The Red Road (19 page)

“We’re not here to discuss what
I may or may not have done in a hypothetical situation,” Mr Hancock
said. “We’re just here to deal with the facts.”

Another damn typical response. The
teachers were infallible in their decisions as always.

Mr Somers looked to Priest. “Craig,
why did you attack Joe?”

“He attacked me first,” Priest
said.

I forced myself to remain mute. I
swore that he was making himself sound a great deal more miserable
than he was actually feeling.

“When and where?”

“The Marble Stairs, two weekends
ago.”

“That’s because you called me a
‘mistake’ and that my parents didn’t want me,” I retorted. “I
only pushed you, too. It’s not my fault that you fell down the
stairs because you’re so mal-coordinated.”

“Joe ...” Mr Somers warned me to
be quiet.

“I thought there was a
misunderstanding, and I was worried that Joe was going to attack me
again, so I thought I’d go and clear the air.”

My jaw flapped open. I couldn’t
believe my ears. “No, you didn’t!” I glared at him, ignoring
the gestures of silence from Mr Somers and Mr Hancock. “You were
embarrassed that you fell down the Marble Stairs and started crying
in front of the first years, and you thought you would come and
‘teach me a lesson’, as you put it.”

“I didn’t say that,” Priest
said, looking wounded between Mr Somers and Mr Hancock.

“You did, and you brought Justin
Murphy and Orson Bishop with you, too, to make sure of it. Why aren’t
they here, too? They hit me as well.”

“Joe, don’t sneak,” Mr Somers
warned.

“What? Sir,
they attacked me as
well
,” I emphasised.

“As far as I’m concerned, this
is just between you and Craig,” Mr Somers said, as if not hearing
me. “Now, is this all resolved? Because I don’t want to find you
two back in here ever again, and neither does Mr Hancock want to find
you in
his
office, either. The pair of you have both got very
important things happening this term and next that you need to
concentrate on. Joe, your GCSEs; Craig, your A-Levels.

“I’m also still waiting on your
UCAS application,” Mr Hancock reminded Priest.

“I’ll give it to you when my
eyesight is better. I’m going to have trouble doing some of my
coursework and concentrating in class for a couple of weeks, I think,”
Priest said.

He was exaggerating, as the bullies
of the school always did as soon as they turned victim. I wondered
whether Mr Somers and Mr Hancock had seen through the feint, quite
aware that he was clearly faking it, and were merely humouring him.
Mr Hancock nodded but gave no comment.

“Do you both understand what I
have said to you?” Mr Somers asked.

“Yes, sir,” we both mumbled.

“Good. Now, Joe, apologise to
Craig.”

This man could not be serious.
Priest had attacked
me
, yet I was expected to apologise to
him
?

“No,” I said defiantly. “Not until he apologises to
me first.”

“Joe, I am this close to taking
you to see the headmaster and recommending that you be rusticated for
the next two weeks,” Mr Somers said, pinching his thumb and index
finger close together, his tone growing angrier as the last thread of
his patience threatened to snap. I could understand. Mine was nearly
all gone, too.

I looked at Priest, seeing him
rubbing at one of his eyes and feeling sorry for himself, begging for
sympathy. The act was lost on me, as it always had been; he would be
struggling to contain a grin of satisfaction, I was sure.

“Sorry,” I managed with all the
sincerity that I could muster. I added nothing else. Both he and the
housemasters looked to be expecting more. I wasn’t sorry to
disappoint them there.

“Okay, thank you,” Mr Somers
said. “Anything you wish to add, Dean?” He looked to Mr Hancock.

“No,” rumbled the big man.

“Good. Okay, in that case you can
go, Craig.”

“Thank you, sir.”

No apology to me for having to go
around the school for the next few days with a swollen nose and a
puffy, black and blue face, then. I watched as Mr Hancock walked with
Priest out of Mr Somers’ office, closing the door behind them. Mr
Somers then looked back to me.

“Joe, you’re one of the
brightest pupils in your year, and I would hate to see things such as
this tarnish your reputation. I’ll be honest with you. Up until
today, I was strongly considering you for a prefect when you reached
the upper sixth. I thought you could be a great role model and
inspiration to others. After what’s happened, I’m not so sure.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m not
planning on staying anyway,” I blurted out immediately.

“Pardon?”

“I said, I’m not planning on
staying after I’ve finished my GCSEs. I’m going to do my A-Levels
at another school, a sixth form college near home.”

My housemaster looked a little taken
aback. “Your parents haven’t mentioned anything to me about it.”

“That’s because we’re waiting
on the results of my mocks,” I said, telling a white lie.

I then
found some of my anger for Priest turning to anger at my parents for
not being fully onboard with my plans to leave St Christopher’s. I
wondered whether or not they would care about this little incident,
should I tell them about it. Probably not. It was to be expected and
came with the territory, they would no doubt say in their diplomatic
fashion. Now that I thought about it, they had hardly battered an
eyelid about Scott Parker’s murder.

“I see,” Mr Somers said. “Well,
I will have a chat with them about it, then.”

Probably to convince them to keep
me here, so the school can wring a few thousand more pounds out of
them
, I thought bitterly.

“Can I go?” I asked.

“Yes, Joe. And I would suggest you
stay away from anything to with Craig Priest for the rest of term, if
not the rest of the year.”

Gladly
, I thought as I got
up. I paused with my hand on the door handle to the housemaster’s
office.

“So, I don’t get an apology from him?” I wanted to
know.

“As I said, I think it’s best
that you keep away from Craig from now on,” Mr Somers said
dismissively.

I bit back the immediate fiery
response, counting silently to five in my head as I let my temper
cool.

“Sir,” I said, once I felt I had my angry under control,
“are you scared of people like Craig Priest?”

“Just get out of my office, Joe,”
was all that Mr Somers said.

That basically meant yes. I added
nothing more and returned to my dorm.

Chapter Fourteen

I
found myself standing in a near pitch-black corridor. No elongated
shadows, no shrieking voices, no goblins. I wasn’t dreaming, I was
awake. I had been sleepwalking again. As with the previous times, I
had somehow managed to put on my dressing gown. I was also wearing
slippers on my feet. It took me a little while to work out where I
was – Tudor House. I had entered through one
of the side doors that apparently hadn’t been locked. I wondered if
I had checked all the other doors first before coming to this one, or
had just made straight for it. Whatever had happened, I shouldn’t
be here.

I made to leave, when I saw
something moving in the darkness, a shadow elongating in the
moonlight seeping in through the windows. The shape halted as they
saw me, giving a start. They then came a little further forward,
hesitated and stopped completely. Not a goblin, but a boy.

“Who’s that?” the boy asked.
They appeared to be a first year, wrapped in a dressing gown and
wearing slippers. They were most likely on their way to the toilet. I
had clearly scared them.

“It’s Joe,” I said.

“Joe?”

“Crosthwaite.”

The hesitation continued.

“Did I scare you?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Don’t worry. I was just
visiting someone,” I explained. “Go back to bed. Or the toilet,
or whatever you were doing.”

I started off myself, leaving
through the door I had entered by and beginning to make my way across
the ground, back to Butcher. I figured that the boy, whoever they
were, would discover sooner or later that I wasn’t in Tudor House
and would begin to question why I was there. I didn’t want him
doing that, as I didn’t exactly know why I was, either.

I had a hunch, though, and I didn’t
like it one bit.

Chapter Fifteen

A
side
from the sleepwalking, I was a good sleeper in the main, albeit a
light one. I generally had few problems getting to sleep, my habit of
reading a book before switching off my light calming me enough to
allow me to sleep well. Some of the other boys would talk after the
lights were out, but I would ignore them. I sometimes even found the
whispered conversation that went on helped to lull me off even
quicker.

Tonight, however, I was unable to
drift off. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe I was feeling anxious about the
results of my mocks, which had now concluded, and my ongoing desires
to see the back of St Christopher’s as soon as possible. Even more
so after my bust up with Craig Priest. If I didn’t get good grades
in my mocks, then I might not be admitted to the college I so
desperately wanted to attend. Regular classes had resumed this week
at school, and I had tried to tell myself that what was done was
done.

But my insomnia could perhaps also
be attributed to my fight with Priest. Though we had both given each
other a wide berth, and making only the briefest of eye contact if we
did happen to pass one another (which was thankfully rather
infrequent, due to the two of us being in different houses), I could
still feel hatred for me radiating from both he and his friends.
Would they act on it again, or were they simply hollow threats?

I looked at my watch. The
illumination on the hands wasn’t working very well, and I couldn’t
tell the time. I drew back the curtain above my bed to let in a
little light. Twelve minutes past one. Damn. I was useless on less
than six hours sleep, and it was looking as though I would struggle
to get that. I would probably fall asleep around four and then
be a zombie for the rest of the school day. I knew what I needed to
do to get some rest, something I hadn’t done for a long time. Well,
not intentionally at any rate.

Slipping out of bed, I pulled on my
dressing gown and slippers and crept over to the door, planning on
taking a walk around the school for ten or twenty minutes, to calm
myself down. I wasn’t sure why it worked, but I found that after a
little stroll I was more settled and would then fall asleep quite
quickly. Perhaps it was because it was cooler than in my bed and
helped my body to slow down.

I hesitated as I made to pull the
doorknob. As this was a rare occasion, and after everything that I
had been through in the past couple of weeks, I decided that I may as
well indulge myself in another one of my casual activities.

Returning
to my bed, I pulled open my bedside locker’s drawer as quietly as I
could, picking up my keys from within and using them to unlock the
tuck box that lived under my bed. I held the padlock as I did so, so
that the sound of the mechanism releasing wouldn’t wake the others.
Open, I felt around inside, moving stuff about until I found what I
was looking for. There were five cigarettes left in the packet, as
well as a nearly full lighter. I locked the box again and made my way
from the third year dorm.

~ ~ ~

I wandered the dark and desolate
corridors of the main school randomly for a time. I glanced into the
shadows as I passed, weary of ... something. I had no idea why they
bothered me. There would be nothing lurking there.

The corridors were
cool, cooler than I had actually expected. After the mild weather we
had experienced a couple of days before, the climate had righted
itself and the temperature had plummeted from its fifteen degrees,
back down to three. My parents had been amused to hear about the
freak weather we had experienced in Wessex. Surrey was still as cold
as it had been at Christmas, and even Baz’s and Dave’s parents
had confirmed that London wasn’t nearly as hot as we had had it,
even with all the smog and the inner city temperature gains.

I
guessed the little taste of spring must have been localised to St
Christopher’s. That didn’t surprise me, as odd things happened
here all the time. It was sometimes as if the school wasn’t
connected to the real world and would flux into parallel realities as
and when the fancy took it. I felt a radiator as I passed. The
heating was on, but had been turned down after eleven p.m. Most would
fail to notice, as they would be tucked up in warm beds.

I discovered that the exit door I
had been heading for was locked. It was a simple bar lock, however,
and was easy to open. I would lock it again once I was done. I
stepped outside, the cold air hitting me immediately and making me
instantly appreciative of the warm bed I had recently left. With what
I was wearing, I would probably only be able to tolerate the cold for
about five minutes. My bare ankles would suffer the most.

I didn’t walk far outside, only a
few metres from the door, slipping around a corner and hiding in an
alcove, where I lit the cigarette. I took a drag, enjoying the taste
and the warmth that came with it. I could already tell that after my
night-time expedition was done with I would sleep well.

I looked
about as I smoked, seeing a light on, high up. Was it coming from one
of the toilets? I wondered. Probably not, the window frame was all
wrong. It looked more like a boy’s room. I knew that some of the
sixth formers stayed up late to get work done, especially those
preparing for Oxbridge exams. St Christopher’s was trying to put a
stop to that, insisting that they get to sleep at a reasonable hour
and get up for breakfast. Some would choose to skip breakfast,
staying in bed longer, either getting up just in time for a nine a.m.
class or having a lie in if they didn’t have to be up for anything.
Oddly, some sixth formers chose to eat in their own rooms, bringing
in cereal, bread, milk, and spreads from home. Crazy, I thought, when
the school was already laying on food. Why pay for something twice?
Maybe by that age they simply didn’t wish to sit in a refectory
full of rowdy thirteen and fourteen-year-old boys ...