And here it is. My story. You’ve finally found it, Warden. Well done!
I wonder what you thought when you started reading it. I wonder if you had any idea why I decided to write my story as Owen. Why didn’t I write it as myself – as Callum the bully, the liar, the coward, the deserter?
Is it really such a mystery to you?
No one wants to read about someone who ran away. They want to read about heroes. About people who find the courage when they need it. And I never found mine. I never had any in the first place.
And speaking of running away – there’s another mystery here, if I’m not mistaken …
Where have I gone?
Well, that’s another story entirely.
Which unfortunately I’ve had to hide somewhere else. Everything will make sense once you find it, promise.
If you find it.
Good luck!
Yours sincerely,
‘Inmate 409?’
As long as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be somebody else. Even before I heard of the Tornado Chasers. I never could stand being Callum.
‘Inmate 409?’
Luckily for me, your name is one of the first things they stop using when you come to County.
I whip round, quickly scrunching up the sheet of paper on the desk before me. I was so busy writing a new ending – where I save Owen and the others by riding away on motorcycles – that I didn’t even notice I was being watched. I slip the ball of paper out the window before the guard sees it and turn to the door.
My cell is small and cold. There’s not much to look at – a light bulb, a desk, a bed, a sink with a loose tile at the back. The guard is glaring at me through the hatch in the locked door.
‘Finally writing your confession, are you?’ he snaps.
I say nothing. The guard frowns.
‘Oh God,’ he groans. ‘You’re still not talking, are you?’
I nod.
‘Big surprise,’ he mutters. ‘Well, you’d better start talking, fast. It’s the day of your meeting.’
My heart stops. I knew that this meeting would happen one day. But I didn’t know it would be today. The guard unlocks the door.
‘Who would have thought,’ he said. ‘Six months you’ve had to write that flipping confession, and how much have you done? Not a word!’ He laughs. ‘You must love being here.’
The guard’s wrong. I don’t love being here. But then, he’s wrong about a lot of things. He doesn’t know that I have been secretly writing my story this whole time. That it’s hidden, page by page, behind the loose tile above the sink. But I don’t correct him. I don’t want to talk to him, or anyone. I just want to be left alone, and to write my story. That’s all I want any more.
‘Come on,’ says the guard. ‘The Warden’s waiting.’
He marches me up endless flights of stairs, to the glass door that lies at the end of a long corridor on the very top floor. As it gets closer the surface of my hands starts to prickle, and I feel like I’m about to be sick. We stop outside the door. I look down at the nametag on the wood panel.
THE WARDEN.
It will be the first time I’ve seen him since the Caves. I try to slow my heartbeat, to calm my breathing, to tell myself that I am not afraid. I can’t let him see me be afraid.
‘Come in,’ says a voice from inside.
I open the door, and I immediately stop. The view – you can see the whole of the valleys here, running in great waves over Barrow and the hills beyond. It’s beautiful. This must be the only room in County that doesn’t have bars in the glass.
‘Well,’ says a voice. ‘Inmate 409.’
I turn. The Warden sits behind his desk, a paper folder in his hands. He wears his black suit and black glasses. He looks exactly the same as he did that day in the cave, a lifetime ago. The only difference now is the scar across the top of his head, where he must have hit the stone floor. He looks me up and down and raises an eyebrow.
‘You thought I was dead, didn’t you?’ he says dryly. ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you. I did wish I was dead for a while, seeing as I broke both my legs when I landed, but eventually the County officers found me. Nothing a few months in hospital couldn’t solve.’
We stare at each other for a while. At least, I think we do. It’s hard to tell what he’s looking at behind his glasses. I keep my face blank, my eyes dead. I can’t let him see I’m frightened. The Warden waits for me to say something, in vain. After a while he holds out a hand to a wooden chair on the other side of the desk.
‘Sit down.’
I sit. The Warden holds up the paper folder and leafs through it. It has a picture of my face on the front, taken back on the first day I was interred. I look much younger.
‘Inmate 409,’ the Warden reads, his eyes scanning over the file. ‘The Tornado Chaser.’
The memory of what happened rises up when he says the words, sudden and unexpected. I have a well of memories inside me, of everything that happened, a deep well that goes down beyond where I can get to them. Most of the time I can ignore it, pretend it’s not there, but I feel it now as it rises up, urgent and angry. I breathe gently, and push it back down. The Warden closes the folder and looks at me.
‘Do you remember the conditions of your arrest, 409?’ he asks.
I nod calmly, but say nothing. The Warden pauses for another moment, and then speaks.
‘We said that you had to explain to us exactly what happened. And until you did, we wouldn’t be able to let you go.’ He folds his arms. ‘There are people who need to know how you did it, 409 – so they can prevent anything like that from ever happening again. You do understand, don’t you?’
I nod. I understand completely. That is why I cannot tell them anything. If I did tell them what happened, it would all be over. They would release me from County and I’d have to go back home. Back to everyone who knew me.
‘So why won’t you talk?’ asks the Warden.
And for the rest of my life, I’d have to face what happened that day.
I just shrug. The Warden looks at me for a long time.
‘You know I used to have children myself, 409?’
I say nothing. The Warden looks at me. I can see myself reflected back in his glasses. I look very small, and very far away.
‘It was a long time ago,’ he says. He looks me up and down. ‘I suppose they’d be about your age by now.’
He pauses for a moment, waiting for a response from me.
‘I took the Warden job after they died. I promised myself I would never let any children come to any harm, ever again. That I would dedicate my life to protecting them. So I know what it’s like to cope with losing a child. That’s how the parents of your friends feel right now, 409. Don’t they deserve to know what happened?’
I glare at the man sat in front of me. It is a cruel trick for him to play. He leans forward.
‘Don’t they?’
I nod. Of course they do. I hate him right then, more than anything.
Leave me alone, I scream at him inside my head. Get away from me. You liar.
‘Then why won’t you tell us what happened?’
I look out the window again. It’s just past midday, and the sun is beating off the ripples of the valley and making the grass and treetops shine, turning the whole world green. I guess he keeps the window here for a reason.
‘I need you to answer me, 409.’
I lick my lips, and clear my throat.
‘I … I don’t know how,’ I say weakly.
My voice comes out hoarse and cracked. It’s become barely a whisper over the last year. This is because I never speak. When I have to, my voice doesn’t even sound like mine any more. It’s good. I like it that way.
The Warden looks at his folder again.
‘It says here you were told you could write it down,’ said the Warden. ‘Only the guard here tells me you haven’t written anything in six months. Is that true?’
I hide my eyes and quickly
nod. It is a lie, of course. But no one knows that. I can’t ever let them know. The Warden eyes me critically.
‘It’s almost like you don’t want to leave,’ he says quietly.
He keeps his gaze fixed on me, his face expressionless. The idea suddenly occurs to me that the Warden can see through me, that he can see the truth, that he already knows what happened, what a coward I’ve been. I stare back at him, trying to make myself a blank page he cannot read.
The Warden waits for me to talk. I say nothing. He sighs, and adjusts himself on his chair.
‘I think we need to try another approach,’ he says.
He nods to the guard behind me. I hear him walk across the room, and unlock the door, and leave. It is now just me and the Warden. I sit, gazing calmly forward, but my heart is spasming in my chest. I keep my face empty. I can’t let him see that I’m frightened.
The Warden stands up. He walks around the desk to the other side, and stands beside me. He looks down at me. I am trying to stop myself from trembling. All I can think about is him in the Caves, holding the baton over our heads. He’s as close to me now as he was then. He leans over, even closer.
‘Callum,’ he says, ‘we need to talk about what happened in the Caves.’
And that’s too much. My name, the memory of it, and now him right there beside me, just like that day. I suddenly leap to my feet, throwing the chair back behind me.
‘You … you liar!’ I cry.
My voice is there, right in front of me, my old voice. I’ve learned to hide it over the last few months but I can’t hide it now. The Warden looks at me in shock.
‘Callum, I don’t …’
‘I stayed behind in school for a year!’ I spit. ‘A whole year. And you know why?’ I stare at him. ‘Go on, you know everything else, don’t you?’
I have to look at the reflection in his glasses, at myself as I shout. It makes me even angrier. I clench my teeth.
‘Bears,’ I shout. ‘Bears! All those stupid stories about bears! Once I left Miss Pewlish’s class and went up a year, I wasn’t going to get a Home-Time Partner any more, was I? And you know what that means? Walking home on your own. I couldn’t do it! Everyone thought it was because I was stupid, but I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t stupid!’
My face burns with the humiliation of it. I clench my fists and grit my teeth and try to drive it down again, the anger and the fear and the sadness inside me, but it’s no good. I can’t now.
‘All those stories about children being eaten … I really believed them! So I made sure I’d always have a Home-Time Partner, didn’t I? Because I couldn’t be left on my own. I tried to hide it but I couldn’t. I was … I was frightened!’
I turn to him. He stands, his face blank.
‘That’s why we did it!’ I cry. ‘The whole thing! Leaving the village, chasing the tornado … the whole point was to prove that we weren’t afraid – but there wasn’t even anything to be afraid of! It was all lies!’ I shove him. ‘Go on, then, talk! It’s your turn! What could you possibly have to say to me that you haven’t already said?’
I fall silent. The Warden stares at me.
‘I wanted to apologise to you,’ he says. ‘I wanted to tell you that … that I’m sorry.’
The Warden swallows.
‘For everything I said to you that day,’ he explains. ‘To you and your friends. And the fact I tried to … I made a mistake. I didn’t do it right. I regret it, hugely. If I had done better, I don’t know, maybe … maybe things would have been different. Maybe your friends would still be here.’ He pauses. ‘I’m so sorry.’
He finishes. We wait in silence and look at each other. Something has changed, in the space of a few sentences. We’re more equal. Maybe it’s the light in the office, or my memory, but I notice that the Warden does look different now. From this close, I can see that his hair has grown out a little over the last year. He is, in fact, slightly balding. Maybe that’s why he shaves his head. He looks at me, straight on.
‘You need to explain what happened, Callum,’ he says. ‘If you don’t, you’ll be here for the rest of your life.’
I shake my head. ‘But I … I can’t.’
‘Why not?’
I clear my throat. It hurts. I haven’t spoken this much in a long time.
‘I … I did try to explain,’ I say. ‘Back when they first questioned me. I really did. But I – I couldn’t stand it. I had to try and explain why I did all these things I did, why I said things … and most of the time I didn’t even know why myself. I look back at what I did, and I hate myself for it.’
The Warden looks at me. He’s confused.
‘What do you mean, what you did?’
I shuffle slightly. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
The Warden suddenly steps forward. He looks genuinely concerned.
‘Callum – you know you didn’t do anything wrong, don’t you?’
It’s too much. The memories rise up inside me, everything that I’ve worked so hard not to think about. I push myself backwards.
‘I want to go now,’ I say.
I push myself backwards but I’m in a corner. There’s nowhere to go. The Warden steps towards me.
‘Callum, I’m serious,’ he says. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t punish yourself like this. Why don’t you give yourself a chance and …’
‘Because I don’t want to!’ I shout. ‘Leave me alone! Let me go!’
The memories are rising up. The Warden doesn’t stop.
‘Why are you so frightened, Callum?’ he says. ‘Why can’t you tell us what happened, and start over again?’
‘Because I don’t deserve it!’
It’s coming out of me now and I’m terrified, I can’t stop it. The Warden steps forward.
‘Why don’t you deserve it, Callum?’
‘Because of what I did!’ I cry, slamming my hands against the wall behind me. I’m trying to stop it coming out but the Warden keeps stepping towards me. He’s close to me now. There’s nowhere I can go.
‘Callum,’ he says, slowly, calmly. ‘What could you possibly have done that deserves this?’
I leap at him, my chest bursting, and out it comes.
‘I left them!’
The Warden stands, and watches me. I hang my head and hold it in my hands.
‘I left them. I just left them there. My friends. My first ever friends. You hear me? I made them go it alone. I … I didn’t even say goodbye!’
The memory arrives. And at once, I see it. The moment in the Caves when I took Owen’s hand and he let me. And I think about every single time I pushed him into the nettles.
‘They put up with me all that time,’ I say, shaking. ‘They put up with me. After everything I said to them and everything I did to them. They didn’t laugh at me or call me a coward. Like I would have done to them. They … they let me go.’
It was that moment, that exact moment when Owen said I could go, that I knew I had never been a Tornado Chaser, not a real one, not like him. Because if I had been one – a true one down in my heart – I would have thanked him, I would have said sorry, I would have told him how much his friendship had meant to me. But I didn’t do any of those things.
‘They knew the truth,’ I say. ‘That I couldn’t stand up to it, like they could. And they were right. I wasn’t a Tornado Chaser. I was just … a coward.’
The Warden steps forward again.
‘You were not a coward, Callum,’ he says. ‘You were frightened. And that is not the same thing as being a coward. Everyone is frightened.’
I shake my head. ‘No they’re not. Not like me. Not all the time.’
The Warden shrugs. ‘No, not all the time. But you can’t never be frightened, Callum. That’s not bravery. Bravery is knowing how frightened you are of something, and still doing it anyway.’
As he says it, something suddenly clicks in me. I glare at him.
‘That’s rich, coming from you!’ I spit at him. ‘Your job
is lying to children. Scaring them! Getting them to do what you want! How do you think I felt, standing there in the Caves, thinking a bear was coming towards me? I thought I was going to die! And then, when we tried to escape … you attacked us!’
The room is silent suddenly. This time, the Warden does not move. He looks at me.
‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ he says. ‘I wasn’t trying to scare you. I didn’t want to hurt you. I wasn’t even angry.’
‘Then why did you do it?’ I shout.
He pauses for a moment. And then slowly, he reaches up, and takes off his glasses.
‘I did it because I thought that you’d get away from me,’ he says. ‘Because I thought everything that had happened to me would happen again. Because I thought that I’d fail. That I’d lose you.’
I see his eyes properly for the first time. They are old and green and marked with lines of pain, lines that show what he has been through. They are the kindest and gentlest eyes I have ever seen. And I finally understand why he has to wear glasses.
‘Because I was frightened,’ he says quietly.
The door suddenly opens behind me, and I spin round. The guard has walked back in.
‘Everything OK in here, sir?’ he asks.
I turn back to the Warden. His face is blank once more, a shop-front mannequin. He has put his glasses back on. All I can see is myself reflected in them.
But I’m shocked at what I see. I’m different to the boy that walked in. Something has changed. The Warden clears his throat, and for a second I’m certain he’s shaking.
‘Get 409 as much paper as he wants,’ he says. ‘He has a lot of writing to do.’
The guard closes my cell door behind me.
Scrape.
A stack of paper has been pushed under the doorway behind me. It is quickly followed by a pencil.
I look out the window of my cell. The view from here is not like the one in the Warden’s office. The fields outside my window are landfill, stretching right on towards the horizon. The people of Barrow ship their rubbish out here, where they can’t see it, and it piles up and surrounds the valley like an ocean. Birds are swooping down from the clouds, picking at it in great shifting flocks, right up the hills.
The Tornado Chasers Page 16
