The Suicide Club (41 page)

Oh God, Matt, I thought. What have you done? I remembered him up on that motorway bridge with Jenny before she killed herself; the image burning itself on to my memory. This was why he did it. My heart yawned open, a big hole appearing in its centre, visceral and
exposed to the big bad world that had driven us all to this.

‘Richard?' My mother had placed her hand on my leg. ‘Are you OK?'

I couldn't answer.

‘They gave me this letter,' she said.

I opened my eyes slightly and regarded her, the bright sunshine from the curtain crack lighting the back of her hair. In this strange light her face looked weirdly sallow.

‘Letter?'

In her hand she held a white envelope. Delicately, she placed it on my duvet. I wiped the sleep from my eyes and squinted to focus. A letter? Brought by his parents? I ripped open the envelope and started to read.

A moment passed, my mother still sat on my bed, only there to enjoy the drama of my despair.

‘Richard, are you OK?'

I had closed my eyes.

‘I'm fine.' I swallowed. ‘Just leave me alone.'

Silence. Her hand was still on my leg.

‘This is the best way.'

‘Please just leave me alone, Mum.'

‘I can't,' she choked. She thought I was going to commit suicide.

‘Mum, I'm not going to do anything stupid . . . today.' I winced when I said it.

‘Richard . . .'

‘Mum, please.'

She waited for a moment and then I felt my bed lighten as she stood up. And left.

My bedroom had that sci-fi silence in it, you know? So this would be how everything started to unravel. There was a darkness inside me, something bad; a thought. Was I really thinking that his non-death was an anticlimax?

I felt cold. Matt was a coward, a snivelling little rat. No, he was a snake. A fucking snake. He had succumbed utterly, capitulated entirely. How could he be so fucking stupid? How could he just fall in line with the mediocre like this? The whole point of the Club was
not
to fall in line, right? I resented him for being such a coward, for deserting us. Since Jenny's death, everything had been intense, melancholic and beautiful. But now, with this, all that had been zapped away. Matthew had wrecked everything. I didn't care that he was still alive, that meant nothing to me. All that mattered was that he had left me.

As usual, I knew that this anger, this one feeling that I had let through the barriers, was only there to take away the attention from the second, deeper feeling. There's no point in hiding it any more. The truth is, I do one thing, feel one way, so that I don't have to accept another feeling, a deeper, more painful experience. Maybe you've already picked up on this. When I was horrible to the counsellors in school, it was
because I didn't want to listen to what they were telling me. This is so hard to write. When I threw the computer monitor and got expelled it was because Emma had rejected me. My God, I can't believe I'm about to tell you this but when I signed the Suicide Club Charter it was – oh God – because we had killed Bertie and I couldn't handle the fact that I was becoming unpopular so, rather than allow my friends to leave me, I left them. That's the truth, unblinking and deadly. You see? Shit. I'm sort of crying as I write this.

And here I was doing it again. I was pretending to be angry with Matt because the real truth was far too painful. I was not ready for that yet. The information that I had read off that letter, the
deep meaning
, was being carried by electrical impulses in the outer regions of my brain. It was pushing in on me like a planet trying to get through my bedroom window, so much gravity like a star in collapse.

The message was skipping from synapse to synapse, biding its time, encroaching on me, swimming around me. Circling sharks. But these neon-blue tadpoles of information didn't come any closer. Before reaching the centre of my brain they stopped, like soldiers in an army taking up positions in anticipation of a deadly, synchronized attack that could come at any time. But not yet – I wasn't ready. If they attacked now it would be too early. They knew that they could cause more damage later. So they waited.

Numb, I picked up the phone and called Clare, concentrating hard on each key that I tapped. I had to do something to take my mind off Matt. I had to speak to somebody who still loved me. At the other end I got ringing.

Click
. ‘Hello?' Her voice was tinny, distant.

‘Hey.'

‘He's gone.' Her voice was trembling.

‘I don't care. He's a traitor,' I said half-heartedly.

‘Don't say things like that.'

‘Why not? I should have known he'd do something like this. He was never as good as us at anything.' I hated saying it, but I had to say it because the real truth would have hurt too much. ‘Are you in school?'

She hesitated.

‘No, I'm at home. My father won't even let me out of the house after yesterday. Not even for school.'

I lay in bed, my eyes closed as I spoke.

‘Can I ask you something?'

There was silence at her end.

‘Matt told me that you've felt bullied by the other kids in school.' I paused. ‘Clare?'

‘I'm here.'

‘Is that true?'

The faint crackle of static sang into my ear. And then, through the electric hiss, I heard a sob.

‘Clare?' My heart burned. Surely this couldn't be happening. Clare was in the Suicide Club – why was she letting normal people get to her?

‘I . . . just . . .'

I felt unable to speak.

‘They're just so mean to me,' she said, trying not to cry, her voice wavery.

‘Is that why Jenny killed herself, do you think?'

She sniffled.

‘I don't know.'

‘So' – this was hard – ‘did you only hang around with us in the end because you had nobody else? Not because you wanted to?' My skin felt hot.

There was a long pause.

‘No . . . I don't think so . . . I don't know. Maybe. God, why do you have to say stuff like this?'

‘I thought you liked me.'

Really quickly, she said,' I do like you.' There was a slight delay. I was back in her bedroom, trying on my bees knees T-shirt, watching her face glow with happiness.

We stopped right there and recomposed. I hated that she was almost crying at the other end. Had I really not noticed the way that the others were responding to all this suicide/bullying/reaction stuff? Had the others been going through a whole different experience to me since Bertie, since Craig? Had they been going through hell? Some friend I was if I didn't notice that. We were supposed to be together for reasons of friendship and love, not desperation. If they had felt like that, then the Suicide Club had failed.

I suddenly remembered something that me and Clare used to do before all this mess. Back then, if I was feeling down, I would text her a sad face
, and she would do the same to me if something had made her upset. Then, we would reply to the sad face with a smiley face
. It showed that we were there for each other. To finish it all off, to show that the text had cheered me up, I'd reply
. That was how it worked. But not any more. I had destroyed my phone, just like everything else. There were no more smiley faces.

I suddenly heard a noise in the background of Clare's line.

‘Who's that?' a voice said. It was her father, the evil oil baron. ‘Nobody,' I heard her say before turning her attention back to me. ‘Rich,' she sighed,' I have to go.'

‘Wait,' I said quickly. ‘Clare, I'm always going to be there for you, no matter what. You're never alone, OK?' My heart was beating really fast but I just thought it was important that I told her that.

There was a brief pause at her end.

‘I've really got to go.' And she clicked off.

I SPENT THE
next three days in a weird hinterland of existence, all of the colours bleaching to grey.

In the early hours of the morning, when I was in bed, my parents had started arguing again, just like they had done before they split up when I was younger. They would try to keep their voices down but occasionally they would explode and their hate would blast through my floor and into my head.

The police came round again to ask me some questions and my parents finally told me that I wasn't allowed to go to Jenny's funeral. They left it to the police to tell me that Clare's parents were going to take out a restraining order on me. How fucking crazy is that? I was only a fifteen-year–old, for Christ's sake. And I loved the way they thought it was my fault and not hers.

Because our group had been so utterly ripped asunder and I had no contact with anybody because the adults thought they knew best, I had no idea what was happening to Freddy. I was sure he was still up at the school because his parents were both working away and couldn't get back. Some parents.

An army of media had descended on our town by now because, although Jenny's death was a few days old, the whole nation had fallen in love with our tragedy and the news was
still white hot. Though I didn't really read the articles, the newspapers had streams of words telling everybody how we had killed ourselves with apparently no motive. Even though the Suicide Club Charter had been found on Jenny, people still refused to accept responsibility.