The Accidental (5 page)

Forty people in the upper sixth probably saw that picture. Twenty-six people in the lower sixth probably saw it. Magnus can’t calculate how many other people possibly saw it, or can still see it. There was a lecture about it at Assembly, after. Milton said the people who sent it should come forward. It would come to light, he said. When it did it would be worse for them then if they didn’t come forward now. But it can’t be traced. There is no way the email can be traced back to them. Anton found a zipcode from somewhere in the States. He got it out of the back of the magazine. The message was sent from ‘Michael Jackson’. When Magnus checked his mail that Tuesday night that’s the name that came up. He had laughed. He had thought it was well cool, to be part of it. He was in the common room when Jake Strothers first came in with the photo. Jake Strothers stole it from the school office. Jake Strothers had been sent to deliver a note but when he got there the office was empty. The filing cabinet was wide open. Jake Strothers looked in it. He found the photo on her file. She was in the lower sixth. She was near the front of the Ms. Jake Strothers came into the common room, showed it to Anton. Anton had the magazine in his locker. He fetched it out, folded the photo on to it. Jake Strothers went crazy. Don’t for fuck sake you’re bending it. Jake Strothers had wanted to go out with her. That’s why he stole it. He didn’t want a phone photo. He wanted a photo taken unsneakily. Then Jake Strothers actually looked at the composite Anton made by folding it. They both laughed. He asked them what they were laughing at. They wouldn’t tell him or show him. They knew he hadn’t ever done it yet. They could sense it like it was written on his forehead. Anton said: I’m not responsible for what happens to homosexuals. Magnus said he wasn’t. Anton said: I believe you, honest. But I’m not responsible either for what happens to innocents who see things they’re not ready for yet. Anton was right about that. Hologram Boy was so fucking pure. Hologram Boy noted his own stiffs like interesting science experiments. At this point he was still Hologram Boy. At this point Hologram Boy was still under the illusion that he was Magnus Smart. It was still an ordinary Tuesday. Magnus Smart knew something they didn’t know. A child could do it for fuck sake. Anton, Jake Strothers, hadn’t a clue. They were computer illiterates. Magnus Smart told them there was something he could really show them. It was after school hours. There was hardly anybody about. They walked along the corridor past the cleaners. They went down the main stairs. The school was empty, hollow, big as a whale. They walked through it like they were inside its ribs. But now Magnus is bigger, more bloated than the school. He knows more than the whole school does. They pushed the door open. What is it you see when you see a photo of someone? There was an article in the paper. It said: the tragedy of the loss of Catherine Masson who went to Deans. A happy generous well-loved person a polite bright girl a good friend whose friends would all miss her a keen member of the Lapidary Society. The photo in the paper was the school photo. It was the same one. Magnus knows more than she knew. Magnus knows more than her family knows, even now. All the people who got the email, all the people who read the paper, Magnus knows more than them all. Anton knows. Jake Strothers knows. Nobody will know Magnus is anything to do with them. They are known as bad. He is known as good. They met at the side gate as if by chance they were just walking along at the same pace going home from school. Anton was looking at the ground as he walked. He said nobody was to know, nobody was to say. They all agreed, they nodded without saying anything, no one would know. But Magnus knows. He is all swollen up with knowing.

He did it.

They did it.

Then she did it.

She killed herself

Magnus shakes his head hard inside the duvet. He says the words to himself again. She. Killed. Herself. Nothing. Words are pointless. They mean nothing. They don’t do anything. He pulls the duvet off his head. He is still in this room. They are on holiday in Norfolk. Is it dark yet? Doesn’t matter. Catherine Masson. He says her name to himself. Catherine Masson Catherine Masson Catherine Masson. Doesn’t matter doesn’t matter doesn’t matter. She was happy, generous, well loved. Her friends loved her. He puts his head inside the duvet again. She was bright. She was polite. She went to the Lapidary Society. At the Lapidary Society they polish stones to make things, like jewellery or cufflinks. She would have kept the things she made on her dressing table in her bedroom. There she is, at a computer, in her bedroom. It is a girl’s neat bedroom. It has posters of singers, pictures of tv personalities, cut-out pictures of horses, baby animals, tigers, polar bears. It is the moment she opens an email saying it is from Michael Jackson. She clicks on it. She stares at the screen. Ah. Doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter. He passed her one time in the corridor. He is not even sure it was actually her. She was just a girl. She was in a bunch of loud laughing girls. They were terrifying. They were going to French. They were eating crisps, jostling each other through the classroom door. They were shouting about how stupid the French word for tyres was.
Les pneus
. Was it her? If that girl was her then they passed within about half a metre of each other but they didn’t know. She didn’t know who he was. He didn’t know it either, who he was. She is lucky. She is dead. She can’t feel anything. He can’t feel anything either. But he isn’t dead. After, the rumour went round the school. A girl from Deans had killed herself in the bathroom in her house. Her mother or her brother had found her. He heard the rumour in Maths. Charlie wants to add an extension with a floor area of 18 metres squared to the back of his house. He wants to use the minimum possible number of bricks, so he wants to know the smallest perimeter he can use. Write down an expression for the area in terms of x, y. Calculus is the mathematics of taking limits, especially with reference to rates of change. There was nearly a war over who discovered it first, whether it was Leibniz or Newton. Leibniz invented the = sign. Maths = finding the simple in the complex, the finite in the infinite. He sits on the carpet, holds his feet. It was a Tuesday. The whisper said she hung herself. Sarah walks with her brother Steven from home to school every day. One day they time themselves. When Steven gets to school he says: it takes me 6 mins 8 seconds. When Sarah gets to school she says: it takes me 6 to 7 minutes. Whose answer is more likely to be true? Hologram Boy, who was going to University, squeaked inside his head that hanged was more correct than hung. Correction. There is no University. University is not more likely to be true. University is laughable. Calculus is laughable. Everything is a joke. Even the days of the week are laughable. It was a Tuesday when he heard it. If, that other first Tuesday, he just hadn’t been in the common room after school. If he hadn’t known so much. If he had just not. If they hadn’t. Then they hadn’t. Then she wouldn’t have. Then she might still.

That noise is someone knocking on the door of this room. He lifts his head out of the duvet. Above the door is the jut of a roofbeam. It is probably not original. His jeans are in a pile on the floor. His long-sleeved shirt is piled next to the jeans. All the clothes he brought here are in a pile by the sink. She goes through the door of a bathroom. She sits on the edge of a bath. She is surrounded by shower curtain. What would there be a smell of? Toothpaste, soap, clean things. There would be carpet under her feet. Maybe the carpet would still be damp from the last person who had a bathor shower. She must have been quite resourceful. There aren’t that many obvious places in a bathroom. It is a strange room to choose when you first think about it. But after you think about it for a while it makes perfect sense. You go in then you go out of a bathroom. You don’t stay for any length of time. It’s where you empty all the shit out of yourself. It’s where you get clean. She looks at him from the edge of the bath. She is polite, bright. She is wearing her school clothes, like in the photo. She looks straight at him. She nods. It is the least she can expect. She expects it. No she doesn’t. She’s dead. She isn’t looking at him, she can’t look at anyone. But there she is, sitting on the edge of the bath, looking at him. She holds up the showerhead like it’s her who’s got the stiff, not him. She waggles it at him. She gives him the eye.

That noise is someone knocking again. Someone is shouting something. It sounds angry.

Right, Magnus calls. All right.

His voice sounds strange. It seems to come from his stomach. It is surprising to him that there is still a connection from his middle to his head.

Magnus, the voice behind the door had called. How long ago did it call? It had been his mother’s voice. The words weren’t angry in themselves but the sound of them was. Come downstairs now. All right. All right. It is all he has been saying for days. He is monstrous, a liar. All right.

Magnus gets up. He feels dizzy from standing. He walks across to the door. Then he notices his bare arm above his hand. He notices his chest. He looks down. He isn’t wearing anything. He turns back into the room. He pulls on the shirt. He takes a button, lines it up against a buttonhole in the shirt’s other side. But he can’t get the button to go through the buttonhole. He can’t get his hand to do it. He pulls on the jeans. He tucks himself in. He takes the zip, finger there, thumb there. He makes an effort. The zip goes up.

He unlocks the door. Above the keyhole the door has a latch. It is pretending to be an authentic old latch. The door is pretending to be an authentic old door. Maybe everything there is isn’t authentic any more. Maybe everything there is is a kind of pretending. Magnus opens the door. The hall is too bright. This is the kind of bright that goes dark. Over there is the door to the bathroom. It has a little rectangular plaque stuck on it that says the word Bathroom in swirling writing with an illustration of a watering can next to the word. Flowers are growing out of the word, through the letters, the capital B. Magnus shuts his eyes. He is sweating. He feels across to the wall with his hands, feels with his toes for where the floor turns into the stairs. He opens his eyes a crack when he knows he must be past the bathroom door. He goes down the stairs.

Down in the hall he turns to face the door of the room where they eat every night. He steps towards it, stands in front of it. He raises his chin off his chest. All right. He opens the door.

There’s his mother. She doesn’t know anything. She is saying something. Magnus nods. He picks up the plate from a place at the table with no one sitting at it. His sister takes the plate from him. She doesn’t know either. She is putting something on the plate out of a dish on the table. It smells of fish in the room. Michael is saying something. He doesn’t know anything. He is pointing at something. Magnus nods. He hopes that this nodding is what they need. He nods several times, as if he is very sure of what he is nodding about. Yes. Yes, definitely. No worries. He takes the knife then the fork from the place setting. He slides them against himself where his back pocket should be. They must have gone in. There is no sound of them hitting the floor. He can feel the cold of them against his back. The cold is astonishing. It is astonishing to feel anything. The feeling won’t last.

If you don’t mind, I’m going to take this up to my room, Magnus says. Please excuse me. Thank you very much.

He is polite. He is like her. She was polite, bright.
Les pneus
. His mother says something. It sounds like an exclamation mark. His sister hands him his plate. He takes it in both hands so as not to drop it. The fish on it is dead. It is headless.

The door swings shut behind him. Ahead of him are the stairs. They are deep in shadow. The door with the word Bathroom on it is at the top of them.

Magnus walks to the front door. He puts the plate down on the carpet. He opens the door, picks up the plate again. It is so bright outside. It is unbelievably bright. He hunches his shoulders. Any minute now it will darken. That noise is just wind in leaves, the noise of birds. The birds are like a nightmare. They are making the same noises, again, then again, then again. The leaves are hissing. Birds are pointless. They make a noise to reproduce for their own genetic ends. Leaves are pointless. Trees are pointless. They sustain the lives of insects which die almost as soon as they’re born. The leaves help to produce oxygen that keeps people breathing, then people stop breathing. Insects pollinate a third of the food that people who are horrible to other people, people who are going to die because of it, eat. Hologram Boy:
a purpose-bred silkworm moth in caterpillar form can transform the mulberry leaves it eats into half a mile of unbroken silk thread stronger than a steel thread of the same thickness would be
. Information is a joke. It is laughable. It is so meaningful it is meaningless. The other noise is the crunch of his own feet on gravel. It doesn’t hurt enough. He looks down at the ground moving under him. It doesn’t hurt now because he is walking on grass.

He is on a little bridge. Under it is a clogged river. He leans over, scrapes the fish off the plate with his hand. Most of it lands in the water. Part of the tail-end breaks off, lands in a bush on the bank. He drops the plate in after the fish. Then he gets the knife out of his back pocket, then the fork. He drops them over too.

The bush is a scratchy one. He leans right into it to reach the bit of fish that got away. When he has it, he goes to the river’s edge. He wades in, then he cups the broken pieces in the water. He lets them float out of his hands. They waver then sink, flaking apart, settling round his feet.

Magnus sits down on the bank in the litter, the weeds. His jeans are wet up to the thighs from the river. Once last year two girls from school came round looking for him. It was a Wednesday. He was at Chess Club. Astrid told him afterwards. She had been in the garden. Two girls had put their heads over the gate. Was this where Magnus Smart lived. Was she his sister. What girls? he asked her. He couldn’t believe it. It was unbelievable. What did they look like? Don’t ask me, Astrid said. I didn’t recognize them. They were a lot older than me. They were like your age, sixteen at least. One had her belly button done. But what did they want? he said. Hologram Boy. He was all shiny with amazement. They wanted you, Astrid said, but you were out. Why would they want me? (Hologram Boy. He was so brightly shining.) Well duh, Astrid said. She was throwing her powerball at the wall by the Egyptian prints, an illegal thing to do if Eve ever knew, catching it, throwing it again, catching it, throwing it again. The prints shook as the ball hit the wall. No, really, what? he said. I told them you didn’t live here, she said. I told them you have a body odour problem you have to go to the doctor about. I said you were at a special clinic taking medication. I told them your nickname was Wankstain. I told them you were gay. They were both really ugly. The one with the belly button was infected. One of them had a scar like this all down her face. They both smelt disgusting of dead fish.