And Into the Summer
The two boys walked away from the school, down over the playing field. The playing field sloped gently away from the school, so it was natural they should walk this way, though it wasn’t exactly the direction of home for either of them. They walked slowly. They had both taken off their ties and un-tucked their shirts, and their black blazers absorbed the heat of the sun above them.
On their knees were streaks of mud and grass from the football they had played at lunchtime.
It was a quarter to four and the sun was still warm. It had cleared all the clouds from the afternoon sky. It reflected brightly on the grass under their feet, and in the specks of blossom remaining on the trees lining the base of the field.
The two boys spoke of nothing in particular. Teachers and friends, homework and sports. As they reached the row of trees they began to decide what they were going to do with the evening.
Then there was the sound of running behind them. The sound of books and empty lunchboxes shifting and jumping about in backpacks. They turned around. There were two other boys, both in the same tie-less white shirts and black blazers, running up behind them. They had their shirts un-tucked too. They were both shouting at the first two to stop and they were both laughing. One of the running boys had dark hair, cropped evenly over his head. He ran with awkward strides; as if constantly falling over but stopping himself just before he lost all balance. The other had orange hair, and seemed to run by stamping his feet. They were laughing so much they couldn’t quite run properly, and the one with orange hair had to sit down on the grass when they finally caught up.
The one still standing managed to control himself long enough to say;
“Shit. Bri, Show us that picture again.”
Then he collapsed to the ground with his friend, laughing.
“We got to see it again Bri,” the ginger boy said, now on his back, with exhaustion as well as his spasms of laughter.
Brian looked a little embarrassed. He was taller than the other three, and wore clothes which, although dirtied slightly from the football pitch, seemed to fit him well. His trousers were cut smartly, the shoulders of his blazer sat properly on his shoulders and the sleeves fell just the right length down to his wrists.
“What picture?” asked the boy who had been walking down with him.
“Its so funny,” the dark haired boy said.
“So funny,” the ginger haired boy said.
“You don’t want to see it Stuart,” Brian said to the boy he had walked down with.
“Yeah I do,”
Stuart took his glasses off and wiped them on his cuff.
“If Sam and Ali get to see it, why don’t I?”
“Its stupid,” Brian said.
Sam and Ali, the ginger boy and the brown-haired boy, had managed to stand up. They were both managing to breathe normally now too.
“Its not stupid,” Ali said, “its hilarious.”
“I want to see it,” Stuart said, putting his glasses back onto his nose. “Why don’t I get to see it?”
“Yeah, show us it again,” Sam said.
“You sure you want to see it?” Brian asked Stuart.
“He wants to see it,” Sam said.
“Sure I want to see it,” Stuart said.
“You can’t un-see it,” Brian said. “Once you’ve seen it, that’s it.”
Sam and Ali seemed to think this was very funny, and they staggered with the laughter it brought on, though they both managed to stay on their feet.
They would have a better view standing.
“Alright,” said Brian.
He slung his bag from his shoulder.
He unzipped it, and reached inside. He took out a geography textbook, and split it open. In the crease of the page was a sheet of paper folded twice. There was silence. He unfolded it in front of all of them.
The four of them looked at it in silence. Two seconds.
Three.
Four.
“Shit!” said Sam.
“Fuck!” said Ali.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” they both shouted together, covering their eyes with their hands and falling backwards onto the grass, shaking with laughter again.
Brian was left holding the picture.
“What is it?” Stuart asked.
“Really?” said Brian.
“No, I don’t get it.”
Stuart tilted his head to one side.
“You see that thing?” Brian said, pointing at part of the picture.
“Yeah,” Stuart said,
“That’s the top of a glass ketchup bottle.”
“Okay.”
“Those are his legs, see? and that’s his ball-sack from behind.”
Stuart didn’t say anything. Then he said;
“Oh my god.”
This pulled the last of the breath from Ali and Sam in a wheezing giggle. Then they both began to suck air in loudly while they recovered the rhythm of breathing.
“That’s horrible,” Stuart said, though he didn’t look up at Brian right away. “Why would anyone do that?” Stuart said.
“Why do people do anything?” Brian said.
“Where did you get it from?”
“My brother got it off a friend. I’m borrowing it.”
“But why would anyone do that?”
Sam and Ali were standing again. Sam was holding his chest.
“Because it gives them thrills,” Ali said. He pronounced it ‘frills’.
“But why?” Stuart said.
“Some people must just like it, I guess,” said Brian.
He folded the picture up and put it back in the book, alongside the diagram explaining longshore drift.
“But what if it broke inside him,” Stuart said. “What if it shattered?”
Brian held back a snort of laughter.
Sam and Ali groaned at the pain in their ribs.
“You would have at least thought he’d put it in the other way, not with the flat end first,” Stuart said.
He was smiling too now, and smiled more when he heard his friends laugh at this.
“Shit,” said Sam
“Fuck,” said Ali. “My ribs kill.”
Stuart tested out another comment;
“I mean, how do you know if you’ll end up being someone who gets thrills out of things like that?”
He said this casually, and it was impossible to tell if he was making an effort to keep the shape of a frown from seeping into his forehead.
“That’s messed up,” said Ali, shaking his head.
“You think it was a fake?” Sam said,
“No, its real. Certain. There are people who do actually like stuff as weird as that,” said Ali.
Only Brian saw the frown cross Stuart’s face when Ali said this.
“That is so twisted,” said Sam.
The four boys stood there, underneath the trees.
A gust of wind, warm moving air, came and went from nowhere, and for a couple of seconds the tree they stood under shed a few of its remaining blossoms, down onto their shoulders and onto their heads.
“I’m going home,” Brian said. “I’m hungry.”
He put his bag back on his shoulder.
“Yeah,” said Stuart, “so am I.”
“You want to eat at mine?” Brian said.
Stuart said yes. Ali said no, he thought he had to get back early for something. Sam said he had to visit his grandmother.
Then they started to walk down the line of the short, twisted, blossoming trees, full of leaves but more bare now than ever of petals.
They spoke of nothing in particular. Teachers and friends, homework and sports.
They walked between the line of trees and the chain link fence which separated the school field from the road running alongside it. Which separated the school from the rest of the town, and all the people now too old and too wise to be in the school at all. And they left the field by the gate at the very end, in the corner where hundreds of shoes a day had worn the grass away.
They left the school grounds on their way home, and as they did, the sun moved imperceptibly lower in the sky.
Andrew Graham grew up in the west country, but now lives and works in London. He spends as much time writing as he is able to, and is (very) slowly working towards a degree in literature.
