Hurt (11 page)

There seems to be a lot of blood; blood everywhere, in fact. The others have forged ahead towards the flea market, but Mathéo has stepped in something, and there is crimson splattering the toe of one of his trainers. For a moment all he can see is red – the same red that was pulsating in front of his eyes, the same red that was running in rivulets down his legs under this morning’s shower.

Suddenly Lola is by his side, her hand on his arm. ‘Mattie?’

His arm shoots out of its own accord, knocking her hand away, hard. He sees her eyes widen in shock.

‘Ow!’

‘Sorry, I’m just . . . I didn’t mean to—’ He swallows hard against the gag reflex in his throat. He can taste the blood in his mouth. All that blood – where did it come from?

‘Lola, I’m sorry, I’m not feeling too good. I’ve got to go . . .’

He sees her expression turn to one of alarm and she moves towards him, but he is already backing away, dodging the afternoon shoppers, losing her quickly in the crowds. As his feet begin to pound the pavement, a momentary flash of lightning skims through the sky and the air around him begins to buzz and shimmer. It fills his head with static, and he briefly scrunches his eyes against the sickening aura, willing it away with all his might as his stomach starts to heave.
No, not here
, he begs.
Not here, not now
. But the refracting crimson blaze at the centre of his vision slowly shatters, like sunlight on moving water. Filling his lungs to capacity, he struggles to stay focused – one foot in front of the other, and repeat, and repeat, and repeat. But the ground beneath him begins to pitch and lurch as he struggles to stay upright and not give in to gravity’s dragging force. As he starts to stumble, the pavement swaying dangerously beneath him, he turns down a narrow cobbled alley, skidding over a trail of crushed cartons, fruit peel and other debris. Then, ducking behind a tall rubbish bin, digging his nails into the wall for support, he bends over double and vomits violently into the gutter, again and again, until all he is bringing up is bile and his stomach has heaved itself dry.

Flung back in his chair, Mathéo tries to focus on the long list of bullet points on the whiteboard and the career counsellor’s dull drone through the rubble of his brain. By mid-morning, a sharp skewer seems to have entered one temple and exited through the other. His mind is slogging along, slow and sticky, trying to keep up with the monotone. Mr Mason’s face is half hidden in shadow, and periodically Mathéo forgets who he is. He fears that if the dried-up fossil clears his throat one more time, he may lose it completely and hurl his notebook at the old man’s pate.

His head is starting to tip on the top of his spine, heavy with the dead weight of his brain, in danger of falling off his supporting hand. His upper eyelashes yearn to meet the lower ones, and everything feels blunted, refracted through a prism of smudged glass. His mind is blank, like a board wiped clean. He takes a deep breath of sweaty, stagnating air in an effort to quell the mounting sense of frustration rising within him. It’s ridiculous. All of it. Within the grand scale of things, sitting in a classroom day after day is so utterly meaningless and pointless that it actually makes his chest hurt to think about it. School is a pile of crap. School has always been a pile of crap – he had just never bothered to think about it until today. He has little hope that university, when he gets there next year, will be any different. Like right now, all these pupils taking notes as if their life depended on it.
All for what?
he wants to shout.
To get into the top university, so that you can somehow convince yourself you are better than the great unwashed? So that your parents can convince themselves that they are better parents than the great unwashed? So that Mum and Dad’s fourteen-hour days at the office, paying for a fucking private education you never asked for, wasn’t just a pathetic waste of a life?

He has no idea what he wants to do as a career, cannot imagine a life beyond diving. He initially wanted to study English Literature, but as his parents and certain teachers drummed into him, he would just reappear after three years with the kind of degree that would have him trained for nothing other than bullshitting his way through a critical essay. Law, his parents said, or medicine, or finance – become a banker like Dad: yes, that was the obvious choice. So, despite having no interest in the subject, Mathéo did as he was told and applied to do economics at Cambridge. If he stays injury-free and does well enough at the Rio Games, he will no doubt continue diving for another two or three Olympics, spending every waking moment either studying, working, training or competing. Until his form begins to dip, until his body gives out. And then he will most likely get a job in the City, at some investment firm, working fourteen- and fifteen-hour days like his father. Marrying someone, having kids he never sees, with no choice but to put them through the same educational treadmill – because at the end of the day, education is compulsory, and for a reason: without it you face a life of cleaning up other people’s shit. So, if you’ve got the means, you try to shove your own children as far away from the shit-cleaning as possible by sending them to the best school you can afford. Even if it means spending the rest of your days working in vacuous professions such as finance or investment or law, ripping off those who can afford it or those who can’t but are desperate. Like his mother, for example: a hotshot solicitor who charges by the minute . . . He loathes it all, Mathéo realizes; the whole system. He loathes it more with every passing second.

Another fourteen minutes and thirty-five seconds before the lunch bell. Time presses down on him, slowly spinning to a stop, hanging in the air. It is an effort to move his limbs, to turn his head. The day goes on outside in the street, but in here, time moves in infinitesimal increments, or doesn’t move at all. He has one of those expensive, sleek, super-accurate analogue watches – silver, with a broad black leather strap – a present from his parents in exchange for the string of As and A stars he brought back for GCSEs . . . His brain empties suddenly. He feels flattened, and it is almost an effort to breathe. He doesn’t want to do anything, can’t concentrate – a dull, mute pounding against his skull.

He is aware of the teacher’s eyes on him.

‘Mathéo, are you feeling all right?’

The squat, middle-aged man has been walking up and down the aisles and, breaking off from his soliloquy, comes to a stop beside Mathéo’s desk. It isn’t until he glances up into the teacher’s mildly concerned face that Mathéo realizes that, unlike the rest of the class, who are now engaged in some lively debate, he is just sitting there, currently studying a chip in the wooden desk beside his unopened pencil case.

‘Uh, not really. Headache. Can I go to the nurse?’

But once free of the classroom, he doesn’t head for the medical room. He considers the library, but he is not in the mood for reading. Instead, he walks the corridors restlessly, passing the odd janitor or student between classes, recognizing a face here and there. He wonders if any of them can tell just from looking at him that his pain is so total, so complete, that it consumes him. It is terminal. He feels so entrapped by the horror of existence that it is hard to comprehend why the whole world doesn’t feel it too. His polished school shoes squeak rhythmically against the red and white chequered lino, a lonely soundtrack to his purposeless meandering. He wishes he could describe the feeling to someone, so they could help him; help him understand what is happening. But it’s something he can barely put into words. Just a heavy, over-whelming despair. Dreading everything. Dreading life. Empty inside, to the point of numbness. And terrified he is stuck down here for good.

The school canteen is a sea of white acrylic, nothing but whiteness, the vast hall buzzing with shouting, jostling, laughing students. It’s so loud in here it hurts his head. The industrial-sized windows overlooking the sports fields let in too much sun, flooding the walls with brightness, turning the whole place into a giant light box. Getting through the buffet line seems to take for ever – faced by the options he cannot choose, his stomach turns over at the sight and smell of all that food. People seem to be knocking into him on purpose; faces he barely recognizes break into smiles of congratulation – he manages to nod and smile back, thankful for the general din drowning out his half-formed words. Standing still, tray in hand amidst the tide of passing bodies, he is lost for a moment, unsure where to go. Until he spots Lola in the far corner, away from the throng, mercifully alone.

She is finishing off an application form with one hand while forking pasta into her mouth with the other. As he sets down his tray opposite her and takes a seat, she glances up only briefly, before returning to her paper and lunch.

‘Hi,’ he says uncertainly, thrown by her lack of greeting.

She continues scribbling in her barely legible scrawl without looking up, munching solidly. For one awful moment he feels like he might be invisible, a figment of his own imagination, but then she swallows her mouthful.

‘Hi.’ She does not look up again.

‘Uh . . .’ He picks up his fork and moves the salad around on his plate. ‘Are you busy?’

She slaps her pen down on her notebook in a gesture of exasperation and pins him with a look. ‘Not particularly. Why?’

‘Well, I just—’ He sucks in his right cheek, biting and pulling at the skin. ‘Are you mad about something?’

She opens her eyes wide, as if amazed by his stupidity. ‘Well, yeah, Mattie. And kind of confused!’

‘About yesterday—’ He swallows a bitter taste at the back of his throat. ‘I’m sorry I took off like that. I wasn’t feeling too good. Just kinda dizzy, you know? Maybe I was dehydrated from the competition or something.’

‘That’s why you switched your phone off for eighteen hours? And refused to return any of the messages I left with the nanny?’

‘I crashed out for the rest of the day and most of the night,’ he tells her truthfully. ‘I was knackered.’

‘You could have called me before school this morning to tell me you weren’t coming to pick me up! I nearly missed first period waiting for you. And you could have answered my texts!’

Mathéo forces himself to meet her gaze. Her eyes spark with anger, but he also detects a hint of bewilderment and worry that sets his head pulsing. He doesn’t want to spike her concern further by telling her he had kept his phone switched off since yesterday, purposely leaving it unchecked so that he wouldn’t be faced with the barrage of concerned voicemails from his coach, his parents, Consuela, his friends and even Lola herself.

She is staring at him, waiting for an answer.

He draws his lower lip in between his teeth. ‘I messed up. I’m sorry.’

Her mouth drops open. ‘You’re
sorry
!’ she exclaims. ‘Mattie, I’ve been worried sick! If it wasn’t for your parents I’d have come round.’

He winces against the sound of her voice, her words piercing the fragile membrane that seems to surround him. ‘Look, I really am sorry, I don’t want to fight. Lola, please don’t be mad, I can’t deal with this now. I’m just so tired—’ The words catch in his throat and he stumbles to a halt.

‘Mattie, I’m not mad, OK? I was just worried, that’s all. I didn’t – I didn’t know . . .’

A big, vacuous silence: Lola as much at a loss for words as he is himself. She is worried, he can hear it in her voice. She stretches her bare arm across the table and cups her hand over his.

‘Mattie, please. Please, just tell me what’s going on.’ Her voice is barely more than a whisper.

He shakes his head, forces a laugh and pulls his hand away. ‘Nothing! I’m just – I just seem to be in this weird mood . . .’

Her eyes are searching. ‘What on earth happened?’

‘Nothing!’ He exclaims with mock annoyance. ‘I just hate it when we fight, that’s all.’

‘We’re not fighting, Mattie.’

‘OK, OK – well, good.’ He takes a ragged breath. ‘Because – because I’ve blown off training so I’m free to hang out all evening, if you’ll put up with me!’ He forces a laugh.

She gives him an uncertain look, as if weighing up whether to press on with the inquisition or accept the sudden change in mood. ‘Cool!’ she exclaims after a beat. ‘That’s perfect because I agreed to meet Hugo and Izzy for pizza in the park and I wasn’t looking forward to being the third wheel.’

His heart plummets. For the life of him, he cannot remember how he ever tolerated hanging out so much with those two when his time with Lola was already so limited.

‘Are you up for that?’ His expression must have betrayed him: all at once she looks uncertain.

‘Of course! I’ll pick up some beer!’

‘It’s a school night, Mattie.’

He laughs at her and shrugs. ‘So?’

‘Hey, that’s my man!’ Hugo raises a hand for a highfive as Mathéo jogs over towards them with a pack of Stella, pulling his tie down, shirt tails flapping loose. He slaps Hugo’s hand and kneels down on the grass between the girls, who are busy dividing up the pizzas. The sight of the red peppers and sauce turns his stomach for a moment. He tosses Hugo a can and rocks back on his heels, angling his head into the warm breeze and taking a steadying breath. When he turns back he finds Lola’s eyes on his face, the crease of concern once again furrowing her brow.

He forces a smile. ‘Well, this is nice.’

She returns the smile, but the hint of sadness in her eyes throws him for a moment and his precarious veneer threatens to splinter. Quickly opening his can of beer, he takes a long swig.

‘Aren’t you excited about winning the Nationals?’ Isabel asks him through a mouthful of food. ‘I mean, has it actually sunk in yet?’

With a monumental effort, he forces himself to engage. ‘Yeah, course!’ He raises his eyebrows and smiles in an attempt to reinforce the words. ‘But, you know, another whole year till the Olympics. Still plenty of work to be done . . .’ His voice tails off at the sinking thought.

‘I think this calls for a drinking game!’ Hugo declares.

‘No, I want to sunbathe.’ Pulling a magazine from her bag, Isabel opens it and tries to lie back, but Hugo immediately snatches it out of her hands.