Church Group

by Michael Brightside

  * * *

  Half an hour later and we’d scaled the roof of the school we’d left the year before. Getting onto the gym roof had been the hardest part. There was no ladder to get up there. We used a wheelie bin. A cylindrical metal ladder then took you the four further floors from the gym roof to the roof of the school itself. A padlocked gate inside the ladder stopped unpermitted people from getting inside it. We climbed up the outside instead. Al went first, and I knew that on any normal day he would have gone alone, but I was in that frame of mind where nothing seems like a bad idea.

  It wasn’t until you were up there that you realised just how high it was. I walked over to the edge of the flat roof and looked out, the streetlights below massing together into one lurid yellow glow. It was bedtime for everyone else so the lines of terraced houses had fallen dark, apart from the occasional outside light that shined defiantly. It was cooler up here, the night had moved on into morning and the wind could get us from any direction. I stood at the edge of the flat roof and felt the cold wind blow through me, where I could see for miles and miles. I felt calm, as though my relationship with the world had become platonic. We no longer wanted to take anything from each other, being content now just in the knowledge that we both existed. Leaning into the wind, I held myself at an angle, weightless on the edge of the roof, with arms out wide. Easing my toes forward I rocked on the arches of my feet, skirting the line between life and death, sky and floor. Ecstasy filled blood flooded through my veins, faster because I was aware that if at any moment the wind stopped I would fall. But then surely we were too good to die. Death wouldn’t have had the impertinence to interrupt us when we felt like this.

  “Lu! What the fuck are you doing?!” Al’s voice made me jump inside, not the sort of time to be startling people.

  “Sorry mate.” I moved away from the edge.

  “Sit down over here.” Al pointed to a place in the middle of the roof where neither of us could fall off. I sat down next to him and he pulled a ready rolled spliff from his pocket.

  “When did you roll that?”

  “Back at yours mate, on the garage. Didn’t want to tell you about it cos I knew you’d have wanted to smoke it.”

  I reached into the inside pocket of my coat, pulling out a little plastic bag. Bollocks, I only had one E. “You got any pills left Al?”

  “Nah mate.” Double bollocks.

  I rolled the tiny tablet out into my hand, careful not to drop it on the shingle roof where it would almost certainly disappear.

  Turning it over so the thin line was facing towards me and the smiley face pointing away, I gently split it into two; putting one half in my mouth and handing the other to Al.

  “Thanks mate,” he said, lighting the emergency joint.

  We lay back on the hard roof in a V shape, with our feet close together.

  When it was my turn I took the deepest drag I could on the spliff and pointed to the small piece of moon not hiding behind the clouds. Everything shook back and forth. I tried to work out whether the stars were moving, or if instead the earth was shaking and the heavens were stood still.

  “Can you imagine it Al?” I said. “People actually went there, two hundred and fifty thousand miles away from Earth. In a fucking spaceship, the only ship of its kind, so if anything went wrong there was absolutely no way anyone could help them. Can you imagine how much of a buzz that would be?”

  “That would be mental,” he replied through a quivering jaw.

  “What if that’s why we do this Al? To get the same buzz as them. Do you think they would have bothered going up there if they’d had ecstasy?”

  “I don’t know Lu.”

  “Imagine if they’d taken it on the moon,” I said. “Imagine the buzz you’d get looking back and seeing the earth in the distance.”

  “What if they’d needed a smoke? That would be fucked up, being stuck on the moon with no fags.”

  “I don’t think they’d send you to the moon if you smoked mate,” I replied sarcastically.

  “And you think they’d let you up there with a load of E?”

  “Good point Al,” I laughed. “Plus, can you think of anything worse than being on the moon with a come-down?!”

  “Fuck that mate, I think I’d have to aim myself at the sun and fucking jump into space. I’d rather melt to death than be stuck on the moon all paranoid and coming down.”

  I laughed. Even though I knew he’d never get a chance to prove it, I knew him well enough to know he wasn’t joking. I turned my head a little and gazed around. What a fantastic place for us to have ended up tonight. My insides warmed at the funny way one random event can lead on to another even more random event. Maybe every event in life was random to some degree. The possibility that I might have actually deciphered the way the world works made my mind fizz. The air continued to get colder.

  “There has to be something out there mate, I don’t mean another me and another you,” I said. “There just has to be something. Fuck knows what it looks like but there has to be. It’s just too big a space for there not to be. Maybe it’s there now watching us and we don’t even know.”

  I waited a moment for a reply, before turning to look at Al.

  His face bore a strange expression I’d never seen on him before. His eyes had glazed over, like boards in a shop window advertising a new ownership. He jumped up and ran over to the television aerials on the very edge of the building. Grabbing one with both hands he twisted it and aimed the thin end at the night.

  “Dukka-dukka-dukka!” he shouted, then even louder, “Dukka-dukka-dukka!” As he wrenched the thing skyward as far as it would go, before ducking down behind it for cover.

  I ran over and grabbed the spare aerial next to him, I didn’t know what he was shooting at but I had to let him know I had his back.

  “Duv-duv-duv-duv-duv!” I let off a volley from my .50 cal, the rounds invisible in the light swallowing sky.

  “Dukka-dukka-duukka!”

  “Duv-duv-duv!”

  I waited for Al to fire again, so he could take cover before I jumped up and took aim. I waited for the familiar sound of him firing his weapon, then instead of gunfire I got laughter.

  “You fucking! Ha-ha! You fucking....ha! You nutter! Ha-ha!” As he curled up in a ball on the floor. The kind of laughter that makes you pull a face that you have to hide from people. Not from me though.

  The realisation of what we were doing hit me too. I laughed so hard I had to sit down.

  “You fucking twat Al! There wasn’t even! Ha-ha! What were you even? Ha....”

  I laughed until it hurt, then sniggered while I caught my breath, before going back into full on laughing again.

  Eventually we forgot why we were laughing and rested, taking the time to appreciate where we were. Two floors below us the English department of the school rested too, waiting for Monday when it would teach its latest crop of students how to be creative by studying somebody else’s work. And to think, just over a year ago when we left they said with our lack of initiative we’d never get anywhere. We were on top of the fucking world!

  When it started getting light out we headed back to mine. Then in the morning I was woken to the sound of my mum banging on the garage door. “Al is asleep in the bath! You’re going to have to get rid of him!”

  Fortunately he was fully clothed. Unfortunately the ratio of black to white in my eyes was the wrong way round. Wake up Al, don’t look at my mum, go back to bed. Not the most ambitiously planned day in history.

  All the Acting Lessons in the World Wouldn’t Get You Eyes Like That

  November 2000.

  I was in Club Z one night when a skinny bloke with a ponytail came up to me. The smile he gave me made me think I knew him.

  “Hello mate how you doing?” he asked. He was even skinnier up close, his bony shoulder pressing into me.

  “Yeah good mate. Wicked night this,” I replied, still not knowing what the fuck he was doing with me. “You?”

&nbs
p; “You after anything tonight?”

  “I’m alright,” I said. I didn’t want to confess to anything, just in case he was old bill. Just play it cool for now, then if at midnight I’d run out of gear and was desperate, I’d try to find him.

  “So how much are you paying for your pills?” he blurted out. No way am I answering that I thought, talk about an admission of guilt.

  I couldn’t just walk away from him, that would be rude, but if I stayed here he might ask me again. What I needed now was for one of my real mates to come along, not my new best mate the drug dealer-cum-police officer. What came next was even better. A man who was so obviously high it couldn’t have been more blatant if he’d been tied to the end of a kite string and was sailing above us in the wind, glided in through the doorway that led from the dance floor to the foyer where we were stood. He made a beeline straight for my new best friend.

  “I fucking love you bruv!” he said.

  Skinny suddenly went into play it down mode. “Er, yeah safe mate. Oi I’ll have to catch you later, I’m just having a chat,” he said. “I’ll come and find you when I’m done.”

  He turned and faced me intently, and when he turned back a few seconds later to find the bloke had gone he was clearly relieved. I’d been on enough nights out to recognise that was a previous customer who’d been caught off guard by a strong pill. All the acting lessons in the world wouldn’t get you eyes like that. I was in safe company.

  “Fivers each mate, or a bit less if I buy them in tens,” I told him.

  “Where from?”

  “Carlton,” I replied. I didn’t know if he was after a name, I wasn’t going to give him one.

  “I’m in Carlton. Try me first next time, I’ll do you fours each. How many do you normally pick up?”

  “Fifty maybe.”

  His eyes lit up and he gave me his first name, Rick, followed by his mobile number (fortunately not 999).

  “Luke,” I said as I shook his hand. Then he walked away.

  For a second I wondered how he could have known I was a customer. Then I looked down at the bottle of water in my hand and the glow in the dark whistle hanging around my neck. If I wasn’t on drugs, I must have been planning on refereeing a late night football match when I got out of here.

  When I found the rest of the group I told them about Rick. Though I didn’t tell them what he looked like, in case one of them just walked straight up to him. He had at the end of the day chosen to introduce himself to me. I don’t know where he went after we’d talked, I didn’t see him in there again that night.