The Suicide Club (31 page)

‘You have to talk about this, Rich.'

I sighed.

‘I don't want to talk about it.'

‘It will haunt you for ever if you don't.'

‘Good,' I said.

‘You think that's good?'

‘Yes,' I said childishly, but what else was I supposed to do?

‘Richard, studies have shown—'

And then I stopped listening.

THE WEATHER WAS
almost too perfect for the funeral. It was windy and cloudy and shards of rain licked against the air. My parents gave me a lift to the church. I had never been to a funeral before and I wondered how I would react. I waited in the churchyard, amongst the graves on my own, because I was the first of the Suicide Club to arrive and nobody else wanted to speak to me, which suited me fine. I wandered over to a little corner full of colours. The headstones had little white picket fences around them about six inches high. You know those little windmill things that kids have that you stick in the ground and they spin in the wind? There were dozens of them whizzing around and humming away. And then there were little statuettes of cute bunny rabbits and frogs. Set up against the side of one of the graves were about ten action figures that had been faded by weathering. None of the living kids had stolen them, which moved me.

My throat caught. I closed my eyes, but not out of Drama. I closed my eyes because I was sad. So sad. Imagine the mothers at these kids' funerals, putting the thing that grew in their womb into the mud. You think you've got it all sussed out, but then you see something like that and there's a moment of dread when you realize that there's no meaning in anything.

I was standing in front of children's graves and I knew
then that it was the end. In that corner of the graveyard, right up by the fence and underneath one of those trees whose seeds fall to the floor like helicopters, a poet might say that because of all the colours, that little section of the cemetery was still alive. A poet might say that in the colours live the souls of those poor little children. But that's not the case, is it? It might seem alive, but it's not. It's dead. Those colours? They were put there by people who assumed that their kids could still see them after they were gone. As if little kids would visit their own graves if they were ghosts.

That little chamber in heaven where we had agreed to wait for each other seemed a long way away.

I could feel the congregation of people up at the top of the graveyard looking at me. They were looking at that weird kid who killed the bird, made his friend shoot himself, and who was wandering around the graves of the dead. But I simply didn't care. I knew that it didn't matter because heading my way, drifting over the grass between the graves like spectres, were Matt, Jenny and Clare.

I felt Clare next to me, just felt her presence. I loved her so, so much. All I wanted to do was to go to that river with her and throw pebbles. I didn't want anything else in the world.

I saw the headmaster looking fake-solemnly into the bare trees. He was wearing, just as I had predicted, his overcoat with upturned lapels, trying to get some Drama into his hair with the blowing wind, but failing miserably.

We went into the church and everything became hollow and echoey. I hadn't been to church in years and I had forgotten what it looked like on the inside. No matter what you say, there's something magical about those places.

We sat on the pew furthest from the front. The church was heaving, its walls expanding out with all the fake people
pretending they once cared for Craig. But I won't keep repeating myself about that any more.

I sat in the back row and thought about Craig as everybody filed past. I remembered the day I had seen him in town just after he had taken the pills. Another image popped into my head of a kid taking his ice cream when we were kids and throwing it into the side of the church in which I was now sat saying goodbye to somebody I had known since I was three.

I looked towards the aisle and saw his ragged old parents ache down the centre like their joints had rusted over. Horror crunched through me, or rather I crunched through it. I suddenly let my mind wander and something very weird happened. I started to come away from reality and now, although my body was still in the church, my mind was not. My mind was at the top of the world, falling through clouds. As the awfulness of what was happening encroached on me, I took a secret exit.

As my mind plummeted through the clouds I watched them part. Layer upon layer peeled away, as if they were trying to show me something underneath. Some sort of answer. The answer to everything. Through the clouds I went and they suddenly took on a soft yellow glow. Pinpricks of light dazzled in the midst of the cloud and then there was just one thin translucent sheet left and as it moved away I caught my first glimpse. A glimpse of the answer, the truth . . .

‘We are gathered here today,' said the Vicar, and my mind crashed back into my skull and I was in the church again. I looked about me. I could see the backs of Craig's parents at the front of the church. I felt shaky, like when you don't have enough sugar.

The Vicar started talking about Craig and I started listening. Because he had that white ribbon around his neck, I was enchanted by this man. He would never lie. He started by
saying that he didn't really know Craig and that was the best thing he could have said from my point of view. He spoke about how Craig was a deeply troubled boy, but had a good heart. Apart from his voice, the church was totally silent.

But then he started reading passages out of the Bible and that stuff's a bit boring so I looked at Clare's leg underneath her black skirt and prodded her thigh with my index finger.

She looked at me sadly. I left my index finger held out to her and she took it in her fist and we both faced forward again.

The last sentence the Vicar said, was, ‘And now Craig's father will say a few words.'

An instant, blazing WCS scorched across my brain where his father broke down in tears and started wailing embarrassingly. Everybody would feel awful apart from the schoolkids, who would love it because they can be pretty evil sometimes. I had to do something to stop this. But what was I going to do? Stand up and make a spectacle? Come on.

It was too late anyway, he was up there. He took from his top pocket a few sheets of folded A4 paper. I wondered if he'd written it in the middle of the night, in the silence of his lonely house.

‘Craig was my only son,' he started, and I felt Clare grip my finger tighter with despair. I looked at her and tears were streaming over her cheeks, making her make-up run. ‘When he was six, we took him to Longleat Safari Park because he had the strangest fixation with monkeys.'

A sad laugh cracked across the transfixed congregation. I pictured the pile of
National Geographic
magazines in his bedroom.

‘We drove into the middle of the enclosure, where the monkeys live and, although we had been warned not to, we stopped the car. As soon as we did a whole group of these little beggars came bundling over and started jumping on
and hitting my car. One little blighter even tore my aerial off.'

Again, a laugh yawned out.

‘I'll never forget my son's face. The little critters were destroying his old man's car.' He paused and there was a silence. ‘He'd never laughed so much in his life.'

Again, everybody laughed, a little louder this time, less stale.

My respect for this man went through the roof. I could not understand how he could be so strong at a time like this. I would have collapsed into a ball by now – I guess that's the difference. He was a Great Man. He had spent a career in the Army, for crying out loud. His job was to protect us all.

‘And I know he's gone, and I know that times will be hard, but I, and my wonderful wife Margo, are just
so
grateful for the happiness he gave us.'

Now I was welling up. How could this man say that Craig had brought him happiness? I thought he must have brought them nothing but torment, but I guess I was wrong.

‘We'd like to thank everybody for coming today and, although he didn't have many friends, we'd like to thank those children from Atlantic High School who are here today.' He looked at the large group of kids down at the front and smiled at them like he had smiled at me on that day in town when he was queuing for food with his wife. He did not look at us, Craig's real friends. Craig's real killers. At this time, of course, nobody knew about the Suicide Club because Freddy had taken the Charter from Craig's pocket on the night he killed himself.

Suddenly Clare let go of my finger and ran out of the church, the back of her hand covering her mouth. She was trying with all her might not to explode until she got outside.

I stood up and followed her as quietly as I could, which, in all truthfulness, wasn't very quiet.

Outside the church was a gravel path and Clare was crouched down in the middle of it, facing away from me. I went over to her. She wasn't shaking and she wasn't making a noise. When I came round to her front I saw that her eyes were balled up tightly and her mouth was open and full of moisture. She looked like she was in agony. Her face was reflecting everything because of her tears, which had bottlenecked in her brain, stopping her from doing anything. And then they broke free and she rocked back and forth, inconsolable. I crouched down next to her and put my hand on her back because I couldn't think of anything else to do because I had never seen anyone act like this before. Actually, I had seen one person act like this, Craig. When he was in the headmaster's office after we killed Bertie. But he was dead.

I hated seeing her like this. I wish I could have been a demon and possessed her body so that I could suck out her pain for her. But that's not real life. She cried and cried. She fell to one side into the gravel and there was nothing I could do about it. I was watching her break and all I wanted to do was stop it for her. I know I'm an arrogant person at times and I sometimes think that I can do anything. I hate it when I'm reminded that I can't.

‘Please stop crying,' I said.

But she couldn't even hear me.

It took her ten minutes to come round and then we hugged but there was no magic in it. Something had snapped inside her. The congregation started to come out of the church and we stood to one side and watched. I hadn't seen them carry it in, but when I saw them carry it out the sight of Craig's coffin almost made me throw up.

They lowered Craig into the ground and his father did a sterling job of it, just as I should have known he would. He didn't cry the whole time and I loved him for that. He would
have wanted to cry, he wasn't cold, but he was so strong that he wouldn't. He was like an old oak tree, I guess.

Outside the church, Matt came up to me.

‘Rich,' he said. His voice was quiet.

I couldn't answer.

‘I'm scared,' I heard him say. ‘I just . . . can't believe this.'

I still couldn't find any words so I just put my arm around his shoulder and we looked at the damp grass and gripped each other tightly. All of the bitterness towards the people who were fake-mourning Craig was gone, and for the first time I really started to grieve.

The blame was already on us. The kids knew that we were the only ones who spent any time with Craig, us, the bird-killers, so it must have been our fault. It can't have been theirs. It's funny how things work like that.

On the way back to school from the church, we had to pass through this weird little alley. It's like a little oasis of trees with a path running up the middle. It's lodged in between two tall buildings, neither of which you can see because their walls are covered in ivy; it's just a tunnel of green in the middle of the grey buildings. It always gave me the creeps because when there are no lights and it's dark, it's
really
dark in there.

That was the spot where a group of about twelve kids caught up with us and the hatred felt towards us by so many people finally turned into something real, something you could
feel
. They weren't from my school; they were from the comprehensive. As well as between eight and ten boys, there were a couple of girls with greasy hair. They snarled at us like they were animals, feral and savage.

This one kid came right up to us, hair glued to his red scalp, uniform ill-fitting – generally disgusting. He pushed
me in the chest without even saying anything and I stumbled backwards but didn't fall because of my balance. I could have beaten him up with pure skill but Clare's fit of crying had zapped my energy and I couldn't do anything. This time, the bullies would win.

‘You fucking pricks,' he said to us. ‘We know all about you.' He was trying to be cool but it came out as a cliché and I felt genuinely sorry for him because he didn't understand. He would never know the depths.

Another three boys came up behind him. I looked at Matt. I caught his eye and noticed that he was standing directly in front of Jenny, which was really sweet. I looked at her and was shocked to see how white she was. Her face was really odd. She had been crying as well but she hadn't broken down like Clare. I wished we had Freddy with us.

I could feel Clare taking a few steps backwards, leaving me on my own. That was a complex and hurtful thing for her to do.

I looked back to Jenny just as her face changed, her muscles crumpling, her cheeks stretching tight around her bones.

‘Why don't you just leave us alone?' she screamed. Screamed.

‘Why don't you fuck off back to America,' said one of the stringy girls who were with the boys.

‘You killed that poor little boy,' said another.

I sat down. Sat down on the floor in the alley. Just sat there. I had to do it because if I hadn't I would have fainted. The fact is I was terrified. I was terrified of these kids because they were dirtier than the kids in my school and I know that it's a crappy thing to say but that's how I felt. I
didn't want to get hit any more. I didn't want to be punched ever again. I didn't want any physical pain any more. I didn't want any more of my best friends to kill themselves. I
didn't want to feel the exhilaration of the news on TV because of something I had caused. So I sat down.