Something Wicked

“Come and get us,” Ritchie taunted.

Then he pulled me round the building to the door, guessing rightly that our pursuer would chase us in the direction of his voice. The other boys followed. We ran round the building, shot back inside and headed for the stairs. As fast as we could, almost tumbling, we catapulted ourselves down the foul-smelling concrete stairwell, round and round, down and down, until we hit the lobby.

“Let’s split,” Ritchie said.

Everyone ran off in different directions. Ritchie took my hand and walked slowly away with me. I could see what he was doing – making out as if we had nothing to do with trespassing on the roof, just a boy and a girl taking a stroll. Appearances were everything.

It didn’t matter, as no one came to run after us. We walked towards the precinct, not that the shops were open. I was feeling great – adrenaline was coursing through me and it created a big surge of happiness. At the back of my mind a rather tinny voice prattled, You shouldn’t have gone on the roof. It was trespassing and it was dangerous. But I didn’t care. I thought – what harm did we do anyone else? Why shouldn’t we go on the roof?

Once we reached the precinct Ritchie dropped my hand, and commented that we were safe now. He laughed, and I could tell he was in the same mood as me. If anything, the weather was sunnier. I just wanted the day to go on and on. When Ritchie suggested the park just outside Fairfield I tried not to sound too eager.

We walked up to the main road, crossed at the lights and made our way to the park entrance.

“So they’re your mates?” I asked him.

“Yeah, they’re all right. Tanner’s all right.”

“Did they go to your old school?”

“No.”

We reached the park gates. An ice-cream van was outside with a straggling queue. I was remembering what Loz had said about breaking into cars. The slight jolt it had given me had gone. It left me curious to know more.

“So where did you meet them?”

“Around. We hang out together during the day – used to hang out together when I first moved here, before I went back to school.”

“They wagged it?”

“No. They just didn’t go to school.”

We were walking along the main path that led to the centre of the park. Ritchie turned off to the left on to a narrower path that led to the lake. The ground was slightly uneven and I had to watch my footing. Once we came to the lake, it was easier. We headed for a bench and sat there. Further down a man and a boy were fishing, a dark green tent beside them.

“But I thought everyone has to go to school by law?” I questioned.

“Yeah, but not everyone does.” Ritchie lit a cigarette, and with each drag he became more talkative.

“I hated my last school. Everyone had it in for me. The teachers, right, you can tell they have favourites and I wasn’t one of them – no way. It was quite interesting, some of the stuff we did, but then half the time some old teacher would rush through the explanation when you were copying from the board or when the class was talking, and then refuse to repeat it, so I didn’t understand what was going on. Then they tell you off more and call you stupid. And you get to believe it after a while.”

I told him that was dreadful and St Tom’s wasn’t like that, but I knew I was lying. A few of the teachers treated us as if we were pretty hopeless, thinking that would encourage us.

“So I used to wag it,” Ritchie continued, “and then everyone would be on at me, so I’d go back to school, but by then I’d missed so much I couldn’t be arsed to catch up. And even the other kids treat you funny, like you don’t really belong. So you find you’re acting even more of a prat in order to get accepted.”

Ritchie laughed to himself.

I prompted him. “Go on.”

“Like this. There was this one teacher, Conner, taught science, who kept picking on me all the time. He really pissed me off. He asked me questions when he knew I didn’t know the answers, he made jokes about the stuff I was wearing and if anyone was talking, he’d be, like, ‘Ritchie! Get out!’ I hated his guts. So what I did, I got myself locked in the lab one lunch time and loosened the tap on the front bench. So when we had our lesson after lunch, he starts this experiment and goes, ‘… and you have to add some water’, turns on the tap and it shoots off right up in the air, and he gets soaked with water. Completely drenched. All over his face and shirt. It was just brilliant. The class was in hysterics.”

“Did he know it was you?”

“I didn’t wait to find out. I legged it and didn’t go back. I reckon they didn’t think it was me as there was nothing on my records when I started at St Thomas’s. It was all about having to come in every day. Making a commitment, all that crap.”

“I’m still surprised our school agreed to have you.”

“You wouldn’t be if you’d met Wendy – my mum. She was the one who arranged it. All that stuff about you’ve got to give him a second chance, and he needs a good school, and look how high his SATs marks were.”

“It’s good your mum cares about your education,” I commented.

“Yeah. She cares, all right.”

“Do you get on with her?”

Ritchie looked baffled for a moment, as if no one had ever asked him that question before. “Yeah, yeah. I do. She can be hard to live with, but she’s my mum.”

I could relate to that. I was quiet for a bit and stared ahead at the lake. Then I thought it was sad that Ritchie hadn’t had a proper education up till now, and then I thought that a so-called proper education wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Half of what I was learning for my GCSEs was going to be useless to me. And so much of the time I switch off in lessons – we all do. It unsettled me, the way Ritchie was making me see things differently. I had to admit he might be right about schools. But surely it couldn’t be right to steal, and that’s what he and his mates did. You see, at that point I still felt things like stealing and vandalism were wrong.

Ritchie carried on talking, telling me about his mates. None of them went to school either. Tanner had been relentlessly bullied and the school couldn’t stop it. Loz had been excluded lots of times. Woodsy used to go to a special place for kids thrown out of school, but he even refused to go there.

I asked him what they did all day. Ritchie lit another cigarette.

“Hang out in town. And we watch what’s going on, where they’re careless about security. We’ve nicked a few things. We know some people to pass them on to.”

I could tell he was trying to impress me. There was a slight swagger in his speech. After having admitted he’d opted out of school I suppose he felt the need to show me he was smart. But I told him he’d get into trouble, and you couldn’t defend theft. He turned then and looked me straight in the eye.

“Listen. In my life what have I taken? A few packs of fags, stuff that’s been left around where any fool can see it, cash if I can find it. And what’s been taken from me? Everything. I’ve got no future – I know that. I live in a stinking hole of a flat with my mum, who was kicked out of her job because the pub landlord wanted a younger barmaid – he robbed her of her income.

“Everywhere you look, people are on the game. Businessmen, politicians, builders – everyone’s on the make, everyone’s only out for number one. Even the bloody Big Issue sellers pretend they haven’t got change if you offer them a fiver. So tell me why I should be any different?”

At that moment a toddler set up a wail near us and I heard his mother screaming at him. But his wail drowned her voice. I tried to think what I could say to argue against Ritchie and came up with nothing. Looking at life from his point of view, I could see why he’d made his choices. They now seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

“My mum’s out of work too,” I offered. “Through stress. She’s normally a practice manager for some doctors, but she gets periods of depression, ever since my dad left. He lives in Exeter with my brother. I don’t get to see them very often. Do you see your dad?”

There was a beat, and Ritchie said, “I saw him the other day.”

“Yeah?” I encouraged him.

But Ritchie’s face had darkened into an ugly scowl. I backed off. I could see I’d accidentally soured the atmosphere, and that was the last thing I wanted to do.

“Let’s drop all this shit,” Ritchie interrupted. “I’m not a loser – even though you think I am.”

“I don’t,” I said.

But the atmosphere had changed, unmistakably. We both left the bench and walked on along the side of the lake for a while, saying nothing. A few clouds had appeared, though it was still a nice day. I tried to lighten up by telling him about school and trying to make him laugh. And I succeeded, and he told me about the books he’d been reading and about the punk tapes he collects, music from the seventies. He liked The Clash and The Adverts. He said just because he hadn’t gone to school didn’t mean he was braindead. He read the papers when he could. The more we were talking, the more I was beginning to see that Ritchie was my superior – he’d lived more and even read more. He’d had tough choices and he’d thought about things. I felt shallow in comparison. But that wasn’t a bad feeling. It made me determined to be more like him – that wasn’t a conscious determination. It was just his influence working on me.

We sauntered all the way to the gates at the other end of the park, which happened to be near my side of town. I knew I ought to offer to go, and I did. I asked Ritchie if he’d be in school tomorrow. He shook his head and I felt a rush of disappointment.

“Why?”

“It isn’t right for me. Maybe when I’m older, but not now. I’ve got to get my head straight first. But, Anna, I owe you some money.”

I was glad. It was a bond between us.

“Meet me at the shops near school at four. By Music Zone.”

I told him I would, and meant it. He turned and went back through the park. I began to walk in the direction of my house but I found I didn’t want to go home. I would have like to have stayed with Ritchie. This had been the best afternoon I’d had for ages. I wanted his life, not mine. Only we were so different – but were we?

I had a lot of thinking to do.

When I got home, I could tell my mum was feeling bad again. Sundays often got her like that – Sundays are pretty depressing for anyone, but my mum beats herself up about being off work and how it’s all her fault. She was sitting in the kitchen when I found her, cradling a cup of tea, her voice nervous and weepy. She asked me whether I’d managed to get any shoes and for a moment I hadn’t a clue what she was on about, until I remembered that was what I was supposed to have borrowed the money for.

“No,” I said. “I’m going to carry on looking.”

“I should have gone with you,” she said. “I’m such a bad mother.”

I told her she wasn’t. She disagreed, and said the proof was that she was off work on sick pay. I tried to argue with her but it was no use. In this mood, she keeps knocking herself all the time. Like a dog tied to a pole, she goes round and round in circles, treading the same ground. Dad left her because she wasn’t good enough for him, she ought to work on her self-esteem but what is there to like about her, life was just a black pit and she was at the bottom, what could she do to get out?

This might sound dreadful to you and maybe you’re feeling sorry for both us, imagining I get upset when my mum gets upset. I did in the beginning, but now I find I cut myself off and I don’t feel anything. It scares me sometimes, that I don’t feel anything. I just wait for her to stop. I do try to tell her positive things but I know from experience she won’t listen. Sometimes I feel resentful and I want to scream: “I’m only sixteen – what do you expect me to do?” Or I start thinking traitorous thoughts, like, you could help yourself if you want to. For example, Mum won’t take antidepressants because she says they’re drugs and she’s scared of being dependent on them. Instead she does all this therapy stuff.

But she was crying now so I knew I had to do something. I gave her a hug and said she ought to ring Julia and have a chat. That shows how desperate I was. I can’t stand Julia. Mum met her at the therapy group. She’s got more money than sense and too much time on her hands, as her husband is rolling in it. She doesn’t go to work, and her hobby is working on herself. She not only goes to the group therapy sessions, but she’s in private analysis with the therapist, and is in training to become a therapist herself. It’s a nice little business. A lot of money changes hands.

I realised I was starting to think like Ritchie. But he was right – he was so right. Here was my mother, ill and in need of help, and – hey presto! – here were lots of people eager to help her: her therapist, her hypnotherapist, her masseuse, all charging piles of money, feeding off my mother’s problems. Julia didn’t charge Mum anything, though. She just encouraged my mother, which is in some ways worse. But that night I wanted time alone, and I thought that Mum might as well ring Julia and let her listen.

I brought Mum the phone, went upstairs, and decided to run a bath. I love soaking in the warm water, preferably with a layer of bubbles. What I do is stare hard at the bubbles and the rainbow colours in them, and imagine each little bubble is a world in itself, with millions and millions of inhabitants no bigger than atoms. I’ve done that since I was a kid. Then I smash the bubbles like a vengeful god.

I lay back in the water, replaying all the things that had happened in the last twenty-four hours. But I’m not really one for thinking about the past much; I’m more interested in the future. I was glad I’d be seeing Ritchie again. Then asked myself, why? Do you fancy him? I moved some of the bubbles over my exposed body.

I liked him, definitely. I felt we were very similar in some ways. The fact he operated outside the law was frightening and exciting at the same time. I also suspected he had opened up to me in a way that he didn’t with his mates. Opened up. Yeuch! A phrase of my mother’s. I mean, we talked a lot, and it was good. And, yes, I liked his face, and I had to admit, he wouldn’t have had this effect on me if he was a girl. Which might mean something. But now all I wanted was his friendship, and I wasn’t going to risk that by introducing all that stupid boyfriend/girlfriend stuff. Like he said, we were mates. And that was more than good enough. Anyway, it felt all wrong, me and Ritchie dewy-eyed, in luuurve. That wasn’t what it was all about.

The water was cooling now so I heaved myself out of the bath, took the largest towel and wrapped myself in it. School would be bearable tomorrow because I had something to look forward to at the end of it. I debated whether to get straight into my pyjamas even though it was only five, and spend the rest of the night chilling. But that seemed a bit of a slobby thing to do, so I went back to my room and got back into my jeans and a sweater.

It was lucky I did, because when I got downstairs, Julia was there.

“Anna darling! Come here. Let me kiss you. No – both cheeks. You look gorgeous. Anna – your poor mother. What shall we do with her? I thought rather than speak on the phone I’d come straight round and be here for her.”

I forced a smile.

Julia was sitting on the sofa with Mum, holding both her hands. It made me feel a bit sick – jealous, even – and so I let a sarcastic comment out.

“How’s your non-specific anxiety disorder, Julia?” This is what she claims to be suffering from. In plain English, that’s worrying needlessly.

“Thank you for asking, honey. I’m making progress. I understand now that it comes from caring too much – it’s the result of a caring overload.”

Oh, puh-lease!

“Anna,” my mum said. “Can you make Julia a drink?”

Grudgingly I asked the traditional questions. Tea? Coffee? Milk? Sugar?

“Do you have anything herbal?” Julia asked. “Camomile would be a joy.”

I was waiting for the kettle to boil when my ears picked up the tune of Celine Dion’s My Heart Will Go On. I was puzzled for a moment or two, until I realised it was Julia’s mobile ringtone. I made a retching motion to myself. Then I heard her chatting to Geoff, her husband, confirming my suspicions. Julia’s voice was loud and brash, and it carried. When she finished the call, she carried on making my mum feel better.

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