Any one of them I could have taken and it could have changed my life from that point on. But I was not ready for it, then. I often look back at that evening, the nights already drawn in ready for winter, the air chilly but not yet bitter, the sound of Helen’s running feet echoing down the alleyway, the sight of the girl with her legs splayed, her head smack against the bottom of the wall, her face in the glass and litter and dog shit that lined the edges of the path.
What I did was kick her. I didn’t look where the kick landed, but it was only one, and it was to make sure she was still alive. I didn’t say anything to her. I just walked away, following Helen but with a gait no faster than a purposeful saunter. I didn’t even look back.
When I got home I went straight upstairs to the bathroom. My mother was in the kitchen preparing dinner. I wasn’t even sure if she heard me coming through the door; either way, I made it to the bathroom and locked the door. There was blood on the sleeve of my school shirt, and my knuckles were red and swollen, although they didn’t hurt. I had no idea where the blood had come from. I ran the sleeve of the shirt under the tap and scrubbed at it with the nail brush until it was clean, then hung the shirt over the radiator to dry. I was aware of my own arousal, but only in an abstract way until I undressed and got in the shower. Was this what violence prompted in me? I wondered? Or was it because I’d punched a girl? And then the image of her lying there, lying in the dirt and the crap on the tarmac, barely moving – her white legs against the ground, open – and the sound of Helen’s feet, Helen running away. And Helen’s hair like a halo around her face, the shape of her mouth when she whispered that word to me… HELP. I had probably misinterpreted the whole situation; I had most likely got it all wrong. But none of that mattered as I relieved the arousal in the shower, thinking of all those things in combination, and the fact that it might not be what the world thought of as normal never entered my head.
Helen acted strangely towards me after the incident in the alleyway. She stared at me at school. When she was with her friends she would say hello to me and they would all dig her in the ribs and laugh at her. She would sit next to me at lunchtime and start talking to me about what she’d seen on television the night before. I fended these approaches off as best I could, but, as much as they were unsolicited, they were not unwelcome. Every time I saw her I had that same jolt, the one in the alleyway as she’d walked towards me with that word silent on her lips.
The girl I’d punched – I assumed she made a full recovery. I never heard anything more about it and I never saw her again.
Helen didn’t refer to the incident in her monologues, which made her approaches to me even more odd. Her friends all seemed to think she had gone completely mad in talking to me. But it continued into the summer term, our last term, when we were all busy with the pressure of A-levels and the heat and the hay fever seemed to grow worse every day.
Helen’s last exam was on the Thursday; mine was on the day after. She went to the pub with her friends straight after the exam, and by the time I finished my afternoon’s cramming in the library she was walking home. I caught her up because she was walking unsteadily, smiling and singing at the world in general.
‘Colin!’ she said when she saw me. ‘It’s all over – isn’t it wonderful?’
‘Not for me. I have my last physics paper tomorrow.’
‘Pfft, physics.’
She swung her bag around her ankles and we walked to the alley. We’d walked this way – together – most days since that incident in the winter, but no word about it had passed between us. Today, though, she seemed to hesitate as we entered the path, even though it was brightly lit by the sun overhead.
I’d never felt comfortable with a girl before Helen, and it