The Force of Destiny
by Zambezi
Chapter Two
I stayed hidden and in emotional turmoil for what seemed like hours, although in reality it can't have been more than twenty or thirty seconds. The scrap in the park, just on the other side of the wall, came to an abrupt end when a woman walking a couple of huge dogs went in through the gates and my associates scattered and ran.
The moment I heard them shouting and running in separate directions to flee the crime I suddenly felt a return of all my energy, so I ran in through the gates to where the woman was stooping over Adrian's body. Thankfully, I don't think she had seen me hiding in the shadows or she'd have realised what a fucking pussy I had just been.
"What the hell happened here?" I asked as I ran up to them.
"Seems some of your classmates wanted a go at him," the woman responded curtly, having noticed we were all wearing the Hope High uniform. "Can you help me see if he's conscious?"
"I am," he mumbled weakly.
"Adrian!" I cried. "You all right mate?" I placed my hands under his back and started to pull him up into a sitting position. "God he's thin," I thought as I put my left arm around his shoulder to support him while he reoriented himself
"I've felt better, but I don't think there's any major damage."
"I'm phoning an ambulance," the woman continued.
"No, don't," he pleaded. "I'll be fine - I just want to go home. My Mum's a nurse, she can check me out when I get there. Please? Nick?" He looked at me with a pleading expression on his eyes and I could feel his whole body tense up.
The woman looked at me. "OK, but you make sure he gets home safely. You seem to be a good enough friend of his."
I closed my eyes and nodded as I fell off the cliff into the abyss. "Yes, I am."
I felt him relax in my arm instantly, while the woman smiled at us and walked off with a final instruction to me to ensure he got home safely.
"I knew you'd come," he said. OK, it was a bit of a cliché, but I felt honoured to be not only his hero of the hour, but of his dreams too. I had no idea why - I had been such a bastard to him really, along with everyone else - but I suddenly felt like I was eight again, sharing a secret with my best friend which made us feel more important than everyone else.
"What the fuck happened?" I asked again as I helped him to his feet.
"I was waiting for the bus and just missed the first one home, so I thought I'd have a wander into the park. Next thing I knew I was surrounded by Darren - Daz - and his goons. I knew I was in trouble when I saw you weren't with them. They pretended to be friends with me: you know, all arms around me and asking how my day was, and next thing I knew I was being hammered."
"It wouldn't have made a fucking difference if I had been there," I thought to myself. The guy was thinking I was some sort of hero, and I knew I was a pussy. "Shit, Adrian," I said, trying to change the subject, "you're covered in mud and there's blood all down your shirt."
"Mum will kill me. I can't get on the bus like this and if I ask her to pick me up she'll worry herself silly."
My brain ran at its full capacity for the nanosecond it took to burn out. "I live just over on Tootal Drive, the other side of De La Salle college. Come back with me and we'll try and clean you up," I offered, figuring if I was going to hit the rocks at the bottom of the cliff then I might as well make try and achieve redemption during the fall. I knew Dad was out - the Giro had arrived that morning so he'd be in the Ashley Brook pub until he got chucked out tonight.
Adrian looked back at me as if he had just noticed that I had two heads or something. "Really?"
"Yeah. Call your Mum from there and say you're doing homework with me or something. She can pick you up later, or whatever."
"Cool," he replied as he stepped forward to walk back towards the gate so we could head to my house. He was clearly in some pain so I put an arm around his back to steady him, although with hindsight I realise it wouldn't have made much difference: it was really to comfort him. "Thanks," he whispered as he realised that I had done it.
We got to my cold and deserted house four or five painfully slow minutes later. After locking the door behind us I started up the central heating and then turned to look at my friend in the full glare of the hall light.
He was a mess. His lip had been split open, and there was a dried up stream of blood coming from his nose, running all the way down onto his sweatshirt. He had already developed a bit of a black eye and his coat and trousers were covered in mud.
"Adrian..." I sighed.
He was just about ready to turn on the waterworks again. "Nick, I can't live like this much more. Does everyone get treated like me? What have I done to deserve this?"
Just as the sobbing and tears started I did something I had never done in my life before: I pulled another boy into a hug. It was like being electrocuted, but in a good way. "I don't know, I just don't know," I whispered soothingly into his hair. "But you're safe here, I promise."
"I know," he replied as he hugged back, before letting go rather suddenly, as if guilty of something terrible.
"Is your Mum at work?" I enquired.
"No, she can't work. Hasn't got her UKCC PIN issued yet."
"Oh," I replied, pretending I understood what that meant. "Then call her and tell her you're studying with me. Then we'll do something about washing your clothes and getting you looking respectable again."
"But I don't have any spare clothes while you wash mine. What will I wear?"
"Leave that to me." I watched as he removed his trousers and sweatshirt to leave him standing there in black socks, a white t-shirt vest and those white Hings Y-front pants of his. They could only really be described as Homer Simpson pants, yet they somehow seemed incredibly sexy on him. Much to my embarrassment, I found myself getting hard as I threw his dirty stuff in the machine. "Want me to stick them in as well?" I asked, teasing a bit.
"Just about the only thing I'm wearing that isn't soiled, unbelievably," he quipped. "But I'm getting kinda cold."
"Sorry," I replied, and tossed him the blanket we used to protect the sofa from the dog. "Back in a minute. Phone's there. Bathroom's upstairs if you want to wash all the blood off your face. Use the blue towel."
After setting the machine going I popped next door to Joanne's, explained a little about the situation, and asked to borrow a set of her son Kane's clothing. Kane had just turned twelve, and was about the same size as Adrian. When I got back into my house and he finally emerged from the bathroom I chucked the clothes at him and told him to put them on, before we sponged as much of the mud as possible out of his coat. It wasn't brilliant by the time we gave up and draped it over the now scalding hot radiator, but at least it looked like he had slipped and fallen rather than be used to landscape Buile Hill Park.
We retired upstairs to my room, and he was clearly amazed at all the gear I had in there: TV, video, computer, huge stereo, plus sundry other bits of shit. "Wow, you've got so much stuff, way more than me," he gushed. "What do your parents do?"
"Mum walked about a year ago and Dad's a crook who claims the dole."
"Huh?" he asked, before he came to the realisation that I was telling the truth.
"You heard."
"I guess I just never thought of you like that," he mumbled in obvious embarrassment. "Daz maybe, but not you."
"You're not like us, are you?" I ventured. This was already the deepest exchange of our souls we had shared; I figured there was no harm in probing a little further.
"Whaddaya mean?"
"Come on, Hope High is full of the dregs of society. We'll never be any more than that - that's why none of us give a flying fuck about school. We'll always be on the dole, and thieving for that little bit extra. It's just life, we've always accepted that."
I had seen Adrian look shaken many times before, in fact he always seemed to be about to cry. But I had never seen him totally puzzled, like he was now. "My Dad's Dad was a dock worker in Liverpool and could barely read and write, but Dad's now a pretty senior, um, civil servant. Mum's parents were born and raised on a farm in a place called Sze Wui in Guangdong in China. The village didn't even have a proper school building until three or four years ago. Mum's now a nurse. I hope to be a doctor one day."
"I don't see your point," I complained.
"My point is that none of them accepted that their station - their future success - was set in stone because of where and into what class they were born. They took advantage of the chances they were offered, worked hard, and followed their dreams."
"It's just the way it works here."
"Says who?"
"Reality."
"I don't want to get into a big debate with you about destiny, Nick, because you are the only friend I have anywhere in this place and I don't want to offend you, but I promise this isn't the best you'll ever be - if you're prepared to take a leap of faith and work hard. That's my reality."
"Your reality got you mashed to a pulp in mine."
"And your reality will have you living on a park bench in mine."
If anyone but him had said that to me I would have floored them, but I looked up and saw nothing but sincerity and concern for me in his face. He genuinely thought I could do better than my miserable existence as a cat burglar in Salford.
"But come on mate, even if I did have brains, no-one would ever speak to me. They'd treat me like you." The moment I'd said it I knew I shouldn't have: he looked as if he had just been struck by lightning. "Shit, sorry, I didn't mean to..."
"It's all right. I'm sure every guy in school would say that, if only they had the guts to say it to my face."
"But-" I tried to apologise.
"I'll live. It would be nice if we could at least acknowledge each other in public, but I know how important your street cred is," he continued, with a hint of resignation in his voice and yet another tear forming in his eye.
I was devastated. I felt so pathetic: he was at the end of his tether every day and took it all with dignity and kept his head high. And I was ashamed to be associated with him.
I took a deep breath. "Adrian, mate. I really really want to be your friend, but I don't know how. Fuck, I don't even know why." As I said that, a solitary tear escaped my own eye.
This time, he took me into his arms and the instant he did it I fell to pieces and started sobbing uncontrollably. "I'm so sorry Adrian. I've been such a shit to you, and now you're having to comfort me. It's not right," I sniffled.
"That's OK," he responded softly. "It doesn't mean I can't be a good friend to you," he whispered comfortingly in my ear.
If there was one reaction I did not expect my body to make on being held in his arms with his hot breath in my ear, it was that of getting hard. With hindsight, of course, I'd have been amazed if that hadn't happened, but I just didn't expect it there and then and was simply taken by surprise. I tried to wriggle free before he felt it, but I knew he had and he didn't say anything, nor was he taking the hint to let go, so I just remained in his arms. Within seconds I had brought my own arms up to wrap around him and we stayed like that for an eternity: he crying with exasperation, me with shame for being too weak to do anything to help him, for being the weak one.
When we eventually separated for me to pluck out a few computer games to occupy ourselves until the washing machine finished its cycle we looked at each other and smiled. Although I had no idea where it came from I felt an overwhelming urge to kiss him as we let go of each other from the embrace, and I just somehow knew he was thinking the same thing. It wasn't a lip kiss I wanted to give him, just one on the cheek to say that I was right next to him, shoulder to shoulder, and that I cared. As I leaned down towards him our faces did that sort of dance you do when you realise you're about to walk into someone on the street and both go the same way, before eventually we found ourselves in another hug, cheek to cheek, and I brushed my lips just below his ear with a tender kiss just as he did the same to me.
It should have been a perfect moment - peaceful, tender, and caring, and definitely what I had just wanted at that moment - yet I was aware that something was not quite right. I was momentarily unnerved enough that I decided to go and rescue a can of Stella from the fridge. I asked him if he wanted one and - bless him - he didn't know what I was talking about. When I explained that it was beer, he laughed and said he'd seen the adverts for it on TV but had never tried any. His Dad, apparently, was a Carlsberg drinker since San Miguel in England wasn't the same as out there. Adrian still declined though, so I dug around and found a Coke for him.
It wasn't until we sat down to wreck some cars on the computerised race track that I realised what had not been quite right before. He had been hard as well. Of course, from the moment I realised that, I was on edge for the rest of the day. I knew that I got turned on really easily and could order erections at will, and then some, but I had always put that down to my willingness to please the ladies - and the fact that I was about to get a shag. I hadn't really talked about it with other guys, but I just assumed that other guys were pretty much the same to a greater or lesser extent. There was most definitely no prospect of a shag in my bedroom that afternoon, but we had both been very aroused. I was frankly overwhelmed with the thoughts flying around in my head, and went out with the pixies for a moment.
Adrian snapped me out of it a couple of seconds later as my car ran off the track. "Nick, I think the washer has finished spinning," he said, although it was less a statement of fact than an enquiry as to whether or not I was still in the land of the living.
I headed down to the kitchen with him in tow and flicked the machine over to tumble-dryer mode, set it to "dry high", and cranked the timer round to fifteen minutes. "When's your Mum coming?" I asked.
"She said to call again when I'm ready. I'll probably need some help with directions."
"It's only a few minutes back up to school. Why don't you walk up there so she knows where to come?" I replied. The truth was we lived on one of those housing estates where every home has a rusting kitchen appliance outside the back door, an old mattress in the front garden, and a rottweiler patrolling the fence. For the first time in my life I was somehow embarrassed about it all, and terrified that his Mum would take one look and ban him from speaking to me again.
"Um, I think she kinda wants to meet you. Sorry."
"Don't be," I replied, thinking "why in the name of bloody fucking hell would she want to meet me?"
Adrian must have been reading my mind. "I told her how you are my only friend at school."
"Shit. Shit, shit, shit." I thought, before continuing out loud. "Come on, I've seen you hanging out with some of those Jehovah's Witnesses guys. Wouldn't you consider Jason Ray a friend?"
"Nick," he continued, "they're wankers. I only hang with them because occasionally it's better than being alone. Occasionally," he emphasised.
I looked Adrian up and down with a million and one feelings running around through my mind. And when my little internal decision engine had finished processing the logic, there was only one result: we were, indeed, each other's friend. I was his only one of any description and, I was beginning to realise, he was my only real one worthy of the name.
Adrian's mother arrived about fifteen minutes after he called and I had provided appropriate directions from the school with which she was familiar. She pulled up in their Civic and walked up to our front door before I could bundle Adrian outside, thus opening me to the risk of having to let her in.
Ever the gentleman, I invited her in and offered her a can of Stella, which prompted a look from her that suggested I belonged with the slushy stuff at the bottom of the rubbish bin. In the corner of my eye I could see Adrian cringing before his mother turned around and started fussing over his still blackening eye, about which she clearly knew nothing.
"So," she said to me over her shoulder, "Adrian tells me you're his lab partner in his Science class."
I felt a sudden and overwhelming need to be polite."Yes Miss, I am."
"Please, call me Lily," she continued. "I haven't been Miss anything for nearly twenty years."
Jeez did she have a way of making me feel right at home... In my own home! An awkward silence followed.
"Are your parents in?" Lily eventually asked.
"It's just my Dad these days," I responded. "He's out, um, entertaining prospective clients." Adrian shot me a disdainful look: I had already told him Dad was blowing the giro in the pub. I rationalised it was at least partly true - he would be charming some total stranger into revealing his home security details, or whose car he would nick from the car park.
"So what are you doing for dinner?"
Good fucking question. Pouring boiling water into a Pot Noodle was never going to satisfy her, so I came up with the next best thing: a lie. "If Dad's not in I'll usually go and get fish and chips from down the road." I was never more conscious of my crap diet than I was at that moment.
"Then come back with us for a meal," she said.
I was lost. I had no idea what to say.
"Please?" Adrian chipped in. "We can drop you back home afterwards, can't we Mum?"
"Yes, of course."
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained..." I reminded myself, and a decent meal did sound good. "That'd be lovely, thanks." I just prayed they used knives and forks at home. Chopsticks were a no-no for me.
We rode to the Jenkins' house in virtual silence. I think Lily must have wondered what the deal was between the two of us, but she kept a very diplomatic distance from whatever tension it was - I still wasn't sure myself - in the air. I was still on edge from our hugs - and arousal - that afternoon.
It turned out that Adrian's family lived in one of those new townhouses in the Quays, the yuppie development in the old dock area off Trafford Road which had recently provided some good pickings when Daz and I were out at work. It seemed a bit weird going upstairs to the lounge for two minutes of small talk, let alone up to the next floor to go into Adrian's room. We shot the shit for about half an hour as his Mum prepared tea - or dinner, as they confusingly called it - in the ground floor kitchen. His room was a bit bare: loads of books on a bookcase and a small CD player, a desk but no computer or anything. I never knew that a fifteen year old kid could live in such a bare room with so little stuff, yet his family were obviously not short of a penny or two.
"Now I see why you were amazed at the gear I had in my room," I offered.
"Yeah, my parents are quite strict about stuff like that. They're always telling me that material possessions are not the answer to everything."
I was confused. "So how do they show you they love you?"
For the umpteenth time, he looked at me as if I had just come down from a cave in the mountains. "They don't need to buy me stuff for that. I just know from what they say and do."
I was bewildered, and just then started to wonder if we would ever be real friends. He was a really nice guy, so genuine and warm, had wormed his way into my heart even though he had no right to, and I felt that we had really started to bond ever since the changing room incident the day before. But then we would have a conversation like this one and it would feel like we came from different planets. I wondered if we'd ever be able to relate to each other.
My thoughts were interrupted just then by the sound of the door to the car port being opened. "Dad's home," explained Adrian, so I followed him out of the door down two flights of steps to the kitchen where his Dad was kissing Lily.
"Hiya sport," the man said to Adrian before he realised I was there too. "I don't believe we've met."
"Nick Finch. I'm Adrian's lab partner at school." I held out my hand.
"Ah, so you're the famous Nick," he responded, shaking my hand vigourously. I shot a look at my friend, wondering exactly what the hell he had told them about me. I mean, there wasn't much he could have said other than lump me in with the dickheads. "I'm Patrick, Adrian's father. Call me Paddy." Paddy then did a double take as he spotted his son's shiner. "Come on boys, let's go upstairs and have a chat while the wench cooks dinner for the menfolk." A piece of carrot flew across the kitchen and hit him on the head as he laughed. "You know I love you really," he shot back as we three ‘menfolk' went through the door and towards the stairs.
"Aiiieeeeyyyyyyaaaaaaaaah!" was the only response as Adrian and his Dad giggled with each other. So this was what he meant by showing their love to each other. I could feel it in the atmosphere.
When we got to the lounge Paddy looked at Adrian's eye more closely. "Want to tell me how this happened?"
I looked at my friend and suddenly felt like an intruder in a father-son moment. "I'll step outside."
"No, please, stay," he begged, reaching out for my arm and grabbing it as I began to move away. When we both realised he had done that we stared at each other and didn't know what to say or do for a second, before he withdrew his hand and sent a smile to me. Turning to his Dad, he continued: "Usual stuff, but it just finally turned violent today. They jumped me in the park while I was waiting for the bus home."
"I'm so sorry this is happening sport," Paddy replied. "If I'd known things were going to turn out like this I'd never have come on the exchange. It's just a nightmare all round." He slumped on the sofa. "Did you see who did it?" The question was aimed at both of us, and I started to feel ever more uncomfortable.
Adrian spoke first. "Yeah, it's the same ones who we complained to Mr Hewitt about before, but he never did anything then."
"But this was a physical attack, he's got to take notice this time."
I spoke up next: "If it didn't happen on school property he won't have anything to do with it. Trust me." I didn't add that I only knew this because it had got me off the hook for something similar the year before.
"And the wankers in the police won't give a stuff," Paddy continued. "It'll be too much like hard work for them - they'll just tell us to take it up with the school." He looked directly at me. You must have been at that school a while, any suggestions?"
I had none. "I know it's not what you want to hear guys, but once they get hold of you they don't let go."
Adrian and his Dad looked crestfallen, like I had just told them he had cancer. "Dad, can't we just go back home? We all hate it here, what's the point in staying?"
"Because you only get stronger by winning challenges. The bravest man is the one who confronts his fears, not the one who doesn't have any." Paddy had put his arm around his son, and watching it was like being in a dream for me. I could feel the love and tenderness in that room and it made my entire existence empty in comparison.
Feeling a bit awkward in the middle of all that father-son bonding, I looked around the room a bit more and noticed a couple of pictures on a display unit, so I wondered over to look. In one of them Adrian was standing in those speedos of his, being presented with a trophy of some sort. It was taken outside, in blazing sunshine a world away, and he had a huge smile of pride on his face like he had just conquered the world. He seemed so happy; he was a totally different boy to the sad tormented creature I knew.
Dinner was fantastic. It wasn't Chinese food, or English food, it was just a family meal full of stimulating flavour and conversation, quite unlike anything I had experienced in a long time. It was good. Afterwards, Adrian and I headed back up to his room to kill another hour before I had to head home.
"Your Mum's a killer cook," I noted as I swivelled his desk chair around to face the bed and sat down.
"Thanks. I'm sure she'd appreciate it if you told her as well," he responded as he fished out a CD and dropped it into his player. "I don't think you'll take much to my classical music, but this might amuse you."
We listened to about thirty seconds before I chuckled as I recognised it. "It's the Stella Artois ad!"
He laughed back. "I thought you might say that. It's the overture to a Verdi opera called La Forza del Destino. It's not a very popular work, but it's actually one of my favourites."
"I wouldn't know Chopin from chopsticks," I said, partly chuckling about the Stella advert music being from opera, partly about my own lame joke. "Classical music isn't really for the likes of us."
"Says who?"
"Let's not start that again," I laughed. As he laughed too, I saw a glimpse of the happiness I had seen permeating that photograph downstairs in the lounge. "That picture I saw, were you winning a swimming trophy?"
"Yeah, I used to swim competitively a lot and I was hoping to try for the Atlanta Olympics. Swimming's one of the few ways to keep cool in the summer in Hong Kong. That picture represents some happy days."
The glimpse of joy had gone by then, and again he looked lost. I realised that, having pounded Adrian into an emotional wreck, when he got an opportunity to demonstrate the swimming prowess of which he was rightly proud we had laughed at him for reasons of pure evil. I couldn't imagine how that must have felt for him. I got out of the chair and sat next to him on his bed, once again drawing him into the hug I knew he needed and we both wanted. He just sort of sank into my arms.
"Thanks," he sniffled onto my chest as Verdi hummed away in the background.
We held each other for a few minutes before I figured out how best to change the subject. "So what's that opera all about then?"
"La Forza? It's about two lovers forced to live their lives apart after one kills the other's father by accident."
"So it's quite gory? I thought these things were all really posh."
"Never seen it. But they all had to have good stories to go with the music, otherwise nobody would have gone to see them. I suppose they were a bit like going to the movies is now. Mum and Dad said we could go see an opera while we're in England; maybe you could come with us?"
"Whoa, lemme think about it."
"Yeah, I know, no street cred going to the opera."
We both laughed as he mocked me and we frittered the rest of the evening away. Paddy took me back home in his car, another Honda - this one a Prelude. Adrian sat in the back, so when we arrived I released the passenger seat so he could get out and sit in the front for the ride home. As we stood outside on the pavement in the freezing cold he put one hand on my arm, and his other on my hip, and closed the car door with his knee.
"Thanks for being there today Nick. I don't know how I would have managed without you. I know you're never gonna show it in school, but I'm glad you're my friend. I'm just sorry I'm such a loser that you can't be seen with me, I'm really letting us down."
I felt like crap as he got back into the car. Before he closed the door I looked back down at him, and the strangest thought popped into my head.
"Adrian, how does it end?"
"What, the bullying?"
"No, the Stella opera."
"Depends which version you mean. In the most well known one, the revised one, he finally gets the girl after evading her family's vengeance his entire life."
"And in the original?"
"He kills himself."
Adrian shut the car door. The way he said it, we both knew we weren't talking about some opera. In fact, when I thought about it, it never felt like we had.
Now I felt like crap on toast as I headed back into the still deserted house and went up to my room. Although it was only 10pm, I was drained and couldn't wait to get into bed.
Sleep took a long time coming as I replayed the day's events over in my mind and tried to make some sense out of all the emotions flying around my rather limited brain. I was too scared of my own mates to stop Adrian being beaten up. I had then hugged and kissed him and it felt the most natural thing in the world between two close friends. I had seen how my world - the Salford of bullying, crime, jobsworths and hopelessness I had hitherto helped to create - came together to break a loving, caring family that had invited me to sit at their table because my own Dad didn't put a meal on mine.
And above all, as my hands wondered into my boxers in a final attempt to help bring sleep to my door in the time-honoured fashion, the overriding memory of the day was that Adrian had been there, in that very bedroom, in my arms, hard as a rock.
I came within seconds.
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