Bang Bang You're Dead (5 page)

I want you to understand that Jamie is not a monster.

I'm telling you about things that he
might
have done when we were younger. Maybe he did them, maybe he didn't. Like I said before, I don't have proof of any kind.

Perhaps it was just a coincidence that our Year Two teacher, Mrs Merriman, had her handbag stolen the day after she scolded me for talking to Jamie in class. She was so harsh and so cutting, I was completely crushed and humiliated. The school caretaker was blamed for stealing Mrs Merriman's bag, amongst other things, and he was sacked. Nobody liked him, he wasn't a nice man, so it all made perfect sense and everyone was satisfied.

But a secret doubt still lingers.

And there might have been other things.

I am
sure
there were other things.

Mr Culpepper was one of our neighbours, and he was very proud of his garden. Grandpa told us that Mr Culpepper always won prizes for his plants at the local gardening show, although I much preferred the blowsy, tangled mass of wildflowers, grasses, butterflies and bees in our garden to the regimented blocks of colour next door. Jamie always said that Mr Culpepper hid in his kitchen with a water pistol, ready to blast out of existence any insects that had the cheek to stray into his garden.

Mr Culpepper did not like children. He kept any of our footballs that accidentally went over the fence between our gardens and burned them on his bonfire. When my special bubblegum-pink
I AM
6 birthday balloon escaped, the string sliding through my hot little hand, it floated next door and Mr Culpepper burst it with a needle. I sat down on the back doorstep and cried so much that eventually Jamie gave me his own blue balloon to cheer me up. Meanwhile Mr Culpepper sprayed his roses with insecticide, looking grimly pleased with himself as he destroyed hundreds of greenfly.

A month later, Mr Culpepper's plants began dying, turning into rotting brown stems before our astonished eyes. It was the talk of the street, and Grandpa and Mum were sure that Mr Culpepper had been sabotaged by one of his gardening rivals. Jamie and I simply thought that it served him right. Eventually, though, I did feel sorry for Mr Culpepper when I saw him crying over a beautiful coral-coloured rose tree that was shrivelling and dying. Mr Culpepper didn't bother with the garden again after that. He moved away a few months later and we never saw him again.

At the time it never entered my head that Jamie might –
might –
have had something to do with this. I only realized later that in the jumble of the old, collapsing shed at the bottom of our garden, there were several rusty cans of weedkiller.

But could Jamie actually
do
such a thing?

Would
any
six-year-old?

I know the 'normal' ones wouldn't.

And there were other happenings too.

It would take me a long time to tell you them all. They mean almost nothing on their own, but if you put them together and look at them as one, they appear more than slightly sinister.

These were the happy years, though, living with Grandpa. There was always food on the table and hot water for baths in the old claw-footed Victorian tub, and the electricity never got cut off because Mum hadn't any money for the meter, and we didn't have to hide whenever anyone came to the door in case they wanted payment for something or other. Jamie and I had always felt responsible for Mum, but now we were safe with Grandpa because he stepped in and took charge of her illness.

'Your mum needs some help because the chemicals inside her body don't always work the way they're supposed to, the way ours do,' Grandpa explained to Jamie and me. 'It's not her fault, always remember that.'

After months of persuasion, Grandpa managed to get Mum to see the doctor. Then, using a variety of methods, he would alternately wheedle, beg, blackmail or bully her into taking her medication regularly. At first Mum refused and would flounce off in a rage, but Grandpa never gave up.

'Come along, my darling,' he'd say, stroking Mum's hair, and eventually she began dutifully taking her tablets, like an obedient child. Grandpa also tried to persuade her to start seeing a therapist, and she did, in a fitful kind of way.

But, very gradually, the highs and lows of Mum's behaviour began to stabilize, and Jamie and I saw someone different, someone we hardly recognized as our mother, someone who wasn't either severely depressed or outrageously overconfident and full of her own self-importance. It was all very slow, and there were times when Mum slipped back into her old ways. But I was so much happier, and so was Jamie. I had always been much closer to Mum than he was, but now he would draw pictures for her at school or make breakfast or leave a flower on her pillow.

Normal things.

Suddenly we were a normal family.

Remember what I told you? When something good happens to me, something bad follows right on behind? When Jamie and I were twelve years old, Grandpa became very ill, and a year of hospital visits began.

'Grandpa has cancer and the doctors don't know if he's going to get better,' Mum explained. She was tearful when she told us, but the melodramatic outbursts that were such a feature of her illness were now a thing of the past. 'And he has to stay in hospital for a long time.'

There was a poster on the wall of the hospital visitors' room where we spent so many unhappy hours, waiting for the latest update about Grandpa's condition.
One in four people will get cancer in their lifetime,
it said above a picture of a blonde white woman, a young black man, an elderly Asian lady and a middle-aged man. As Grandpa became thinner, more yellow-faced and shrunken, I used to wonder who the other three people in the world were who wouldn't get cancer now that my grandpa had it. I had to try hard not to hate them.

The operations and the chemotherapy did not work and just after our thirteenth birthday, Grandpa came home to die. He lay in his bed, silent, unmoving and unblinking, sinking in and out of drug-addled consciousness. He didn't seem to recognize us most of the time. My heart felt as if it had shattered and I couldn't imagine it healing again, not ever.

'Why does Grandpa have to die?' I asked Mum. 'It's not fair.'

She and I were curled up together in one close, loving embrace under a patchwork throw in front of the living-room fire. I hadn't seen Jamie since we got home from school, but I guessed that he was upstairs with Grandpa. Jamie spent a lot of time just sitting silently next to Grandpa's bed; even in his drug-induced stupor, Grandpa seemed to like having Jamie close by.

Mum sighed and rested her chin on the top of my head. 'Life isn't fair, darling. But we'll never forget Grandpa. We'll keep him alive in our heads and in our hearts.'

I was silent. That just wasn't enough for me. The thought of never seeing Grandpa again was frightening and unbearable, and tears dripped down my face and ran off the end of my nose. We cried together until our eyes were sore. Then Mum, exhausted from late-night vigils, fell asleep, and I carefully crawled out from under the throw and slipped upstairs.

Grandpa's bedroom was warm and slightly stuffy, with the smell of sickness hanging in the air like thick fog. The lights were dimmed, but Jamie was there, sitting patiently beside the bed, as always. Together we looked down at Grandpa's slight, still figure hidden under the mound of bedclothes.

'He's sleeping,' Jamie whispered. 'Where's Mum?'

'She's asleep too,' I replied. 'She's worn out.'

'Has she taken her tablets?'

'
Yes,
Jamie, she has.'

Jamie was always on Mum's case, and it annoyed me. Mum was doing fantastically well. Even during Grandpa's illness she'd kept taking her medication and she'd been strong, even in the midst of coping with her own grief. She had even promised that she would never allow her illness to take control of her again. Why couldn't Jamie accept that Mum was all right now, I thought, frustrated, and just get off her back?

At that exact moment Grandpa's eyes suddenly snapped open. He glanced at Jamie and me without any sign of recognition in his dull, unfocused gaze.

'I'm here, Grandpa,' I said softly. 'It's Mia. You remember me, don't you? Shall I fetch Mum?'

Grandpa did not reply. I wasn't even sure he could hear me. His red-rimmed, glazed eyes were fixed on Jamie and me as if he wasn't quite sure who he was looking at. It was strange, like he was seeing us clearly for the first time.

'It's all right, Grandpa,' I said as, panting and groaning, he struggled to pull his old, withered frame into an upright position. Jamie and I both tried to ease him gently back down onto the mass of pillows. But Grandpa shook us off irritably.

'What's the matter, Grandpa?' Jamie asked.

A gurgle rose in Grandpa's throat as he tried to speak and a chill ran through me at the look on his face. His eyes bulged from their sockets and his mouth was slack, a thread of saliva dribbling from it.

'It's all right, Grandpa,' I said quickly. A shiver trickled along my spine as I saw that he was very frightened, and I rushed to reassure him. 'Don't be frightened. I'm Mia, and this is Jamie. You remember Jamie? He—'

Grandpa gasped for breath. He dragged his eyes from Jamie and stared into mine, gripping my hand with his last remaining strength.

'Jamie,' he whispered, so low I could barely hear him. 'Mia. Be careful—'

And then he died.

I can still see that look on Grandpa's face.

Be careful.

To this day I'm still not sure what he meant.

Was he going to say something about Mum to Jamie and me?

Or was he warning me about Jamie?

Had Jamie confessed something to him during the long, long hours he spent in the sickroom?

Did Grandpa know something terrifying that I didn't?

I have no idea. But within six months of Grandpa's death, everything had changed. Grief-stricken, Mum broke her promise and stopped taking her medication and her illness quickly took a vice-like grip on her once more. I had no one to turn to except Jamie, and this was when our relationship started to break down: for some inexplicable reason he turned from me and began pushing me further and further away.

I think that was when he first began to follow, faster and faster, the downward spiral to self-destruction.

Monday 10 March, 9.22 a.m.

Sweating, panting, I race to put as much distance between me and Ms Kennedy as possible. I hope she's going to be all right, but she is not my biggest problem right now. According to Ms Powell, the armed response team – and that means police who have guns – will be here in ten minutes.

Less, now.

So in around eight minutes or so there are going to be marksmen surrounding the school, and I will be in even more danger.

'Don't think about it,' I repeat to myself over and over again as, heart thundering in my chest, I run back the way Miss Kennedy and I have just come. As I pass the staffroom once more, the TV is still murmuring in the silence, but I resist the temptation to go back and check the latest update. I don't need the TV reports: there is breaking news going on right outside, only a few metres from where I am now.

All I have to do is stop and look.

I stop.

I tiptoe into the nearest classroom, go to the window and position myself directly behind the blind. As it's made of thick black canvas, there should be no giveaway shadow visible on the other side, nothing to tell the police that I am here.

There is a very small gap between the edge of the blind and the window recess and I put one eye to the gap and look outside, clinging to the blind to keep it from moving aside and betraying me.

'Oh,
Christ.
'

There are eight – no, ten – police cars parked in the distance outside the school gates. There are police officers, too many to count, milling around in the street. Some of them wear riot gear, body armour and hard helmets with face protectors. I can't see any guns, though. I am still safe from the armed police for a short and ever-decreasing period of time. There is no one else around, no pupils, no teachers, no watching crowd, no faces at the windows of nearby houses. Everyone has been moved away from the school, as Ms Powell said.

For the first time I begin to wonder how the police will handle the situation. Almost instantly, a memory surfaces of myself and Jamie watching TV just a few months ago. A man with a gun had barricaded himself into a flat in – Leeds? Liverpool? Somewhere like that. He had a hostage, his ex-girlfriend, with him and the armed response team were called in. But the police began by negotiating with the man, and this went on for two days.

'They'll talk, to begin with,' I reassure myself, remembering that news story. 'They won't just rush straight in and start shooting.'

I wonder briefly if what we saw that day planted the seed of an idea in Jamie's mind. The siege ended when the man let his ex-girlfriend go, but killed himself with a single shot.

I gently release the blind and let it settle back into place. As I do so, I hear the shriek of an ambulance on its way. I wonder if this has been called for Ms Kennedy or if it was coming anyway, in case there are any casualties.

I want Ms Kennedy to be all right, I really mean that.

I don't hate her. I hate
myself.

I should have listened to Jamie months ago, and maybe then this wouldn't be happening.

But it is happening, and this is how you've chosen to deal with it.

Be strong and get on with it.

I shoot off down the corridor again. I am now leaving the extension behind me and am in the original school building. I pound my way past the school office, the headteacher's study, the school hall.

I am coming closer and closer to the annexe.

I wonder what is happening there.

I wonder what Jamie is doing right now.

And Kat Randall.

Will she be as quick to open her big mouth in front of someone who has a gun?

As I take a short cut through the DT department, I glance through an open doorway and see tools laid out for a woodwork lesson. Chisels, hammers, Stanley knives, drills.

I skid to a halt. I have just thought of something earth-shatteringly important that I haven't even considered so far.

If I need to defend myself at any time, in any way, I have nothing.

Nothing.

No self-defence skills.

No weapons.

How satisfying it would be to reveal at this moment that behind my meek and mild-mannered appearance I am a karate black belt and a master of kung fu. Sadly, though, I
am
actually meek and mild-mannered. I have never chopped a block of wood in half with my bare hands. I can hardly tear an envelope open without getting a paper cut.

I hurry into the DT room and grab a large and a small chisel and a Stanley knife. Then I weigh the hammers in my hand, much as I weighed the gun all those years ago in the loft, searching for one that's big enough to inflict damage, but not too heavy to carry around with me.

'But would I actually have the guts to use it?' I wonder aloud.

Another flash of recent memory.

Thursday, a few weeks ago, and Jamie and I were sitting in the form room before the bell for morning lessons. Ms Powell does not subscribe to the view that her class should be allowed to do whatever they want in the fifteen minutes between registration and lessons, be it gossip, read
Heat
magazine, arm-wrestle or whatever. She structures the time so that we have silent reading on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays
(Heat
magazine definitely not allowed), and a discussion about stories in the news on Tuesdays.

Thursday is philosophy day. We come into class to find a question written on the whiteboard that is guaranteed to provoke debate. On the day I'm thinking of, the question was:

Do you think everyone has the capacity to kill another person, if they are provoked far enough?

'No,' I said definitely, when asked for my opinion. 'No, I just couldn't do it.'

Usually I am so torn between the opposing sides of the question that everyone in class, including Jamie and Bree, gets annoyed with me. My trouble is that I can see both sides of every argument and, as I told you, I hate making decisions.

This time, though, I was completely and utterly sure. I could never hurt anyone in that way, whatever they'd done to me.

'Not even in self-defence, Mia?' Bree asked, and I shook my head.

Most of the girls agreed with me, although some said they would have no problem if they had to kill to escape a man who was attacking them. The boys were less sure, although the majority of them were also quite convinced that the only reason why they might kill was in self-defence.

'I think it depends on your attitude to yourself,' Jamie said quietly when the debate had got very heated. 'If someone doesn't feel that their own life is worth very much, or maybe nothing at all, then that someone won't value other people's lives very much either. And that makes him or her dangerous.'

Was Jamie talking about himself that day?

His words come back to haunt me as I choose a hammer and add it to my self-defence kit. I bundle the tools into a plastic carrier bag I find lying on the teacher's desk and then I tie the handles of the bag to the belt around my waist, leaving my hands free.

Maybe
I
don't value my own life much, I muse as I run from the DT department. After all, I've chosen to put myself in the middle of this life-and-death situation, haven't I?

And if Jamie's right, does that makes me more dangerous than I realize?

I am close to the annexe now, so close I can almost smell my own fear. I wonder what is happening in there, in Class 9D's form room. I wonder if everyone is still alive.

I run faster. Ahead of me I can see the double doors that lead into the long, L-shaped glass corridor, the corridor that connects the main school to the annexe. My heart thumps faster.

But as soon as I push my way through the swinging doors, I realize that I have made a mistake.

A stupid,
stupid
mistake.

I have assumed that all the blinds at the front of the school are pulled down. Here they are not. For a second I stand there in the corridor in front of the large plate-glass window, totally exposed to whoever happens to be looking in from outside.

'Oh, God!'

I drop to the floor so fast that I almost stab myself in the side with the tools that hang around my waist. There I freeze, the pale, clear winter sun blazing through the window, burning my eyeballs. Trembling from head to toe, I glance up, expecting faces to appear. I wait in limbo for the glass to shatter as the police come in after me and drag me to safety.

But nothing happens. So I take a deep breath and pull myself together. Then, adjusting the bag of tools so that it sits behind me, I begin to inch forward on my stomach like a paratrooper in the jungle.

After a moment, when still no one comes, I dare to believe that I have not been spotted after all.

I edge my way along the short leg of the L-shape, and then round the right angle. Relief floods through me as I see that, in this longer stretch of corridor leading to the next set of double doors, the blinds on the playground side are drawn.

I still don't stand up, though, until I am near the doors. At last, after what seems like an eternity, I inch right up to them. Trembling, I drag myself upright, hanging onto the door handles for support.

Behind these double doors is the annexe.

Behind these doors, on the first floor, is 9D's classroom. Kat Randall is there. And Jamie? I don't know what I will find, but nothing will make me turn back now.

I push gently on the swing doors, expecting to slip smoothly through into the annexe.

The doors do not open.

They are locked.