We’d posted the memory stick to them, along with a note saying we’d found it out on this street.
Even the police couldn’t fail to make the links. To see that Graham has got to be put away. For the sake of every girl in town.
It wasn’t just Tom Cruise that Graham wanted to be like. It wasn’t even that he wanted to be every good-looking movie hero around.
There were also those movies where the nerdy guy gets the drop-dead gorgeous girl at the end.
He was re-enacting all the scenes where, despite their stupidity and downright nerdiness, these guys eventually get the woman of their dreams.
Sure, like it really happens like that, Graham!
These movies are only a short step up from pornos. The way they portray these guys making some dim girl flop all over them like kids’ puppets.
Graham’s well-rehearsed in these re-created shots. Never stumbling over his words, confidently talking to camera in a way he’s never managed in real life.
He’s quite smoothly dressed too when he needs to be. Like the movie-stars gone wrong. Some bizarre world where every guy’s really ugly but there aren’t any even slightly ugly women.
It must have cost him a fortune, all the dressing of the shot, the replication of it all. Though there’s one heck of a lot of digital copying and computer graphics gone into it too. As well as splicing in shots of the girls, cars, and what have you from the original movies or even games.
Most of the scenes begin with actual footage from the movie, the real actor playing the part. Then, like they’re caught up in something like Star Trek’s transporter beam, they begin to break up, to pixilate. Until they simply vanish. Next thing you know, Graham’s version of them is ‘beamed in’ to replace them.
It’s one hell of an achievement.
A very sick hell.
So what’s sick about replicating a few movie shots?
Well, for a start, it isn’t a ‘few’: it’s seemingly endless actually.
God knows how long he’s been putting this thing together.
It’s been an obsession. No wonder no one’s ever seen him outside of school. Unless he’s been out shooting for his video, he’s been locked in his room. In front of his editing suite.
Jeezus; he wishes life was like it was in the movies– all sex, fun and pleasure even for the geeks like him. Am I reading all this right?
It had been Chloe’s comment, but I had to agree with it.
Graham’s movie, however, got worse as it went on.
He starts slipping in his own lines, rather then just keeping to those of the character he’s playing.
Bits about him being moved from school to school. Never having any chance to become part of a group of real friends.
When he comes to girls, we’re all fools, we’re all shallow, for chasing after the hot guys while geeks like him are the real nice ones. The ones who’d really care for their girlfriends.
‘Why not me? Why can’t I have a girlfriend?’
Sure, he repeats that a lot. You could feel sorry for him, if that was as far as it went.
As in any movie, he’s the good guy; the unappreciated guy, the misunderstood guy. The outcast who’s unfairly rejected time after time. Until, at last, he gets to prove that he’s the only one who’s been telling the truth all along
But what a truth he has to tell.
He doesn’t know why he’s still being turned down by the girls: it can only be, of course, because they’re stupid.
So they deserved to be punished. Along, too, with the good-looking guys who make them act like fools. Who won’t have anything to do with him.
He would show at last that he is the ‘true alpha male’. And he’d do it the same way they do it in the movies: when the road runs out for them, they go out in a blaze of glory, taking as many other people with them as they can.
As in the earlier shots, all the girls each begin to pixilate, as if caught up in Captain Kirk’s transporter beam.
But they’re never replaced by anyone. They just writhe in agony, shrieking. Like they’re really just being obliterated.
It’s a snuff movie, in its way: and its mainly blonde girls like me, Chloe and Pearl who end up getting snuffed out.
*
Chapter 7
Why the hell did they let him go?
We should have included the diagram – the police obviously did need a diagram to have it all explained to them!
I’ll get it from his locker.
You can’t say that was found in the street!
Maybe we can work that out later? Say he’d left it lying around?
Wow, the most careless killer in history! Memory sticks out in the street. Diagrams left for anyone to find. Confession letters stapled to the forehead of the Chief Constable.
Wait a minute; something you said there! It made me realise why I’ve always thought there was something odd about Graham’s video.
Something odd? Would that be the bit where he mixes in the game sequences showing him cutting heads of girls in the streets? Or, maybe, the sections where so there’s much blood you wonder if you need to readjust your monitor’s colour settings?
Sure, sure; it’s all terrible, we all know that! But I mean there was something bugging me that we were still missing something!
Well it’s sure missing shots of happy families.
No, no: I mean we found it in his camera!
A video in a camera? Wow, that is unusual, Amina!
Cut the sarcy tone: I mean it’s an edited video. Not a raw set of shots you’d expect to be in a camera. You take raw shots; then take them back to be edited.
Since when did you turn into Sherlock Holmes?
Since when I realised I might be the next to be killed. And the edited film in the camera is probably proof that Graham still regards me as a target.
Now you have lost me, Inspector Poriot.
Think about it. It means he doesn’t think it’s a completed movie! He has at least one more scene to shoot: the ending.
Your death, you mean?
That still doesn’t make sense. As you’ve just said, he’d shoot it; take it back to be edited.
Not if he’s planning on going out in a blaze of glory.
Let’s get the diagram!
We have to send it.
*
It’s not there anymore.
Graham’s moved it, obviously.
I shut the locker door, turn around: and Graham’s there, like he’s been expecting this.
‘When you looked in there, did you notice the spy camera recording that you’re a thief?’
‘I’m not a thief, I...I...’
I can’t think what to say.
Neither can Chloe and Pearl, obviously.
‘I could make a citizen’s arrest. I know you stole my memory stick–’
‘I...I–’
‘Don’t deny it! I now have proof that you’re a thief! Yet you’re the one who set the police on me! They asked me if I was suicidal. Can you imagine that? How humiliating that was for me?’
He’s keeping his voice low, like an angry hiss. So no one else can hear.
But he’s gritting his teeth, like he’s having trouble holding back all his fury. Fury that shows itself in his bulging, veined eyes.
He can sense the fear in me, I’m sure of it. If he can’t sense it, he can probably read it in the way I’m edgily backing off from him.
In an abrupt change of mood, he glances about us triumphantly.
‘No heroic Adam to rush to your rescue this time?’
Don’t panic; he can’t do anything!
Not when there’s people around just a few feet away!
‘Why don’t you like him?’ I ask, hoping to draw his attention away from the video he’s just made of me breaking into his locker. ‘He...he’s not this Wry Man, is he?’
He laughs.
That’s a bit pathetic for a villain’s laugh!
‘Hah, if only. I checked,
hacked into the maintenance depot’s staff records. He’s just plain Adam Garner. Left school recently, no qualifications. Hence why he’s in overalls. See how much more knowledge you can gain when you’re already highly intelligent?’
He’s so busy gloating, he doesn’t seem to realise he might have given me a way of contacting Adam. Then again, I suppose it’s never entered his head that I would want to contact Adam.
‘But if he’s not the Wry Man, why do you say I shouldn’t see him?’
He shrugs, grimaces.
‘Guys like that, they’re always no good. Always picking on other people.’
‘Maybe people like you Graham; not people like me.’
I want to tell him that I now know what he’s really like; that I’ve seen his ranting against the world in his little movie.
Sure, go ahead: admit that you did take his memory stick!
‘So that’s okay, is it? As long as it’s people like me, not you?’
‘Course not! I didn’t mean it that way!’
‘Didn’t you? Didn’t you and your friends always pick on me too? Simply because I was the intelligent kid – the geek, the nerd?’
I’m embarrassed. Ashamed. He’s right.
Wait a minute: he did kill us!
We don’t know that for sure! The police don’t seem to think so.
‘I’m sorry; we shouldn’t have done those things to you. I realise that now.’
I’m nervous. I’m not entirely sure if I’m apologising simply because I’m ashamed of what we put Graham through, or if it’s dawning on me that we might bear some of the responsibility for how he’s turned out.
Or am I simply apologising in the hope that it placates him? That it at least calms him down, maybe even long enough for me to get away from here without him attacking me?
‘Why now, after all this time? Because your friends died?’
‘In a way yes; but not in the way you think. I just realise now – that it wasn’t fair.’
‘No, it wasn’t fair, was it? But know what? Life isn’t fair, is it? Not at all like it is in the movies. Where everyone ends up happy ever after unless you’re the bad guys.’
Who ends up happy ever after in his movie?
We do; we end up in the ever after.
Where the hell’s Adam when you need him!
‘What’s going on here again?’
I can’t believe it!
It’s Adam!
*
Chapter 8
With an angry grumble of, ‘Your girlfriends a thief; and I’ve got proof!’ Graham storms off before Adam can humiliate him any further.
Adam looks down at me, staring directly into my eyes, his expression one that asks if I’d like to explain Graham’s accusation.
‘Well? Has he got proof?’
I hang my head, ashamed.
‘Yes,’ I admit. I look up. ‘But there is a reason: and I can prove it too!’
I hold up my own memory stick, one containing a copy of Graham’s movie.
‘Do you have a laptop?’
He grins.
‘Of course; maintenance isn’t just about plumbing these days. Most places have some form of computer control we have to link into to access diagrams and plans.’
‘It might be best if we go somewhere a bit more private–’
‘Hmn, so Graham was right about that too, was he? About you being my girlfriend?’
Ohh, cheessssyy!
With a smile like that, I’ll let him off.
‘I meant so we can watch this weird movie he’s made!’
I punch him lightly and playfully on his chest. He grins again.
‘I know: but I thought I’d just use the opportunity to check where we stood, right?’
‘Well, I could stand a bit closer, if you want?’
Even cheeessssier!
Sure, but he’s lapping it up. The girl knows what she’s doing!
I move a little closer towards him. So close he has very little choice but to slip an arm around me.
It’s an arm that manages to feel both hard and powerful and soft and tender all at the same time.
In his arms, I somehow feel delicate, in need of protection.
We’re so close, I have to raise my chin a little. And he has to look down at me.
I mean, what else could we do but kiss?
*
‘That’s seriously creepy!’
Told you! Creeps-cemetery, Creepstown!
Adam looks a little awestruck as he watches Graham pour out his loathing for women on the laptop’s small screen.
‘It’s like...like he sees his whole life as being this movie. With him as the central character. He’s, like, the audience for a movie about himself.’
Did this guy really come out of school with no qualifications?
Perhaps he was, you know, just the bad boy there?
Intelligent but rebellious? The more I hear about him, the more I like him.
‘I did media studies at school,’ he explains with a beaming smile just for me.
‘You ask me,’ he continues, ‘I reckon there’s actually an awful of shame and self-loathing seeping out of Graham. He hopes the movie gives him a little more control over the bad things happening in his life; he can give it a plot, a back story.’
Do you really learn all this in media studies?
Just what sort of school did he go to? Eton?
Adam laughs, seeing that I’m impressed.
‘We made our own movies at school. Really bad ones, not like this – not at all like this! Our teacher came out with all the spiel I’m giving you now. I remembered it, though, because it made a lot of sense to me at the time; the way we tend to live our lives through movies, these totally fictional accounts of other people’s lives. They might not really reflect reality, he said, but they form our ideas of what we think we deserve from it; how we expect it all to turn out.’
Are we sure this guy isn’t really some sort of professor, who just does a bit of maintenance on the side?
Maybe the extra money’s handy?
‘But this guy – like, wow! I’m not sure he can make any separation at all between reality and his own weird fantasy. It’s like he’s turned his own life into out-of-body experience. He must dream in computer graphics!’
Damn! He’s just looked up from the screen and caught me gawping at him with love-glazed eyes.
‘Sorry, my teacher’s words again,’ he admits with a chuckle. ‘Impressive, huh? I mean, what he’d come out with; not me.’
‘You’ve remembered it all. And it all made me sense to me; the way you explained it all. So I think that is impressive.’
‘Then it’s a pity you’re not my boss! Maybe that way I wouldn’t be constantly being told I’m an idiot, I’m getting it wrong, will I never learn – all that sorta stuff! Daily!’
‘I can’t believe anyone would think you’re an idiot.’
I snuggle up closer to him.
I let him know that I don’t think he needs to learn anything at all.
*
Come lunchtime at school the next day, I slip out of the yard, heading for my rendezvous with Adam.
As I make my way past everyone, my newly-discovered confidence seems to have done the trick: I’m getting a few lingering stares, even a frequent smile, from some of the school’s better-looking boys.
The low top seems to have done the trick, Amina.
Yeah, I’m surprised no one’s pulled you up for that yet: that’s a definite against-school-regulations top.
And no one seems any the wiser there’s a lot of padding going on down there.
There’s no such thing! That’s the bra: it just needed a bit of help to get the shape right!
Don’t look, don’t look! Tyler’s looking this way – hey, wait a minute! He shouldn’t be looking at you, Amina!
Its not like he can go out with you anymore, is it?
Sure – but it’s the principle! There’s suppo
sed to be some graceful period of mourning, isn’t there?
Well, going by the way his tongue’s almost hanging out, I reckon Tyler figures that period’s over!
Amina! Promise me you won’t go out with Tyler!
I can’t help it if Tyler’s gawping at me, can I? Course I won’t go out with him! I don’t even fanc–
You don’t like him? You always said you did!
Oh, what else was she supposed to do? Tell you the truth that we both thought you were a little crazy getting all–
You too? You didn’t like him either? But I only went out with him because you two thought he was hot!
No, no; definitely not even cool.
Oh, that’s sick, sick, sick! And to think I let him–
You didn’t?
No, no – not that! God no!
Thing is, it’s making me feel a bit creeped out, the way some of the nerdy kids think they have a right to just gawk at me like I’m on show just for them!
Yeah, I thought that too!
Nigel Houseman! Yuuuuccckkk!
Eyes like cuckoo eggs! Makes me shivery all over just thinking about it!
Scary! It really turned my stomach; or would have, if I still had one.
Don’t worry though, Amina; it’ll all be worth it when Adam sees you. You look amazing!
Despite the padding.
There’s hardly any padding!
Well, I reckon your mum’s gonna be wondering what happened to her box of tissues she–
It wasn’t a box!
A box would look really bad!
You know what I mean!
And he probably won’t notice the zit tha–
Zit!
Kidding, kidding!
Don’t let her worry you girl! You’re handling Adam fine. But if you need a few tips on how to really kiss–
I do not need tips, thank you!
But the way–
The way I did it was fine!
Hey, hey – am I the only one keeping an eye on where we’re going here? Who’s that gawping at us from the trees?
There’s no one there; it’s just the way the shadows–
There so is someone there!
She’s right, Amina! Maybe you can’t see him too well.
So now my eyesight’s faulty?
I mean he’s like really, really thin.
Yeah, almost like he’s made of twigs or stalks, he’s so–
Slender?
It’s him! It’s the Wry Man!
*
Chapter 9