Something Wicked Page 2

  A woman got on with two small kids. I love little kids, the way they stare at you. They came and took the seat in front of me and the little boy knelt on the seat and just looked at me. He was gorgeous, chocolate coloured with large, dark eyes. It’s crazy, sometimes I wish I was black so one day I could have a kid like that. I grinned at him and he watched me, a bit suspicious at first. I stuck my tongue out. That made him smile. Then his mum called him and he swivelled round again, and I was on my own.

  We arrived at the bus station and everyone queued to get out. I could see Karen and Paula and everyone in a gaggle over by the closed newsstand. I walked over to join them.

  “Hi, Anna. We’re just waiting for Janette.”

  Paula and everyone were all transformed. They looked nothing like they did at school. They wore their hair up with huge butterfly clips; their faces sparkled with glitter; Karen had done up her eyes so that they dripped sex. Their perfumes competed with each other, eddies of musky scents moving around them, but overcome by the acrid cigarette smoke – nearly all them were puffing away at cigs. God, I felt dull in comparison.

  And just then Janette arrived, stepping out of her mum’s Ka.

  “You look gorgeous!” everyone cried.

  Which was true. She did. She just wore a simple black skirt which consisted of a silky lining with see-through flouncy material over it. Janette’s top was one of those tight-laced bodices, thrusting up her boobs and leaving a few inches of exposed midriff. I don’t blame her – her stomach was flat as a board. She wore black, knee-high boots. All the other girls cooed over her and she chatted away nonstop to them. I had a choice. I could either join in or stand back and lose the sense of kinship that comes from doing the same thing as all of your mates. Because I’m a bit bloody-minded at times – and because I wasn’t sure whether I was wanted or not – I stood back.

  The Ritz wasn’t far. It used to be an old cinema that they converted to a night club. It was the best place to go on a Saturday night. The shaven-headed, puffajacket-wearing bouncers gave us all the once-over as we made our way in, but stopped none of us. Karen had warned me they were being more careful since the police raided a few months ago and found the place full of eleven year olds. But it was quite easy to get in if you were female and dressed sophisticatedly. Karen linked arms with me as we entered and that made me feel better.

  We paid our fivers at the kiosk and made for the ladies for a bit of extra grooming. I primped my hair a bit in the mirror and wished I’d made more of an effort. I didn’t look much different from usual. There were stubs of ciggies in the basins and damp, lipstick-stained tissues. The condom machine had a notice on saying it was empty. Karen said I looked a bit pale and put some of her blusher on me. Then she disappeared into one of the cubicles.

  Paula came over to me then and said Karen had fallen out with Mandy and that was why she was hanging round with me. She was only using me. Mandy was there, and was busy fussing around Janette. I reckoned this could be true. Great. I was just a substitute.

  We all left together and headed for the bar. They all bought Smirnoff Ices and Vodka Blues. I had a Diet Coke. I don’t drink. Partly because I don’t much like the taste but, more than that, I don’t like what it does to me. I feel as if I’m slipping out of my own control.

  The dance floor was quite crowded. The DJ was playing some Madonna track that I forget the title of. Our crowd was still sticking together, shouting in each other’s ears stuff about who they knew who’d turned up, what they were wearing, who they were seeing, or every so often their eyes would swivel towards some bloke who’d come in. “He’s fit! … He’s cute! … He’s stunning!”

  I just looked around. Karen carried on whispering stuff to me, but I could see that every so often she looked over at Mandy to see what she was up to. I began to feel more and more as if I wasn’t really there. It was a strange feeling – as if I was just a pair of eyes, observing. I saw the DJ jerking to the music; groups of lads standing round, bottles in hands; everyone eyeing up everyone else.

  I followed the girls on to the dance floor. It was sticky with spilt drink. They put their bags down on the floor so they could watch them while they danced but I didn’t fancy that. I kept my bag on my shoulder and decided that I wouldn’t dance for a bit, but just look on. Some Ibiza anthem was blaring out now: loud, repetitive music with a heavy bass. The girls were dancing together, showing off their bodies, hoping to attract attention. Paula was getting right down on to the floor. Janette hardly moved. Just stubbing out her ciggie on the floor with the toe of her boot was enough to send the boys wild.

  A little voice in my head said, go and join them. Get on the floor and make with the music. But it was no use; I just wasn’t in the mood. I was invisible – no one could see me. No boys looked my way. And then I noticed Mandy go up to Karen and say something to her, and Karen hugged her, and Mandy hugged her back, and they started dancing together. I knew what that meant. Bye bye, Anna.

  The louder the music got, the more frenetic the dancing, the more detached I felt. Don’t think I wasn’t having a good time in my own way. I’ve said before you’re not to feel sorry for me as there’s nothing to be sorry for. I liked the way my thoughts were coming thick and fast, I liked watching people, I liked watching blokes. If you’re interested, I’ve had crushes on boys and the odd snog, but never a real boyfriend. I want one, one day. You wouldn’t credit this, but I have romantic fantasies too. Sometimes I watch old Hollywood musicals on the box, and wish I could be the girl in the long flowing dress tripping lightly down the staircase to the ball, my lover waiting in the hall. Or be the dame in one of those secret agent movies – the woman with a past who the detective falls for – walking into a sordid little office, aloof, sexy, full of passion. Or I’d be on top of the Empire State Building, up high, looking over Manhattan, the man of my dreams by my side and knowing only we two mattered.

  How sad am I? I have all the wrong dreams. I know I should want to be Britney Spears or J.Lo, or have a kooky, loving family like in the sitcoms. Or get proposed to on telly or something, so the whole world knows. But when you think about it – when I think about it, I mean – today’s romance scenarios are crap. All those so-called role models – Britney, Madonna, Kylie – they’re just in love with themselves. You can see it on the videos. And everyone is completely into who they pull or have sex with – it’s that or soppy look-at-this-lovely-Valentine’s-card-he’s-sent-me! It’s either all crude or makes you want to throw up.

  To prove my point to myself I looked again at the dance floor. Some lads had come up to my mates and were groping them. Hands on bums, on waists, and Paula had turned round and was draping herself all over this boy with spiky black hair. They were hoovering each other up with their mouths. His hands were everywhere. It was kind of disgusting and kind of sexy at the same time. I looked away.

  Paula wasn’t a virgin. She liked chalking up her conquests much as boys do. One lad in our class – Darren – boasted he’d shagged Janette so Paula beat him up. It was the best scandal we’d had in school for ages. But it was all about point scoring, the relationships my friends had. I wished things were different. I thought when I fell in love – pow! – we’d make a new world, a world all of our own.

  That crappy world of the Ritz with its bouncers and people gagging for sex they probably didn’t even enjoy, the deafening so-called music and the gallons of alcohol, was a pretty rubbishy sort of world. But it was about as good as it got in our town. It was clubbing or looking round the shops at things you couldn’t afford. It made me angry. I wanted things to be different, but how could they be? What could I do?

  Perhaps I was thinking like that to cover up the fact no one had come up to me for ages. My mates were all pulling lads and I was ignored by everyone. I knew deep down if I’d made more of an effort I could be one of them, but it would mean not being me – it would mean compromise. I don’t do compromise.

  I wondered if I just went home, would anyone notice? And then th
e idea of home suddenly became appealing. The club was hot and my shirt was sticking to me. My feet were hot in my trainers. Time was passing slowly. Outside it would be dark and cool and I would be free. Every single one of the girls I’d come with was with someone now, and I noticed a greasy old bloke staring at me. That did it. I pushed my way through the crowd of drinkers and left the club.

  It was a relief. I hoped the girls would wonder where I was and maybe even worry about me. If they did worry, it would serve them right. I knew I was supposed to get a taxi home with them, but as I’d left early the buses were still running, so I’d be OK. Technically I wasn’t supposed to travel alone at night, but my mum worried needlessly a lot of the time. Most people were OK. It’s just the media that want you to believe the streets are full of paedophiles so they can whip up mass hysteria and sell more papers. Everybody’s on the make these days.

  It was only a short walk to the bus station, down the High Street and then across King’s Gardens where the moshers hang out. Another place I wasn’t supposed to go at night. It was a square lined with bushes. Each street bordering it had a path that led to the middle, where there was a fountain that hadn’t had water in it for years.

  Tonight it seemed empty. Maybe it was too early for the moshers – they were probably all at one of their clubs – Medusa’s or Hell’s Kitchen. I wondered if they also had to pay a fiver for entry. What annoyed me was the fact I’d wasted my money. Five quid entry, two fifty for a Coke, one fifty for the bus. Why was everything so expensive? Where did they expect people like me to get money from? I’m supposed to stay on at school to go to college and not earn money, but also go to clubs, buy the right gear, have a mobile, an MP3 player, a computer. ’Cause people know teenagers want to fit in they target us with all the consumer goods on the market. It just isn’t—

  I would have said “fair”, but I didn’t have the opportunity. My conscious thoughts stopped there as in that split second someone ran at me and grabbed at my bag. Pure instinct took over. Not to run – you don’t run when someone is trying to take something from you. The instinct is to hold on tight. I did. I also filled with rage – how dare they? They? I looked at my attacker. A bloke. So I kneed him, as I’d been taught to do. Amazing! He let go of my bag and fell to the floor. I’d won.

  I was still too full of adrenaline to realise properly what had happened to me. I should have run then, but in an odd kind of way I felt sorry for the bloke I’d just crippled. He was doubled up on the floor. He was wearing trackies, trainers and a hoodie. The hood had fallen over his face so I couldn’t see him.

  But then he looked up at me.

  “Ritchie?” I questioned.

  “Anna,” he said.

  Knowing it was Ritchie who’d attacked me made me feel better and a whole lot worse at the same time. I could feel myself trembling, and now the initial shock was over, anger replaced it.

  “You tried to mug me!” I accused him.

  I know this was stating the obvious, but give me a break – someone had just tried to snatch my bag.

  “I didn’t know it was you,” he winced, clearly still in pain.

  “So that makes it all right then?”

  He didn’t reply. Now I began to feel sorry for him. Which was pretty crazy, really – I can be a bit pathetic at times.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He swore, and told me he wasn’t. But slowly he got to his feet. Once he was on a level with me, the situation began to normalise. I was in King’s Gardens with Ritchie, late on Saturday night. Ritchie, the new boy in our English set. Never mind that he’d tried to rob me. It almost seemed natural that we should go and sit on a bench together, and he should take a crushed packet of cigarettes from his trackie bottoms pocket and light one, his fingers shaking. He offered me one too.

  “I don’t smoke,” I said.

  “I’m trying to give up,” Ritchie replied.

  The few people who walked past us gave us superficial glances but then ignored us.

  “Do you often do this?” I asked him. “Like bag snatching?”

  “No. But I need the money. I owe twenty quid to a bloke I know, and if I don’t pay tomorrow there’ll be trouble. He’ll do me over.”

  I was going to lay into him myself – verbally – for thinking the best way to get money was violent robbery, but something in his manner stopped me. The way he hung his head, the blankness in his eyes – he wasn’t mean, but desperate. Plus I was flattered that he’d confided in me. When you have someone’s confidence, you don’t want to lose it. I didn’t feel like criticising or judging him.

  “Is there any other way you can get the money? Can someone lend it to you? Your mum?”

  Ritchie shook his head. “No. She’s hard up at the moment, what with moving and everything.”

  That was fair enough. Even though my mum was off work, we probably had more money than Ritchie and his mum. My mum would have lent me the money. She wouldn’t have been best pleased, but she’d have given it. Ritchie’s mum didn’t have the money. So if he didn’t have a job, and had no one to ask, and he was being threatened with violence, it was hardly surprising he had to resort to mugging. Or was it?

  “Couldn’t you have just nicked some money without attacking someone?” I asked.

  At that point Ritchie looked up at me, surprised. I understood why. I’d surprised myself. Here I was, suggesting he commit another crime – me, who’d never done anything illegal in my life. Except fare-dodging a couple of times, or noticing someone had given me too much change in a shop and not saying anything – oh, and keeping a twenty-pound note I found on a bus last year. But looking at Ritchie’s situation from his point of view, theft seemed the only logical answer. But it was wrong. Crime was wrong.

  “I tell you what – I could lend you the twenty. It’s not a problem.”

  “But you don’t know me,” he said. “I might just run off with it.”

  “Because you’ve said that, I know you won’t.”

  We both heard the urgent waah-waah of a police car – one followed by another. A typical Saturday night in town.

  Ritchie spoke again. “You must think I’m a bleedin’ idiot.”

  “I don’t, as a matter of fact.”

  “Listen, let me tell you. My life stinks right now. First I get all the truant people on my back and my mum stressing about my education, and having to go back to school. I even thought I’d give it a try but it’s no bloody good. It’s pointless for me – I’m not going to get any GCSEs as I’ve missed too much. It’s all wasted effort. And then the guy I bought the weed from is on my back, and the crazy thing is, the weed wasn’t even for me – it was for Loz, my mate. And my other mates – the ones I used to hang out with – before going back to school – I don’t see them any more. But they were a load of nutters. Like, what’s the point?”

  I was stunned. I’d never heard Ritchie utter so many words in all the few days I’d known him. I’d got him down as one of those inarticulate yobs you get (even in our school) but he wasn’t, exactly. I mean, how often do you meet a bloke who actually talks to you about his life, and not just the football?

  “Look, I’ll lend you the twenty quid. I really don’t mind. And school’s not too bad.”

  “You’re the only person who bothers to talk to me there. Other people just look straight through me. I don’t think I’m going to go back. What good is an education going to do me? I’ll end up working in some factory or behind a counter – like I said, it all stinks.”

  “What do you want to be?” I asked him, intrigued. Even though in a lot of ways he was very different from me, I could see we thought in the same way. I felt things were pretty rotten most of the time too.

  “What do I want to be? OK, then, how about Prime Minister for a start? Then I’d raze this town to the ground and start all over again, and I’d build houses that people wanted to live in, with gardens and that.”

  I couldn’t help it – I laughed. I didn’t expect him to talk
like that. But my laughter didn’t stop him. He seemed filled with a kind of fury and just carried on.

  “Yeah – there’d be no more high-rise flats. You wouldn’t have to go to school unless you wanted to, and if you did, you could do what you wanted: paint, or play the guitar, or swim. Yeah, there’d be pools everywhere – free, of course, and free gigs every weekend. And free stuff for kids – shows, and that.”

  I tried not to show my surprise at his words. I came over all cynical instead. “Yeah, right,” I said. “But first you’ve got to pay off your debts. I’ll lend you the money.”

  “Yeah, but I have to meet this guy tomorrow, and I won’t see you till Monday.”

  “Tell me where you live and I’ll meet you tomorrow.”

  “Why are you doing this for me?” he asked.

  I thought to myself, because I feel sorry for you, because I can relate to you, because by trying to mug me you’ve pulled me into the drama of your life, whether you wanted to or not. Because even though you sound crazy, I agree with a lot of what you’re saying. And because, in a funny sort of way, your life seems more exciting than mine. You take risks, you’re brave. And honest.

  I said, “Why am I doing this for you? Because I want to. The end.”

  “I’ll meet you outside the Fairfield community centre at one o’clock tomorrow?”

  “Yeah – text me when you’re on your way there.”

  His silence was eloquent. I understood immediately he didn’t have a mobile.

  “I’ll be there at one,” I said.

  He stood up then and our eyes met. “Thanks, Anna,” he said. “And sorry.”

  “Don’t mention it,” I said.

  I watched him go. He walked quickly, his shoulders slightly stooped, in the way blokes do, the ones who’ve shot up too quickly. I wondered what he was going home to, and what his life was like outside school. Normally the petty criminals, the kids who get into trouble, go around in gangs. What Ritchie did – mugging me – was well unusual. But then he was unusual too. Saying all that stuff about how he’d change the world. You wouldn’t think someone like him would think in that way. Have all those dreams.