The Knife That Killed Me (17 page)

Traitor.

Traitor.

Traitor.

TWENTY-FIVE

Billy found
me in the library at lunchtime.

It took me a while to realize he was there. I’d been thinking about a time when I was small. Maybe six or seven, something like that. My parents had some friends who had kids the same age as me. We were having a picnic all together down in the gypsy field, which sounds mad, but on a sunny day it could be quite nice. There were a few places where the fold of the ground meant you couldn’t see any houses, and with the sound of the beck running in the background it almost felt like you were in the real countryside. We had
ham sandwiches and sausage rolls and jam fritters, which were actually just jam sandwiches deep-fried in batter, but I loved them. I played in the beck with the other children. We had on jelly-shoes to guard against the broken glass and rusty wire, and we waded in the brown water while our parents drank beer and wine and got red faces in the sun.

There was a girl called Bethany who had the curliest hair you ever saw, and I remember holding her hand while she balanced on an old fridge that was thrown away in the beck, and the other children made fun of us for holding hands, but I didn’t mind because I liked Bethany and her curly hair.

And I think I was reaching out my hand to touch Bethany’s curly hair when Billy sat himself down heavily opposite me, filling the space I wanted to gaze into.

“I was looking for you,” he said in a heavy whisper, although there was no one else in the library.

“You found me.”

It was hard being unfriendly to Billy. But hard is what I’d become.

“Kirk told me.”

“Told you what?” I made my voice as empty as I could, and my eyes avoided his.

“What he did.”

“What makes you think I care what Kirk did?”

“Not just
did
—what he did to
you.”

“Kirk didn’t do anything to me.”

“You think?”

“Kirk’s nothing to me. None of you are.”

“You don’t fool me. I saw what happened at break. You tried to hide it, but I saw.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Out there. I saw you stop Roth. He was going to do something terrible, and you stopped him.”

“I just warned him that Boyle was coming.”

“No. That wasn’t it. I was watching. You stopped him first, then you saw Boyle. Boyle was just an excuse.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why should I care if Roth pissed on Shane, or any of you?”

“Will you listen to me? I know you’re not like this. We were together just now in the dining hall. We were all a bit shocked, you know, because of Shane. And Kirk was talking, the way he does. He said he saw you at the Odeon, waiting for Maddy. He said it was why you’d gone over to that lot, to the thugs.”

“I’m not listening to this.”

“You are listening. You’ve got to listen. He was taking the piss, saying what a loser you are. He said that’s why you turned against us, that’s why you became one of them, one of the shits, just because Maddy stood you up. He said that you’d shown what you were really like. Said we should never have let you in. And all the time Maddy had this look on her face, like
What are you talking about?
Then she said she’d never stood you up, that she couldn’t have, because she didn’t even realize you had a date.”

“I’m not saying we did.”

“But that’s what you thought, isn’t it? That’s why you were waiting around at the Odeon?”

I said nothing, but I couldn’t stop the shame from showing.

“Well, she hadn’t understood—whatever, I don’t know. But I’m telling you, she wasn’t faking. She didn’t stand you up. It was news to her that you two had a date. So then Kirk said you were a psycho and had imagined the whole thing, and that anyway Maddy was out of your league.”

“Yeah, well, thanks, Billy, that’s really cheered me up. Is that why you came here? Mission accomplished. Now get lost.”

“I haven’t finished yet. Because then that little Year Nine girl of his—Lucy, I think her name is—showed up with a plate of plain boiled rice ’cos that’s all she eats. And she sort of blurted out what Kirk had said, about Shane and Maddy screwing, and Kirk tried to shut her up. Then they had a row, and she said he was always going on about Maddy, and if she was so wonderful, why didn’t he go out with her? And he said, yeah, why not, so she stormed off, leaving her rice behind. But we’d twigged by then. It was all Kirk. He’d said it all out of spite.”

“I don’t even know what you’re saying. Don’t know and don’t care.”

“Listen to me! Kirk was lying when he said that Maddy and Shane were together. I mean, together like that. They aren’t. They never could be.”

“What do you mean?”

“How could you not know?”

“Know what?”

“Shane. Maddy. Couldn’t happen.”

“Of course it could. I’ve seen her look at him. Kirk’s right. I was stupid to think … Just get lost, will you, Billy, I’ve stuff to do.”

“He’s gay.”

“What?”

“Shane’s gay.”

Then came the sort of silence that pounds in your ears. And then I laughed. And then I cursed. And then I said, “You’re taking the piss.”

“You know what this school is like. Do you think I’d joke about it? Imagine being gay here. Imagine what would happen to you if it got out. Imagine what that does to you, inside. Maddy’s got a brother who … Well, that’s for her to tell you. Anyway, she understood better than anyone. She was a shoulder for him to cry on. And maybe she felt things for him, I don’t know. Would be a bit weird, if you ask me, but that’s not the point.”

“So what
is
the point?”

Everything Billy had said made a kind of sense, and maybe it should have cheered me up, but it didn’t. I was too confused, too heartsick. I didn’t know what to think about Shane being gay. It made me feel queasy and embarrassed. It made me think in a different way about things he’d said and done. I know it shouldn’t, but it did. And the knowledge that
Maddy hadn’t deliberately stood me up got lost in the fact that she hadn’t noticed me enough even to realize that I’d asked her out.

There was too much, so I blanked it out, made it go away.

“The point?
The point?”
said Billy, almost shouting now, his arms waving around for emphasis. “The point is that you don’t have to get mixed up in all that bullshit after school. The stupid fight. Acting like Roth’s right-hand man. We can just forget about the past couple of days, get on with life. And you never know, you and Maddy—”

“Shut up about Maddy.” I surprised myself with the concentrated spite in my voice.

“OK, whatever …”

“It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late.”

“Everything’s … in place.”

“So what? Just don’t go.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Damn right I don’t understand.”

“Go away, Billy. Go away and play your silly games. Pretend that your lives are interesting. Pretend that you’re special. Pretend there’s some great tragic drama that you’re part of. You lot are pathetic. You think you’re better than everyone else, you think you’ve got more depth. But you’re not deep, you’re stupid. You don’t get it—don’t get how the world works. You read books and you talk about them but
you never see what’s around you. Well, Roth does. Roth sees everything. And you’re not even much good at being a freak. You’re too fat and you laugh too much.”

And then smiling Billy’s round face, so wrong for a freak, so right for a clown, suddenly looked gaunt, and it was as if I was seeing through the flesh to the skull beneath. He got up slowly, like an old man, and I felt sorry for what I’d done.

“Look, Billy,” I said, “I appreciate you coming here, saying what you said. But things are different now, and that’s all there is to it. Anyway, how’s Shane?”

When he answered, his voice was empty.

“Maddy called him. A couple of stitches. He’ll be back in school in no time.”

And then he was gone, his bulk swaying its way into the corridor, like an old-time sailing ship leaving a small harbor.

TWENTY-SIX

I had
geography with Mr. Boyle in the afternoon. His heart wasn’t in the lesson, and he didn’t even bother to stop the kids talking among themselves. He just droned away, pausing sometimes to write stuff on the whiteboard in his unreadable handwriting. As usual, Roth and Bates and Miller were behind me, but they didn’t throw chewing gum today. We were on the same side now.

Despite the boring lesson, you could sense the excitement build up as we got nearer the time of the fight. It was an excitement I didn’t share. The anger I’d felt about Maddy
and Shane was gone. What was left behind was a kind of gray sludge. Not really what you need to get in the mood for a fight.

I’m trying to find the right word for what I felt; trying to find a big word, a good word. But maybe the right word is a simple one: I felt sad. My time of being a freak was over. For a while I’d almost become one of Roth’s nutters, but that was never going to work. I wasn’t hard enough, and I didn’t enjoy other people’s pain. But there was no way I was going to back out of the battle. I didn’t want to live with the shame of it, like my dad had done, hiding it beneath lies and bluster. I’d said I’d be there, so be there I would.

“Stay behind, will you, Varderman.”

The lesson was over, and Boyle was talking to me.

I heard a hiss from behind.

“Make sure you’re there, or we’ll come looking for you.”

I turned, ignoring Mr. Boyle. “I’ll be there.”

When the rest of the class were gone, I went and stood by Boyle’s desk. He was writing something, and made me wait for a couple of minutes. Finally he put down his pen. It was a chewed Bic biro, same as a kid would use.

“What’s going on, Varderman?”

“Don’t know, sir.”

“Do you think I’m an idiot, Varderman?”

“No, sir.”

“Then tell me what’s happening. Because something is. The whole school’s buzzing with it.”

“Nothing’s happening, sir. It’s going-home time, sir, that’s all.”

Then Mr. Boyle picked up his pen and wrote some more. I twisted and squirmed and fidgeted, terrified in case Roth thought I was trying to get out of the fight.

“I was talking to Shane on the way to the ER,” he said after a while. “Oh, don’t worry, he wouldn’t tell me anything either. But he said that he thought you needed help. He said he thought that you could do things with your life.”

“It’s not up to him what I do with my life, sir.”

Then Boyle looked at me properly for the first time. “I used to go to school with your dad, you know.”

“I know, sir.”

My dad had told me. He laughed when I told him I had Mr. Boyle for geography. He said everyone thought Boyle was a joke, because he was brainy and clumsy and was always falling over his feet. My dad said they called him “Boyle on the bum.”