The Suicide Club (40 page)

‘You should have seen her body.'

A crackle of cold shuddered up my skeleton. I suddenly remembered seeing Matt climbing down the motorway embankment after Jenny had thrown herself off the bridge.

‘It was like, not even her. It was just mush.' His words were slow and quiet and horrifying. ‘She didn't even have a face.'

‘Matt, don't,' Clare said quickly. ‘Please stop.'

He glanced at her and breathed out through his nose.

‘Sorry.'

The hairs on my arms were standing on end. The image
of Jenny, her face ripped off, was branding itself into my brain. I could feel bile in my stomach. It was too hard to take. Two tears fell out of my eyes, and I'm glad that the others didn't notice. I turned away and wiped them clear.

‘Would you miss me if I was gone?' he said.

Clare gasped.

‘Matt . . .' she spluttered.

He just kept staring into the fire.

I had to say something, I had to stop this.

‘Matt, I know this is all fucked up but you can't talk like—' I stopped in my tracks.

Matt was looking at me and his stare was so terrible that I could not continue speaking. His eyes were looking at me like I was something alien, like I wasn't his best friend. I remembered the time on the airbase when Craig had threatened to shoot me and I had gone mental on him. Matt had looked at me in the same way then, like I was an animal. But this was more extreme, more concentrated. This was awful.

‘Matt?' A shadow moved behind his eyes. ‘Matt, Jenny wouldn't want you to do anything—'

‘What do you know about Jenny?' he snapped. ‘You didn't even notice—'

My heart turned to ice, my ribs liquid nitrogen.

‘You think that because you're in this club that you're invincible, that we're better than everyone else. But it's not the same for the rest of us. You think' – he was pointing at me – ‘that we're in the right. But the rest of us—' He stopped. ‘Forget it.'

I felt like crying. We
were
better than everyone else, I knew this was true. I didn't like Matt saying that we weren't because it wasn't true. Everyone else was horrible. We were nice. We understood. I knew unfalteringly, as we sat around that fire in the woods, light dappling our faces, that I loved
my friends. Even the dead ones who were waiting for us in our heavenly chamber that nobody else could enter. I loved that I was in this group of wonderful people and I didn't like the way that Matt seemed to be faltering. The Suicide Club wasn't about killing ourselves, it was about being nice people protected from the cold world by each other. I desperately didn't want him to kill himself. If he did, it wouldn't be anything to do with the Suicide Club. No, if he killed himself it would be because he couldn't stand life any more, not because he loved life. If any of us were going to do it, I thought that Clare would have been next, but now, as I watched shadows warp across his face, I knew that it would be him. Everything had been taken away from Matt – his friends, his school, his Jenny, his soul.

Across the fire we stared at one another and I think he felt sorry for me, like I had gone crazy and was in the wrong. But that's OK because I felt the same about him. I guess it was just his way of dealing with Jenny's suicide. We all had our own ways of dealing with it – Matt was angry, Clare was sad, I was numb. Only Freddy seemed to be
happy
about it. Or indifferent at least.

I caught Freddy's eyes moving back and forth between me and Matt and I never wanted to punch him in the face more than then. My heart was starting to beat faster and I was losing my grip.

Clare looked at me.

‘Stop being such a fucking idiot and you' – she looked at Matt – ‘you stop being such an idiot as well. You're supposed to be best friends.'

My lips were wet because the moisture from all of my emotions was getting the better of me again.

Then none of us spoke.

I felt bad because I didn't want Matt to hate me.

Jenny was dead and he was somehow blaming me.
But we were best friends and that was all there was to it.

That's why, after five minutes, and finally ending the standoff, he said,' I can't believe that neither of us are going back to school.'

I kicked a twig into the fire with my trainer.

‘I don't care.'

Freddy adjusted himself on his seat.

‘I don't want to say anything bad about your parents, Matt, but don't they realize what's going to happen to you in the comp?'

‘I don't know.' He sounded deflated.

‘They only want what's best for you,' Clare said.

Freddy laughed smugly.

I gave him a stern glare.

‘What are you doing, Freddy?'

His eyes were lasers in my face.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Why are you trying to poison him?'

‘Hey,' he snapped, but then recovered. ‘Jesus, Rich.' His eyes and face went all emotional and I was lost because you could never tell what Freddy was thinking deep down. His expression would make you want to hug him like a father hugs his son, but at the same time you knew just how calculating he was. Just when you thought you understood him, had him pinned, he would slip away again. ‘What do you think I'm doing? Engineering this whole thing? Planning your demises?' He laughed nervously.

I threw my stick into the fire.

‘I'm sorry,' I said, making a decision. I had lost everything else; I couldn't lose my remaining friends. I had forgiven Freddy in the past because I saw me in him, but I don't know if that was still the case now. I gave Freddy the benefit of the doubt this time because, basically, I had to.

He sighed and gazed into the fire.

‘We can't let everyone else get to us. We have to stick together, OK?'

‘OK,' I repeated.

‘OK,' Clare echoed out of nowhere.

Instinctively we all looked to Matt.

‘OK,' he said half-heartedly.

It was all melancholic. Things were coming to an end and we all knew it. Matt and I were already separated from Freddy and Clare after having been taken out of school. After today, after we'd all gone missing together, we'd find it more and more difficult to sneak off and spend time with each other. The police, the school, our families would all be formulating plans to keep us apart. And soon the world would have its way with us and we'd go off to university, think of each other less and less often until, in the end, we'd be nothing but bad memories of an unhappy time. That was what the world had in store for us. Unless, of course,
she
were to return for one of us once again with beating wings.

Just like the daylight, our conversation got darker and darker and because we were with each other we had no idea how much damage we were doing to ourselves by going to these places. We talked about such fragile things with such mellow ferocity that all I could feel was my bone mass increasing exponentially whilst my body stayed the same. A million kids under a million stars had said this stuff before, stuff about feelings and the meaning of life and how there's so much sadness, but that doesn't mean that every time you say it it's any less important.

IN THE END
we promised to meet up in the forest again on Friday whilst everyone else attended Jenny's funeral. She would be buried in America but there was going to be a special service for her friends in the local church – even though her real friends, us, weren't allowed to go. We decided that we'd get drunk and stoned in the woods like animals without a care, just one last time for us, for her; one last blowout.

By this time the twilight was dropping over the horizon and the canopies of the trees were sucking all the light so we made our way back home, single file. When we got off the mountain the stars were out and the sky was purple, with the last rays of sun spraying the western sky orange. We left Clare at the bottom of her drive, just a quick look back and a ‘See you'.

When she was gone Freddy pulled up alongside me, the sound of our tyres gripping the road drifting quietly with us.

‘You really do like her, don't you?' he said.

I stopped my bike. We were at the junction where Freddy would split away and head back to the school. He was going to get in trouble because he had been banned from leaving the school grounds but, just like in the song, he didn't even care.

‘Of course,' I said. ‘You know I do.'

For the longest moment Freddy stared at me. A few strands of hair in his fringe were caught in the wind.

‘What?'

He shook his head.

‘Nothing. It doesn't matter. I have to go. Say bye to Matt for me.' He wheeled his bike around and rode off.

‘OK,' I said. To myself.

Now it was just me and Matt. We pedalled all the way to my house, Matt unable to bear even the thought of going home. He wanted to stay out for ever. I put my bike away and wiped my hands on my jeans.

‘So, school tomorrow?' I said.

‘Yup.'

It was unbearable. I tried to imagine just how messed up seeing Jenny's body was going to make him during the dark stretches of the night. I couldn't comprehend how awful it must have been for him.

‘Don't go,' I said. ‘Cut class. I haven't exactly got anything to do.'

We smiled but it didn't hide our true despair.

‘We can hide out in the city.'

Matt sighed.

‘Fuck it. OK.'

‘Yeah?'

‘I'll pretend to go to school and call you in the morning. Are your parents going to be at work?' I knew he didn't mean it. He wasn't going to call me at all. He was just saying it to be nice.

‘I think so.' I felt incredibly emotional. Matt was my best friend and his life had stacked itself against him in such a way that it was all a dead end.

‘Rich,' he said. ‘You're a really good friend. You do know that I think that, don't you?'

‘Why does this sound like you're saying goodbye?'

Pause.

‘I'll call you at eleven,' he said. ‘And we'll tear the world apart.'

Pause.

‘Fine . . . so, do you want to hug this out?'

‘Do I fuck,' he laughed suddenly, jumping on his bike and burning away like a meteorite. ‘So long, sssssucker,' I heard him shout down the lane.

I laughed out loud. Just for a second there his old self was in him – that pure-of-heart child that could never be corrupted. It was so great to see it rise to the surface like that, so out of the blue. I watched him ride down to the bottom of the lane, round the corner, out of sight. That was the last time I ever saw him.

When I got inside it was like my whole house breathed a sigh of relief. My parents had been tearing their hair out, pacing up and down in the twilight.

‘Don't worry, I'm not dead,' I said bitterly and needlessly.

‘Where have you been?' said my mother, hardly able to stop herself shaking. She wasn't wearing make-up, which she
always
does, and she looked old, like her skull had shrunk and her skin had gone all saggy. She didn't even tell me off for saying flippantly that I wasn't dead. Rather she said, ‘Where have you been?' flatly, as though if she had injected the slightest inflection of emotion into her voice I would have jumped on it and hurt her like I had hurt her before. She was now aware that she couldn't square off to me any longer because I would call her bluff. So, instead, she just showed me without meaning to that she still loved me.

‘I've been out riding my bike,' I said, trying to apologize.

‘Oh.' She sat down in her chair and looked at her knees as if I wasn't in the room any more.

Just then a policeman entered the conservatory. He was wearing the uniform and holding a glass of water, which he handed to my mother.

‘Well, I'll leave you to it then.'

As he walked past, he looked at me with really reproachful eyes, like I was responsible for something very, very, very bad. I couldn't believe that the police had come round because I was missing. It seemed so surreal. I knew what this would mean though. It would mean that, after this, I was never going to be allowed to see my friends again. The adults, in all their wisdom, would see to that.

‘Will you tell us when you go out in the future?' my father asked politely, thinking he was treading on eggshells.

I felt a bit ashamed.

‘Sure,' I lied. I couldn't tell him that we were going to try and meet up the following Friday when Jenny's funeral was going on.

We all stayed still for a moment. I thought about what I could do next, like there were two roads in front of me, one dark, one light. To put it dramatically, I had to try and make a choice.

‘Did you see what I built for Toby?' I said and I pointed across the room, through the window to the Stevenson Screen stood proudly in the middle of the back garden. I tried to bring myself to smile to show them that I was OK, but I just couldn't do it.

THE NEXT MORNING
arrived and I awoke to the sight of my mother. She was sat on the end of my bed. Behind her, sunlight was blasting through the crack running down the centre of my curtains again.

‘I need to tell you something,' she said, echoing Clare's words from yesterday.

My head was still muffled by sleep. I closed my eyes, my mouth dry. I knew what she was going to say; she was going to tell me that I wasn't allowed to go to Jenny's funeral. I felt sorry for her but it still didn't stop me getting annoyed at her having to tell me so dramatically – sitting on the end of my bed until I woke up, Jesus.

‘Mum.' I opened my eyes a crack and squinted at her, the sun burning my retina. ‘I know I'm not allowed to go.'

‘Matthew's parents came here this morning.'

Jesus, I thought. He's dead. Suddenly everything went cold and I couldn't feel my arms and legs. My heart was throbbing like a pulsar, shooting shock waves out through my body. I didn't want my best friend in the whole world to be dead.