Rick and his friends were staring up at him with a mixture of anger and confusion. Two of the boys started to applaud, evidently impressed by Owen’s achievement (a glare from Rick soon put an end to the ovation however).
They all seemed out of breath from their pursuit, whereas Owen, who had ran just as far and had also climbed up at least fifteen metres, had barely broken a sweat. In apparent frustration, another rock was launched, which Owen casually ducked away from. Rick jumped and tried unsuccessfully to mimic Owen’s ascent, an act that Owen couldn’t help but respond to with a smile.
“Coward!” Rick cried, incensed at Owen’s amusement. “When I get up there I’ll wipe that smile off your face.” He turned to his friends “Help me up!”
Dutifully, one of his party linked his hands together and gave Rick a leg-up. Despite getting a good hold of the top of the first sheet of metal, he could not get any higher, losing his hold whilst helplessly clawing at the metal sides.
Owen laughed and his enjoyment was replicated by Rick’s increasingly disloyal group, who now roared with glee as Rick fell backwards and landed against the hard earth on his back.
He stared up at Owen with a feral look, snarling through gritted teeth as he staggered to his feet. Owen’s brief revelry was replaced by an unsettling realisation that his unintentional humiliation of Rick was unlikely to go unpunished.
“You think you’re top dog at the minute, but just you wait,” Rick shouted up. “Just because you can climb up the side of some poxy building doesn’t change the fact that you’re only friend is a girl and people wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire!
“When you get down from there you’re dead, you hear me. Dead, just like your mum!”
He remained staring at Owen manically for a few moments, allowing his words to sink in. Owen wasn’t worried about the threats, but didn’t like being reminding of his mother’s death. Apparently content that Owen had been wounded (albeit emotionally, which wasn’t typically Rick’s preferred method of torture), he turned on his heels and headed towards the school, brushing the soil off his trousers and staggering in obvious pain, which offered a glimmer of hope that Owen’s inevitable punishment may be delayed by Rick’s injuries. On the other hand it might just make him more vengeful. Only time would tell, he thought philosophically.
When the last of the crowd disappeared behind the main leisure centre building, Owen scanned the rest of the park. The man in the hat had left, and the area appeared deserted. With a sudden pang, Owen remembered his exam and made to get down to ground level. This presented itself with a slight problem.
He was at least ten metres off the ground, and did not want to experience the same pain that Rick had felt after falling from a third of the height. So jumping was off the cards. Maybe he could climb down?
He looked at the sides of the sports hall for the places that he had used to climb up with. Aside from the gaps in the metal skin forming a narrow ledge, there was nowhere else to grasp onto, and no sign of the stony holds that he had used for his ascent.
Confused, Owen lay down on his front and peered over the edge. He still could not see how he had managed his ascent, as the sides were virtually smooth. He examined the other sides of the construction. The doors that were on one side had a narrow ridge that extended from the floor to about three metres up, but looked too narrow and slippery to allow him to drop down and grasp. “Must’ve been the adrenaline”, he muttered to himself, in answer to the unspoken question: ‘how on Earth did I get up here?’
“Adrenaline my eye,” a woman’s voice replied from below.
Looking back over the edge that he had climbed, Owen saw his neighbour Mrs Argyle looking back up at him, purple hat and grey mac both present and correct.
“Oh, good morning Mrs Argyle,” Owen responded with an air of normality that was not really suited to either his current altitude or predicament.
“Quite,” Mrs Argyle commented. “Taking in the breadth of one’s domain, are we?”
“Pardon?”
“Never mind.” Mrs Argyle scanned the park as if looking for someone. “Quite a climber you’ve become. I thought swimming was your pastime of choice?” This puzzled Owen as he was sure there was only one other person in the park besides himself, Rick and his gang that could have seen his ascent, and that was a man whose choice of headgear was unlike any he had seen Mrs Argyle adopt.
“Normally I do prefer the pool,” Owen agreed. “I’m only up here out of, err, necessity.”
“Yes I saw. Nice company you keep, I must say. Well, shouldn’t you come down?” she continued. “It’s gone nine o’clock, or are you that confident about your mastery of English that you don’t require the full allotted time?”
Owen looked at his watch. 9:02. He cursed to himself.
“I heard that,” Mrs Argyle scolded, but with a smile on her face. “Come on, climb down. I’ll catch you if you fall.” Owen stared at her in bewilderment. Her smile had been replaced by a serious look, and she was holding her arms out in preparation for him falling. “Come on!”
“I really don’t think…”Owen started, an unlikely vision of her catching his plummeting body in both arms filling his mind’s eye.
“Tish tosh,” Mrs Argyle cut him off. “I saw you climb up, getting down should be a piece of cake.” She bent her knees confidently, a self-belief unfortunately not shared by Owen in either his own or her abilities at preventing at least a dozen of his bones from being broken.
However he couldn’t stay up here all day, and the thought of being rescued by the fire brigade would no doubt result in public humiliation. Deciding that damage to his body was preferable to damage to his pride, he took a series of deep breaths and moved to climb down.
Making sure that his bag was secure over his shoulders, he lay on his front and holding onto the edge of the roof, lowered himself down. Whereas before his feet had easily found purchase on the building's edge, now they uselessly scrambled about from side to side.
“Concentrate on what you’re trying to do!” Mrs Argyle shouted encouragingly, not sounding in the least bit concerned by Owen’s predicament. He glanced down and saw that she was still adopting her catching position, looking like a wicket keeper at a Women’s Institute cricket match.
“Reach out!” she suggested, grinning and nodding.
Reach out? For what? Owen ceased flailing his legs about and decided that there was little chance of him finding anything to hold onto. Panicking, he decided that the roof of the building was much safer than the sides after all.
His hands were tingling and emitting the same white glow as before, and in preparation to pull himself to the roof, he pushed on the sides with his feet. This time they had found purchase, so Owen looked down again to see what on.
His right foot was pressed against the side of the building, but the left one, which felt like it had found the sturdiest foothold, was suspended in mid-air, a white glow surrounding his shoe. Owen stared in disbelief at this rather unexpected but convenient alteration of the laws of physics as he understood them. He could now see that the glow was not coming from him, but was coming from whatever it was that he was stepping down onto. Furthermore, his mysterious foothold appeared distorted by his weight; shimmering in a way that reminded him of heat radiating off a road on a hot summer’s day.
Determining that his foot would probably be safer on something with a more tangible physical presence, Owen pushed down on his left leg so that it would make contact with the metalwork. However his foot stayed put on its unseen resting place, launching Owen off to the right. The sudden movement caused Owen’s hands to slip and he let go of the edge of the roof.
His right arm swung about and his hand grabbed hold of something that again felt like rock, but on closer examination had the same invisible but glowing properties as whatever it was that he was standing on just before. Thinking that as seen as had obviously lost his grip on reality, he might as well release his grip on whatever the unseen item was that he ha
d found floating fifteen metres above the ground. His top half fell back first, with his legs swiftly following. Letting out a cry, he mimicked Rick’s fall from earlier, heading backwards toward to the hard ground below.
Squall
For a brief moment, time seemed to stand still as he began to fall, before he watched with horror as first the edge of the roof, then the sheets of metal that encased the walls passed by quickly. Before he could make a mess on the ground however, a sequence of events transpired that could only describe as being a bit odd.
Firstly, he felt a strong cold wind against his back. It was so strong in fact that it blew his top half forward, righting him from his lying position, so that he was almost standing, albeit without any connection to the ground. The wind continued to move his body upright and Owen could see that, based on the speed the wall was passing him by, his descent was a lot slower than it was before.
Finally his feet made contact with the ground with surprising grace and none of the pain that Owen had anticipated. The wind seemed to have subsided too. What could have been an elegant landing was abruptly ruined by Owen panicking and trying to grab hold of something solid. He lurched forward, hitting his head on the metal wall and bouncing away, landing as he had originally feared: flat on his back.
Owen stared up at the clear sky. A clearly disappointed Mrs Argyle appeared in his view.
“Almost a perfect ten,” she offered as an assessment.
The blow to his head had clearly affected Owen’s faculties, as the only explanation for the blustery conditions that had saved his fall (and most probably his ankles) were that they had originated in his imagination. Furthermore, Mrs Argyle’s hat was still perched proudly on her head, whereas such a wind would have surely blown it away. So there must have been a more logical explanation for his relatively intact body.
“Oh dear, you’re bleeding all over your shirt,” Mrs Argyle pointed out, with both a smile and a strange look which Owen could only interpret as pride. “We had better get you cleaned up.”
“Hmm?” Owen felt his forehead. There was a damp patch that hurt when he prodded it. “Oh, yes. Erm, thanks but I need to get to school. English exam.”
Mrs Argyle was not to be trifled with though. “Now don’t talk such tosh. You’ve had a nasty fall and are making a mess of your shirt. At least let’s pop into the reception there and see if they have a first-aid kit.” She gestured toward the leisure centre, and held out her arm in case he needed steadying.
The thought of bleeding over the abhorrent receptionist’s carpet did have a certain macabre appeal to it, so Owen agreed to this course of action. His legs felt capable of walking so he politely declined the offer of Mrs Argyle’s arm as a crutch. As he followed his neighbour, Owen looked up at the structure from which he had just fallen.
How on earth had he climbed up to such a height? And why had Mrs Argyle not thought that it was odd that his fall had been cushioned by freak weather, or whatever it was that had saved him? Curious.
~ ρ ~
As predicted, the receptionist at the leisure centre had little concern for Owen’s state of wellbeing, focusing all of her alarm on the state he was making on the carpet. After a few sharp words from Mrs Argyle, helped no doubt by the realisation that the puddle of teenage blood was getting larger by the second, she lamented and agreed to allow the use of her meagre selection of bandages and sticking plasters.
Huddled in the disabled toilet, Mrs Argyle deftly (but by no means gently) mopped the blood from Owen’s head. Looking in the mirror, Owen saw that the wound to his forehead was neither as deep nor as wide as he had feared, but did extend from his hairline to just above his left eyebrow.
Mrs Argyle removed all of the hair that had accumulated in it and opposed the edges of the wound very neatly using a strip of sticking plaster she had cut up (the contents of Mrs Argyle’s handbag apparently included a Swiss Army knife).
“Good as new,” she proclaimed.
Owen’s assessment was not quite as glowing, based on his newly acquired talent at impersonating Frankenstein’s monster, and the state of his once white but now raspberry-ripple patterned shirt. She had done a much better job than he could have achieved though. Perhaps she was a nurse before she retired?
Before he could question his neighbour on her lifelong career decisions, she was ushering him out of the toilet cubicle.
“Okey dokey, off to your exam then, no reason to dilly dally,” she said cheerfully.
They walked out of the leisure centre and stood outside of its entrance, where Mrs Argyle wished him a brief “good luck” before walking off purposefully back towards their street.
Owen stood alone, feeling rather abandoned. One look behind him at the receptionist (who by now was apoplectic with rage having realised that Owen’s trail of blood extended from the entrance carpet to the toilet cubicles) convinced him to make a hasty escape. He returned his rucksack to his back and made a dash for school.
~ ρ ~
As everyone was by now in lessons, he did not meet any fellow students on his way to the assembly hall where his exam was taking place. The noise of him opening the door at the back of the hall was met with the sound of just shy of a hundred students turning in their seats to see who was late.
The sight of a bloodied Owen Johnson did not elicit the commotion that a more popular student would have been honoured with, as only a handful of students bothered to stare at him for more than a few moments.
One of the students who did look concerned by his present state was of course Katie, who was seated by the central aisle in the exam hall, about half way up. She mouthed a concerned “what the..?” followed by an uncharacteristic use of expletives.
Before Owen had the chance to mime a reply, the head of English, Ms (never to be addressed as 'Miss', or worse, 'Mrs') Campbell had accosted him.
“You’re bleeding,” she observed with an air of annoyance and complete lack of concern.
“Yes,” Owen replied. From Ms Campbell’s pinched look he realised an explanation was required also. “Oh, I fell. The nurse patched me up.” This explanation seemed to offer far fewer opportunities for extended questioning than the truth. “I feel fine though.” Ms Campbell leant forward, apparently wanting something extra. “Sorry I’m late,” he added.
This seemed to do the trick. “Well so long as you don’t bleed all over the floor, take a seat.” People’s concern for the welfare of flooring over his own was starting to dent at Owen’s already low self-esteem.
Owen studied the seating plan for the exam, and then made his way to his allotted seat, aware that for once he was mildly interesting to his peers, however few they numbered. He sat down and looked at his watch. Twenty minutes late.
He glanced around at Katie. Her head was down again, writing line after line effortlessly in her elegant hand. She was wearing a plain blue t-shirt and jeans, which would have seemed drab on anyone else but on her was the very definition of alluring (to Owen’s eyes anyway). She had tied her shoulder length brown hair in an untidy bun, from which she had deposited a selection of pens and pencils. Even in an exam she looked perfect, the very epitome of-
Before he could get as far as drooling over his best friend, Ms Campbell appeared in his peripheral vision and strode up to him. “Hour and forty minutes left, you’d best knuckle down,” she advised.
Owen gave his wound a brief dab to confirm that it wasn’t bleeding still, and opened his exam paper.
~ ρ ~
The late start notwithstanding, Owen felt that the exam went rather well. He was confident that he answered the questions on Arthur Miller’s ‘The Crucible’ to a standard that would award him a pass, although he felt that his reasoning as to why Goody Proctor allowed for her husband to be hanged was perhaps a little less worthy of a seat next year in Katie’s class. He may have got the two Reverends names mixed up as well. His thoughts were so consumed with greed, ambition and metaphors for Communist witch-hunts that he walked straight into the very p
erson who normally monopolised them.
“What the bloody hell happened to you?” Katie asked, randomly pointing out parts of Owen’s white shirt that had red on them. Katie on the other hand looked perfect, as always.
“I fell in the park,” Owen explained, snapping out of his dreamy assessment of her perfection. “How do you think you got on?” Owen enquired, hoping that his sorry appearance had not distracted Katie from achieving the top marks she deserved.
“Oh, fine. The questions were far easier than the mock ones from last year.” Easy was not a description Owen would have used but he nodded in agreement nevertheless. “Fell on what?” she asked, continuing her interrogation. Katie’s inquisitive mind clearly was not going to be so easily sated.
“I was late waving goodbye to my dear brother, so I had to run through the park. I tripped on a stick, and landed head first on a rock. My next door neighbour saw and helped me out.” That seemed plausible. “I even managed to make that receptionist hate me even more by donating blood all over the leisure centre carpet”.
Katie whistled. “You’re brave. I’d choose bleeding to death over getting on her dark side. Are you coming for a drink?” She looked him over, taking in his dishevelled appearance.
“Yep. Just need to get changed into my civvies.” Owen gave his rucksack a shake to indicate he had brought a change of clothes.
Katie seemed relieved that he wasn’t going to show up as if he had just finished a shift at the abattoir. “Good plan Stan, but what are you going to do about your new hairdo?” Katie pointed at Owen’s hair line.
“What do you mean?” Owen tried to run his hand through his hair, but found it so matted that his fingers got stuck. Prising them free he saw that they were covered in congealed blood. “Oh, nice.”
The Remarkables (The Remarkable Owen Johnson, part 1) Page 3
