Friday, 14 January 1994
The sun was so bright on Friday morning that it felt like summer, the vast sky suddenly a magnificent cloudless blue. The warmth that hit his face as he opened his front door came as a complete surprise, causing him to stand motionless on the step for five full minutes in an effort to absorb all of it. He felt like he was photosynthesising, the sun’s rays pushing life back into his limbs. He had been dreading going to school until then, contemplating his withdrawal, but all that fear had unexpectedly left him. Warmed by the sun, he now felt oddly content, his worries set aside.
Locking the door, Ben sauntered over to his bike, bent down and unfastened the chain from the old wrought iron drainpipe on the other side of the window. Freeing it, he wheeled it through the broken gate, still pondering on the astonishing happiness that had descended within. Everything was going to be fine today, he told himself, no longer perplexed by this alien optimism.
Touched by the sun, he wheeled his bike across the pavement, crossed the road and then mounted, pushing himself away from the curb, his toes pounding the pedals. What a glorious day it was, he thought to himself, gazing up at the azure canopy above him, its immense beauty driving away the last of his burdens.
Wham! He felt himself crash sideways, the spokes of his wheels splitting as they flipped over the curb, hurtling him to the ground, his right leg twisted around the tubular steel frame.
‘That’s for Sid,’ yelled a familiar voice, a pair of arms pouncing on him.
His head unexpectedly numb, Ben tried to focus on a face, but it was all a blur. Yet he knew who it was, for Kevin’s deep voice was unmistakable. ‘You’re going to regret picking a fight with Sid,’ it returned, louder than ever.
‘Yeah,’ rejoined his eternal sidekick, skinny Lee. ‘We’re going to bray you so bad.’
Slowly, Ben tried to pick himself up, attempting in vain to untangle his leg. He tripped again, banging his other knee on the pavement, but finally pulled it loose. Examining his bike now, he realised that it could help him no more. Both of the rims were twisted, the front fork split in two, the top tube sheared away from the stem. His bike had already been on its last legs, but now it was beyond redemption.
‘Thanks very much,’ he muttered, gazing back at each of them in turn, mourning the demise of a faithful friend.
‘You think that’s bad,’ laughed Lee, ‘wait until we’ve finished with you.’ With that, he propelled Ben backwards as fiercely as he could, sending his ankles knocking into the frame, flinging him to the ground once more. ‘What’s happened to you, mate?’ he asked, towering over him, ‘You becoming racist like your dad? You think you’re hard now?’
‘No,’ he muttered.
‘What was that?’ cried Lee, ‘What was that? I didn’t hear you.’
‘I said no.’ He tried to get up again. ‘I don’t suffer from the same delusions as you.’
‘Shut your face,’ cried Kevin, ‘You’re the delusional freak. You think you can get away with what you did yesterday? You think we’re going to let it pass?’
Ben wanted to yell back at them, to put them in their place, but when he opened his mouth only a whisper came out. Inaudible words: ‘It’s between me and him.’
‘What was that?’ scoffed Lee, ‘Hey, Ben’s so strong, have you heard the way he defends himself?’
Lunging forward, Lee punched him in the stomach, winding him, and followed it with two more blows. ‘Those were for Sid,’ he said, knocking him to the floor yet again, kicking him relentlessly. ‘And they were for me,’ he snarled.
Out of the corner of his eye, Ben saw Kevin scavenging for a piece of his bike, yanking at the rusty crankset. With a couple of kicks, it came loose, a nut snapping under duress. Now it was a weapon, modelled after a prop from a James Bond movie. Right before his eyes, Kevin had transmogrified into Goldfinger’s ruthless henchman, Oddjob, who threatened to decapitate him with a mere flick of his wrists. Kicking back at Lee, Ben managed to roll away and stumble back to his feet; he was not going to stay and fight, but turned instead to take flight.
‘Aaaaah,’ he screeched a second later, a dirty cut sliced into the top of his right hand.
‘We told you,’ growled Kevin, swinging his crude weapon at him again, forcing him to duck.
Pressing his hand against his trousers, trying his best to dull the excruciating pain, Ben grasped for an insulting cuss, offensive enough to move them, but his mind was blank. ‘Are you mad?’ he cried out instead. ‘Are you a psychopath?’ he asked.
‘No, man,’ he replied, ‘but you are,’ and then he tossed the crankset at him, catching the side of his head, moments before kicking it into the gutter.
‘This is bravery, is it?’ asked Ben, nursing his cuts and bruises, ‘Is this what you were going to do to Satya Singh?’
‘What you on about?’ roared Kevin.
‘That’s what this is about, but you’re too dumb to realise,’ he tried to say, suddenly conscious that he had no control over his limbs; Lee was in control now, pushing him backwards and onto the road, through the gap between two parked cars and into the path of a bus. Lee pulled him back just in time, but it was no act of charity; instead he pressed him on across the road, tripping him over the opposite kerb and cracking him against a wall.
‘You’re the dumb Nazi shit, you prick,’ yelled Lee, battering him, ‘What happened to you? What happened to you, man?’
Ben could feel the blood, snot and sweat moistening his face, his skin throbbing. ‘You’ve only got yourself to blame,’ said Lee seeming to cease his assault on him, massaging his own sore knuckles, now bruised. ‘You made a big mistake yesterday. We’re not like you, Ben. We look out for our mates.’
Just then, something forced Ben to glance back across the street, his gaze drawn back to Kevin. Perhaps Ben had seen it out of the corner of his eye: the boy was emptying the contents of his rucksack onto the pavement. When he had finished, he took to rifling through the pile of books, tearing his notes from a ring binder, then unzipped his pencil case and scattered its contents too.
‘Let’s go, man,’ he said, strutting over to them with booty in his hands. ‘I reckon that’ll do for now.’ Kevin gave the stout boy a final whack, bashing his jaw. ‘You’re getting the message now, aren’t you Ben? It’s sinking in?’
‘Sod off,’ he replied, giving up.
‘Not so hard now, are you, mate?’ smirked Lee, taking off with his friend, abandoning the boy for good. ‘You ever mess with us again,’ he cried out as he went, ‘We’ll finish the job properly.’
Now the sun was theirs; they would let it warm their backs as they made their way to school, getting high on their adrenalin. They were ecstatic, releasing great guffaws as they hurried on, congratulating themselves for standing up for their friend. They could not wait to tell the others, to speak of their valiant fray. Soon it would be the talk of the school; oh, how they would laugh out loud. At last, they told each other, they had put Ben back in his place. He had had that coming to him for weeks.
Barging into their form room just in time for registration, their euphoria was unmistakable. Bulldozing their classmates out of the way, they hastened to the back of the room, still laughing with glee. ‘Now will you look at this,’ grinned Lee hysterically, bounding up to their friend’s desk, ‘turns out Ben’s a druggie after all, man. And to think we thought he was just doing weed.’
‘Yeah man, check this out,’ cried Kevin, slapping a dark blue pouch down onto the desktop, pulling back its flap. ‘He’s got the needles and everything. Ben’s an addict. Now it all makes sense.’
As they thumped down onto chairs either side of him, Siddique scrutinised the contents of the case, examining it carefully. ‘Where did you get this from?’ he asked them wearily, studying the label on its side.
‘We nicked it off him,’ laughed Kevin.
‘Yeah, he won’t mess with us again, man. We put him in his place.’ He smirked at his friend dimly. ‘So what do you think? Imagine, all that time we were taking the piss out of him, saying he was snorting Coco Pops, and it turns out he’s doing crack. Wow, Ben’s a crackhead.’
Siddique gazed back at them with disdain. ‘And that’s how crack comes, is it?’ he scoffed, ‘In these little sterile vials with nice rubber seals? He must have a good supplier.’ Siddique stared at them even more intently. ‘This is insulin, you tit.’
‘Insu-what?’
‘My dad’s diabetic. He has to inject this stuff four times a day.’
‘So what’s Ben doing with it?’ asked Kevin, utterly confused.
‘Well it must be his, you tit.’
‘You saying Ben’s diabolic too?’
‘Quite probably,’ he replied, nodding his head, ‘And you’ve just run off with his medication. Clever.’
It was then that Satya accidentally glanced back at them. She watched the way Kevin and Lee peered at one another, unsure of their friend’s nonchalant riposte.
‘Well what do you care?’ jeered Lee restlessly, ‘After what he did to you yesterday, I say, sod him.’ Stealing the pouch from the desk again, he aimed for the waste paper bin by the door, launched it into the air and hurled it right across the room. It hit the wall behind the bin with a thud and slid down to the floor, disappearing from sight.
‘Yeah, sod him,’ agreed Kevin, laughing his head off. ‘You should see the state we left him in. That’ll teach him to pick a fight with us.’
As she watched them, Satya saw how Siddique turned his eyes elsewhere, ignoring his demented companions, and took to running his fingers over his own sore skin instead. Then she watched again as he shoved his desk forward fiercely, a set of chairs clattering out of the way, and stormed out of the room without speaking to them, flinging the door closed behind him on his way. It slammed into the frame with a deafening bang that echoed all along the corridor, reverberating back at them as if to reinforce his disdain.
