The Suicide Club (37 page)

At around half three the BBC news channel had an expert in the studio talking about the nature of suicide pacts and how once one person does it the rest usually seem to follow. According to him, people who would ordinarily never kill themselves on their own often do it if they are part of a pact, kind of like a chain reaction. The news report was good because as he spoke they kept showing pictures of my school. There were a few kids I recognized milling around the yard and then the camera suddenly panned round and zoomed in right on . . . me and Clare. We were holding each other in our arms and I almost choked when I saw it. My heart skipped and a sudden surge of happiness coursed through me. I was on TV! And I looked cool, even if I do say so myself. But then the camera panned to another group and my heart sank once more.

Since Jenny had died I hadn't even spoken to Matt or Freddy so I had no idea what they were thinking at this point. I had been thrown out of school before first lesson had even finished.

Inside I was in turmoil. I was happy because the school was on TV and I had even been given a brief cameo, and not just on the regional news; this story would get all over the world. But on the other hand it was me and my friends who were the stars of this story but our names weren't getting mentioned. I know it must sound weird, and it wasn't my strongest wish at that time, but a bit of recognition would have been nice.

I know that if it was another school and I was just an observer, I would want to know how many kids were left in the pact so that I could count down the deaths. And I would want to know
who
the kids were and their backgrounds so
that I could guess how likely it was that they were going to commit suicide. I know it's what's called gratuitous but it's true. At least for me.

As I sat in the living room I wondered what my parents were doing. They were being very quiet. I assumed that a big lecture was coming up about how I was throwing my life away, but you know what? It never came. Ever. After the way I had behaved in the conservatory, our relationship had broken and, though you could tape it up, it could never be fully repaired because what had happened was Not Natural and you never come back from something like that.

So I sat in my room doing absolutely nothing. I could hear Toby shuffling around on the landing every now and again but I didn't feel like talking to him because I knew I wouldn't be able to handle it if I made him cry, which I almost certainly would, seeing as though everything I was touching lately was turning to shit.

At ten o'clock I watched the news on TV (I only have terrestrial channels in my bedroom). Our story had been promoted to the first segment and we totally dominated the regional news, which made me feel a little better. The editors at the TV station must have had time to put together a better report by this time because in this one there were shots of Jenny's house on the airbase and of her parents getting out of a car, her mother doubled over in agony, her dad in his uniform looking like the toughest guy in the world. The airbase was described by the reporter as having been ‘rocked' by the events.

I remembered how Jenny had told me that her parents were ‘opinionated'. Other than that all I knew was that they were from just outside San Francisco, from a town called San something. I suddenly realized just how little I actually knew about Jenny and her background. Right now, as I was in my bedroom, her parents must have felt like their world
was over. Which it was of course because their daughter was dead after being smashed to bits by a car after jumping off a bridge. There was a gold rope of bond running between Jenny's parents and Craig's parents and they didn't even know it. It probably never crossed their minds that just a mile of space away were another grieving couple being drowned in the same river.

At least Jenny had done it dramatically. Thank God for that. Her death was probably better than Craig's if you asked me to choose. Just. If you think about it, you could never have imagined Jenny killing herself in such an explosive manner. She was the most normal of us all. She was definitely capable of killing herself, everybody is, but to do it like that? I would never have said she could have done it in such a dramatic fashion. But then again, she was very artistic.

The next morning I woke up with so much sun coming through the curtains that I thought that it had exploded. It was not normal for February. If it hadn't been that sunny I would have probably stayed in bed all day but how could I miss out on a day like this? I had been expelled yesterday and so this was like that song, the first day of my life.

The water in the shower fed me energy. Everything was going to be OK. My feeling wasn't based on anything real; nothing had changed, I could just
feel
it. In reality, of course, so my counsellors tell me, I had gone crazy. By this point I was so far gone I had no idea that my view of the world had warped so badly. I hadn't even noticed any discernible difference in me.

I wanted to see my parents. Not to bury the hatchet and start anew, that was impossible; I just wanted to be around them. I got changed and pulled back my curtains. The sky was so blue it was like neon and there were absolutely no clouds. The world was alive. I was alive.

I ran downstairs like one of those crazy winds that wash into France off Africa, ready to scream out how happy I was – only to find the house empty. I opened the front door. Mum's car was gone. Surely they hadn't all gone out without telling me, right? I looked at the floor and picked up the mail. My heart skipped when I saw my name written on a brown envelope. Don't worry, it wasn't another suicide note, it was one of those browny-yellowy padded envelopes that Play send out. My MCR album! There's nothing quite like the feeling of seeing one of those brown envelopes on the doormat, is there? I tore the wrapping off frantically, excited that at last I was going to get my CD. The envelope slipped away and my heart sank. I almost started crying right there and then. I had to sit down at the kitchen table to get my breath back. In my hands was a classical music CD. They had sent the wrong CD. I had waited for so long and they had got my hopes raised and now here they were slapping me in the face. How could they do this? I was on the verge of giving up on everything, finding a rope and hanging myself from it, but a little voice said, Just give it one more chance, Rich.

Hands shaking, I put the CD back into the ripped envelope and went over to the kitchen cabinet to fetch some sticky tape so that I could send it back.

It was when I was stood at the kitchen counter, reaching up to the cupboard for the tape, looking out of the window into the back garden, that I saw Toby holding a two-litre plastic bottle with the top sawn off. I got a twang in me because I thought about me lying in bed whilst he had been going about his business in silence, just walking around the garden with a bottle in his hand. I sighed. I wished he had more friends because he was such a great little kid. I couldn't even imagine why nobody wanted to hang around with him. If I had been a little kid I would have definitely hung around with someone like Toby.

Anyway, it was while I was having this very thought that Toby started talking to someone. Whoever it was, they were out of sight. Curious, I craned my neck round and couldn't believe what I saw. There was another little kid in the garden with him. A sudden sense of dread came out of nowhere and thudded into me. He had a friend. I watched Toby's mouth move, even though I couldn't hear what he was saying. Then I looked at the kid, and
his
mouth was moving in silence. They seemed to be having some sort of conversation. He didn't need me any more. Over the coming months and years I was going to be phased out. I had a terrible WCS about it where I was crippled in bed and he never came to see me because he was too busy playing some awful game with his friends.

Since he was born, Toby had been the weightiest constant in my life. No matter what happened, he was always there like a rock. Whenever it was raining on a Saturday afternoon it was never that bad because I always had Toby and he would do pretty much whatever I told him to because he idolized me. But that tide was turning. If he was going to turn into Mr Popularity then I would become the follower and he would become the idol. Now that he was all but gone, I felt it so hard that I almost collapsed.

Anyway, this kid. He had thin black hair, was quite tall and had on a matching red tracksuit jacket and trousers. And you know those zips that you have at the bottom of tracksuit trousers that run down the side of your calf ? Well, he had zipped them all the way to the bottom so that above his bright white trainers was a hideous bulge of cloth. I'd say he was about nine. I instantly despised him.

Under his arm he held a shoebox covered in black masking tape.

I went into the conservatory and out through the French windows. I was more timid than usual because I was a little
bit afraid. I knew that whatever was about to happen was going to be incredibly bad. I could just tell.

The air was so cold that my warm breath condensed into clouds.

‘Hiya, Tobe,' I said cheerily, even though it came out with no middle.

‘Morning,' he answered coldly.

‘How come you're not in school?'

‘School's closed. The pipes got frozen. Mum said I had to call her mobile phone when you got out of bed. She's just popped to the shops.'

‘I've just spoken to her,' I lied. ‘She's on her way back.' I sort of couldn't decide if I was upset or happy that my mum had to take time off work to look after her crazy son.

I stood just in front of the door, on the patio. Toby was in the middle of the lawn.

‘Alan, pass me the box?'

Alan walked like he had springs in his shoes, all bouncy. He handed Toby the box. Tobe took it and placed it carefully on the lawn. Then he took his bottle with the top cut off and placed it inside. From his pocket he produced a roll of masking tape and unravelled it around the bottle. Then he pulled the tape away from the bottle and used the rest of it to secure the bottle to the box, if you know what I mean. Next, he looked at Alan expectantly. Alan took some scissors from his pocket and snipped the tape.

I watched on, incredulous.

The bottle was now securely attached to the inside of the shoebox and the two boys stood up simultaneously and awkwardly to admire their handiwork.

‘Not bad,' Alan said.

‘What the hell are you doing?' I called to them from across the garden.

Toby didn't answer immediately.

At last he said,' Building a weather experiment.'

‘So what's that?' I asked, pointing at the bottle and shoebox. ‘A rain gauge?'

They both nodded slowly.

‘So how are you going to tell how much rain has fallen?' I crossed the lawn and picked up the box and tilted it in their direction. Toby looked scared, like I was about to smash it up and humiliate him in front of his new friend. ‘This bottle doesn't have any measurements on it.'

Alan and Toby looked at each other sheepishly, realizing their mistake.

‘Come with me,' I said at last.

Thankfully, they followed. I took them to my bedroom and lifted a geography textbook off my shelf. Finding the page I wanted I threw the book on to my bed so that they could see.

‘Do you know what that is?' I was pointing at a photograph of what looked like a white bird house with slatted sides, mounted on a sturdy central post a metre tall.

The two boys said ‘No' at the exact same time and thought nothing of it.

‘It's a Stevenson Screen,' I answered. ‘It's designed for measuring the weather. You put your instruments like thermometers and barometers inside. Because it's white it reflects the sun's rays so the temperature you get is always accurate. Did you know that official temperatures are always taken in the shade, usually in one of these Stevenson Screens?'

They didn't.

‘And they're always kept on the top of one of these poles, which are always a metre tall exactly. That way, no matter where you are in the world, your recordings are consistent, which is exceptionally important in good science.'

They had blank looks on their faces.

‘Come on,' I said. ‘Let's go to the hardware store. We'll buy some wood and some white paint and we'll make one.'

Their faces came alive and lit up like Christmas trees when I said that.

‘Really?' Toby said excitedly.

‘Sure,' I beamed, feeling great. I needed this.

We set off right away. I took all the cash I had in my cash box, which amounted to nearly £60. I left my mother a note explaining where we had gone and we set off.

It's nearly two miles to the hardware store and we took the river route because if we had taken the road my schoolmates might have seen me and shouted things at me in front of Toby. I hadn't been down that muddy path for years and I had forgotten how peaceful it was; one of those places where you can hardly hear the cars. It was like the place I imagined going with Clare in my daydreams.

Alan turned out to be a delight. He was almost as bad as Toby for his country-gentness but at least he liked sports.

It was an amazing day. It took us about three hours just to get to the shop because the river turned out to be much more fun. We tried damming it in the narrow parts but it never worked. It was just like being a kid again, or maybe like being a father, I don't know. At one point I took off my shoes and socks even though it was the middle of February and freezing and was giving them piggybacks whilst they cracked up in the way that kids crack up when it's not even that funny.

Toby had forgiven me for Bertie and I hadn't even had to apologize. I could have apologized but it would have been so awkward there was no point. It wasn't because I paid him off with the weather station, it was because kids aren't as stubborn and they don't hold pointless grudges. They haven't hardened. By taking Toby to the hardware store and building him a Stevenson Screen (which is still in my garden, by the
way) I had shown him that I wasn't such a bad person after all, and that was good enough for him because he was Toby, he was my bro. If he had made me apologize, it would have been the end because apologies are just words that people are forced to speak to make other people feel superior. If you're really sorry about something, you don't have to say it because you and the person you've hurt just know it. That's all.