The Red Road (16 page)

“Made a new friend?” Sam asked
as we finished stacking cups and carried them through into the
kitchen, to be taken care of later by the catering staff.

“I found out what he was expelled
for,” I said.

“Oh, what?” asked Rob, who was
making room on the worktop for more dirty cups.

“Dealing drugs.”

“Seriously?” Rob started.

“Yep.”

“Shiiiiiiit!” Sam said.

“Yeah, that’s not good, is it?”
I said. “It screwed things up pretty badly for him, too. He wasn’t
able to finish his A-Levels or get into medical school or anything
like that.”

“I’m staying well away from all
that stuff,” Sam said. “I’d rather not end up doing some crappy
job because I got caught with a little bit of weed.”

“Hmm,” was all I replied. I then
saw Rory step into the kitchen. I had seen him milling around the
hall earlier, seemingly so with purpose.

“Alright?” he asked us, though
he didn’t seem to care for our responses.

“Hey, Rory,” Sam said, “Joe,
Rob, and I are going to have a game of touch rugby out on the playing
fields after lunch. You coming?”

“Sure,” Rory said absently. He
then tugged at one of the cupboards, finding it wasn’t locked.
Several boxes of biscuits resided within, a couple of them open.

“Where’s Handjob?” he hissed, looking around at us.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I
can’t see him.”

“Go look.”

I did, seeing no one coming near the
kitchen. “All clear.”

“Quick!” Rory said, pulling out
one of the boxes and starting to liberate a good number of packets of
biscuits, stuffing them into the various pockets of his suit.

I did
likewise, as did Sam and Rob, until we felt we had taken enough. We
had emptied about half of what remained in the box. Not that anyone
would notice hopefully.

Finishing up in the kitchen, we
headed back to our dormitories to offload our stash, change into our
casual clothes, and then do other things until lunch. I decided that
I wouldn’t be eating all the biscuits that I had stolen at once and
would probably save them for later in the week. I ate one packet as I
changed, followed later on in the afternoon by the custard creams
Adrian had given me, my stomach rumbling like mad after our game of
touch. The hunger was of no surprise to me, since, as predicted,
lunch had indeed been shit.

Chapter Twelve

T
he
next weekend was an Exit Weekend. My parents were away (again), and
so I had to remain at St Christopher’s. Sam had chosen to stay as
well, not too bothered about escaping the grounds. I was glad for his
company, as the Saturday and Sunday might have otherwise been quite
boring. Somewhat ironically, I decided to help out that Sunday with
the post-Mass tea, if only for something to do. Otherwise the day
dragged, and I was glad when the evening meal rolled by, meaning that
the other boys would soon be returning. I had other problems to deal
with first, though.

~ ~ ~

“Here for another whole weekend,
Mistake?”

Craig Priest was walking towards me,
coming down the Marble Stairs of the main school as I ascended them.
I walked along with Sam, choosing to ignore the obnoxious sixth
former. The problem was that Priest hadn’t decided to ignore me.

“Oi, Mistake, don’t fucking
ignore me when I’m talking to you,” Priest said, stepping in
front of me.

I tried to walk around him, but he
moved in my way. I refused to make eye contact with him.

“You’ve been here every Exit
Weekend this term. Have your parents now decided to abandon you here?
Let the monks look after you?” he said once again.

I had no idea what I had done to
offend Priest and why he thought that verbally abusing me at every
opportunity was within his rights. Perhaps it was just the way he was
wired.

“Oi,” he said, pushing me.

“Craig, what’s your problem?”
I asked, finally meeting his eyes.

“Joe, ignore him,” Sam urged.

“I don’t have a problem,”
Priest said. “Except you.”

“Why?” I asked. Seriously, I
wanted to know.

“Because you’re a mistake and a
loser.”

“What has that got to do with
you?”

“Everything. You’re a dweeb.”

The logic baffled me. He was
attacking someone just because he found them different? I could never
wrap my head around that concept. Did it unhinge people like Priest
that not everyone was the same as he? Did it make him feel insecure?

“Why are
you
here?” I
asked.

“I’m revising for my mocks,”
he replied. “I
chose
to stay here.”

“How do know I didn’t, too?”

“Because you didn’t.”

He was
half-grinning, half-scowling. Was he just bored? Was it because the
sixth formers felt the need to assert some sort of dominance over the
younger boys, no matter how they did it? Was it that I wasn’t a
part of the Clique? Whatever it was, I didn’t care. I took Sam’s
advice and quickly sidestepped him, starting up the stairs again.
Priest gave me another shove as I
did so, but I ignored it.

“Not going to defend your parents, then?”
he asked. His eyes then locked on Sam, following me. “Ah, I see.
You’re in a rush to get back to your dorm with your boyfriend.”

Sam heeded his own advice and said
nothing.

“My parents are working hard,” I
told Priest as I continued up. “That’s why they’re not at home
a lot. Not all of us have the benefit of being children of
millionaires.”

“My parents aren’t millionaires,
but they don’t refuse to let me go home for the weekend,” Priest
said. “The problem is that you’re a dweeb and a pain in the arse,
and the only reason your parents had you is because the condom
broke.”

“What?!” I stopped and rounded
on Priest, glaring at him, my nostrils flaring.

“Oh ho!” Priest chuckled,
feigning fright. “Look whose balls just dropped.”

A handful of boys had gathered
around the stairs, watching the scene unfold. I shouldn’t really
have been giving them anything to watch, but I had to make a couple
of things clear to Priest.

“My parents are out of the country a lot
and can’t always be here for Exit Weekends. They work hard to send
me here so I can get a good education, so stop dissing them. And
also, don’t
push
me,” I said, giving Priest a shove on the
chest with both hands.

I shoved a little too hard.

Priest took a step back to steady
himself. He failed to do so, misplacing his footing and slipping on
the stair below. He turned to try and reaffirm his balance, before
tumbling down the Marble Stairs. He didn’t cry out or shout as he
went, the shock of the fall muting him.

“Shit,” I said.

“Fucking hell, Joe. What did you
do?” Sam asked.

I made to run down the stairs and
see if Priest was okay, but I was suddenly quite bothered that this
was the wrong thing to do. Priest was pulling himself to his feet,
his limbs shaking. His face was red and he was gritting his teeth.

The Marble Stairs, as their name implied, were made of marble and I
wondered just how much the fall had hurt. It was fairly uncommon for
people to fall on the stairs, but any time it happened the results
were always rather painful. Those falls were typically not as severe
as this one had been, either.

Priest failed to stand and instead sat
leaning up against the wall, rubbing his legs and arms. He certainly
looked to be in pain. He also looked to be crying a little, too.

“You’re DEAD Crosthwaite!” he
screamed at me.

“Craig, are you okay?” I asked
with genuine concern.

“FUCK OFF!” he shouted back at
me. “YOU’RE DEAD! YOU HEAR ME?!”

It being a Sunday night and an Exit
Weekend, there normally wouldn’t be lot of boys around. Sadly, it
was dinnertime, and so those who were still here were concentrated
around the Marble Stairs, leading, amongst other places, to the
refectory. A number of boys were already gathering and looking from
Priest to me. I wasn’t sure just how many of them had seen what had
happened, but there was little doubt in my mind that the rumours
wouldn’t begin immediately. No doubt it would come out that I had
beaten up Priest and thrown him down the Marble Stairs. Crap, this
wasn’t good.

“Let’s go, Sam,” I said.

I made my way back to Butcher,
feeling my heart thumbing quite hard in my chest. Mistake? I hoped
that I hadn’t just made a really big one.

Chapter Thirteen

W
hen
the time came for the mock exams, we made our way to our classrooms
as normal; though now, instead of regular lessons, we were treated to
extended periods that would run under exam conditions. Computer
print-out notices were stuck on the doors of the classrooms and the
entrances to the various corridors, warning that mock exams were in
progress and to keep quiet. I remembered seeing them when I was a
first year and had kept my head down as I had walked about the
classroom block, making an even greater effort than ever to avoid eye
contact with the older boys.

The last time I had sat a proper
exam was Common Entrance, back when I was just twelve. Those exams
had covered mostly the same subjects as my GCSES – English, maths,
science, French, geography, and history. I had scored a string of As
and a few Bs in those exams, though I had heard that a tremendous
number of other boys had actually failed. Though the Common Entrance
was supposed to govern pupils’ entry into the senior school, and
subsequently permit them to go on to take their GCSEs, it was said
that the school had decided to save face and allow those that had
failed the exams to progress to the senior school, anyway. It would
be quite embarrassing for St Christopher’s to deny half of their
own pupils access to the senior school, on account of them being too thick
to earn a place. Later investigation actually revealed that the exams
had been too hard, a number of schools up and down the country facing
similar failure rates, so it was likely that they would have been
allowed in at any rate. Whether my near straight As meant that I was
smarter than most others was only a fleeting thought in my head. I
was more bothered about the transition to senior school and the fear
of being beaten up after moving to Butcher House.

My first mock GCSE was geography, a
subject that I was fairly nonplussed about, but suffered my way
though without fuss. With all my classes having been cancelled for
the duration of the mocks, I had spent the morning in the third year
dorm, making a small effort to do some last-minute revision with Sam
and Baz, testing one another with quick fire questions and going over
some essays we had written over the past three years.
Baz was in the
B stream for geography, it being one of his weaker subjects, while
Sam and I studied in the A stream. C streams existed, but only for
certain subjects. Despite this, I actually found geography rather
boring and couldn’t care less about glacial erosion, oxbow lakes,
and how to read the gradients on an Ordnance Survey map.

I set my
pens and pencils down on the desk where I always sat during classes,
Sam occupying the seat next to me, and we waited for Mr Hancock, the
geography teacher, to give us a rundown of what would follow.

“Now,” he rumbled his address to
the classroom, “this being the first Monday of the first week of
your mocks, I’m guessing that this is your first exam. Has anyone
had any exams before this?”

“No, sir,” came the prompt reply
from the class. Most boys found the man quite intimidating; I was
glad he wasn’t my housemaster.

“That’s what I thought,” Mr
Hancock said. “In that case, I will give you a brief explanation of
how this week is going to run. These exams are going to operate under
strict conditions. You will not talk while the exam is in progress,
nor may you leave if you finish early; you are to remain in your
seats until the time is up. You are not to talk to anyone you are
sitting next to, and if you are seen to be copying from them or
anyone else, or passing notes, then you will fail automatically. You
may also be banned from taking the actual GCSE next term,
so don’t
do it
!”

His eyes flickered over each boy in the classroom,
ensuring that we had all heard that last part. He continued on,
“Paper will be provided for you, but you must provide your own pens
and pencils, so make sure you have enough. You will not be allowed to
get any more if you run out.”

I saw others starting to immediately
check their pens to ensure they were full, as well as ensuring they
had adequate spares. Sam laid out a number of ink cartridges for his
fountain pen, far more than were actually needed. I had stopped using
fountain pens myself the previous year. In my opinion, they didn’t
last as long as ballpoints. I also found that the ink was often too
wet and fresh, dramatically increasing the smudge potential while
writing. They also made my lettering come out a little too thick for
my liking. But then, maybe I was just holding the pen wrong. It
mattered little – ballpoints served me just as well.

“If you need more paper, hold up
your hand and ask,” Mr Hancock went on. “Please submit all the
paper you use, even if you were just writing on it to make notes. It
could be the case that your final answer is wrong, but your working
out was partially correct. In some subjects, you would receive credit
for that. Questions?”

Anthony Simmons raised his hand.
“Are we allowed to go to the toilet?”

“I would suggest once only,” Mr
Hancock said, with an edge of finality to his voice. “If you go too
often, then you might be deemed to be cheating and fail.”

“That’s not fair,” Simmons
said, already with a trace of arrogance to his voice. “What if I
have a weak bladder?”

“Do you?” Mr Hancock growled.

“Well ... I might do from nerves.”