M. Hyland - Carry Me Down

‘That’s stupid.’

‘No, it’s not. Wait and see.’

‘Give me the money and then I’ll do it.’

I give him the five quid and he holds it up to the light, as though to check whether it’s counterfeit.

I laugh then because he laughs, even though I am having to pay him to do something he should want to do because he’s my friend.

On the way back to the shed we stop by the classroom and collect our sleeping bags, and the food I took this morning from the pantry at home: two pieces of chocolate cake, a chunk of ham and a loaf of bread. I have brought a spare blanket and pillows too.

It’s a foggy night and, as we walk to the shed, it covers our coats and makes them wet. When we get inside the shed, we lay our sleeping bags on the floor. I’m cold and have no idea how to light the stove. ‘We’re going to freeze to death,’ I say just for something to say.

‘Don’t be a molly,’ says Brendan. ‘I’ll get some wood and get the fire going.’

‘Good,’ I say.

The stove is lit and piled high with wood. The room is a little warmer now, and we are comfortable as we eat cake inside our sleeping bags. But I’m worried that if we don’t begin the experiment soon we might not start at all.

‘The caretaker’s left us a note,’ says Brendan.

Dear Boys ,

I hope you have a good night. There are some new comics on the bookshelf!

The Caretaker

Brendan looks for the new comics and my stomach drops; he is more interested in comics than my experiment.

‘But we don’t need any comics,’ I say. ‘We haven’t even started.’

‘Just looking,’ he says.

We flick through the caretaker’s books, and among the comics Brendan finds a sex magazine. It is not possible that Brendan knew it was there, but he says, ‘I had a feeling he’d put something weird here for us. I just knew it.’

Brendan climbs back into his sleeping bag and turns the pages of the magazine. He keeps saying ‘Cor blimey’ and ‘Wow!’ and ‘Look at the size of them!’ and he sounds stupid and fake. ‘Come and look at this!’ he shouts.

I pull my sleeping bag in closer to his and sit beside him to look at the pictures. Some have three or four people in them. They don’t make sense. I feel seasick. There’s pressure and spinning in my gut. I hope Brendan doesn’t look at me, but he’s too busy swearing and making noises with his throat. I won’t make any noise. All I feel is a heavy pressure on my bowels, a feeling like needing to shit.

Without any warning, Brendan pushes me hard in the arm, and shouts, ‘You don’t have to sit so close! You’re giving me the creeps.’

Before I have time to answer, he is out of his sleeping bag and putting the magazine back on the shelf. He stands for a while, looking down at me, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. ‘I’m going out to piss and then I’m going home,’ he says.

He doesn’t look at me, and I don’t look at him. He goes outside and I wait for ten minutes for him to come back. When he returns he says, ‘I’m going now.’

‘What about the experiment?’ I ask.

He shrugs. ‘We’ll just tell our mams we decided not to sleep over,’ he says.

I stand and we pack our things without speaking. I want us to speak. I want to know what Brendan thinks of the pictures. ‘But what about the experiment?’ I ask.

‘What about it?’ says Brendan.

‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Do what you want.’

I want more to happen tonight, but I don’t know what. The idea of him leaving makes me angry. I want something more to happen in the caretaker’s shed, tonight, between Brendan and me. I want something between us, in the dark, during the night. I don’t want us to part, not now, and not so suddenly.

‘Let’s stay and do the experiment,’ I say.

‘Just forget it,’ says Brendan. ‘It was a stupid idea anyway.’

‘Well you must be stupid, because you wanted to do it, too.’

‘So?’

And we stand and shout ‘so?’ at each other. Brendan is pretending to be angry but I know he is lonely and feels strange just as I do.

‘Let’s turn off the lights and sleep and not even talk,’ I say quietly, with what is left of my voice. ‘We’ll go home as soon as it’s morning.’

Brendan doesn’t answer.

‘Please,’ I say. ‘Just to sleep.’

Brendan switches off the light and we get into our sleeping bags. When Brendan has settled down, when he has stopped moving, I move my sleeping bag closer to his so the bags are touching.

‘G’night,’ he says.

‘G’night, Brendan,’ I say.

I turn over into my usual sleeping position, my temple resting on my hand, but I can’t sleep. I turn over on the hard floor and feel the cold of the concrete under my arms and legs. I can’t stop thinking about how I want to touch Brendan, or be touched by him, and I want to see his body. I’ve never had thoughts like this before, have never felt anything like this. It’s not about liking Brendan; not in that way. I look over at him in his sleeping bag and want to wake him. No. I will only think about it.

I will only imagine waking him. I imagine this: I wake him and ask him to sleep by me and he says yes and we lie naked together and I see his body and he sees mine. But this is wrong; this is a sin. I sit up and shake my head. I open my eyes and the pictures go away. I lie awake for a long time, confused. The more time passes, the more I feel like a prisoner, trapped awake. I turn and turn again and more time passes, and more, slow time.

My head, as though filled with helium, has nothing in it to carry me down to rest, to dark, down to sleep. It is pitch-black and yet there is no darkness in my mind. There is a blinding bright day when it should be night. Thoughts I know are very bad won’t stop coming. They are very bad sins. This is why my mother doesn’t want me to lie down with her.

I want the thoughts to stop and yet I want to see what happens to the thoughts, to the stories about my body and Brendan’s body and all the other stories I am making up in my imagination.

I smack my hand into my head until it hurts. I punch myself in the chest and on the arm and then I smack myself in the face.

I will never think like this again.

I get up and turn on the lamp and sit in a chair under the window with my sleeping bag wrapped around me. I look at Brendan, who sleeps on his side, his mouth open and his tongue resting on his bottom teeth. I like that I can look at him like this and he cannot do anything to stop me. I stare at his nostrils twitching and for a moment I hope that he will wake and talk to me, keep me company, but if he wakes he might want to go home and, if he goes, I won’t be able to look at him.

I stop looking when I get bored and read a comic book, but nothing is funny. I kick my sleeping bag. You are not a sleeping bag. You are a waking bag .

After an hour or more of sitting up by the lamp, beneath the cold dark window, I decide to try for sleep again. I climb back down into my sleeping bag, at the foot of the chair.

It is colder now, much colder than before, and I can feel the concrete like ice beneath the bag. My arms and legs feel bruised.

And it is this way until the birds start to sing, and when they start to sing I become drowsy, at last, and I sleep, briefly, then wake.

The caretaker is standing in the doorway. ‘Get up,’ he says as though we are two strangers, ‘I need to use the shed.’

It is Saturday morning, the first day of the Easter school holiday, and my father comes into the kitchen while I’m having breakfast. ‘Hello,’ I say.

‘Morning,’ he says.

He’s wearing a white shirt and blue jacket and stinks of aftershave. His beard is gone again and I hope he doesn’t let it grow back. He takes my plate from the table then comes over to where I am standing, near the cooker, and holds it out under my nose. ‘Don’t you eat your crusts now?’ he asks in a whisper, as though he doesn’t want eavesdroppers to hear.