The Remarkables (The Remarkable Owen Johnson, part 1) (3 page)

The last holiday was supposed to have been during the spring about five years ago,
but Katie’s parents were also killed in an accident, victims of a plane crash whilst abroad on business. Since then Katie had been brought up by her sister Fiona, who was about ten years older than her.

The death of Katie’s parents and Owen’s mother brought them closer t
ogether; a shared bond formed from grief, helping them both to recover as well as they were able to do so. This closeness intensified Owen’s feelings for his best friend, although he had known since first seeing her smile that she would always be the girl for him, and every hint of her existence made him feel rather peculiar (the smell of her hairspray seemed to have a very odd paralysing effect on him, which was quite inconvenient when his form teacher decided to adopt that particular brand).

A second
volley of verbal abuse from the gang of boys behind him hastened Owen’s pace further.

Ever since Rick had decided
that Owen was the reason behind Katie’s recurrent rejections and made him a marked man, Owen had begun to dread the inevitable moments at school that they encountered one another. What had begun as fairly harmless mocking and jeering had soon escalated, culminating in a physical attack on Owen as he walked home alone one winter’s evening after swimming club. This incident had left Owen with a black eye and cut lip, and Rick with an even more inflated ego that exhibited no signs of deflating.

Owen denied
to anyone that asked that it was Rick who had caused these injuries, instead blaming them on a bicycle accident that he invented. Katie saw through this ruse though (no doubt because she was aware that Owen didn’t own a bicycle, a slight flaw in his story), and became very annoyed with Owen for protecting the person who was clearly her prime suspect. Owen’s decision to invent his fall off an imaginary bicycle was not to prevent Rick from getting into any trouble, but rather to deter Katie from taking matters into her own hands, and to avoid at least a month’s worth of teasing from Jack for allowing a girl to fight his battles.

Mind you, if you were going to have someone fight your battle
s for you it would be Katie Morgan. She wasn’t a person for whom violent activities were a regular pastime, but Owen had seen how powerful a punch she packed after she took issue with a group of sixth formers who were bullying one of the boys in Jack’s year.

They were playing piggy-in-the-middle with the boy’s
schoolbag. Besides the telling of lies, if there was one thing that Katie despised it was bullies, so she swept in and retrieved the picked-upon boy’s bag and handed it back to him. When the tallest and burliest of the group ordered Katie to give it back to them she refused, so he behaved in the civilised and chivalrous manner that one associates with a bully and spat in her face. Before Owen could pluck up the courage to wade in and defend her honour, Katie had leapt forwards and landed a right hook on his face. Despite her petite size he was thrown off his feet and landed on the ground a short distance behind, knocked out cold.

Her punching ability
was not just restricted to luggage stealing troglodytes, as it also extended to the sports hall, where she was a feared opponent on the volleyball team on account of the extensive bruising that a ball struck by her could cause. Her team mates called her ‘Lightning Kate’, as they were convinced her hands flashed like lightning when she played (and perhaps on account of the frequent burst volleyballs that succumbed to her power).

Up
until now he had avoided any further physical confrontation with Rick, but one lunchtime the previous week he had announced across a crowded school corridor that by the end of term Owen would get another ‘pummelling’. As today was Owen’s last day, he could only presume that Rick had chosen this morning as his preferred time for carrying out said punishment, no doubt to ensure as many people as possible saw his handiwork before the student population dwindled.

O
wen felt his heart start to pound in his chest, and experienced the strange tingling in his hands once more. Rather than carrying on down the street towards the school, he darted through some trees into the park that stretched behind it, hoping that it would be empty of rampaging hounds on this occasion. Crossing the park would make his journey longer and risked him being late for his exam, but Owen hoped that this would deter Rick and his cronies from following as they would also be in trouble for tardiness.

After a few moments he glanced over his shoulder to judge the success of his
manoeuvre. Aside from himself and a man wearing a narrow-brimmed hat and long coat standing beside a tree, the park appeared deserted. Owen relaxed slightly, but maintained his steady pace.

He tried to concentrate on the exam that awaited him at school,
quietly confident that he had done enough revision to get the grades he needed to continue his studies at the next level. English was by no means his strongest subject, so his father and teachers were somewhat puzzled as to why he was planning to study it further. The true reason for his choice was that English was the only class he would be able to share with Katie (he didn’t have a hope at doing well at history or geography which she was also taking) so he didn’t want to risk not being able to study this subject.

In his bag was a change of clothes so that he could tag along with Katie and some of her friends to try and get served in the pub behind the leisure centre
. He was desperate to spend as much time with her before she headed down to Cornwall tomorrow with her sister to visit their grandfather.

As h
e repositioned the ruck sack over both shoulders (dispensing with the unwritten social etiquette of ‘one strap good, two straps bad’) he felt a sudden pain in his left leg, followed by a
thud
on the ground beside him.

Looking down he saw a smooth rock tumbling a
way, accompanied by a roar of laughter behind him. Turning he realised that Rick and some of his entourage had decided to follow him after all, with Rick’s arm already swinging halfway through the air, about to release another missile.

Owen broke into a sprint, and a flurry of expletives behind him suggested that hi
s aggressors had done the same. He was not sure if he could outrun them so looked ahead to see if there was anywhere he could escape from his pursuers. He could probably make it to school, but short of bursting into the staff room (an act which would only delay and probably exacerbate Rick’s assault) there were few opportunities within its walls that could provide him with shelter from the violence that had been promised to him.

The leisure centre
in the corner of the park was nearer, but that didn’t guarantee a safe haven either. He was certain that the swimming pool would be open, but that would mean getting past the receptionists, one of whom still harboured a grudge for Owen after he trampled mud on ‘her’ pristine carpet a couple of years before (an act that she remained so incensed by that Owen feared that she would likely turn a blind eye to Rick’s attack if he chose to follow him inside, and maybe even join in).

Adjacent to the leisure centre was its car park, the corner of which was being
excavated to provide a new sports hall and changing rooms for the footballers that played in the park every weekend (and to keep mud off the leisure centre’s carpet, no doubt). The new sports hall’s exterior was nearly finished, with its walls covered in sheets of smooth steel that reflected the blue sky and trees of the park. Owen decided that this was as good a place as any to shelter behind, and remained hopeful that Rick would decide that not being late for school was a preferable option to a game of hide and seek.

Glancing over his shoulder Owen saw that they were gaining
on him. He increased his speed, thankful that all those hours in the pool had at the very least given him some stamina. Just metres from the sports hall he felt a rush of air past his right ear and saw another rock collide with the metal in front him, making a surprisingly loud
clang
.

Turning to the right he saw that the
route behind the building where he had planned to hide was obstructed by a large metal shipping container. Quickly he shimmied to the left to go around the other side, but that way was blocked by a splinter group of Rick’s gang. Without thinking Owen decided that going up was the safest option, his brief treetop asylum the previous week still fresh in his mind.

Why Owen chose to climb at this point would be a question that he would ask himself many
times throughout his lifetime. Ordinarily he would have stood his ground and fought back, however unlikely it may have been that he would triumph. Yet something deep inside of him, something almost primal, was urging him to climb, to reach out and haul himself up the structure before him.

Despite the walls of the building having no
obvious handholds further up, he leapt forward and grabbed onto a small gap between the cladding, which felt more like rock than metal as he expected. His hands tingled as if electric currents were passing through them, and seemed to have a feint white glow to themy, presumably caused by the vast amount of adrenaline that was pumping through Owen’s body.

Looking up, he continued to climb up the side,
reaching out and grabbing at the spaces between the sheets of metal, again finding that they felt more like gaps in a rock face. His feet easily found purchase on the smooth sides, as did his hands which by now were throbbing in an intense but not unpleasant manner as he climbed up the building’s wall. With one powerful lunge he hauled himself onto the roof and peered down.

Rick and
his friends were staring up at him with a mixture of anger and confusion. Two of the boys started to applaud, evidently impressed by Owen’s achievement (a glare from Rick soon put an end to the ovation however).

They all seemed out
of breath from their pursuit, whereas Owen, who had ran just as far and had also climbed up at least fifteen metres, had barely broken a sweat. In apparent frustration, another rock was launched, which Owen casually ducked away from. Rick jumped and tried unsuccessfully to mimic Owen’s ascent, an act that Owen couldn’t help but respond to with a smile.

“Coward!”
Rick cried, incensed at Owen’s amusement. “When I get up there I’ll wipe that smile off your face.” He turned to his friends “Help me up!”

Dutifully, o
ne of his party linked his hands together and gave Rick a leg-up. Despite getting a good hold of the top of the first sheet of metal, he could not get any higher, losing his hold whilst helplessly clawing at the metal sides.

Owen laughed and his
enjoyment was replicated by Rick’s increasingly disloyal group, who now roared with glee as Rick fell backwards and landed against the hard earth on his back.

He stared up at Owen with a feral look, s
narling through gritted teeth as he staggered to his feet. Owen’s brief revelry was replaced by an unsettling realisation that his unintentional humiliation of Rick was unlikely to go unpunished.

“
You think you’re top dog at the minute, but just you wait,” Rick shouted up. “Just because you can climb up the side of some poxy building doesn’t change the fact that you’re only friend is a girl and people wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire!

“When you get down from t
here you’re dead, you hear me. Dead, just like your mum!”

He remained staring at Owen
manically for a few moments, allowing his words to sink in. Owen wasn’t worried about the threats, but didn’t like being reminding of his mother’s death. Apparently content that Owen had been wounded (albeit emotionally, which wasn’t typically Rick’s preferred method of torture), he turned on his heels and headed towards the school, brushing the soil off his trousers and staggering in obvious pain, which offered a glimmer of hope that Owen’s inevitable punishment may be delayed by Rick’s injuries. On the other hand it might just make him more vengeful. Only time would tell, he thought philosophically.

When the last of the
crowd disappeared behind the main leisure centre building, Owen scanned the rest of the park. The man in the hat had left, and the area appeared deserted. With a sudden pang, Owen remembered his exam and made to get down to ground level. This presented itself with a slight problem.

He was at least ten metres off the ground, and did not want to experience the same pain that Rick had felt
after falling from a third of the height. So jumping was off the cards. Maybe he could climb down?

He looked at the sides of the sports hall for the places that
he had used to climb up with. Aside from the gaps in the metal skin forming a narrow ledge, there was nowhere else to grasp onto, and no sign of the stony holds that he had used for his ascent.

Confused, Owen lay down on his front and
peered over the edge. He still could not see how he had managed his ascent, as the sides were virtually smooth. He examined the other sides of the construction. The doors that were on one side had a narrow ridge that extended from the floor to about three metres up, but looked too narrow and slippery to allow him to drop down and grasp. “Must’ve been the adrenaline”, he muttered to himself, in answer to the unspoken question: ‘how on Earth did I get up here?’

“Adrenaline my eye
,” a woman’s voice replied from below.