Boy Who Made It Rain (6 page)

Of course, we, as a school, have to hold our hands up and accept our share of responsibility. Perhaps some of the staff could have made more valued judgements and acted before the situation got out of hand, which quite clearly it did. Obviously I am talking about colleagues such as Pauline Croal here, who was close to the boy, if you believed the school's rumour mill. In this instance I hold my hands up and say that I did believe it initially. I am not saying that their dalliance had a direct effect in the event in question, but, I have to say, it could have been intrinsically linked in some perverse way. Everything has a cause and effect after all.

It wiz Cora who first attracted ma attention tae it. So did big Liam iz well, coz he wiz in her English class. The thing iz, big Liam wiznay the sharpest tool in the box so she wouldnay've givin him any attention at all. But big Liam said she used tae swoon over him in class. That's just him bein jealous a suppose. Then he told me that she wiz all over him in the swots class after school…his wee sister goes tae the class sometimes, and she said that she felt that she wiz intrudin on two people hivin a date. I wiz like that, get in there my son! Wit guy wouldnay've wanted tae sha…erm…kiss Miss Croal? Am tellin ye he wiz the talk ay the common room fur a while. Come tae think of it, he's still the talk ay the common room. Then wee Cora said that she suspected somethin and if it wiz true that she wiz goin tae scud him full force on the bawz…erm…penis… an then tell Rosie. An I thought she wouldiv as well.

Clem knew all the rumours iz well coz when any ay us tried tae ask him aboot it, he always said somethin we didnay understand an then storm aff. He got that mad look in his eye an you were like, nae danger man, A'm no goin there. Am no gettin involved in any that caper. A'll tell you wit though, if it wiz true he wiz some liar coz he an Rosie were still like Velcro knickers kickin aboot the school…aye she heard. She must've. You cannay keep anthin quiet at this school, we even know wit girls are…erm...on their period. Wit I meant iz that you cannay keep anythin a secret, the world is too small man, walls have ears an all that. Rosie must've known. But the funny thing about it wiz that Cora didnay tell her, now that wiz dead weird coz if that'd been ma best mate I'd've told him there an then, but Cora said nothin. Maybe she knew somethin we didnay. Some folk still think Rosie got wind ay somethin coz she's no that stupid. Rosie Farrell may be loads of things but she's no thick. If she did, it just shows you how much she wiz intae yer man. Maybe he wiz threatenin her or somethin an that's why she didnay dae anythin. A dunno, it's pure mental man. A still cannay get ma heed roon it.

A just think he hated it here, that he hated all the teachers, apart fae Miss Croal, an all the students. The NEDs used tae give him a hard time aboot his accent, slaggin him all the time, doin bad impressions an all that. They slaughtered him aboot his clothes as well, which wiz a pure joke considerin they're all sittin there wey their Primark trackies an white trainers on. A actually thought Clem's clothes were cool as. He looked a wee bit like a singer, but no one who looks like they've been dragged through
H an M
. Cooler than that. Anyway, it wiz a sin fur him coz you couldnay even say anythin back tae them in case he'd git leathered after school. A cannay blame him. That's why a thought he went tae those classes after school, tae get away fae the NEDs. It wiz a sin for him man, am tellin you. A felt dead sorry fur the guy, coz he wiznay that bad so a had a wee brainwave, a approached one of the NEDs who played in the football team an ask them tae lay aff a bit. Bad move man. Bad move. A just said, give the guy a break, man. An he turned roon an said, ‘A'll fuckin break yer jaw if you speak tae me like that again, ya cheeky cunt'. Aye, it wiz Fran McEvoy. A thought a wiz in for it; that the squad would be waitin after school. For about two weeks a wiz terrified of them. At the end of the day a had tae let Clem fight his own battles on that front. Look after number one. But, dude man, the guy wiz getting a hard time fae all angles, the Croal stuff an the NEDs. He wiz one brave boy though, no doubt about that. One brave mother. A'd defy anyone tae do nothin in that situation.

Sometimes a think that maybe the fellas an me could hiv done a wee bit more, you know, iz a support fur the guy. Bring him intae the clan. That we could've invited him oot with us sometime. Up the town. Gigs. Shoppin. But, at the end of the day, if it doesnay click, it doesnay click. It would'iv been like tryin tae fit a triangle intae a circle, or somethin like that.

I might be daft but I'm no stupid, or the other way around. Do you think for one minute that I walked around that place and never heard a thing? Of course I heard what everyone was saying. Even my best pal was saying it, well, she wasn't exactly saying it but she was part of all the gossip groups. Oh, I know Cora she'd have been right in the middle of them all, stirring it up. Although she told me afterwards that she was trying to shut them up, I didn't know if I believed her. We just had one of those rubbish arguments that nobody wins. I was saying to her:

‘Aye some pal you are, didn't even say a word.'

And she was like, ‘what do you mean, ‘never said a word' I was the one trying to make sure your name was kept out of it.'

‘Aye right,' I said.

‘Aye right,' she said.

‘You should have told me,' I said.

‘You should be thanking me I never,' she said.

‘There's no way I'm pure thanking you,' I said.

‘Aye right,' she said.

‘Aye right,' I said. And it went on like this for ages and nobody won the argument. I won't bore you with the rest of it. At the end of the day I could see her point, you know, when I played all the events over in my head. I was raging though. But then when I played
that
in my head, you know, why I was raging, I think it wasn't Cora I was raging at. No, it wasn't Clem either. It was myself for not realising it. I sort of had an idea that something was going on, but I guess I blanked it out of my mind. Well, that's what people do when they don't want to admit the truth, isn't it? I read that somewhere in a book about psychology or psychiatry or something like that, it was psycho something. Anyway it said that by not engaging with true events, that's the book's words by the way, by not engaging with true events you are consciously blanking it out of the mind. But the thing is, the harder you try to blank it out the more it takes over the things you think about. It was weird because I kept thinking about it all the time. All the time. I couldn't concentrate in any of my classes. I couldn't even do my art. It was mad as, so it was.

Then I got dead para…paranoid…and thought the whole school was gawking at me when I walked down the corridor. Especially all those mongo NEDs. Cora kept saying ‘why don't you say something?' But I just couldn't. I thought that if I asked him he
'
d have dumped me then and there. I was sort of loved up with him at the time. I couldn't just pure ask him outright. I was terrified. But that all changed. Another part of me was like, you have to trust him if you're going to have any future together, you have to be able to trust each other. The thing is he gave me no reason to think that anything bad was going on, apart from the gossiping and sniggers. He was just the same, nothing changed in him. And when I think back and ask myself was there any sign of anything strange going on, you know, in his behaviour, I'd have to say no. It was the same Clem as ever, but it was like one of those things that hovers over you, you know, like a bubble or a cloud or something. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Then I did something really bad. Not like
bad
bad, but bad enough to make me feel bad. I didn't cry over it or anything like that, I just had this thing saying something in my head, ‘I can't believe you did that, Rosie; I can't believe you did that.' Anyway, I stayed back late in the art room to start off my portfolio, I was just doing some life sketching, bowls and cups and fruit and stuff like that. Easy stuff. But it was all one big pretence. I did sketch a wee bit and I did need to get the portfolio started but I could just as easily have done it at home, the thing was I didn't tell Clem that I was staying back. I knew his study class finished at a certain time, so I just waited till ten minutes before it was over and then I waited outside for him to come out. No, I wasn't waiting on him. I didn't want him to see me. We hadn't planned it. I was actually waiting across the road so that when he came out I was ready to nick down and hide behind a car. I was standing there shaking. I was pure morto that I was doing this. That's just not what I do. Well, obviously it is now. Anyway, the next thing I know I see Clem coming out of the school's main doors, only he's not alone. I thought ‘you cheeky little...' In front of the school as well. By this time I was in bits. I was livid. I was half going to run up to them and have it out right there and then. Thank God I didn't. But I could feel my anger getting the better of me, my hands were sweating and I was clenching them into a fist. The funny thing was though, there was this wee voice in my head saying ‘what are you doing, Rosie? You're making a complete fool of yourself. If he catches you it's curtains.' So I'm hiding behind this car and the next thing I know they're walking in my direction and I'm like, ‘oh shite, oh shite' then I realise that I'm right in the middle of a street where some of the teachers park their cars. They're that close that I can hear them talking. Clem's asking how many quotes he should be putting into his essay. I mean for God's sake! By this time I'm shifting around the parked car in case they see me. But they don't. It's the next car down they're standing at. Then something weird happened, they didn't say anything at all. They just stood there and said nothing, which seemed to go on for ages and ages. I was like, hurry up and go because my legs were killing me hunched there behind that car. But they said nothing until Croal broke the silence. She said, ‘do you want a lift anywhere?' Then there was more silence until Clem broke it and said, ‘no it's alright, I'm good thanks.' Or something like that. I was like, ah that's my boy. Then he went home and she drove away in her car…no, I can't remember what kind; I'm no really up with my car models. When I got home I had a pure red neck for what I did. But, at the end of the day, it put all that shite in my head to bed for a bit. So even though it was bad, it was a good bad. If you know what I mean. It confirmed everything to me.

I felt great after that. It sort of brought us closer together in a strange way. I wanted to trust him, and I knew he trusted me. The rumours were still floating about but who cares, right? The thing is, I was wondering why nobody said anything to her, other teachers I mean. Or why she still came to school. Not that she shouldn't have been in school because she'd done nothing wrong; it's just that I couldn't stand all those folk sneering at me all the time. I'd be pure stressed out of my nut. I've got to hand it to her she had balls of steel to continue showing her face in that school…well, because everyone gets a hard time…well, not everyone, but you know what I mean. Then all that changed, didn't it?

Clem didn't say anything at first but I knew he was getting a hard time. It's nothing new, anyone who dares to be a wee bit different, who likes a certain type of music or who wears a certain style of clothes or has a different hairstyle than everyone else even, gets a hard time. You see, you're not allowed to be different from everyone else. You've all got to like the same things, do the same things, go to the same places, have the same opinions, have the same interests and have the same level of bitchiness. Schools are bizarre places because everyone is just a clone of everybody else. How depressing is that? It's not as if I go out my way to be different, that's just the way I am. In my mind I don't consider myself to be different, it probably looks that way because I'm not like any of them. Obsessed with things like…crap TV. Who cares who's in the final of
Strictl
y Come Dancing
? I mean, who gives a toss? Clem was totally different from everyone else, and I'm not just talking about his accent. He was way more intelligent also, which never goes down too well. It wasn't really that much of a surprise that folk were slagging him all the time. Yes, it was mostly guys. I suppose it began with all the sixth-years, Conor Duffy and his cronies. Or ‘crew' as they liked to call themselves. Clowns. It was mostly taking the piss and trying to imitate his accent. Cora told me most of what was going on. It wasn't like vindictive stuff or anything like that it was more immature wee boys talking shite behind someone's back stuff. I'll tell you what though, they would never have said anything to his face because Clem could have taken them apart with his tongue. It was sharp. Razor sharp. No, he didn't feel threatened by them. They weren't dangerous or anything like that, they just thought they were great and ruled the school. They thought they were in that horrific American TV programme…that's it,
Beverly Hills 902…
whatever it is.

The NEDs were the ones who scared him the most. He didn't like walking past them in the corridor or being in the same class as any of them. I don't think he'd experienced anything like that at his last school. In fact I knew he hadn't, he didn't need to tell me. So when he came up here it must have been some eye-opener for him. I remember explaining to him what the word NED actually meant. He thought it was hilarious. He thought the way their wee neddy hats sat on the top of their heads, you know, pure pointing upwards, was dead sinister. In a pathetic way. It was all a joke at first but you just knew that they were waiting for an excuse to do something. To get him. Not that they needed excuses to do what they wanted to do right enough. I always told him to stay well clear of them. The trouble was, they knew he was new to the place, new to Glasgow, and he wouldn't have had any friends or anything like that to back him up. In their heads they thought they could do anything and there would be no comeback for them. That's their mentality. That's how brainless they were. The sad thing is they were right. Who was going to do something to challenge them? The school? The Police? No chance. It didn't seem to bother Clem at first. I think half the battle was that he didn't have a Scooby what they were saying most of the time. Normal folk are hard enough to understand for Clem but the NEDs have their own special way of talking, it's like listening to pure thick people talking with a mouthful of lemons. Everything is said through the nose as if someone's constantly squeezing it for them. I haven't a clue what they are saying half the time. Then there's the sovvy rings that they all wear…
sovereign rings; you buy them in town for dirt cheap. Pure tramps man. The problem is they use the sovvy rings as knuckledusters as much as anything else. They used to walk about the school giving people dead arms, and you should see the bruise that it leaves. Can you imagine that on the face? But Clem thought the whole NED outfit was strange. He used to call it the NEDs' uniform. You should see them though, Glasgow's full of them. Like a plague. A cancer. Imagine if you were a tourist and you were faced with that?