Crossing the Line (12 page)

McCluskey sat on the head's left, arms folded, glowering into the middle distance, meeting no one's eyes and certainly not mine. What his body language said was this:
I know the guy on my right is a prat. I know you have no respect for him. But until he shuts up and lets us all get on with our respective jobs, I will personally kill any giggler
. It was like watching some politician give a speech to squaddies. The regimental sergeant major was up there next to the defence minister, and the squaddies knew if they stepped out of line they were going to die.

So we were all remarkably good in the circumstances. As usual somebody off to my left was quietly humming the theme tune to
Pinky and the Brain
, and others were harmonising, and this was making some first years practically explode into fragments with the effort of not laughing, which was of course the whole point. I wanted to start singing ‘Imagine', which would have got me all
kinds of complex Brownie points in my school rehabilitation, because it would be taking the mickey out of my notorious mother as well as our intense and well-meaning head. But I ached all over, my ribs and my nose hurt too much and any tune would have been unrecognisable. Besides, I found I couldn't quite do that to my mother, even if I'd happily do it to Pearson.

Anyway, though McCluskey was ignoring the music merchant, his super-senses would lock on to me straight away. I was disgusted to discover that I cared what McCluskey thought of me and I didn't want him to go on thinking I was stupid.

I certainly wasn't the sharpest lemon in the bag. This is when I pocketed one of Mum's kitchen knives and started carrying it to school.

In the last couple of months of his final term, not having my feelings to consider any more, Kev did his best to make up for lost opportunities where my sister was concerned. It was the same as with Orla: he was scared of her, so he targeted Aidan. He was scared of me (still), so he targeted Allie. And the big shining best of it, from Kev's point of view, was that Allie was not just a way of getting at me: she was also a way of getting at Aidan.

Killing two birds, that's what they call it.

There were still constraints on him: namely, the Despot McCluskey, and the fact that I could still kill the wee tosser with my bare hands if he went too far.

So what he did was he got the girls to do it for him. This meant I was worse than useless. Girls outclass boys a hundred times over when it comes to making someone's life a misery, especially when it's another girl. Allie was
persecuted in the toilets, in the PE changing rooms, anywhere they could get her alone.

It was not that easy to provoke Allie to tears but they managed it quite often. Shuggie would come to get me, but by the time I raced to her aid she'd be standing quietly as Aidan talked to her (the first time), or sitting against the fence with him, their shoulders pressed together (the second time). On various occasions after that, I watched him wipe her face dry with the palm of his hand. I watched him put an arm round her shoulders. A few days later I watched her press her face into his neck and I think she kissed him because his face reddened and his throat jerked with his gulp. Next time I saw his lips touch hers experimentally. After that it all went beyond experiment.

So he was finally making an effort. Finally taking advantage. The
tosser.

From then on he'd hold Allie's hand, but only when he thought I wasn't around. Was he scared of me, or was the big cowboy considering my feelings?

Didn't matter. When I was around and he did not take her hand, she would ostentatiously take his.

By the first week of the next school year, Aidan and Allie were firmly and finally an item. I seethed. The age gap! But I looked at her and realised over the summer she'd stopped being my strange little sister. She was starting to be beautiful in a grown-up sort of way. And how could I say anything anyway? He was there for her when I wasn't.
It was Aidan she went to, always Aidan.

It was four months since the incident with Shuggie, four months since I burned my boats with Kev. Allie was just into her second year, Aidan his fourth, and I'd stayed, to McCluskey's horror, for a fifth.

‘Geddes,' he greeted me as I sloped in on my first morning. ‘Oh, the joy of it.'

‘I'm touched, Mr McCluskey. It's nice to see you too.'

He clasped his hands and closed his eyes. ‘Dear God. What did I do in a past life?'

‘Were you some kind of evil fascist dictator, sir?'

‘Aye, and I shot the likes of you for sport before breakfast. Get lost, Geddes.'

‘I missed you too, sir.'

The way his scowl was working and twitching, he was either livid with rage or he was trying not to smile. I couldn't quite tell as I slouched off in the direction of the science block.

I'd been afraid I might hate being in school when I didn't have to be, but what happened was quite the reverse. The atmosphere without Kev was different. The worst of his gang had gone with him, and the ones who stayed, like Sunil, discovered they didn't have quite the same aura of menace without him and anyway to a large extent they'd lost interest. Maybe we'd just started to grow up. I was still Billy Nae-Pals, but English and my Science subjects were shaping up to be kind of interesting and the teachers treated me with – well, not exactly
affection, but at least a bit more respect. I was there from choice and once they got over their shock they seemed to appreciate that. I think things might have turned right around if Kev hadn't still been haunting the place.

I reckon he was missing school a bit, missing his easy work-free life and his status as large shark sniffing round the blood trails in a smallish pond. Partly, of course, he was showing off: his souped-up car, his manky big-label fashion choices, his superior wee I'm-a-grown-up sneer.

McCluskey got bored of telling Kev to go away (though not in those words), but there was a limit to what he could do about it. He couldn't prove Kev was flogging cannabis to first years, though I knew fine he was. I think, given time, McCluskey would have got the better of Kev, but he never did get time. None of us did. Aidan Mahon's time, of course, ran out altogether.

Allie should have come to me. She should have come to
me
, but she never did. That's why I'm alive and Aidan isn't.

I think it started out like any other day. I suppose they always do. The sky wasn't a cloudless blue, but nor was there a louring, ominous darkness. There were clouds from horizon to horizon, halfway up the sky and uninclined to rain. The atmosphere felt a bit damp but it wasn't cold; it was the end of summer, after all. The last day of another mild August. Nothing would have made you think twice about getting out of bed and into the world and restarting your life from where you left it on pause last night. Nothing would have hinted it was the last day of someone else's.

When I see a bad news story now I think: what was I doing while that guy was getting kicked to death on his doorstep, or that girl was getting strangled, or that boy was fighting for his last breath in a swollen river? I was watching
The X Factor
or I was on the internet or I was
eating a biscuit and swiping the crumbs off my homework. And I never felt anything, and nor did anyone else, and no dreadful rip opened in the fabric of space and time. The world just went on.

In a way that's reassuring, but in another way it's terrifying. If the earth blew up tomorrow, the universe would go on too. I can just see some little green man getting bored with the ‘Earth Explodes' breaking news, I can see him picking up his remote and changing channels.

Maybe that's why I don't like looking at the night sky.

‘Nick?'

I glanced up. On that ordinary morning I was sitting in my usual spot against the wire fence, which was developing a baggy bit from being leaned on so often.

‘Aiiidaaan …'

I had to say his name slowly, because I was surprised, to put it mildly, and I had to haul myself out of the sixteenth century before I could talk to him. I wished I'd hidden the poetry book inside a violent graphic novel or
Loaded
or something. Bad enough trying to get my head around John Donne, who seemed to have got his head round many things, not all of them the kind you'd discuss with your grandmother. I'd been starting to like the man on a personal level and I wasn't glad of an interruption from a boy who'd never spoken a word to me in his life, let alone a friendly one. I shut the book with a snap. ‘What?'

Considering I was the one on my backside on the ground, squinting into the watery sun, Aidan was the one who looked awkward. Swinging his backpack off his shoulder, he shifted from foot to foot, then turned clumsily and crouched on his hunkers beside me. I could see him better now he wasn't standing against the diffuse sunlight and his face was on my level. He was giving me a shy sort of smile but I looked back without a word. The empty-eyed stare.

It didn't seem to faze him. ‘When's Allie's birthday?'

‘Why don't you ask her?'

‘Because.' He looked up at the milling groups in the grounds. ‘Because I don't want her to know I asked.'

‘November fourth,' I said before I could stop myself.

‘Thanks!' He gave me his big open grin. ‘John Donne?'

I gritted my teeth. ‘I have to do him. Set book. Right?'

‘Right.'

‘I don't read poetry.'

‘Right.' He glanced idly around again. ‘Orla does.'

‘Is that so?' I'd have liked to hit him but that would look as if I cared what Orla did with her free time. When I followed his gaze, I saw Orla. She was standing with a bunch of girls not ten metres away. I couldn't make out whether she was looking at Aidan or at me, but whichever it was, she was finding a lot to interest her. Cold horror formed in my stomach like a lump of dirty ice, and I grabbed Aidan's sleeve and yanked him down so I could
glare at him. ‘I'm not reading this to impress your bloody sister.'

‘Never said you were.' There was annoyance in his voice. ‘Look, I know you don't like me.'

‘Good.'

‘And I don't like you.'

I don't know why that bald statement should hurt the way it did. I took a breath. ‘And?'

‘Just, Allie and me get on fine. And I hope you're not upset about it. Is all.'

I closed my book and tapped it against my knuckles. ‘I'm not upset about anything.'

‘Allie thinks you are.'

‘She's wrong.'

‘Well, will you tell her?' His expression went soft all of a sudden. I'd have liked to punch him. ‘'Cause she gets upset if she thinks you are.'

‘Allie doesn't care what I think.'

‘Yes, she does. She kind of worships you.' There was a sardonic twist to his lip.

‘Not any more,' I said.

‘Yes, she does. She didn't like you for a while but she changed her mind because of Shuggie and what you did.'

I sat there letting the wire fence brand a lattice pattern into my back. I was going to look like a waffle when I got up, but I needed the support and I needed the distraction.
She kind of worshipped me, but she didn't like me for a while?
I felt light-headed with relief, but there was also a
terrible ache below my breastbone.
She didn't like me for a while.
Nobody had come out and said that to me before. I suppose I knew she didn't like me. I suppose nobody did. I don't suppose even Kev or Sunil or that crowd actually liked me. Fair enough: I'd never actually liked them. My last four years had been entirely empty of liking, and now Aidan didn't like me either.

Oh, so what? My phone never got nicked.

‘You know my sister?' he said casually.

Knew her, feared her, fancied her. Obsessive-compulsive lust turning lately to borderline terror. But Aidan didn't have to know that, and neither did Orla. ‘Yeah,' I said.

‘She heard Kev saying something about you, end of last term. After you got your kicking, remember? He was kind of laughing with some guys and they were having a go at you, really loud. So she stops and taps him on the shoulder and says “At least Nick Geddes has got some balls and he doesn't keep his brains in them.”'

I rolled my knuckles against John Donne's cover. ‘Did she … um, say that, did she?'

‘Uh-huh.' He'd gone a bit pink. ‘Oh yeah, and then she kind of stared at his pals, and she told him his dick must be really small if he had to surround himself with bigger ones.'

I laughed out loud, couldn't help it. Then I thought about it, and laughed again. When I looked at Aidan he was smiling at me.

I scowled. ‘See Allie …' I said.

‘Uh-huh.' He tensed, and his smile vanished.

‘No dumping her,' I said through my teeth. Then, because that sounded a little unreasonable, I added, ‘No dumping without a good explanation and being really nice to her.'

‘I'm not going to dump her,' he said.

‘And you'd better look after her,' I said.

‘Yes.'

‘Because she goes running to you now. She doesn't come to me any more, she always goes to you, so she's your bloody responsibility. Right?'

‘Yeah,' he said. And smiled. ‘I'll look out for her, Nick. I promise.'

‘You dropped your big white cowboy hat,' I said, and pointed across the grounds.

Taking the hint, he scrambled to his feet, grinned at me and sauntered off. I kept my glower in place till he was safely gone, so he didn't see me smile. The only person who saw that was Shuggie, hovering and watching with that bright inquiring gaze. I crooked my finger at him.

He came over and hovered some more, till I slapped the tarmac and he sat down at my side.

‘Shuggie,' I said, not looking at him. ‘Sometimes I think you're a bit fiendish.'

‘Fiendish? What a big word, Nicholas, and difficult to spell.' He followed the direction of my stare, and before I could rip his head off said, ‘There's Orla.'