April

By Lydia Stevens

Dear Mr. Police Officer, Detective Inspector, or whatever you are,

You asked me to write down what happened for you. Well, I’ve decided to do it properly. I know you’re going to send me to jail, I can tell you’ve already made your mind up about me, and you’re not going to believe what I write here, so I thought I’d do a good job of it, like a proper story, because while I’m in jail or Borstal or wherever it is you send 12-year old girls to, I’ve decided I’m going to write stories, like Oscar Wilde. Then when I’m grown up and a famous author, you can say I wrote my first story for you, and sell it for millions of pounds. See, I won’t even copyright it! It’s all yours. You’re sending me to jail, but I’m still being nice to you. I’m not a bad person. But April is. I mean was.

Here we go then. I knew April back in primary school, in case you didn’t know. She was in my class, too. She was one of those big girls who were pretty enough and loud enough to be popular, even though she looked like a shot-putter. Her hair was big as well, as if she thought that would stop people noticing how big her shoulders and bum were. And her boobs – they were pretty big even when she was ten. She had two groups of friends she went between every week – she’d fall out with one, go to the other, fall out with them, and go back. But they always accepted her. I never understood why – I always thought they were just afraid of her – but now I know. They were afraid of her. But not because she was big enough to smash their heads in. You’ll see what I mean soon enough. I was never friends with her, though. She ignored me unless she wanted me to pass the rubber or give her an answer in a maths test.

After Sheldon Primary everyone went to two main high schools, Barley Mill and St. Theresa’s, but me and April – no, I must get this right if I want to be a writer – April and I – went to Ogden High. We were the only two out of our school who went there. I think her mum wanted to get her away from all those ‘friends’ of hers. Anyway, in Ogden she wasn’t so big any more. And she wasn’t so cool, and she couldn’t push her way around like she did at Sheldon. Don’t get me wrong, April wasn’t a violent girl. I never saw her really hurt anyone at Sheldon. She never had to. But Ogden was different. Going from Sheldon to Ogden was like going from a kiddie’s paddling pool to a big aquarium filled with sharks. I kept seeing April fighting with other girls, in our year or older, and she never won, even against the small ones. They were small but vicious, like rats. One day I even saw her crying. I smiled at her because I felt sorry, or maybe because I was still afraid of her. She just scowled at me and said ‘ what are you laughing at?’ even though I wasn’t laughing. That was when she stopped ignoring me. I wish I’d never smiled at her that day, I really do. Then I could have carried on being invisible to her.

She started looking at me then, not friendly, but not unfriendly either. She just asked me for things, like the time, or to give her a sweet, or to pass her the ball in basketball. Then one day she came up to me in break and said, ‘do you want to go swimming after school?’

I said yes. Why wouldn’t I? I like to swim, and I suppose I wanted to look cool, April and me in the pool together, racing, splashing, diving, having a laugh.

But when I met her after school, she didn’t have her kit, and we didn’t walk towards the pool, but to the park that’s between the school and the council estate we both lived in. We ended up in this little group of trees, a sort of den the local lads had made, with doors and planks and stuff nailed to the tree trunks. You couldn’t see the houses from inside it, just the clouds floating by above. I liked it. I felt proud, and really cool, to be hanging out with April in the park, in a secret hiding place, even if it wasn’t that secret.

She started going on about some girls she knew in Year 8 who were total bitches, they looked down their nose at her because her make up was from the wrong shop, or her hair wasn’t the right style, or something. I don’t know, I’ve never really cared about that sort of thing. I reckon I’ll wait till at least Year 9 before I started wearing make-up and that. But it was great to hear her go on about it, talking to me as if I was her equal, as if I was one of her friends.

She made fun of my hair, saying it was geeky, and she said I was small, and not developed, although she didn’t put it like that. She wouldn’t win any prizes for politeness, April. She said we should go to a hairdressers in town, where all the pretty girls from Ogden go. I said I couldn’t afford it, and she made fun of me for being poor, even though her family is poorer than mine. But she still has satellite TV in her room! Anyway, she called me names and laughed at me for all these things, but I didn’t mind, because this was April, and I wanted to be friends with her. How stupid I was.

The next day we went back to the den, and there were these Year 8 boys there, who made rude comments about us, especially about April’s boobs, but she said some things about their privates which shut them right up. She even smacked one in the face. They left us alone after that, just rode past on their bikes now and then shouting the same stupid things. Boys are idiots.

But never mind them. On the third day of our brilliant new friendship April tried to get me to smoke. She had a pack she’d stolen from her brother, and a lighter, but I said no. She called me a wimp and laughed at me, but I wasn’t going to because my Granddad died of lung cancer last year. She said I was stupid because we were young and he was really old, so why worry? But I still said no. Then another day she tried to get me to steal tobacco from my Dad (he rolls his own) because her brother had beaten her up for stealing his cigarettes (honestly, she had a big bruise on her face). I said no, and she called me the most pathetic little girl in the world and pushed me into one of those doors (which gave me a splinter in my hand), and walked off. That was another time I could have got out of it, out of her nasty claws, for ever. But I didn’t, because she was right, I was pathetic.

The next few days I saw her trying to get back in with some of the older girls, but they treated her really badly. They pretended to be her friends one day then ignored her the next, and worse, told her she belonged on the school rugby team. I saw her crying after that, but I didn’t smile at her this time. The next day she asked me if I wanted to go swimming, and I knew she needed a friend again. Or looking back, it was more like she needed a slave, or a victim. I bet if you look in her mouth you’ll find a pair of really sharp teeth. Good for biting necks. And those big lips – perfect for sucking blood.

So we were there in the den, and she was smoking a cigarette, and swearing and moaning about those girls, and school, and her brother, and her dad, when she just stopped and looked at me and said, ‘Tell me a secret.’

‘What?’ I said stupidly.

‘You know, a deep, dark secret. Something you’ve never told anyone.’

‘Why?’ I asked, just as stupidly. Obviously she was just trying to get closer to me, right? To be a better friend?

Ha ha ha. Good joke.

‘Go on, you tell me one,’ she said, ‘and I’ll tell you one. Promise you won’t tell, though.’

‘No, course I won’t, April.’

‘Go on then,’ she said.

I’d gone red, because there was only one secret I could think of, and I was terrified of telling her, but at the same time I wanted us to share secrets, I wanted to tie a knot between us, to bind us together as friends forever. And I was so grateful she’d come back to me that I agreed. And it was the stupidest thing I’d ever done. Up to then, at least.

‘Y-you go first,’ I stammered. My heart was beating so fast I thought I was going to faint.

Then she smiled, an evil smile, though at the time I didn’t think so, and said ‘Okay.’ And she told me her big secret. ‘My brother’s queer,’ she said. ‘He’s a poof.’

‘But he’s got a girlfriend!’ I said, totally amazed.

‘Nah, she’s just for show. He likes boys. Honest. I’ve seen him kissing them.’ She frowned. ‘You’d better not tell anyone, though.’

‘Course not, April.’

‘Right, your turn.'

‘Er…er…my dad’s going out of business.’

She pulled a face. ‘What? That’s not a secret. Not a proper one. Who cares about your Dad? Tell me a real secret. I just told you a really big one, so you’d better tell me one!’ Her shoulders had never looked so bear-like. I was scared, and I wanted her to like me, I almost loved her at that moment, so I told her. Here it is, the big secret which isn’t much of a secret any more, since it was all over the school and all over the newspapers. I wet the bed. Almost every night. The psychologist says it’s from stress and fear, after my Granddad died, because my Dad smokes. Him and my Mum argue about it after I’ve gone to bed, but I can still hear them. That’s why he’s on roll-ups now, he’s trying to give up. I don’t know if this is the real reason, because I used to wet the bed before my Granddad died, just not as much. The doctor says I’ve got a weak bladder and I shouldn’t worry about it. I didn’t, normally, except I was terrified of people finding out. What could be more humiliating than that? I suppose there must be something, but I don’t know what it is.

April laughed at me. She laughed so much I started to hate her. In fact I hated her as much as I loved her. She stopped eventually, but she still had a big grin on her face.

‘You won’t tell anyone, will you?’ I said.

‘Depends,’ she said, and I got a horrible chill.

‘Depends on what? I asked, but she just grinned, a nasty, devious grin that made me feel sick.

And then it all began, the master-slave stuff. After school the next day she made me do her maths homework. I didn’t really mind. I’m pretty good at maths, and I liked helping her, I thought it made us closer. But she made me do it every day, and soon she wasn’t even watching, she just got me to write it all into her book. I told her the teacher would know it wasn’t her writing (I was disguising my own so he wouldn’t know it was me) – but she said she didn’t care and the teacher was too stupid to realise anyway.

Then she tried to get me to do all her homework. I said no. And the threat came rolling out for the first time, like a little nuclear bomb ready to explode if she pressed the button. ‘If you don’t,’ she said, ‘I’ll tell your whole class that you wet the bed.’

I was horrified. But strange to say I didn’t immediately think she was evil, just that she really needed my help, so much that she’d been forced to say that, like a last resort. So I agreed, and I did all her homework. Of course it was stupid, we were bound to get found out, but what choice did I have? Amazingly we didn’t get found out, though I suppose we would have eventually. And I had to slave away doing two sets of homework every night.

Then she told me to steal my Dad’s tobacco again. This time I got really upset and told her how it had killed my Granddad. So she said if I stole it I’d be saving my Dad, wouldn’t I? Which was the stupidest thing yet, because he’d just buy some more. But I didn’t say that, I just did as she said. I was a proper slave now. It made me feel horrible to steal from my Dad, but I told myself maybe he would stop smoking soon anyway. It just made him more bad-tempered though. Fortunately I didn’t have to keep stealing his tobacco for long because April was rubbish at making roll-ups, and I made sure I was too.

So what was next in this litany of horrors, as my Dad says? Simple, more thieving. April took me to the shops one day and told me to steal a skirt for her, a trendy denim skirt all the girls were wearing. I said why didn’t she do it, and she said they knew her already and she’d get caught. I refused and said she was mad, if I got caught I’d get thrown out of school and my Dad would kill me. She said I was stupid, loads of kids from Ogden nicked things, and my Dad was the type who’d buy me a present instead of punishing me.

But still I refused. So she rolled out the nuclear bomb again. ‘Do it,’ she said, ‘or I’ll tell everyone your dirty secret.’

I started to cry. She swore at me and called me a pathetic wimp, and said she was going to tell everyone at school tomorrow that I wet the bed. I cried so much people gave us funny looks, and an old man asked me if I was all right. April said I’d just found out I was pregnant, and laughed, and he tutted and walked away.

So I had to do it. Of course I did. You’re a policeman so you don’t understand – you think everyone has to obey the law all the time, no matter what. But for the rest of us human beings, there’s no choice in a situation like that. So I went in the shop and got four skirts, and pretended it was three, and went into the changing room, all the time feeling like I was going to have a heart attack and die, and I put one of the skirts on under my school skirt, and came out as red as a raspberry. But I got away with it. We ran to the park and I gave her the skirt, and I was more relieved than I’d ever been about anything.

I thought that would be the end of it. I thought she’d be so grateful, she’d think I was so cool now, that we’d be proper friends at last, equals. How naive can you get? No one in the history of naivety comes close.

Of course it got worse. Each day that week we went back to the same shop (yes, we were getting even stupider), and I stole some new bit of clothing for April. And each day I was more scared, and felt closer to dying from a heart attack, and more sure they’d catch me. On the fourth day I saw the assistant give me a narrow look the moment I stepped in the shop, so I fingered a scarf for a minute and walked out again. I told April it was daft to keep going back there, they were on to me now, but she said no, she wanted this T-shirt with the purple sequins on and I’d better go and get it for her. I was so worked up after four days of this I started crying. So she threatened me again. By now all she had to do was sing this silly song, ‘Little Miss Wee Wee, wets the bed with pee pee.’ But I’d reached the end of my rope and I ran off down the road, crying. She ran after me, and then we just walked to the park without talking.

‘All right,’ she said to me when we got to the den, ‘we’ll go to a different shop tomorrow. There’s another one where they’ve got that T-shirt.’

But while we’d been walking I’d been working up the courage to say something. It was the bravest moment of my life.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not doing it any more, April.’

She laughed and sang her silly song. But I said, ‘I don’t care. If you tell anyone about that, I’ll tell everyone your brother is gay.’

And to my amazement, a big grin broke out on her face. ‘You idiot! You stupid idiot! He isn’t gay! I made that up. You can tell who you want, I don’t care. But if you tell anyone, I mean it, he’s going to come after you and break your legs. He’ll kill you. Look at what he did to me just ‘cause I nicked his cigs. He’ll kill you.’ And to emphasise the word ‘kill’ she kicked one of the doors hard with her big black boot. Then she laughed again. And I fell apart. I was a proper slave now.

So the next day I stole her T-shirt from that other shop. I was a total nervous wreck. I wondered how I’d got into this nightmare, and wished that was all it was, a dream. Nightmares have to come to an end. But this one was more like being in prison, or like being trapped in a horror movie that goes on forever. My parents noticed I was miserable, but they thought it was the smoking/bedwetting thing. And I couldn’t tell them anything, of course. I started to think April wasn’t even human, but a monster, a vampire, a Freddy Krueger. I had dreams in which I killed her, hit her in the head with bricks, axes, hammers, anything, over and over, until her head was like a squashed tomato.

That’s why I did it. I was crazy. Can I plead temporary insanity, Mr. Detective? Or is that just an American thing? I bet my psychologist would back me up. Ask her if you want.

Anyway, that night I went to where April’s brother Jason sits every night with his mates, drinking beer and smoking, in a sort of concrete square in the middle of some run-down concrete flats in our council estate. His dad gives him that beer, can you believe it? But his Dad’s an alcoholic, so I suppose he doesn’t know any better. 

Jason was there, with two of his mates, drinking and swearing and kicking an empty plastic bottle around. He knew me because he’d seen me with his sister, but he’d never paid me any attention. I sat on the wall near him, totally petrified.

‘What do you want?’ he said. ‘Where’s April?’

I shrugged.

‘Get lost, you little squirt,’ he said. He was just playing the tough guy, though. I knew he didn’t care if I was there or not, or if I existed at all.

‘We’re not friends any more,’ I said, too afraid to even look at him.

He laughed. ‘Ha! Like she’s got any friends. She’s a bloody nutcase, she is.’

I laughed, like I agreed with him. He carried on drinking and kicking the bottle around.

‘Get lost then,’ said one of Jason’s friends. I looked at Jason but he ignored me. He started wrestling the friend who’d just told me to get lost, got bored of that, then came and sat next to me on the wall, still swigging his beer.

‘What happened then? Cats have a fight?’

I shrugged again. ‘She…she just said some nasty things about me.’

He laughed. ‘Doesn’t surprise me. Bloody psycho.’

‘She said…’ I gulped. I could hardly breathe.

He glanced at me. ‘What?’

‘She said some nasty things about you, too.’

‘What?’ he said, suddenly interested. ‘What’re you on about?’

‘I didn’t believe her, Jason, honest. It’s rubbish.’

‘What did she say?’ he demanded, throwing an empty beer bottle against a wall, smashing it.

I whispered so his friends wouldn’t hear, ‘She told me you’re gay.’

His face darkened and he leaned close so I could see all the horrible blackheads on his nose. His breath stank of beer and cigarettes.

‘What? Are you lying? If you’re lying I’m going to mash you. I don’t care if you’re a girl. You got that?’

I nodded. ‘Honest, Jason, it’s the truth. Ask her yourself,’ I said, even though she would obviously deny it.

He stared furiously at the wall opposite, and I could see from his curling lips and his grinding teeth he was thinking about what he was going to do to April when he got home.

‘Who has she said that to?’

‘Just me, Jason. I think. But I didn’t believe it, Jason, I swear.’

He jabbed a grubby finger at me. ‘You tell anyone else and you’re dead. You got that?’

‘Yes, Jason. Sorry.’

And there we sat for about ten more minutes. I even drank some of his beer, and he started chatting to me like I was his own age. It was a weird ten minutes, me feeling powerful and sort of glowing, because I’d got April in trouble with her brother, and him friendly but on the inside planning his sister’s destruction.

And the next day - that was the fatal day, the day it all happened. When I walked through the school gates I noticed everyone looking at me, pointing, smiling, chuckling, jeering. And then I saw it. Sprayed in enormous red letters along the side of the school, the immortal words, ‘Lidya Stevns wets the bed evrey night’. Misspelt but clear for everyone to read and enjoy.

Do I have to tell you how I felt? Of course, you’re a policeman.

Like death would have been a sweet relief. Like all the tortures of the Middle Ages were a soft bed compared to what I was going through. Can you imagine sitting in assembly, with every kid in the school knowing, laughing, looking, making baby noises, weeing noises, saying horrid nasty things, and even the teachers trying to keep a straight face? Of course it wasn’t long before I started crying, crying even more miserably and painfully than when my Granddad died. Because this was like my own death. For the rest of my school life, and beyond, probably, I would be the miserable girl who wet the bed at the age of twelve. Every night. I would have no friends, and certainly no boyfriends. No life at all, really. Even in that awful state I noticed that April wasn’t there. Everyone knew she had done it, of course. She hadn’t disguised her handwriting, because she didn’t have the brains to, and anyway, who else would have known something so personal but my closest friend, the one I had spent every afternoon with for the last few weeks? And I knew where she was. During that assembly my agony turned into rage, and at the end I ran out, no longer in control of myself, out of the school and into the park.

And there she was in the den, smoking a cigarette with her arms folded. Both her eyes were puffed up and purple, and a can of red spray paint stuck out of her jacket. We gave each other strange looks for a bit, as if we both didn't know what to do, then she sneered at me and said, ‘Got what you deserved, didn’t you, you idiot, you stupid, flat-chested bitch, you pathetic little wimp.’ And she started laughing, not a proper laugh but a false, mocking, hateful laugh. I can’t describe what went through my mind then, because I don’t know, but I felt like I was one of those marionettes, and someone else was pulling the strings. I know, you’ll say that’s no excuse, because you’re a policeman and that’s how policemen think. But that’s how it felt. Someone pulled my strings, and I shoved her as hard as I could against the door behind her. It was just bad luck that there was a nail sticking out of it, a big sharp one, and that the nail went in the back of her neck and killed her.

Okay, maybe I saw the nail and pushed her onto it on purpose. I know that’s what you think. Maybe for a second I did want to kill her. But it wasn’t me, it was someone else doing it.

So now you know, Mr. Police Officer-Detective man. I know you’re going to send me to jail, because you’ve already decided. You think I’m just an evil little girl. I don’t think I’m evil. But you don’t really care what I think, do you? Lock her away, and it’s all sorted, isn’t it? But make sure you keep hold of this story, because one day I’m going to be famous, and then it’ll be worth something

The End.