The Suicide Club (43 page)

I am falling through space and I look down into the direction I am falling. It's familiar. I'm falling through the clouds again, heading towards the truth. I had been here when I was sitting on that pew at Craig's funeral and again when lying in bed on the night that Jenny died. I can feel that this time I am going to make it through to whatever it is that lies beyond that last cloud. Through and through I go and then I see that final veil between me and the answer. The cloud tries to sink away from me but I'm catching. I get closer and closer, those pinpricks of light popping up all around me. The wind howls through my hair and tears at my face. I am arriving. Closer, closer, closer. The last cloud stretches away north, south, east, west as far as I can imagine. The atoms that make up my body start to come apart, electron orbits growing ever wider. It doesn't hurt. I look at my body and I am almost transparent, like every alternate atom has slipped through a crack in the dimensions. I look down and suddenly lift my head up as I shoot through the final curtain.

All of my senses explode in a furious chain reaction and then, as fast as light, I crash through the other side of the cloud with a sonic boom and look down on the great secret, that elusive truth that always moves away when you're just about to unfurl the ends of your fingers and touch it. It takes my breath away. Stretched out all the way to the edges of infinity before my eyes is nothing but inky, empty darkness.

I GASPED AWAKE
, sweating and clammy. I was actually out of breath. Somehow in the night I had made it across to my bed, where I lay, my chest heaving up and down. I was in that place between sleep and waking where you don't really know if a dream's real or not, you know? I brushed my hair off my forehead, my palm coming away damp. Could that really be the answer? Nothing. No meaning. Was there really nothing to save any of us?

I kind of started having what's called in psychiatry a panic attack. How was I going to get through the rest of my life if there was no point to it? The enormity and blackness of this question, coupled with everything else, loomed over me like a night sky would loom if it were sentient. It was so huge I couldn't handle it. I found myself hyperventilating, needing air, lungs not big enough. I thought I was dying. Searing waves of heat washed out of me like an earthquake at its epicentre. My chest suddenly tightened, wires being pulled taut about my ribs. I had never felt anything like this before. White stars started to materialize in front of me and I felt sick. My whole body went limp. I tried to call my mum but I couldn't get any sound out. I was in a state of pure, undiluted dread; all sickle-cell and hyperglycaemic – no substance, all saccharin. Dusty air was in my throat and I couldn't swallow it because it wouldn't go down. I was
in dread of there being no point in anything ever again.

I had to do something to stop this so I did the only thing I could think of which was to throw myself bodily off my bed and on to the floor, landing with a massive
thunk
.

I lay there for a second, cool and better. Down here the air wasn't so bad. Then I cracked up at how ridiculous I must have looked falling out of my bed like a spastic. I laughed and laughed and laughed like it was the end of the world and it was then, in my fit of hysterics, that I came under attack.

Those little electrical bytes of information, the little blue tadpoles lying in wait, the ones that were holding the true meaning in Matt's letter, the real reason why he had left me, had come to life. I could feel them swimming around the outside of my brain, their tales squirming slowly, mesmerizing. They came all at once, burrowing into my consciousness until they were inside my essence where their fragile bodies warped and folded outwards, their skin cracking open, exposing the monster that hid inside – desperate memories of an old friend.

Walking to school in the rain with hoods pulled over our heads; hanging around the park in the summer when the sky was like it was on fire; sitting on a wall eating Chinese food from cartons; nervously sat in a circle in a field with pretty girls; him laughing at me acting like an idiot, me laughing at him acting like an idiot.

Armies of memories vied for my attention, swamping me, smothering me, forgotten windows of bliss with Matt that I hadn't even known were happening at the time. From my neck to my belly button was like lead. I hadn't been able to grasp the concept of Matt's betrayal but now it was on me, unblinking and ferocious. On the floor, I dug my fingernails into the hard stuff that carpet fibre gets fused into and tried to bend my nails backwards, snap them off. My teeth clamped tight and I ground them down. I started making
weird gagging, moaning sounds and my jaw hurt. I was in freefall.

Matt's disappearance was worse than death. All death is is a wall that you can't get past to see your loved ones. But Matt was still alive. He could still speak to me. But he wouldn't.

The reality was that Matt had left for boarding school because he wanted to get away from me because I was bad. He hadn't left because the mediocre had beaten him – that simply wasn't true. He had
chosen
to stay alive and cut me out of his life like I was a cluster of diseased cells and nothing more. That was the real reason he left. I had tried to deny it to myself but the truth had finally taken a hold of me.

I had thought that I could be a better person but it wasn't true. The boy who had attacked that old man had never gone away and never would. I
was
that boy; any approximation to being good was just that. Like when a robot wants to be human. It can never happen. Matt was right to leave me. He was right.

My breathing became forced again as I tried to comprehend this.

As I thought about it, images of Clare, her eyes closed in ecstasy underneath Freddy, his hair falling in front of his face, half damp with sweat, half dry, ripped at my imagination. I saw Matt on a train to Scotland, relief all around him. They were all gone. Gone, gone, gone. I was alone and I had been left behind because I was evil. That was that. I knew this now.

My heart wanted out, didn't want to be part of this faulty soul any longer. There was one option left to me; the only option.

I opened the door to my bedroom and padded lightly across the landing, a silver river of moonbeams leading the way. I went slowly downstairs and into the living room where, in the pitch blackness, I found a lamp and threw circles of
orange light across the walls. I went to the mirror and brought my face up close. I dried my eyes because I wanted to look into them. I took in every facet; every fleck of colour in my iris, every red vein straggling across the surface near the duct, the deep, dark hole of forever that was my pupil. Finally I had seen enough.

I left the living room and went into the kitchen. I felt like my emotions were all gone, like the amount you are given when you are born is finite, and mine were spent. I had nothing left, nothing. I was just tired, busted up and hollow.

I opened the kitchen drawer and took out a steak knife. If I was going to do it, it had to be horrendous. I could have gone for a straight blade but I went for the serrated edge instead because I wanted to saw. In my head I imagined the steak knife running heavily back and forth, my wrists open and the flesh wriggling like it was alive with every thrust.

I placed the blade on to the surface of my skin and looked at metal on pink for a second, my heart rate slowing until I was ready. I could hear myself breathing and in my head I kept telling myself, Go on. The muscles in my right arm, the arm holding the knife, tensed as I pulled the blade down into my left wrist. The skin sank into the flesh and bulged outwards until the seams failed and the first drops of red trickled out either side of the silver steel. Whatever happened from now, I would always have the marks.

I hesitated, waiting for the freight train of release that you hear self-mutilators talk about. It didn't come. I kept looking at my skin, the serrated edge of the knife out of sight underneath the torn surface. I changed the angle of my right arm so that the blade was diagonal to the cut. My mind was working like a clock, mechanical and calm, no emotion. There was no feeling left, not even physical pain. I knew that all I had to do was cut deep.

‘Richard?'

I whipped my neck around and looked at the figure in the kitchen door. My mother.

The feeling that pumped into my chest was like when an emergency generator kicks in during a power cut. First there's darkness, then there's that surge of power and the lights come back on and everything hums back to life.

The kitchen lights came on. I saw her eyes move down to my wrist, the knife still in it.

‘Oh no,' she exhaled, extinguished.

My hand dropped the knife immediately. The blade held in position for a second before getting sucked out of my inner forearm, falling to the floor with a clang. The blood started to flow. The artery wasn't severed, the blood came from nothing but a few ruptured capillaries.

She was suddenly across the tiles and on me like she hadn't even had to move to get there. Pulling my arm up, she took me from the counter and over to the sink. Running the tap, she put her finger underneath to check the temperature for me. The hand that was holding my arm up she pulled towards her and placed my wrist into the flow of the water to wash away the blood. Not a word was said.

If you had asked me what her reaction would have been if she had caught me slicing my wrist up I would definitely have said that she would have flipped out, collapsed on the floor in tears. Not this. Everything she did was so methodical, like a field nurse in a war.

As the water thrummed over my wound I looked at her face. It was tired and drawn and all because of me. She saw me looking at her, turned her head and smiled.

‘We'll find a way through all this, honey,' she said, with a voice that she used to use when I fell off my bike or got stung by a bumblebee when I was seven. She was my mum. My body buzzed with that weird security that only a mother can offer.

Just before, I had woken from a dream where I couldn't see any way out because there was nothing to save me. The story had run its course for me and I was utterly destroyed. Everything I had had before it all started was gone. My friends, my school, my girl, my family, even my beliefs. My parents were arguing again and I didn't even know if they'd get to keep each other after all this was over. Even though they had tried to save their marriage, it had never fully recovered.

But that night my mother bandaged my arm and made us both a cup of hot chocolate. We sat at the kitchen table in the depth of the night and forgave each other for everything we had done, in silence. Outside the window was the night but it couldn't get in past the glass because it knew it wouldn't beat her. Not my mother. I had obliterated my relationship with her and even though we would try to patch it together, it would always be broken. But even so, sat at that table, seeing her out of the corner of my eye, I knew that she was there and that was enough. Even though I had thought that there was no answer to anything, that nothing was there to save us, I saw then that I might just have been wrong. There was always my mum.

I WOULD HAVE
thought that waking up the next morning would have been like, cathartic. The blazing sun was still with us but I still felt just so sad. It was going to take more than one night to get better from this, I realized. Which was depressing.

The story was all but over. I went downstairs and made myself some toast – four slices I was so hungry. I went through the whole process in silence, my parents watching me from the table. This was the first time I had eaten anything substantial in a long time. As I buttered my toast I couldn't help but notice how cool my bandage looked around my arm. I had to shake that thought clear. I dropped the toast on to the plate and sat at the table, all eyes on me.

‘You OK, champ?' my father said.

I nodded and ate, not sensing that something was wrong.

‘The police called us this morning.'

I stopped chewing.

‘Richard, tell us honestly, do you know where Clare and Frederick Spaulding-Carter are?'

The saliva in my mouth suddenly retreated back into its glands and the toast turned to asbestos in my mouth. I couldn't swallow it.

‘They didn't go home last night,' he added.

Jealousy tore across me. If they had run off together, I
don't think I could handle it. If they had killed themselves together it would be even worse. How could they leave me like this with nothing but a bland road to Healthy Recovery?

‘I don't know where they are,' I muttered.

‘You would tell us if you knew, wouldn't you?' he said.

‘Of course,' I lied. ‘I have to go and get changed.' I left my toast on the plate.

It was Friday morning, the day of Jenny's funeral, so I knew that they could only be in one place: the forest. I had to find them, even if I didn't know what for.

In my room I pulled on whatever came to hand, apart from my My Chemical Romance hoody, which I grabbed with purpose. With knowing, full-circle symbolism I pulled it over my head. I had worn this hoody that night way back when we had sat in the folly, the first night I had met Freddy.

I went through to Toby's room and opened the window, below which was the roof of the conservatory. The sill was slippery with grime and I almost lost my footing. Dangling my whole body down the side of the house I felt with my legs for the roof. This escape route was not a new one and I knew that the PVC columns would hold my weight. Dropping lightly to the dewy grass I danced across the lawn to the shed where I found my bike.

I reached the forest in ten minutes, my lungs burning. I hid my bike in the same place that I had hidden it last time with Clare, and found the gap in the little Christmas trees that led to the Egg Well.

As I ran I got the terrible feeling that Freddy had killed Clare. It was irrational but I couldn't get the idea out of my head.