The Suicide Club (19 page)

‘What?' I called.

Nothing.
Knock, knock, knock
.

‘What?!'

Still nothing. I had to get off my bed to open the door. I then did my little joke where I look around and don't notice him because of his height and went to close the door.

‘Don't be such a silly,' he said.

‘Jesus Christ, Toby. What the hell are you doing saying things like that? Do you know how stupid you sound?'

‘What do you mean?' And he looked at me with his clear eyes.

‘What are you trying to do? Make my heart bleed? It's made of stone, my friend.'

I grabbed him under the arms and hoisted him into the air. He was giggling like a little girl as I spun him around on the landing outside my room.

‘Put me down,' he laughed.

So I did.

‘Listen, Tobe,' I said. ‘You're special. Do you realize that? Because you've got innocence.' I paused. ‘How about this for a plan?' I looked at him with his curly blond hair. ‘How about a trip into the city?'

His face lit up. I could see happiness shooting out of his flesh like the stardust that came out of the Big Bang and made everything.

‘Really?'

‘Sure. I'll be breaking up for Christmas soon. We'll go on the first day of the holidays. But only on one condition.'

‘What?'

‘Two conditions, actually.' I crouched down so that I was at his height. ‘One. You don't wear a tie.'

He agreed.

‘And two. You have to give me the picture you drew. The one with the people skating on the iced-over lake. Deal?'

I knew how happy he was because my stomach was buzzing away like a power station. He ran to his room, came back, and thrust the drawing in my face. I took the picture, which was really excellent, and told him to tell Mum that I couldn't eat dinner because I was going to visit Clare and that I'd grab something on my way.

Clare is rich. Not rich like my family, I mean
filthy
rich. That's probably why she's so into Nirvana. Her house is this mansion with white pillars spilling into sky and those windows that come out of the roof.

I knocked on the door and was shown into the hall by her disapproving father, who was something to do with heavy industry. I think he was like, an oil baron, something to do with the petrol trade, I think. Whatever he did, he earned enough money to cover his hall floor in disgusting marble. It was opulent and hideous. He was not a man of style. Nor was her mother, who chose to drive around in, can you believe it, a banana-yellow Porsche of all the dreadful things.

Clare stood at the top of the spiralling staircase that I swear existed, and smiled at me. She looked great. She had on a pair of baggy jeans with a pink studded belt and a pink T-shirt that she had made herself. On the front she had sewn little black letters. You know those French Connection T-shirts that read:

fcuk?

Well, Clare had sewn:

fuck

She was a very clever girl. She was so lovely there in the surroundings of her parents' mansion that she so abhorred. Her wrists were covered with Stars and Stripes sweatbands.

‘Come up to my room,' she said. As she turned around I couldn't help but notice her pink underwear climbing over the top of her belt.

Let me describe her bedroom. It's about forty feet from one end to the next and she's got a sofa at the far end with a massive plasma TV and DVD player with surround sound. I first saw
The Matrix
on that TV. Her bed is a double bed and is pink. Most of her room is pink or purple. It's like the bedroom of a teenage girl who could have it the exact way she wanted. Being a designer-type she had already decorated for Christmas. All of the overhead lights were switched off and the illumination was coming solely from hundreds of coloured fairy lights that she had strung up all around the walls.

I went over to the sofa and slumped into it. Matthew popped into my head.

‘Do you worry about what's happening to us?' I said.

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean . . . this whole Suicide Club thing. I sometimes think it's a bit too intense. I feel like it's frying our minds.'

She came and sat on the sofa next to me, but not too close.

‘Frying our minds?'

‘I just think we're becoming cynical.'

‘Speak for yourself. I haven't even got a clue what you're talking about. So how am I cynical?'

‘When was the last time you went down to the homeless shelter?' Clare used to visit the homeless people every couple of weeks, either helping out in the kitchen or repairing their clothes. She didn't particularly enjoy it, but it was the right thing to do. One of the guys there had once tried it on with her, but she still carried on going.

She flipped her hair in front of her eyes, grabbed a handful and inspected it.

‘I'm not allowed to go down there any more.'

‘What?' I said. ‘What do you mean?'

‘Since all that stuff with Bertie, my parents have stopped me going down there.'

‘Your parents have stopped you going down there?'

She shrugged like she didn't care. But she did. I knew she did.

A thought suddenly struck me. Clare's parents had stopped homeless people having nice food and having the rips in their clothing sewn up in order to punish their daughter. But what about the homeless people? I was genuinely bewildered – surely her parents weren't that stupid.

‘So now who's cynical?' she said.

I think a bond came up for a second but it wasn't full-blown. Not yet.

‘Anyway,' she said. ‘I've got you a present.' She jumped up from the sofa and danced over to the side of her bed. She picked up a wrapped package and brought it to me. It had a red bow tied around the centre.

‘What is it?'

‘It's a new car,' she referenced.

It was clearly an item of clothing. I tore the paper away.

‘I made it myself,' she said.

I held it up to the light. It was a white T-shirt and, when I saw it, there was a catch in my throat. She was such a loving person. When she wasn't being a bitch. Up the shoulders of the T-shirt she had sewn on epaulettes. Stitched into the cloth, alternating colours all the way up, were yellow and black stripes. It was exceptionally cool-looking. And sewn across the chest, in the exact same way that she had sewn
fuck
into her own T-shirt, she had sewn, again in alternating black and yellow:

the     bees     knees.

I didn't know what to say. So I said nothing and looked at her.

‘It says “the bees knees”,' she offered.

I felt like we were young lovers untainted by experience. We were nervous and excited and like two pieces of substance on the quantum level – all crazy and vibrating. I wanted to tell her how much I loved her. But I couldn't do it. I just wasn't ready.

‘I love it,' I said. ‘I really love it.'

I stood up and pulled my sweater and T-shirt off so that I could try it on. It fitted perfectly. She knew my size and had made it slightly too small because that's always the best way.

‘So you love it?'

I could see on her face that she was beaming inside and that made me feel so good, knowing that she was happy.

The rest of the evening we spent lying on her sofa
watching TV. She had her head on my chest and I played with her hair, just like the old days. We talked sporadically about nothing in particular apart from the book
1984
, which, coincidentally, we were both reading at that time. I can't remember exactly what we said but I think we spoke about how the main guy and the main girl had the best relationship ever. It was just like our Eskimo Friends team that we had set up – nobody knew about it. There were a lot of great things about that night: the closeness of it, the sheer joy of being alive, the sense of intense easiness. But the best thing about it by a long, long way was the texture of her skin when we joined our hands and made steeples.

Many times I wanted to tell Clare how I had been feeling about her lately but every time I thought I was close I couldn't quite find the courage. I was, in truth, a little scared. I liked her but I had no idea whether or not she felt the same about me. With all of the rules and tricks and games we had set up over the years I felt like I had just entered a minefield. What I considered a signal could just as easily be a joke. I was sure that she liked me but just how much was anybody's guess. I had a WCS where I told her I loved her and she started laughing and saying,' Oh my God, just wait until I tell my friends what you just said.' I was going to have to tell her eventually but not having any idea whatsoever of what the reaction might be was not good. You see, it wasn't like asking out somebody I hardly knew. Clare wasn't just another girl. If I messed it up I could lose the special bond we had, and I didn't want to do that. In fact, the thought of it, coupled with my WCS, started to freak me out a little bit.

‘OK, I have to go,' I said at last.

She lifted her head off my chest.

‘What?'

‘Yeah, I've got homework.'

She shook her head as if she didn't understand.

‘Homework?' For some reason she was upset. ‘Are you serious?'

‘Um, yes.'

All of a sudden she jumped up off the sofa.

‘You are a fucking dick,' she said.

It was like the scene in my bedroom all over again.

‘What? I have to go home,' I said, drawing the words out like I was talking to a slow child. I hated the way I had to destroy perfect moments.

‘I made you a T-shirt.' Her voice was warbly and I could see her chest going up and down.

I didn't know what to say. I froze.

Clare looked at me very deeply indeed.

‘My friends were right about you.'

When she said that another WCS burned into my brain. A bad one.

‘Wh . . . what?'

She rolled her eyes.

‘God.' She folded her arms and her eyes went up to the ceiling. ‘Just go.'

What had she meant? The idea of Clare talking about me behind my back didn't bear thinking about. The WCS got bigger and bigger and bigger. ‘So I'll see you tomorrow?' I said.

She deliberately looked at the wall to her left, dramatically ignoring me.

I walked past her, said,' Thanks for the T-shirt,' and started to feel sick because of how much I had fucked everything up.

‘
DO YOU KNOW
what? If we did go ahead with the Suicide Club, I bet there'd be a special place for us in heaven where we could spend all our time together. I can just imagine it. You get to heaven and it's all in the clouds and most people go through the main gates, but we'd find a way of skipping the queue because, just round the side of heaven, there's this porthole of cloud that leads to a secret chamber where it would be just us. Heaven would be just on the other side, but before we went there we'd wait for each other.'

We were all sat around the war memorial when Freddy said that. This was what he did best: painted pictures. He'd build up these little worlds in his head that you could totally buy into. That was his talent.

I looked at all of my friends. Jenny, her nose red in the cold, had a faint smile on her lips and I noticed that she was wearing mittens on her hands. Matthew could have kissed her sweetly on the cheek and it would have been perfectly natural. Craig was sat on the bottom step next to Clare, looking blankly ahead as per usual, but we all knew he was listening to us. Freddy was sat on the highest step of the memorial, like he was the King. And I think that back then he probably was.

I started to get a mental image of bright clouds and angels and light, trying to imagine what Freddy had just been saying.

‘And what do we do while we wait?' Clare said.

‘Whatever we want. Because on one of the walls is where our dreams come true. Whatever we can imagine, we can jump into the wall and our wildest dreams become real.'

‘Oh yeah,' drawled Jenny. ‘Like what?'

‘What would you want to do?' he said.

‘I don't know,' she said. ‘Have a picnic?'

‘Exactly,' he chirped. ‘We'll go and sit in sunny fields by a stream and eat apples from an apple tree.'

I noticed that he was looking at Craig and that jolted something in my gut. Was Freddy trying to persuade Craig to do something bad? I wondered. It was a complicated thought that I couldn't really deal with right then.

‘What about you, Rich?' said Freddy. ‘What would you do?'

I shrugged.

‘I'd become wrestling champion of the world.'

Everyone laughed and that made me feel great because it wasn't that funny. I glanced at Clare but she was looking in the opposite direction. She wasn't laughing.

‘Let's make a pact,' said Matthew of all people. He must have been struck by this idea of Freddy's mystical heavenly chamber. ‘No matter how we go, or when we go, when we get to heaven, we'll all go to this chamber and wait for everyone else. Whoever goes first, even if it takes fifty years for the last one to arrive, we wait in the chamber.'

Freddy held out his hand and offered it to Matthew, who placed his hand on top. Next to join the pact was Jenny with her mitten. Then there was Clare. Then it was my turn. I looked at Matthew, who was smiling at me innocently. I placed my hand on the pile of other hands. When Craig put his hand on to complete the pact, I noticed Freddy give himself a little grin, which was a bit chilling, to tell you the truth. In that moment I could just tell that his evil streak had come
to the surface. But I also noticed something else – something brand new in Craig's blank eyes. And it kind of chilled me even more. Right in the corner, only recognizable because the light was shining off it from the street lamp, was a tiny, round, glistening teardrop.

CHRISTMAS WAS JUST
around the corner. The air was stingingly cold and the clouds were dense and silver. A few weeks had passed and you know what? Things were getting better. In school everything seemed to have settled down after the whole Bertie thing and, even though I still pretty much hung around with only those of us who had signed the Suicide Club Charter, life was not too bad.