Fifteen Bones Read online

  “Hang on,” some hooded genius cried from inside the classroom. “Who the hell’s that?”

  I dug in my bag for my inhaler and took a few burning puffs. I opened the door. There was a pause before the entire class bawled with laughter. The red-faced teacher squinted at my stupid mug and went, “What on Earth have you done to your face?”

  I pointed to myself.

  The class laughed.

  “Yes, you,” he said. “Well?”

  Pause.

  I slowly pointed towards my forehead. “You think I did this to my own face?”

  The class laughed again, and it wasn’t at me, it was with me.

  I waited for the pause. “Maybe after school I’ll go up Luton and try and get myself killed.”

  The class laughed again. The teacher’s eyes vibrated back and forth as he weighed the cost of battle. “Go and sit down,” he said.

  I headed towards the back of the class to a table occupied by a skinny white kid in a Yankees cap. For a second I thought I had escaped. The laughter was on my side. I was going to be an eccentric character, with witty jokes and attentive friends, but as I took another step the Yankees-cap boy sprang up. “I am not sitting next to him if he’s gay.”

  He shuffled his chair to another table, but the occupants immediately moved away, and this set off a cascade of pushing and shoving.

  “Get off!”

  “God, extra.”

  “Get off me, man.”

  “Everybody, calm down,” the teacher said, but he was drowned by the commotion.

  I was far away from the door and I started to panic. A tiny girl with high socks clattered out of the crowd and slapped the dust from her skirt. “Budget,” she muttered. She pulled her bag over her shoulder. The bag was so big it made her look like she was playing a double bass. Her tiny fingers tapped on the strap and her foot tapped the floor. Her eyes were wide and open. She looked calm. She looked like she knew herself. “Budget, homophobic, frigid tossers.”

  “Calm down, Clarissa,” the teacher said.

  A tall, olive-skinned boy with black hair parted the sea of bodies to arrive at my radioactive table. “As if he’d put that on his own head? It was obviously Darscall.”

  “Ooooh!” the class said.

  He pointed at the kid in the Yankees cap. “He done the same thing to you, Sean. I don’t know what you’re being such a bitch about. What was it he wrote?”

  “Yeah, nothing,” Sean said.

  “Go on, what was it?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh, what was it?” The tall boy pressed his hands to his eyes.

  “Balls.” Sean shrugged and everyone laughed. “Yeah, yeah, all right. Balls.”

  “Yeah,” the tall boy said. “You was Balls O’Brien all of Year 7.”

  More laughter. Clarissa, the girl with the double-bass bag, smiled sleepily at him.

  “So I call amnesty on this one,” the boy said.

  “All right,” came the general murmur.

  “Peace in the Middle East.”

  The tension broke and people laughed. The boy had deep brown eyes, dark hair gelled carefully into an upright mess, big lips, and white teeth like an American. He had a calm superiority. He looked like one of those sardonic cats who live in leafy London, the ones who don’t blink at loud noises.

  “Kane,” he said as he sat next to me. “Welcome to Special Measures.”

  I opened my mouth but no sound came out.

  A sumo-sized boy with an apple-shaped face walked over, pulled out a chair and joined us. The class looked across at him. He gave them a bored smile.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled as he sat down. “Jake.”

  “Bash,” he replied.

  “Is that short for Bashir?”

  “Yes, and?”

  My fingers curled into the flesh of my palms and my knees pressed together. I was once told with great confidence that I was so pasty that every little thing that came out of my stupid mouth sounded racist. What team do you support? Racist. What page are we on? Racist. You want my pudding? Racist. Is that short for Bashir? Racist. I vowed not to speak again.

  Bash opened a textbook, removed a small black notebook from the pocket of his blazer, and resumed his note-making.

  Sean shuffled back to our table and a girl with dirt rings on her neck followed. Then everyone wanted to sit at the table, just to show how charitable they were, and that irritated me more than the initial scramble to get away.

  Kane looked at me. “Wasn’t you in my primary school?”

  I panicked. If anyone found out what had happened, it would eclipse announcing myself to my new school with “gay” written across my forehead.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Yeah. You was. Ellie’s in Brixton, isn’t it. St Eloïse. Brixton massiv. You hung round with that kid, what was his name?” He clicked his fingers. “Skinny little … Isaac. Isaac! That was him. Ise. I liked him. You was some sort of act. Like twins. You used to do them shows, the pair of you singing and cracking jokes. You was jokes.”

  I fiddled with my phone. “That wasn’t me.”

  “Yeah, it was. You was jokes. You give me laughs, fam. You give me laughs. What was that? What … yeah, the Real Fly Rabbi! We used to film it. Who else? Oh, Albert. Albert! And that teacher, Mr Reacher, who was always, like, hungover and like teaching stuff like how to eat cold pizza. It was well funny. You used to do those raps. ‘Scrub your woks, Iron your socks…’ You had that song called ‘Punch Me in the Face’:

  There’s a girl who caught my eye

  With just one look

  And one right hook.

  You was jokes.”

  I couldn’t believe he remembered the words. I didn’t recognize Kane at all. Maybe I never noticed him before. Maybe he’d gone through such a massive Croydon Makeover that he looked completely different. “That wasn’t me.”

  “It was you.” Kane sat closer. “What happened to him and you? You went the good school, eh. Skeen.”

  I prayed the searching look in his eyes would stop. He couldn’t know what I did. It was news that would spread like nothing else, even wildfire isn’t wireless.

  “So?” Kane said. “Where you bin?”

  Five schools, four hospitals, a courthouse and a madhouse.

  “Nowhere,” I said.

  “You look like a right gaylord with that on your face,” Sean said. He couldn’t take his eyes off me.

  “What gives it away?” I said.

  The others laughed.

  “Are you gay then?” Sean said.

  “Does it matter?” I said. They laughed again and Sean shifted in his seat.

  The bell went and the class crowded out. “Here,” Kane said, handing me a shiny LA Lakers cap. “Lend this.”

  “I can’t,” I said, terrified to be seen with it. “I’d get rushed.”

  “Rushed like doughnuts.” Kane laughed as he took back the cap and put it in his bag. He looked up and caught me staring at him. I snapped my eyes away.

  “Here.” He handed me a permanent marker pen. The other kids were closing in on us. I looked at it and wanted him to stay and for him to go away.

  “Come out, let’s goooo,” called the mob.

  “Use it to—”

  “Come aaaaaaaaaaaht.”

  “All right, I gotta go, yeah.” He backed away. “Get some emo to borrow you some nail polish remover, you get me? And stay away from the tower four yard, that’s where Darscall hangs out with his lap dogs.” He was at the door. “And don’t go around a—”

  He was swept into the human traffic. I looked at the marker pen and felt the nail polish remover in my pocket, and wondered what strange trick he was playing.

  The corridors were swarming with taggers. They slung eyes at everyone who walked past. As t
he bell rang for lunch, the taggers wailed and I retreated to a toilet cubicle. I sat cross-legged on the toilet so no one could see my feet. I wasn’t going to walk into any more lessons like that, and there was no way I was going to any canteen, don’t even mention canteens to me.

  Perhaps Kane thought I should colour in the letters. I could make them spell GAP or OAP. Then I’d be the most popular boy in the world. I thought of how Mother removes the oil from Death Houses by rubbing even more oil into the stain. I looked at my distorted reflection in the bog-roll dispenser and traced the tiny tail of the “Y” with the pen and wiped it with nail polish remover. The ink came off. I wrote over the word. I shook the nail polish remover on to the toilet paper and wiped it across my forehead. I thought it would burn but it didn’t. I looked at my reflection and the ink had vanished. I felt faint with relief.

  The rest of the morning was a waiting game. I read old texts on my phone until I had to emerge and go to the first afternoon lesson and make the register.

  Near the English corridor was a wall of sporting trophies and medals. I scanned the photographs, looking for the girl next door. The faces were determined and proud, happy to be in their sports gear. I lingered on the face of one girl for longer than the others, a skinny Jamaican girl with green eyes so electric they beamed out from the photograph, shoulders like a jaguar, slender muscled arms, a stomach as flat as a board and a hint of glee teasing the corner of her mouth.

  Year 8 athletics squad, I read. They called themselves the “Insain Bolts”. They had won “gold, gold, gold and gold”.

  She seemed so familiar, but it couldn’t be her, she looked so bright and excited.

  Kane was coming down the corridor towards me. “Where were you all morning?”

  “Oh … school tour,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” he said, “touring around a toilet all morning, more like.”

  I hung my head.

  “Got that off then.” He pointed at my forehead.

  My eyes were all over the place. I hated that he was looking at my face. “Thank you,” I managed.

  “You had your first day rush?”

  “No. Give it time.”

  Kane laughed and looked like a toothpaste advert.

  We turned into the English classroom and I bumped momentarily into his hard body. Because I was disorientated, or because I’d been hiding out for so long – or because I was such an all-round idiot – I started talking.

  “Why would someone wear the same bandana every day?”

  “Because they’re in a gang?” Kane said absently.

  “What gang?”

  “What colour was it?”

  “Grey.”

  “CRK, from Wimbledon,” Kane said, looking around. “Dangerous.”

  “Wimbledon? Dangerous?” I tried to keep him talking as people shoved past us into the classroom. “What do they do? Threaten people with couscous and Frappuccinos?”

  “Maybe the Wimbledon you go to,” Kane said. “Why do you even want to know?”

  “No reason.”

  “Yeah, right,” Kane laughed. “You couldn’t lie in bed.”

  Before I could laugh he’d gone to the front of the class and left me hovering at the back. I wondered if he was one of those welcome committees like they have in America, and would evaporate the next day.

  The English classroom was painted a rose colour. Light streamed in through the windows. Above the interactive whiteboard was an origami crane, and above that some hand-painted calligraphy:

  There is another world, but it is in this one.

  When everyone had taken their seats I found myself an empty chair and sat down. It was empty because it was not quite at the back, and not quite at the front, but in the precarious middle realm where the back of the head is an easy target for flying Blu-tack.

  The teacher was dealing with an argument between a group of girls who had all sculpted their hair to cover their left eyes, so they struggled to stare each other down, and ended up curving towards each other like courting penguins.

  I searched the hand-painted quote on my phone. Yeats.

  “Wha’ your coo?” a voice said.

  I ignored it. A foot thumped the back of my chair. “Wha’ coo?”

  I turned to a boy in a Lakers cap, sitting so low in his chair his arse missed the seat. “What?”

  “What your coo?”

  “Coo?”

  “Crew.” He spat the word.

  “I haven’t got one,” I said.

  “You ain’t got no coo?”

  “No.”

  “Das gay, man. Das bad, man.” He laughed a fake laugh and advised me of the many ways in which my life, virginity and metal health were at peril, speaking in such stilted English it had regressed to German. “Das moist. Das gay.”

  I thanked him for the advice and he sat back, chuckling to himself. It was a fake chuckle and I think I hate the sound of fake laughter more than I hate the sound of foxes or those heroin foils or pretty much anything else.

  I ran my finger over the dollars-and-skull tag engraved into the desk. A slim hand handed me a mark scheme and I woke up to myself.

  “You must be Jake. I’m Miss Price.” The teacher’s singsong voice came to me through the fog. Her nose crinkled. She had perfect skin and short Afro-textured hair that patterned her skull. She was wearing bright green. Her sweater sucked flat against her stomach and her forearms were hardened against the bone. Her shoulders were squared. If you hold your shoulders square it means you’ve got back muscles. If you’ve got muscles across your back, it means you’re fit. Really fit. “And what’s your name?” she smiled.

  “Jake.” I shrugged.

  “Jay?”

  “Jake,” I said.

  “Jason?”

  I coughed, “Jake.”

  “Jake. You shouldn’t mumble, Jake. You should respect what you have to say.”

  I shrugged again. “OK.”

  “You mustn’t shrug, Jake. It’s a non-committal gesture.”

  I hung my head.

  “And what’s the story of your name?” she asked. “Everyone listening. Jake? What’s the story of your name?”

  She remained in front of me, nodding and smiling, and I felt terrible for her because if I kept quiet for much longer she would lose control of the class. “Jake is one of the most common names in the world. So’s Jones.” I shrugged, avoiding her eye. “Jones means ‘son of John’, but I’m the son of David so … maybe there’s something my mother isn’t telling me.”

  Nothing.

  “And what about Jake?” she asked. “Paint a picture.”

  What picture? If you have a Coca-Cola name, it’s obvious that there was no real thought behind it, it’s just a name.

  I couldn’t think of any story. My mind used to be so quick I could spar with Isaac and make him laugh. Where could my name have come from? Miss Price looked around and lightly scratched the left side of her long neck. She wasn’t going to be able to hold the class’s attention for much longer. “I was named after the dog,” I said.

  “Lovely,” Miss Price said.

  “Nob!” someone said, and the class bawled with laughter. It took Miss Price a good while to calm everyone down.

  Miss Price handed out a copy of the poem “Suicide in the Trenches” to everyone. She also gave me a new exercise book. “I want you to write me a letter telling me all about yourself.”

  As she spoke to the class I opened my new book, cracking the spine. I looked at the blank page and smoothed my hand over the paper. I used to love school.

  Miss Price was talking about Siegfried Sassoon and how he had been a war hero. “Then,” she said, “he took his medal of honour and threw it in the river. So let me ask you this: why do you think he threw his medal away?” No one answered. “Why do you think he threw his�
�� List – en – ing. Why did he throw his medal away?”

  He didn’t.

  I put my head to the table.

  Sassoon didn’t throw his Military Cross away. His grandson found it about a year ago in an attic in Mull. I know this because I’ve already done war poetry in Year 9 in some school or other. I don’t know why this lot were even doing war poetry. It’s not in the GCSE this year. I wanted to tell her about the medal but she was working so hard to control the class I didn’t want to interrupt her.

  The whiteboard timed out and Miss Price fussed with the controls. Everyone barked instructions. A girl got up, pressed a few buttons and fixed the board. Miss Price thanked her with enthusiasm. The girl smiled but the boys advised her she had a fat arse three times before she sat down, so she stopped smiling.

  “Oh … kay…” Miss Price sighed. The class was irrecoverably distracted, and into the commotion launched the boy-mountain who had tagged my forehead. The air pulled as the class tensed.

  Miss Price gave her watch a theatrical glance and the class laughed nervously.

  “Miss. Thing’s, like, I got speak to you innit,” Darscall grunted.

  He stood there kicking at the wall and Miss Price motioned him out of the room. “Why did he throw his medal away? Think about it,” she repeated as she followed him out.

  The class exploded into noise. I put my head down and noticed that the bag of the boy behind me was stuffed with a grey hoodie and bandana.

  “What you lookin’ at?” he said.

  I sat up. “Nothing.”

  “Sideman. What you lookin’ at?”

  The class hushed and turned to us.

  “Nothing,” I repeated.

  “You steppin’ up to me?”

  His eyes were far apart like a hammerhead shark, giving his face a strange lack of focus. You had to choose an eye to look into otherwise your eyes swept across his naked face like a windscreen wiper. He tensed his forehead and this did not move his wrangled eyes. I knew I had seconds to stop him from hitting me. I had one chance to say one thing that would calm him down, to say something funny, but I baulked, and for some unholy reason I said this: