Devil You Know (17 page)

I thought I’d heard him wrong at first. “Who’s Baz? Is that what you just said? Who’s Baz?”

He stiffened, nodded. “Yeah, who is this ‘Baz’?”

“Baz. We run about with him. Our mate. Your mate. You know who I mean.
Baz
.”

“The only other mates I’ve got are Claude and Mickey.” Gary began to stand up. He looked a bit scared. “So, who are you talking about?”

“You’re winding me up, Gary.” I stood up too. “Baz. You know who Baz is.” Gary took a step away from me. There was a look of total disbelief on his face. “It was Baz who got us to go follow Al Butler into that warehouse. It was Baz dared him to torch it. Double dared him, remember? It was Baz, leading us on, manipulating us. I see that now, Gary. We did things to please him, to keep him happy because we were scared of him. Scared to go against him.
Baz!
” I yelled his name. Gary was really beginning to annoy me. What was his game?

“See, there you go again. One minute you seem normal, you’re funny, you make us all laugh, we’re able to talk to you, and the next second you change, you’re like a bleeding Jeckyll and Hyde.
You’re
the one who made us go into the warehouse that night.
You
were the one dared Al Butler to set it on fire. The only person I was ever scared of… was
you
!” He yelled out that last word.

I lunged at him. Grabbed him by the collar. “Don’t say that!” I hit him with such force we both fell back and landed on the floor. “Don’t lie to me. You know Baz. Tell me you know Baz.” I began to shake him. “Tell me
you know Baz!”

Next minute I was being hauled to my feet. A policeman had run in and had me by the arm. Gary scrambled back from me. “He’s off his chump. He’s talking about some guy I don’t know. Some guy who doesn’t exist. Some guy called Baz.”

I struggled to get away from the police. “But you know I’m not lying, Gary. Baz does exist. Baz is real.”

But Baz wasn’t real. He never had been. I learned that over the next few days. Talking to doctors, listening to Gary’s statements, and Claude’s and Mickey’s too. There had never been a Baz. There was only me.

Did that mean I was mad? It was all I wanted to know. Of course, the doctors all told me it didn’t. I was just ‘disturbed’, and ‘needed help’, and I would get over it, with treatment. They’ve even got a name for what’s wrong with me. Some kind of ‘disassociative identity disorder’.

I had to go over everything, again and again, and I still don’t understand it.

They said it all began when my dad ran off and left me and Mum. Yeah, left us. He’s not dead. He just walked out one day, and left. I couldn’t face up to him leaving, they told me, I missed him so much. Ran away a couple of times trying to find him when he didn’t want found. He was no way the dream-dad I had made up. There never were days on the beach with the kites, or football matches together. He never took me anywhere. He didn’t care about me, and because I didn’t want to believe that, I told myself he was dead. That was when I began to avoid the truth about everything.

My mum was getting really worried about me, between running away and missing school, I was mixing with the wrong people, getting into all sorts of trouble, getting excluded, being picked up by the police. They had suggested taking me into care: I was out of control, they told her. And she couldn’t bear that. She fought for me all the way. So when she met Vince, and he suggested we all move to Glasgow to get away from everything in Aberdeen, she agreed.

Mum thought I needed a whole change, things would get better when we were down here. I would be able to come to terms with my dad leaving. I’d be away from all the bad influences up in Aberdeen. But
I
was the real bad influence, and you can’t get away from yourself.

I was so afraid when I moved here to Glasgow. I was so alone. No one would like me. If my dad couldn’t like me, and if he’d gone off and left me, then how could I expect anyone else to? So they say that was why I created Baz that first day when the boy I’d called a loon was ready to thump me. In that moment I became Baz. No wonder the boy looked so freaked out. In a split second, he saw me changing. Changing from me to Baz. Baz stepped in and saved me, he was the friend who was scared of nothing. So real to me I could see him, talk to him. I had been told I was easily led, and that’s why I got into trouble in Aberdeen. So I created someone who wasn’t easily led. He was the leader, the one who manipulated other people. Baz was everything I wanted to be.

I wanted to be friends with the boys, but I didn’t think they would want me as their friend. So at times, in the blink of an eye, I became Baz. Baz who could be funny. Baz who could be bossy. Baz who could be scary.

But you know, now I see the doctors were right to get me to write this all down, because I can look back and take in all the things I missed at the time.

The boys never referred to Baz by name. Did you notice that? I didn’t. They never mentioned his name once. The boys were never scared of Baz. It was me who scared them when I became Baz. My hero. I was the one who wanted to follow Al Butler into that warehouse. I was the one who dared him to drop the match. I was the one who had stolen the Xbox games that night. I was the one who had sold them on the way home, so I was the one with the money.

Baz hadn’t been on the CCTV footage because he didn’t exist.

And of course he knew what Claude had said at the hospital. Because I knew. I was there.

And when I ran away and thought we were going round in circles, we really were. Because, of course, I didn’t know where we were going, did I?

Even when we had gone on the run, hadn’t I only bought one fish supper between us? Baz had never come with me to get them, never put his hand in his pocket to buy anything. And when we ran into that dead end, didn’t you wonder why Baz didn’t leap up onto the roof of the lock-ups and help me up so we could escape over the roof the way we’d done before? We didn’t do it, because I could never have got up there by myself. We’d needed Gary’s height getting away from the Young Bow.

Baz. Always in the background. My dark secret. He had seemed like flesh and blood to me, but the doctors say he was everything I wanted to be, that’s why he felt so real.

But that day we spent in Glasgow, just me and the boys, remember? How relieved I was that Baz wasn’t there. That was all me. That’s when I began to realise it was better without Baz. That maybe I didn’t need him. Baz, or the part of me that was Baz, was making me do things I didn’t want to do. Making the other boys do things too. I wanted rid of him, I wanted away from Baz, and the doctors say that was me beginning to get better. Becoming more me, and less Baz. Having Baz betray me was the final sign that I was getting rid of him for good.

I’d got it all wrong with my mum, too. She’d moved here to get me away from all the bad memories I had in Aberdeen. She’d left a house and a job she loved, because things were going so wrong for me up there. She was terrified I would be taken into care if we stayed there any longer. Devastated herself when my dad left, she had no time to grieve about him, because she had only thought of me. My mum, always trying to do the best for me.

And Vince? How wrong can you be? Vince had been wounded in Iraq. And he was waiting for a desk job at home. He’d had a medal for bravery and everything. His son, Andy, had a dad to be proud of. He wanted to be a soldier like him. I think I was jealous of that. So I hated him too. He
hated me all right. I hadn’t got that wrong. He was the one who couldn’t see why his dad had taken up with my mum… and me.

My mum had said to me, ‘Why can’t you accept the truth, Logan.’ And that was something I never seemed able to do. I built a barrier between myself and reality, and the barrier was Baz. That’s how they explain it to me anyway.

The first time they came here to see me together, Vince and my mum, I saw how he cared for her. Cared for me too. How could he care about me, after all the things I’d said to him? We talked and talked and, you know, it was as if a veil had been lifted. I was seeing things clearly for the first time.

They’ve got a new house now, out in the suburbs. A semi-detached with a garden.

“You’ll enjoy it there,” Vince said.

But I think it will be a long time before I see that house. I think I may be here for a while. It still frightens me that I spent so much time with someone who didn’t exist.

Wouldn’t it frighten you?

Lucie knew. She knew all the time, or at least she suspected, and she tried to tell me.

Did you think she wasn’t real either? Don’t worry, that scared me as well at first. But no, Lucie’s real. She came to see me with her mum, and my mum was there too.

‘You’re better on your own,’ she had said to me more than once. ‘Be yourself. Don’t blame other people.’

And Baz had told me she was jealous. He was the one who was afraid. The Baz part of me was afraid she knew the truth.

Lucie was worried about me, and she understood. She thought there was nothing too strange about me thinking Baz was real. “I used to have an invisible friend when I was a little girl. You’ll grow out of it.”

“So, this invisible friend of yours. Did she just disappear?”

She looked at me and smiled with that dimpled smile of hers. “No. I blew her up in the garden shed.”

Made me laugh, that did. “You’re the one who should be in here, not me.”

“Maybe I have been,” she said. And I wonder if that is true. Lucie had a hard time before she was finally fostered. Had a lot of problems even afterwards, finding it hard to believe anyone could love her. It took her a long time to settle down, to believe the family she was with really cared about her.

I look forward to her visits. She’s the only one who comes. The boys don’t. Not Claude. Not Mickey. Not Gary, and I don’t blame them. They won’t ever
want to see me again, I guess, and why should they? If I scared them before when my moods could change so quickly, changing from me to Baz in an instant, how much more would I scare them now – now they know I really thought Baz existed?

Mum tells me the doctors say Claude’s legs are going to be ok. It will take a long time, but he’s going to be all right. She says that Gary has phoned a couple of times, asking after me. He’s a good guy, Gary.

Anyway, I won’t be living on the estate with Claude and Mickey and Gary any more, so I won’t have to see them. And they won’t have to see me.

“Will I ever get better?” I keep asking the doctor. It frightens me that I won’t.

She always assures me: “Of course you will. You’re going to be fine.”

And I think she’s right. Writing it all down has helped. I sleep better. I think more clearly. I’m happier.

I am going to be fine.

As long as Baz doesn’t come back.

Cathy MacPhail is the award-winning author of over thirty children’s books including
Run Zan Run, Roxy’s Baby, Out of the Depths
and
Grass
.
Mosi’s War
was shortlisted for a 2015 Scottish Children’s Book Award, an award Cathy has won twice before, and a film adaptation of her novel
Another Me
was released in 2014. She was born and brought up in Greenock, Scotland, where she still lives.

Cathy has been an ambassador for CHILDREN 1
^st
since 2013. This Scottish charity works with families and communities to improve the lives of children and young people. Cathy is passionate about supporting CHILDREN 1
^st
’s work with vulnerable young people.

Visit Cathy’s website at
catherinemacphail.co.uk
or follow her on Twitter @CathyMacphail