Chalk Read online

  Waggoner lay beneath me, beside me, around me. I saw him with me, and he asked me again to let him do what he had been born to do.

  I closed my eyes. ‘What are you?’ I asked.

  ‘I want what happened to mean something. I want everything to mean something. I’m free to make that meaning.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘It’ll take a long time. You won’t understand why I’m doing certain things. You’ll need to keep faith with me. But in the end, I swear, I’m going to hurt them more than they hurt you. Then, when your revenge is complete, you’ll get healed.’

  I thought of Drake with Angie, like I could never be. ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Eight

  The head of a boy from John Bentley was butting into the door of the town hall. Bam, bam, bam, like his skull on the door was a call for something big to happen. Waggoner had grabbed by the collar one of the boys who always gobbed at us and flung him against that door. He’d landed flat on his palms, surprised, and Waggoner had grabbed him again, knocked his hands away and slammed his head on the wood three times. Then he let go, and the kid fell.

  The John Bentley kids stepped back. None of them wanted to fight all eight of us about this kid. He got to his feet, too shocked to be angry. Waggoner reached to grab him again, and he fell back into the gutter, and crawled up the wall until he was on his feet again, staggering.

  I remember everyone staring, an island of strangeness. Elaine said we were being very immature. The kid with the curly hair started shouting things at us as his mates helped him away, as our minibus pulled up. I was looking at how straight Waggoner was standing now, taller than me, at the way he smiled, like a hero, his breath billowing hot from his mouth. He had been testing himself on that boy. Now he could do whatever he wanted. I dreaded that, and I dreaded what was coming at the end of the day.

  * * *

  At school, I looked at the kids getting out of the buses from different village runs. I was walking with Waggoner, slowly, towards the back door of the school, wondering where and when he’d begin his plan. I suddenly realised that Angie’s group of friends were walking past us. There was Angie. There was Louise, looking around quickly, her expression worried and intense as always. Everyone else had gone inside. Then Angie was right beside me.

  Waggoner started to laugh. He was looking Angie up and down.

  She put her head next to mine and whispered so quietly that I was sure even her friends couldn’t hear. ‘Don’t you dare tell about what you saw in the clearing. Okay?’ I was so angry I couldn’t speak. I looked to Waggoner, and now he was glaring at her. She seemed frustrated at my lack of response. ‘What happened to you? What’s wrong with you?’ I couldn’t answer. Drake hadn’t directly referred to what he’d done to me when she was there. Had he not told her? Would it make any difference to how she felt about him? It was impossible for me to even begin to tell her. She held my gaze for a long moment. Then she was off back to her friends, and they were off at high speed into the school.

  I turned back to Waggoner and saw that he was calm, quiet, prepared.

  * * *

  I did my work that day, kept my head down. I heard, at a distance, about Eddy Grant going to Number One with ‘I Don’t Want to Dance’. That didn’t mean much to me at the time, though of course I needed to know what was Number One like any kid did, to be able to answer if anyone asked that as a mocking question. You were supposed to know, like you were supposed to know which music was okay to like and which wasn’t. Since then, I’ve become very aware of what was Number One at every point during the events I’m describing. I keep wondering how much those records influenced everything that happened. The pop charts lie alongside my impossible memories as an index. Angie yelled suddenly at the news, a shout of annoyance that, at the time, I took to be a hatred of Eddy Grant, which surprised me, but I always struggled with which music was okay to like. Meanwhile, Angie and Drake stayed in their separate groups. Outside the clearing, I’d never seen them together at all.

  I made sure nobody was watching me, and found my way back to the clearing in the woods. There was my dried blood. It was still real. I looked around for what had been cut from me. I still couldn’t find it. Maybe it had been eaten by a bird or something. I could imagine it in its beak, pulled at by other birds. I gave up, hating giving up, and went back.

  A cramp was in my stomach. It tensed every time I thought of what was coming at the end of the day. Although Waggoner had told me his revenge would take a long time, part of me had hoped that somehow the end of the day would never happen.

  At the end of the day was PE, and after that we’d have showers, and everyone would see what had happened to me. I couldn’t make myself tell, but my body would. Waggoner must know that.

  Maybe that was going to be his cue to begin his long plan.

  * * *

  ‘Franklin’s sister is broad,’ I heard Lang sniggering through the noise of training shoes being stamped on the floor of the changing rooms to get the mud off them. ‘Wouldn’t it, wouldn’t it, wouldn’t it be funny, if Franklin’s sister had a wooden tit, wouldn’t it be funny?’

  We could already feel the cold from outside. My lot, Surtees and Fiesta and Cath (who was a boy, not a girl called Catherine), were slowly and carefully taking our clothes off. I kept looking across at Drake, but he wasn’t looking up. Maybe by now he knew Angie had warned me off talking about seeing them in the clearing. Maybe she and he spoke about things like that, but I could hardly believe it. He would never acknowledge I held any power over him, so I never would.

  In my lot, Surtees was tall and awkward. His spine curved, so that he looked like he was always ducking down. If he’d stood tall, he’d have been looking out over all of us, and would have been alone. Surtees would say sniffy, insulting things about the football kids, under his breath, usually, with a little high-voiced Wiltshire ferret glance at the rest of us, biting his bottom lip in glee. ‘He’s got an anus as tight as a nun’s chuff,’ he once said to Cath about Lang. I think it was because he hated being with us. He wanted to be a football kid. He never really understood why he couldn’t be. He was talking to me about his English Cricketers Top Trumps pack. He had four of the special cards now, one of which came free in every pack, and if you got five, you could send off for a Sports Cars pack.

  I wasn’t listening. I was looking over to where Lang was with Drake and the others. Drake saw me looking. He must have read the expression on my face. He faltered, looked awkward. He’d just realised about the showers too.

  I wonder now if Rove or Lang or Selway or Blewly were surprised that I came back to school after half-term at all, that they weren’t amazed I wasn’t in hospital. Maybe they’d spent half-term in fear themselves, when they’d woken up the next morning, after the clearing, and realised what they’d been part of.

  No. None of us thought. You read books about kids at school, and they’re fucking detectives, like teenagers on telly, all plans and decisions and life choices. But no. None of us thought. Not like adults do.

  They had been too busy laughing to think of being vulnerable. They weren’t sure they were even now. They couldn’t imagine my weakness harming them. But they were about to see the results of their actions. ‘Broad’ was one of those words of Lang’s that might or might not mean something. ‘Isn’t Cath ace?’ he asked me once. I said yes. Lang had run about, his hands balled into little fists, saying, ‘Waggoner says Cath’s ace!’ Cath, from my lot, had a mane of frizzy hair. That on its own would have been enough to make him one of my lot. Or maybe not, because if you looked at Goff, with his spotty face and greasy hair, you’d think he’d be picked on, but he just wasn’t. The hair made Cath look surprised all the time. I assumed, in those days, that that was how all Catholics looked. I didn’t know what a Catholic was. Lang had said the ‘ace’ thing to Cath too, pointing at me like he was telling him about something bad. So Cath had hit me as best he could on the arm a couple of times.

  Wincing now
, I sat on the bench, and slowly tied the laces on my training shoes. I was aware of Drake’s lot considering me. That I looked wounded now must have felt like a threat.

  Mr. Rushden came in, in his red track suit with white piping, and clapped his hands together. ‘Right! It’s raining, so we’re going to get going with a cross-country warm-up, yeah?’ There was a groan, which he joined in with.

  * * *

  The rain fell on us as we ran along the pavement beside the wall that ran round the school. The football lads, with Drake, had run off into the distance after the first sprint up the drive, leaving my lot to fall to the back and all the kids in the middle to string out in-between. Runs were the pecking order. Fiesta gave up as soon as possible and started walking, unconcerned. He’d get there in time with a couple of jogs halfway. Cath and Surtees went off to end up somewhere in the middle. I jogged along for a while, but then, as always, I started wheezing, and now the wound between my legs was aching, and I found myself having to stop and put my legs together, feeling something terrible and muscular, like something inside was going to snap.

  I should have realised. It was only going to get worse.

  Fiesta walked past me, looking over his shoulder, puzzled for a moment, then walking on. I was alone, leaning on the wall, sucking in air, trying not to throw up. Waggoner stood beside me, calm. He didn’t encourage me. That didn’t seem to be his job.

  Mr. Rushden came running back. The rain was getting harder and harder. ‘What’s up?’ he said. ‘Come on, you can do it. Forget your body; it’s all in your head.’ He tapped a finger against his temple.

  I couldn’t reply. I managed to stumble into a run.

  ‘That’s it, keep going.’ He ran beside me, a comedy slow run. ‘The more you do it, the better you’ll be, yeah?’ He rotated his fists in a little mock boxing cycle. Waggoner ran beside me and Mr. Rushden, like in The Professionals, his cheeks puffed out, his hands made into blades. But he stayed alongside me. ‘You’ll be all right, okay?’ Mr. Rushden got fed up with staying back here and moved off up ahead again, looking back over his shoulder.

  As soon he turned the corner, I fell against the wall again. I wanted to cry. Waggoner looked at me again. Then he leapt up onto the wall. He scrabbled for a moment, then hauled himself up to the top and sat there. He reached a hand down for me.

  I looked back along the road. This was not allowed. But the alternative was Mr. Rushden coming back again, me throwing up, crying, to have everyone looking at me as I staggered back hours too late. I took Waggoner’s hand. He hauled me up onto the wall as a car went by, tooting its horn happily at the cheating. Boys will be boys. The horn covered up the yell I’d come out with as the pain had stretched from my hand to my groin. I hauled my leg over, and sat on top of the wall for a moment before, as quickly as possible, dropping onto the forest floor on the other side. Waggoner dropped down beside me.

  We stood in the woods, hearing the rain thumping onto the trees. Waggoner set off in the direction of the playing fields. I followed, trying to be like him, forcing myself not to go hiding from tree to tree. I felt very out of bounds. Was this something Waggoner was going to do now, lead me into doing bad stuff? We got to the edge of the trees and the expanse of the playing fields. Rain was sweeping across them. In one corner, the girls were playing volleyball, small figures in their blue-and-white sports kit. God, why didn’t they let us do stuff like that? My eyes found Angie, in her normal uniform, sitting at a distance from the game, reading. She didn’t seem bothered by the rain. I saw, even from this distance, her head turn in my direction.

  I didn’t want to think about her at that moment. Closer to us was the football pitch, the lines newly white after half-term. At one corner of it, the football boys were already arriving, racing each other through the door in the wall, sprinting to be the first to get to the line that marked the edge of the pitch. If I joined them now, that’d give them something to think about. Do they tell on me, or do they like what I’ve done?

  They tell on me.

  Waggoner just walked out of the woods and headed for them. I swallowed back throwing up and followed him.

  * * *

  Mr. Rushden came through the door in the wall at the moment I arrived at the group of boys. They were staring at me, laughing, amazed. I’d made a move to change my status with them. All possibilities were still in play. They looked expectant, like they were wondering if I’d break down in tears and claim that I’d got lost.

  Amongst them, Drake was looking calmly at the ground, Selway was looking left and right, smirking. Rove, Blewly and Lang wouldn’t arrive for a while yet.

  ‘Hoi!’ Mr. Rushden stepped forward, pointing at me. ‘Did you climb over the wall?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I said.

  ‘You can’t run that distance, but you can climb over a wall.’

  I nodded.

  ‘Right!’ He grabbed the back of my shirt and hauled me into standing upright, then pushed my shoulders, launching me forward. ‘Do it again.’

  Nine

  The boys laughed. I caught a glimpse of ecstasy on Lang’s face as he came through the door in the wall and was quickly informed what had happened. I could have said something then, told on them. No, I couldn’t. There was no longer any possibility of me doing that.

  I set off. It was a long run to the gravel walk at the side of the house, with them able to watch all the way, so I ran. My lungs felt like two fists. I could feel my face blazing warm in the rain, and the pain between my legs had become a sickening lurch every step. It was like two limps, one leg then the other.

  ‘Go on!’ shouted Mr. Rushden as I stumbled towards the house. ‘Don’t slow down, I’m timing you.’

  I went round the corner. I fell over. I rolled onto the gravel and through a puddle. I threw up in a corner below one of the library windows. I kept on heaving for a couple of minutes, nothing coming. I didn’t care if I was seen now. I’d have been an accusation just in myself. I managed to roll into the corner and curl up. It felt like I’d ripped something open again. The pain stabbed when I moved either leg. I kept moving both, kept kicking against the wall, like a dog having a dream, trying to find a point where there was no pain.

  Waggoner stood there in the rain, looking down at me. He seemed to decide he had to do something. He reached down and helped me to my feet.

  I shouted.

  He put my arm around his shoulder, and his arm around my waist, and got us moving. We followed the gravel path past the ornamental urns with their lids falling off and cracks down their sides, soil spilling out of them, towards where the vast driveway led up to the doorway at the front of the school. With the help of Waggoner, I started down the drive a second time. We weren’t so much running as staggering, him trying to push us on as fast as possible, me about to fall. Was anyone watching from the house? We reached the gates. I grabbed the huge bolts, had to haul a spike out of a hole in the gravel, swung them open.

  Back on the road. On the pavement. The rain broken by trees. Cars went past. Splashes up the pavement. The pain came and went. I got glimpses of figures through the rain. Breathe in. There they were. Standing there. Watching. So many of them. In the rain from the sky. The water shining. Breathe out. Car breaks the image.

  They were seething, waiting to be loose, to have their revenge.

  We passed the point where I’d misbehaved. A splash of brick dust on the pavement, washing away. Could I keep going? Could I keep my story going? If I fell, then Dad would know. Find the wound in hospital. Or worse, the school nurse. My body would tell.

  Breathe in. There they are. Breathe out. Gone.

  Another stretch of nothing.

  And there’s the door ahead. The rain in my eyes. The non-warmth of Waggoner beside me. There’s the door. It’s been closed again. Is it locked? If it’s locked, then I’ll wander off, I’ll just walk and see what car picks me up and tell everything to whoever’s driving it and let them take me home.

  I couldn’t. Mum and Dad. This is
for them.

  We fell against it. Staggered through it. A few steps down the path. There was the white line at the edge of the pitch. They’d all got their football boots on now and were playing a match. Mr. Rushden, with the whistle round his neck, looked around, came trotting over.

  I’d staggered to a halt. I was looking at the white line.

  He stopped, blew the whistle, waved his arm in the air for everyone to come over. They came running. He looked proud. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘Over the line.’

  I continued to look at the line. They’d gathered now, staring.

  ‘Give him some encouragement!’ roared Mr. Rushden.

  They didn’t know what to do. ‘Yay,’ said Fiesta, and then shut up again.

  ‘I said clap! Go on!’ roared Mr. Rushden.

  They started applauding in a sarcastic way.

  ‘Andy,’ said Lang. ‘You’re so ace.’ And he should know.

  I am still considering that line. Story of my life, that line.

  Mr. Rushden was looking at me, wondering what was going on. He came forward, slapped me on the back, and so ‘accidentally’ pushed me over the line, my feet nearly tripping over it. ‘There you go. Well done, Andy. You took your punishment and now we’re quits, yeah? You can play football now.’

  I did not deliberately cross that line. After that, I never did.

  I’m the person who, when the shop assistant goes, ‘That’s two for the price of one; you might as well get another’, shakes my head and says, no, you told me to do that, so no, I will decide not to, even against my own benefit.

  I went and sat on the bench where all the Adidas bags were propped, with bottles of Panda Pop lined up. The others had gone back to the game. I got my boots on. My feet were far away. I waited as long as I could. That had been the first half of Double Games. An hour to go. I stood up again.