We walked in silence, picking up the pace again—I hadn’t forgotten this had turned into a race. We tramped around the edge of the field alongside the green hedgerow through patches of purple heather, swiping at buzzing gnats and midges that got in our way. I might have been tired and anxious, but I was determined too.
It got hotter still. My rucksack felt like it weighed a ton. I was sure Sim’s was as bad. The walking on the rough uneven ground of the fields was draining enough, but having to clamber over fences or through hedgerows between fields seemed to suck dry what little energy we had left. My stomach rumbled every few seconds. The map was next to useless because we weren’t following the roads. All the trees, sheep and cows looked the same. It wasn’t like being on a road with signposts for towns and villages that we could use. So I was surprised, but in a relieved way, when we reached the outskirts of a town called Dalbeattie just after three o’clock.
“This is fantastic,” I said, showing Sim the map. “Look. See that? We’re pretty much halfway there.” I was eager to keep going.
“I need to rest,” Sim said, not even bothering to see if I agreed.
We didn’t go into the town but stayed in a field beside the main road. With a simultaneous grunt we slumped down and leaned our backs against a tall tree, enjoying the shade
its branches offered. At last Sim dug the juice and apples out from the bottom of his bag and we shared. We took off our trainers to let our stinky feet breathe, sitting in silence except for the munching of apples. I closed my eyes, wanting to enjoy the time-out. And now that I was sitting down, all my eagerness to keep going got up and went. But I could tell Sim was brooding. I tried to get him talking to find out what was wrong.
I opened the map across my knees. “D’you think we’re gonna make it?”
He glanced down at the map. “It’s still a long way. And tramping over these fields all the time isn’t making it any easier, just making it feel longer.”
“You reckon we should risk staying on the road, then?”
“Maybe we could get a bus from here. You know, split up, take a different bus each, and meet at Ross later.”
It was something I hadn’t thought about. “That might actually be a good idea.”
“How much money have we got left?”
“Just over a tenner.”
“Nothing to get home again with, then.”
“It’s only got to get us back as far as Dumfries. We’ve got train tickets back from there, don’t forget.”
“I was thinking that once we’ve done it, scattered his ashes or whatever we’re going to do, I might just call my mum and dad anyway, tell them where we are. It’ll be too late for them to stop us, and we might get a lift home.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad plan either,” I admitted.
Sim was brooding again. He tossed away his apple core and lay back in the grass with his hands behind his head. I knew he’d been like this ever since I’d called Nina.
I lay back next to him. “You okay?”
He didn’t answer. I wondered if he’d fallen asleep behind his sunglasses. I didn’t know whether or not to ask him again, but at last he asked, “Why did you tell her?”
I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“Nina. Why did you tell her what we were doing?” He didn’t let me embarrass myself with a lie. “The way you talked to her on the phone—it was obvious she knew what we’re doing, where we’re going. Why’d you tell her?”
“I felt I had to. I thought she ought to know.”
“Is that why you also wanted to tell his sister?”
“That was different—Caroline was really hurting. If you’d been talking to her you’d have seen how cut up she was and I just wanted her to know we were doing something good for her brother. I thought it might make her feel better.”
“So Nina wasn’t upset?”
“Course she was. That’s not what I said.”
“So she was upset, but that’s not the reason you told her.”
“I don’t know what you’re getting at.”
Sim was quiet.
I sat up. “Come on. What’re you trying to say?”
He seemed to think about it, then asked, “Are you going out with Nina?”
“What?”
He jerked upright and put his face close to mine. “Did Nina pack Ross in because of those poems getting read out, and her getting embarrassed in front of everybody? Or was it because you started seeing her instead?”
I could see myself reflected in the lenses of his sunglasses. I didn’t like what I saw. “It’s not what you think,” I said.
“Bullshit. Did you steal your best friend’s girlfriend?”
“Sim, look—”
“Yes or no. Did you steal Ross’s girlfriend?”
“I … Look, it just happened—”
He punched me. It really hurt. I tumbled backward and put my hand to my bloody lip.
Sim rose to his feet, fists clenched.
I got up too, not liking him standing over me when he looked like he wanted to kill me. “She was going to finish with him anyway. And I always got on well with Nina, you know I did. I didn’t mean—”
But Sim punched me again.
“Ow! Jesus! Will you stop doing that?” I backed away from him, hands out to ward off any further blows. “You think I don’t feel shitty about it? You think I’m happy he’s dead, so now I don’t have to worry about telling him?”
“I never said it. But you just did.”
“Yeah, well, it’s not true.”
“Call yourself a friend?” He spat at my feet. “You’re as
big an arsehole as Fowler. And Munro. And all the rest of them.”
“I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t his friend,” I said. “Why the hell would I be getting myself into this much trouble if I wasn’t his friend?”
“Guilt.”
“You what?”
“Guilt,” Sim said. “Guilt. You’re doing this because you feel guilty.”
I didn’t know how to answer. I was scared it might be true. But I was spared from saying anything because Kenny, red-faced and dripping with sweat, pushed his way through the hedge into the field. He still had hold of the helmet he’d been wearing.
“What’s going on? I could hear you two shouting from all the way up the road.”
It stopped Sim and me dead. It was like neither of us believed it at first. All we could do was stare at him.
“Why’ve you been fighting?” he wanted to know.
I unglued my mouth. “Where the hell have you been?”
He looked surprised by the question. “Trying to find you two, obviously. You just rode off without me when I fell off.”
“Did you get hurt?”
He turned and lifted up his T-shirt to show us the massive purple and black bruise spreading up his left side from his hip. “It kills.”
“The police didn’t get you?” Sim asked.
“I’ve not seen any police. I thought you’d drive on and wait for me, but I couldn’t find you.”
“We went back looking for you,” Sim said.
“But I went looking for
you,”
Kenny told him.
“So how’d you get here?” I asked.
“I saw a sign for Dalbeattie, and remembered it was one of the places Kayleigh had said about.”
“You walked along the road?”
He nodded. “I’m telling you, though: my feet feel like they’re gonna drop off. I’ve got this massive blister. And I was resting a bit further along the road—just near those houses down there, because that’s Dalbeattie—and that’s when I saw you two. I tried shouting at you but you were too far away to hear me. I saw you climb through the hedge and came to meet you. I was worried I’d lose you again, but I could hear you shouting half a mile away. What’s going on?”
Sim and I looked at each other. I jumped in before he could say anything. “Look, it’s the three of us back together again, right?” I was trying hard for appeasement. “Just like Ross would’ve wanted. Let’s keep going, okay? We’re almost there.”
But Sim wasn’t happy.
And Kenny was still concerned. “But what’s—?”
Sim jabbed a finger at me. “Ask him. Ask him why he stole his best mate’s girlfriend.”
Kenny turned to me, shocked at first. Then sad, disappointed. “Did you …?”
“It’s not how Sim’s making it out to be,” I told him.
“Bollocks,” Sim sneered. Then, in a flash, he was in Kenny’s face too. “And don’t you go thinking you’re not as bad. You could’ve helped him with his dad’s computer, but you just couldn’t be bothered.”
Kenny was startled by the sudden attack. He staggered back a step.
“Ross would’ve been really scared, really shitting himself, because he knew what his dad would do when he found out he’d deleted that stupid book of his.”
“That’s not fair,” Kenny said.
“He was your
friend
, Kenny. Didn’t that thought even get through your thick skull?”
Kenny looked at me, appealing to me to defend him. But Sim was right. Both Kenny and I had let our best friend down.
Kenny was flustered but he managed to stand his ground. “You can’t say that. I’m telling you: you’re worst of all.”
Sim lunged at him. “What did you say?”
Kenny cowered back against the hedge, holding the helmet up to his chest to ward Sim off. “What about Munro? You didn’t help Ross then, did you? Why don’t you tell Blake about that, instead of having a go at me?”
Sim looked like he was the one who’d been punched. I saw his mouth try to form words that wouldn’t come out. I remembered meeting Ross after Munro had beaten him up in Haverstoe Park. I’d asked him if we should get Sim, but Ross had looked away, avoided the question.
“What happened?” I asked.
Sim didn’t answer. He grunted, paced a step or two back and forth and kicked at the ground. Then sat down like his legs had been chopped out from underneath him. He put his head in his hands.
“He didn’t stop Munro beating Ross up even though he was there too,” Kenny said.
I said to Sim, “But all that trouble with the graffiti on the bike shed … it only started because he let you copy his homework and didn’t grass you up to Fowler.”
Sim wouldn’t answer. The three of us didn’t move. None of us had anything to feel proud of.
I sucked on my busted lip and stared out across the field at the sheep on the far side. I was thinking about the fuse Mr. Fell had lit inside my head yesterday morning. But it glowed too hot; grew too insistent. I grabbed up my rucksack and searched the pockets for my phone. I couldn’t turn it on quick enough and was impatient for it to find a signal. Kenny asked what I was doing but I ignored him. I called Nina.
I didn’t let her speak, asked immediately: “Did he know?”
“Who? Listen, Blake—”
“Please, just tell me. Did Ross know about
us
?”
She didn’t answer at first, but I could hear her breathing.
“Nina?”
“He saw us together.”
That fuse in my head fizzed and sparked. I went back over what I remembered of those last few days before Ross died. And Mr. Fowler, Sean Munro, Nina, me, Kenny, Sim.
Nina was saying my name.
“Yeah, I’m still here,” I told her.
“I was trying to tell you before—they’ve found a note.”
I squeezed my eyes tight shut. Ross had said to me, “The day I can’t stand up for myself anymore is the day I roll over and die.” And all of a sudden, I knew what was coming.
“He’d been on his dad’s computer,” Nina said. “He’d damaged it or something, I don’t know how, exactly. But his dad was trying to get it fixed yesterday when they found that Ross had been going on the Internet to visit these chat rooms and forums. He’d tried to cover up what he’d done, delete what he’d been writing, and that’s how he’d damaged the computer. But it’s all come out now.”
And at last the fuse lit the bomb. And the bomb went boom.
“They were chat rooms for people who want to kill themselves.” She was crying too. “He posted a suicide note on the same morning he died.”
I thought I’d seen Sim angry before, but this was something else. I was scared of him. He smacked the phone right out of my hand and stamped it to pieces. I cowered away from him, thinking he was going to smash me up too.
“How can you say that? How can you?” He came at me and I stumbled away from him, out of his reach. “Come on! How can you say something like that?”
“You’re wrong,” Kenny told me. “We’re not going to believe it. We can’t. He was knocked off his bike, wasn’t he? He didn’t hang himself. He didn’t cut his wrists.”
“Think about it,” I said. “His best friends,
us
, we’d all let him down. His mum and dad wanted completely different things from him; he knew he couldn’t please them both. His sister humiliated him in front of all those other kids at school, because of his writing. He was bullied by both Fowler and Munro. He must have felt like the whole world
was against him. And then he thought he’d destroyed the most important thing in his dad’s life. His dad, who was the one and only person who seemed to be on his side.”
Sim was still seething. “You’re saying we’re to blame.”
“Maybe we are. We all ignored what was happening to him, didn’t we?”
He lunged at me, knocked me over, pinned me to the ground. His face was a bruised, angry red. “If anyone’s to blame, you are. You stole his girlfriend.” He had his knee in my stomach. “Say it.” He ground his knee into me. “Say it’s your fault.”
“Sim …”
“Say it.”
“Sim, look—”
He slammed his knee into me, making me cry out.
I managed to roll and push him off. I sat up and cradled my stomach. “He must have done it for lots of reasons, some we probably don’t even know about.”
“Then he’s the biggest shithead I’ve ever met.” He held out his hand. “Give me my money.”
“What?”
“I want my money back. I gave you a fiver, right? I want it back.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t believe I’ve come all this way and got into all this trouble for some shithead who killed himself.”
“Sim, listen—”
“Give me my money, Blake. Or I mean it: I’ll take it from you.”
“We’ve got to go to Ross.”
He swiped his sunglasses off his face, let me see his eyes, as hard as snooker balls but glistening with tears. “Give me my money. Just give it to me.”
I’d never seen him cry before. I dug in my back pocket for our money and gave him a five-pound note. “Don’t go.” But I didn’t know how to make him stay. “At least come to Ross and—”