(Being a short story I started writing in instalments a few months ago, then forgot about for a bit.  I’m posting the whole thing now.)

(CONTENT WARNING:  This story features some extremely unpleasant subject matter.  Proceed with caution.)

August 1999

Just as they were about to start the second half, Isaac looked up at the stands and spotted Mr Forrest. He hadn’t seen him before, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been there- the Ravens Hall pitch was on a big, open field, and the spectators’ stands were right in front of the sun. Half the time, when you looked in that direction, all you saw was a silhouette in front of a big, yellow burst of light that made your eyeballs ache.

Mr Forrest. Isaac hadn’t seen him in three years. He’d been the PE teacher at Ivy Brook Primary, but then he’d left just before Isaac had gone into Year Five. Isaac wanted to get his attention, maybe get in a little wave before the kick-off, but something made him hold back. He had a weird, guilty feeling, like he knew Mr Forrest wouldn’t be pleased to see him.

Then the coach blew the whistle, and Isaac had other things to focus on. The score going into the second half was one-all, so both teams were ready to risk life and limb just to get to the ball. Isaac managed to get hold of it, at the price of getting his shins hacked to bits by the Mountfitchet boys’ boots, and passed it along to Ben Larson, who got it halfway up the field and passed it to Tommy MacLeod.

Tommy did alright at first, weaving around the Mountfitchet defenders like a pinball. Tommy was a little bit shorter than most of the boys in the Ravens, but that just made him harder to catch. If he’d just made it another yard or two, he could have passed it back to Isaac and everything would have been fine. Instead, one of the Mountfitchet boys moved to tackle him, and Tommy shrank back.

For a moment, Isaac wondered if that was really what he’d seen. Maybe the Mountfitchet boy had been a bit rough with his tackle, and Tommy had just stumbled backwards? Maybe the Mountfitchet boy had even fouled him? But when the coach bellowed across the field, “MacLeod, what are you doing?!?” Isaac knew what had happened. Tommy had seen the Mountfitchet boy coming towards him, he’d panicked and jumped back, and that mistake had cost them the ball. Isaac saw the look of disgust on the coach’s face, and thought about Mr Forrest again.

His memory was a bit fuzzy, but Isaac was pretty sure he’d embarrassed himself in front of Mr Forrest somehow. Not right before Mr Forrest had left, but at the end of Year Two or Year Three, so that every time Isaac had seen him for the next few years, he’d got that hot, squirmy feeling in his stomach and wanted to hide.

There had been… some kind of game? Had it been in a PE lesson, or at an after-school club? Isaac couldn’t remember exactly. All he knew was that he’d been too much of a wimp to join in, and that Mr Forrest had given him exactly the same look of disgust that the coach was giving Tommy right now.

Isaac didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Tommy or to kick him in the shin. On the one hand, he knew what it was like to be the person who screwed things up for everyone else, but on the other, he’d worked very hard to stop being that person. He’d managed to stop being scared of stupid things (spiders, the dark… even escalators, for a while), and to join in and make friends. For the last few years, he’d barely thought of how he used to be when he was younger. He’d been too busy living his life.

A cheer went up from the stand. In barely ten seconds. Mountfitchet had managed to get the ball all the way up to the pitch and into the Ravens’ goal. Isaac cringed. He had a feeling that Tommy was never going to live this down.

June 1994

Isaac had had a lot of fun finding and eating bits of popcorn people had dropped on the floor, until his mum caught him doing it and got him to stop.

“I can’t believe it,” she snapped, “I thought you were old enough to know not to eat things that have been on the ground.”

Isaac fidgeted. Mum was right, he’d known it was a stupid idea even as he’d done it… but popcorn tasted really, really good, and he didn’t have any of his own.

Mum and Dad were at one of the metal tables on the upper half of the playground, the ones that were covered in little puddles of beer. Further down, there were face-painting stalls, a bring and buy, and a bouncy castle, but Isaac had been to all three, and now he was bored. And now he didn’t even have popcorn to console him.

“If I can’t trust you on your own, you’ll have to spend the rest of the evening sat with me.” One look at the table told you what a dire threat this was. The chairs were the metal kind that drained all the heat out of your legs and made you die of frostbite even though it was June, and the table itself was covered in beery grime, so you wouldn’t even be able to lean on it without making your elbows stink for the rest of the night. “Is that going to have to happen?”

Isaac looked down at the ground, which was covered in popcorn that he wouldn’t get to taste. “No. Sorry, Mum.”

“Right!” Mum gave a nod of satisfaction, and turned back to the table. Isaac trudged off, doing his best to look trustworthy in case she turned round to check on him.

He wandered towards the dancefloor (really a big patch of tarmac with disco lights flashing all around it), wondering if he should wait for a song he liked and join in. There was a little stall nearby selling drinks and snacks, but Isaac had mostly run out of money, and besides, they were only selling those weird fruit drinks in the square containers, the ones that always seemed to go down wrong and make you cough and get a sore throat.
He looked around and spotted the fortune teller’s tent. He probably didn’t have enough money for that either. Besides, he didn’t think he really wanted to see the future. He didn’t like the thought of seeing himself and his friends as old people.

“Hello, Isaac,” said a voice, right in his ear. Isaac jumped, and Mr Forrest laughed. He was always doing stuff like that, joking around, like the time he’d told Isaac’s class that they’d be doing parachute jumps in PE, but it turned out what he meant was holding up that big red bit of cloth they kept at the back of the hall and jumping under it. “Keeping busy?”

Isaac smiled up at him. “Yeah.”

Mr Forrest scratched his nose. “So I suppose you won’t have time to come out to the swimming pool with me?”

Now, that was interesting. The swimming pool was in a little building just on the other side of the vegetable garden, and Isaac had never been inside. “I thought you had to be in Year Six to go in the swimming pool?”

Mr Forrest slapped him on the back. “Not tonight. You’ll be with me, so it’s allowed. Unless you’re too busy…”

“No!” said Isaac quickly, “I’ll come!” He liked swimming, and he loved the thought of being the only kid in Year Two who knew what the swimming pool looked like. He could imagine it right now- the other kids wouldn’t believe him at first, but then when they all got to Year Six and were allowed in the swimming pool, they’d look around and realise that Isaac had described it perfectly. He’d get four years’ worth of respect, all at once.

Mr Forrest grinned. “You sure?”

“Yeah!”

“Alright, then!” Mr Forrest slapped him on the back again. “Come on, I’ll get you some icecream on the way.”

They all knew that there were going to be some serious fireworks once they got back into the changing rooms, and the coach did not disappoint. “What were you doing out there, Tommy?” he roared, “Two-nil down! All because of you!”

“It wasn’t because of me!” squeaked Tommy. He was trying to sound defiant, but he couldn’t hide how much the coach was scaring him. All of a sudden, he looked about two years younger. All around him, his teammates stood with their backs against the walls, looking at him as if he was something they’d scraped off their shoes.

“Mountfitchet would never have got the ball if it hadn’t been for you!” roared the coach, “Do you even know how to play football? Because the first rule is, ‘Don’t run away from the ball like it’s about to explode’!”

Isaac’s stomach was twisting up, and he didn’t know why. It was almost as if he was the one who was being yelled at, not Tommy. Maybe because he’d seen Mr Forrest earlier, and remembered what it was like to be little and useless. There was a time when he’d been the one who…

“It wasn’t my fault!” said Tommy, “That Mountfitchet boy was going right for my shins!”

The coach raised his eyebrows. “Right for your shins, was it? And what would have happened if he’d reached them? Would your legs have fallen off?” A couple of the other boys laughed nervously. The coach pointed to Isaac, who wished he hadn’t. “Look at Greenie over there! He got a chunk taken out of his legs in the first two minutes, but he still kept playing and he still managed to hold onto the ball!” Isaac tried not to meet Tommy’s eyes, or the coach’s, for that matter. He just wanted this whole thing to be over. “Now why can he do that and not you?”

“I don’t know!” said Tommy, “I’m sorry!”

The coach pulled his lips tight, and shook his head. “No. Sorry’s not going to cut it, Tommy. Thanks to you, we might have lost this match. You might have lost us a place in the league.”

“I only lost the ball once!” Tommy’s face was turning red. “Ben and Adam missed two goals in the last three minutes!”

Isaac cringed. He didn’t need to look at anyone’s faces to know how badly that had gone down- there was already a disgruntled murmur coming up as if from the ground. Even if they had missed a shot or two at the goal this time, Ben Larson and Adam Sears were two of the best players at Ravens Hall, and they got a lot of respect around here. There was no way that Tommy was coming back from this.

The coach turned to the rest of the team. “Did you hear that., boys? Tommy’s got some critiques of your playing!”

There were angry murmurs and scowls from every direction. The coach continued. “Well, if he’s allowed to give you feedback, I think we’re allowed to give him some, don’t you? So here it is: Missing a goal when you’ve actually made the effort to get the ball that far up the pitch is completely different from letting the ball go the moment things get a little bit difficult. Larson and Sears are head and shoulders above you as players. You should be ashamed.”

There was a chorus of “yeah”s from the other boys. Isaac just felt sick.

The coach pointed to the exit. “I don’t want you on the pitch in the second half. In fact, I don’t want you on this team anymore. I’ve got no room for people who point the finger at others instead of taking responsibility for their mistakes. Pack your things and get out.”

Tommy jumped to his feet, knocking over the bench behind him. Isaac couldn’t tell whether or not he’d done that on purpose, but it didn’t matter- if it had been an accident, nobody would ever believe it. “Fine!” snapped Tommy, a tremble in his voice, “You’re going to lose anyway! And it’s not because of me; it’s because you’re all crap!”

And, before anyone else could say anything, he turned and ran out of the exit, not bothering to pick up his bags or even change out of his playing strip. Isaac didn’t blame him. In Tommy’s position, he wouldn’t have wanted to stay here a minute longer, either.

They managed to score in the second half (Ben Larson, redeeming himself), but by the time the final whistle blew, the Ravens were still two-one down. Towards the end, Isaac glanced up at the stands to see if he could spot Mr Forrest again, but he wasn’t there. Maybe Ravens Hall just hadn’t lived up to his standards.

Mr Forrest had got Isaac one of those blue ice-pops, and by the time they got to the pool building, it had melted enough for him to start sucking up the juice from down the sides. It meant having a mouthful of plastic while you did it, but it was worth it for the taste.

“I meant to ask,” said Mr Forrest, as they got to the front door, “Were you upset about something earlier?”

Isaac shrugged. “Not really. My mum told me to stop eating popcorn off the floor, that’s all.” He tested the ice-pop with his teeth, to see if it was soft enough for him to bite through yet.

“I meant earlier, in school. Something seemed to be bothering you.”

Isaac thought back through the day. Nothing really stood out as upsetting- the worst thing that had happened was that he’d had to do division in Maths, which he always hated the most. But even that had just been annoying- it wasn’t anything more than that.

Mr Forrest put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder. “You know you can always talk to me if there’s something bothering you, right? You can talk to me about anything. I know that sometimes you can feel alone, even with people you love very much.”

Isaac shrugged again, and took a bite out of his ice-pop.

They reached the door, and Mr Forrest got a set of keys out of his pocket. “Do me a favour- don’t tell the headteacher about this, OK?”

“Why not?” asked Isaac.

“Well, she didn’t want anybody using it tonight.” He unlocked the door and wrenched it open. “But I say that what she doesn’t know can’t hurt her, eh, Isaac?” He winked, and Isaac winked back. Normally he’d stay away from things that could get him into trouble, but this was different. It wasn’t a boy from his class who wanted to do something naughty, it was a teacher. That made it exciting instead of scary.

Isaac crept through the door like a secret agent, and Mr Forrest followed, closing it behind him. “Better not put too many lights on. We don’t want them seeing it over there, or they’ll all want to come.”
Isaac dashed out to the side of the water. It looked mysterious and inky in the dark, as if there might be sea monsters under there. For a moment, that thought made Isaac want to back away… but Mr Forrest was there, and he was letting Isaac in on a secret that none of the other kids knew. He couldn’t just throw that away because of a few monsters that weren’t even real.

Mr Forrest clapped him on the back. “Last one in’s a rotten egg, eh?”

Isaac looked at the water. “Are we going to go in with all our clothes on?”

“No, no. Your mum wouldn’t be happy if you got those new trousers wet through, would she?”

“But I don’t have any swimming trunks.”

“Neither do I! We’ll have to make do with what we have!”

Isaac frowned. “What… Just go in in our underpants?”

Mr Forrest winked at him again. “Well, you could leave your pants on, but, honestly, to do it correctly…”

And that was when Isaac’s heart sank.

“I think Tommy was up in the woods earlier,” said Ben Larson.

Isaac turned his head sideways to look at him properly. The three of them- him, Ben, and Matthew Walker- were lying on top of the sea wall, trying to soak up the sun. It was the kind of day when you drowned in sweat if you did anything else. “What, around the campsite?”

“Yeah,” said Ben, “Like he’s got any right to it.”

The campsite was actually just a little clearing in the woods up near the football pitch, with piles of wood and other things you could build hide-outs with. All the Ravens Hall boys used it. “How do you know?” asked Isaac, “Did you see him?” Isaac hadn’t seen him since he’d been kicked off the team, and that had been nearly a week ago.

Ben shook his head. “There were sweet wrappers all around the platform. Skittles. He was sitting there eating while no-one else was there.”

Isaac thought for a moment. It sounded right. Tommy did like Skittles. “Maybe he was hoping some of us would show up. Maybe he wanted to apologise.”

Ben snorted in contempt.

Isaac rolled onto his back, and folded his arms behind his head. It had been a good day. Earlier, a couple of girls from school had come along and teased them in the way girls did sometimes (“My mate Kerry says you look like the guy from A1”), and they’d had a fun twenty minutes bantering back and forth before the girls had had to go off and meet someone at the pier. Later on they’d go to Ben’s house to read books and see if they could get Ben’s older brother to let them watch his South Park videos, but right now, there was just the sun, sizzling Isaac’s skin in a weirdly comfortable way, and the sound of the waves lapping gently against the sand. It was the kind of sound you could fall asleep to.

But instead, Isaac’s thoughts drifted over to Mr Forrest, and that evening at the swimming pool.

This had happened quite a few times since he’d seen Mr Forrest last week. He just couldn’t stop thinking about it. He hadn’t forgotten what they’d argued about, exactly, but it had been a long time since he’d really thought about it, so it had taken him a while to call it up. The last time it had come up had probably been in Year Four, when they’d learned about how Olympic athletes in Ancient Greek times did all their sports naked. See, he’d thought with a pang of guilt, You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes as an athlete in the olden days. And then, because no-one liked feeling guilty, he’d put it out of his head and tried to think of something else.

Now Isaac thought, Mr Forrest wanted me to swim naked with him. That’s pretty weird, isn’t it?

It was definitely lucky for Mr Forrest that no-one had come by to check what was going on in the pool. They might have got completely the wrong idea about what he was up to.
Isaac thought about Mr Forrest at last week’s football match, with a bit of annoyance. He had no right to make Isaac feel guilty for wimping out. If anything, he should thank him. Things could have gone pretty badly if he hadn’t, and Mr Forrest would have had no-one to blame but himself.

“What are you waiting for?” asked Mr Forrest.

Isaac was waiting for Mr Forrest to suddenly forget what he’d just said and let him wear whatever he liked into the pool. He’d have been prepared to wait forever, if he could. “I think I’d rather keep my underpants on…”

“Why?”

“Well…” Isaac knew he wouldn’t be able to give Mr Forrest a good reason. If he didn’t already know how it would feel to take off his clothes here and now, about the sick, squirmy feeling he had in his stomach from just thinking about it, then he never would. “It’s a little bit embarrassing…”

There was a long silence, filled only by a dripping sound somewhere over by the deep end, and Mr Forrest just stared at Isaac in disbelief. “Isaac, get a grip on yourself. I’ve seen hundreds of people naked.”

Isaac fidgeted. “Yeah, but… I don’t want to.” It wasn’t a good reason, he knew that. But it was the truth.

“Oh, come on.” Mr Forrest smiled. Isaac wanted him to keep smiling, but he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Mr Forrest would probably never be pleased with him again. “Give it five minutes in the water, and you’ll forget that you have nothing on.”

Nothing on. Isaac’s stomach turned again.

Mr Forrest sighed. “It isn’t because you think it’s dirty, is it?”

It would be so easy to just do what he says, thought Isaac, You’ll only feel bad for a couple of seconds, and then you’ll be in the water. Just be brave for a moment or two. “No… It’s just…”

“Because it’s not dirty.” Mr Forrest definitely sounded angry now. “Some people’s minds are, that’s all.”

Isaac hoped that he wasn’t “some people.” “It’s not just…. I mean, are you going to be naked, too?” For some reason, that would make it worse. So much worse.

There weren’t many lights on, so it was hard to see Mr Forrest’s expression. “Isaac, let me ask you a question. Did it bother you when I put my hand on your shoulder earlier?”

“I guess not…”

“Well, if that didn’t bother you when we both had clothes on, there’s no reason for it to bother you when we don’t, right?” Mr Forrest smiled again. “It’s the same thing either way. Taking your clothes doesn’t change anything, not really.”

Isaac knew it didn’t change anything. He knew he was just being silly. But he couldn’t stop.

“Isaac, you’re being silly about it. You’re not being fair to me. Think about how I feel, after making such an effort for you.”

He looked down at his feet. He bet Mr Forrest wished he hadn’t decided to show him the pool at all, now. “Sorry.”

“I thought you were more grown-up than this. I didn’t think you’d see being naked as something embarrassing to giggle over.”

“Sorry.” Not grown-up. Not grateful. No matter how hard he tried.

“I thought we understood each other, Isaac.”

Isaac said nothing.

“This is your chance to try something new. You’re brave enough to do this, Isaac, I know you are.” Mr Forrest put his hand on Isaac’s shoulder again, and Isaac didn’t even think about what he did next. He just wriggled out from under Mr Forrest’s grip and bolted for the door.

Stupid, Isaac thought, Not grown-up. Not brave. Not fair to Mr Forrest. But no matter what he thought, his legs kept on running, almost as if they were doing it by themselves. Away from the swimming pool, through the vegetable garden, and back onto the playground. For a moment or two, he heard Mr Forrest behind him, shouting for him to come back, but then he stopped. Maybe he’d decided it wasn’t worth it.

Isaac wanted to be brave and grown-up. Maybe one day- say, when he was in Year Six and actually allowed in the swimming pool- he actually would be. But today he wasn’t. Today he’d disappointed Mr Forrest, and he’d disappointed himself, too.

Isaac walked around the dance floor, and went back to the metal tables to sit with his parents for the rest of the night. It was probably what he deserved.

On Tuesday morning, before any of the others showed up, Ben Larson showed Isaac the old equipment shed.

It was just a few dozen yards away from the campsite in the woods. Isaac had probably walked past it hundreds of times, but he’d never really looked at it before now. It was a tiny little box, maybe two metres by three, and its wood had nearly turned black with age and damp. On the door was a big iron padlock, and Ben smiled gleefully as he waved a ring of keys and unlocked it. “They keep them on a hook just round the side.”

“Right,” said Isaac, not really understanding where Ben was going with this. They were in one of the wilder parts of the wood, a tangled little patch of green that was probably full of poison ivy and nettles, and Isaac really wanted to get back to the campsite before bits of him started turning red and bumpy.

Ben opened the door to show the mouldy darkness inside. “So, when Tommy gets here…”

“Wait, Tommy’s coming?”

“Yeah, I called him this morning. He thinks we’re all going to hang out.” Ben’s grin grew wider. “I told him not to worry about the match against Mountfitchet. I said it had all been forgotten about.”

Isaac fidgeted a bit. He was thinking about Mr Forrest again, and lately, whenever he thought about Mr Forrest his skin crawled.

“So the plan is,” said Ben, “We wait around the side of the platform until he gets here, and then we each grab him by the arm and bring him over here so we can lock him in.”

Isaac said nothing.

“We can do it!” said Ben, who looked as if he was about to start jumping up and down in excitement, “We’re both stronger than him- if we work together, he won’t be able to get away! And then…”

“How long are we going to leave him in there?” asked Isaac. His heart was pounding as if he’d just run a whole mile, and all he could think of was Tommy being locked away in the dark, maybe forever, for not being brave and grown-up enough. That was what you deserved, apparently, if you didn’t do exactly what other people said. If you didn’t hurt yourself just to make them happy.

“Maybe overnight. Long enough to teach him a lesson.” Ben’s face twisted into a weird, goblin-like smirk. “You don’t mess with the Ravens and get away with it.”

A thought crossed Isaac’s mind: Mr Forrest would want you to lock Tommy in the shed. He’d say it was the grown-up thing to do. He knew, even as he thought it, that it probably wasn’t true- Mr Forrest hadn’t really cared whether Isaac acted grown-up or not. He was just a dirty old man who’d have said anything to get little kids to take their clothes off. But true or not, it was what finally made Isaac angry enough to do what he did next, which was snatch the keys off Ben, push him into the shed, and lock the door.

Ben started pounding on the door right away- “What are you doing, Greenie?! What the hell do you think you’re playing at?!”- and Isaac took a step back in case he broke it down. He didn’t. Isaac could hear Ben’s fists slamming at the door with all their might, and it didn’t even shudder.

The sudden burst of anger was starting to fade, and Isaac looked at the door in disbelief. It’s not too late to let him out and say it was just a joke, he thought. But it was. It had been too late as soon as he’d seen that smirk on Ben’s face.

For a moment, he thought about throwing the keys into the undergrowth, but instead he hung them up on the nail Ben had shown him. Adam and Matthew and the others would be along soon, and they’d let him out. Ben would probably only have to spend quarter of an hour or so in the shed. Just long enough to teach him a lesson.

Isaac walked away, aiming to be long gone by the time anyone else arrived. He didn’t know if they’d take Ben’s side or his, but it was probably best not to find out face-to-face. He hurried through the woods, practically flying along as the ground slopes downwards, and after about two minutes he nearly crashed right into Tommy MacLeod, who was coming the other way.

Tommy tensed up, as if he thought they were going to fight. “Hi, Isaac,” he said, the words rushing out at seventy miles an hour, “Ben said I could come.”

“I know,” said Isaac, holding his hands up in front of his chest so Tommy could see that he wasn’t going to hit him, “But…”

But he only said that so he could lock you in a mouldy shed overnight.

But you can’t trust that guy.

But why do you care what that moron thinks of you, anyway?

Oh, what the hell- why ruin his morning? Isaac could tell him the gory details later. “But I think I made him pretty mad just now, so I’m making myself scarce,” he finished, “You should, too- he’s the kind of guy who’ll take things out on anyone he can find.”

Tommy gave him a weird, freaked-out kind of smile. “What did you do?”

“He was going to play a mean trick on someone, so I played it on him first.” He clapped Tommy on the back, gently turning him away from the path to the campsite as he did it. “I’ve got better things to do than hang around with someone like that. Come on, let’s go to the beach.”

Tommy shrugged, and went along. As they approached the edge of the woods, Isaac found himself humming under his breath. Yeah, Adam and Matthew might take Ben’s side over his, but they might not. Yeah, Isaac would probably have to quit the Ravens either way, but there were other teams and other sports. Yeah, he’d have to watch his back when school started up again, but that wouldn’t be too difficult. And if he ever saw Mr Forrest again, Mr Forrest would wish he hadn’t.

Satisfied with that, Isaac grinned at Tommy, and began to race him down the hill.

The End