The Knife That Killed Me (7 page)

“Good lad,” he said.

Had my face betrayed me? Told him, in response to his own, unspoken threat, that I would do whatever he wanted? I don’t know, but I think that if he’d really tried to force me, I might have resisted, or might have said yes, and then thrown the package away. But his assumption that I’d agreed, his acceptance of it as natural, as inevitable, destroyed my will to resist. I told you Roth was deep.

But I had one last, feeble go at refusing.

“Can’t you get one of them to take it?”

“Look at them,” he said, and I followed his line of vision. Bates had hold of the stick, and had dredged up some of the weed and slime from the bottom and was waving it at Miller, the two of them whooping and laughing. “A cretin and a nigger. Too dumb to fart and walk at the same time.”

The casual brutality of Roth’s language stunned me, and I hated it, and hated him. I didn’t think even Roth would say “nigger” like that, as if it was a word like “idiot,” one you could drop into a conversation. But it was another part of his plan to draw me in. For a second I was part of the inner circle, just me and Roth. The safest part of the hurricane is at the eye.

And hell has its circles.

And then my voice said:

“Where do you want it taken?”

That was it: I was committed.

“That’s ma boy. Up to the sports ground. The one in Temple Moor. You can take the bus up.”

“But all the Temple Moor kids hang out there.”

“Very, ah,
astute.”

“But they’ll see me….”

Temple Moor High School was nearly as rough as ours. And there had always been trouble between us. Sometimes it was war. Sometimes an uneasy peace.

“Look, it’s all cool with them. In fact it’s one of them you’ll be dropping this off with. Black kid. Called Goddard. They call him Goddo. It’s something he wants.”

“Like what?”

“Seriously,
Paul
, you don’t really want to know. Just a package.”

I could guess.

Drugs.

I felt sick.

But there was no way out now. Well, there was a way out, but I couldn’t take it. I was already too far down the path.

Drugs weren’t that big at our school. A while back there had been a serious problem with glue and solvents, but one kid died with a can of lighter fluid up his nose, and that kept things quiet for a while. A few of the older kids talked about dope and speed, but I’d never heard of anything worse than that.

“You look a bit peaky. I’m telling you, there’s nothing
to worry about. And it’s one little favor. After this, you and me, we’re mates, all right?”

I didn’t want to be mates with Roth. I didn’t want to hang around with him and the nutters like Bates and Miller. But I did want something from him. Something hard to put your finger on. I’d felt it already today. It was as if Roth put out fields—I mean, like radiation or something. And there were two different kinds. There was the one that killed you, the death field, and the one that protected you. If you were in that field, then you were OK, you were safe. Safe from anything. But it was really hard to know sometimes where one field ended and the other began.

He handed me the package. It was heavier than I thought. It’s funny. Sometimes when things are heavier than you expect, it’s a good feeling. And this should have been a good feeling now, because surely this was too heavy to be drugs. It weighed as much as a cricket ball, more maybe.

“When shall I take it?”

“Now.”

“Now? But … but I’ve got to go somewhere else.”

“That can wait.”

“No, I …” But I didn’t carry on, because I could easily get from Temple Moor to Halton. It just meant I couldn’t go home first. And I knew that I didn’t have the strength to tell a convincing lie to Roth.

And so again I asked him:

“Tell us what it is, Roth.”

And Roth put his hand at the back of my neck and squeezed, and pulled me toward him at the same time. The pain wasn’t that bad, but I knew it was a message, and the message was:
I can hurt you whenever I want to
.

“Ask me that again and you’ll find out,” he said, and that filled me with more dread than anything so far.

And then he showed me his teeth. This close I could see the flat tops. They looked like they’d been worn down, worn smooth.
I’ll grind your bones to make my bread
. It came into my head like that.

“Get going, or you’ll miss him.”

I nodded, and began to get up. And then Roth pulled me back down again.

“But just to be on the safe side,” he said, in a low voice, “you’d better take something. For self-defense.”

Then, keeping eye contact, he put something metal in my hand. I looked down.

It was the scissors.

I heard wild laughter. Miller and Bates had appeared from nowhere to enjoy the joke.

TEN

I went
to the bus stop. I could have walked—it’s only twenty minutes—but I was afraid that Roth might be watching, and he’d told me to take the bus. There were a few other kids there, larking around. No one I knew. I was daydreaming. Thinking about Shane. Thinking about Maddy. Sometime in between seeing her get hit by the ball and her visit to me in the sick bay I’d realized something. Something that was probably there all along, but I’d never acknowledged it. I liked her. I liked her a lot.

You probably think it’s weird that I liked Maddy, after
what I said about her. Not exactly cool. Not exactly pretty. But she had something. Something strange, like she heard secret voices or saw things that other kids couldn’t see. That’s making it sound worse. Maybe it was just that I thought she was a bit like me.

There was a loud honk, yanking me out of my thoughts. I looked up, already knowing what I’d see. It was my dad, leaning out of the window of his truck cab. I felt my face burn.

“Where you off to, son?”

“Just up the hill, Dad. I’m … I’m meeting some friends up on Temple Moor.”

“Hop in. I’ll give you a lift.”

“It’s all right, Dad, I’ll get the bus.”

“What for? Money wasted. Get in.”

He opened the door for me, and I climbed up. The cab was hot and it smelled of my dad—not foul, but a bit sweaty. I opened the window, and the truck juddered and chugged into motion.

“Who are these friends then?”

“Just some kids.”

“But why are you meeting up there? You’ve got to watch yourself.”

“Yeah, Dad, I know.”

“Did I ever tell you about the big fight up there when I was your age?”

“Yeah, Dad.”

“It was the whole school, virtually. Streaming up there
like an army. You see, one of their kids had nicked a bird off one of ours. Over nothing, really.”

“I know, Dad.”

“All our hard kids were there. And I’m telling you, back then, when I say hard, I mean hard. Not like now.”

“You’ve told me, Dad.”

“Funny thing is, though, we took a right spanking that day. We were on their patch. And Temple Moor has always been a bigger school. We got surrounded. I wasn’t even supposed to be fighting, just watching. But some of the little kids got mixed up in it, and I had to dive in to help them.”

“I know, Dad.”

“Well, someone had to.”

He’d told me the story a million times. Me and anyone else who’d listen. About how he shepherded the little kids, protecting them from the Temple Moor meatheads. How everyone said he saved their lives, even though he’d just saved them from getting a kicking. How even the Temple Moor kids nodded at him afterward. I was sick of it, to be honest.

“But it’s all right now, Dad. We’re not fighting them anymore.”

“So what are you doing up there?”

“Like I said, just meeting some mates. Drop me here, will you, Dad.”

“OK, son.” He ruffled my hair. “Stay out of trouble, eh?”

“See you, Dad.”

I cut through the shops at the top of the hill. There was a pound store where you could buy anything shit for a pound—shit batteries, shit biscuits, shit baby clothes. And there was a liquor store where the guy stood behind a grille so you couldn’t rob him. It was the first one of those they had in our town, and people used to come just to look at it. It was like something in an American film, so people thought it was kind of cool.

Past the shops, and soon you were in what looked a lot like countryside, although you could always see the shadow of the big council estate that looped around one side of it. We’d done the history of this place at school. The land was given to the Knights Templar in twelve something. That’s why it was called Temple Moor. They had a big farm, making money to help them fight the Saracens in the Holy Land. Then the Templars got slaughtered, not by the Saracens but by the kings in Europe who wanted their money, and I can’t remember what happened to the land, until hundreds of years later someone built a big house, and it’s still there, kind of beautiful. You can go round it and look at the chairs and beds of the rich people who used to live there.

But I didn’t have to go near the big house to get to the sports ground. I knew it quite well, because we always had our school sports day there. You probably wouldn’t have guessed it, but the best time I ever had at school happened on sports day. I don’t know why, but Frisco made me volunteer to do the triple jump. I’m OK at sport, nothing special. Not in any school teams, but I can run. Frisco said, “Any
volunteers for triple jump?” and then, “Right, you, Varderman,” before anyone had put their hand up.

I’d never done the triple jump. None of us had. It was a new thing. I think Frisco brought it in just because it was quite hard to get right, and he wanted to see some of the kids fall on their faces in front of the whole school. It was a sunny day. I was against all the really sporty kids in the year. I did a couple of practice runs. The first time I messed up, stumbled, fell. The next time I went slowly, but got each stage right: hop, skip, jump. I didn’t get very far, but I could do it—you know, basically do it.

Because the day was running late we were only allowed one jump in the competition, which was stupid. It was probably all part of Frisco’s plan. And it nearly worked. Every jump was a no-jump. Kids stepped over the board, or got the stages wrong, or didn’t bother with the stages at all, but just took a big leap, thinking that would be OK.

And then I came along. Yeah, I just did it, easy as anything. Not many people were watching as there were other events on at the same time. A kid called Franklin punched the side of my head because I’d beat him. But I didn’t care. It was the only time I ever came first in anything at school. And now nothing can change that.

ELEVEN

I saw
them hanging round some benches near the changing rooms and clubhouse. Six—no, seven of them. They looked pretty mean to me, although that could just have been because of the history.

I could tell the second the gang saw me: the excitement went through their bodies, jolting each one.