Read Online The Suicide Club by Rhys Thomas - Free Book Online Page B

I’m sorry for saying that.’ I put my hand on his upper arm. ‘How are you?’
    He shrugged. ‘I’m OK.’
    â€˜Um, should you be . . . you know . . . out and about . . . on your own, I mean?’
    â€˜My parents are queuing for food over there.’ He gave the barest of gestures with his free arm.
    My heart went out to him. He was really upset. I could feel his energy coming into me and it was just terrible.
    â€˜So. What now?’
    â€˜I have to go back to school.’ The way he was talking wasreally scary. It was like he wasn’t actually speaking to me at all. It was more like he was just going through the motions of a conversation without meaning it.
    I knew full well that if he went back to school he would get torn apart. I could see his parents over at the food place. His dad was wearing a wool sweater with a shirt and tie and his mother was wearing a long dress and a blouse with baggy arms – they were so old it was sickeningly depressing. They both wore glasses and I thought that I was going to cry. I pictured the old man removing his spectacles, taking a freshly pressed handkerchief from his pocket and cleaning the flecks of dust off the lenses. I couldn’t even start to imagine what it must have been like in the evenings for Craig. He must have sat in their living room with patterned carpet and crappy TV watching something indescribably terrible.
    â€˜Listen,’ I said. ‘One of the American kids is having a party on Halloween in the cricket pavilion. Do you want to go?’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜Come on, it’ll be great. You can stay with me all night, I won’t leave your side.’
    â€˜I don’t know.’
    â€˜It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Don’t say yes or no now. I’ve got your number. I’ll give you a call closer to the time. OK?’
    â€˜OK,’ he said. It was bizarre, like he didn’t seem to be having any sort of emotional response to me at all. This suicide thing runs deep, I tell you.
    We walked out of the shop together and I took him back over to his parents.
    â€˜There you are,’ said his dad. ‘And you’ve brought a friend.’ He smiled massively at me.
    â€˜Hello,’ I answered politely, my heart splintering.
    His voice was quite nasal, like his nose was full of hair. But he was such a kindly soul. I tried to gauge how he wasfeeling towards his son. This poor man; he’d worked his whole life, had just retired and now his son put him through
this
. He should have been enjoying his twilight years but his child was stopping it. I could see him hoisting his legs up over the side of his bed at night, having laid his slippers neatly side by side. He’d take hold of his wife’s hand and whisper in her ear, ‘It’ll be OK, my darling.’ He would notice a tear glistening at the corner of her eye, which she would wipe clear with a handkerchief. Then he would tighten his grip on her other hand and give her a peck on the cheek. ‘He’s a good kid really.’

6
    AND SO THINGS went on. After that night I guess you could say we became Freddy’s circle of friends. I sometimes wonder exactly what happens when a kid arrives at a new school. Is the group that they latch on to just a coincidence? Or is there an inbuilt ability that allows us to seek out our own?
    It was strange because before Freddy came along we didn’t have such a rigidly formed gang. It was almost like that night in the folly looking out over the school lake had set us apart. It was as though we loved Freddy and wanted to keep him to ourselves, our own little secret that we didn’t want to share with anybody.
    It became clear quite quickly that Freddy was good at schoolwork. In much the same way as me he was able to understand things he was told straight off the bat, not like some of the other kids, who used to struggle. But there was far more to him than