Chapter One

Shadows in the Mirror

Cameron Nunn

“What are you staring at?” The words were spat out. A group of seniors stood in a small huddle. One student had another pinned against the red brickwork, his forearm pushing hard against his victim’s face. Around him, other students looked on. “Well? Piss off.” One of the other students took his hands out of his pockets and moved towards me. He had prefect stripes on the sleeve of his blazer.

I glanced at the student pinned against the wall. The seniors understood my fear as I turned and ran, the laughter hurling me out of the shadows.

I was breathless when I got to Marty. “Someone’s getting bashed over there,” I said. Paul Martino had been assigned as my ‘peer buddy’. Everyone in Year Seven had someone who was supposed to look after them in the first week at the college. Most of us had been abandoned by lunch-time on the first day.

Marty shrugged indifferently.

“Do we tell a teacher?”

He looked at me squarely for the first time. His voice was serious. “You better learn this fast if you want to survive at Hamilton. It doesn’t matter what you see. You never dob. Not on anyone. Not about anything. Unless you want to get the crap kicked out of you.”

For five years I had lived by this rule; ‘It doesn’t matter what you see. You never dob. Not on anyone. Not about anything.’

In Year Seven, Hamilton College seemed so big, or maybe I just felt small. It would be easy to get lost among the buildings, I had thought when I first saw the school. “Over a hundred years of history,” my dad recalled when he first took me to meet Mr Roberts, the Headmaster. “I bet this place has some stories it could tell.”

It had been my dad’s idea to apply for the scholarship. It wasn’t that we couldn’t afford the school but my dad was interested in chalking up what he called ‘another little victory’. That was the way he saw life; a series of little victories. Life was a contest to be won. My dad wasn’t a snob, he was a realist. It’s what I liked about him most. He’d been kicked in the guts enough to know that you had to grab every opportunity you could. He called it ‘seeing the world the way it is, rather than the way that you wish it was’. What mattered was making the ‘right’ connections in life. Hamilton College, he assured me, was the type of place where you built those connections.

At the scholarship interview in the holidays, there was a kind of hushed reverence about the school. Large, redbrick buildings with stained glass windows and wide hallways were designed to impress visitors. In the main waiting area, rows of portraits gave the whole place a solemn air. When we met Mr Roberts, the seriousness of his expression seemed to match the rest of the school. He was a tall man with greying hair and large hands. Looking over his glasses, he shook my hand and welcomed me. “It’s good to have you, David. I hope you’ll enjoy learning here.”

I learnt a lot in those early days of school but most of it didn’t happen in the classroom. I was learning about the way the world worked. I was learning to survive. Those who understood the unwritten code learnt easily, others had to learn the hard way. Brutality was never random. It was a coordinated exercise that brought everyone into line. Those who enforced conformity—the seniors I saw on the first day, the prefects, even some of the teachers—worked as a unit, though none of them would ever have been fully conscious of it. Weakness could not be tolerated.

No one understood this more clearly than the Head of PE, Mr Smith. It was a mission he took on with passion. In our class, a boy named Thompson became his main victim. Long and thin, with sandy hair and blotchy freckles, Thompson looked every bit as uncoordinated as he was. He would always hide towards the back of the group. After some complicated drill, Mr Smith would look around for a volunteer to demonstrate, his eyes roving, searching out Thompson. Then, with casual indifference, as though his choice was utterly random, Thompson would be summoned.

“Lift your legs. What are you, some kind of girl?” he would bark. Thompson hung from the bar, his red face straining to lift his legs. “Well, come on. We’re all waiting.”

Thompson dropped to the ground. Mr Smith glanced up at the class. This was the cue for us to snigger at the boy heaving himself off the mat. “What’s the matter, Thompson? My grandmother is stronger than you.” And with that Mr Smith sprang and grabbed hold of the bar himself, easily lifting his legs at right angles to his body. He dropped back to the floor and stood facing Thompson. “Now you do it. Properly this time.”

“I can’t, sir,” a high-pitched voice squeaked out.

“Of course you can.” Thompson hesitated, unsure. Smith smiled, enjoying this game.

“You’re weak, Thompson. Get out of my sight. Join the back of the group. I’m sure you’ll find your boyfriend down there somewhere. He’s probably missing you by now.”

We laughed as the defeated figure slumped his way towards the back of the group, mostly relieved that it wasn’t us.

Back in the change rooms the dingoes smelled blood. “Who’s your boyfriend then, Thompson?” Thompson continued to face away, leaning over his open bag pretending he was searching for something. The rest of us stood back and watched.

“You’re a faggot, Thompson,” one of the boys shouted over the others’ laughter.

Thompson faced the wall, hunched over, trying to ignore us.

Growing bored, they picked up the pace. With all his force one of the students catapulted Thompson’s head hard against the brick wall. With a sickening thud, his body slumped down. For a second he lay there motionless. A sudden thought that Thompson might be dead seemed to flit through everyone’s mind, but he reached up and grabbed his head. His face was contorted with fear and rage. Tears tumbled from swollen red eyes. “Just get lost. I hate you.” The cry delighted those that had gathered round. In falsetto, they imitated him, doubling over with laughter. A long ungainly leg lashed out, hopelessly short of making any contact, causing howls of laughter.

Thompson’s eye caught mine and I turned away quickly.

Don’t look. Don’t go near. There is contamination in association. The strong survive. I remembered Marty’s advice and said nothing. I wasn’t going to make myself the next target.

I had once been stupid enough to boast about scoring full marks in an English essay. I began asking what others had scored. At first my friends were offhand in their remarks, but as I kept going, one of them grabbed my writing from me and began to read it mockingly out loud. When I finally pulled it back, I hid it deep in my bag and vowed never to draw attention to my marks again.

It was okay to do well, but it had to seem like you didn’t care. Test results were routinely pushed into my bag and only brought out, crumpled, when someone casually asked how I had gone. The better I had done, the more nonchalant I had to appear. The others were the same, and although we all would have denied doing it, we understood that it was part of what was expected.

When I got home, I would lovingly smooth out the creases, laying the paper on my bed or on my desk where my parents would be sure to notice it. My desire to succeed had not changed as I struggled for every mark I could get. However, at school, I was creating an image that others would accept. Playing rugby made sure I would not be labelled as a ‘spock’. I had learnt that the best way to avoid getting hurt in rugby is to throw yourself into it, full force, no fear, no hesitation. It was the same as school. I threw myself into all that it had to offer. The school was keen to celebrate success of every sort and I was keen to enjoy the ‘little victories’ my father talked about. Confident that I would not be a Thompson, I grew to love the culture that ostracised the weak. It was being ‘tough’ that mattered. I was learning success. I thought I was learning about life.

When I was in Year Nine, my parents separated. It felt strange that life continued at school while my world seemed to fall apart. I didn’t tell any of my friends at Hamilton about my parents. I wasn’t sure how they would react even if I did. There was nothing they could say to change how I felt about the situation. Saying something might be seen as weak. It was easier to push the pain to the bottom of my school bag with everything else that was important and continue as normal, as though nothing had happened.

But my life came to a sudden crossroad about a year later when I arrived home from school. I could hear my dad’s voice coming from our kitchen, and for a brief moment I was filled with the comforting memory of how things used to be.

But as I entered the kitchen, I knew something was wrong. There was an awkward silence that indicated they’d been talking about me.

“We were just talking about…” my mum began and then fumbled trying to think of what to add.

“Your mother’s got a new job,” my dad spoke softly, but the seemingly innocent words didn’t match the scene. Mum had had new jobs before.

“I’ve been offered a position starting next year, working for the government, advising them of policy impact in regional areas. The position is based in Tamworth.”

The puzzle was coming together. My grandparents lived about twenty minutes north-west of Tamworth. My mum wanted to return to her home and expected me to pack up and go with her.

“What about me?” I said. “Don’t I count any more? What if I don’t want to go?” Then I took a stab at what I thought they’d been talking about, “Why can’t I stay with Dad?”

My dad looked away. “I would love you to come and live with me.”

“Your father’s hardly ever home. I don’t want you going home to an empty house and spending evenings by yourself. It’s not safe.”

“You’ve got to be joking, Mum. What do you think I’m going to do, take drugs and set the house on fire?”

“What she means is that the next two years are very important. You’ll be in Year Eleven next year and then soon you’ll have your final exams. You can’t be expected to look after yourself and cook dinner when I’m working late.”

“Don’t you think I know how important these next two years are? You two make plans for me like you’re the only ones who are aware of this fact. How good do you think it’s going to be having to up and move to the country, to start at a new school and have to get settled in some crappy hole just because you want a new job?” I was nearly screaming now. “I’ve worked hard at Hamilton and now you just want me to leave.”

I waited for a lecture about not shouting, but instead there was silence. “Why can’t I just board at Hamilton?” My voice was now sullen. I looked up at my dad who in turn was looking at my mum, his head slightly to one side. It was clear that this was what they had been discussing when I entered.

It was now my mum’s turn to avoid looking at me. “I think it’s better if you’re with us.”

“With us? Since when has it been ‘us’? Have you decided to take Dad with you as well?”

“I meant that I’m not happy placing you in a boarding school. I feel like I’d be abandoning you.”

“But don’t I get some say. I really like going to Hamilton. My friends are there. I’m doing really well at school and I don’t want to go to some place in the country. You could end up stuffing up my chances to get into university.” And to make it more melodramatic, I added, “You could stuff up my whole life!”

If my mum was going to drag me off to somewhere in the country, I sure wasn’t going to make it easy for her. I made one final attempt at changing her mind.

“Please, I want to stay at Hamilton.”