In the Bag (19 page)

Just before he let me go, he said, ‘You’re a good lad, Ashley. You can make something of your life, but don’t waste your opportunities.’

I wrote Mr Benson the most sarcastic letter I could manage. I watched him read it. You could see him getting wound up as he read it. But he didn’t say anything and didn’t do anything. He just kind of seethed a bit. And then, when he’d finished, he screwed the letter up into a ball and threw it at the bin.

‘Missed,’ I said, just loud enough so that he could hear.

Benson looked at me. He had hatred in his eyes. He didn’t say anything right away. But eventually he opened his mouth and said, ‘I dread to think what will become of you, Ashley. With an attitude like yours, you’ll be lucky to hold down a job in a supermarket on the minimum wage.’

I didn’t know what to say to that. I wasn’t expecting it. So I just smirked. Then, as I thought about what he’d just said, I felt like telling him that I’ll make more money per month than he does per year when I start working. But I kept my mouth shut.

Benson shook his head. ‘It’s all wasted on you, isn’t it?’

I didn’t move, didn’t answer.

‘Get out of my sight,’ he said, turning his back on me.

So I did.

Do you know what? Fuck them all. I don’t care what they have to say to me. They don’t know me. And I don’t have to listen to their bullshit.

I get up off my bed and grab my drumsticks. I go over to the drum stool and start to pound away to the music. I’m not as good as Casey Camper, the Porn Dwarves drummer, but I’m OK. We always used to talk about starting a band: me on drums, Joe on guitar, Dylan on bass and Rabbit as the singer and frontman. Joe reckons that he even wrote some songs. He’s never let anyone hear them, though.

Usually when I play the drums, everything else seems to disappear. It’s like the rest of the world stops existing. Not today, though. I can’t let myself go. There’s too much on my mind. I’m totally off the beat. Hitting the drums too hard. It sounds rubbish.

So I stop and rest my head in my hands, let the music wash over me, so I hardly even notice it’s there. I keep thinking about Benson and Watts, about all the stuff they said to me earlier – all that patronising bollocks. And it really pisses me off that I was the one they picked out for that treatment. I mean, how can they bring me in for smoking – just me – when plenty of others were there too? Dylan was there for a start, standing right next to me, and Benson completely ignored him and just brought me in.

The reason is obvious, though – Benson likes Dylan and he hates me. Dylan’s a good boy in class – always does his homework, doesn’t answer back, wears the right school uniform. And me? Well, I don’t. I’m myself. An individual, not a sheep. And teachers don’t like that. They want some pleb who’s gonna behave like a sheep or a robot and make their life easier.

One song finishes and the next one starts.
American Apocalypse
, the track’s called. I pick my sticks up and start playing again. This time I really concentrate on following the beat. But after a while I start hitting the drums harder and harder and harder with each stroke. Before long I’m not following the beat any more, I’m just whacking the skins as hard as I can, the drumsticks splintering as they hit the rims. And I know that I shouldn’t. I’ll break something in a minute. But I can’t stop. A part of me doesn’t want to. A part of me just wants to hit them harder – as hard as it’s possible to hit them, to split them and break them and tear the skins. Fuck the consequences.
Bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang!
One of the sticks comes apart, splits right down the middle. But I keep hitting the drums. And then I catch my hand on the outside of the snare, on my knuckles. I don’t feel any pain, but I see red. Blood. So I stop and look at it. There’s a rough bloody edge all across my knuckles where I’ve bruised them and then cut them. And now that I’ve stopped, the cut stings. Blood’s starting to well up and drip from my hand on to the snare drum.

I get up from the stool and go through to the bathroom, put the cold tap on and shove my hand in the basin. The water hits the cut and immediately it stings. Blood and water mix together and start to swirl around the bowl. There’s a kind of psychedelic pattern to start with, but then it just turns pink. I stare at it. And I feel like a total dick. What kind of idiot smacks their own hand against the metal rim of a drum? Didn’t I realise I’d cut myself? After a minute I take my hand out of the basin and turn the tap off. My hand feels kind of numb now from the cold water. And it’s pulsing. I wrap it in a wet flannel to stop it bleeding everywhere and then walk over to the medicine cabinet and look for something I can use, like a bandage or something. Only there isn’t anything. Just a box of plasters that’s been there for years. Some of them have got a cartoon of a cowboy and Indian on and the words
Little Brave
. We’ve had them for years.

I take the box out and fumble around trying to open it. I grab one of the big plasters, a plain pink one. No little kid’s pictures of Indians. I take the flannel off and dry my hand carefully on a towel. The edge of the cut has swollen up and gone blue. I take the back off the plaster and stick it over my cut. It doesn’t go on smoothly; there’s a kind of rut in the middle. But it’ll have to do.

As I leave the bathroom, I hear a key in the lock downstairs. And all of a sudden I feel nervous. Whoever it is, Mum or Dad, I don’t want to see them.

Joe

There are cooking smells coming from downstairs. Curry. My favourite thing that Mum cooks, without a doubt. It smells delicious from here. And it’s making concentrating on my revision almost impossible. Not that I was finding it easy to concentrate on Geography anyway.

After staring at the same page of my textbook for ages I give up on revision and go downstairs instead. I go into the lounge, where Kate’s already sitting – or I should say, lying – across the sofa. She’s watching crap music videos on the TV, as usual. I budge her up and she tuts and sighs. And then we sit in silence, gawping at
100 Alternative Anthems
. As we’re sitting there vegging, the front door opens and Dad and Granny come in. Granny perches on the sofa and asks a million embarrassing questions about each music video, like, ‘How can you tell what the words are when he’s shouting like that?’ Me and Kate sit and smile.

After a bit, Dad steps into the lounge. ‘Curry’s ready,’ he says in a pretend Indian accent. He puts his hands together like some dodgy stereotype of an Indian waiter.

Granny laughs. I cringe. Kate tuts. But we all go through to the dining room.

Ash

‘
Ashley!’ Mum calls from downstairs.

I think about ignoring her. I even look at my bedroom window and think about making a jump for it. But then there’s a clomping sound as she starts to walk up the stairs and I know it’s too late. I go and lie on my bed, turn my music down low.

‘
Ashley?’ Mum says as she pops her head round the door. ‘There you are.’

I look up at her and pretend I’ve only just noticed she’s there. ‘Hi, Mum.’

Her face screws up as she looks at me and spots the plaster on my hand.
‘
Are you OK?’ she says. ‘What’s wrong with your hand?’

I look at the plaster and then without thinking about it, hide it behind my back. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘I cut it.’

‘Do you want me to have a look at it for you?’

I shake my head. ‘It’s fine.’

And then it’s silent. Mum stares into space. After nearly a minute, I feel like asking her if she actually wants anything.

But then the expression on her face turns from concern to serious and annoyed. ‘Um,’ she says. And then she pauses. ‘I got a phone call at work today.’

I nod.

‘It was Mr Watts.’

I don’t say anything.

‘He said that you’d been caught smoking in the school grounds.’ Mum raises her eyebrows, like, ‘
How dare you!
’

‘I know.’ I look down again. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

Mum sighs. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see her folding her arms. I imagine the cross look on her face, but I don’t look at her. ‘I’m very disappointed, Ashley. I thought you knew better than that.’

‘It’s not fair, though. I wasn’t the only one smoking.’

‘It makes no difference if there were hundreds of you,’ Mum says. ‘You shouldn’t have done it. Smoking’s bad for you.’

I roll my eyes. I can sense the lecture coming. I’ve already had enough of that today. ‘Benson just had it in for me,’ I say. ‘There were at least three other people standing behind the mobile and the only one he picked out was me.’

Mum just stares at me. She doesn’t look impressed.

‘
And he didn’t even catch me smoking. He just assumed that’s what I was doing.’

‘Were you smoking?’

I nod. ‘Yeah. That’s not the point, though –’

‘It is the point,’ Mum says, and she sounds angry.
‘
And what’s more, I got pulled off the shop floor to go and take that call. It was very embarrassing. I had to explain to my manager.’

‘Oh, what, I’m in trouble because you got embarrassed? Oh, now I understand.’

Mum looks at me like she’s about to go mad at me. She’s trying to hold it back, trying not to lose it.

‘
Anyway, Dad smokes,’ I say. ‘I don’t hear you going on at him. And you both drink like fish.’

Mum just stands there for a second with her mouth open. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.

‘How dare you talk to me like that!’ she says.

And I don’t say anything back. I don’t apologise cos I’m not sorry. I’m angry.

‘Sometimes, Ashley, you make me feel so ashamed. I can’t believe you’re the same little boy that I brought up when you say things like that.’

I look down at the bed again. I can feel my face starting to tense up. I want to get up and shout at her. I want to tell her that I’m exactly the same kid she brought up. She made me like this. Her and Dad.

‘Say you’re sorry,’ Mum says. She stares at me.

I ignore her. I cross my arms. No way am I saying sorry to her.

‘
Ashley, I want to hear you take that back. Say you’re sorry.’

I shake my head.

‘
Ashley,’ she says, her voice raised now, ‘say sorry.’

‘No!’ I shout back. ‘I won’t. And you know what? When you act like this, it’s no surprise that Dad’s seeing some –’ I stop myself short. I can’t believe those words came out of my mouth. I want to take them back, to suck them back in.

I look up at Mum. She’s staring back at me, looking shocked. A tear forms in the corner of her eye. It falls down her cheek and then to the carpet. And I feel guilty. I feel like a shit. I get up from my bed and go over to her, put my arms round her. She just stands there with her arms still folded. She doesn’t move at all. We stand there for ages, saying nothing, Mum crying silently, me wishing that the earth would open up and swallow me.

After a while, Mum moves away. She goes and sits on my bed.

‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

Mum sighs. She doesn’t look up at me. ‘It’s not your fault, Ashley,’ she says. Her voice sounds strange – empty and distant. ‘It’s not like I didn’t know already. It’s just a shock to hear you say it.’

‘You knew? You knew that Dad is . . . that he’s been . . . screwing someone?’

‘
Ashley,’ Mum says. ‘Don’t say it like that.’

‘Then why didn’t you do anything about it?’

Mum hangs her head.

I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I can’t believe she actually knew this was happening and she’s just stood by and let him. ‘Cut his bloody clothes up,’ I say. ‘Shout at him. Throw him out. Bloody stab him. Anything. You can’t just let him get away with it and then cook dinner for him when he gets home.’

Mum shakes her head.

I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to feel about this. I feel so sorry for her. But at the same time I feel angry at her, like this is her fault somehow.

I hear a car slowing down outside. The engine sounds like Dad’s car. Sure enough, a few seconds later I hear a key in the front door. I look over at Mum. She doesn’t look up at me. She looks like a little kid, sitting there on my bed. Why can’t she take control? She’s a bloody grown-up, for God’s sake.

‘Right,’ I say. ‘We’re going downstairs. Come on. We’re gonna do something about this.’

Mum looks up at me, her eyes pleading with me. ‘No,’ she says. ‘No, Ashley. Not now.’

I shake my head at her and go downstairs. Dad’s in the kitchen, getting a drink of water.

‘I hope you’re happy,’ I shout at him from the bottom of the stairs, ‘now you’ve ruined everyone’s lives. I hope the bitch you’re screwing is worth it.’

Dad turns and stares at me. He looks surprised and angry. I go to the front door and open it. I have to get out of here.

‘Come back here!’ he shouts at me.

I turn and stare at him.

‘
Ashley!’

I turn away from him and slam the door shut behind me.