Cracks (3 page)

‘When the first flag was introduced in 1606,’ she says to the class, ‘it became known simply as the British flag or the flag of Britain’. She pauses and gives her head a
weird shake. ‘British flag or the flag of Britain,’ she says again. Then she does the head shaky thing a second time. ‘British flag or flag of Britain, flag of Britain, flag of
Britain, flag of Britain . . .’

I look around the class, grinning. What’s happened to the old cow? She’s got stuck. Some people are scribbling frantically, but most are doodling or texting under the desk as usual.
Even the people watching her have no expression other than the normal, bored one. The smile dies on my face as the horrible realisation takes hold.

I swallow hard. Is it only me who heard that? When I look back at Jennings, she’s talking normally again.

I can’t get out of the class fast enough at the end of the lesson. I gulp fresh air down and I’m clammy all over.

‘What’s up with you today, man?’ says Amil.

I clutch his arm. He grins awkwardly and steps back a bit.

‘Look, this is really important, right?’ I say. ‘So think carefully.’

He shakes my hand away with an embarrassed laugh. ‘All right, but take it easy, yeah?’

I take a deep, slow breath. ‘Did you hear Jennings repeat herself back there?’

Amil bursts out laughing. ‘Course I did,’ he says. ‘Are you nuts?’

Relief pours into me. I could hug him. ‘Thank God! I was starting to think I was really losing it, man!’

Amil laughs again. ‘She always repeats herself, doesn’t she?’ he says. ‘Different lessons, same old crap, innit?’

The warm feeling drains away, leaving behind a chill that feels like it will never go away.

I turn, trying to hide the scared look on my face. ‘Yeah,’ I say, quietly. ‘Same old crap.’

‘I
’ve found a way for you to pay Ryan back,’ says Des. I look up from my dinner, trying to keep my expression blank but knowing
I’m not going to like this.

‘Yeah?’ I say, through a mouthful of chips.

‘It’s through my mate, Loz,’ he says and my heart falls as I picture the skinny, stoner freak with mad eyes Des sometimes works with. He’s about a hundred and four, with
ginger dreadlocks, and he’s always hoiking huge phlegm bogies onto the ground.

‘Right,’ I say. My misery only adds to Desmondo’s glee.

‘Well, he’s got a bit of work on at the moment renovating a building and you’re going to help him. Pay’s good – a tenner for evenings, twenty-five quid for
weekends.’

‘OK,’ I say suspiciously. ‘Where is it?’

Des puts half a sausage in his mouth and chews, grinning the whole time so I can get the full chewing action. ‘Not far. You can see it from here.’

‘Aw, come on,’ I say, ‘I’m not having to work in the brewery with Pig—, Ryan, am I?’

‘Nope,’ says Des and spears the rest of the sausage, still grinning. ‘Try again.’

‘It’s not school!’ I say. ‘I’m not working at the bloody school!’

‘Not there either,’ says Des. ‘Try again!’ He pauses but can’t hold it in any longer. ‘I’ll tell you, then. It’s Riley Hall! You should feel right
at home among all those losers and toerags.’ Des actually slaps his leg, he’s so chuffed. ‘Close your mouth, Princess, you’ll catch flies,’ he says, sitting back in
his chair and letting out a massive burp.

I don’t feel like the rest of my dinner but I keep going so he can’t see how freaked out I am. He couldn’t have given me worse news.

I’ve always had the horrors about Riley Hall. I can’t explain why. I’ve never been there, but I only have to hear the name and I get this choking feeling. I have a recurring
dream about it too, where I’m endlessly walking down corridors. All I can hear is a boy screaming in a room I never find.

Weird.

‘So,’ I say casually, which takes a truly impressive amount of effort. ‘When do I start?’

‘Tomorrow after school,’ says Des. ‘Make sure you get back here quickly.’

It gets worse every second. ‘But I have art club on Wednesdays!’

Des leans across the table and lowers his voice. ‘Not until you’ve paid for that Xbox you haven’t.’

I try to swallow the rest of my dinner but it tastes like sand and polystyrene. Art club is one of the few places I feel like I’m any use. It’s nothing to do with the fact that Miss
Lovett, who takes it, is blonde and pretty and smells like she’s just come out of the kind of frothy bath you see on adverts. And she says things like, ‘That really is wonderful,
Callum,’ and ‘I think you have a real aptitude for this,’ which aren’t words I hear anywhere else. I’d promised I’d help her paint some backdrops for a Year
Eleven exhibition. Looks like I’m going to let her down.

I want to kick something. But I’m not giving Des the satisfaction.

After dinner, Mum’s watching one of her soaps and Des is on the phone in the kitchen. Ryan’s probably out torturing baby chicks or something. I’m sat on the sofa opposite mum,
staring at a piece of paper with the words
Cal Conway, 9BF
at the top and nothing whatsoever about the stinking Union Jack or whatever the hell it’s called. I’m thinking about
everything that’s been happening and suddenly Mum gets up. She moves to the middle of the room and in a voice that isn’t really her own says, ‘He can’t be waking. It
isn’t possible. Increase the dosage by another five mils . . .’

‘Mum? Mum, what are you doing?’

She turns her head and stares at me, still as a statue.

Des is still on the phone next door.

‘Des!’ I shout. ‘Something’s wrong with Mum!’ Normally he’d yell at me for interrupting him. That’s how I know, with another fizzing chill, that he
can’t hear me.

I jump up and stand in front of her, waving my hands about. But there’s no reaction even though she’s looking right at me. Her eyes are starey, like she’s not even human. Then
she abruptly flops back into her chair.

‘What’s the matter with you? Why are you gawping at me like that?’ she says irritably.

I drop to my knees and cling onto her awkwardly, because I’m so scared and freaked out by everything. I can feel her body tighten but I hang on and squeeze harder. My head pulses with a
sudden headache and I’m dizzy, so dizzy I cling tighter to Mum to stay upright.

‘Cal, will you give over, you’re hurting me!’ She pushes me away and reaches for her fags, her face tight and annoyed. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you at
the moment, I really don’t. Now get on with your homework and let me watch Corrie.’

I don’t get any relief from worrying about all this at nighttime. Oh no.

I already have a full repertoire of strange dreams. Not just the Riley Hall one. There’s another, where I’m in a car, listening to the same nursery rhyme over and over again. Then
everything goes scorching hot and I can’t breathe. I’ve had that dream for as long as I can remember. But lately the two dreams are on shuffle.

I try to stay awake, listening to Pigface oinking in his sleep and sounds I don’t want to hear from Mum and Des but eventually my eyes droop and now when I close them I go hurtling down a
Technicolor tube like a combination of the biggest rollercoaster and waterpark slide you can imagine. Except instead of being a laugh, I’m fighting for my life. I see things exploding and
body parts lying like joints of meat in a street. Ghostly white faces with no features lean over me, whispering harsh words I can’t make out. I wake up coated in slimy sweat and feeling like
I’ve done ten rounds in a boxing ring, my duvet strangling me.

There’s a good dream too, though. It only comes now and then. I can see sunlight sprinkling the ground and I’m really high up. There are strong hands holding my legs and a little kid
is laughing fit to bust. I think the little kid might be me. A woman with reddish hair is smiling up at me and reaches up to touch my face. I try to remember more because it feels good, like a warm
bath, but it always stays just out of sight.

The next day after school I wait for Des’s idiot mate to collect me. Telling Miss Lovett I wouldn’t be at art club for the rest of term was bad, especially when I
had to add the bit about not helping with the exhibition.

‘Is there any way I could talk to your parents and we could reach a compromise?’ she’d said, a lovely crease between her lovely brown eyes.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I have to pay for something . . . something I broke.’ I felt ashamed and suddenly angry, because she was making me feel bad.

‘Well, maybe you can carry on with the picture you were working on at home? It’s so unusual, it would be a shame not to finish it.’

The picture she’s talking about is of loads of wires. That’s it, wires. They’re snaking all over a room and a person is imprisoned in them, right at the centre.

Unusual is one word for it.

Anyway, I tried to picture myself at home, taking over the kitchen table with art stuff. Maybe Mum could say, ‘Here’s a nutritious snack, darling! You must keep up your energy levels
for these marvellous artistic endeavours!’ And then Des could come in, fart loudly and smack me round the back of the head for behaving like a girl. This made me angry too so I said,
‘Nah, don’t think so,’ and walked out of the room without even saying goodbye or anything. I could feel her looking as I walked down the corridor and her gaze stayed on my back
all day like a stain.

So I’m looking out the window, getting ready for Loz’s arrival when Ryan comes into the kitchen with a sandwich in his hand. The other one is rummaging about in his trousers.
He’s home from work early for some reason and he stops dead when he sees me. His eyes narrow and I know he’ll die before he forgives me for the other day.

‘You know what they do in Riley, don’t you?’ he says.

‘No, Ryan, why don’t you tell me,’ I say in a bored way.

He comes and stands over me so I feel his warm breath. ‘They make weapons out of anything they get their hands on,’ he says quietly. ‘Bed springs, disposable forks, bits of
plastic covering from the table.’ His breathing is shallow like he’s been running. ‘Then they slice each other up with them. I reckon you’ll be painting a wall and thinking
your pathetic thoughts and the next thing, someone will come up behind you and open you up until you cry like a stuck pig.’

I swallow and I know he can see the fear in my eyes because his smile widens.

‘So you’d better watch your back,’ he whispers into my ear. ‘And if they don’t get you, I will. Only a matter of time.’ He grins and moves away.

I hear a sound and look out the window. A battered white van, exhaust spewing a toxic brown cloud, parks in front of the house.

Ryan gives a snort and moves away to switch on the TV, while I pull on my trainers and think about how nice it would be if I were about to have all my teeth pulled out with a pair of broken
pliers. Better than what I have to do now, anyway.

L
oz’s van smells of feet, fags and dog. The mutt in question, a barrel of pure muscle and teeth, is called Tizer. He’s tied up by a bit
of string but I can feel his stinking breath on the back of my neck. If I turn, he rumbles like a washing machine about to spin.

Loz comes from Glasgow and I understand about a tenth of what he says. He mumbles into his chest and every now and then grins to show the little brown gravestones of his teeth.

He has a conversation into his mobile most of the way. Every now and then I catch something like, ‘Wuzznae like that, hen,’ or ‘You’re breakin’ ma heart,
darlin’!’ I tune him out and stare at the sky, which is a weird pink colour. The clouds seem to be moving really fast. Do they usually look that way, like they’re brewing
something poisonous? I suddenly can’t remember what the sky normally looks like and that only adds to the battery acid feeling churning in my guts. The headache’s back too. It comes and
goes in a rhythm, squeezing my temples like a giant fist. I close my eyes for a minute and when I open them, the world stays dark for a scary second and then everything looks normal again.

Soon we’re approaching a high barbed wire fence with a CCTV camera on massive metal gates.

You’d better watch your back.

Pigface’s words come back to me and I unconsciously lean back in my seat, prompting a snarl from Tizer.