The Knife That Killed Me by Anthony McGowan

Author:Anthony McGowan [McGowan, Anthony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-375-89392-6
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-07-30T16:00:00+00:00

Although my eyes are on the knife and the hand that holds the knife, I become aware of something behind me. A shadow. A presence. But it is soft and blunt and it cannot hurt me. So I dismiss it. Everything must reach forward, all my mind must be focused on the knife, on the boy.

SIXTEEN

A few days later I saw it happen.

Those days had been good. I’d been hanging out with Shane and his gang. For the first time since going to that school I felt like part of something. I wasn’t really a full member of their gang, and I hadn’t turned freak, not really. But I had changed. I looked a bit different, and I was thinking about things I hadn’t thought about before. About the world and what was wrong with it—not just the tiny bit of it that I was in, but the whole world. When I walked, I didn’t always keep my head down. I hadn’t got up the courage to talk to Maddy much, but she didn’t seem to mind if I stood near her in the playground or sat next to her at lunch.

It wasn’t all good. Kirk didn’t like me, and quite often he’d make sure the talk went in a direction I couldn’t follow. But Kirk was only one kid. And I knew from experience that getting snubbed was a hell of a lot better than getting punched.

Anyway, the next Wednesday afternoon I was in the science lab on the third floor. The sinks there overlook the back of the school. Out that way you first have a small square of playground, then the big rectangle of the all-weather field, then the fence and the school gates, and then a building that used to be a social club but is now a nothing, a shell like a rotten tooth. There’s always graffiti on the walls of the club. Body parts, names, swearwords—all that. I once thought that I should do it too—make my mark on the wall, I mean. I bought a can of white spray paint and sneaked out late. But then, when I reached the club and stood in front of the wall, I couldn’t think of anything to write. I shook the can so it made that rattling noise, but nothing else. I didn’t have a nickname I could spray, and there wasn’t a girl I fancied, not then. I didn’t want to write the name of a crappy football team, and I didn’t want to copy the other things scrawled there, the f-words and the c-words and the ugly pictures. I was as empty as the social club. So I threw the can into the gypsy field and went home again.

But now, looking out over the back of the school, I saw that some kid was doing what I hadn’t been able to do. I couldn’t make out what he was spraying, but there was no mistaking that combination of sweeping arm movements and quick little steps.

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