In this chapter Miles tries to persuade the gang to do the right thing, but he meets with resistance. And we'll also hear some more about why Luke hates school so much.
Tuesday June 3rd
Last night Miles asked me to share his bed again, but this time it turned out to be because he was having some problems at school and wanted my advice. He was a little surprised when I got into bed without any pyjamas on, but I told him I’d found out that I like sleeping naked and have decided not to wear pyjamas in future unless it’s really cold at night.
I’m not sure why he thought I would be able to give him much advice because of course I haven’t been to school for three years now and so don’t know much about how relationships with other pupils really work. But then I realised he just needed someone to talk to, even if it was just someone who would listen without offering suggestions afterwards.
I don’t think Miles has done anything wrong – he says he had to choose between Noel and Graham, who were arguing about bullying, and he decided to support Noel, who didn’t want to join in. But Graham was obviously upset about this, because he hasn’t wanted to talk to Miles since, and he posted a picture of Miles and Noel kissing on the school notice-board. It seems this was a forfeit in a game Miles and his friends have been playing recently, and that Graham used his mobile phone to take a picture of them while they were doing it.
(I hadn’t realised that you could take proper photos with mobile phones now – I’d sort of thought they weren’t very good, just sort of basic and fuzzy, but apparently modern phones can take photos almost as well as proper cameras. And Graham took lots of photos with his phone while Miles and his friends were doing forfeits, and Miles has seen them and apparently they’re really good – and really embarrassing, too. Maybe I’ll have to get a mobile phone after all: it would be useful to have a camera in my pocket all the time, just in case I see something interesting while I’m out walking or something).
But the real problem is that the boy who had been bullied tried to commit suicide, and now Miles has to persuade Graham to own up, because the boy won’t be able to go home unless he does. And Miles has no idea how to make him do that. I had to explain that I wasn’t sure how to go about it, either – although when I met Graham he didn’t seem a bad kid at all, and in fact I liked him. I told Miles that I thought Graham was a decent kid at heart and that he just had to appeal to his better nature, though I suppose it’s a lot harder to work out how to do that in practice.
I also said that it sounded to me as if this wasn’t really Miles’s problem at all – after all, he and Noel had done the right thing by not taking part in the bullying, and so it wasn’t their fault that the boy had ended up in hospital. But he said he wants to help if he can, because he says that if Noel hadn’t been there he probably would have joined in, and so he feels bad about it.
There wasn’t much more I could say to help him, but just being with him seemed to help him a bit, and he was able to relax and go to sleep. And in the morning he was obviously feeling a bit better, because he cuddled up to me and stroked my personal places until my penis went hard again. Of course by now I’ve realised that I like him doing that, so I just put my arm round him and hugged him while he was doing it… and it made me wonder if I should do it for Luke next time we sleep together: if he likes it as much as I do, obviously I should. And of course once his penis is hard we’ll be able to mate again, and I enjoy that a lot…
Miles thought that maybe talking to Martin had helped a bit, even though his brother hadn’t had any brilliant answers for him. He hadn’t expected him to, because after all interpersonal relationships were something Martin knew very little about. But it had helped him to get his own thinking straightened out.
Of course Martin was right to say that it wasn’t his problem, but nonetheless he and Twitch had promised Toby that they would try to sort things out and he felt that he had to at least try to keep his word. And, besides, he wanted to sort things out with Graham – he hated the gulf that had opened up between them.
So when he got to school he went round everyone in the gang and told them that he’d been to see Toby the previous evening and that they needed to discuss what he had found out. He asked them all to meet him in the playground during morning break. Graham wasn’t keen to do so until Miles told him that Social Services were already involved and that probably the police would be too before much longer, and then he grudgingly agreed to come along.
At break Miles and Twitch told them that Toby was in hospital because he’d taken an overdose and that the only reason he wasn’t dead was because his parents had come home unexpectedly.
“But… God, Miles, we didn’t do that much to him!” protested Jack. “And it’s the only time it’s ever happened, and we weren’t going to do it again – so how can he have thought things were so bad he’d have to kill himself?”
“It wasn’t just what you did. For one thing, it was the fact that you hated him badly enough to do all that stuff – not that he actually said exactly what it was that did happen, except that he got whipped a lot. And for another, he was sure that when he came back to school he’d find loads of photos of him naked being passed around or on the notice-boards – and we know how easily that can happen, right, Graham?”
Graham didn’t say anything, but he did look uncomfortable.
“And since he isn’t all that happy at home either I think he just decided he’d had enough all round. But now he’s got another problem: Social Services think it was his parents who beat him, and now they won’t let him go back home. And that means he’s have to go into care, or something. He’s told the social workers that it wasn’t his parents who beat him, but because he won’t say who actually did do it they don’t believe him. And he’s too scared to tell them because he thinks Graham’s going to knife him if he does. So I need to be able to tell him that isn’t going to happen.”
“But you’ve already said that the police are likely to get involved,” argued Graham. “And that means that we’ll all get into serious trouble if we own up. We might all get put into care, or something. And I’ll probably go to prison for threatening him with a knife – it’s supposed to be five years in prison if you get caught with a knife, and I’m not going to prison for Toby, no matter what you say.”
“I don’t think they put boys of our age in prison, especially if you’re not actually caught with a knife. We’d probably just get told off.”
“That’s easy for you to say – you’re not the one in trouble! So I’m not owning up, and Toby’s not dropping me in it, either: if he grasses me up I will stab him, and you can tell him I said so!”
And Graham ran off. The rest of the gang looked worried, but one by one they walked away until only Jamie was left.
“It’s my fault,” he said, quietly. “I should never have agreed to play him using Graham’s special pack of cards. I mean, if Toby had lost fair and square I think doing the forfeits to him would have been okay, but he didn’t: we cheated.”
“What do you mean?” asked Twitch.
“That pack of cards is marked. If you look closely, there’s something on the back of each card to show you what it is. It meant I knew what to throw in the box every time, because I could see what he’d put there, and it made it easy to score points when playing out, too. Graham said we should do it so that Toby ended up getting all the forfeits on his own, and I went along with it because I didn’t want to get beaten and stuff as well. I tried to talk Toby out of playing the singles game against me, but I didn’t try very hard, and when he said he wanted to play I deliberately cheated and made sure I won. I mean, obviously I didn’t know it would make him want to kill himself, but I still shouldn’t have done it. So I’m ready to own up about it, if it’ll help Toby. And I’ll talk to Tom and Kevin about it tonight. I think Kevin will be a bit worried about owning up because he’s older than us and they’ll probably say he should have stopped us, but I’ll try to talk him round. I mean, I don’t like Toby much, but it isn’t fair if he ends up in care because of what we did.”
“Thanks, Jamie,” said Twitch. “I’ll make sure Toby knows you said you’d help. I don’t know if it’ll do any good until Graham changes his mind, because Toby said he won’t say what happened while there’s any chance of Graham hurting him, but at least it’s a start. Maybe if the rest of the gang agree to own up Graham will, too.”
Miles had to go straight home from school that evening, so Twitch went to the hospital without him. But next day he told Miles that Toby had been discharged from the hospital but that nobody would tell him where he was now.
“We’ll have to wait until he comes back to school,” he said. “If they don’t actually move him to a different school, of course.”
Jamie managed to get them on their own at one point. He told them that Tom and Kevin were sorry about what had happened to Toby and that both of them were prepared to own up if it would help Toby to get back home. Kevin was scared of the consequences but had agreed to do it all the same.
But Graham’s attitude didn’t seem to have changed at all: he was now avoiding them, disappearing at the start of every break and not coming back to class until the bell went
On the Wednesday Robyn came to tell them she’d spoken to Jamie and was prepared to own up, and Jack, who came to see them with her, said the same thing.
“And I think I can talk Robert into owning up, too,” added Robyn. “It’s hard, because Graham’s trying to make Rob stick with him, but I’ll work on him tonight.”
And if she was able to do that it would leave Graham isolated, and Miles was sure that if that happened his former friend would come around. And then maybe they’d be able to rescue Toby from wherever he’d ended up.
Wednesday June 4th
I got a phone call from Luke this evening: he wanted to know if I could go over to his house for a while. Normally Miles isn’t allowed to go out on school nights, and I thought maybe I wouldn’t be allowed to, either, because I have to study tomorrow even if I don’t have to travel to school. But when I said that Luke sounded really upset my mother said I could go provided I was home before it got dark. Sunset today is at 2043, which would give me plenty of time, so I said thank you to Mother and set off on my bike.
Luke took me straight up to his room and closed the door, and it was obvious that he was extremely unhappy, so I asked what was wrong. He said that the two boys who had been bullying him had got straight back onto him as soon as school started on Monday. He’d tried to ignore them, and it had seemed to work a bit at first, but today things had got a lot more serious.
He’d managed to ignore them again all the way through school, but they had got on the same bus as him to go home, and when they were a couple of stops before where the bullies usually get off they had grabbed him and the bigger one held him while the smaller one took the hearing aid from his right ear. Then they told him that if he wanted it back he would have to get off the bus with them now, and if he refused they’d drop it down the nearest drain. So of course he had to get off the bus with them, because his hearing aids are quite expensive and he can’t hear properly with just one.
The stop they got off at was in the country, about halfway between the town where Luke goes to school and the village where the two bullies live. It’s an area of rough scrubland and woods, and there aren’t any houses nearby, so once the bus had gone they were on their own. They marched him into the trees and pushed him over. The big one – his name’s Hamilton, Luke told me – said that he’d been rudely ignoring them all day and they didn’t like being disrespected like that, so they had decided to teach him a lesson. The smaller one, whose name is Young, suggested that they should check to see exactly how many scars Luke had (though he called him ‘the freak’, not Luke), and Hamilton thought that was a good idea, so they pinned Luke down and stripped all his clothes off. They also took his other hearing aid off, so after that he couldn’t hear what they were saying to each other, but they poked and prodded at his scars, and Young squeezed his testicles really painfully. Then they kicked him a few times, threw his clothes into some gorse bushes close to the side of the road, dropped his hearing aids into one of the thickest bushes and left him there – they only had to walk about half a mile to get home, so they didn’t need to wait for a bus.
So Luke was naked and his clothes were in an area of spiky bushes right next to the main road. It took ages to get them back – he found a long stick in the woods and used it to fish his clothes out, but he had to duck down out of sight every time a car came past. Eventually he got everything back and got dressed again, but he still got scratched rescuing his hearing aids from the bush. And then he had to wait for the next bus, and the one that runs past his house only comes once an hour, so he had to wait quite a long time. And that’s why he was so upset when he finally got home.
I couldn’t say a lot to try to cheer him up because, as I’d already realised, there is nothing I can really do to help. So I sat next to him, put my arm round his shoulders and hugged him, and it seemed to help a bit because he managed to smile at me, and after a few seconds he put some music on, and after that things were more like they had been when I visited him during the holidays. I just wish there was something I could do to give him some practical help…
On Thursday Toby returned to school, and as soon as he set foot into the classroom – and he wasn’t as early as he usually was – Miles and Twitch grabbed him, propelled him out into the cloakroom and asked if he was okay.
“Well, yes – except that things are still in a mess about my parents. Apparently the social workers spoke to Miss Steadman and the other teachers and found out that my parents keep pushing me to do better all the time, and are never happy if I get less than one hundred percent. And that makes them think it’s more likely my parents would have hit me for not doing well enough at school. So I’m with foster parents at the moment – it’s an ‘emergency placement’, or something like that. And I won’t be able to go home until I tell them who really beat me.”
“And are they okay, the foster parents?” asked Miles.
“I suppose so. There are a couple of other kids living there, and they’re a bit quiet – like me, I suppose – but the food isn’t too bad and they just let me lie on the bed reading most of the time. But I still want to go home really. So, did you manage to talk to Graham?”
“Well, yes… all the others are ready to own up to hitting you, but Graham’s afraid they’ll send him to prison for having a knife, and for being the ringleader, and he’s refusing to talk to us. Maybe he’ll talk to you, though.”
“I’m not going near him on my own! What if he’s got the knife with him?”
“He’s got no reason to hurt you – after all, you haven’t grassed him up, have you? But we’ll come with you when you talk to him if you like.”
“Okay. But I don’t know what I’m going to say.”
“Just tell him he has to own up. If you tell him the social workers are about to get the police involved it might help – after all, he can’t expect you to just stand by and say nothing when your parents are about to be arrested for something they didn’t do, can he?”
“Well… okay, but unless he swears he won’t hurt me I don’t think I can tell anyone it was him who threatened me.”
“You don’t have to tell him that, though, do you? Come on, let’s go and talk to him – Miss Steadman won’t be here for another five minutes or so.”
Graham was already at his desk, and the three of them crowded round him in such a way that he couldn’t just walk off unless he wanted to climb over them.
“Look, Graham,” said Miles, “Toby’s going to have to tell the social workers what happened, because otherwise the police are going to be called in and his parents will be nicked for something they didn’t do. But it’ll look far better if you and the others go and see the headmistress and own up to it instead. And I’ll come and own up, too, because if Twitch hadn’t taken me away I’d have stayed and joined in. And if we all take the blame there’s no reason you should get in any more trouble than anyone else.”
“Yes, I will: I’m the one who had the knife and threatened to use it, and they’re bound to find out, because nobody else is going to take the blame for that. And I’m not prepared to go to prison – it’s not as if I actually used the knife, is it?”
“No,” agreed Miles. “And if you say you never had any intention of using it, that you were just trying to scare him, I’m sure there’ll be no question of prison.”
“Yes, there is: I looked it up on the Internet, and just having a knife can get you five years in prison. You don’t have to use it.”
“We’ll all speak up for you,” said Rob, who was sitting beside Graham as usual. “We’ll tell them you’d never have actually hurt him.”
“That won’t make any difference. As soon as I admit to having threatened him with a knife I’ll be arrested. And there’s no way I can let that happen.”
“But they already know someone threatened me, because otherwise I’d have been able to say who hit me,” Toby pointed out. “So sooner or later they’re bound to find out it was one of you lot, even if I don’t say anything.”
“And you can’t expect anyone else to take the blame,” Miles added.
They argued until Miss Steadman arrived to take the register, and they carried on at break, and by the end it was obvious that Graham was close to accepting that his threats were going to come out sooner or later.
“Look,” he said, finally, “let me talk to my parents tonight. Then I’ll come with you all to the head tomorrow and we’ll tell her what happened. But Toby has to promise not to say anything until then – okay?”
“I suppose so,” agreed Toby. “I don’t think one more day will make any difference.”
Thursday June 5th
I’ve been thinking about Luke’s problem, and I think I might have got a solution. I don’t know if it’ll work, but logically it ought to, if Luke is able to do a little acting, and if I’m strong enough to play my part. I called Luke and told him about it and he says it might work – he even thinks Hamilton might be prepared to play it straight, though he thinks it’s far more likely he’ll get Young to help him as usual. So we’re going to spend as much time as possible this weekend training and then try to put the plan into action the weekend after. If it works it should get them both off Luke’s back for good.
Miles had originally intended for the whole gang to go to see the headmistress at break on the Friday morning. Toby was going to come with them, and they were all going to own up to beating him up in a game that had gone too far. Jamie had spoken to Tom and Kevin the previous evening and warned them what was going to happen, and both had agreed to their names being given to the headmistress and so, if she decided to follow that course of action, to the police. But the plan hit a snag as soon as the school day started: Graham didn’t arrive.
He still hadn’t arrived at break, and at that point Miles decided that they simply couldn’t leave it over the weekend. So he gathered up the rest of the gang and went with them, and Toby, to see the headmistress. He’d been prepared to do the talking, but when they got there Jack said that strictly speaking he and Twitch shouldn’t be there at all, since they hadn’t taken part in the forfeits inflicted on Toby, and that it would be better if one of the guilty parties did the talking. So Miles stepped back and let Jack get on with it.
“It’s about what happened to Toby,” Jack began, once they were all in the headmistress’s office. “We’re the ones who did it. See…”
And he explained how they had all been playing forfeit games, and how when Toby lost (and Jamie interrupted at that point to clear his own conscience by admitting that the final game had been rigged, which came as a nasty surprise to Toby) they had all gone overboard and beaten him really badly.
“Except Miles and Twi… Noel,” Jack added. “Noel tried to talk us out of it, and when Gra… when he failed he went home. And Miles went with him, because he didn’t want Noel to be off on his own in case he had a fit… a seizure, I mean. So neither of them had anything to do with what we did to Toby.”
“Well, I’m glad to see that you’ve all decided to make a clean breast of it,” said the headmistress. “It doesn’t excuse what you did: that’s called bullying, and I’d hoped it didn’t happen in this school. But recognising that what you did was wrong is a step in the right direction.”
“We didn’t realise how badly it had affected Toby,” said Jack. “We thought he’d just get over it.”
“Obviously he didn’t. And I understand from Social Services that there was something more: somebody scared him so badly that he wouldn’t even admit what had happened when his own parents were under suspicion. So was that all of you, or one in particular?”
The gang looked at each other uncomfortably, but nobody said anything.
“I think you’ll have to tell me which one of them it was that threatened you, Toby,” she said.
“It wasn’t any of them,” said Toby.
“Well, who was it, then? Because it’s obvious that someone threatened you – or was it really your parents after all?”
“No, of course not… it’s just… well…”
“Speak up, boy. We’ll make sure nobody hurts you now.”
“Well… “
“If you won’t tell me I’ll have to assume it was everyone here, and that will mean you’ll all get punished for something you didn’t do. Do you think that’s fair? If not I need a name.”
“It was Graham,” said Twitch. “I don’t owe him anything, especially after what he did to me and Miles on Monday. He was the one who did the threatening.”
“Is that true, Toby?”
Toby nodded.
“And why isn’t he here with the rest of you?”
“He’s not in school today, Miss,” said Miles. “We all agreed yesterday that we’d come and see you this morning, and we didn’t think it would be fair to Toby or his parents to keep it quiet for another three days, so we decided to come even though Graham isn’t here.”
“I see. Wait there.”
The headmistress walked through to the secretary’s office and asked her to call Graham’s home to see if he was sick. Graham’s mother said that he wasn’t, and that he’d left for school as usual. She was amazed to discover that he wasn’t there.
“All right, I’ll have to deal with Graham separately,” the headmistress told them. “Now, you know how strongly we dislike bullying, so I’m going to write to your parents – not yours, Miles and Noel – and then you’ll be suspended for a week. After that the school will consider the matter closed, but of course if Toby and his parents decide to make a formal complaint to the police you may find that there are more serious consequences.”
“I won’t,” said Toby. “And I’ll make sure my parents don’t, either.”
“Are you sure? You could easily have died.”
“I know, but that would have been my fault, not theirs.”
“Well, that’s very generous of you, and I hope the rest of you appreciate it.”
The gang clearly did, and a chorus of variations on ‘thank you very much’ followed.
“Then you can go. I’ll get the letters out to your parents today and we’ll be calling to confirm that the four of you – Jack, James, Robert and Robyn – are suspended for a week starting on Monday. Toby, I’d like you to stay: we need to speak to Social Services about getting you back home.”
The rest of them walked back towards their classroom.
“I suppose a week isn’t too bad, considering Toby could have died,” said Jamie.
“Maybe not, but we’re still going to be in deep trouble at home,” said Rob. “I bet we end up getting grounded for a lot more than a week.”
“It’s still better than getting arrested,” said Jack. “If Toby had wanted to complain to the police we might have been in real trouble. I suppose we all ought to lighten up on him a bit after this.”
“He was telling us about how hard his parents push him,” Miles told them. “It’s not that he wants to show off all the time, it’s more that if he doesn’t get glowing reports from the teachers he gets into bad trouble at home. Maybe this might persuade his parents to ease off a bit, and then he won’t have to do his Hermione impression all the time.”
“What do you think has happened to Graham?” asked Rob. “It sounded like his mother thought he was at school.” (They’d heard the headmistress’s half of the conversation with Graham’s mother because she’d left the door to the secretary’s office half open). “I hope he’s okay.”
“He was really worried about owning up,” said Miles. “He seemed sure the police would be after him for threatening to use his knife. I hope he hasn’t tried to do what Toby tried.”
“I don’t think he’d do that,” said Rob. “But he might have run away, and that might be dangerous, too. If I don’t get grounded straight away I think I’ll go looking for him at the weekend.”
“I’ll come and help,” said Miles. “If you don’t mind, of course.”
“Of course I don’t mind. Except after what Graham did to you and Twitch on Monday I’m surprised you’d want to.”
“He’s my friend. Friends argue sometimes – I found that out when I used to live in London – but it doesn’t mean we won’t be friends again. Okay, I was pretty angry about the photo, except… well, I can sort of understand why he was upset enough to do it. He thought I’d let him down, and maybe I had, sort of. So if I can help to find him I will.”
“Me, too,” said Twitch. “After all, maybe the photo did me a favour: it proved to all the girls in the class that it is possible for someone to kiss me and live.”
“I don’t think they’ll be queuing up to try it out, though,” Miles pointed out.
“I suppose not. Still, maybe one day…”
Toby came back shortly before the bell went for the start of the next lesson, and Jamie was the first one to go and apologise properly.
“I’m really, really sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have cheated like that. It’s just because I was scared of getting hurt… and because I’d sort of convinced myself you deserved it, somehow. I swear I didn’t realise how bad it would make you feel… well, you know, bad enough to want to… you know, take those pills, and that. And now Miles has explained a bit about why you… well, do the teacher’s pet thing, I suppose I can understand better. So I really am sorry, and I won’t ever do stuff like that again, okay?”
“Okay. But… you weren’t trying to lose in the other games we played, were you?”
“God, no. That was just because I’m rubbish at cards, that’s all. It was only in the last game I was cheating, because that’s the only one we played using the marked cards.”
“Okay. Then I’ll just make sure I don’t ask you to partner me in future.”
The other three came and apologised, too, so that by the time Miss Steadman arrived for the next class Toby was feeling almost popular: normally nobody ever talked to him at all.
He was called into the headmistress’s office during afternoon school and returned to tell them that, after speaking to the headmistress, Social Services were satisfied now that it was simply a game between children that had got out of hand, and that now that the culprits had come forward, owned up and been punished by the school there was no need for them to be involved. They were finishing off the paperwork and signing off on his emergency placement with foster parents, and as far as they were concerned Toby was free to return to his own home. They would be calling Toby’s parents straight away to arrange for them to collect him from school that afternoon.
So it looked as if Toby’s main problem had been resolved. But at the end of the school day Graham still hadn’t turned up and they were beginning to worry about him, especially as it was starting to rain. Some of them thought the rain might drive him back home, but Miles had seen how nervous he was about the possibility of being arrested, and he thought Graham wouldn’t want to risk it. They decided that Miles would phone Graham’s house in the morning, and if he hadn’t come home he would call the others and try to start a search.
It rained all night. In the morning Miles made his call, but Graham’s mother told him that Graham hadn’t come home at all the previous evening, and that they’d already notified the police that he was missing. Even though it was still raining Graham’s father was out searching at the moment.
But when Miles asked his own parents if he could go and help search he wasn’t entirely surprised to be told that he couldn’t: they wouldn’t let him out in the rain, no matter how good a cause it might be. Nor would they let Martin go out: he’d arranged to meet Luke to do some training, but when he phoned Luke to apologise he found that Luke was stuck at home, too. They rescheduled the training for the following afternoon.
It went on raining, on and off, all day, but it had stopped by the time Miles got out of bed on the Sunday morning. So an hour or so after breakfast he got on his bike and rode over to Rob’s house, hoping that they could continue the search for Graham, who (a further phone call to his house had revealed) was still missing. Rob opened the door to him and asked him to come in.
“So he still hasn’t turned up?” he asked. “That’s bad. I don’t know where he could have gone, but it was pretty wet yesterday. I hope he’s okay.”
“Can you come and help me look? I know the police are looking, and probably there won’t be much we can do, but I’d like to try, anyway.”
“Okay. We’re both grounded, but not until tomorrow. It could have been a lot worse: all we got was one week’s grounding and no allowance for two weeks, and considering that Toby might have died I suppose we can’t complain. Anyway, we’re free today, so we can check out some of the places round his house, just in case the police didn’t look.”
“Can I ask Robyn if she wants to come? I mean, the more of us there are, the more places we’ll be able to look.”
“You can ask,” said Rob, trying not to laugh. “She’s a bit busy at the moment, but there’s no harm in asking. Her room is second on the left at the top of the stairs. You’d better knock.”
Miles wondered what was so funny, but he didn’t ask: instead he went up the stairs and knocked on the indicated door.
“Who is it?” came Robyn’s voice from inside.
“It’s Miles. Can I come in?”
“No!! No, I’ll… I’ll be out in a minute.”
So Miles waited for a minute or so and then Robyn emerged, looking flustered. She pulled the door closed behind her but the latch seemed to be stuck as the door just hit the frame and rebounded open again, revealing an equally flustered-looking Jack. Ah, thought Miles: that explains Rob’s suppressed laughter.
“Hello, Jack,” he said, trying to keep a straight face. “I’m glad you’re here: I came to ask Robyn if she wants to come and help us look for Graham; so maybe you’d like to come, too. Oh - and your flies are undone, by the way.”
Jack blushed bright red and rapidly did up his zip. “It’s loose,” he mumbled. “It comes undone all the time.”
“That must be a nuisance. Perhaps Robyn could try to fix it for you – girls are good at that sort of thing.”
Robyn glared at him, but then grinned and pulled him into her room with her and Jack, closing the door. “Look,” she said, “we weren’t doing anything bad, but I don’t want the rest of the class finding out about it or we’ll get teased to death. You’re not going to say anything, are you?”
“Probably not. However, there is one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, I seem to remember you two laughing about the photo Graham took of me and Twitch. So I want one of you two. It won’t go on the notice-board, or anything, but I think you’d look good together.”
“Well… okay, but we’re not getting undressed, or anything.”
“Pity – you’d look even nicer naked. But I won’t make you do that – just a head and shoulders shot will do nicely, like the one of me and Twitch.”
They didn’t mind that too much, so Miles got his phone out and took a couple of photos of them as they were kissing – and he was right: they did look good together.
“So, what were you really doing when I knocked?” he asked. “I’m not going to tell anyone, not even your brother, Robyn. I’d just like to know.”
“Well… I was sort of investigating Jack’s… you know,” she said. “I thought it looked interesting when we were playing cards, and so I asked him round so that I could have a proper look in private.”
“I’m sorry I interrupted, then. You don’t have to come with us, obviously: if you’d prefer to go on… investigating each other I’m sure Rob and I can manage without you.”
“No, we’ll come. After all, we can do this any time, and Graham is our mate. So where were you thinking of looking?”
“I don’t really know. I suppose the woods around where he lives, though he might be anywhere: we know he’s got his bike with him, because his mum said he left for school as usual, so he could have gone into town, or even just kept going all day. He could be miles away. But I want to do something, so I’m going to start looking near his house.”
So all four of them rode to Graham’s house and spent the rest of the morning checking through the woodland that lay north of the house. But, as Miles had more or less expected, they found no trace of Graham. And none of them had any idea where else he might be…
So now Miles has something new to worry about, and in the next chapter we'll see him and the rest of the gang trying to find Graham. And Martin will be giving a lot of thought to Luke's situation, too.
Any comments, feedback and so forth sent to gothmog@nyms.net will be extremely welcome.
Copyright 2009: all rights reserved. Please do not reprint, repost or otherwise reproduce this or any part of it anywhere without my written permission.
David Clarke