Chapter 4: The Dog Prince

Present

Jeremy had been at his new school a week. He couldn’t remember anything from his previous school, though, other than glimpses of neon. But he’d already learnt a few things in this new school. He’d learnt that starting a third of the way through the year sucked. He’d learnt that nobody cared about people who were good at art. And he’d learnt that Chad Gordon hated him.

In the mornings, before the bell, boys kicked footballs around and looked past Jeremy like he wasn’t there. He went to class early to avoid their blank gazes. He stared at diagrams from the previous day’s science class that were still on the blackboard. Groups of particles floating together in neat atoms. A newcomer particle could never just appear and attach itself to an existing atom. He’d learnt that.

Jeremy got to class early because it was better to pick an empty desk than to sit next to someone who scowled and shuffled their seat away.

Jeremy got to class early because Chad was normally the last to arrive. Chad, the only boy who noticed Jeremy, was the only boy whose notice he didn’t want.

But today Chad arrived early too. He stood in the doorway, his face fixed firm.

Jeremy looked at the textbooks on his desk, he looked at the atoms on the blackboard and he looked at the walls, scuffed dirty from decades of boys’ shoes. Eventually, he had nothing else to look at, so he looked at Chad.

A square of a boy with already-adult muscles. Skin pricked with acne, hard eyes that didn’t move from Jeremy’s face. When Chad curled and uncurled his fists, something under his skin snaked up his arms. And it was like Chad had an invisible third arm that reached out and grabbed Jeremy around the neck.

Jeremy wanted to look away, but he couldn’t. Except for his fists, Chad didn’t move until a stretched smile crossed his face. Then his head dipped in a slow, deliberate nod and the grip around Jeremy’s neck released.

Jeremy dropped his gaze to the floor and tried to catch his breath.

‘Chad, how about letting the rest of us in?’

The teacher and a cluster of boys stood behind Chad in the hallway.

Chad took a single step into the classroom. Boys fanned out from behind him, making their way to their seats. The teacher went to the blackboard and picked up the duster. Chad still stood near the doorway, his eyes aimed at Jeremy.

‘Chad! This class isn’t run at your leisure. Go sit behind Jeremy.’

Chad wound his way between the desks, not hurrying despite the teacher’s glare. The desks were close together and he was broad, but Jeremy knew it was deliberate when Chad knocked against him as he passed. Boys snickered, and Jeremy looked up at the teacher who had his back turned, erasing the atoms.

Jeremy had spent a week unnoticed, and now he could taste the changed air. All through class it was like he could feel a burn that spread around his neck. He rubbed the back of his head, but the feeling didn’t leave.

The bell rang and Jeremy felt Chad’s stare as he scuttled out of the classroom. He headed for the library, then realised that was the expected refuge of people like him, so he changed direction. He tried to think of a place even more abandoned than the library. In the end, he went to the school chapel and spent lunchtime there, listening to his stomach growling and waiting for the next bell.

Jeremy walked across the quadrangle back to class. He spotted Chad talking to a group of boys. They weren’t the boys who were academic or good at sports, but they weren’t loners like Jeremy either. They were the boys who circled the school in groups at lunchtime, watching and waiting with the empty eyes of sharks.

Chad leant against a tree, hands in pockets, gesturing with short nods of his head. The boys gathered around him, deferential.

Chad stared past them at Jeremy without blinking. He snorted and said something, and the boys laughed. Jeremy gripped his books against his chest and hurried away to class.

He was the first to arrive again and chose a desk close to where the teacher would stand. He watched as other kids shuffled in, screeching chairs across the floor as they took their seats. The bell rang, the teacher arrived and, a few moments later, Chad arrived. He was eating a sandwich with his mouth open, flanked by two of the shark-like boys. Their eyes had changed since lunchtime. Now they glistened with purpose.

‘Sorry we’re late…sir.’ Chad sounded more bored than sorry. He waved his sandwich around as though it was a trophy.

The teacher nodded and Chad walked to his desk at the back of the room, nudging Jeremy as he passed. The other boys followed, doing the same thing.

Jeremy let out a shaky breath.

‘Quiet, Jeremy!’ The chewing noises Chad made with his sandwich were louder than Jeremy’s breath, but it was Jeremy who copped the teacher’s frown.

‘Sorry, sir.’ Jeremy dropped his gaze and willed himself not to pick at his fingernails.

A new day didn’t give Jeremy any relief. Everywhere he went, Chad’s sharks circled. They were there when he walked through the school gate and they were there when he crossed the quadrangle.

Wait it out, wait it out, wait it out.

He had a feeling he’d waited things out before, prepared himself against an enemy. Jeremy wished he could remember something from his past to help his present. But it was just a feeling, not a memory.

He tried to avoid the sharks and went to the chapel, but they were there too, standing on the steps leading up to the entrance where Chad stood chewing on another sandwich. Jeremy swung left but more boys blocked his path. The school of sharks had expanded to include silent, circling boys from other classes, herding him towards Chad and the chapel door.

They pushed him so close he could smell ham sandwich on Chad’s breath. Jeremy’s stomach bubbled and the tightness gripped around his neck. Then, the world went silent.

Chad ran his eyes lazily over Jeremy, taking in the details of his dislike without a blink.

In his head, Jeremy saw everything Chad saw. The small frame swimming in a too-new uniform, the skin that peeled around his fingernails, the hair that flew about in wisps, the babylike eyes — defenceless and memory-free.

Chad smirked and the other boys smirked. In unison, they pinned him with their sharks’ eyes. Only Chad glanced away, briefly, to the chapel door behind him.

He stomped his man-sized foot over Jeremy’s toes. He shifted all his weight onto that one foot until Jeremy let out a yelp that sounded like a tiny puppy.

‘No point going in there.’ Chad thumbed the chapel door. ‘God abandoned you years ago, mate.’

The word ‘mate’ was like a punch to Jeremy, a term that was meant to be friendly but was menacing enough to bruise. And Jeremy knew Chad was right. He knew he was nothing but a scrawny loser, with no memories and no friends.

Sharks shoved him from behind and he fell onto the steps, twisted with his foot still pinned. The navy of the towering boys’ uniforms blocked out the sun and Jeremy curled into himself waiting for them to do whatever it was they were going to do.

They did nothing, though. Chad and the sharks left.

Jeremy uncurled himself and sat on the chapel steps. It wasn’t just his foot that ached, it was his whole body. He ached for the time when everyone ignored him. He ached for a boy that he wasn’t, a boy who could stand up for himself. Jeremy deserved Chad’s bullying, he thought, his stomach tightening.

But then Jeremy grew still as another possibility came to mind. None of this was permanent. None of this was any more real than the god Chad had spoken about.

All Jeremy had to do was wait, and eventually something else would happen. Something big.

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