Skippy Dies (36 page)

And Lori ignores them too. She does not return any of Carl’s phone calls, she’s never in the places she used to be. Then her
friend Janine tells him Lori left the Hallowe’en Hop with some guy.

What? Carl says.

They are in the church car park. Janine still wants to buy pills. It’s dark, the church windows are dark, there are no cars
around.

This guy Daniel, Janine says. She looks up at Carl through eyelashes covered in black shit. Carl searches his head for Daniel
but he cannot find anything, his head pounds like it is splitting in two.

Well, what did you expect? The girl twirls her hair with a bony hand. You stood her up. You don’t do that to a girl like Lori
and just expect her to forgive you.

I was stuck in my house, Carl mumbles.

I mean, she’s got guys queuing up to go out with her, Janine says.

Go out with her? Carl’s mind churns like the propeller of a boat caught in weeds, trying to catch all the little pieces of
that night and glue them back together, the messages she sent him saying come and meet me, it was right here in the church
car park –

I thought she just wanted to buy pills, he blurts to Janine. She laughs, a film laugh, with her head back, ha-ha-ha. You don’t
know much about girls, she says. Then she pulls in closer to him so her tits are just touching his arm and her voice drops.
I could teach you, she says, playing with the cord of his hoodie. But Carl is still thinking of what she said about Lori and
after a second Janine pulls back, stares at him with eyes like a dog you have kicked. Then, She was with him, she says, stabbing
the words like a knife. He’s been texting her. He sends her poems.

With little shuffling steps, Carl turns away, facing into the dark. The girl dances round in front of him, grabs his hands
and cries, Oh Carl, why do you even care what Lori does? She’s a child, she doesn’t understand what men want. But Carl doesn’t
move. He is staring at the concrete ground, where the no-faced boy is kissing Lori, going to all the places Carl had been,
shoving his hands under her shirt, sticking his fingers into her box, flooding her little white fist with jism… Janine steps
back. Her hands are still wrapped around his, he can feel her eyes on him like they’re in the distance. In a cooler voice
she says, Do you want to get her back?

He raises his head. He is so angry, for a second she is Daniel and his arms pump with the message of grabbing him and tearing
him up into little pieces. But then it is gone and his arms are empty and Carl is broken.

Janine reaches out, she strokes his hair and then she says, You really screwed up at the Hop, Carl. That’s not the only problem,
either. Her parents found out she’d been lying to them. All the time she was with you she told them she was with me. Then
my mom met her mom at the deli and told her she hadn’t been in my house for weeks. She got into major shit. Her daddy likes
to know exactly where his little princess is and who she’s with at all times. I don’t think he’d be too happy about you, daddies
don’t like you, do they, Carl? He follows the movement of her head, wagging at him like a sad dog. Anyhow, she’s basically
grounded. So even if she did want to see you, it would be pretty hard. She smoothes back his hair with gentle fingers. Don’t
be sad. If you want me to, I can talk to her for you. I could at least tell her how sorry you are. Would you like me to do
that, Carl?

Carl nods. She puts her arms around him and gives him a comforting hug. Oh Carl, she sighs, like a teacher with a favourite
but always-naughty child. Carl has never been that child, he has always been the one they are afraid of. Janine leans back
to gaze at him, then she plants a little cheer-up kiss on his cheek. I’ll talk to her, she promises. Everything will be all
right. Then she chucks his chin. Did you bring my dolly mixtures?

He takes the baggie from his pocket and hands it to her. She unfastens her purse, then says, like they are two people just
come out of church standing on the steps talking about the weather, Lori says you and her had an arrangement.

Carl shifts from foot to foot without saying anything.

Oh Carl, she says again, squeezing herself against him. Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of you. And bending upwards, she
gives him another little kiss, a friendly mom-type kiss on his cheeks, and
then one on his nose, then on his chin, his eyes, his neck, until accidentally one lands on his lips, which are open, and
then accidentally she does it again, and accidentally they are accidentally locked tight and wet together, his mouth full
of hers, there on the steps in the dark, just like in his imagination Lori’s mouth is full of the mouth of the faceless Daniel.
But soon Carl will find his face, and then he will be sorry.

With posters for the Christmas concert everywhere, Audition Fever has swept the school. At lunch break, after class, the halls
are filled with parps, twangs, thumps of varying degrees of musicality, the rec rooms clotted with knots of boys dreaming
up routines that range from opera to gangsta to a new form of Wagnerian tropicalia invented by second year’s Caetano Diaz,
which he has dubbed ‘apocalypso’. The Seabrook Christmas concert may be small potatoes in the grand scheme of things, but
as any modern student of fame knows, there is no platform so low that it does not make you look slightly bigger than the next
guy. Competition is fierce, and the lowest common denominator does not go unplumbed. Among the rehearsing voices, a surprising
number can be heard performing more saccharine versions of already toxically gloopy ballads – ‘Flying Without Wings’, ‘I Believe
I Can Fly’, ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’ and others, flying-related and not. Credibility is not the issue for these boys that it
might have been for previous generations. A lot of contentious arguments have been resolved in the last decade, a lot of old
ideas swept away; it is now universally acknowledged that celebrity is the one goal truly worth pursuing. Magazine covers,
marketing deals, artificially whitened smiles, waving from behind barriers at the raving anonymous multitude – this is the
zenith of a world now uncluttered by spirituality, and anything you do to get there is considered legitimate.

The concert’s musical director is Father Constance ‘Connie’ Laughton, a kindly, epicene man with white hair and a candy-pink
complexion whose burning desire to instil a love of classical music in the hearts of his teenage charges, combined with a
softly-softly approach to discipline, sees him occupying a regular
spot near the top of Dennis’s Nervous Breakdown Leaderboard. While he recognizes the populist leanings of the boys, his own
tastes are strictly canonical; in particular he is a fan of the French horn, and has already taken Ruprecht aside for a word
in his ear regarding perhaps a performance? No orchestra exists in the school at present, after some past event Father Laughton
never talks about, but maybe Ruprecht has some chums, the priest suggests, who might like to accompany him. Dennis laughs
long and hard when he hears of this plan. ‘Pity the poor suckers who get roped into
that
,’ he says. ‘It’s like having the world’s biggest kick-me sign stuck to your back.’

Hot ticket for this year’s concert are the rock group Shadowfax, who, in Wallace Willis and Louis O’Brien, boast not one
but two classically trained guitar wizards: actual girls pay actual money to hear the band’s immaculate covers of the Eagles
and other giants of adult-orientated rock. Even the Automator is a fan, following the band’s performance of Toto’s ‘Rain in
Africa’ at a benefit for victims of the Ethiopian drought organized by Father Green last summer. Not every aspiring performance
is musical, however. Down in a shady corner of the basement, at this very moment, a small crowd is gathered around Trevor
Hickey, bent over with his bottom in the air and a lit match in his hand that, with the solemnity of the magician stepping
into the cage of swords, he slowly extends backwards…

Diablos: the name given to the igniting of, and ignited, farts. Trevor Hickey is the undisputed master of this arcane and
perilous art. The stakes could not be higher. Get the timing even slightly wrong and there will be consequences far more serious
than singed trousers; the word
backdraught
clamours unspoken at the back of every spectator’s mind. Total silence now as, with an almost imperceptible tremble (entirely
artificial, ‘just part of the show’ as Trevor puts it) his hand brings the match between his legs and –
foom!
a sound like the fabric of the universe being ripped in two, counterpointed by its opposite, a collective intake of breath,
as from Trevor’s bottom proceeds a magnificent plume
of flame – jetting out it’s got to be nearly three feet, they tell each other afterwards, a cold and beautiful purple-blue
enchantment that for an instant bathes the locker room in unearthly light.

No one knows quite what Trevor Hickey’s diet is, or his exercise regime; if you ask him about it, he will simply say that
he has a gift, and having witnessed it, you would be hard-pressed to argue, although why God should have given him this gift
in particular is less easy to say. But then, strange talents abound in the fourteen-year-old confraternity. As well as Trevor
Hickey, ‘The Duke of Diablos’, you have people like Rory ‘Pins’ Moran, who on one occasion had fifty-eight pins piercing the
epidermis of his left hand; GP O’Sullivan, able to simulate the noises of cans opening, mobile phones bleeping, pneumatic
doors, etc., at least as well as the guy in
Police Academy
; Henry Lafayette, who is double-jointed and famously escaped from a box of jockstraps after being locked inside it by Lionel.
These boys’ abilities are regarded quite as highly by their peers as the more conventional athletic and sporting kinds, as
is any claim to physical freakishness, such as waggling ears (Mitchell Gogan), unusually high mucous production (Hector ‘Hectoplasm’
O’Looney), notable ugliness (Damien Lawlor) and inexplicably slimy, greenish hair (Vince Bailey). Fame in the second year
is a surprisingly broad church; among the two-hundred-plus boys, there is scarcely anyone who does not have some ability or
idiosyncrasy or weird body condition for which he is celebrated.

As with so many things at this particular point in their lives, though, that situation is changing by the day. School, with
its endless emphasis on conformity, careers, the Future, may be partly to blame, but the key to the shift in attitudes is,
without a doubt, girls. Until recently the opinion of girls was of little consequence; now – overnight, almost – it is paramount;
and girls have quite different, some would go so far as to say deeply conservative, criteria with regard to what constitutes
a gift. They do not care how many golf balls you can fit in your mouth; they are unmoved by third nipples; they do not, most
of of them, consider mastery of
Diablos to be a feather in your cap – even when you explain to them how dangerous it is, even when you offer to teach them
how to do it themselves, an offer you have never extended to any of your classmates, who would actually pay big money for
this expertise, or you could even call it
lore
– wait, come back!

As the juggernaut of puberty gathers momentum, quirks and oddities and singularities turn from badges of honour to liabilities
to be concealed, and the same realpolitik that moves boys to forsake long-nurtured dreams of, say, becoming a ninja for a
more concerted attention to the here and now, forces others, who once were worshipped as gods, to reinvent themselves as ordinary
Joe Blows. Rory Moran will put away his pins, Vince Bailey find some product that de-greens his hair; in five years’ time,
as they prepare to leave school, how many of the crowd who applaud him now while he takes his bows (‘I thank you. I thank
you.’) will remember that Trevor Hickey was once known as ‘The Duke’?

‘Hey, Blowjob, you fat moron,’ Dennis charges as Ruprecht emerges blinkingly from his basement. ‘You’ve crossed the line this
time, you fuckwad!’

‘What?’ Ruprecht is mystified.

‘Did you tell Father Laughton I played the bassoon?’ Dennis’s bassoon, a present from his stepmother, is a tightly guarded
secret kept permanently underneath his bed.

‘Oh, that,’ Ruprecht says.

‘You idiot, now he wants me to play with you in the crappy Christmas concert.’

‘Yes!’ Ruprecht’s chubby face lights up. ‘Won’t it be fun?’

‘I’ll saw my hands off before I appear on stage with you and your Orchestra of Gays!’ Dennis bellows. ‘Do you hear me? I’ll
saw my hands off!’

But it is already too late for that: his stepmother has caught wind of his participation via her vast network of religious,
and is right behind it. ‘Music has wonderful healing power,’ she tells him that morning, adding sadly, ‘you are such an angry
boy.’

Other boys have been more adroit, however, and the priest, faced with a mass vanishing act on the part of the school’s musical
community, has been forced to scale back his original concept. Instead of a full symphony, the Christmas concert orchestra
will now be a quartet, with Ruprecht and Dennis joined by Brian ‘Jeekers’ Prendergast on viola and Geoff Sproke on triangle.
‘It’s
quite
unconventional,’ Father Laughton, ever the optimist, pronounces. ‘It’s
terribly
exciting.’

The participation of Jeekers, while doing little for the Quartet’s street-cred, comes as no great surprise: Jeekers’s parents
are obsessed with Ruprecht and with making their son more
Ruprecht-like. It is, in its small way, a tragic story. In any other school, in any other year, Jeekers – academically gifted,
diligent to a fault – would have been undisputed top dog. The caprices of fate, however, have consigned him to the same class
as Ruprecht, in which Ruprecht, in every exam, in every test, in every Friday just-for-fun quiz, reigns supreme. This drives
Jeekers’s parents – his mother, a pinch-faced dwarf with the permanent appearance of sucking sulphuric acid through a straw;
his father, a wound-up solicitor who makes Pol Pot look like the Fonz – into paroxysms. ‘We didn’t raise our son to come in
second place,’ they shriek. ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you even trying? Don’t you
want
to be an actuary?’ ‘I do, I do,’ Jeekers pleads, and so it’s back into the study, surrounded by homework timetables, performance-tracking
graphs, brain-boosting fish oils and vitamins. His extra-curricular activities, meanwhile, largely revolve around shadowing
Ruprecht, doing whatever he’s doing, be it the Quartet or Chess Club, in the hope of discovering whatever it is that gives
him that
edge
.