3

            The rest of the weekend was pretty dull.  They found the lead for my stereo though, which was a bonus.  With my music on, and the door shut, I felt more compelled to sort my new bedroom out.  It wasn’t anything amazing, obviously.  They’d let me have the room bigger than Johns, which I think was partly to appease me, and partly because he was off to Leeds after the summer to start his university course.  I had the view of the street, which was good.  Welcome to the jungle, it gets worse here every day, Axl screeched as I unpacked and I had to agree with him on that.  I covered the pale green wallpaper with music posters and bits I’d cut out of magazines, and with every piece of paper I stuck to the wall, I thought about what the ginger kid had said to me.  So fucking over.  What did that even mean?  He did like Guns ‘N’ Roses once, but now he didn’t? I stole two more cigarettes from my mums’ bag and smoked them out of the window, while I thought it all over.  I kept my eyes on the street, watching for any sign of those boys, but there was none.  I felt abandoned for some reason, unworthy of their attention.  I was bored by Sunday, and started to write in my notebook.  My mum called it a diary, but it wasn’t one, and her saying that always annoyed me.  Diaries have dates and things.  This was just a lined notebook, and I wrote whatever the hell I wanted to write in it.  Sometimes it was what I’d done that day or whatever, but most of the time it was just thoughts and feelings, and words.  Words from songs, or words from my head.  It helped pass the time, but if anyone knocked on my door, I was quick to shove both notebook and pen under my mattress.

Monday morning found me strangely calm to begin with.  I got dressed in my scruffiest jeans and a t-shirt I had saved up pocket money to buy back home.  It was black with Jim Morrison on the front.  My mum didn’t like The Doors either, by the way. You’d think she’d at least appreciate something from her own generation, but she didn’t.  She started fussing around me in the kitchen, trying to tidy my hair and acting all excited for me.  The calm seeped right out of me then.  I actually felt it hit the floor when it dropped out the legs of my jeans.  Instead this knot of something started to build inside my stomach, getting harder and tighter, so that there was no room for breakfast.  “No fighting,” my mum was telling me, counting off on her fingers. “No cheek, no mucking about being the clown, no getting into trouble of any kind!” I wanted to tell her to stop assuming the worst of me, but that would only have given her more ammunition for later.  “Don’t forget to go to the office first to pick up your uniform! Do you want me to drive you? Do you know which road to go down after you cross Somerley?”

I nodded and rolled my eyes at her. “Yes, you already showed me.” I was out of the door, and reaching for my bike, when she tried to go in for a kiss.  I ducked away, so she pulled back and placed her hands on her hips.

“Oh okay, I don’t know why I bother! Be like that then! Have a nice day Danny!”

I rode off before she could shout anything else.  In my mind there was no point starting the day with niceties, when I already knew it was going to end with a slanging match.  I rode quickly, keeping my eyes on the other uniformed kids heading the same way.  The school was smack bang in the middle of Somerley estate, which was across the main road from ours.  The houses were different though, I noted as I cycled through.  They were red brick and looked older, more run down.  The gardens were all bigger, but most were in a terrible state.  I found the bike sheds and secured my bike, and then set off, my sole intention being locating the boys from the park.  I had strict instructions of course, to go and introduce myself to the head master, and collect my school clothes, but that could wait.  He’d be meeting me soon enough.

I knew where to look for kids like them.  The bike sheds, the toilets, anywhere they could skulk about and cause trouble unnoticed.  I pushed my way through the corridors as if I owned them.  My heart was thumping faster and faster, and I almost longed for some faceless kid to shove me back so that I could lash out.  My hands were curled into fists as I marched on, and the first bell had already rung by the time I found them.  They were coming out of the boys toilets, just as I was going in.  It was the dark haired boy, and it was me that won the struggle with the door, batting it back at him so forcefully he was knocked off his feet.  I entered the toilets and let the door slam behind me.  The other two boys had backed up silently, not sure what to do, or say. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” I told the dark haired boy, and stuck my hand out to him. “This place is huge!”

Unsurprisingly, he ignored my hand and climbed quickly to his feet.  “Danny, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. Didn’t catch your name the other day.”

“Michael Anderson,” he told me, and threw his fist solidly into my face.  I managed to side step it a little, and it knocked my cheek and sent me flying back into the door.  The next thing I knew we had a hold of each other and we were down on the wet tiles, scrambling and panting.  It didn’t last long, of course.  Some teacher must have heard the noise, and came flying in, shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows.  He took hold of our arms and dragged us down the corridor to the headmasters office.  We were both flushed in the face, a little bloodied, and trying not to smile.

The head master was a large black man called Mr. James.  My mum had told me previously that he was very strict, and wouldn’t stand for any nonsense.  You can see the way her mind worked.  We slouched solemnly into the office and he rose from his chair to regard us with nothing but disgust.  He narrowed his eyes at me, lifted his wrist and briskly tapped the face of his watch.  “You must be Daniel Bryans, my promising new student?” I nodded without meeting his eye.  He clicked his tongue and stuck one brown loafer forward.  I stared at it wordlessly.  “Well what can I say? Quite some introduction eh? Take a seat.” He nodded at a grey plastic chair on the other side of his desk, so I took it without a word.  “And what have you got to say for yourself Mr. Anderson?” he addressed the dark haired boy cooly, with a slight sigh at the end of the question.

I glanced up to see the dark boy shrug, his eyes averted to the floor.  There was a trail of blood coming from one nostril, and I could see a spattering of red on his white school shirt.  I glared at him in triumph, but he kept his gaze down.  “Nothing sir.  Sorry sir.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Mr. James had a deep voice that boomed around the small office, and seemed to bounce back at my ears from every cluttered surface.  “Go and get cleaned up and back to class,” he snapped, waving a hand at the dark boy. “You’re in afternoon detention for the rest of the week and I’ll be sending your mother another letter. Go on, get out of my sight.”

He looked up then, and caught my eye.  I thought I saw the corner of his mouth move upwards slightly, before he spun out of the room and closed the door softly behind him.  Mr. James positioned himself on the other side of his desk, but remained standing.  I understood that tactic all right.  It was supposed to make me feel even smaller.  He placed his hands down on the desk, leant towards me and regarded me curiously, while tilting his head to one side. “So what about you young man?” he asked. “Got anything to say for yourself?  Want to explain how you can get into a fist fight on your first day in a new school?  Is this the way you always start off?”

“Just got in a fight sir.  Sorry sir.”

He lifted his eyebrows in response. “I’ve had the pleasure of looking through your school records,” he said. “They make colourful reading, to say the least.  The only positive thing they have to say about you in the last year or so is that you are good at English, and like to write stories, is that true?”

I grimaced a little and looked at the door. “I dunno sir.  I don’t think so.”

“Well you better be good at something Daniel, or you won’t be impressing me in a hurry will you?”

I gave a half hearted shrug.  I didn’t want to piss him off exactly, but I didn’t want him having any high hopes for me either.  I kicked the carpet with my shoes. “Sorry,” I said again.  I spoke the word and realised it felt just the same as when I said it to my mother.  It was just a word, I thought, just a word that you said when you’d been caught.  It slipped out automatically, I mused, and it was always there, on the tip of my tongue.  Sorry.

Mr. James released a sigh that he directed up to the ceiling along with his eyes. “I have a worrying feeling I’m going to be hearing that from you a lot young man.”

At the end of the day I was shown to detention.  It was a classroom, filled with bored looking kids, scrawling aimlessly on notepaper, and I immediately took the seat next to the Michael boy.  I stared at him for a while, trying to instigate some kind of reaction.  I didn’t know about him, but I was ready for more.  We’d been interrupted before anything had been settled.  I didn’t like to leave it like that, so I wrote a note offering to finish the fight after detention and passed it to him.  I watched him read it, and then he smirked a little, screwed it up and shoved it into his pocket.  He carried on writing and did not look at me again.

I spotted him pushing his bike away after detention, so I wheeled mine right up to him.  He stopped and held up a hand.  “Whoa there mate,” he said, with a laugh. “I don’t want to fight you again.”

I was confused. “Why not?”

He offered a bright smile that confused me even more. “’Cause neither of us will win,” he shrugged. “We’re too evenly matched.  You going this way too?”  I nodded, narrowed my eyes in suspicion and fell into step with him.  “This school is a total shit hole,” he started to say, as we pushed our bikes along. “It’s fucking shit, everything about it is shit.  The teachers are shit, so are the lessons.  Most of the kids are total twats one way or the other. It does my head in.” I nodded when he looked my way.  He grinned.  “You were totally insane this morning! Total mental!”

“Well you asked for it,” I started cautiously.  My mind was whirling as we walked.  My first thought was that he was being nice to be as a joke, or as part of a trick.  Maybe the other boys were lying in wait somewhere. “All that shit at the bench the other day.  Hanging around outside my house the whole time, trying to scare me or whatever.”

“Ahh we were just bored!” Michael snorted in amusement. “We were being nosy.  Nothing ever happens around here, ever.  We were just checking you out.”

“Yeah well I can fight any one of you any time you want!” I told him then, fixing him with what I hoped was a fierce stare. “No one pushes me around.”  Michael nodded at me, so I nodded back.  We climbed onto our bikes then and started to ride slowly back home.

We crossed Somerley Road, and on the other side I had to stand on the pedals, bearing down with my full weight to keep up with him.  He pointed to the houses around the corner from ours, the ones I had passed on the way to the park. “I live there,” he said. “My mum’s out if you wanna’ come in?”  I stopped my bike and eyed him. “I’ve got fags,” he added with a grin.

“All right then.”

I followed him to the alley that ran behind the row of houses.  We pushed our bikes through piles of split bin bags and smashed TV’s until we came to his back gate.  The gate was open, hanging awkwardly from the top hinge.  Michael slammed his bike down into the overgrown grass, so I did the same.  He gestured to the rusting skeleton of some indistinguishable car that was sat on bricks, going nowhere. “Don’t think my brother’s ever going to get around to fixing that, do you?” he asked in amusement.  I stopped behind him at the back door, as he fished a key from his pocket and unlocked it.

“Is he not home either?”

“He’s in prison.  Come on in.”

The kitchen was dark, as was the hallway beyond, but what I noticed even more was this thick sweet smell that seemed to immediately clog up my nostrils.  It was really strong.  I had no idea what it was, but the closest I could get to identifying it was realising that it smelled a bit like Grandma Sylvie, my mum’s mum.  Michael dumped his bag on the kitchen table and started swinging the cupboard doors open in search of food.  I gazed around curiously as he did.  The table was covered in junk; piles of newspapers and magazines, overflowing ashtrays, and a large plastic basket of dirty washing.  The sink was full of unwashed crockery, and there were several empty wine bottles lined up on the draining boards.  That’s when I realised what the smell probably was.  Booze.  Stale booze.  I stepped forward and something crunched beneath my shoe.  I looked down and saw broken glass scattered across the floor. “Oh whoops sorry,” Michael turned and said to me.  He offered a brief shrug of the shoulders. “My mum’s been too busy to tidy up lately.  Had a few parties.”

“Oh.” I lifted my foot from the glass.  I was starting to relax a little now, quicker than I had thought I would.  Obviously the other boys were not about to jump out and smash my face in. “You lived around here long?”

“My whole life,” he said with a sigh. He slammed the last cupboard door and turned his attention to the fridge instead. “Rubbish eh?  It’s a boring old shit hole just like that school. Jake lives in the flats near the beach?  The shitty ones I mean, not the swish ones the other way.”  I had no idea what he meant, so I just nodded. “Billy lives round the corner.  We’ve been mates since Infants school.”  I leant back against the table and listened.  Michael slammed the fridge door shut and turned to face me.  It was weird then, for a moment.  When I looked at him I didn’t recognise him as the boy from the park, or the street outside my house.  It was like looking at a totally different face.  His dark brown eyes were warm and sparkling with mischief, and his smile was lazy and looped casually up to his ears as he spoke.  “Billy has this huge crazy family! Like a hundred brothers and sisters, seriously! His parents were hippies, or something. Jake’s dad is this ex-army bloke though, boring old fart, never cracks a smile. And his mum is sort of a fatso, I mean, she never leaves the place!” He produced two cigarettes from his trouser pocket and held one out to me, so I took it.

“I’ve just got an older brother,” I told him. “But he won’t be around much longer either. He goes to University in Leeds after the summer.”

“You get on with him?”

“Nah,” I laughed. “He’s Mr. Perfect he is.  Golden boy. Makes me sick most the time.”

“Doesn’t sound much like you,” Michael grinned, chucking me his lighter.

“Nah, he’s nothing like me.”

“Listen,” Michael stepped past me then, sucking on his lit cigarette, and taking me lightly by the arm as he passed. He walked back outside, so I followed. “Sorry about that, the other day at the park?  We were being twats to you.”

We sat down on the doorstep, smoking like pro’s. “That’s okay,” I shrugged, and I couldn’t stop the smile that escaped me.  There was this tentative brimming of hope inside me, for some reason.  I liked him.  “Sorry about this morning.”

“That’s okay, we deserved it,” he laughed.  He was watching me carefully now, cigarette poised between finger and thumb as his hand dangled over one knee.  “So you can hang around with us if you like,” he said then. “If you don’t know anyone else.  But I mean, people will probably tell you not to, like teachers and neighbours and stuff. They don’t think much of my family round here.”

“Do you think I’d give a shit what any of them thought of me?” I asked him very seriously and he laughed in return.

I put off going home for as long as I could, and when I finally showed up, my mother met me at the back door, blocking the way in.  She held onto the door frame, her hips thrust aggressively to one side, while her nostrils flared dangerously.  “Where the hell have you been? Get in here now! I am just about ready to explode!” She said all this so quickly it was almost just a mumble of fury, but at least she moved and let me in.  “Have you been smoking?  I can smell smoke!” I dropped my bag on the floor and went to the sink for a glass of water.

“No,” I said with my back to her. “Just been around people who have.”

“Liar,” she snarled behind me, and I wanted to smile, so I kept my back turned. “I am missing cigarettes all the time Danny, and I know when you are lying! So don’t you dare stand there and lie to my face! I am so bloody angry with you young man! The head master called me! On your first day!”

I drank the water and started to refill the glass again. “Yeah, I’m sorry about that. I got in a bit of trouble today.”

“You got into a fight Danny!” she screeched, really erupting now.  I turned slowly and saw her stood there with her fingernails in her cheeks. “On your first day! A fight! How could you? I shouldn’t be surprised though should I?” I had to rub a hand against my mouth pretty hard to disguise the smile that was threatening.

“I’m really sorry,” I told her, eyes down. It was my best shot.  “Look some kids were picking on me, that’s why. I had to stand up for myself, didn’t I? Otherwise it would just carry on, right?”

She pushed one hand violently through her hair and shook her head at me.  I felt just a small stirring of guilt in my belly, but that was okay.  I was used to that.  I bit my lip and kept my eyes down, while she looked on. “What do you mean picking on you? Fighting is not the answer Danny! I’ve told you so many times! We came here for a fresh start, for goodness sake…”

“You mean you came here for a fresh start,” I corrected her.

“Excuse me?”

“Well I just mean, saying we makes it sound like me and John got into a mess and had to run.” I risked a look at her, and could see she was fuming, yet also calming.  She had her own guilt, see. That was the way it worked between us.  She threw a little at me, and I threw a little right back.  In the end, we both had to back off, because neither of us would ever win.  I shrugged my shoulders a little and tried to look pathetic. She was waiting for me to say more though.  She was waiting to see how I was going to get myself out of this one. “What I mean is, it was actually you who picked another loser boyfriend who went all weird on you. Just saying.”

“Yeah I know what you’re saying,” she snapped, and finally turned away from me. I watched her shoulders drop as she snatched her handbag from the table and started to rummage around in it desperately.  “But whatever you think about all that business Danny, and yes, it was an unpleasant time for all of us, but I moved us here for the best, is what I’m trying to say. I moved us here for the right reasons.  A new start for all of us.”  I waited.  Now it was her turn to get herself out of it.  She stuck a fag between her red lips and lit it up.  With one hand on her hip, she cocked her head at me and puffed a quick stream of smoke into the air above. “You said you would behave better. You’re not sticking to your side of the bargain.”

Ha! I knew I had her then.  Had she really forgotten so soon about her side of the bargain?  I smiled a little at her, a nice smile I mean, as if I was a little kid just remembering something nice his mummy had promised him. “Okay, okay,” I said. “I’ll do better tomorrow, I promise.  I didn’t exactly mean to fight, it’s just these kids were giving me a hard time, but it’s all sorted now anyway…so don’t forget, you have to stick to your side of the bargain too? Remember that?”

She gave me a quizzical look, cigarette held in mid air. “I do,” she said it slowly.  Then she tried to turn the attention back on me.  “What do you mean it’s all sorted now anyway?”

I sensed my victory in more ways than one, so picked my bag up and headed for the door. “I’m friends with them now,” I told her as I went. “And your side was no more loser boyfriends, remember?”

A muffled groan followed me up the stairs, and I grinned in response.  She had probably thought I would forget about that one, but no such luck.  She had promised me after crazy James, promised me, no more boyfriends.  I closed my door behind me, gave Axl a withering look and pulled my notebook out from under the mattress.

1

June 1996

It’s funny, what goes through your head.

Do you want to know what is going through mine right now while I think about what knife to choose?  As I gaze down at the cluttered and crumby choices in the drawer before me?  The drawer divider stares back at me, cracked and stained. The colour of dirty vanilla ice cream, each segment coated with crumbles of dust and food. Two things are going through my head simultaneously. I like it when that happens. It’s a bit like fireworks going off in my brain, one thought sparking off another that overtakes and consumes it, before scattering into a million more.  I am trying to make the right decision, about what knives to take, because I don’t want to get it wrong.  There are probably a million ways I could get it wrong.  Life is like that.  You make decisions here and there, never knowing at the time how magnificently one innocent choice could fuck things up for you.  I am aware that I have to put thought into it, I have to fight through the mush my mind has become, and come up with a clean, sharp solution.  But while this is all going through my head, I have song lyrics too.  I nearly always do, to be honest.  They come at me all the time.  They crawl through my ear canals and into my messy brain, and they set up camp, and they control me.  Feels that way anyway.

So here I am.  Staring at knives.  Trying to be quiet about it, so that I don’t wake anyone up.  The song that is going through my head isn’t about knives, or stabbing though.  It’s about a car crash I think.  Not sure why it comes to me now, but it does.  I’m standing warm against the cold, now that the flames have taken hold, at least you left your life in style. There’s more, and if you know anything about music you will know it’s from a Stone Roses song, and if you knew anything about me you would know that I love them, like I love all music, I mean, I fucking love music, all music. But those are the lines in my head, and I have no idea why, but they are circling, around and around and around, so slowly, so rhythmically, that I can almost feel my head begin to nod with them, like I am being slowly sung to sleep.

I am barely breathing as I lower my head, and narrow my eyes on the choices.  I am hearing those words in my head and I am thinking; one big one and two small ones is the way to go.  That’s what you want.  I will need more than one.  Just in case.  If I only take one, and I drop it or something, then it’s game over, isn’t it?  I have to take a big one, I just have to.  I’ve been dreaming about a big knife for years, you see.  I used to fall asleep at night with the vision of one in my head.  Shining behind my eyes.  The tip on fire with blood.  I used to imagine the feel of it, the weight of it in my hands, and I used to think about how it would strengthen me, in so many ways.  So I have to take a big one.  But I need little ones too.  Little ones I can hide in my clothes.

A noise comes from the other room.  It startles me for a moment, and reminds me to get on with things.  I reach for the cutlery drawer tentatively and I feel a bit like a child again, my hand stealing cautiously and without permission towards the biscuit tin. I lick my lips.  They are dry, and cracked.  A residue of blood coats my tongue and the metallic tang spreads to the roof of my mouth.

My hand moves in stealthily, and my fingers curl stiffly around the handle of the biggest knife there.  It has a serrated edge.  Nasty.  Am I really going to do this?  Has it really come to this?  I shrug my shoulders at my own questions.  Maybe I always knew it would.  My hand shakes so I lay the knife down on the side and peer back into the drawer, the music still tumbling through my mind, as I consider what this act will make me, if I go through with it.  A killer? Yeah, well.  I talk to myself in my head for a bit.  I’ve been doing that a lot lately too.  These rambling and wired conversations kick off, and it’s like there is more than one of me, in there, rabbiting on.  I’ve been quiet on the outside, but my friends don’t mind this.  They allow me this.  They can’t hear the babbling of voices that go on inside.  The conversations that all end with the same conclusion before I fall asleep.  You want to know what that is?  Well, nothing matters.  It’s that simple.  I thought it anyway, a long time ago, but I was younger then, so I wasn’t always sure.  I know it now.  Nothing matters.  Nothing.

I pick up the small brown handled cheese knife.  I think I am alive and buzzing with so many things, yet I am also dead.  Dead man walking.  So it does not matter.  Have a life or die.  Whatever. This knife is good.  I can stuff it down my sock, inside my boot.  I nod and place it next to the other one.  Get on with it.  Don’t back out.  Don’t forget what happened, don’t lose sight of why you are doing this.  This voice is strong and gnarled, it has a low throaty sneer to it, like a bitter old man.  Get on with it, it says.  I feel a bit torn.  I need to make the right decisions and not fuck up, but I need to hurry up too.  Need to get out of here.  I grab a third knife.  Small and flat, with a rusty edge.  Think it will do.  Okay, so I am not going to bother with bin liners and cleaning fluids, or anything, but I still need to be prepared to a certain extent.  If time has taught me anything, it is not to underestimate the bastard.  He’ll just laugh at me, and it will all be over in seconds if I am not careful.

If it goes the way I am planning, I won’t even run away afterwards.  I won’t need to.  I imagine myself sat next to the body, and I wonder how it will feel, watching his life slip away from him.  What will it feel like?  Breathing in my own existence while the life blood flows from his.  Will I find my own life in the taking of his?  Will I stop feeling dead?  Will my heart begin to beat again, with something other than fear and hate?  I wonder if I will feel free, when it is done.  If I will feel like it is over.  Or maybe I am wrong.  Maybe I will become something even worse than what I already am.  Maybe I will become yet another human monster, hunched and sorrowful, wandering the planet, rotting on the inside.

I line the three knives up alongside each other and place my hands on my hips, blowing my breath upwards into my hair.  This is it.  It is nearly time to go.  I did try to think of other ways, you know.  Last night.  I thought about everything.  The trouble is, and this may be kind of hard to explain to you, but the trouble is, once you start to think about killing someone, once you start to imagine them dead and gone, it is hard to shake free of it.  And to be honest, in some ways, I have planned this for years.  I have dreamt of this for years.  I have promised this for years.  I suppose the thoughts and the urges to rid my life of the enemy, the thorn, have been piling up in me all along.  That probably says quite a lot about the sort of person I really am.  They gathered momentum after last night, of course.  It’s been a battlefield lately, but last night was the final straw if you like.  The urges gathered strength and reason. They led me to a tantalising prospect, an irresistible possibility.

I cross my arms over my chest and lick my lips again.  I lick them repeatedly, and I feel like I am about to go to war, into battle, and the blood in my mouth serves as a taster for what is to come.  I can feel my heart throbbing under my skin, pounding it is.  I imagine the cocaine I have just ingested hurtling through my blood stream, crashing into sleepy nerves and cells and setting them on fire.  Can’t stop licking my lips.  I smile at the tingling that takes over my weary limbs.  The knives on the sideboard shine back at me, filling my chest with fight. Fight.  I mouth the word slowly, dragging my top teeth backwards across my lower lip.  Fight.  Who started the fight anyway, I wonder?  Who started it?  I have not got much time.  I grab the smallest knife and bend down to stuff it inside my sock, and then I tighten the laces of my boot around it.  The second small knife I push up the sleeve of my denim jacket.  The tip prods at the skin on my wrist.  A rustle of bedclothes in the next room panics me into action.  The largest knife I push down inside the waist band of my jeans.  I have still got to write the letters, and a creep of doubt and fear is tickling my spine.

My notebook and pen are set out on the side, so I take up the pen and start to write.  It flows easier than I had imagined, but I guess that must be the coke working its magic.  It always did make me talk a load of shit.  As I write the first letter, my eyes are drawn to my wrist, to the crust of blood circling my hand.  It chafes and smears against the notepaper, washing my words in rust red and flakes of last nights pain.  I don’t like the way I feel as I write to my friends.  It’s like I am slipping down somewhere, fading away, losing myself and in danger of losing the moment too.  I have to hang onto now.  I am not the same person anymore, I tell myself, I’m just what is left.  I’m no good to any of them now anyway.

Get on with it, one of the voices instructs me.  It’s loud and abrasive that voice, snappy and commanding, and it’s spurred on by the shitload of coke I sniffed in the toilet just moments ago.  So I get on with it, and the pain in my wrists, the pain in my back and head, it all propels me forward, it all jumbles and binds together, becoming like this ball of power, pushing me on towards the inevitable.  Write the letters, tell them what you need them to know, and get the hell out of here.  Something is gone, I think, as I write.  Something that was teetering anyway, something I had always feared losing to him, well it went last night.  It snapped inside of me, and now it lies broken.  That’s it.

And now he has to pay.

2

April 1993

So, it looked like there would have to be some kind of fight.  I knew it, and they knew it.  I suppose the only one who didn’t know it yet was my mother, but if I was right, she would know it soon enough.  It had been three days now.  I couldn’t let it go on any longer or they would start to think I was hiding from them.  I shook my head in disgust as I watched them from the window.  The grubby net curtains left behind by the last tenants served as the only shield between them and me.  Three of them.  They were always out there, always.  Circling slowly on their battered bikes, they reminded me of vultures, hovering on the perimeter of some unfortunate half dead prey.  Thoughts like that made me bristle, from my head down to my toes.  I stuffed my hands into my pockets and glared at them.  They would shuffle their bikes together and flick their mean eyed gaze to the house, where I lay trapped within.  They appeared hungry to me, huddling together, heads low and shoulders hunched, discussing me.  Their foreheads would almost touch, before they would all recoil again suddenly, dramatically, mouths gaping with laughter muffled by the window pane.  I reached for them, touched the glass with an outstretched index finger and knew they were laughing at me.  The new boy.

So what did they want?  I felt they were waiting for me to decide, waiting for me to make the first move.  A fight then.  Better than feeling like a prisoner, holed up in the new house, while my mother and brother moved our old lives into it behind me.  The boys had appeared on the first day.  I had watched them roll in on their beat up BMX’s, heads low, hair long and eyes flat.  Their arrival had made me pause in the doorway to the new house, cardboard box in arms.  Hello had worked its way to the tip of my tongue, but at the emergence of three piercing scowls, the word had evaporated in the air before me. The second day had been worse. I’d been sent out to retrieve my mothers’ handbag from the front seat of the car, and they had been out there again, just watching.  “Forgot your handbag?” the dark one had called out in a mock high voice, sending the other two boys into howls of laughter.  I’d gritted my teeth and gone back in.  That had cemented it.  I had a problem.  Again and again I returned to the living room window, drawn to the dusty panes like a moth to the light, not wanting to know they were after me, but unable to stay back and ignore their presence.

I had been thinking about the dark one.  The dark one was the ringleader, without a doubt.  Which made him the one I would have to fight.  Winning did not really matter at this point, and I knew this.  But starting the fight, and putting up a good one, would mean everything.  The dark boy was bigger than me, with jet black hair long on his neck and hanging down over his eyes.  Those eyes gleamed at me from across the street, whenever he chose to flick the hair from his face.  He looked angry, I thought.  I wondered if it was just me, or something else.

I wouldn’t admit it to anyone except myself, but I had not ventured far because of them.  I had just stood and viewed the street, reminding myself sulkily how wrong and alien everything felt.  My body was nearly always rigid with displeasure, arms crossed tightly, jaw jutting out, forehead creased with a frown.  Of course, they, my mum and my brother, just bumped and bundled past me, sighing and clicking their tongues.  I did as little as I could to help them carry our old life through the doors.  They did their best to skirt around my dark moods, making light of everything like they always did, while I merely stood and considered the injustices they forced upon me.  I wondered dismally if life had been this unfair to my mother at age thirteen, but she never told me anything, so I wouldn’t know.  I just felt like we were not supposed to be here, in this new place, and the unfairness of it all formed a constant lump in my gut, that twisted and churned every time I saw my mothers’ face.  Every time I looked at her, the same thought would fill my mind, literally going off like a bomb in there; I am being punished for her mistakes.

I got away with shooting her the odd hard look, but I couldn’t push it too far, or she would go off on one.  She thought the same when she looked at me though, I knew it.  The looks she gave me were cautious ones.  We tiptoed around each other, or we locked horns and fought.  That was the way it was, the way it had always been.  She made me laugh sometimes when she went off.  When she gave the full works, it was hair pulling and everything.  She’s even smashed plates and things. Why can’t you be more like your brother? You are the thorn in my bloody side! Funny stuff, if you were in the right mood for it.  I’d heard it so often by that age it barely registered.  My brother, Good Boy John I called him just to wind him up.  The golden boy.  I could have hated him, but he was too fucking nice for that.

I bided my time.  I watched and waited, gearing myself up for the challenges that lie ahead.  If mum or John vocalised their despair at my lack of movement, I would just turn and offer them my iciest stare.  You don’t have to be me, I thought, whenever I looked at them, you don’t have to go out there at some point and face those boys, and it was true. So she’d moved us to this seaside town called Redchurch.  She used to holiday there when she was a kid.  She raved on and on about the beaches, and the quay, and the ancient Priory church.  I didn’t give a shit.  She’d made it sound like we were moving to millionaires row or something, like we would be out on a fucking yacht every day or whatever.  Of course, she was on her own since my dad bailed out years ago, so all we could afford was a rented end terrace house on the housing estate at the edge of town.  It was like a box, identical to all the others.  Dull.  The kitchen was tiny, just big enough to squeeze the round table into one corner, although you had to suck your tummy in when you passed it to reach the back door.  The kitchen window gave a view of the postage stamp sized garden.  Like all the other rooms in the house the kitchen was painted magnolia.  The floor covered in cheap beige lino, and all the other carpets were grey. From the kitchen, the hallway led to the front door, with a downstairs toilet under the stairs, and the living room to the right.  I’m not saying we lived in a mansion or a castle or anything before, but this place just hung with inescapable dullness.  I felt nothing but apathy for it, and I needed some excitement.

What was amusing was watching her stride purposefully from room to room, in those first few days.  Always with this cloth headband on her head.  I’d never seen her wear things like that before, so it made me sneer a bit.  She had an outfit for every occasion, my mum, and denim shorts, red vest top and matching head band appeared to her moving house ensemble. I watched her scurrying about, lugging boxes, scrubbing windows, and knocking down cobwebs, and all the time she was spouting all this excited drivel at us; “we’ll soon put our stamp on it won’t we boys? Can’t wait to start decorating! Don’t you want to go out and explore Danny? There is so much to do around here!”  She was doing her best to be positive I suppose, I’ll give her that much, but there was guilt behind it, and that irritated me.  She wore a permanent fake smile, painted across her face, while her eyes gave her away as usual.  The smile had shown no signs of cracking just yet, and I knew that when it eventually did, it would be because of me. “Wait until you see the beach, it is gorgeous!” she was prattling on behind me.  “You’ll want to spend the whole summer down there Danny. It’s amazing.  And the town even has its own cinema you know? Did I tell you that already?  Why don’t you go out for a bit and have a look eh?”

To this I turned and looked at her.  I suppose she was getting sick of the sight of me, so I sighed in response.  As much as she tried to keep up this jolly front for us, I knew that my dark moods irritated her.  Unable to think of a response that was not rude, I looked back out at the street, my stomach giving a little lurch when I remembered that I would be starting school in two days.  “You’re really going to love it,” she was saying now. You are going to love it, I corrected her inwardly, you think it’s all amazing, not me.  At that moment John came into the living room with an armful of books.

“You could pop to the shop,” he started saying, without even looking at me.  He dumped the books on the sofa and trudged back out again. “You’re not exactly any help to us here,” he threw back over his shoulder.  I glanced at mum.  She had a bottle of cleaning spray tucked under one arm, and had picked up one of the books.  Her blue eyes regarded me cautiously.

“You can go out you know Danny.  Go on, go out and explore! You’re started to get on my nerves just stood there the whole time staring!  What are you looking at anyway?”  She dropped the book and came around the sofa.

“You guys can never wait to get rid of me, can you?” I shot back, arms folded, as she arrived at my side.  John groaned out in the hallway, but that was all from him.  He hated confrontation, and never liked to get involved in anything.  That didn’t stop my mother from calling on him constantly for back up though. He’d always do his best to be fair.  He’d try not to take sides, and he was really good at calming mum down when she lost the plot with me, but you could always see he hated it.  It made him uncomfortable, stepping in, playing the father figure.  We looked nothing alike, John and me, and everyone always mentioned it.  John was tall and broad shouldered, thick chested, and kept his mousy brown hair neat and short.  I suppose he was good looking, in a traditional, conventional kind of way.  Girls always seemed to go for him anyway.  He was the double of his dad, everyone always mentioned that too.  They never said I looked like my dad though; just that I had my mothers’ eyes as well as her temper.

With mum beside me, I felt the niggling urge to nudge her away, to poke an elbow at her, but I didn’t.  Instead I folded my arms even tighter and looked back out of the window.  I noticed right away that the boys had gone.  I had not seen them go, and wondered what exciting distraction had finally torn them away from me.  I reached out then and scraped my finger nails down the pane.  I wouldn’t say I did this deliberately to annoy my mother, I just sort of did it without thinking, but she reacted like I had, leaping backwards, slamming her hands against her ears and looking at me in horror.  “For God’s sake Danny!” she practically shrieked at me. “Stop that awful noise and just do something!” I didn’t look at her then, but I could imagine her perfect red smile splintering on her face.  I turned to her reluctantly and right away the expression on her face made me decide to get the hell out of there after all.  It was the face she only seemed to give to me; all taut and tight, anger mixed with anxiety, fear mixed with love, I don’t know, but it was always the same and it always depressed me one way or another.  I narrowed my eyes at her.  Looked her up and down, which I knew she hated, because she had a real paranoia about being judged, by anyone.  I wanted to shake my head at her, maybe I did just a little bit, just at the sight of her, not quite forty with two teenage boys.  She was always wearing tight fitting clothes which made me question exactly how the hell I was meant to take her seriously.

I threw up my hands in mock and exaggerated defeat and stormed past her. “All right I’ll get out if it makes you happy!” I yanked open the front door and paused long enough to shout again; “happy now?”  They said nothing, but I could feel their relief.

I’d walked for a few fast minutes before I realised how warm the day was.  I slowed down, blinking in aggravation at the sun, and removed my shirt to tie around my waist.  Under the shirt I had this cool Guns ‘N’ Roses t-shirt I had picked up back home.  Black, with the guns and roses logo in the middle.  I could smell the sea. It twitched my nostrils and I wondered if I could even hear it.  The sky was pale blue, and streaked with low slung clouds.  I shoved my hands into my pockets and stomped along, my hair hanging down over my eyes the way I liked it.  I remembered then that I still couldn’t even listen to my music, as they hadn’t found the cord for my stereo yet.  That was part of the reason I’d spent so much time staring out of the window, I reasoned, as I marched on.  My mum had laughed when she saw me organising my small collection of tapes on the desk in my room, tapes I couldn’t even play until they found my cord or bought me some batteries. “You seem to love everything I hate!” she remarked, and then she had given me a stern look. “I don’t want to hear swear words coming from your room young man.” I’d smiled secretly at this.  What she didn’t know was that all the tapes I owned had swear words on them.  It wasn’t the swear words I liked though, not really, it was the music, you know the screeching guitars and the mad drums, but not just that, it was the lyrics.  She always moaned and said she couldn’t hear a word they were saying, but she didn’t listen, or she didn’t care.  The lyrics were brilliant, and I was always scribbling them down, so I could learn them or think about them.  I don’t know why, but they just always seemed apt to me.  It’s like I would be thinking or feeling something, for whatever reason, and then a song would come on and I would think, hey fuckinghell, that’s exactly what I mean! I had Axl Rose in my head as I walked then, and as usual the words were spot on; when I look around, everybody always brings me down, well is it them or me, well I just can’t see, but there ain’t no peace to be found. You see what I mean? Brilliant.

Nodding to the music in my head, I walked to the end of Curlew Close, and turned right.  There were more houses, identical to ours, with a wide expanse of green in the middle of them.  There were kids out, riding bikes and scooters in loops around the houses.  I stalked quickly past them, lifting my head long enough to see trees in the distance, up on a hill.  I remembered we had driven past a large park on the way in, so decided to go there.  Maybe there would be some woods, or some benches where I could smoke my cigarette in peace.  I was thinking about my smoke, and I was thinking maybe I would stay out for hours and make them worry about me, and I was also thinking what would happen if I ran into those boys?

By the time I reached the top of the hill I was a bit out of breath, and sweating under my hair.  I pushed it back and walked on.  My mum was constantly on about the hair.  She hated how long it was, which only made me want to grow it longer.  I had this huge poster of Axl Rose on my wall above my bed, and his hair was way longer, and looked so cool.  Before I started growing it she always made me have this nasty little crewcut. Fucking awful. I used to look like Bart Simpson. I crossed the road and slipped under the low fence that surrounded the park.  At the bottom was a football pitch, and some younger kids were in the middle of a game.  I slunk around the edge of them, and headed up the hill.  To the right was a swing park, which didn’t really interest me.  I kept on until I was at the top of the hill, and from there I could see woods in the distance.  I was getting desperate for a smoke now.  I didn’t think I was addicted yet though.  The first time I’d smoked at all was when I was twelve.  Me and this boy from my old school used to walk home together, and one day he just had some, so I gave it a try.  I’ve got to be honest, I found it pretty disgusting to start with.  I left it alone for about a year, and then I started pinching them from my mums’ handbag when she started going on about moving us.  It was the stress, you see.  I didn’t find it disgusting anymore.  I loved everything about it.  The taste, the smell, the feel of the fag between my fingers, lighting them up, everything, especially the thrill of not being allowed.  I spotted an empty bench under a tree, not far from the woods, and headed for it, one hand in the back pocket of my jeans, fishing out the stolen cigarette.

I sat on the bench, pulled up my legs, hugged my knees and lit up.  I felt momentarily happy.  I watched the smoke circling above my head and I felt my body loosening up for the first time in days, relaxing.  Behind me, I thought I could hear the distant roar and crash of waves, and guessed I must be pretty close to the beach my mother had been raving about.  I’d only taken a few tokes when I spotted the trio of boys enter the park down where I had.  I didn’t recognise them at first.  I had to squint down, hold one hand up against the glare of the sun and still I didn’t realise it was them until it was too late to move.  Not that I would have run off or anything, anyway.  I watched them plough through the younger kids football game, charging at the kids when they protested, sending them scattering like skittles across the grass.  They came up the hill quickly then, but I wasn’t sure if they had seen me or not.  I knew now it was them.  The three boys from the street.

Shit, I thought, and lowered my feet to the ground.  I had no choice but to stay put and try to appear either cool, or invisible.  So I sucked on my smoke and watched them get closer.  They had slowed right down now, and were slouching their way towards me, and I saw the tallest one flick back his hair and say something to the other two.  I took the chance to look them up and down and take them in properly for the first time.  They were all dressed alike, scruffy jeans with holes around the knees, checked shirts worn unbuttoned over t-shirts, and hair that was too long.

They stopped right in front of me, so I looked up at them expectantly and wondered whether I ought to smile or not.  For some stupid reason I felt the strongest urge just to grin at them.  The tall one stood back slightly, his arms crossed loosely around his middle.  He had pale brown hair that curled in wisps around his ears and danced across his forehead.  His face was lean, his cheekbones high and his hazel eyes sombre.  The smallest one had a kind of squat and stocky build.  His hair was a rusty orange, and looked stiff and wiry, while his eyes were a bright and inquisitive green.  He placed one foot up on the bench beside me.  I glanced at the dirty Adidas trainer next to me, and then looked back at them.  The dark haired boy was just staring at me, his only movement being a quick shake of his head to knock the hair from his eyes.  I had to concentrate hard now, to keep the scowl on my own face.  My lips wanted to smile, and there was a tremor of a giggle caught in my throat.  I sat up, straightening my back, reacting to a shiver of excitement that shot up my spine.  “You’re on our bench mate.” The dark haired boy said finally.  Again I had to fight hard not to smile, or laugh, because it just sounded so funny.  I looked at each of them carefully in turn, and then I glanced down at the bench I was sat on.  I drew on the cigarette and puffed the smoke out towards them.

“I don’t see your name on it mate.”

The boy raised his thick black eyebrows in return.  The other two looked at each other, and the small ginger one sniggered.  “You’re the boy who’s just moved in.”

I nodded. “You’re the boys always out the front.”

“What’s your name?”

“Danny.”

“Guns and Roses are so fucking over mate,” the small one said then, taking me a little by surprise.  He was sneering at my t-shirt, the one I was so proud of, and the other two were laughing softly now.  I tried not to let my confusion show.  Part of me wanted to explain that I had only recently been getting into music, and there was just so much of it, that I felt I would never be able to catch up.  I frowned a little at the small kid then. I wondered what he knew that I didn’t.

“In your opinion,” I told him.

“Where you from?” back to the dark boy.

“Southampton.”

“Why’d you move here?”

“My mum,” I shrugged, and told them. I was still trying to work out if there was any chance they were actually being friendly, but the persistent scowl on the dark boys face was not giving me much hope.  I could tell they were waiting for more. “She had this mental boyfriend,” I explained. “She dumped him and he wouldn’t take no for an answer.  Started following her everywhere and making weird phone calls, so we moved.”

“You mean like a stalker?” the ginger boy asked, leaning over his knee now, while his green eyes widened in interest.  I felt doubtful.  I hadn’t heard that word before, not in relation to crazy old James anyway.  So I shrugged.

“Think so.”

“So where’s your dad then?” the dark boy wanted to know.

I shrugged again. “I dunno.”

I saw a look pass between them, and it gave me the feeling that I was going to get away with it this time, that I was going to be able to walk away from this.  The other two boys had their eyes on the dark one, and I felt like they wanted to discuss me.  I also knew I was right, about him being the ringleader, the one I had to beat, and I felt that fizz of excitement course through me again, churning my guts and making my limbs feel restless. Finally the dark haired boy put his hands on his hips, dropped his shoulders a little, and sighed.

“Okay Danny, whatever your name is, this is our bench right? We come up here to have a smoke and a chat, so I’m gonna’ ask you nicely to get up and fuck off back where you came from, okay?”

I blew my breath out really slowly, and glanced down for a moment.  I took one last, long drag on my cigarette before tossing it behind me. I wanted them to think I was considering the offer.  What I really wanted to do was either laugh in his face, or smash my fist into it.  I quite liked the idea of a fight, to be honest.  I wondered how mental my mother would go if I came back home all bloodied and messed up.  But I was outnumbered, and I was smaller than two of them.  I was waiting urgently for some kind of fucking growth spurt, but my mum kept telling me not to hold my breath.  You have my build, she would tell me, making me want to tear out my own hair and stuff it into my ears so I wouldn’t have to listen to her.  Small and light, like a bird, she was fond of saying.  Yeah great, a fucking bird no less, exactly the look a teenage boy wants to have.  I shrugged carelessly and got up from the bench.  I tried to move as slowly and casually as possible, exaggerating all of my movements to make it look like the most boring thing in the world.  “Okay go for it then mate,” I told him, sliding through them and gesturing back towards his precious bench.  “I was leaving anyway.”

I started to walk away, but walked backwards for a bit. “Maybe I’ll see you guys in school on Monday,” I told them.  I nodded at the dark boy then.  “Maybe I’ll see you in school on Monday.”

“You starting at Somerley?” he called after me.  I nodded and kept walking.  “See you Monday morning then,” he said, and when I looked back at him one last time, I saw him nod at me.  His face was dark and serious, his eyes narrowed down to slits, his lips tight.  I understood that expression perfectly, so I grinned and laughed.

“See you then,” I said, and didn’t look back again.

I walked back with a small smile upon my face.  It was all spinning around and around inside my head.  The boys, the bench, the threat.  School.  When I thought about those mean eyed kids, I felt something fill the emptiness inside of me, and it was a relief.  I would either have to fight them, or win them over. Whatever happened, it was going to be interesting.