Ross Armstrong - The Girls Beneath

We look at the school, it’s a tidy set of red bricks with a pair of pointy roofs. It also contains a playing field full of my past sporting failures and the scene of many rejections and one good kiss.

Her name, Sarah, flashes into my head and I pat my brain on the basal ganglia for the remembrance. Without the ability to show me Sarah’s face, it merely reminds me that she was pretty, freckled and mysterious, and that I hung around to wear her down. And that sometimes people told stories of the strange things she did. But I can’t recall any of them.

Old sights, sounds and smells allow you to go down neural pathways you don’t frequently use. The resultant sudden rush of seemingly lost memories is what causes strong emotions in such places.

I observe this feeling and let it pass through me. None of my teachers will be here, the turnover is pretty fast. Things change swiftly in cities. They change double swift around here. This is a foreign land.

I won’t announce that I am alumni. I’m not sure they’d care anyway. Some bloke whose biggest claim to fame is getting shot in the skull. I’ll wait till I’ve done something more auspicious with my broken head before I bring it back here and try to hold it high around the corridors.

He brings out ‘the bag’. I’ve had to handle ‘the bag’ once before, in a training session, but today he has ‘the bag’.

‘I’m going to do the talking. You be a presence,’ he says.

‘I can do that.’

‘Good. Any questions? Anything you need?’

‘Yes.’

‘Go on.’

‘Right. The girl that went missing, did she go to this school?’

‘Forget about that,’ he says, scolding me just enough.

‘Okay. But did she?’

‘Err… yes. I think so,’ he says in a sigh.

‘You think so? Or know so?’

‘I know so,’ says Emre Bartu.

He wants us to go but I can’t walk and think smoothly yet. My stillness means he can’t move. It’d be rude.

He waits. I pause. I think. Then speak.

‘Okay. I’m going to ask about her.’

‘Who?’

‘The missing girl.’

‘No. Please don’t.’

‘Why is that?’

‘It’s being handled elsewhere. It’d seem… odd.’

‘I don’t mind that.’

‘Yes. But others would. Others are assigned to it.’

I shrug and nod at the same time, committal and non-committal all at once. We both stare at the school, he grips the bag, I blink hard.

‘It would be interesting. Quite interesting. I’m interested,’ I say.

‘Please, don’t. Just trust me, no one wants you to do that.’

‘Okay. I won’t,’ I say.

He touches me on the shoulder.

‘Good man.’

He turns as he bites his bottom lip, a tense mannerism that intrigues me already. It’s always the little things that intrigue me.

‘Ready?’

‘Yes,’ I say, my movements getting smoother all the time. I can feel myself growing already, spreading out to encompass the space the world outside my room has provided for me.

‘Good. Come on then,’ he says as he walks.

You just have to say you won’t do something. That’s what they want. Little compromises. Promises. Words.

It’s as easy as that.

We sign our names and put on those badges with the safety pins attached that ruin jumpers and would do unfathomable things to a face.

Then we’re in.

7

‘Dreams, keep rolling, through me

Dreams of you and I,

Dreams that drift far out to sea

Why does my baby lie?’

Being back here is sinister. The hallways hum with spectres. Dr Ryans said he didn’t think I’d suffer any amnesia or losses, as the bullet didn’t seem to rupture anything where my memories lie, but then the brain is unpredictable. I hear the song of distant thoughts as we walk under halogen strip-lights to the school hall. Traces of said things in half remembered classrooms pass by.

It’s like a dream and not the good kind. Forced into your old school hall, dressed as a policeman, with a bullet in your brain. I look down and expect to see my penis but only my trouser crotch stares back at me.

Bartu sees me staring at my own crotch and when I raise my head again our eyes meet and I smile. He does, too, trying not to let on how much I concern him.

He makes conversation with the head of year. She is called Miss Nixon. She is all brown and grey hair and clothes she’s had a while. I write down a brief description on my face cheat sheet.

She is Caucasian. Has church-going hair. Wears dangly earrings.

The last one is her most distinguishing feature, in fact. If she took them off, she’d disappear.

I start to hum a song I made up called ‘Dreams’. When my senses were kicking back in and my brain was repairing itself I found I had the overwhelming urge to make up little lullabies. Conjuring a tune and putting words to it was one of many exercises I set myself. I didn’t write them down but I won’t forget them, there must have been hundreds.

‘Dreams are rolling through me…’

The cleaning fluid smells the same. Even the cold crisp door handle’s touch against my skin sings deep-held memories back to me. Along with fears that I might stumble through the wrong door and end up in a classroom some miles away, where Gary Canning pushes my would-be fiancé up against the blackboard and her back slowly rubs off what was once written on it.

A group of kids pass us on our left, keeping their heads low, as if the sight of everything above shin level depresses the hell out of them. One of them has an unmistakeable birthmark, so distinctive that even I can’t forget it. He pretends he doesn’t see us, but he can’t fool me. Eli cold shoulders us like we’ve never met. That’s life in your home town. These instances that come and go. As fate blows us into each other’s paths like debris in the updraught.

That childhood kiss with Sarah drifts into my mind, then blows away, escaping through my ear.

When we get to the hall, its unmistakeable chafed parquet flooring under my feet, the kids are waiting and Emre Bartu wastes no time.

He claps his hands, a surprisingly effective attention drawing tactic that turns their chattering heads towards him.

‘Hello Year Eleven! My name is PCSO Emre Bartu and it’s a real pleasure to speak to you today. We’re usually out on the street, you may have seen us about, so at this time of year it’s just nice to come in and get warm.’

It’s not the kind of gag I would open with but he’s certainly come in with confidence. He reaches centre stage, the exact spot the headmaster stands to give out end of term awards, where Martin Humball gave his Fagin, and precisely where people were invited to stand and play clarinet or present some kind of talent if their ultimate wish was to be punched by their peers at lunch break. Bartu’s not a natural public speaker, his thumbs tucked tightly under his police vest tell me that. He needs something to hold on to for comfort. But I like Emre Bartu, and they are warming to him, too. Although I’m sure I hear someone mutter the word ‘Tosser’ as he pauses to collect his thoughts.

‘So why am I here? I hear you all ask. Well, myself and my friend and colleague PCSO Tom Mondrian at the back there…’ he says pointing to me.

They turn to look. ‘Friend and colleague.’ Very kind. We’ve only just met. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do at this point. So I put my index and middle fingers to my forehead and salute. I’m not sure why.

No one smiles. A morass of shaggy haircuts turn back to the stage. I see a grimace somewhere inside Emre Bartu. He falters.

‘We… me and Mondrian… PCSO Mondrian… (a cough)… wanted to talk to you about a few things you should be aware of as you lot start to taking your drivey theoring tests. Driving theory tests.’