to tell him, to make this all right. And I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know. I take a couple of breaths, try and stay calm. And I open my mouth.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Yeah, I know what happened.’
.
Gary
I grab what I need out of the shed, put the gun over my shoulder and sneak back through the hedge. No one sees me. Mum and Dad probably haven’t even noticed I didn’t come home yesterday. They might think I’m still at school. Except Paul Knaggs has probably gone squealing to the teachers by now. The school will have phoned Mum.
I check along the track. No one’s around. I run across the track and over the fence, into Yaxton’s field. And then I keep walking, till I’m well away from the track. I sit down. Check the gun out. It’s seen better days. Dad used to take good care of it, used to clean it and oil it after he’d finished with it. But he don’t any more. He hardly uses it. It still smells of the oil, though. It makes me think of when I was little, when Dad used to clean his gun in the kitchen. I used to sit at the table and watch him. But he wouldn’t let me help him. Said it was too dangerous. But I used to like the smell of the oil.
I empty the stuff out of the front pocket of Zoë’s jumper. Screwdriver, wrench, hammer, Zoë’s bloody bubble blower. And some cartridges for the gun, four of them, red ones. I take two of the cartridges, load them into the chamber of the gun and then snap it shut. All I need to do is point it at my head and pull the trigger and it’ll stop. All of it. For ever. No one would be able to get me then. There’s no way I could survive it. But I keep the barrel of the gun pointed away from me, put the other cartridges and the stuff back in the pocket of the jumper and stand up.
I walk further up the field, till I’m level with the gate into Henry’s field on the other side of the road. I check the road. There’s a car coming, a blue metro van – old Victor’s van. So I duck down and wait for it to go past. He takes ages. That van’ll only go about ten mile an hour. When he’s past, I leave it a few seconds, then check the road again. No cars. So I jump the fence and then race across the road, into Henry’s field.
I put the gun down near the hedge, so no one will see it. I get the tools out of the pocket and try to mend Henry’s stupid bloody gate. I haven’t mended one before. I helped Dad put one up in another field once. It isn’t easy on my own, though. See, when I hung the gate with Dad, one of us held each end, so we could get it level and lift it on to the frame properly. But when I pick it up on my own, I stumble about all over the place, nearly break my bloody neck as I fall backwards. It takes a couple of goes to lift it on to the frame. I can’t find the nuts to fasten it on, so it’ll just have to do as it is. It won’t fall off, anyway. I’ve made something right. It doesn’t look like it’s been bust any more.
I walk over to the hedge and pick up Dad’s gun. I turn and walk quickly across the field to the barn, cos I don’t want anyone to see me. The sun’s just coming out from behind the clouds. It’s pretty warm. It’s nearly summertime. There are flowers in among all the grass and nettles and brambles in the field. Poppies mostly, but there’s others as well. I don’t know their names, though. And there are loads of birds singing. A cuckoo, some blackbirds, robins, a skylark.
I don’t go into the barn. It’s still shady in there. I sit against the wall instead, on some overgrown grass, in the sunshine. I put the gun down next to me and I shut my eyes, let my head fall back so that it rests against the crumbly bricks of the barn. I put my head in my hands and take some deep breaths. I can feel tears forming behind my eyes. I bite my bottom lip, try and stop myself from crying. But the tears start to come anyway, start to leak from my eyes and run down my face. I try to fight them, try to stop them, but I can’t. They just keep coming and I start sobbing. And I keep thinking, Why’s all this shit happened to me? How come I’m the one who finds a dead body? How come I’m the one who gets the piss taken out of them? Over and over and over. How come I end up with a dad that’d rather spend his time in the pub than at home? But the thought that keeps coming back, the one that won’t go away, is: I don’t want to be here, I don’t want this to be happening, I want it to end.
Maybe this is what it was like for Henry, before he done himself in. Was that why he blew his brains out? Cos he couldn’t stand it any more? Cos he couldn’t go on for another day feeling like this? Cos he just couldn’t face waking up the next day feeling the same way?
The tears have stopped now. I feel angry. At everyone. But I’m angry at myself more than any of them. Cos it’s all down to me, the reason that this stuff happened. I must be like a magnet or something, attracting all this hassle. Like a shoe that can’t help but land in shit with every step. That’s me. And if I don’t do something about it, it’s gonna keep happening for the rest of my life. I open my eyes, wipe them on the sleeve of Zoë’s jumper. It doesn’t smell like her any more. It smells of tractors and gun oil and BO. It smells nasty. It smells like me.
I sigh, and look around the field. I think back to when I was seven or eight, back to when Henry was alive, when there were cows in the fields, when Dad worked here and I helped him. Why can’t it be like that again? With Dad giving a shit about me, instead of spending all his time in the Swan getting pissed up. That’s what I want. That’s what I really want. More than anything in the world. It isn’t gonna be like that again, though. Never. Henry’s gone. The farm’s gone. And Dad might as well have gone. It’s over. Things are rubbish. And that’s the way they’re gonna stay.
I pick up the gun by the barrel, rest it on my shoulder, look down the barrel and take aim at a rusty tractor in the field. My finger’s resting on the trigger. One movement, one second and I could fill the tractor full of lead. I sigh. I put the gun down, let it rest in my lap. When Henry shot himself, he stuck his bloody gun in his mouth. Pulled the trigger. Covered the walls in farmer brains. Just like that. BANG. One second he had all this shit going through his head, the next just a load of shot. And then nothing . . .
I take a few deep breaths. I can feel the tears coming back. I screw up my face and I start sobbing again. I just can’t stop myself. So I pick up the gun. Turn it, so the barrel’s facing me. I open my mouth. The metal of the barrel clunks against my teeth. Makes me cringe. Makes me feel sick. I close my eyes, put my finger on the trigger. One pull and i
t’s over. No more Gary Wood. Then I don’t have to think these stupid thoughts any more, don’t have to feel like this. I squeeze my finger against the trigger. One more movement. That’s all it’ll take. One more squeeze and . . .
But I can’t do it. I take the barrel out of my mouth. And tears start to fall down my face again. I can’t even kill myself properly. I pick up the gun, aim at the rusty tractor again and squeeze the trigger.
BANG.
I smack into the wall of the barn as the shot flies out of the end of the gun. Jesus. It hurts. My back hurts. I think it’s bleeding. It stings like mad. Stupid idiot. I should have known it’d do that. What a dickhead. I shift myself forward a bit, away from the wall, and I reach around under my shirt. There’s a graze there. It stings a bit when I touch it or when my shirt touches it. I put the gun down next to me on the grass and I get up. I walk over to the rusty tractor. It’s an old Ford. It was full of rust holes anyway. But now it’s full of holes where the shot hit it as well. Looks like all it needs is a good kick to finish it off for good.
I turn away from the tractor, look up at the sky. All the clouds are blowing over. Most of the sky’s blue now. I can feel the heat of the sun on my back. I think about taking my jumper – Zoë’s jumper – off. I’m too hot in it. But I don’t want to take it off. I want to keep it close to me. I want her to be here now. If she was here, she’d be telling me to stop feeling sorry for myself. She’d be saying that nothing’s as bad as you think. But she doesn’t know what it feels like to be me, to be inside my head. She doesn’t know what it’s like to have a head so full of . . . of . . . of I don’t know what, but so full that you just want to find the ‘off’ button and switch your brain off. But maybe she’ll never see me again. She probably wouldn’t want to, either, after what I did yesterday, after what I did this morning. She must realise by now that I’m bad news, just like everyone else has.
I walk over to the farmhouse. The tape that the police put up around it has started to come away. Some of it’s flapping in the breeze. I go to the window, put my face right up to the glass and shade it with my hands. I look at the table. Where Dad found Henry. Where Henry sat down when he’d finally had enough. Where he ended it all. You wouldn’t think it now, looking in there. They cleaned it all up. One day someone will buy this bloody farmhouse, if they don’t knock it down. One day someone will have a table right there, near the window, where they’ll eat their breakfast and look out across the fields. And no one will ever tell them that where they’re sitting is where someone put a shotgun in their mouth and pulled the trigger. Cos no one would buy the house if they knew that.
I turn away from the farmhouse and start walking back across the field. I put my hands into the pocket at the front of Zoë’s jumper. I feel the pot of bubble mixture, the one she bought in East Strand. I smile. Just for a second. And then I take my hands out of the jumper and I walk through the gate.
.
Zoë
Today has gone so slowly. And all day I’ve had only one thought: I need to get home. I need to find Gary. I need to know that he’s all right. I need to tell him what’s happened. That everything isn’t as bad as he thinks it is.
When the bus finally puts us down in Wallingham, I rush straight off. There’s only one place that I can think of to look. Henry’s farm. If he’s not there, then I don’t know where else he could be. I race right through the village, running down the roads, past my road and out of the other side of the village, towards the farm. And as I walk up the road, past the hedges that shield Henry’s field from view, I feel nervous. About whether he’s there. About whether he wants to talk to me, whether he even wants to listen to me. About whether he’s still alive.
As I get close to the gate, I see something up in the air in front of me, drifting across the road, glinting in the sunshine. Bubbles. Loads of them, being carried up and away by the wind. I run the last few metres. And there he is. Gary. Sitting on the gate that he drove through yesterday, the bubble blower near his mouth. He looks up at me as I walk towards him. He takes the bubble blower away from his mouth and looks embarrassed. I smile at him. He just looks back at me.
‘Gary.’ I don’t know what else to say.
He doesn’t answer. He just looks back at me, like there’s something that’s confusing him.
I walk up to him, climb the gate and sit up there too. The gate creaks a bit, like it’ll buckle under our weight, but it holds steady. ‘Are you OK, Gary?’ I say.
He puts the bubbles away, in the front pocket of my hoodie. He shrugs. ‘Not really.’
‘Have you been home?’
Gary shakes his head. ‘No.’ He looks down at his feet as he swings them out in front of him.
‘You should,’ I say.
Gary looks up, not at me, but across the road, at another field. ‘Why’s that?’ he says. ‘So I can get in trouble? So my dad can give me a slap for not coming home? So they can send me to see a shrink? So the police can nick me? I’ve messed everything up, Zoë.’
‘They’re worried about you, Gary. They want you to come home. They’ll probably report you missing if you don’t go home soon. And then the police’ll be looking for you.’
Gary doesn’t say anything.
And I don’t know what to say. Or at least I do – I have about a million things that I need to say to him – but I don’t know how to start. So I just open my mouth, without thinking, and blurt something out. ‘I saw you at school this morning.’
Gary turns slowly. He looks at me for a second and then looks away again. His cheeks are red.
‘It was a stupid thing to do, you know, Gary,’ I say.
He looks down at his feet again. ‘I know,’ he mumbles.
‘It was funny, though,’ I say. ‘Sort of.’
Gary looks up at me. He looks confused again. ‘It wasn’t,’ he says quietly. ‘It was a psycho thing to do. They’ll lock me up if they find me. I made him think he was gonna die.’
I look away for a second. He’s right. I just wanted to make him feel better.
‘Did he go and tell Mr Moore?’ Gary says.
I nod. ‘Yeah.’
Gary laughs. ‘Well, that’s me fucked, then! I’ll be chucked out for good,’ he says, almost like he’s relieved.
I don’t say anything for a few seconds. I just listen to the wind blowing across the field, listen to the birds calling. But it’s too much. I have to say something. ‘Paul Knaggs has been given an exclusion,’ I say as casually as I can.
Gary’s head spins round. But he doesn’t say anything right away – he just looks at me, with his mouth wide open. The wind ruffles his hair.
I smile at him. ‘I’m serious,’ I say.
Gary keeps staring. ‘Why?’
‘Because of all the stuff he’s done,’ I say.
‘But –’ Gary starts and then stops.
‘It was David,’ I say. ‘He felt bad about what happened. He came and found me, made me go with him to see Mr Moore. We told him the whole lot.’
Gary looks away from me, at the ground. He’s got this weird look on his face. I can’t tell if he’s happy or sad or what.
‘Are you all right?’
Gary nods his head. He slips down off the gate. He looks dazed, like he doesn’t know what’s going on.
‘Mr Moore’s not gonna throw you out, Gary,’ I say. ‘He said so. He just wants to talk to you.’
Gary looks at me again. No smile. No thank you. Not that I thought there would be. Then he looks away again. ‘I’m sorry, Zoë,’ he says. ‘For everything.’ And he takes off my hoodie. He hands it to me. ‘I’m going home,’ he says. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow?’
I smile at him and nod. But he’s already marching off down the road.
.
David
Mum and Ollie are already home when I get ba
ck. I can hear Ollie’s music blaring out of his window before I even put my key in the door. And Mum’s in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a cup of tea in her hands.
‘Hi, David,’ she says. ‘Good day? Do you want a cup of tea?’
I shake my head, put my bag down and head over to the sink. I fill a glass up with water and take a gulp. And then I go back to the table. ‘You all right, Mum?’
She looks up at me with a start. ‘What? Sorry, David. I’m OK,’ she says in this really flat voice.
I stare back at her. I wish I hadn’t asked. I don’t know what to say to her now.
But it doesn’t matter, cos Mum opens her mouth again and says, ‘Margaret phoned earlier, David. Gary’s still not been home.’
My stomach turns over. I look away from Mum. ‘Oh,’ I say. I think about telling her what happened at school today. But that’d probably just make things worse. Besides, she might know already if she’s spoken to Gary’s mum.
‘Margaret’s going to phone the police soon if he doesn’t turn up.’
I sigh. I still feel useless. Mum and me both stare into space without saying anything. After a while, I grab my bag and walk upstairs.
I lie down on my bed and switch my mobile on. As soon as it starts up, the message tone goes. Before I can open the message, the tone goes again. Two new messages. Both from Knaggs. I open the first one: I CAN’T BELIEVE U. SOME FRIEND U R. I open the next one: UR DEAD WHEN I GET BACK TO SCHOOL. NO ONE LIKES A GRASS U KNOW.
I switch my phone off and throw it down on my bed. I shut my eyes. What a mess. Even when I decide to try and put things right, I leave it too late. Wood’s probably done something stupid by now. He’s probably got a real can of petrol and blown the school up. Jesus! I don’t even want to think about what he’s done. Cos it’s partly my fault.
I open my eyes again. I reach down the bed and grab my phone, switch it back on. I start to write a reply to Knaggs: I WAS ONLY DOING WHAT WAS RIGHT. I’M SORRY. WOOD IS STILL MISSING. I’M WORRIED. I WISH I KNEW WHERE TO FIND HIM. But as soon as I’ve written that, I know I can never send it to Knaggs. There’d be no point. He wouldn’t understand. So I switch off my phone instead. And I lie back down on my bed and concentrate on listening to the thump of the bass drum coming through the wall from Ollie’s music, so I don’t have to think about anything else.
Inside My Head Page 18
