by Rhys Thomas
‘So,’ Jenny started. I noticed her cheeks were all rosy from the cold. ‘How are you finding boarding school?’
I loved the way she was always so interested in everything. She had this great way of being really nice but not in a creepy way, if you know what I mean. Like now, with this conversation. If it had been just me and Freddy talking it would have been far more awkward but it wasn’t; it was very easy. Her little blonde presence was like an aura that surrounded you.
‘It’s great,’ he shrugged.
‘Where were you before?’
‘In my local school, back home. My father’s always worked away but my mother got a new job in London, in publishing. She wasn’t going to take it but I said she had to – she’s always wanted to go into it – and I sort of wanted to go to boarding school anyway.’
‘You wanted to go? Wow.’ Her eyes went wide and round.
I noticed the sound of the cars whooshing past, their headlights splashing on to the dark road in front of them.
‘Sure. I love the idea of boarding school. It’s like in the films, you know? Anyway, we’re all in the same boat up there. We just stick together.’
‘No offence,’ I said, ‘but I don’t think I could handle it; being around strangers all the time.’
‘I guess you get used to it. It’s still a bit weird, you’re right. I’ve only been here a week though so I can’t really say. There’re a few freaks up there, and some bullies, but most of them are OK. You should come up.’
‘Yeah, defo,’ beamed Jenny. ‘I’ve never been up there before.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No. I try and get Matt to take me but you know what he’s like,’ she said, looking at me. She lifted her shoulders like a hulk and went, ‘Murgh,’ pretending to be a zombie version of Matthew.
I laughed at her.
‘So have you seen the school lake?’
Jenny shook her head.
‘I know it’s there,’ she offered.
Freddy paused uncertainly for a moment, like he didn’t want to overstep the mark.
‘We could go up there later. If you want. I went there the other night when the moon was out and it’s amazing. I found this really cool place—’
‘This is so going to happen,’ interrupted Jenny excitedly.
I said nothing as I don’t like to commit to something that I’m not definitely going to do.
‘Do you think you’ll get homesick?’ I said, changing the subject for no real reason.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. My room-mate does. He’s only eleven and he hates it.’
This struck a chord with me. Freddy had his own version of my Toby.
‘What’s his name?’
‘Anthony.’
We all laughed.
‘He’s a class little kid but he misses home. I feel pretty sorry for him.’ He smiled, thinking of something. ‘He’s great though. He calls his parents at like, three o’clock in the morning. He told me the teachers tell him off for doing it but he does it anyway. They’ll probably end up taking his phone off him.’
‘Aww. He sounds adorable,’ Jenny cooed.
‘It’s their own fault anyway,’ he said, not listening. ‘They shouldn’t have sent him away in the first place.’
He said it bitterly, like there was a crack in him. A prickle came up on my neck and I wondered if Jenny felt it too. There was a little barb, a little of that untamed anger that I sometimes get (but only very rarely). This is what I meant when I said about the binocular lenses not quite matching up.
We had arrived at the pub and I could see a doorman standing outside. He looked decidedly unimpressed with the group of fifteen-year-old kids coming his way.
‘Good evening,’ I said to him.
He looked down at me, amused.
‘Good evening to you,’ he said.
I went to walk past him but he stood in my way.
‘Excuse me, please,’ I said. We were only bantering. There was no way he was letting me past.
‘Come on, mate. How old are you? Six?’
‘Twelve, actually,’ I retorted, and stepped back.
I texted Johnny, my friend who was in the band, who came out to meet us, but we still weren’t allowed in and so Johnny went and got the owner, who said it was all right for us to go in as long as we didn’t try to get served alcohol.
As I walked past the doorman I said, ‘Thanks.’
And he said, ‘You’re welcome.’
Our entrance wasn’t quite as cool as I would have liked but at least we were in. And we had a secret bottle of vodka, which we slipped into the Cokes we bought.
I feel I should explain about the Egg and Train pub because it’s quite unusual. There are two sides to it, left and right. On the right-hand side, there’s a big pool room with a jukebox where all the young people go. On weekends a DJ comes in, the lights go down and it all gets pretty sordid. The left-hand side of the pub is the family-friendly side where people of all ages go. I prefer the young-people side because, and I hate to say this because it’s bound to come out wrong, I love sleaziness. And you can smell the hormones on the dark side.
Johnny’s band were playing on the nice side because the local kids from the comprehensive school would definitely leave if there was a loud band playing on their side. They just don’t get it. And anyway, the band members’ parents could support their kids when they played on the light side.
I found myself a corner with Matthew, Jenny and Freddy. We had been in the pub for around an hour. I didn’t want to stand in the middle of the floor in case the barman saw I was tipsy, and chucked me out. I watched the people walking past, back and forth to the bar, saying ‘Excuse me’ to the people in their way, and I felt warm inside. Across the room I saw a group of my friends from school. I hung around with quite a few different groups because I liked talking to people. It was fun. One of the boys caught my eye and waved to me so I raised my glass to him.
‘Do you think that if people were nicer to him,’ said Jenny, ‘that he wouldn’t have done it?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Freddy. ‘I think some people are just like that.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Matthew. His eyes were looking in two separate directions because he was drunk. His eyes went funny when he drank.
‘Just that, I don’t know . . . actually, I have no idea what I’m talking about!’
We all laughed.
‘Richard Harper!’ somebody called from over Freddy’s shoulder.
I peered over and saw my friend Phil.
‘Hello, mate,’ I said.
Phil came over. He was tall and quite awkward, with a bit of a belly.
‘Here to see the band?’
He looked up towards the stage, where the drummer was tightening some bolts on his kit, or whatever it is they do.
‘It’s your mate, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’
I saw Phil glance nervously across to Freddy out of the corner of his eye.
‘Phil, this is Freddy,’ I offered.
‘Hi,’ Phil said.
‘Hi.’ They both shook hands, which for some reason struck me as funny.
‘That was pretty cool, what you did,’ he said.
‘Cheers.’
‘You’ve actually saved somebody’s life.’
Freddy smiled. ‘I don’t know about that.’
‘I don’t know what Craig was doing,’ interrupted Phil. ‘Still, I guess it’s a story to tell.’ He took a slurp from his can of Coke. ‘Not a great story though.’
I chuckled. Phil was funny.
‘Alex is looking for you, Rich.’ Alex being the boy I sat next to in geography.
‘What for?’
He shrugged. ‘Dunno.’
Out of nowhere I started to have terrible visions of Craig lying in bed with his parents at his side in a quiet Friday-night hospital ward whilst I was in the pub getting drunk. Phil had turned his attention to the others about homework or something. My h
ead started to feel light with the alcohol. I wanted to do something to help Craig but I had no idea what. I felt a WCS coming on. My throat started to feel heavy for Craig.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Clare walking past and instinctively yanked her jumper. She turned to me and I smiled drunkenly. I was sort of trying to apologize for whatever it was I had done, but it must have looked pretty pathetic when all I could think to do was smile.
She spoke first.
‘Do you know what I’m going to write in my diary tonight?’ she said.
‘I didn’t know you had a diary,’ I slurred.
‘Yes, I have a diary and I write everything in there.’
I gulped loudly. But only symbolically, not really.
‘And do you know what I’m going to write about you?’
I shook my head.
‘Enlighten me,’ I said, trying to compose myself.
‘I’m going to write that you’re a really good friend.’
Oh, I thought.
‘Listen,’ I started, not really knowing what the hell I was going to say. But my head was starting to clear. My WCS was on the wane. ‘I didn’t want it to go any further than it did because . . . you know . . .’ I looked at the floor to add meaning. ‘We’re friends and I don’t think I could handle it if that changed. I don’t want things to be weird between us.’
There was a long, long pause. I could feel her eyes on me. She leaned in and gave me a peck on the cheek.
‘It was a test,’ she said suddenly.
I knew that by saying it was a test she was trying to get out of the fact that she had been rejected.
‘A test for what?’ Although I knew what she meant.
‘I know what I look like to boys. I know that guys go crazy for me. And I wanted to find out why you were so nice to me.’
I nodded, watching the guitarist tune his guitar, which was gleaming in the light, giving me white blotches on my field of vision.
‘And you passed,’ she said.
I sighed. For her.
‘I might keep a diary,’ I said.
‘Yeah, right.’
‘Yeah . . . right,’ I retorted.
‘You’re a boy.’
‘So?’
‘So it would be gay.’
‘Don’t be stupid. I could keep a diary because I’m sensitive.’
‘You’re about as sensitive as a cripple’s spine.’
You see what I mean about us saying shocking things? I felt that when Clare said that it was wholly inappropriate and she went down in my estimation because saying something like that when having a normal conversation is exceptionally crass.
‘Why do you say stuff like that?’
‘It’s not so bad.’
My head was spinning a little bit.
‘It is bad. You shouldn’t say stuff like that. It’s really unladylike.’
‘Whatever. Look, I was trying to explain myself to you—’
‘You say something like that because you can’t say you’re sorry without adding something shocking to take away the bite of the apology.’
I was making fun of her by saying that and she shared the joke – we were pretending to be like the kids out of that TV show Dawson’s Creek where everything is life or death. We always do it. We get really angry at each other, have a massive argument, the argument dissolves into drama, we start play-acting and forget that we were ever angry at each other in the first place.
‘And I could keep a diary.’
She laughed.
‘You couldn’t keep a diary.’
‘Could.’
‘Couldn’t.’
I took a sip on my Coke, which tasted like that acrid dandelion milk with all the vodka that was in it. But the drink felt good. I was so happy to have got it all out in the open with Clare so that we could get back to normal. Inwardly I smiled and then I pulled the most exceptionally arrogant face that you can imagine.
‘Could.’
4
‘COME THROUGH HERE,’ he said, the wind in his hair.
We were in the school grounds, having already walked all the way back from the pub. It was me, Clare, Matthew, Jenny and Freddy. The dorms were a good half a mile away from the school proper and up here the buildings were exactly as you would expect from a private boarding school. Unlike the main school, which was a mixture of old and new, this whole place was aged; old buildings, old trees, old ivy growing over old lumps of stone. I rarely came up here because I didn’t really hang out with the boarders, but it was a spectacular place. You’d expect to see floppy-haired poets in blazers and scarves reciting Blake or one of those old English chaps, not the wannabe gangsta idiots that mostly lived up there.
Freddy was ushering us into some dense bushes that lined the long driveway up to the dorms. It was pretty cool how Freddy, the talk of the whole school, had somehow managed to latch on to us.
I had seen the school lake a few times, but never at night.
‘Where are we going, Freddy?’ Jenny asked.
‘Just follow me,’ is what he said softly. Just follow me. His eyes were sparkling in the moonlight. Freddy was strange. I detected some weird, indefinable sadness in him. On the surface he was excited because he had made new friends and he had coaxed us all the way up here. In that manner he was like a little boy but behind that there was definitely something up. All of a sudden I had a compulsion to throw my arms around him and give him a big hug, tell him that everything was going to be OK. I had been drinking, yes, but it was more than that. There was definitely something about him.
We followed him through the bushes, which were quite thick, in near-enough pitch blackness, all five of us. Five went in, five came out, but it wasn’t as simple as that. Those bushes were like the wardrobe in Narnia; when we came out the other side we were in a whole different world.
We were stood at the top of a gentle grassy hill. I was looking at my feet when I came out but, as my eyes rose up towards the sky, the grass ran away to a vast silver lake that glimmered in the bright moonlight. I was instantly hit with awe. It was like something out of a picture book.
‘You’ve got to see this place I found.’ Freddy was beckoning us on, so excited by whatever it was he was about to show us.
It was strange but also endearing how he was speaking to us as if we were old friends, as if we hadn’t just met that day.
‘This place is like, so beautiful,’ Jenny whispered in her very over-the-top American way.
But she wasn’t wrong. Dare I say it, the place had a historic majesty about it. You could feel the souls of past students presiding over the lake and its secrets. Well, not really, but you know what I mean.
The grass was wet underfoot as Freddy led us all the way down to the water’s edge to a gravel path that wound around the shore. I can remember that the air was freezing, so cold it felt like needles were pricking my face.
‘I found this yesterday.’ Freddy was looking over his shoulder as he walked, as if he knew the path like the back of his hand. I watched his breath curl up into the night sky and listened to the soft sound of the lake gently lapping the shore. I liked the way that he had saved somebody’s life earlier on that day but now here he was acting like everything was normal, like he hadn’t done something amazing.
Presently, we came to a rise in the land where the path strayed away from the lake slightly. There were a few trees in this raised area growing on either side of the path, making it much darker.
It was in these trees that Freddy stopped.
‘Ta-da.’ He was gesturing away from the lake towards what I guess would be called a stone folly.
It was perfect, like something out of ancient Greece or something. It was a kind of stone shelter, made from big old bricks with a flat roof covered in ivy that hung down like a fringe. It must have been at least a hundred years old.
Inside was a stone bench, which we all sat on and which turned our backsides to ice. From this vantage point we could see the lake. It was perfectly
framed by two tall trees, whose canopies interlinked overhead. A thin layer of mist had formed on the surface, as if some of the water had got curious and decided to take a look at us. For a few moments we just sat there and stared at it.
Freddy sighed. ‘I guess it’s not so bad coming to live here.’
I felt for him when he said that. It sounded like he had been thrown into this situation without a choice and here he was opening up to us because he didn’t have anyone else to talk to.
I looked at Clare sat next to me, our legs touching. I knew she would say something. Her pale face was glowing silvery.
‘You didn’t want to come here?’
Freddy paused.
‘I don’t know. A part of me is glad because it’s a big adventure and stuff and I’m out on my own in the world, but . . . I don’t know.’
We didn’t push it any further. I didn’t want to mention that what he was saying didn’t exactly match up with what he had told me and Jenny earlier that night when he said he saw boarding school as an adventure.
The view from here was stunning, clearer still in the cold winter air.
‘I wish I could spend my whole life doing things like this,’ I said, my emotions running away as they so often do. My head was buzzing pleasantly from the alcohol I had consumed.
‘I intend to,’ Freddy said. ‘This is how I’m going to live my whole life. When I leave school I’m going to do this sort of thing all the time.’
I looked out at the silver lake and wondered if it was possible to live a life where all you did was magical things, like huddle on a stone bench with your friends in the middle of the night.
‘I’m not going to let anything get me down. It’s this idea I have. Like, I’m never going to get a job unless I like the job.’ He sucked some spit in off his bottom lip, carefree. ‘It makes no sense to work if you hate it. We only get one life so what’s the point in wasting big chunks of it doing things that you don’t want to?’ He was speaking so softly, like he was in a daydream. His speech was slightly slurred, but not so much that what he was saying didn’t seem heartfelt.
‘There are so many people in the world doing things that they don’t want to do, and it’s depressing.’ He leaned forward from the stone bench and looked at us all, his eyes glittering. ‘I never want to be like that. I’m never ever going to let the weight of the world crush me.’ He paused and again I got the feeling that he was trying to tell us something. After a few seconds he decided to go on. ‘My mum always says that I used to be really sensitive when I was a little kid. But I still feel that way now. Nothing’s changed inside me. I don’t think it ever will. I want to feel like this because people get old and they just, sort of, harden. I don’t want to be like that.’
