No True Echo (12 page)

Maguire waited and watched me from his car, making sure I walked all the way up to the school building. Once inside, I was stuck on the slow-moving conveyor belt of that school day. Short of running out of the front door, there was no way off it. I signed the late register, then went into assembly. Mr Cornish sat by the side of the hall. PC Liphook stood at the front, speaking to Mrs Lewis. My class was already sitting down so I had to push my way along the row to get to Angus.

‘Where have you been?' he asked when I sat down.

‘I have no idea,' I replied honestly.

‘I saw you at the bus stop. You ran off.'

‘How can everything be just the same?' I said. ‘I mean, if so much is different, then how can all this be the same? I don't see how it can.'

‘It is confusing,' agreed Angus.

‘Wait. Do you know what I'm talking about?' I said.

Angus laughed. ‘No, but I agree that what you're saying is confusing.'

Mrs Lewis stood up. ‘Now, everyone, we have a very special guest so let's show her what a polite and well-behaved school we are as we welcome Officer Liphook.'

The usual round of applause followed.

‘Community,' began Officer Liphook. ‘Who can tell me what that word means?'

Something inside of me snapped.

‘Oh, come on.' I didn't bother raising my hand. ‘It means looking out for each other, being selfless and sticking to the rules,' I shouted.

Mrs Lewis was on her feet, scowling at me, but I didn't care.

‘Well, yes, that's right,' said PC Liphook, looking a little thrown by the interruption.

‘Good,' I said. ‘Now can we move on to the bit where everyone asks about guns.'

‘Edward Dane,' yelled Mrs Lewis.

‘Well, look at her. She's as bored as I am and this is her first time around. And do you know why she's bored? Because this valley where we live is nowhere. Actually, no. It's worse than that. It's the middle of nowhere. Do you know why people come here on holiday? It's because they want to get away from it all and you can't get away from everything unless you're visiting somewhere where there isn't anything – and that must be nowhere.'

‘Enough,' shouted Mrs Lewis.

‘I don't care. None of this matters,' I said.

I could see Cornish looking concerned. I glanced at Angus, smiling nervously. None of them seemed real to me. I felt dizzy. The voices were back.

‘
There's no medical reason for him to be in this state
,' said one.

‘
Eddie, can you hear me?
' said Ruby.

‘
Can you help?
I'm lost,
' said a third voice.
Scarlett,
I thought. It was Scarlett's voice but none of them remained and the next one I heard belonged to Mrs Lewis.

‘My office, Eddie, please.'

I nodded, and made my way out of the hall, feeling the weight of everyone's eyes upon me.

Mrs Lewis turned to PC Liphook. ‘Sorry, Officer Liphook, you appear to be the unlucky recipient of one of Eddie's jokes. Please, do carry on.'

‘Thank you,' she said. ‘So, what does community policing involve? How do the police help maintain a stable society?'

PC Liphook continued but I was no longer listening.

I had heard it all before.

Sitting in Mrs Lewis's office, I could hear the scraping of chairs and thundering feet as the assembly came to an end. I was thinking that if these events could happen over and over, exactly the same, then these students and teachers had no choice but to behave as they did. The chattering and clattering was meaningless. None of us really had a choice but to cling on to the swinging branch. I wished I could be so ignorant, but it was different for me. I understood that the world wasn't as it seemed. I had never felt so alone.

Mrs Lewis entered the room and sat down behind her desk. ‘Is everything all right, Eddie?' she asked.

‘I have no idea,' I answered honestly. ‘Is this normal? For me, I mean. I don't even know what I'm like here.'

‘Since you ask,' she said, ‘I would say you are a bright boy with a very individual sense of humour, but you need to understand when it is appropriate to make jokes and when it is not.'

‘Maybe you should call my mother?' I said.

Mrs Lewis bit her lower lip. ‘I don't think there will be any need for that. Perhaps there's something you want to talk about.'

‘I don't think I could explain it to you.'

‘Try me. Maybe I'll understand.'

‘Nothing that's happening makes any sense.' I heard my voice break and I blinked back my tears.

‘This is about your mother, isn't it?' Mrs Lewis picked a pen off her desk and placed it carefully into a pot. ‘I know she and your grandmother have been arguing a lot recently but you mustn't worry on behalf of other people.'

‘How do you know that they're arguing?'

‘Mr Cornish mentioned it,' she said. ‘It's good you feel you can open up to him about these things but I'd like to think you can speak to me about them too. I'm trying to help here, but you need to understand that your behaviour this morning was totally unacceptable.'

‘I understand that. I'm sorry, miss.'

‘And do you have an explanation?'

‘It's like you said. It was a stupid joke.'

‘Yes, well, the thing about jokes is that you have to ask yourself who's laughing.'

‘Yes, miss.'

After Mrs Lewis let me out, I was straight into lessons, so I didn't get a chance to speak to Angus properly until lunchtime.

‘These meatballs are amazing,' he said, taking a bite. ‘I mean, you forget how good they are.'

‘Angus, we have them every Thursday,' I said.

‘Seven days is a long time without meatballs, Eddie.'

I knew Angus was trying to make me laugh because he was worried about me but it annoyed me when he asked, ‘How are you?'

‘Don't you start,' I replied.

‘Start what?'

‘This asking
How are you?
and looking worried business. Everyone wants to know how I am. I don't even know myself.'

‘I can help you with that. You're Eddie Dane.'

‘Who's he?' I asked, because I no longer knew.

‘Here, at this point in time, he's my best friend,' said Angus.

It struck me as odd that he hadn't brought up my behaviour in assembly when half the school was looking at me like I was crackers. I put it down to Angus not wanting to cause me any more embarrassment than I had already caused myself. Whatever the reason, I was grateful for it.

‘I want us to name as many monsters as we can, comrades.'

Cornish's repeated words were nothing to the crackling and spitting questions in my head but I was dragged into the present by a new response from Angus.

‘Frankenstein,' he called out.

Angus had been acting strangely all afternoon. He had seemed more engaged with the lessons and kept jiggling his legs under the table.

‘You mean Frankenstein's monster,' replied Cornish.

‘No. I mean Victor Frankenstein, the man,' said Angus. ‘It seems to me the monster only becomes a monster when his creator rejects him. Before that, it's innocent, isn't it? Frankenstein is the real monster.'

It was rare to see Cornish lost for words but he was clearly thrown by this. ‘Impressive,' he said. ‘Have you actually read the book, Angus?'

‘No, but I saw a really good film of it once,' he replied.

‘That's great, but in a film the story has already been interpreted numerous times. The screenwriter, director, actors and all the countless others who made that film gave their interpretations. With a book, the reader must do all that him- or herself.' Cornish grabbed the pile of books from the desk and began distributing them amongst the class. As usual, the same copy with the yellow-faced man landed on my desk.

‘So, who can tell me this book's alternative title?'

By now, I had learned to drift off at the first sign of repetition. I stared at the book. The man in the picture stared back with his dark eyes. All of this time I had thought of him as old but, now I looked, I saw the lines on his forehead were the product of a frown rather than of age. Under that beard was a man no older than Cornish. I opened the book and flicked through, looking for the sentence that had popped into my head with such determined clarity. I failed to find it, then realised I could no longer remember it. Instead, I turned to the final page of the book and read the last line.

Lost in darkness and distance.
I liked the sound of that. It was how I felt. The more I thought about it, the more I realised it was how I had always felt. I turned the page to the appendix and some more notes and adverts for other books. Finally, I got to the last page.

It was spidery writing with a circle over the
i
. I don't know how, but I knew it was aimed at me. Any questions? I had more questions than I knew what to do with. I picked up a pen and wrote:

I closed the book and looked around. Everyone was listening to Cornish reading
Frankenstein
. I opened my copy again and saw that another sentence was written below mine.

My astonishment that this sentence had miraculously appeared on the page was tempered by my annoyance at the reply. I stared at it. I felt like throwing the book across the room. I wrote:

This time when I shut the book I caught Angus's eye. I waited until he looked away before opening the book again.

I picked up the pen to write again but this time Cornish spotted me. ‘Eddie Dane,' he yelled. ‘Are you writing in that book?'

‘No, sir,' I said, quickly closing it.

‘I'm glad to hear it. I've managed to beg, borrow and, steal enough copies for you all to have one but I will want the books back, so please treat them with respect. Now, let's see how Mary Shelley begins this masterpiece, shall we?'

Cornish was back on script. ‘I'm going straight off tonight, Eddie, if you want a lift home.'

‘Thanks.'

‘How about you, Angus?'

‘Er  … ' Angus looked at me, unsure what the right response was.

‘His mum is picking him up,' I said.

‘That's right,' he said. ‘Honestly. I'd forget my own  …  you know, if it wasn't something or other.'

Cornish grinned. ‘Just you and me then, Eddie. I'll see you by the car once I'm done here.'

I followed Angus out into the corridor with the rest of the class.

‘How come you forgot about your mum coming to pick you up?' I asked.

‘Slipped my mind,' he said.

‘You don't usually forget.'

‘Maybe I was distracted by whatever you were writing in the book.'

We stopped and looked at each other, each suspicious of the other, neither of us knowing what to say next.

‘Did anyone write back?' asked Angus.

The last of my classmates had gone now, meaning it was just the two of us in the corridor.

‘You know?' I said.

‘Eddie?' he replied. ‘I mean,
Eddie
?'

‘Yes?'

Angus lowered his voice. ‘Are you Eddie from now or from, you know, my now?'

‘When's your now?'

‘I'm not supposed to say. What about you? When's your now?'

‘Kind of now, but not here now.'

‘Hold on, if you don't know what now I'm from, then you're not from my now and we shouldn't be talking.'

We stepped out into the car park and I wondered if it was possible to feel any more confused. Cornish had travelled back in time to kill Maguire. Scarlett had travelled back to stop him and then a second time arrest Maguire. What had Angus come back for and how could I possibly trust him?

‘Why are you here?'

‘If you have to ask, I definitely can't tell you,' he said.

‘You're as bad as she is.'

‘Who?'

‘I'm not supposed to say,' I told him.

‘Last call for anywhere but here,' cried Bill.

Angus and I stared at each other, neither knowing what to say next.

‘We shouldn't talk,' said Angus.

‘Why? Are you worried that we might say something that actually makes sense?'

Angus laughed. The car flashed its lights outside the school gate.

‘I guess that's me,' said Angus. ‘I'll see you, Eddie.'

He ran to the car.

I blew into my cupped hands and stamped my feet to keep warm, thinking about the future Cornish and how all that passion I had admired would one day make him a murderer.

‘Hi, Eddie. Get in, then,' said Cornish.

I sat in the passenger seat. ‘Can I ask something, sir? Does my mother ever come to pick me up?'

Cornish nodded as though to say that he understood what I was really asking. ‘Mrs Lewis said she spoke to you. I hope you don't mind that I'd told her about our chat. She only wants to help. We all do.'

‘Yes, but does Melody ever come and pick me up?'

‘Listen, Eddie, I know you're angry at your mother for being so busy all the time and it's fine to express that anger.'

‘You're not answering my question,' I protested.

‘Often you'll find the answers we seek don't always match the questions we ask, but if you really want me to answer, then no, your mother doesn't have a car. You told me she had a scare once and went off the road with you in the backseat. She hasn't driven since. Has this got something to do with what happened in assembly this morning?'

‘No, sir.'

Cornish turned on the radio but found only static and switched it off again.

‘You know, lots of adults think the young don't have anything to worry about because they don't have jobs or mortgages or money worries. But the worries you have at your age are worse than ours because you feel powerless to do anything about them. Do you know what I mean by that?'

‘I think so,' I replied. Powerless was exactly how I felt.

‘I'm a teacher because I want to make a difference to the world. Education is where change starts. My experience of school was that it was all about doing the right thing, following instructions, revising and getting through exams.'

‘Doesn't sound all that different,' I said.

He laughed. ‘You're right, but while I'm in a lesson like that one today and the ideas are flowing, the minds are thinking and we're all embracing the chaos, I'm able to show how limitless imagination is. That's how you bring about real change in the world. You imagine it.'

I didn't respond.

‘The world is yours to change, Eddie, but if you want it to be a better place, if you want to stop the rich and powerful from exploiting everyone and everything this planet has to offer, you can't sit around waiting for others to do something. You need to take matters into your own hands.'

I thought back to Maguire's lab, when Cornish had pointed the gun at my chest. When he stopped the car outside my house, I felt the seatbelt tighten as I rocked forward, reminding me of the pain of the bullet.