I look at Mum but she’s avoiding my eye so I slink off to my bedroom and flump onto the bed, face down. Eventually I take off my clothes and crawl into the bed even though it’s still early.
My thoughts are going round and round in my head. The cracks in the boys’ bogs and the smashing eggs were enough to cope with. Pigface’s mysterious floating fist is even weirder still. What’s happening to me? Am I going mad?
I’m certain I don’t fall asleep, really certain. So I can’t explain why the next thing I know it’s morning and I’m in the bathroom in my school uniform brushing my teeth. It’s like someone jumped a scene ahead on a DVD.
Nobody says very much at breakfast. Pigface acts like I’m not even there. I wonder whether he’s a bit scared of me and this gave me such a buzz I almost laugh out loud. Des is stomping around with a bit of toast in one hand and a cig hanging out the side of his mouth. He’s speaking into his phone and saying something about ‘problems with the suppliers’.
It feels like there’s no air in the house so I’m glad when it’s time to walk to school. The sun is shining and the birds are tweeting away. It’s a bit hard to stress about mystery cracks and the general horror that is my life this morning.
I knock for Amil, who lives on the road behind the school.
Even though he’s my best friend, he doesn’t come to the house. The one time he did, Des took one look at him and could barely bring himself to speak. I reckoned it might have something to do with Amil’s brown skin and I burned with shame.
I’m always at his, though. I love it there. He lives above the newsagent’s on the high street, which his parents own. There are always loads of people crammed into the tiny, hot living room upstairs when the shop’s closed. His little brother Janesh zooms around with his trucks, and various aunties are all yabbering away in Hindi and mainlining tea. But however full on it is, his mum, Asha, always has time for me. She bustles about, bracelets jangling, talking non stop and offering me food. She seems to think I’ll starve to death unless she makes me eat at least two slices of cake and a handful of sticky, sugary Indian sweets. I’m not arguing. There isn’t much in the way of sweetness at my house, I can tell you. Amil always tries to steer us straight up to his room and complains about the way she goes on. But I feel like the sun’s beaming right down on me when she fusses and tells me how much I’ve grown and how handsome I’m getting, even though it’s a bit embarrassing too. Sometimes it feels as though she likes me more than my own mum does.
Anyway, he comes out and we chat about this and that. Although I’m bursting to tell him what’s been happening, I hold back. But as we reach the school gates, I can’t keep it in any longer.
‘Hey, Am, do something for me, will ya?’
‘Look, man, you still owe me two quid from —’
‘No, no, it’s nothing like that,’ I pause. ‘I know this sounds weird, but I want you to . . . hit me.’
Amil stops and looks at me with an expression I’m seeing a lot lately. ‘What are you on about, freak?’
‘Do it! Go on. I’m testing something out.’
‘If you insist.’ Amil grins and then punches me in the gut. Hard.
I double over, trying to get my breath back. When I regain the power of speech I yell, ‘That really hurt!’
Amil falls about laughing. ‘What did you expect?’ he says. ‘You did ask!’
I swear at him quietly and we walk the rest of the way in silence. Amil shakes his head every now and then.
Me? I’m angry, humiliated and very, very confused.
I’m in history, and Mrs Jennings is droning on about some old rubbish or other. I’m looking out of the window and thinking about cracks and wondering how I am going to get the money for a new Xbox when . . .
‘ . . . so what’s the answer, Callum?’ says Jennings.
My head snaps round and I hear sniggers. Jennings is glaring at me. I try a winning smile, but she’s immune to my charms.
‘What is the answer to the question I just asked?’ she repeats.
‘Cheese?’ It’s the first thing that comes into my head.
The class erupts and I can’t help dipping my head in a little bow.
‘I’m glad you think that’s funny,’ says Jennings, stony-faced. ‘I hope you enjoy doing an extra essay on the topic for me as much.’
She smiles at me then, evilly. ‘I’d like it for the morning, please,’ she says and turns back to point to the image on the white board.
‘When the first flag was introduced in 1606,’ she says to the class, ‘it became known simply as the British flag or the flag of Britain’. She pauses and gives her head a weird shake. ‘British flag or the flag of Britain,’ she says again. Then she does the head shaky thing a second time. ‘British flag or flag of Britain, flag of Britain, flag of Britain, flag of Britain . . .’
I look around the class, grinning. What’s happened to the old cow? She’s got stuck. Some people are scribbling frantically, but most are doodling or texting under the desk as usual. Even the people watching her have no expression other than the normal, bored one. The smile dies on my face as the horrible realisation takes hold.
I swallow hard. Is it only me who heard that? When I look back at Jennings, she’s talking normally again.
I can’t get out of the class fast enough at the end of the lesson. I gulp fresh air down and I’m clammy all over.
‘What’s up with you today, man?’ says Amil.
I clutch his arm. He grins awkwardly and steps back a bit.
‘Look, this is really important, right?’ I say. ‘So think carefully.’
He shakes my hand away with an embarrassed laugh. ‘All right, but take it easy, yeah?’
I take a deep, slow breath. ‘Did you hear Jennings repeat herself back there?’
Amil bursts out laughing. ‘Course I did,’ he says. ‘Are you nuts?’
Relief pours into me. I could hug him. ‘Thank God! I was starting to think I was really losing it, man!’
Amil laughs again. ‘She always repeats herself, doesn’t she?’ he says. ‘Different lessons, same old crap, innit?’
The warm feeling drains away, leaving behind a chill that feels like it will never go away.
I turn, trying to hide the scared look on my face. ‘Yeah,’ I say, quietly. ‘Same old crap.’
‘I’ve found a way for you to pay Ryan back,’ says Des. I look up from my dinner, trying to keep my expression blank but knowing I’m not going to like this.
‘Yeah?’ I say, through a mouthful of chips.
‘It’s through my mate, Loz,’ he says and my heart falls as I picture the skinny, stoner freak with mad eyes Des sometimes works with. He’s about a hundred and four, with ginger dreadlocks, and he’s always hoiking huge phlegm bogies onto the ground.
‘Right,’ I say. My misery only adds to Desmondo’s glee.
‘Well, he’s got a bit of work on at the moment renovating a building and you’re going to help him. Pay’s good – a tenner for evenings, twenty-five quid for weekends.’
‘OK,’ I say suspiciously. ‘Where is it?’
Des puts half a sausage in his mouth and chews, grinning the whole time so I can get the full chewing action. ‘Not far. You can see it from here.’
‘Aw, come on,’ I say, ‘I’m not having to work in the brewery with Pig—, Ryan, am I?’
‘Nope,’ says Des and spears the rest of the sausage, still grinning. ‘Try again.’
‘It’s not school!’ I say. ‘I’m not working at the bloody school!’
‘Not there either,’ says Des. ‘Try again!’ He pauses but can’t hold it in any longer. ‘I’ll tell you, then. It’s Riley Hall! You should feel right at home among all those losers and toerags.’ Des actually slaps his leg, he’s so chuffed. ‘Close your mouth, Princess, you’ll catch flies,’ he says, sitting back in his chair and letting out a massive burp.
I don’t feel like the rest of my dinner but I keep going so he can’t see how freaked out I am. H
e couldn’t have given me worse news.
I’ve always had the horrors about Riley Hall. I can’t explain why. I’ve never been there, but I only have to hear the name and I get this choking feeling. I have a recurring dream about it too, where I’m endlessly walking down corridors. All I can hear is a boy screaming in a room I never find.
Weird.
‘So,’ I say casually, which takes a truly impressive amount of effort. ‘When do I start?’
‘Tomorrow after school,’ says Des. ‘Make sure you get back here quickly.’
It gets worse every second. ‘But I have art club on Wednesdays!’
Des leans across the table and lowers his voice. ‘Not until you’ve paid for that Xbox you haven’t.’
I try to swallow the rest of my dinner but it tastes like sand and polystyrene. Art club is one of the few places I feel like I’m any use. It’s nothing to do with the fact that Miss Lovett, who takes it, is blonde and pretty and smells like she’s just come out of the kind of frothy bath you see on adverts. And she says things like, ‘That really is wonderful, Callum,’ and ‘I think you have a real aptitude for this,’ which aren’t words I hear anywhere else. I’d promised I’d help her paint some backdrops for a Year Eleven exhibition. Looks like I’m going to let her down.
I want to kick something. But I’m not giving Des the satisfaction.
After dinner, Mum’s watching one of her soaps and Des is on the phone in the kitchen. Ryan’s probably out torturing baby chicks or something. I’m sat on the sofa opposite mum, staring at a piece of paper with the words Cal Conway, 9BF at the top and nothing whatsoever about the stinking Union Jack or whatever the hell it’s called. I’m thinking about everything that’s been happening and suddenly Mum gets up. She moves to the middle of the room and in a voice that isn’t really her own says, ‘He can’t be waking. It isn’t possible. Increase the dosage by another five mils . . .’
‘Mum? Mum, what are you doing?’
She turns her head and stares at me, still as a statue.
Des is still on the phone next door.
‘Des!’ I shout. ‘Something’s wrong with Mum!’ Normally he’d yell at me for interrupting him. That’s how I know, with another fizzing chill, that he can’t hear me.
I jump up and stand in front of her, waving my hands about. But there’s no reaction even though she’s looking right at me. Her eyes are starey, like she’s not even human. Then she abruptly flops back into her chair.
‘What’s the matter with you? Why are you gawping at me like that?’ she says irritably.
I drop to my knees and cling onto her awkwardly, because I’m so scared and freaked out by everything. I can feel her body tighten but I hang on and squeeze harder. My head pulses with a sudden headache and I’m dizzy, so dizzy I cling tighter to Mum to stay upright.
‘Cal, will you give over, you’re hurting me!’ She pushes me away and reaches for her fags, her face tight and annoyed. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you at the moment, I really don’t. Now get on with your homework and let me watch Corrie.’
I don’t get any relief from worrying about all this at nighttime. Oh no.
I already have a full repertoire of strange dreams. Not just the Riley Hall one. There’s another, where I’m in a car, listening to the same nursery rhyme over and over again. Then everything goes scorching hot and I can’t breathe. I’ve had that dream for as long as I can remember. But lately the two dreams are on shuffle.
I try to stay awake, listening to Pigface oinking in his sleep and sounds I don’t want to hear from Mum and Des but eventually my eyes droop and now when I close them I go hurtling down a Technicolor tube like a combination of the biggest rollercoaster and waterpark slide you can imagine. Except instead of being a laugh, I’m fighting for my life. I see things exploding and body parts lying like joints of meat in a street. Ghostly white faces with no features lean over me, whispering harsh words I can’t make out. I wake up coated in slimy sweat and feeling like I’ve done ten rounds in a boxing ring, my duvet strangling me.
There’s a good dream too, though. It only comes now and then. I can see sunlight sprinkling the ground and I’m really high up. There are strong hands holding my legs and a little kid is laughing fit to bust. I think the little kid might be me. A woman with reddish hair is smiling up at me and reaches up to touch my face. I try to remember more because it feels good, like a warm bath, but it always stays just out of sight.
The next day after school I wait for Des’s idiot mate to collect me. Telling Miss Lovett I wouldn’t be at art club for the rest of term was bad, especially when I had to add the bit about not helping with the exhibition.
‘Is there any way I could talk to your parents and we could reach a compromise?’ she’d said, a lovely crease between her lovely brown eyes.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to pay for something . . . something I broke.’ I felt ashamed and suddenly angry, because she was making me feel bad.
‘Well, maybe you can carry on with the picture you were working on at home? It’s so unusual, it would be a shame not to finish it.’
The picture she’s talking about is of loads of wires. That’s it, wires. They’re snaking all over a room and a person is imprisoned in them, right at the centre.
Unusual is one word for it.
Anyway, I tried to picture myself at home, taking over the kitchen table with art stuff. Maybe Mum could say, ‘Here’s a nutritious snack, darling! You must keep up your energy levels for these marvellous artistic endeavours!’ And then Des could come in, fart loudly and smack me round the back of the head for behaving like a girl. This made me angry too so I said, ‘Nah, don’t think so,’ and walked out of the room without even saying goodbye or anything. I could feel her looking as I walked down the corridor and her gaze stayed on my back all day like a stain.
So I’m looking out the window, getting ready for Loz’s arrival when Ryan comes into the kitchen with a sandwich in his hand. The other one is rummaging about in his trousers. He’s home from work early for some reason and he stops dead when he sees me. His eyes narrow and I know he’ll die before he forgives me for the other day.
‘You know what they do in Riley, don’t you?’ he says.
‘No, Ryan, why don’t you tell me,’ I say in a bored way.
He comes and stands over me so I feel his warm breath. ‘They make weapons out of anything they get their hands on,’ he says quietly. ‘Bed springs, disposable forks, bits of plastic covering from the table.’ His breathing is shallow like he’s been running. ‘Then they slice each other up with them. I reckon you’ll be painting a wall and thinking your pathetic thoughts and the next thing, someone will come up behind you and open you up until you cry like a stuck pig.’
I swallow and I know he can see the fear in my eyes because his smile widens.
‘So you’d better watch your back,’ he whispers into my ear. ‘And if they don’t get you, I will. Only a matter of time.’ He grins and moves away.
I hear a sound and look out the window. A battered white van, exhaust spewing a toxic brown cloud, parks in front of the house.
Ryan gives a snort and moves away to switch on the TV, while I pull on my trainers and think about how nice it would be if I were about to have all my teeth pulled out with a pair of broken pliers. Better than what I have to do now, anyway.
Loz’s van smells of feet, fags and dog. The mutt in question, a barrel of pure muscle and teeth, is called Tizer. He’s tied up by a bit of string but I can feel his stinking breath on the back of my neck. If I turn, he rumbles like a washing machine about to spin.
Loz comes from Glasgow and I understand about a tenth of what he says. He mumbles into his chest and every now and then grins to show the little brown gravestones of his teeth.
He has a conversation into his mobile most of the way. Every now and then I catch something like, ‘Wuzznae like that, hen,’ or ‘You’re breakin’ ma heart, darlin’!’ I tune him out and stare at the sky, which is a weir
d pink colour. The clouds seem to be moving really fast. Do they usually look that way, like they’re brewing something poisonous? I suddenly can’t remember what the sky normally looks like and that only adds to the battery acid feeling churning in my guts. The headache’s back too. It comes and goes in a rhythm, squeezing my temples like a giant fist. I close my eyes for a minute and when I open them, the world stays dark for a scary second and then everything looks normal again.
Soon we’re approaching a high barbed wire fence with a CCTV camera on massive metal gates.
You’d better watch your back.
Pigface’s words come back to me and I unconsciously lean back in my seat, prompting a snarl from Tizer.
Loz roots around in his pocket and comes up with a dog-eared piece of paper. A tall guard glances at it and then we’re driving up towards the main building.
If it looks grim from the top of the hill, close up it’s downright scary.
Made from grey stone, it has hundreds of slitty windows that look like eyes peering down on you. Something about it feels really familiar but also makes me want to run away. My heart’s beating like it’s got a microphone strapped to it. I swear I can hear it all around me and I glance to check whether Loz has noticed, but he says nothing. For a minute I feel like I’ll stop breathing if I have to go any further, which is so stupid because it’s not like I’ve broken the law and got any reason to worry. It’s this feeling I keep getting, that’s all. Like if I go in there, I’ll never get out again.
I clear my throat loudly and take a big breath. Got to get a grip on myself.
We reach another security entrance, where we have to walk through a metal detector. Another unsmiling guard pats us down all over our bodies, including between our legs, which is a bit embarrassing. He says, ‘Right, come with me and I’ll show you where to go and then I’ll explain how to get back round with the van when it’s been checked.’
Even Loz looks a bit nervous now and we trot behind the guard like pet dogs. I can hear lots of voices as well as the echoey sound of footsteps. It sounds a bit like school, except with no girl noises at all, and I miss them.
Cracks Page 2
