Читать книгу Montpelier Parade - Karl Geary - Страница 15

9

Get him, get him!” You were running as fast as you could through the brick lane at the back of the bicycle shed. You were fast, impervious to the uneven tarmac. You didn’t dare look back to the prefect chasing you. Graeme, that was his name. Graeme something. He wore a cricket jumper. He was tall and had shy, sandy eyebrows. He’d been waiting for you, hidden inside the tuck shop, where he had a clear view into the shed.

He may have been there for hours, hunkered low to the floor, and all the while you sat through a class, both of you measuring the lazy strokes of a clock. He had had the thought of marching you roughly to the principal’s office. There he could detail the minutes of your crimes and stand proudly, having prevented them.

Before the bell at eleven you’d left the classroom. Your shirt covered a small vise grip, and there were pliers jammed under your belt: you needed a front derailleur. It was one piece of hundreds that made up a bicycle, the last piece. You had to break the chain to remove it; smashing it would be quicker, but you hadn’t smashed it. Instead you’d found the release clip, removed the chain, then the derailleur, and reattached the chain. At least the bike still would work, unlike when you stole a wheel and later had to walk past a student in tears dragging the misshapen frame behind him.

It was a ten-speed Raleigh, blue. You’d seen it that morning the second time you circled past, at close to nine, when the shed had begun to overflow, bicycles littered this way and that. You took the pliers from under your belt; they had been painfully pressing cold into your skin, and you were sure they would leave a mark.

That’s how the prefect wanted you, your hands covered in oil, tool clasped tight, bolts one by one inside your pocket, bent defenseless over the now-mutilated mechanics. He waited.

You felt none of that, how he must have thought, I’ll let him get a little further, I’ll let him settle in, I’ll get him, all right. You sensed nothing, even when he’d crept a few feet from you, and it was only when a pebble, dislodged by his foot, skittered quickly toward you that you turned in time to see his raised hand over your shoulder, collapsing your body like a broken spring across the frame.

You pushed back against him, but he had hold of your shirt, pulling at it until the buttons gave. You pushed him again, harder this time. He lost his balance, falling slowly over the wheel of a bicycle set behind him like a trick. He tried to pull you with him, but then he let go and splayed his arms out behind him, trying to break his fall. It was then you ran, hearing the elevens bell, and then the shouts and cries, “Get him, get him!”

You had a good lead. You ran through the first trickle of students that had begun to emerge from the classrooms, through a high-bricked corridor to where a black steel gate stood between you and the main road beyond, maybe eight feet high, with a ledge halfway up where you could get your footing, and in a few rehearsed strides you were over the crest of it and dropping down to the other side.

You knew he wouldn’t follow you outside. No, he’d go up to the principal’s office, probably bringing the bicycle with him. He’d knock on the office door and wait, assembling a story where he could be the hero. You couldn’t blame him for that.

You were sorry then, as you slowed your pace, checking over your shoulder. Being caught always made you sorry, but it didn’t feel like the sorry for being caught. It was the sorry that was deeper inside you and made you heavy and sad, and think that it would be nice to be asleep or somewhere else. You crossed over the wet road. You would have to wait it out a few hours and go back for the last class. He probably didn’t know what you were called, but he knew the rest of it, and it would only be a matter of time before your name came across the intercom, summoning you to the office. It would be known that it was you, would find its way through the line at the tuck shop, along corridor A, corridor B, corridor C, settling in a dust around you, in secret whispers and looks along the classroom. You knew how it went.