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Chapter One – The Ones We Fear
“Freak!”
“Eww look at her!”
“What a stupid bitch!”
“Disgusting freak!”
“Stupid, poor loser!”
“Loser!”
Alex heard the cries before he saw the crowd; they rent the air, ripping the morning sky apart. What had been a perfectly normal, average day had taken a sinister turn; Alex could feel it in the atmosphere. A ring had formed in the middle of the playground, an undulating mass of students moving and swaying in kind, like seaweed being gently rocked by the tide, and without needing to see he knew exactly who was at the centre of it. Whenever a ring formed like this at Deerborn Secondary School, there was only ever one person at the centre of it.
The shouts grew louder, more and more voices joining in. It was a cacophony of sound, a mixture of hatred, excitement, glee; the voices were visceral, their feelings unbound. The sound of a group of children, teenagers mostly, reminding an outsider of their place. Reminding Janet of her place.
“Janet! Janet! Janet!”
The crowd started to chant her name, the many voices becoming one, but the noise was far from a celebration; if anything it was an incantation, as if to draw yet more spite towards the poor, innocent child at the centre of all the vitriol.
“What kind of name is Janet anyway, what are you, like 50?”
“My grandma is called Janet and she’s nearly dead!”
“Why don’t you just kill yourself, Janet?”
The voices separated into their component parts, and each line was delivered with such a mixture of sarcasm and disgust that Alex flinched. He’d been moving in the direction of the crowd, making his way slowly, reluctantly, towards it, like a moon pulled in by a planet’s gravity, losing all control of itself and doing what it must, but he stopped at hearing these words. Janet. It wasn’t exactly a cool name, a pretty name, a young name, but still, he thought, Janet couldn’t help what her mum had decided to call her. Especially if what they said about Janet’s mum was true, it wasn’t Janet’s fault. You don’t choose your parents, a fact Alex knew all too well.
“Janet Janet, fatter than a planet!”
The crowd took up the chant, and soon the majority of the voices merged into one again, a monster’s voice, loud, booming.
“Why are you so poor, Janet?”
“You’re so dirty it’s disgusting.”
“Why don’t you ever wash your clothes?”
“Why don’t you ever wash your hair?”
“Why don’t you just fuck off?”
Alex reached the mass and began to push his way through. He manoeuvred bodies out of the way, using his shoulders and elbows to force a path through the wall of excitement, fear, exhilaration. The bodies were warm, alive, he could feel the anger emanating from them, it was palpable. He pushed harder, claustrophobia threatening to rise from within him.
He could also feel himself pushing through the air itself, so infused with the frothing and baying of a group of angry, taunting teenagers, a vicious mob of humans turned animals. It was almost electric, there was a heat to it that belied the overcast weather. The air was so heavy that Alex felt like if it was removed, if this had been taking place in a vacuum, it would have been easier to move. He thought to himself, actually it is a kind of vacuum. One with Janet at the centre.
Eventually Alex reached the front of the crowd, which had formed the shape of a doughnut, a doughy, circular collection of people with a clearing at the centre. Bursting out of the mass of bodies, like a freediver breaching the surface, desperately gulping air into his starved lungs, Alex was confronted with exactly the scene he expected.
On one side of the clearing, on her hands and knees, head hung down so her hair was hiding her face, was Janet. From where Alex stood she looked so helpless, so defeated. Her lank hair, long and greasy, probably a mousy brown but too dirty to be able to properly discern, swayed as Janet’s body rocked slightly with each thudding impact. At the other side of the clearing stood Emma Sullivan, the usual suspect. The sun glinted off the golden crucifix she wore around her neck as she threw hear head back in laughter. Behind her were her gang, Jenna Marsden, Aliyah Khan, and Francesca Lombardi, the new Italian girl in class. And behind them, Emma’s boyfriend Jason Basely, a lumbering hulk of a boy too big to still be a child in anything but age. Luckily, Alex thought, his gang were nowhere to be seen. Alex dreaded to think what might have happened then.
The four girls laughed as they threw objects at Janet; at first Alex struggled to make out what, but after a couple of seconds he realised it was erasers. Francesca was holding a small, brown cardboard box in her left hand, and with her right was gleefully passing small pink and grey rubbers to Emma, Jenna, and Aliyah. They, in turn, were throwing them at Janet; as Alex stood, his feet rooted to the spot, the trio threw rubber after rubber at Janet, many of the small pieces of stationery missing her, many not. Each one that hit did so with the faintest of thumping noises, and coupled with the gentle swaying of Janet’s body, Alex could imagine the impact. Being hit by one single eraser wouldn’t do much damage; being hit by ten, twenty, god knew how many, the cumulative impact must have taken its toll. Especially in front of a mocking crowd.
Alex felt his temper begin to rise, and not just at Emma and her gang. Those four were pieces of shit, Alex knew that, everyone in school knew that. The problem was, Emma Sullivan was both beautiful and intelligent, a devastating combination for anyone anywhere, but especially so for a 15-year-old girl still in high school. Not only did she get As in every subject, turning in all her homework on time, turning up to all their mock exams and passing easily, she was also easily the hottest girl at school.
With her long, straight blonde hair, her large green eyes, small button nose, and bright, glaring smile, everyone in school, at least all the boys anyway, and not a few of the girls, had crushes on her. Boys trailed after her wherever she went, like crowds of seagulls following a trawler, hoping that she’d bestow on them a smile, a hello, anything at all. They basked in her attention, lived for it, some probably even willing to die for it. That she never gave her fans anything only seemed to make them want it more, and if her plan through her ignorance was to discourage them, it didn’t work. The cross she wore coupled with her weekly church attendance meant the majority of teachers were in her thrall, too; whenever anyone had the temerity to tell on her – not Janet, never Janet, but the occasional other student who felt her wrath – the teachers would dismiss their complaints. “Not Emma Sullivan,” they’d say, “it can’t be Emma Sullivan, she’s too good.”
Jenna and Aliyah were pretty, too, tall and slim, with soft features and bright eyes; Jenna had violently red hair, Aliyah’s a badly dyed blonde. She’d turned up to school with the bad dye job one Monday morning, and everyone has immediately assumed she was copying Emma. Whether it was true or not, such is high school, no one cared to find out. Rumour soon became fact.
No one had made up their mind about Francesca; she was new at the school, a transplant from elsewhere, an other, and her arrival was still too recent for anyone to have formed a firm opinion. She was pretty, probably, people said, but she was still too new for that opinion to be the prevailing one, and for her reputation to precede her. As well as this, people were suspicious of her; no one was quite sure how she’d ingratiated herself with Emma and her gang so quickly and it made them uneasy. The smart money would be on the fact that she’d joined in the othering of another to prevent being the other herself, but no one at Deerborn Secondary was that insightful, at least consciously. Between the four girls, however, there was enough beauty and intelligence to make them untouchable. Especially when they were juxtaposed with Janet; poor, dirty Janet.
Alex wrenched his eyes from Emma and her gang and rested them on Janet. Still on her hands and knees, Alex wanted to run over to her, grab her, shake her. It was at her that the majority of his anger was aimed. He didn’t hate her, not like Emma and her gang and most of the school, teachers included, did. He didn’t like her either, oh no, that was not the case at all. If anything he was wildly indifferent, he felt about Janet how he felt about most of his fellow students at Deerborn. They were just people he was forced to be with, forced to study with and learn with and eat with and play football with in PE until the school year ended a few months later. Then he’d finally be free to leave, would never see the majority of them again.
If it had been up to Alex, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with anyone in the school; but he knew that wasn’t possible, knew he needed to blend in to survive, knew, in his heart of hearts, that he did actually need his fellow students, he did actually need the people around him. And so he laughed with his friends, he listened to the teachers, he kept his head down and did his best to get by.
But right then, in that moment, he wanted to break from the crowd, storm over to Janet and grab her arms, drag her to her feet, brush the hair out of her face and shake her. He wanted to shake her as hard as he could, try and shake some sense into her, shake some willpower into her, shake some of the meekness out of her. He wanted to scream in her face that she should stand up for herself, she should fight back. She should, at least, stay on her feet, walk away, exit the situation. That was better than doing nothing at all, than simply accepting her place, surely? Alex wanted to tell her that she had to do something, anything, or the torment would never end. Because Alex had seen his father coming in dejectedly from work, had heard his mother console him, whisper in his ear that it would get better, she was sure of it, she promised. Alex knew that bullying didn’t stop when you left school, and that some people, like his father, like Janet, like Billy Loomis who would eat anything for 50p, would be bullied forever.
It wasn’t just Janet he wanted to grab and shake; he wanted to do the same to Emma, to walk over to her and shake her and slap her face, like he’d seen people do in films when people are hysterical. He wanted scream at her, “what gives you the right? Why do you get to decide who’s popular and who gets bullied? Who put you in charge?”
He wanted to, but even over and above knowing he wouldn’t, he knew it would be futile. No one had decided Emma was in charge; everyone had decided Emma was in charge. Her father was the local councillor for Deerborn, the village they called home; the public had voted him to be in charge, and this conferred a certain amount of status on Emma. Her father was in charge of his father’s generation, therefore Emma was in charge of her own. But more than that, much more so, what really put Emma in charge was her beauty. She’d matured faster than other girls; she grew tall before them, starting shaving her legs (and talking loudly about it in the corridor between classes and in the dining hall at lunch) before them, grew breasts before them. If anything, that was what truly put her in charge. Not only was she beautiful, a girl slowly becoming a woman before everyone’s eyes, but she had breasts. And not only had she grown them before most of the other girls, she’d never been ashamed or embarrassed by them. Where other girls tried to hide theirs, wearing baggy jumpers, constantly keeping their arms folded, Emma wore hers like a badge of honour. And for someone as beautiful and popular as Emma, a thing becomes what she wills it to be. So where other girls were taunted for their breasts, whether they were too small, too big, one slightly bigger than the other — for there’s no winning for teenage girls, not when it comes to teenage boys — Emma displayed hers proudly. She started talking loudly about bras, about how her mum was taking her shopping, and not just for plain, boring bras, but cute ones, in pretty colours with patterns and designs. Emma had learned long ago that to master something you had to own it, and so she did.
Whilst the children wouldn’t learn for many years, the adults knew that it was this confidence that had really put Emma in charge, that made her leader not just of their year, but of the whole school. The year previous she’d been bold, brash, but there had been a holding back, a sense that she was capable of more. Only having been in year 10, not the top of the school, meant she was reserved, waiting, like a tiger in the bush, knowing its moment will come and so not rushing. When Alex and Janet and Emma and the rest of their year had come back that year, into their final year at the school, Emma had truly flourished. And that had been hell for Janet.
There was so much Alex had wanted to do, standing there surrounded by the baying crowd; he felt like he’d done the first time his dad allowed Alex to go with him to watch the annual boxing match at the Harvest Festival in Hagan’s Field, the one with the stone circle children weren’t supposed to go near any other time of the year. At first the crowd had been perfectly calm, perfectly reasonable, men and women sitting, standing, talking, drinking. And then two men had entered the ring, a bell had rung, and everything had changed. Those same people, some of whom Alex recognised, like kindly Mr Jones who ran the library, and his wife Mrs Jones, who Alex knew worked in Hull for the Hull Daily Mail, had ceased being people, and had become animals. Where a minute previously they’d been talking calmly, reasonably, discussing the weather or the local economy, suddenly they were screaming and shouting, egging on these two men to fight each other, to hurt each other. Blood was on the cards, blood was in the air, and when the crowd got a scent, they’d seemed to devolve to their basest animal selves. It was the same there on the playground.
On the opposite side of the ring Alex had seen see his two best friends, Tom and Mo. Normally very calm boys, they were two people who were, like Alex, just happy to get by. They weren’t popular, weren’t unpopular, but simply blended in to the school’s ecosystem. And like Alex, they were patiently waiting their freedom the following June after their GCSEs; however, unlike Alex, right then they were monsters. They were snarling, shouting, Mo was even moving his arm as if he had a box of erasers, too, as if he wanted to pelt them at Janet, increase her pain and suffering, become a part of it.
Alex could also see Lisa, Maria, and Dani, three of the swots who sat at the front of every class, answered every question, even sometimes asked for extra homework; they too were like bestial versions of themselves, they were no longer humans but Frankenstein’s Adam, rejected by humanity and tearing it apart as a consequence.
The shouting had begun to hush; it was like a reverse ripple effect, starting from the back of the crowd, though it took its time to reach the centre. Alex noticed it before Emma and her gang, and turning he saw the crowd behind him part like the Red Sea before Moses as two teachers pushed through. Mr Barnett, the head of Maths, and Miss Aseen, the new Science teacher, eventually made their way to the centre of the doughnut; Francesca was the next to notice, and in a panic she dropped the box of erasers, spilling them through the clearing, small pieces of rubber bouncing in every direction. It would have been comedic if the situation wasn’t so grave.
“For fuck’s sake,” Emma said to Francesca as she bent down to pick up a handful of ammunition before she straightened back up and continued her aerial bombardment. Jenna spotted the teachers next and tried to quickly shove the erasers she was holding into her nonexistent pockets; they too spilled onto the floor about her feet. Aliyah and Emma, however, were blissfully unaware of the impending end to their fun, and continued to lob the erasers at the prone Janet, who still was not moving, neither to defend herself nor flee.
Silence descended on the crowd until all that could be heard were the soft thumps of rubber hitting Janet. She was completely silent, any tears her hair might have been hiding without volume, until Emma caught her in the face, just under her left eye, and she finally cried out. The noise was sad, like a dog being whipped, and it broke Alex’s heart even as his anger remained. Emma was delighted with the noise; she turned to face the crowd as if to soak up the praise she thought she was due, and that was when she spotted the two teachers. Rather than panic like her friends, she simply stood on the spot, putting one hand on her hip in a posture of utmost petulance.
“You four, here, now,” boomed Mr Barnett, his voice shocking its way through the fresh silence like thunder on a quiet summer night. Emma’s underlings moved quickly over to where he was pointing, to a spot just in front of him; Emma stood stationary for a few seconds, as if daring him to ask her again, before with an audible sigh she too moved to stand in front of him.
“Head’s office, now,” he shouted, spittle flying from his lips, his fury palpable. As the girls trudged away, and Mr Barnett followed them, Miss Aseen moved over to Janet. Even though it had only been perhaps ten seconds since the teachers had arrived, the crowd had nearly vanished, everyone moving away to other forms of entertainment since the show had ended. Miss Aseen squatted on her haunches; Alex couldn’t hear what she was saying, but her words appeared to have no effect on Janet whatsoever, who remained on her hands and knees, head hung low, unmoving. This continued for a minute before Miss Aseen stood up, putting one hand under Janet’s left arm and lifting her. Janet stood reluctantly, and allowed Miss Aseen to steer her across the playground, in the opposite direction to Mr Barnett and the group of offenders.
Alex remained standing where he was, unsure of how to proceed, until Tom and Mo appeared before him laughing.
“Did you see that?” Tom said, barely able to get his words out, his voice high pitched and utterly soaked through with delight.
“Yeah, I thought Barnett was going to shit himself,” Mo was bent over with laughter, he put one hand on Alex’s shoulder to steady himself but stopped abruptly when Alex shrugged it off.
“That was shit.”
“Huh?” Mo said, standing up straight. Tom had stopped laughing, too, and was regarding Alex with half a suspicious look on his face.
“What you on about man?” Tom asked.
“What Emma and those bitches did to Janet, that was fully shit.”
Neither Tom nor Mo said anything for a moment, before Tom started smiling.
“Do you fancy Janet?” he said, laughter returning to his voice.
Mo started laughing, too, and soon they were both jumping and dancing round Alex, pointing and chanting at him.
“Alex and Janet sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
“Fuck off,” Alex said, repressing his anger and trying to sound like he was joking.
“You fancy Janet, you freak,” Mo said, once again bent double with renewed laughter.
“Ew, no thanks,” Alex said, hating himself even as he said it. “Who the fuck would fancy that dirty bitch?”
Tom and Mo roared with laughter at this, delighted to have their companion back from his odd behaviours. They didn’t notice Alex flinching at the sound, didn’t see the shadow that crossed his face, the darkness on his features. From across the playground came the sound of the bell clanging, summoning them back inside to begin afternoon lessons.
“Oh fuck,” Tom said. “Double maths with hard-on Harden, we better get a move on.”
The trio stalked across the playground, the patches of sunlight poking out from behind the clouds feeling like taunts to Alex. It was a warm September afternoon, and Alex wondered to himself, as they made their way back into the bland brick school building, how something so awful could happen on such a beautiful day. Little did he know, there were so many more beautiful days to come, days that would feel without end, days that made him happy to be alive. And so many awful events he’d wish he weren’t.
The Ones We Fear – Robert Welbourn
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