Trapped Between

I looked at his beautiful face twisted in anguish and felt the full weight of my decision. It felt heavier than the stones that had sat in my stomach for so long.

I tried to snip through the ties that were holding him to me, but they were strong, stronger than I had expected, and I had to hack at them. Each hack, each slice bled, and it felt like I was cutting through my own flesh. I winced through every cut and then when the final tether was severed I forced an expressionless empty mask onto my face.

Drew watched me intently throughout the painful disconnection of the ties, but then his eyes narrowed when he saw my cold, impassive face.

“We need to prove the truth, Drew,” I kept my voice steady. “Even if you could, I don’t want you to stay with me.” Lie.

“What?”

His eyebrows shot up. I knew what he was thinking, he was thinking about Saturday, at my pure joy when he admitted to feeling the same way I did. When we realised how crazy it all was, but how we loved each other anyway.

“I have to go,” I whispered.

It was the same words that he had said to me only a few days ago, the same words that had left me bleeding. So much had happened since then, but here I was saying them to him, here I was causing the blood to flow freely again.

As I turned my back on him I tried to build a wall around the flame still burning brightly in my chest, a wall that would barricade my love for him and keep it locked away.

The wall was weak and threatened to crumble, but I made it hold. I had to make him see sense. Make him see that we had to get back to the task of proving how he died. What else could we do? We couldn’t care about each other the way we did, it was destroying his chances of getting away from here. The wheels had been set in motion; we couldn’t walk away from it now. I certainly couldn’t, I wasn’t that person. I was a person who needed to know the facts, even though they were going to leave me broken and alone.

As I walked away from him he called my name. I wanted to turn round, to look at him, but when I thought about his face the wall trembled, as if the cutting of the ties and the cracking of my heart had dislodged some of the bricks. I concentrated hard on keeping it stable, keeping the flame behind it, and keeping walking.

I kept my mind completely focussed on the task of moving my feet; I didn’t allow myself to think about anything other than the sound of one foot falling in front of the other. I was back in the zombie state and stared at my shoes making their way down the street. Somehow I managed to make it all the way home without the wall caving in and burying me alive.

I mumbled something unintelligible to my mum about not feeling very well again and wanting to go back to bed. She looked concerned, I had left the house in a blur of frenzied motion and now I had returned looking pale, listless and empty. If the sickness in my stomach was reflected even half as much on my face then I knew that my mum would let me go without too many questions, I must have looked like death warmed up.

I shut my bedroom door behind me and threw myself on my bed. I pressed my face into my pillow and let the barrage of tears come. I balled up the pillow and pushed it into my mouth with shaking hands, trying to muffle the heaving sobs that were racking from my chest.

I was losing control but I had to be careful not to dislodge the wall, I had to be careful to keep it standing even as the world around me came crashing down.

I was trapped between what I wanted to be right and what was right. I wanted to love him. I’d loved him since the moment I had seen him, I had dreamt every night about what it would feel like to have him really touch my face, my waist, my hips, run his long pale fingers through my hair. I had never felt so right than when I was with him, when he was looking at me with his soft, grey eyes.

But it wasn’t right.

No matter how much I wanted it to be, it wasn’t.

The right thing was to prove how he had died. The right thing was to prove that he had been murdered and then let him go. The right thing was to take heed of his silver laces and gold buckle, let him go on to where he was supposed to be.

A tiny voice in my head enquired about the colour of his trainers and tee shirt, but I quickly shoved that thought behind the wall. That was the kind of question that would chip away, eat away at the already crumbling mortar; I had to keep any thoughts about loving him, tying him to me, behind the barricade.

This wasn’t about me, regardless of what I felt for him. It was about justice and rightness, and I was going to have to be selfless. I was going to have to let him go.

The pale sun made its inevitable journey across the sky outside my window; time didn’t stop for anyone no matter how much you wanted it to. Meal times slipped by and I was thankful that my mum didn’t come up to ask how I was feeling or to bring me something plated up.

I allowed the tears to flow freely, I tried not to think about what I was crying over and eventually they dried up, leaving my face swollen and tear streaked. One week had passed since this all began; it was a tiny drop in the ocean of my life, a tiny sliver of my seventeen years. I would have to think about it like that, like it was a fleeting moment, a fleeting moment of impossibility.

The wall was holding, I tested it, pushed at it, by thinking about his name, and it quivered but remained standing.

Progress.

The scrapbook was where I had left it and I forced myself to look at the articles. His face smiled up from the page and I felt dust crumbling, disintegrating from the mortar between the bricks.

But still the wall held.

I couldn’t love him in the way I wanted to, but I could still do the most loving thing, and as long as I didn’t think about loving him, as long as I only thought about trying to free him from his limbo and find out the truth about how he died, I found that the wall remained standing, precariously, but standing nevertheless.

As long as I could keep the barricade in place, keep the flame at bay, I would be able to do this. I would be able to see him and help him.

I re-read all the articles, looking for something, anything that would help me get started. I shoved the scrapbook aside, frustrated; it held nothing new, nothing to give me a clue.

I had no way of knowing where to start.

I managed to get through the night; it had reared up at me, a dark vastness, threatening to tangle and twist nightmares around me, but at some point I had fallen asleep and surprising slept until the sun was already well into its journey once more.

Luckily I hadn’t dreamt, no thoughts of grey eyes had disturbed me or chipped away at the wall. I lay in bed at a loss of what I had to get up for, school was shut for an INSET day so I had nothing to do, and the long hours of nothingness frightened me.

I looked pale and drawn in the mirror; my eyes shadowed and rimmed in red. The dreamless sleep had helped to settle my mind but done nothing to help my face.

I dragged my hair back into a ponytail and headed downstairs for something to fill the empty hollow in my stomach. My mum was in the kitchen, she was wiping down the already spotless surfaces, obviously waiting for me. She turned to me with a look of concern on her face and she twisted the damp cloth through her fingers.

“Beth, I’m worried about you. You are so up and down at the moment.”

“It’s nothing.”

It wasn’t nothing, it was everything, but there was no way I could tell my mum about it.

“Are you struggling with your school work? I know the pressures of sixth form are hard and I’d hate to think you were struggling on your own. Being a teenager is tough and if the pressure is-”

“Mum, stop, I’m okay.” I interrupted her. I had to stop her, her wary eyes and nervous voice frightened me. Her talk of struggling with pressures on your own made me think about David Pearson, about Drew, and I couldn’t afford to think of those things right now. The wall was weak enough already. “It’s just this stomach bug; I’m struggling to shift it, that’s all.”

“Okay,” the word rushed out of her mouth on a relieved sigh, “if you’re still feel rough tomorrow maybe we should think about going to the doctors.”

“No, no doctors.”

“We’ll see.”

She started to wipe the worktops again, like she could wipe away her concerns and worries with a quick squirt of anti-bacterial spray.

She kept her back to me and when she spoke again it sounded cheerful, forced, but cheerful.

“What do you feel like doing today? I’ve took the day off work so we could do something together.”

“I’ve got loads of school work to do,” I muttered. She turned to me trying in vain to disguise her crestfallen expression and I was reminded of Drew’s voice telling me that time with family was precious. I forced the memory back behind the wall and plastered a smile onto my face. “But that can wait, Mum, what do you want to do?”

“I know just the thing to make you feel better, love.”

Two hours later were laid out in the front room, face packs on and finger nails drying.

Bless my mum, she had said that a sitting room spa special was what I needed to help me feel better, and it actually had.

My mum and painted my nails and talked none stop, never allowing me to wallow in my thoughts. Even as we lay still, trying not to crack our faces, she had somehow still managed to keep up the light hearted chatter. Her voice had mingled into the quiet music playing from the radio and it combined to make a hum that filled me mind completely, pushing out any other thoughts.

But she couldn’t keep me busy forever.

After a late lunch she reminded me that I’d mentioned lots of school work that needed doing. I hugged her, thanked her for a great morning, and drudged back up the stairs. I shut my bedroom door and leant back against in, not relishing the idea of being alone in my room again but not wanting to go back downstairs either.

I was actually up to date with my school work; the excuse had back fired because now I was alone, with nothing to do except feel the wall quaking at its foundations.

I had to find something to do.

I sat at my desk, pulled out my sketch book and flicked through the thick pages to find my most recent designs for the memorial sculpture. I thought about the smooth, steel pieces in the gallery and set about altering my ideas to make them more reflective, brighter, and less depressing.

I was completely consumed by my work. My iPod was playing quietly in the background and I was focussed on trying to get my drawings right so we would be ready to start the practical work in class tomorrow.

I was surprised that the afternoon had gone so fast when my mum poked her head round the door to tell me that tea was on the table. I was pleased, pleased that my design was pretty much finished and pleased that I hadn’t thought about anything other than the pencil strokes on the page.

The kitchen felt warm and cosy. My dad was back from work and he was sat next to my mum, helping himself to some cheese and biscuits.

“You look much better,” he beamed. “Mum tells me you have had a girly day. I’m glad I was at work.” He winked, leaning over to fill my glass from the water jug.

“Really? Looking at those laughter lines, Dad, I think you would benefit from a facial.” I joined in his laughter and it felt good to take part in the light hearted banter. I allowed myself to be buoyed along by mum and dad’s easy conversation, as if they were keeping me aboard a raft, never allowing me to think about the dark swirling waters below.

After school the next day, I offered to stay behind in Art. Mrs. Ashburn wanted to strip the display boards so the design work for the memorial could be displayed ready for the unveiling next week.

After each small group had pitched their ideas, the class had unanimously decided that my group had the best design. Ian and Claire smiled awkwardly at the class; they had already slung their own ideas out, Claire more reluctantly than Ian, when they had seen the drawing I had created the day before. Our group might have won the vote but they both knew it was my work that they were taking some of the credit for. I didn’t care. Mr. Sharpe had wanted our class to create a sculpture that we could all work on as a class; I guess he thought that a group of students working together went someway to creating a positive atmosphere in school, to making it a place where kids were less likely to want to kill themselves.

Mrs. Ashburn passed me a staple remover and I looked doubtfully at the inch thick display board in front of me and the tiny tool in my hand. There must have been years and years worth of work on this one board alone, and there was another four boards to strip back after this one.

How wrong I had been to think that this job would be hard work and unrewarding. The pieces of work I was revealing, layer after layer were incredible, inspiring. There were drawings, paintings and photographs dating back years and Mrs. Ashburn looked suitably embarrassed when we kept discovering the dates on the work. She obviously never removed her old students’ work; she just stuck up new sugar paper and carried on. The board was like an onion of amazing art, we peeled back layer after layer, revealing more and more, I felt like an archaeologist discovering some old forgotten treasure.

“Do you know, Beth, I’ve been working here for fourteen years and I’ve never stripped these, not even once. I’ve got no idea what we’ll find at the bottom.” Mrs. Ashburn’s eyes sparkled with excitement. I could tell she felt the same as me, like we were on the cusp of discovering a great and forgotten masterpiece.

We had just revealed a dark purple backing sheet covered in Andy Warhol-esque pop art portraits dated 1999, when Mrs. Ashburn stepped back, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand.

“Nineteen ninety nine,” she mused. “That was my first year teaching here. Anything underneath is from before my time.”

The display board looked like it had one final layer underneath the pop art portraits. Mrs. Ashburn began bundling up all the ripped sheets and torn work off the floor as I turned back to the board to prize out the last few staples. The purple backing paper fell away as one complete sheet, like the board was shedding its winter skin and was glad to finally feel some fresh air. The final layer of work that had been hidden under masses and masses of sheets saw the light for the first time in over fourteen years.

It was amazing, breath-taking.

The backing paper was a matte black, curling up slightly at the edges with age. It was covered with large charcoal drawings; great grey sweeping strokes depicting musical instruments dominated the board. Collages made of old sheet music and black and white photographs filled the spaces between the charcoals. The drawings were so alive it was as if you were waiting, with bated breath, for the instruments to start playing, as if you would be able to hear the sounds bleed out from the paper.

I looked carefully at the photographs, they were all of the same band playing in the school hall and what looked like the town snooker club, but before it was the snooker club. There were no tables or racks of cues, but the bar ran against the back wall where it stood now and there was a stage at the far end where the wide screen television currently sat.

The photograph directly in front of me looked electric, the lead singer had been caught leaping into the air by the camera, his hair was shook out around him like a halo. The drummer had his eyes closed, arms raised, sticks poised, ready to bang out the next beat in the song. The lead guitarist held his guitar aloft and had one foot rested on a speaker at the front of the stage, he smirked down at the crowd in triumph. The crowd looked manic; the photograph had been taken from the side of the stage so you could see the expressions of the people in the crowd. Their faces were upturned, in awe, at the scene playing out in front of them on the stage. They were packed in tight, mouths wide open, and you could see the sweat glistening on their faces, highlighted by the lights and the camera flash.

Mrs. Ashburn stopped pushing papers into the recycle bin and came to stand next to me, intrigued by what had stopped my feverish staple removing.

“Wow!” she gasped. Her eyes scanned across the board, “Beth, these are fantastic, so full of energy. Does it say who did it? When it’s from?”

I glanced round the board, looking for a name and a date. In the bottom corner was a small white card, embellished with tiny black music notes, stating the artist’s name and the date.

Drew Clayton, 1998.

Time stopped.

Everything in the room, the masses of paper strewn around my feet, the tables and chairs, even Mrs. Ashburn faded out of awareness, faded into black. All I could see was that white card and the information written on it in thick, black lettering.

Drew Clayton, 1998.

He was an artist?

If fate had been stood next to me instead of Mrs. Ashburn I would have turned and punched her, really hard, in the stomach. She had dealt me a low blow. I had kept my thoughts of him, how perfect he was for me, firmly behind the barricade.

But now this?

He would have loved the idea of a sculpture, Mrs. Clayton’s voice popped into my head, uninvited. Of course he would, he was an artist, like me.

As I stared at the card embossed with his name I felt the wall, the barricade I had painstakingly tried to build, brick by brick inside my chest, start to crack and splinter until it was nothing but a pile of debris at my feet.