The Suicide Club (30 page)

As soon as the news finished I stepped into the back garden and went into the shed. I unchained my bike for the first time in over a year and yanked it out through the flimsy wooden door. I went out through the back gate into the lane behind my house, started a run, threw my bike down and jumped on board, gravel crunching underneath my wheels.

I sped across town as fast as hell, dodging in and out of cars, jumping up and down kerbs, wind thrashing in my hair, oxygen rushing down my arteries. I pedalled like my legs were powerful pistons, like I was a machine.

The whole dark world came alive in the neon of the town centre as I sailed past the war memorial. Cars beeped their horns at me because I kept pulling out in front of them to slice seconds off my journey and in less than ten minutes I was throwing my bike down outside the school dormitories
and gliding up the steps, past the security desk and on and on to Freddy's room. My heart was pumping because I finally understood. In the final corridor, I rounded the corner and there he was, already coming to meet me.

We looked at each other.

‘I saw you coming from my window,' he said.

‘You were right, weren't you? About what you said. About people. About everything.'

‘I think so,' he said. ‘I'm pretty sure I am.'

That was a big moment. It was when I truly left normality behind and plunged completely into the mindset of the Suicide Club. Freddy had me now. Craig's death, and people's reaction to it, had finally shown me the way. People simply weren't very nice. They were dishonest and selfish, trying in some way to get involved with a situation that was nothing to do with them. Everything that Freddy had talked about seemed to be coming true. He had been right all along – Craig's death had shown me that. I was now completely under his spell.

We went to the park and climbed the trees. They had powerful lights underneath, which made them look astoundingly weird and creepy. In a way, just like we must have appeared to the outside world. We found comfortable sitting positions in an old tree and smoked a cigarette each. We were like leopards in those trees that you see in wildlife programmes about Africa.

‘Do you think anyone else will kill themselves?' I said to him.

‘Sure.' He blew out some smoke into the air.

‘Who do you think will do it?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean, who do you think will do it?'

‘All of us,' he said simply.

‘Just answer the question, moron.'

‘I'm going to do it.'

I felt like a sudden surge of liquid nitrogen had been spliced into my genes. I was only joking when I asked. I thought he knew that I was joking. I didn't want anyone else to die and I didn't want to continue this conversation. It was too frightening, too disenfranchised. I turned my thoughts away from something obvious that I wasn't prepared to accept.

‘You know it's a mortal sin,' he said, smoke coming from his mouth as he spoke.

‘Suicide?'

‘We'll go to hell for it.'

I watched the lights of an aeroplane cross the clear sky.

‘What about our chamber in heaven?' I said.

But Freddy didn't answer.

I still felt a tiny amount of
something
in my gut. It was a little bit rotten and I think it was echoes of the grief from Craig. It was still weird to think of him as being a dead boy. But he was and that was that. We talked about his funeral and how sickening it would be to see all the kids from school turn up pretending that they knew him even though they would only be there to get time off school and lament the fact without even realizing it that they were selfish and had never taken time out to think about the poor boy who shot himself in the head. No doubt the headmaster would be there too, dark overcoat with lapels turned up and polished leather shoes that would click all the way into church. Horrific.

IN ASSEMBLY THE
next morning the headmaster particularly embarrassed himself because he made us all observe a minute's silence in memory of Craig. So we all stood, pretending to be solemn, and bowed our heads. I was next to Freddy and he kept nudging me and it was all we could do to not collapse in hysterics. Clare, who was further along our line, saw us and was disgusted.

I'm not saying that we weren't devastated about Craig, I'm saying that we simply couldn't believe everybody's reaction – that was what was ridiculous. Maybe we should have been more sombre, but that's not the way it was.

‘Now then,' said the headmaster, clearly relishing his newly found celebrity. I noticed he was wearing shinier shoes than normal. ‘I'd just like to reiterate that if you need to talk to anybody about anything, you can see my secretary and she can make you an appointment with our counsellors.' He shuffled a little in front of his lectern. ‘The police will be in school today and they might want to talk to some of you. So if you get called out of any lessons you don't need to worry because there's nobody to blame in tragic times like these.' He really did say ‘tragic times like these' – can you even believe it?

When we got out of assembly, Matt came running up the corridor. His hair was all over the place and his shirt was untucked.

‘You're not going to believe this,' he laughed. I was glad he was laughing. It meant that he was having a similarly weird reaction to this thing as me. I wasn't alone. ‘Have you heard about Chad?'

I looked at him and raised an eyebrow.

‘What about him?'

‘He's only been arrested.'

‘What?' chimed Freddy.

Matt was grinning like he was about to crack up.

‘Yup. Do you know where Craig got his gun?'

‘Oh my God,' I said in a high voice. So that's why Craig was friends with Chad. So that he could steal his gun. It made me wonder how long Craig had been planning his own death. He must have been planning it even when I spoke to him in his bedroom and I thought he had put his psychological problems behind him. It made me respect him even more. I started laughing. ‘So they've got Chad? That's awesome!'

We all laughed and I suppose it was a bit evil and we also knew at the time that it was a bit evil, but then Chad was a moron so what did it matter? He should have handed the gun over instead of keeping it like a typical American. I was ecstatic that he had been held responsible for it because it was so typical of everybody. Somebody had to take the blame because that's just the way it is. Nobody could accept the fact that
they
were to blame, that it was
society
that had killed him. They had to have a scapegoat. It's hilarious.

‘How can you laugh like that?' We all turned to see Jenny looking at us. She had bags under her eyes, ringed in red, and bloodshot whites. I think she had been crying.

Suddenly she bolted forward. Looking up I saw that she had been physically barged by one of the American kids.

‘Get out of the way. Fucking freak.'

And then he headed for us. I stepped into his track even though he was older, taller and bigger than me. He didn't even reach me because Matt leapt forward and punched him across the face. His speed and ferocity really surprised me. It might have scared me a bit if I hadn't been in such a mangled state of mind. Instead, when Matt grappled him to the floor, I jumped on and swung two punches, left and right, into either side of his head. I hated doing it because it's not a good thing to do but I was possessed and I just did it. Then Freddy was there too, his face in a creased rage as he let go about a million kilojoules right into this kid's skull. If the American kid had looked up he would have seen three monsters seething at him: the crazy kids who had killed the bird. We were one. But he didn't look at us because he was covering his face with his forearms. He shouldn't have barged one of us like that. He was a bully and now he was getting what he deserved.

His friends grabbed us and I felt a fist impact my face and was sent sprawling across the corridor into a bunch of younger kids. I got straight back up and felt blood trickling over my lips from my nose, which must have looked incredibly cool. I lowered my head and stared at the boy who had hit me.

‘You're a fucking basket case, man,' he drawled.

I heard a teacher shouting about thirty yards away and I knew that I didn't want to get into any more trouble than I was in already so I unfolded my fists and wiped my nose. My hand came away red and I had no idea why I started thinking about my My Chemical Romance album that still hadn't turned up from Play even though they said it had been posted.

We were taken to the headmaster's office and the American boys told the headmaster that we were Craig's best friends and that they thought we were witches and that we
had made Craig kill himself. I sat back in my chair and sniffed through my bloody nose. My knuckles were really hurting.

‘That's a very serious allegation,' the headmaster said. ‘A
very
serious allegation.'

‘It's what I think, sir,' said the American.

The headmaster looked at all three of us.

‘Do you boys think that you're going to Mr Bartlett-Taylor's funeral tomorrow?'

We just sat there. I was horrified to hear him start talking like this – he really was an embarrassment.

‘Why should I let you go?'

‘I'll tell you why,' said Freddy gloriously.

I started to get tingles in my fingers.

Freddy's cool hair hung with drama.

‘Because you're a fucking moron,' he said calmly, ‘and it has
nothing
to do with you whether we go or not, you abominable cunt.'

Jesus Christ, you would not believe how amazing it was to witness something like this. Freddy had just planted a flag on Everest, drunk from the Holy Grail, put a boot through the gates of heaven. The headmaster's face dropped when he said the ‘c' word. I don't think anyone had
ever
said something like that to him. Freddy inflected the words in such a magical way that the headmaster must have known instantaneously that what he had said about not allowing us to go to the funeral was completely idiotic. Freddy had just held up a mirror to this man and the reflection was unbearable.

But do you know what? Such was his weakness, he would not accept Freddy's reproach.

‘Well, Mr Spaulding-Carter,' he said, trying to act calm, even though it was quite obvious that he had lost it. ‘You don't understand that it has
everything
to do with me. I suggest you apologize for your outburst.'

I watched Freddy deliberate for about three seconds.

‘Ordinarily I would.' He paused. ‘But not today. I just can't. If I did, I would be letting Craig down.'

He really was superb when he wanted to be.

‘Sir,' said Matt suddenly.

‘Don't start, Matthew.'

‘Sir, I'm sorry. But how can you use our friend's funeral as a bargaining chip?'

‘Matthew, you keep your mouth shut, or you won't be going either.'

Matt looked at his feet. So that was that. Freddy was not going to the funeral.

‘And what about you, Richard?' he said, turning on me. ‘Have you got anything to add?'

Here was my chance.

‘I have nothing to add,' I said coldly, like I was in court.

‘Good lad.' He paused. ‘Go on then, off you go. And don't let me hear any more about fighting or anything like that.'

We all got up to leave.

‘Not you, Mr Spaulding-Carter.'

Freddy sat back down without even looking at us. I was the last to leave and I pulled the door shut behind me. It was a dramatic moment as the slit in the door got narrower and narrower until Freddy and the headmaster were cut off from the rest of the world.

First lesson, maths, passed uneventfully but, as I sat there and listened to the teacher talk about angles or something like that, my dread unrolled in me like a tapeworm. I really didn't want to see Emma today. I would much rather have skipped school and taken Clare to a riverbank somewhere, where we could throw pebbles into the water and kiss each other whilst the rest of the world washed by, blissfully ignorant that we were even by that river. I guess I just wanted to
be innocent again but I had gone well past that point now and so I went to the meeting room and met with Emma.

The session started with five minutes of silence.

She spoke first.

‘So you've been in a fight.'

I just sat there and looked at the glass of water in front of me.

‘Rich,' she said, really kindly in a way that made my stomach lurch. I was going to crack, I could tell. I tried to reel myself in before she continued. ‘It's OK, Rich. Tell me about Craig.'

I kept looking at the water in my glass. There were two bubbles stuck to the bottom. I watched them closely. At last one of them set itself free and headed for the surface. As soon as it went, its friend joined it and they scorched for the surface, wobbling as they went to their inevitable deaths.

‘What do you want me to say?' I said, very, very calmly.

‘Did it make you sad? Angry? Tell me how it made you feel,' she said professionally, which was repellent.

‘You never did tell me how many A levels you had,' I said coldly.

‘This isn't about me, Richard. If you don't talk about what happened to Craig, it will sit inside you and eat you from the inside out. You have to talk about it.'

‘What do you do when you feel sad?' I asked. ‘Do you have your own shrinks? You people?' My head was spinning. I hated her because she was a psychotherapist and I loved her because she was so pretty.

‘The police wanted to talk to you but I didn't allow it.'

I couldn't look at her. I was right on the edge.

‘Richard, you held him in your arms after he died, didn't you?'

I shrugged. Just for a second I was back on the stage, Craig lying dead in my arms. It knocked the breath out of me.