SHRUBS (Part Two)

(11: 22)

Profoundly uncomfortable, I unzipped my bag and fished around inside without looking, faking nonchalance while keeping my eyes fixed on the mounds of cigarette filters strewn across the ground, some embedded in the mud like archaeological relics. Catcher in the Rye was suddenly forgotten as my fingers alighted upon a spiral-bound notebook that didn’t belong to me. I pulled it out, hoping that it might provide the three of us with a distraction.

Looking back I’m not sure why I had bothered picking it up in the first place: a scuffed, anonymous notebook lying in the middle of the busy corridor. Predictably, halting in the midst of predators, I got my hand trodden on and some comedian booted me in the arse while I was bent over. Yet I’d clutched it to my torso triumphantly and shuffled away, stuffing it into my bag as I ducked casually out of the building and headed for The Shrubs. Now, holding it almost solemnly in both hands, I scanned the front and back covers for clues as to whom it belonged to, but they were devoid of the mandatory doodles and heart-enclosed initials.

“What’s that, Gareth?”

Ed had taken no notice of me, still engrossed in decorating the brown plastic with obscenities, but Kylie – standing awkwardly to one side with shoulders hunched and arms folded across her infamous chest – was desperate to take the edge off our silence.

“It’s just a notebook I found in the Science block,” I said.

“What, someone’s homework?”

I shrugged. “Dunno. Haven’t looked yet, have I?”

Kylie nodded glumly and turned away, accustomed to her participation being unwelcome. I inwardly cursed my feeble communication skills; to hurt Kylie’s feelings felt akin to breaking an unwritten code, as if I’d brought the outside world into The Shrubs with me. I hadn’t realised until that moment just how carefully Ed and I tended to step around each other’s fragile egos.

Clearing my throat, I asked, “Do you want to have a look with me?”

She answered in the affirmative by taking a few steps closer. I held the book at an angle so that we could both see the front cover. Kylie glanced from my face to the notebook and back at me again.

“You gonna open it then?”

“Yeah but…it’s probably just homework like you said, and that’s boring. So we chuck it in the bushes: Game Over, forty minutes left to kill. That’d be crap.”

“So?”

“So we have to make it last a bit. Like at Christmas when you don’t open a present straight away because you want to take a guess first.”

Ed looked up from his project. “Like when you want it to be an X-Box but it turns out to be Hungry, Hungry Hippos from the Oxfam – with all the little balls missing, so the hippos are never gonna get fed?”

“Yeah, except the opposite of that. So, OK, this is probably just homework but…it might be…Leanne Bridge’s diary.”

Leanne Bridge was a bitch. She and her elitist group of friends went out of their way to humiliate Kylie on a daily basis. A few days previous I’d seen them follow her all the way down to the school gates, barking like dogs and sprinkling things in her hair – pushing and shoving Kylie whenever she stopped walking in the vain hope that they’d go on ahead. They were probably the main reason why she hated PE so much. I could easily imagine thirty girls following Leanne’s lead; taunting Kylie as she tried to get changed, hiding her things, spitting on her. A session of netball wasn’t worth going through that even once, never mind two hours every week.

Ed and I glanced at Kylie but she didn’t seem to grasp the potential significance.

“What?”

“It’s a game, yeah? If B had that evil cow’s diary in his hands…her diary, yeah? We’d know what lads she fancies, the times she’s fingered herself, everything she doesn’t want people to know about…”

“Oh. OK, I get it. Soz. We could blackmail her or something.”

Kylie’s dull tone was a lesson in anti-climax. However wrong it might be to feel angry with a dim, miserable girl who was a moving target from the minute she woke up, I was a bit pissed off.

“Never mind, forget it.” I opened the zipper of my bag to push the notebook back inside.

“Aww, give it here! B, give it us!”

I handed the notebook to Ed, puzzled by his sudden excitement. He gripped it tensely in both hands. “Dear diary, my name is Dan Miller and I think…I think I’m gay!”

We cracked up as soon as he’d spluttered the final, all-mighty G-word. Daniel Miller was one of the more aggressive tormentors from my tutor group. It had been he who compared me to the statue of Buddha in our RE textbook, effectively wiping out my real name.

Ed shoved the notebook back into my own hands.

“Er…OK, the reason I think I must be gay is because…”

Struggling, I only needed to glance at Ed’s eager expression to gain momentum. Dan had recently discovered a new hobby: repeatedly stabbing people’s backs and arms with his compass. Ed sat in front of him for both French and Maths.

“…because I can’t stop thinking about Mr. Houghton naked!”

Result. Ed hooted loudly and collapsed backwards, laughing so hard he got tears in his eyes; Kylie was giggling; my cheeks were aching like they were going to split. I hadn’t felt this good during school hours in a long time. The possibilities of this game were endless – pretty much everyone in Year Eight had screwed us over at one point or another, which meant we could exact individual revenge upon around a hundred and thirty kids.

“Give it us!”

I passed Kylie the notebook, which she promptly flipped open. Ed and I exchanged aghast faces. “Kylie! For fuck’s sake...”

“Go on then, what does it say?” I asked her.

“Nothing. It’s empty. What yuz on about, diaries and all that?”

Ed sprang to his feet and we both rushed to book-end Kylie, peering at the alleged diary as she flipped through a couple of pages.

“She’s right, nothing in it,” I sighed.

“Told you. What you want to check for? I ain’t that thick, I know what letters look like. Pricks!” She thrust the notebook in my direction and stomped a few feet away.

“What you on about? We weren’t calling you thick…”

Kylie didn’t turn around but it was obvious she was crying because her shoulders were trembling. I looked at Ed in dismay and he heaved the sigh of someone about to make a major sacrifice. He walked over to Kylie, tapped her on the shoulder and held out his crinkled packet of Richmond to her.

“Save me twos though, yeah?”

Kylie sniffled a few times and said of course she would. She eased out a cigarette, stuck it in her mouth and flicked hair off her face with a skilful toss of the head so that Ed could light it for her, like the tough guys in old black and white films. Her eyes looked scary where the mascara had run but I decided not to mention it – Ed wasn’t the only gentleman in The Shrubs. We stood in a semi-circle, Kylie considerately blowing the smoke upwards.

 

(11: 35)                                                                                                                                 

 

“Bet none of them would keep a diary anyway,” Ed muttered.

“Yeah, too brain-dead,” I said.

“You ever done one?” he asked me.

“Only the ones they made us keep in primary school.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that! Had to put what you got up to at the weekend. Chips for dinner, watched telly, all that crap. Nosy bastards.”

“Is that all you’re meant to write,” asked Kylie, “what you ate and what’s on TV? I thought diaries was all your secrets and that.”

“Well yeah, but not when your teacher’s gonna mark it after,” Ed pointed out.

“Oh yeah.”

“And they used to show your Mum and Dad at Parents’ Evening,” I said.

“See what I mean? Checking up on you…”

I laughed. “Paranoid much?”

“Nah, diaries just get you in trouble. Because someone finds them, and then they got power over you innit, if you’ve wrote down all your secret thoughts.”

“Diaries are for girls and serial killers,” I scoffed. “I haven’t got any secret thoughts.”

“What you lying for, B? Everyone does. Here…” Ed snatched the notebook from me. “Dear diary, it’s me, Gareth. I wish Dan Miller was dead. If I had some poison I’d dip my compass in it and shank him, but they don’t sell poison at Asda so –”

“Pack it in.” I snatched the book back, feeling weirdly exposed.

“Well, what would you write then? If you had to do a diary, and it was just for you, what would you write? Basically how much you hate Dan and Mark and Jason and Leanne…”

“He ain’t gonna say, is he? Not to us,” said Kylie.

“What’s the point in writing something if no one’s ever gonna read it? I don’t get it. Pass my fag, you’re nearly on thirds there.”

Kylie delicately handed the cigarette to Ed without burning either of their fingers.

“You do it then. For yourself,” I snapped, waving the notebook at Ed.

“I’m busy,” he said, gesturing to the cigarette.

Kylie was staring thoughtfully at the notebook. Softly, she asked, “If you ever found my diary, would you read it and tell everyone what it said?”

“Nope,” I said.

“No way.”

She held her hand out. “Can I have a go?” she asked shyly.

“What, you want to use this for your diary?”

“No,” she said, “I’m dyslexic or something. If I wrote stuff down it wouldn’t make sense.”

“So what you want it for?” drawled Ed, blowing smoke rings and watching them gently stretch and ascend towards the sun.

Kylie’s expression faltered. We’d done it again, ruined her trust.

“Nothing...” she muttered.

It was my time to sigh and sacrifice. I knew what she wanted. She wanted to erupt on us, for all the hurt and hate to spill out into The Shrubs and drown us in irreversibility. I didn’t really want that to happen but for some reason, seeing the regret in her eyes, I didn’t want it not to happen either. It felt huge and important that Kylie should trust the two of us enough to do that.

I passed her the notebook. “Of course you can use it,” I said, trying to inject some friendliness and sincerity into those six words.

Kylie gripped the ends in her hands like an accordion player with stage-fright. I noticed for the first time how perfectly aligned her front teeth were as she gnawed nervously at her plump lower lip. In spite of everything – the dull hair, stooping posture, emerging clusters of acne – she was, in that instant, beautiful. Her eyes, usually sullen and downcast, shone with anxiety as she searched our faces for signs of acceptance. The impotent guilt felt familiar; I’d once been bombarded with it when my uncle took me to Battersea Dogs' Home, walking down the Death Row of wet noses desperately pressed against wire mesh. Fixing my gaze on Ed’s scuffed school shoes, I tried to arrange my face into an encouraging smile that she couldn’t mistake for mockery.

Kylie’s lips parted to speak, slammed shut before any words could escape then parted again. “D-dear Diary. You know the stuff people say about me, what I did in Lee Woolcott’s garage? I thought he liked me. But he went and told everybody and now they think I’m a slag. I don’t know what people want no more. Nobody likes me, swear my own mum wishes I was never born. Can’t do nothing right, can’t go anywhere without people starting on me. I’m sick of it. Yuz know what it’s like, I know you do.” Sniffling, she gestured towards Ed and me with the hand holding the notebook. “How come everyone hates us? For no reason, just decided to hate us. I try and be nice to people and they rub my face in the shit. Try and avoid people and they come after you anyway. What’s the point in trying to be liked? What’s the point in any of it? I’m stuck on the outside.”

She was panting slightly, winded by the outpouring of all that verbal vomit.

“Hey, come on, it’ll be alright,” I said lamely. “Only three more years and we’re out of here. We can go to college in a different city or something. None of them will be there.”

“I’ve thought about it,” Kylie said. “Running away, going somewhere no one knows me. But that’s just stupid. It won’t make a difference where I go. Things will still be shit because I’ll still be me. There’s something wrong with how I am but I dunno what it is so I dunno how to change it.” She paused, anticipating a reaction.

Wincing, my mind flashed back to the morbid images I’d envisioned before, those early endings to our tragic lives. I waited for Ed’s kindness to save the day.

“So…what you guys doing for lunch?” he asked. His voice cracked on the word ‘what’.

Shocked by his lack of sensitivity, I turned on him. Ed was looking away from us, face tilted towards the sky. I could see the glistening wet streak down his cheek, a shiny globule hovering on his lower eyelashes. And I realised that he wasn’t going to acknowledge the things Kylie had just said. He couldn’t, it was too painful.

As for lunch, I had no money. Dan Miller had pocketed my Twix during morning registration while my sandwiches, lovingly prepared by Mum the night before, were being stuffed down the back of a radiator, courtesy of his mate Mark Dougall. This was becoming a daily ritual; there was a good chance I’d be as skinny as Ed and Kylie by the time the summer holidays arrived. With nothing to eat, I could avoid the canteen and outdoor areas. I would sidle into the library to claim a secluded table at the back, behind the Science section where it was unlikely anybody would spot me, the same as every other lunchtime.

“I’ve got to meet up with some people,” I said.

Ed cleared his throat. “Same here, mate…yeah. What about you, Kylie?”

She shrugged. “Got a lunch pass. Might just go home for a bit.”

And not return for afternoon classes, same as every other day she could get away with it.

 

(11:59)

The bell in the Art and Design block warned us that lessons were about to finish. It was time to move. Ed peered cautiously around the side of the bushes, checking for teachers and other enemies. Then the three of us emerged from The Shrubs and went off our separate ways.