Back to School
Harley Carnell
** Content Warning: Please note, this piece includes mention of suicide.**
The month before, I was called into the Mel, the HR manager’s, office.
“Hey Paul,” she said. “So, we’ve arranged everything for your return to school next month. Just need you to – ”
“Sorry, my what?”
“Your return to school,” she repeated.
“What are you talking about?”
She smiled quizzically, trying to assess if I was serious. When she concluded I was, she explained that next month, as it was the September of the year I was turning forty, I would be returning to school.
“Like everyone. What, you thought that you just went to school once in your life and that was it? You’re entering a different stage of your life now, you can’t expect the things you learned when you were a teenager to still be applicable.”
If I wasn’t so confused, I might’ve made some snarky comment about the things I learned as a teenager never having been applicable or useful.
Mel ran through how it would work in the office with regards to my replacement, my pay etc., and my eventual return to work. “Think of it like paternity leave, or a really long form of jury duty.”
Then, seeing that I was still a little uncertain, she gave me some literature to take home which further explained the concept of middle-aged school.
We didn’t have to wear uniforms, normal workwear would be fine, but we did have to buy our own supplies. When I was in the store getting pencils, pens, and protractors, there was a woman in the section.
“Going back to school?” she asked me.
“Yeah, next month. You?”
“Same. Just thought I’d get it out of the way now, while they still have the sales.”
I’d seen adults buying school supplies over the years, but always assumed they were doing it for their kids.
I suppose it made sense that you would have to return to school. As Mel had said, why would you just go to school once and then never again? Then again, other than the bare rudiments of reading and writing, and the odd fact here and there, I’d never really learned anything of practical value in school. Or of any kind of value. We’d all left school like sheep flung into a world of wolves. Anything I needed to know, from formatting a CV to setting up direct debits for bills, to more general things like being careful with money, I either had to learn for myself or by asking people, or I simply never found out. It wasn’t even school that got me my first job, but rather volunteering, as most workplaces were more interested in experience than education. I’d hated school when I was in it, but always consoled myself with the thought that it at least meant something. It was only later when I realised it had been a complete and utter waste of my time. The thought of going back filled me with dread. But, as the literature told me, middle-aged school was just as legally mandatory as normal school.
As I walked through the gates for my first day back, I felt the familiar sinking sensation in my stomach. It felt as though I‘d been away only a couple of weeks rather than twenty years. There had been some remodelling since I’d been here last, but I could still see the faded remnants of the original building.
I knew that it was simplistic to attribute all my mental health issues and problems to what had happened in school, but nor would it be logical to dismiss the effect of such a formative part of my life. And if I ever thought to myself that perhaps it hadn’t been so bad, or that maybe it had even been alright, I had this anxiety to remind me.
Still, my attitude now was the same as my attitude back then: I hated this, I didn’t want to be here, it was a complete waste of time, but I had to be here and had no choice, so I might as well make the most of it.
“Hey Paul,” she said. “So, we’ve arranged everything for your return to school next month. Just need you to – ”
“Sorry, my what?”
“Your return to school,” she repeated.
“What are you talking about?”
She smiled quizzically, trying to assess if I was serious. When she concluded I was, she explained that next month, as it was the September of the year I was turning forty, I would be returning to school.
“Like everyone. What, you thought that you just went to school once in your life and that was it? You’re entering a different stage of your life now, you can’t expect the things you learned when you were a teenager to still be applicable.”
If I wasn’t so confused, I might’ve made some snarky comment about the things I learned as a teenager never having been applicable or useful.
Mel ran through how it would work in the office with regards to my replacement, my pay etc., and my eventual return to work. “Think of it like paternity leave, or a really long form of jury duty.”
Then, seeing that I was still a little uncertain, she gave me some literature to take home which further explained the concept of middle-aged school.
We didn’t have to wear uniforms, normal workwear would be fine, but we did have to buy our own supplies. When I was in the store getting pencils, pens, and protractors, there was a woman in the section.
“Going back to school?” she asked me.
“Yeah, next month. You?”
“Same. Just thought I’d get it out of the way now, while they still have the sales.”
I’d seen adults buying school supplies over the years, but always assumed they were doing it for their kids.
I suppose it made sense that you would have to return to school. As Mel had said, why would you just go to school once and then never again? Then again, other than the bare rudiments of reading and writing, and the odd fact here and there, I’d never really learned anything of practical value in school. Or of any kind of value. We’d all left school like sheep flung into a world of wolves. Anything I needed to know, from formatting a CV to setting up direct debits for bills, to more general things like being careful with money, I either had to learn for myself or by asking people, or I simply never found out. It wasn’t even school that got me my first job, but rather volunteering, as most workplaces were more interested in experience than education. I’d hated school when I was in it, but always consoled myself with the thought that it at least meant something. It was only later when I realised it had been a complete and utter waste of my time. The thought of going back filled me with dread. But, as the literature told me, middle-aged school was just as legally mandatory as normal school.
As I walked through the gates for my first day back, I felt the familiar sinking sensation in my stomach. It felt as though I‘d been away only a couple of weeks rather than twenty years. There had been some remodelling since I’d been here last, but I could still see the faded remnants of the original building.
I knew that it was simplistic to attribute all my mental health issues and problems to what had happened in school, but nor would it be logical to dismiss the effect of such a formative part of my life. And if I ever thought to myself that perhaps it hadn’t been so bad, or that maybe it had even been alright, I had this anxiety to remind me.
Still, my attitude now was the same as my attitude back then: I hated this, I didn’t want to be here, it was a complete waste of time, but I had to be here and had no choice, so I might as well make the most of it.
* * *
The one consolation I did have, stepping into the classroom, was that we were all adults now. I’d never much bought into the whole, “X was a kid, so their entire behavior can be excused” thing. When I was a kid, I liked to think that I knew the difference between right and wrong. I hoped I recognized mercilessly bullying another student or celebrating the Maths teacher having to leave due to a mental breakdown as awful. But at the same time, people were stupid when they were teenagers, and now that we’d all gotten older, got jobs, had kids, bought houses and –
“It’s Paulie Ball-y,” a loud voice said behind me, as a hand came crashing down onto my shoulder. I jumped and turned to face Markus. Markus had been a big fucker even as a kid, and so was naturally huge now. “Ball-y, how’s the ballies?”
“Still not dropped yet,” said Jason, and the two burst out laughing.
“Aw, come on, man, we’re just fucking around,” said Markus. “Don’t be so sensitive. Look, we’re adults now, yeah. I’ve even got a daughter if you can imagine that! See?” He took out his phone, whose wallpaper was of a girl of around ten grinning at the camera.
“That’s lovely,” I said. “She’s really cute.”
“What?” Markus said, his face creasing.
“Are you noncing on his kid?” Jason said.
“Fucking pervert,” Markus said.
“No, God, sorry, not at all, I was just – ”
“Don’t shit yourself, we were just busting your balls,” Markus said, and he burst out laughing. Relieved, so did I. Jason, through his own laughs, added: “Not that he’s got any!” I laughed along as the two walked away howling.
As the class filled up, it was incredible how everyone gravitated towards more-or-less the same seating arrangement from when we were younger. It was like some weird form of entropy.
There were a few empty seats, and a conspicuous one next to me. At school, this seat had belonged to Tommy. He was very quiet and shy, and I don’t exaggerate too much when I say that we barely said two words to each other in our five years as neighbors. While I’d had it bad, Tommy had been bullied with a fervency and relentlessness that bordered on sadistic. In the end, he was allowed to have lunch and break times on his own in a classroom supervised by a teacher. Tommy had always been early to class (one of the many reasons bullies gravitated towards him), and I was surprised to not see him in his seat. I was even more shocked when he did not come once the class started. Perhaps he’d been able to get some sort of dispensation for homeschooling. In later years, I’d often wondered if Tommy might have been on the spectrum. While there was still much progress to be made, things were much better for autistic people than when I had been growing up. If Tommy did in fact have autism, maybe this might have allowed him to be homeschooled.
We were given our timetables for the year, and various introductory information. Our form tutor had always been Mr Ahmed, but whether he had retired or moved schools, we now had a Ms Li. She ran through the basics of what middle-aged school was, how it worked, and then finished:
“Just like school, you’re going to learn things that are applicable to you, moving forward, as we come to this exciting, second major stage in your lives.”
The jokes about our history teacher, Mr Johnson, being ancient had written themselves. He had looked ten years past death while he was teaching, and so as I entered double-history, I wondered who –
“Come on Paul, we haven’t got all day,” Mr Johnson said as I entered the classroom. Trying to hide my astonishment, I sat down.
Mixed with my shock, I wondered what we were going to be learning today. Just think of all the history that had been made since we’d been in school. The Iraq War and its seismic consequences was a fascinating subject I’d always wanted to learn more about.
“Now,” Mr Johnson droned, “if you could all turn your textbooks to page 51, we are going to be begin our discussions of the taxation systems of the early kingdoms of the East-Anglian region.”
After History was Maths, and our first lesson was on Fermat’s Last Theorem. Then it was lunch. We weren’t allowed to use phones during school time so I spent most of my lunchtime checking messages and responding to emails. The one thing I had always liked about school was the lack of responsibilities. Middle-aged school didn’t even have this, as I trawled through all this admin that had accumulated in the morning.
I had noticed that I’d struggled reading the board from where I sat, and so I booked an opticians’ appointment for the following Thursday at four.
There was an unwritten rule among all businesses and services that they operated while people were at work and closed before they left it. The good thing about middle-aged school was that it ended at three, like normal school, so I would be able to fulfil any appointments or checkups without having to take time off.
Finishing at three each day also reminded me how lucky we’d had it in school with regards to time. A normal workday for me was half eight to half five. I also had to commute each way, adding another three hours combined. At school, it was six hours in total, one and a half hours of which were lunch and breaks, and because I lived near to it, my total daily commute was around fifteen minutes depending on walking speed. If nothing else, I would try to appreciate how good it was to have all this extra time.
After my admin, I opened my backpack and took out my sandwich. As I did, William approached, like a dog who’d heard its dinner bell. He was from the other class but had taken an especial dislike to me that crossed class boundaries.
It was remarkable, almost uncanny, how much William looked like he did when younger. As though this was some comedy show where in a flashforward the child actor had been placed in platform shoes and had some stubble applied in a poor attempt to make him look older.
“Hey man,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“I’m good thanks.”
“What you doing these days?”
“I, erm, I work at a supermarket.”
“Franchise owner?”
“Oh, no, I do the shelves and that. How about you?”
“Run my own company, innit. Employ fifty people. Bring in about two hundred thou a year. Holiday home in Tenerife, thinking about one in Cyprus, nothing fancy, you know. Like to keep it humble.”
I might have thought William was lying, but his watch and suit suggested different. Also, a lot of weirdos, losers and outcasts like myself liked to indulge in fantasies of these kinds of people growing up to have terrible lives as a result of not working hard at school. But more often than not, people like William excelled in life. With his natural charm, assertive personality, and mild sociopathy, William was the exact sort of person I could see succeeding.
“Anyway, just came over to ask if I could borrow your sandwich, I’m starving. Missus forgot to pack me lunch.”
I laughed, until I saw that he was serious.
“Oh, well, William, I – ”
“Thanks, man, blessed. What is this, chicken?”
“No, it’s tofu.”
“Tofu. Nah, fuck that woke shit.” Then, he took my sandwich and threw it in the bin. “Fucking diabolical. Step it up, man. Oh, wait, before I go, you couldn’t do me a biggie, could you?”
“What?” I asked, hoping he didn’t see the Twix poking out of my bag.
“I’ve got this YouTube channel. I do motivation, life-lessons, positive thinking, it’s all great stuff. You couldn’t subscribe to it, could you?”
“Yeah, course.”
William nodded, then stood looking at me.
“Oh, you meant now?”
“If you could, that’d be grand.”
I took out my phone and subscribed to William’s channel while he hovered over me.
“And the little bell,” he said. “So you get notified about each upload.”
I pressed the bell.
“Thanks man.” Then, spotting something, his face lit up. “Ooh, a Twix. Nice one!” He grabbed the Twix, patted me on the back, and walked away.
After lunch, there was Physics. I had always hated Physics at school and had assumed I’d want nothing more to do with it after I no longer had to study it. However, after I left school, I had developed a passionate interest in it, first through science documentaries, and then books. Sometimes, I would be replenishing the toilet paper, or being yelled at by a customer over some nonsense, and I would think about Proxima Centauri B, a potentially habitable exoplanet, or how Mercury’s lack of atmosphere meant that a footprint left on it billions of years ago would still be there now, and it would somehow put everything into perspective.
Ten minutes into Physics, I remembered why I always hated it so much. Instead of learning how Venus had once been remarkably similar to Earth, or debating the validity of the Rare Earth hypothesis, we had to rote-memorize the atomic number and symbol of every element on the periodic table for a test we had later in the week.
I was also distracted by the continued non-appearance of Tommy. Although he never spoke, his enthusiasm for Physics had always been evident. Pretty much the only time he talked was during that class, the merciless tormenting this led to being almost Newtonian in its inevitability. I had often thought that there were no people in the world crueller and more merciless than teenagers. ‘Bullied’ at times seemed too restrained a word. What Tommy had endured was abuse, and he was psychologically shattered by the time he had left. It was not the sort of thing that you just got over. I remembered William’s YouTube channel. I had a fanciful image of Tommy having one. A small channel with a tiny but dedicated subscriber-base, in which he finally found an opportunity to talk about the things that fascinated him, and where his knowledge and dedication were celebrated.
The final lesson of the day was P. E. It was ironic that, although I despised P. E., it was the one lesson that I thought was genuinely useful as I looked at the timetable. If it wasn’t for the supermarket, I would never exercise at all. And while there were shifts in which I lifted boxes or walked aisles, there were also ones spent entirely sat at the till. Being forced to exercise a couple of times a week could only be a good thing.
I was thinking this when the ball came to me around ten minutes into our football game. As my teammates screamed at me to pass it to them, I was suddenly clattered to the floor by Markus, who had slid into a tackle with excessive veracity and his studs up. As I was lifted up in the air and crashed back onto the muddy grass, I screamed while a triumphant Markus yelled, “Howzat?!”
P. E. had always been the one time at school where all the lunatics and sadists could vent their fury in a legitimate and safe setting. The week we’d done rugby, I’d deliberately made myself ill, and had been vindicated on learning about an especially high and illegal tackle that had been committed against Tommy which kept him out of school for a fortnight and which earned the tackler praise from the P. E. teacher and an offer to join the school team.
I could only hope that next week we would be doing running or something.
As I limped towards the bus stop, I was both physically and mentally exhausted. It felt like the end of my first week, rather than the first day. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the next few years. Still, as with lots of things in life, you just had to do it because that’s what you had to do. In a way, wasn’t that what life ultimately was: a series of experiences and responsibilities you despised but which you had to endure because you’d had the temerity to be born? I supposed I could get a nice aneurism or a stroke or something, but until then I’d just have to carry on.
While waiting for the bus, Alan came up to me. He was from the other class, and at school we’d been more acquaintances than actual friends. But now, as then, it was always good to chat with him. We shared stories about our first day. Alan laughed sympathetically when hearing about my knee, saying his shin had been clattered in hockey in what he was sure wasn’t an accidentally missed ball. He lifted his trouser leg and I winced at the bruise.
We spoke about our lives until this point, and our jobs. We also talked about some of the old people – how they had (or, more often, had not) changed. This got us onto Tommy, as I mentioned his non-appearance.
“Oh, shit man,” Alan said. “I erm, I hate to say this, but he passed away.”
“He died? How?”
“He killed himself, a few years back. It was terrible. But look, I don’t think it’s really that shocking, you know, not with everything that happened back then. Some people,” he shrugged, “never really get away from school, do they?”
“It’s Paulie Ball-y,” a loud voice said behind me, as a hand came crashing down onto my shoulder. I jumped and turned to face Markus. Markus had been a big fucker even as a kid, and so was naturally huge now. “Ball-y, how’s the ballies?”
“Still not dropped yet,” said Jason, and the two burst out laughing.
“Aw, come on, man, we’re just fucking around,” said Markus. “Don’t be so sensitive. Look, we’re adults now, yeah. I’ve even got a daughter if you can imagine that! See?” He took out his phone, whose wallpaper was of a girl of around ten grinning at the camera.
“That’s lovely,” I said. “She’s really cute.”
“What?” Markus said, his face creasing.
“Are you noncing on his kid?” Jason said.
“Fucking pervert,” Markus said.
“No, God, sorry, not at all, I was just – ”
“Don’t shit yourself, we were just busting your balls,” Markus said, and he burst out laughing. Relieved, so did I. Jason, through his own laughs, added: “Not that he’s got any!” I laughed along as the two walked away howling.
As the class filled up, it was incredible how everyone gravitated towards more-or-less the same seating arrangement from when we were younger. It was like some weird form of entropy.
There were a few empty seats, and a conspicuous one next to me. At school, this seat had belonged to Tommy. He was very quiet and shy, and I don’t exaggerate too much when I say that we barely said two words to each other in our five years as neighbors. While I’d had it bad, Tommy had been bullied with a fervency and relentlessness that bordered on sadistic. In the end, he was allowed to have lunch and break times on his own in a classroom supervised by a teacher. Tommy had always been early to class (one of the many reasons bullies gravitated towards him), and I was surprised to not see him in his seat. I was even more shocked when he did not come once the class started. Perhaps he’d been able to get some sort of dispensation for homeschooling. In later years, I’d often wondered if Tommy might have been on the spectrum. While there was still much progress to be made, things were much better for autistic people than when I had been growing up. If Tommy did in fact have autism, maybe this might have allowed him to be homeschooled.
We were given our timetables for the year, and various introductory information. Our form tutor had always been Mr Ahmed, but whether he had retired or moved schools, we now had a Ms Li. She ran through the basics of what middle-aged school was, how it worked, and then finished:
“Just like school, you’re going to learn things that are applicable to you, moving forward, as we come to this exciting, second major stage in your lives.”
The jokes about our history teacher, Mr Johnson, being ancient had written themselves. He had looked ten years past death while he was teaching, and so as I entered double-history, I wondered who –
“Come on Paul, we haven’t got all day,” Mr Johnson said as I entered the classroom. Trying to hide my astonishment, I sat down.
Mixed with my shock, I wondered what we were going to be learning today. Just think of all the history that had been made since we’d been in school. The Iraq War and its seismic consequences was a fascinating subject I’d always wanted to learn more about.
“Now,” Mr Johnson droned, “if you could all turn your textbooks to page 51, we are going to be begin our discussions of the taxation systems of the early kingdoms of the East-Anglian region.”
After History was Maths, and our first lesson was on Fermat’s Last Theorem. Then it was lunch. We weren’t allowed to use phones during school time so I spent most of my lunchtime checking messages and responding to emails. The one thing I had always liked about school was the lack of responsibilities. Middle-aged school didn’t even have this, as I trawled through all this admin that had accumulated in the morning.
I had noticed that I’d struggled reading the board from where I sat, and so I booked an opticians’ appointment for the following Thursday at four.
There was an unwritten rule among all businesses and services that they operated while people were at work and closed before they left it. The good thing about middle-aged school was that it ended at three, like normal school, so I would be able to fulfil any appointments or checkups without having to take time off.
Finishing at three each day also reminded me how lucky we’d had it in school with regards to time. A normal workday for me was half eight to half five. I also had to commute each way, adding another three hours combined. At school, it was six hours in total, one and a half hours of which were lunch and breaks, and because I lived near to it, my total daily commute was around fifteen minutes depending on walking speed. If nothing else, I would try to appreciate how good it was to have all this extra time.
After my admin, I opened my backpack and took out my sandwich. As I did, William approached, like a dog who’d heard its dinner bell. He was from the other class but had taken an especial dislike to me that crossed class boundaries.
It was remarkable, almost uncanny, how much William looked like he did when younger. As though this was some comedy show where in a flashforward the child actor had been placed in platform shoes and had some stubble applied in a poor attempt to make him look older.
“Hey man,” he said. “How’s it going?”
“I’m good thanks.”
“What you doing these days?”
“I, erm, I work at a supermarket.”
“Franchise owner?”
“Oh, no, I do the shelves and that. How about you?”
“Run my own company, innit. Employ fifty people. Bring in about two hundred thou a year. Holiday home in Tenerife, thinking about one in Cyprus, nothing fancy, you know. Like to keep it humble.”
I might have thought William was lying, but his watch and suit suggested different. Also, a lot of weirdos, losers and outcasts like myself liked to indulge in fantasies of these kinds of people growing up to have terrible lives as a result of not working hard at school. But more often than not, people like William excelled in life. With his natural charm, assertive personality, and mild sociopathy, William was the exact sort of person I could see succeeding.
“Anyway, just came over to ask if I could borrow your sandwich, I’m starving. Missus forgot to pack me lunch.”
I laughed, until I saw that he was serious.
“Oh, well, William, I – ”
“Thanks, man, blessed. What is this, chicken?”
“No, it’s tofu.”
“Tofu. Nah, fuck that woke shit.” Then, he took my sandwich and threw it in the bin. “Fucking diabolical. Step it up, man. Oh, wait, before I go, you couldn’t do me a biggie, could you?”
“What?” I asked, hoping he didn’t see the Twix poking out of my bag.
“I’ve got this YouTube channel. I do motivation, life-lessons, positive thinking, it’s all great stuff. You couldn’t subscribe to it, could you?”
“Yeah, course.”
William nodded, then stood looking at me.
“Oh, you meant now?”
“If you could, that’d be grand.”
I took out my phone and subscribed to William’s channel while he hovered over me.
“And the little bell,” he said. “So you get notified about each upload.”
I pressed the bell.
“Thanks man.” Then, spotting something, his face lit up. “Ooh, a Twix. Nice one!” He grabbed the Twix, patted me on the back, and walked away.
After lunch, there was Physics. I had always hated Physics at school and had assumed I’d want nothing more to do with it after I no longer had to study it. However, after I left school, I had developed a passionate interest in it, first through science documentaries, and then books. Sometimes, I would be replenishing the toilet paper, or being yelled at by a customer over some nonsense, and I would think about Proxima Centauri B, a potentially habitable exoplanet, or how Mercury’s lack of atmosphere meant that a footprint left on it billions of years ago would still be there now, and it would somehow put everything into perspective.
Ten minutes into Physics, I remembered why I always hated it so much. Instead of learning how Venus had once been remarkably similar to Earth, or debating the validity of the Rare Earth hypothesis, we had to rote-memorize the atomic number and symbol of every element on the periodic table for a test we had later in the week.
I was also distracted by the continued non-appearance of Tommy. Although he never spoke, his enthusiasm for Physics had always been evident. Pretty much the only time he talked was during that class, the merciless tormenting this led to being almost Newtonian in its inevitability. I had often thought that there were no people in the world crueller and more merciless than teenagers. ‘Bullied’ at times seemed too restrained a word. What Tommy had endured was abuse, and he was psychologically shattered by the time he had left. It was not the sort of thing that you just got over. I remembered William’s YouTube channel. I had a fanciful image of Tommy having one. A small channel with a tiny but dedicated subscriber-base, in which he finally found an opportunity to talk about the things that fascinated him, and where his knowledge and dedication were celebrated.
The final lesson of the day was P. E. It was ironic that, although I despised P. E., it was the one lesson that I thought was genuinely useful as I looked at the timetable. If it wasn’t for the supermarket, I would never exercise at all. And while there were shifts in which I lifted boxes or walked aisles, there were also ones spent entirely sat at the till. Being forced to exercise a couple of times a week could only be a good thing.
I was thinking this when the ball came to me around ten minutes into our football game. As my teammates screamed at me to pass it to them, I was suddenly clattered to the floor by Markus, who had slid into a tackle with excessive veracity and his studs up. As I was lifted up in the air and crashed back onto the muddy grass, I screamed while a triumphant Markus yelled, “Howzat?!”
P. E. had always been the one time at school where all the lunatics and sadists could vent their fury in a legitimate and safe setting. The week we’d done rugby, I’d deliberately made myself ill, and had been vindicated on learning about an especially high and illegal tackle that had been committed against Tommy which kept him out of school for a fortnight and which earned the tackler praise from the P. E. teacher and an offer to join the school team.
I could only hope that next week we would be doing running or something.
As I limped towards the bus stop, I was both physically and mentally exhausted. It felt like the end of my first week, rather than the first day. I didn’t know how I was going to get through the next few years. Still, as with lots of things in life, you just had to do it because that’s what you had to do. In a way, wasn’t that what life ultimately was: a series of experiences and responsibilities you despised but which you had to endure because you’d had the temerity to be born? I supposed I could get a nice aneurism or a stroke or something, but until then I’d just have to carry on.
While waiting for the bus, Alan came up to me. He was from the other class, and at school we’d been more acquaintances than actual friends. But now, as then, it was always good to chat with him. We shared stories about our first day. Alan laughed sympathetically when hearing about my knee, saying his shin had been clattered in hockey in what he was sure wasn’t an accidentally missed ball. He lifted his trouser leg and I winced at the bruise.
We spoke about our lives until this point, and our jobs. We also talked about some of the old people – how they had (or, more often, had not) changed. This got us onto Tommy, as I mentioned his non-appearance.
“Oh, shit man,” Alan said. “I erm, I hate to say this, but he passed away.”
“He died? How?”
“He killed himself, a few years back. It was terrible. But look, I don’t think it’s really that shocking, you know, not with everything that happened back then. Some people,” he shrugged, “never really get away from school, do they?”
Harley Carnell lives and writes in London. His fiction, which has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, appears in Riptide Journal, Shooter Literary, Sarasvati, and Confrontation, among others. His non-fiction appears in L’Espirit Literary and Aurealis, among others. Find him at www.harleycarnell.com.