when i was at primary school there was a boy in our class, anthony, that nobody really liked, he was a bit of a loner. he was a rough boy too, though that wasn't the thing that excluded him; far from it, ours was quite a rough class, it was more that he never really knew where to draw the line, was rough at inappropriate times, and didn't really know how to deal with kids who were harder than him. he had a nervous twitch. he was a bit of a pariah at school, the teachers didn't like him either because he was the sort of person that easily draws attention to themselves, and because his mum was the busybody who ran the PTA and was forever goading the staff into meetings about cake sales and fund raising, and harrassing them at breaktimes for 'chats' about her sons progress. he seemed custom built to annoy our primary school teachers, and they seemed custom built to be annoyed by him. his time at primary school can't have been easy. i can't really remember why, but i was sort of became this boys friend at school, though not always, i had my own group of proper friends, and with childish capriciousness we would elect to play with him some days, and exclude him others - he was a bit rough for us really. he didn't seem to mind though, and was quite happy to join in when we let him. i think i saw a genuine sort of innocence in him, he never meant to hurt anyone really, and was never malicious, as most of the other kids could be. he was just boisterous, it was in his nature. one of my most vivid childhood memories includes this boy. i can't remember exactly which year we were in, or which classroom, because we didn't have our proper teacher in that day, and we were being covered by the awful deputy headmistress, mrs connelly. it was a monday, i know it was a monday because i can remember that the day before was a sunday, and my parents had gone out and left my brother and i with my gran and grandad. we didn't like staying with them, they only lived down the road and their house was too familiar, not familiar like home is - a different sort of familiar. it was always too cold or much too hot up there, still is, and very dark because there are trees on the edge of the pavement outside their house, blocking the sun for the whole day, except a few hours in the morning. because mum and dad knew we didn't really like staying up there they promised to bring us back a surprise - so we agreed to stay whilst they went and did the shopping. they bought us back a pair of pencils, one each; but not ordainary pencils, these had a rubber on one end, and they came unsharpened, the tip was flat and smooth, so that when you were ready to start using it you had to sharpen the flat surface away and away until the lead became a point. i always loved doing that. but best of all was the colour, they wrote in ordinary grey like normal pencils, but the outside was covered with a kind of metallic effect, with black patterns across it. metallic green for me because green was my favourite colour, and red for my brother because red was his favourite colour. we were thrilled, and i sharpened mine and started doodling with it right away. of course i wanted to take it to school the next day to show off, but my mum said i probably shouldn't, because it might get taken; she knew what they were like in my class. but i put it into my pencil case anyway, and my pencil case went into my bag for the next day. as i said, our real teacher wasn't in that day, so mrs connelly was covering us, which was annoying because she hated people talking in class, and i wanted to tell people about my new pencil. we were set some work to do, i think it was sums but thats not important. i was sitting next to anthony and i was so eager to show him and my other friends the pencil that, in my haste, as i took my pencil case out of my bag i dropped it onto the floor. it was one of those tin pencil cases that comes in two bits, and one half is a lid and the other is the base, anyone who has owned one of those sorts of pencil cases will know that if you drop them they never stay shut, and all your stuff ends up on the floor. all my stuff ended up on the floor, including the pencil, which had rolled a bit and settled under anthony's desk - that was the first thing i went to pick up. as i grabbed it anthony said "hey! thats mine!" and pulled it out of my hand, "no, it's not - give it back!" i exclaimed, growing immediately despondant, i sensed this wouldn't end well. "it's mine!" anthony said with an air of finality, and by this time, what with all my stuff still spilt on the floor and our arguing breaking the silence of the classroom, everyone had turned to look. mrs connelly made her way over. "whats going on?" she asked, already annoyed "he's got my pencil..." "he took my pencil.." we both spoke at once. mrs connelly rarely minced her words, rarely dragged anything out, she rolled her eyes, "give me the pencil." she demanded, "but miss..." "sit down and get on with your work." she took the pencil. there was no arguing with her, we both felt like crying; in fact the only thing making me feel a bit better was seeing him feeling as bad as me. i wasn't sure why he should feel bad, after all - he had tried to take my pencil, and hadn't even been punished for it properly. i resolved never to be his friend again, to treat him as everyone else did. we both cried at breaktime, i sat alone in the corner, and i could tell that anthony had been too because his eyes were red and his cheeks flushed as we went back inside. we sat apart and exchanged angry glances for the rest of the day. i wanted to fight him, but i knew i would lose - i felt hopeless, and i couldn't tell my mum what had happened because she had told me not to take the pencil to school in the first place. it was my own fault. we got back home, and there was a while before teatime, where we'd usually watch telly or something, but my brother ran straight away and got out his lovely red metallic pencil and started doing some colouring in. i wanted to cry again. but then something strange happened, my mum came in from the kitchen saying: "do you want to do some drawing as well kieran?" i cringed. "no" i said sullenly "are you sure?" she said, handing me a pencil that looked suspiciously like my metallic green one. i looked closer at it, my mum grinned at me and went back into the kitchen. it was definitely the same one i had had on sunday, i recognised the way it had been sharpened, and the little bit of rubber that had been worn away. she definitely hadn't got it from mrs connelly, because mrs connelly never gave back stuff she confiscated, and besides, i had run straight from mrs connelly's class out into the playground to mum at the end of the day. there was no way they could have spoken during that time. she must have taken it out of my pencil case before i went to school. i didn't feel much better really. but i didn't tell anthony the truth in school the next day, didn't apologise - i couldn't bring myself to do it. in time we silently forgave eachother, and i lost interest in the pencil - the novelty was gone, and i couldn't use it without thinking about what i had done to my friend. it might still be in the house somewhere, abandoned at the back of a drawer or cupboard. you can still buy that type of pencil in various places, i saw a pack of five of them for 99p in a papershop the other day, they looked cheap. ________________________________________________________________________ i can't get that memory out of my head at the moment, perhaps it was seeing those pencils for sale the other day that sparked it. the last i heard of anthony he had been sacked from a job as a lifeguard at the local swimming baths on his first day for groping a girl he was 'rescuing' i see him around sometimes too, and we usually nod at eachother but don't speak. what's odd about that memory is that i can't really recall all of it, i can see our exchange of words as he snatches back the pencil, but the other details are fuzzy. i can picture it happening in nearly all the classrooms of my primary school, with us at varying ages and sizes. it occurs to me too that the memory works a lot like the biscuit story from 'hitch hikers guide...' you'll know the one if you've read it, and will possibly have noticed the similarities. and yet thats how i remember it, even though that certainly happened before i read the book. have i adapted a memory to part of a story from a book? it's hard to say really - theres something about it that doesn't seem quite right in my recollection, an extra paragraph that i can't quite access in my head. - kieran _________________________________________________________________ Join the worlds largest e-mail service with MSN Hotmail. http://www.hotmail.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. 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