Just in Case (3 page)

Justin chewed and swallowed.

His parents glanced at each other.

‘Well?’ asked his mother anxiously.

Justin looked up, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘Yes?’

‘Are you…?’ She blushed. ‘You know.’

‘HO-MO-SEX-UAL.’ Exasperation caused his father to shout.

Justin lifted his spoon and pondered the question. Milk dripped off it as it hovered, loaded, in mid-air. Homosexual? It hadn’t really occurred to him. He supposed it was possible. Anything was possible.

‘Not that I know of,’ he said finally.

His father exhaled impatiently and returned to his paper. ‘Well, that’s a relief,’ he snorted. ‘Life’s complicated enough without having a poof for a son.’

8

School started the following Tuesday.

The radio blasted Justin awake at precisely 7 a.m. and he sat bolt upright in bed, shocked, blood pumping rapidly through alarmed organs. He hadn’t been up before noon all summer.

Groaning, he flailed at the snooze button until the noise stopped, and fell once more into a deep sleep. At the fourth repeat, he sat up in bed, reached over and pulled back one of the curtains.

It was pissing with rain.

The gloom was so thick he could barely see the road from his bedroom. He sighed, facing the prospect of a new school year with all the pleasure of a worm facing a beak.

I wish I had a dog, he thought, searching under the bed for his new paisley shirt and white canvas trousers.

Justin stood up, one arm in an armhole and one lying slack by his side. He felt suddenly that if he could walk into school today with a new name, new clothes and a dog – the
sleekest, most elegant greyhound in creation – he might possibly survive. But he had no greyhound, and the chances of getting hold of one before eight thirty seemed tragically slim. It was already ten past.

He said goodbye to his mother, picked Charlie up off the floor and whirled him around till he squealed with glee. Then he shook hands with his father and set off to meet his fate.

The thought of a pet, even an imaginary pet, soothed him. He stopped in the drizzle along the half-mile walk to school so that his dog could sniff lamp posts, trees, dead birds.

Here, boy! Come on, boy!

He called his greyhound happily. The creature possessed an effortless grace combined with serenity, dignity, wisdom. The dog’s soft eyes contemplated the world with calm compassion. His body was smooth and elegant, his chest deep, legs strong and well-defined. What a combination of the physical and the spiritual! Surely no ordinary dog, no mere mortal dog could claim the attributes of – of – of Boy.

Good Boy! Boy was no poodle. Anyone could see that.

As he reached the school gates, Justin found himself in the midst of an excited crowd of hormonally charged human particles, each one bouncing randomly off its fellow particles, converging finally into groups of twos and threes that went about the age-old business of swapping cigarette
ends and lies about summer sexual conquests, picking up old friendships, and resuming grudges exactly where they’d left off.

The new term held endless golden promise: new victims for bullies, new excuses to fail literacy and play truant, new opportunities to pursue what their parents laughably referred to as an education.

‘Hey, Case!’ He heard a wolf whistle. ‘Nice shirt.’

It was an education all right.

Justin nodded, exchanging greetings with a variety of individuals, many of whom he had known since primary school. Some could be categorized as friends, some were nodding acquaintances. Most knew his name.

It was not going to be easy to explain his new identity.

He turned to Boy, and the greyhound slipped his velvety muzzle into Justin’s hand. He left it there for a long moment, imparting strength, grace and wisdom to his owner. Justin felt himself briefly illuminated by the contact, fortified by the touch of his fabulous beast.

‘Hola.’

He looked up. Peter Prince was fair-haired, toweringly tall and skinny, with bony knees and a relentlessly cheerful smile. He was known (if at all) for his peculiar genius in matters relating to astronomy. He and Justin crossed paths only in Spanish and history, subjects at which neither of them excelled.

‘Good summer?’

‘Only if you like psychic torment,’ Justin said.

‘That’s too bad.’ Peter appeared genuinely sympathetic. ‘I don’t suppose today’s going to be much of an improvement.’

‘No.’

Peter looked at him closely. There was definitely something different about David Case. It wasn’t just his clothes, though they certainly suggested a calamity of some sort. It was an air of unease. Bordering on crisis. Not that David had ever been convincingly average, Peter thought, though perhaps he’d managed to convince himself that he was. People did.

He frowned, struggling to piece together the puzzle, but before he could reach a conclusion, the bell rang and they were swept through into the Victorian building’s main hall on a scrambling tide of humanity.

Justin found a seat in his first class with Peter to his left and Boy sprawled at his feet.

‘Welcome back, etc. etc. etc.,’ intoned Mr Ogle, with the jaded air of a factory pieceworker at the end of a forty-eight-hour shift. Eleven seconds into the new school year and already he radiated weariness. ‘You are no doubt as happy to be here as I am. I can only hope –’ he scanned the thirty faces in the room, some innocent, some insolent, the rest mainly blank with indifference – ‘that this year will be less of a trial than last.’

The class shuffled with doubt.

Mr Ogle pulled out the class register.

Justin’s heart began to pound. Oh god, he thought. Here we go.

‘Archer, James.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Bodmin, Amanda.’

‘Yah.’

‘Cadaprakash, Matthew.’

‘Yes.’

‘Case, David.’

Justin raised his hand halfway. ‘Justin, actually.’

Mr Ogle stopped and looked down at the register. ‘David, surely?
David
Case, unless I’m grossly mistaken?’

Justin shook his head. ‘No. It’s Justin.’

‘Justin Case?
Just-In-Case?
He looked up at the class, his features uncharacteristically animated. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’

The class evidently thought it was. It was bad enough that David Case had arrived for school so peculiarly dressed. But to have changed his name as well? The first-day tensions dissolved into timid chuckles which spread clockwise around the room, gaining momentum until Justin’s fellow students were choking, then screaming with laughter, tears rolling down their faces.

Peter looked down at his hands, embarrassed for the student formerly known as David.

Mr Ogle whacked his book against the wall with a resounding
crack!
and his delirious charges fell silent. The silence had an exhausted, joyous quality and Justin slumped in his chair, hoping to remain invisible in the aftermath. But the forty minutes that followed caused his hope to evaporate in a flurry of sideways glances, sniggers and whispers. The
moment class finished, he stood up, arranged his features into a blank, looked neither left nor right, moved at a steady pace. He knew better than to thrash about. As long as there was no trace of blood in the water he’d be safe.

Not that it mattered, he told himself. He had bigger fish to fry. Bigger fish had him to fry.

With a sympathetic smile and a wave, Peter left for his next class while Justin steeled himself for a day of humiliation. His few tenuous allies dwindled in number as the day wore on. The joke played to responsive audiences in six more subjects.

At precisely three thirty, the bell rang and he went home, slammed the front door and collapsed in a chair. His mother looked up from folding laundry and smiled.

‘How was school, darling?’

‘Hell.’

‘What about your classes?’

‘Torture.’

‘And your friends?’

‘Scum.’

His mother considered him, frowning. ‘You’re not in trouble are you, David?’ She pondered the matter, her brow furrowed. If he wasn’t homosexual, perhaps he was dyslexic? The tabloids often cited dyslexia (school lunches, overcrowding, immigration, absent fathers) as a source of problems at school.

‘David, love, can you tell the difference between “dog” and “god”?’

Justin’s eyes snapped open. What a bizarre question. He had never known his mother to possess a metaphysical bent. Dog? God? He wasn’t at all sure he
could
tell the difference.

He reached for his dog-god and stroked the long, curved back for reassurance.

‘It’s not bullying, is it?’

‘Not bull-ee. Bird-ee!’ interrupted his brother, who had put down his toy monkey and begun flapping his arms like wings. ‘Fly!’

Justin turned to him, suspicious and discomfited by this suggestion (was it a suggestion?). He often had a feeling that Charlie knew more than he let on. The child smiled at him winningly.

Justin turned back to his mother. He assured her that bullying at school was not the problem. He was being bullied all right, but not by some thicko schoolboy.

She was not reassured. ‘Stand still for a moment and let me look at you, David. I think you’ve developed a twitch.’

Justin sighed, stood up, climbed the stairs and locked himself in the bathroom.

He stayed there until the quiet click of toenails on wooden floor, a thump, and the reassuring sound of Boy snoring quietly in the hallway convinced him it was safe to come out.

9

I really like David.

No I don’t. I don’t give a damn about him.

I could run him down with a taxi. Give him a wasting disease.

Or worse, ignore him altogether. Let him live out his irrelevant little life in Luton with a dreary doting wife, two point four gormless children, and a ticking bomb for a heart.

But I do like a game now and again.

And he plays so nicely.

10

Justin survived his first week at school.

With Boy at his side, he managed to act out his role as an average member of teenage society, albeit an increasingly isolated one. Friends gave up trying to engage him in conversation: his clothes were weird, for one thing, and he no longer answered to his name, a fact they found exceptionally irritating. A decreasing number of people bothered talking to him before school, sitting with him at the library, or asking when he was going to lunch. He hadn’t realized his new identity would be so lonely.

Peter Prince, however, chose the shower next to his after PE. ‘Hey,’ he said cheerfully.

Justin looked up, grateful to be acknowledged. ‘Hey.’

‘Where’s your dog?’ Peter’s voice came from within the gushing stream of water.

Justin thought he must have misheard. ‘Pardon?’

‘Your dog.’

‘Yes?’

‘Isn’t he with you today?’

Justin looked at Peter. ‘Ha bloody ha.’

Peter stuck his head out of the stream of water, his features dripping. He smiled shyly. ‘I love greyhounds.’

Justin stared. ‘My dog is imaginary.’

‘Oh.’ Peter looked interested. ‘That’s unusual.’

Justin put his head under the water. When he emerged, Peter was still looking at him. ‘Less work,’ he offered cheerily. ‘If the dog’s imaginary, I mean. Not so much grooming, feeding, etc’

Justin continued to stare as Peter turned the massive, old-fashioned tap to OFF, wrapped himself in a damp greyish towel the size of a dishcloth, and dripped across the uneven tiled floor to his locker.

The following day, Peter greeted Justin with a smile and fell into step with him as he walked home from school. Looking down to the approximate area of Justin’s left heel, Peter added, ‘Hiya, boy.’

Boy trotted over and leant against him briefly as Justin watched in wonder. The boundary between reality and fantasy wobbled dangerously.

Peter pulled a tennis ball out of his bag, and threw it hard across the ground. The dog sprang forward and shot off, moving so fast he blurred. ‘Wow,’ Peter said happily, ‘what a beauty. Very ancient breed, you know. Kept by kings. Pharaohs used them for hunting lions.’

Justin looked at him.

‘Second only to cheetahs in speed. Huge hearts in relation to their weight; same size as ours.’

Justin thought about this. Big hearts, long legs. All they needed was a slightly bigger brain and they’d rule the world. He kept walking, with his greyhound and Peter Prince lolloping at his side. ‘How do you know so much about greyhounds?’

Peter looked embarrassed. ‘I read a lot.’

They walked in silence for a while, Peter contemplating greyhounds and Justin contemplating Peter. They didn’t seem to have much in common. Did Peter imagine they might be friends? He’d had friends in the past, mainly based on mutual need – another person to kick a ball with, someone who had better games at home. Peter appeared to be without motive in attaching himself to Justin and Boy. He seemed content just to keep them company.

At Justin’s house, Peter waved and walked on. Justin stared after him but the other boy didn’t look back.

Oh well, he thought. At least Boy likes him. The two might have been old friends, the way they fell in together.

But Boy’s my dog!

Maybe it’s a plot, he thought. Maybe they’re working together. Maybe Peter is Boy’s human spy contact, brought in as back-up.

He looked at Boy. The dog had managed to wedge his narrow back under the kitchen radiator for warmth and was snoring contentedly.

I can’t even trust my own imaginary dog, Justin thought. How much lower can a person get?

11

Slowly, and in the absence of any competition, Justin began thinking of Peter as a friend. Peter wasn’t exactly a social asset, but he was sympathetic, intelligent, and his dogged constancy appealed to Justin.

At school, their friendship attracted attention, as pretty much everything at a secondary school did.

‘Hey, look! It’s Stephen Hawking and Head Case.’ A pasty-faced group of younger boys sat on a wall outside the school gate at all hours, stabbing limp, fatty chips with wooden forks and jeering at anything that moved.