The Suicide Club (10 page)

In silence, we passed through the gates. None of us said a word as we wended our way between the graves. I could imagine zombie hands bursting up through the soil like in that old Michael Jackson video.

There were dead people all around me.
They just didn't know it yet.

‘Shouldn't we hold a seance or something?' said Matthew at last.

Mist was coming out of our mouths – we must have looked like a human power factory chugging away in there.

‘I have a better idea,' said Freddy, and he took a step towards Matthew.

It was menacing but Matthew stayed where he was. Another step forward. Then another. I was holding my breath. This was horrible. What was Freddy doing? Suddenly he lashed out and pushed Matthew hard in the chest. Time stopped. It was freaky as hell. Chilling, even.

And then Freddy spoke. ‘Tag,' he said, and ran away.

We all stayed where we were for a second. Then, as one, we took a step back from Matthew like a flock of birds with hive mind. You know, distributed intelligence. And we ran.

We heard Freddy shouting.

‘Next one to get tagged is frozen,' he called.

I started laughing. Frozen meant that you had to stand
where you were tagged, legs apart. You could only re-enter the game when someone crawled between your legs to free you. I headed for a cluster of tall graves that looked like a decent hiding spot.

Whenever I used to play tag I liked to stay in one place and see the danger coming rather than run around like a headless chicken. I looked out from my hiding place. I hadn't realized it but I had run up a small incline and could see out over the entire cemetery. Freddy was doing the same as me; hiding. Jenny was running around the centre, Matthew toying with her. Craig was sat on a grave, clearly not playing. I felt a bite of sorrow in my ribs.

I heard a noise behind me and swung round. It was Clare. She looked so small in her massive Nirvana sweater, which was a red-and-black-striped woollen thing that she knitted herself. Her white skin was glowing in the dark. And her smile was just amazing.

‘Come with me,' she said. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me up. With my wrist in her hand she started running around the inside of the graveyard's outer wall, ducking down all the while.

‘Where are we going?' I said.

‘I've got an idea.'

It was just me and her and, to tell you the truth, I didn't really know what she was doing: one minute she was being horrible to me and the next she was being like this. We came around to the main gates at the front of the cemetery.

Hanging off them was a set of wind chimes. She picked up a stick and started running it over the metal pipes that tinkled quietly against the night. I was suddenly struck with an overwhelming urge to grab her and start kissing her really hard.

She stopped the wind chimes and looked at me. ‘Can we have a secret team?' she whispered.

‘A what?' I whispered back.

‘Me and you. We could be a secret team.'

‘What?'

Her face had a childlike excitement. ‘Like, if we're in the same room together, even if we're on opposite sides, we can look at each other and give a quick nod because we're in the team. Just me and you. No matter what anyone throws at us, we can use each other for support. It'll be our secret. Nobody will know.'

Her nose was red and her frame looked tiny under her clothes. I think I was really starting to fall for her. After all those years it was finally happening. But was it now? Or had it actually started back on that day when Craig had tried to kill himself ? I remembered putting my arm around her thinking that Craig was dead, and saying to myself, I hope
you
never die, Clare.

‘How long have you been thinking about this?' I said, barely audible, mist coming out of my mouth like I was in a film.

She looked at me and took my hands in hers. ‘I think I'm falling in love with you.'

I genuinely almost fainted. We looked at each other for a second. Her face was like, well, I can't even describe it. I went to speak but just as I did the edges of her mouth curled up. Just for a second.

I suddenly got it. Drama. Although disappointed, I had to play along because otherwise I would lose face because I had let my guard down.

Falling to my knees, I whispered quickly, ‘You have to marry me. Let's go to Paris. Meet me in the railroad café at six o'clock tomorrow morning.'

Then she fell to her knees.

‘You're so amazing,' she swooned. Bitch.

Sometimes I wished we hadn't set up such intricate rules
for our relationship. It was like walking on a tightrope your whole life. We could
never
say what we truly meant. It was Self-destructive, blah, blah, blah.

I so much wish she had been serious when she told me she loved me. Maybe she was but then resented it because it would have meant
her
guard had been let down so she had to change tack and pretend that she was being dramatic all along. It really was that complicated.

Upset, I said, ‘Let's split up. We'll get caught if we stay together.'

She looked at me long and hard, and shrugged.

‘Whatever,' she said, as if I had just done something incredibly offensive. And she ran off. I sighed. Why do I always have to spoil things?

I padded stealthily back up the hill to my original hiding spot and looked out. Jenny was running along a line of graves and suddenly, from nowhere, Matthew lunged at her, sending her sprawling across a patch of grass. To be honest, it seemed a bit rough. She lay on the ground, back against the turf. Laughing like a hooligan. Matthew pulled her to her feet and they looked at one another. Then he was gone and Jenny remained where she was, legs apart like a triangle, frozen. She was so great.

As Matthew ran off, hurdling the graves as he went, Freddy came out of the shadows and freed Jenny. They both set off. I looked back to the direction in which Matthew had run but he had disappeared. I watched Freddy and Jenny split up and then I heard a noise behind me. I spun round but it was too late. Matthew dived at me and grabbed me round the waist. I slipped backwards and the back of my legs bumped into a low headstone. Over I went and I still can't believe I didn't break my back.

‘Agh. You bastard,' I hissed.

He got up and smiled.

‘Tag,' he said. And he was off. I got to my feet and dusted myself down. Condensation on the grass left my clothes soggy and cold. I spread my legs, hoping that someone would come save me.

‘Psst,' I heard.

I looked behind me. There was a scary-as-hell crypt that I hadn't seen before. At the side I could see Clare's sweater.

‘Free me,' I whispered. ‘Matthew's over the other side. Come on.'

She stepped out from her hiding place. The bottoms of her jeans were soaked. She was smiling at me. With her moonbeam skin she looked like a sylph. I don't mean to be melodramatic about her appearance, but I was falling in love with her and you see everything through a soft-focus filter when that happens. She moved towards me like she was floating. There was a smile like the Mona Lisa's on her face. Her eyes were catching the moonlight.

‘Come on, free me,' I said again.

Without taking her eyes off me, as if to emphasize the gravity of what she was doing, she took a side-step away from me. She kept moving away, putting distance between me and her, fully intending me to understand her symbolism. Which I did. Loud and clear. But it only made me want her more because maybe I'm a bit Self-destructive. I nodded knowingly as she slipped away into the darkness.

A CRACK OF
yellow light cut a swathe across the horizon. Dawn was coming from the east although most of the sky was still dark. I had called my parents to say I was sleeping over at Matthew's house when in truth we had stayed out all night. We'd even persuaded Craig to call his parents, which was great because, even though he wasn't showing it, he must have been enjoying himself. Freddy was going to get in trouble but he didn't care, said this was what he had meant by not being restricted by anybody.

And now here we were, on the edge of the school grounds, peering over the low wooden fence. Mist was coming up off the lawn, the air was cold and you could hear the crows cawing in the bare trees.

None of us were saying anything because we were so exhausted, but we had one thing to do before we could go home. Kidnap a peregrine falcon.

‘Listen,' I said to Clare quietly. ‘I have to ask, it's been bugging me all night.' I took a deep breath. ‘Where did you go before the party?' I had to ask, even if it did mean giving her the upper hand in our little game.

‘Over Matt's.'

She came right out with it, like she hadn't been hiding it at all. Which she had. ‘So . . .' I felt so pathetic saying this. ‘Why didn't you call me?'

She couldn't look at me when she answered. ‘Because we thought you were over Craig's.'

I knew it was rubbish.

‘Anyway,' she added,' what do you care?'

‘OK,' Freddy interrupted. ‘Let's do this.'

I suddenly caught Clare looking at Freddy like he was a god.

The six of us clambered over the fence and ran across the lawn. It was probably around six in the morning. We thrashed over the outer defences and I pretended we were about to storm the keep. I had a sick feeling in my gut because I knew that I would get in trouble for doing something stupid like this, but my monster was getting the better of me. Anyway, it was exactly like Freddy had said – keeping falcons as mascots was plain pretentious.

The aviary was next to the school gym. The falcons were enclosed in a small paddock at which we were now stood. I could see their cage up against the wall. We waited on the fence, trying to get up some courage.

The plan was to get the smaller one, Bertie. After we had him we'd keep him somewhere safe and send death threats to the headmaster using letters cut out of newspapers. It was quite evil I know but we weren't actually going to harm the bird itself, so what did it matter?

‘I don't know about this,' said Matthew. ‘If my parents find out, it'll be the end of me.'

The two girls remained silent. Craig, as usual, wasn't saying anything either. Freddy and I tried to coax Matthew round, but he had made his mind up before we had even reached the school. He wasn't coming. And that first dissent led to more. Jenny and, to my dismay, Clare both backed out.

So it was going to be down to me and Freddy. Operation Free as a Bird. Deep down I was actually glad it was just me and Freddy. This was the first time that it had been just us
doing something. I could feel the golden rope of a bond forming between our souls.

We snuck across the lawn like a couple of cat burglars and as we went I clearly remember thinking about him. Running across that grass, the back of his head bobbing up and down in front of me, might as well have been in slow motion. I had never met anyone like him before. I remember thinking that in the short time we had been friends he had saved Craig's life, taken us to the school lake under the white light of a full moon, taken us to the graveyard to play tag, and now, here we were about to kidnap the school falcon. It was as if my life had shifted up a gear in fun since we had met.

Added to this, I loved his philosophy. I know at our age lots of people spout their teenage musings, and there was an element of that to Freddy, but it didn't dampen the impact of what he said. What he believed rang true in me. He saw the world as a beautiful, poetic place where anything was possible, just as long as you didn't let anything get you down. If you looked into his tunnel of belief you didn't have to worry about what was going on to the right and the left. There was no room for explanation, for science, for coldness. Humans couldn't be explained.

I needed to believe that. I had always felt the exact same way but had never been able to put it into words. Freddy had done that for me. When he had told us about how he wanted to make a connection between all of the lost souls, and about how he never wanted to succumb to the world, he might as well as have put his hand down my throat, ripped out my hardwire, held it above his head and said, ‘Here is what Richard Harper believes and wants more than anything. Let me read it to you.'

And it wasn't just me. The others were enraptured as well. I think we all got the sense that we were holding on to his coat-tails to see where we would go. Yes, I remember having
all of these thoughts as we crossed the paddock to the falcons' cage.

Those were the good days. Those were the days that I remember with great affection. I often wonder if things could have gone differently, or if it was all pre-ordained from the start. Was there anything any of us could have done somewhere along the line that could have sent our course in a different direction? Or were our stars always aligned for what happened?

It was all going to change. That yellow line of dawn could just as easily have been a line drawn between everything that went before and everything that went after.

The cage was on a set of waist-high stilts. We got closer and I caught the first glimpse of the greyish down of the birds. They were so silent, sat amongst their straw beds. I had held the birds in my first year but I was wearing one of those big leather gloves so I had never actually touched them. Their feathers were apparently amazingly soft.

We were in front of the wire mesh.

‘Look how beautiful they are,' Freddy whispered, in a trance, his eyes fixed on them.

I nudged him to snap him out of it.

‘OK,' he said. ‘You pull the hatch open and I'll grab it.'

‘Got it.'

My heart was off, beating hard. Bertie's head was bobbing back and forth. His little round eyes looked like they had the wisdom of ages in them. I whipped the door open and Freddy lunged in. All I saw was an explosion of feathers in his face. I jumped round to the front of the cage.

‘Grab him,' Freddy called, laughing. Bertie was in my face, flapping like crazy. His eyes were glaring at me but he didn't try to peck my face off or anything.