The Penn Friends Series Books 1-4: Penn Friends Boxset Page 17

  “Jack, what the hell are you doing?” she whispered, venom running through her nervous words despite their minimal volume.

  “I’m okay,” he whispered back, before adding, “Get a move on, will you.”

  She picked one of the mags up, flicked through it before dropping it back on the shelf, turning to walk away, glancing as she did to see the same magazine disappear, the pile one less, though, to an untrained eye, the change was all but impossible to have noticed.

  She slowly made her way back towards the exit, glancing at a few things, not wanting to act suspiciously in any way, not wanting to draw attention to the fact she was taking part in a theft. An element of her involvement, she knew, was exciting. Doing something criminal, in a way, had a definite spark to it. It was all so risky. An equally significant part told her it was wrong. It was dangerous. She could be exposed.

  Now back around the corner, in the alley they had been in just minutes before, Jack reappeared, standing there smug, his grin wide, his eyes bright.

  “See,” he said, pulling out the magazine from his inside pocket that she’d asked for, “said it would be easy, didn’t I?” There were two other magazines inside his pocket as well.

  “What did you get for yourself?” She had spotted them in his pocket, so he wasn’t going to lie. He pulled them both out. She looked at him with a certain level of disgust, which he mostly missed as he was tearing open the first of the magazines. “I thought you were going to put them back after?” she said, the fact he’d opened one, meaning that was now wholly untrue.

  “Believe me, no one will want this once I’m through with it,” he said, and she loathed him all the more. He looked up at her. There it was. That same look, those same eyes, she’d seen twice before. The first being the moment he’d stormed off that football pitch, the referee’s red card still held high in the air, and the second had been in those woods, with a silent Abbey helplessly on the floor beneath him. The monster was still inside him.

  “That’s sick; you know that.”

  “What is? These, come off it. Don’t say you disapprove?” He seemed bemused that she was in any way bothered that her boyfriend was looking at a magazine aimed at men and full of naked women. He was fifteen.

  “I’m serious!” He finally looked up, having been engrossed in the first pages already, barely registering the fact she was standing right there. She had not even bothered to look at the magazine he’d given her. She’d seen enough inside the store.

  “Okay,” he said, reluctantly, putting them both back inside his jacket. The coat seemed designed for just such a purpose, its deep inside pockets suitable for mags, bottles, anything sizeable that needed concealing.

  “I’m going to go in and pay for this,” she said, waving the magazine in the air, and turning around despite Jack’s protests.

  “Why? We’re already outside the shop, we’ve already got away with it,” but she didn’t stop. She walked in, not obviously showing she had the mag in her hands, and after taking a turn down the magazine aisle, Penny went to the cash point and paid––she doubted she would even read it. She had never been a magazine sort of girl. But it felt the right thing to do. What Jack chose to do would be entirely on him. She realised he had no intention of ever bringing them back.

  She walked out of the shop again, this time having purchased the magazine which hung in a bag, and found Jack waiting for her on a bench in the centre of the high-street. The whole area had been pedestrianised a decade before, though even then the area had been primarily run down, the wave of empty shops that started appearing meaning more was now closed than open in that part of the city. Most people went to the few sizeable out-of-town shopping centres that were fast becoming popular, Blue Water and Lakeside being two of the biggest.

  “I need to get back home now,” Penny said.

  “Really?” but he wasn’t making much of a fuss. The truth was he looked relieved that Penny was going. He’d looked let down from the moment she insisted on paying for the stolen mag. “Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow?” She gave him a nod of the head––they had no plans made for Sunday, neither had she anything to return home for, she just didn’t want to be around him. She didn’t want to be with him at all, in fact. She needed space to think. She’d seen a side of him he hadn’t shown her before. She needed to know a little more.

  Five minutes later they were going their separate ways, and instead of heading the same way together for the first half mile––which would have taken them both home before they needed to split up––Jack had walked the other way up the high-street. Penny wanted to know where he was going. Leaving it a while, she doubled back and started walking a little faster to be able to keep sight of him.

  She need not have rushed, as just three minutes later, and just off the far end of the high street, Jack walked into the town’s leisure centre, Penny catching him go through the doors before he vanished. She stood there for a moment, hidden from view but trying to work out what had just happened.

  9

  I never did find out that day why Jack was sneaking into the sports centre––it was apparent enough, it seemed, that he just didn’t want to pay. It hadn’t crossed my mind back then, though, why he had no sports bag with him, nothing to change into once he'd gained free entry. A bag couldn’t have been hidden, unknown, in that bloody mack of his.

  Just a few days later, however, I would get an idea. I would gain further insight into Jack's ever-darkening mind during that free period we had mid-morning on Tuesdays.

  It frightened me more than anything. I think, more than even first finding out I had such a gift, maybe even more than what happened with my mother. I couldn’t control this. I’d done this to him, I’d altered him, and now had no way of undoing whatever I had done.

  The weekend had been a warm one as summer had come early, it seemed. Jack and Penny would not end up meeting on Sunday, and on the Bank Holiday itself, Jack was busy with his dad and sister Lucy. They were off to a County Show, something they did every year, something the three of them had always done with their mother, too, so something they now did in her honour. Lucy, Jack’s older sister, was unusually sombre during those days.

  Feeling a little more refreshed with a long weekend away from school, the students of year ten, and 10W in particular, came back into classes that Tuesday. Jack had barely said a word to Penny, which was a little unusual. As the third lesson approached––it was a free period, now that the extra revision lessons had finished, the mock exams long behind them, the students tended to just hang around outside of the school, something that only those in the top two years were allowed to do in the secondary school. Those in the sixth form could come and go as they pleased, and rarely socialised with anyone still in a school uniform.

  Jack had often hung out with Penny during that free period; the couple often caught getting away from others, usually spied by some of the boys just kissing. Jack was getting teased a little for that, though soon brushed it off. He’d long since been telling his mates how good she was in bed––they’d never slept together––and that only made them look at Penny with new eyes. She was easy. But she was also Jack’s girl. Darn.

  Jack snuck away as soon as the bell rang for the third period. Penny hadn’t even made it over to his desk.

  This pattern repeated for the following week, same day, the same result, Jack gone and out of the door before anyone else had even packed away. Penny knew Jack was up to something and needed to find out what. She’d not raised the issue when they would go on yet another date––she did not know what to do, how to end it finally. The more Penny thought about it, the more trapped she felt. She had connected herself, albeit loosely, with all the illegal stuff he was now doing, and risked being exposed if she was to break it off. Penny knew Jack would tell everybody, might even show off his new skill to prove it, the moment Penny split up with him. What could she do?

  So through cinema visit after cinema visit, she put up with it all for those next few weeks,
as June crept slowly on, and the promise of summer loomed ever nearer. Without school––it was all Olympic fever in London that summer because of the home games––and no other distractions, Penny couldn’t bear the thought of so much free time. The home was impossible, spending it with Jack as equally precarious. She needed a plan. And that started with knowing what, precisely, Jack was doing.

  It was the third week, having herself gone to the bathroom five minutes before the end of the lesson under the ruse that she felt sick, that she started to form an understanding of the full horror that had become Jack. Hiding behind the toilet door, thankful that she was currently the only student in that particular girls’ toilet, she listened for the sound of footsteps, spotting Jack coming down, on schedule, seconds after the bell had rung. She started to follow him, the corridors filling up quickly so that the risk of being spotted by her boyfriend was minimal. Besides, he seemed to be on a mission of his own, stopping for no one, as he moved outside and around the back of the school, towards the sports area. Coming around the side of the gym, towards the rear doors––the school, for what it lacked in student standards and ability, did have plenty of outdoor playing fields and tennis courts and a newly built gym as well as a twenty-five-metre indoor swimming pool. The rear doors led back towards the gym, where there was a staff room located, as well as a small weights area and the changing rooms, which were next to the pool.

  Penny watched from the outside––Jack wasn’t apparently going anywhere in particular. He wasn’t shooting hoops in the gym, which seemed empty. Jack wasn’t there to work out in the weights area, the school boasting a small, but a well-conditioned set of machines for pumping iron. He was just loitering. It continued for five minutes, the area amuck with year nine kids who appeared to have PE that period. Penny stood to one side as boys and girls piled in through the doors.

  Five minutes later she could hear them all moving back out again, and in the melee, she’d lost sight of Jack. She knew there was no way he had come out of the doors she was standing beside––it’d been a one-way torrent of incoming students. Had anyone been pushing their way through––visible or not––it would have been evident to all. She went inside. The year nines were not coming to the gym; they’d gone into the pool. Penny called into the empty sport’s hall.

  “Jack, you here?” There was no answer. Penny went to the main wall running down towards the changing rooms, which listed all the lessons for each period across the five-day school week. It confirmed that four of the year nine classes had double swimming during that hour this term. She had an idea, suddenly, where Jack was. And she had just fifty minutes to think up a solution to know for sure.

  It was a poster on the wall of the corridor that gave her an answer––Abbey in all her glory, legs the length of a table, the school championing their soon to be Olympian. There to inspire them all to dream bigger. The poster gave dates and times of the nights Abbey was due to compete, as well as details of the opening ceremony, and the fact the school had been given a block of tickets. Which of the students got the remaining available tickets was going to be cast by lots. Everyone wanted to win.

  As the students started spilling out of the swimming pool––girls darting left and into their changing rooms that sat immediately there, boys with their towel around their shoulders and heading right––Penny let them all pass. Again, the crush made it impossible that Jack could be in their midst, unknown. He’d had no place being there, either way. Penny felt a little self-conscious just standing there, but they all passed her, one way or the other, and no one said a word. The teacher was then the last to leave, a male teacher, and he locked the door to the pool behind him after pulling it shut. So, Jack couldn’t still be inside; otherwise, he was locked in; which meant he was somewhere else. Penny felt like she knew where.

  The teacher went off in the other direction after calling the girls and telling them to hurry up. With a pad in hand, Penny was ready. She had grabbed one of the mini fliers that had been displayed next to Abbey’s giant poster and was standing ready. The first girl out through the door barely even five minutes later––her hair still looked soaked, eyes bloodshot––was surprised to see someone waiting.

  “What’s this?” she asked, seeing Penny in the doorway, partially blocking her passage.

  “I’m taking names for the Opening Ceremony ticket raffle––two tickets to the lucky ones drawn out,” she said, waving the leaflet she’d just taken in front of the girl’s face. The year nine student just shrieked. Soon word got around.

  Over the next ten minutes, being careful only to allow them out one by one––there was no way Jack could have been hiding in their midst––she continued her charade. When all the girls were out, Penny poked her head around to see that the last one had gone, then entered the changing room and locked the door from the inside.

  “Jack, I know you’re in here,” she called, more angry at him than ever. There was no reply, but she was sure she had heard the intake of breath. Penny picked up a broom from the corner of the room that had been standing next to the door and proceeded to spin around on the spot with it extended out horizontally from her.

  “I know you are hiding in here Jack Ferguson and I will find you.” She smashed it into the corner with some venom, sure that he’d been lurking there. The showers were wet––as was much of the floor in the changing area––so she was certain he couldn’t be in there. She would be able to see his footprints in the wet tiles. She swung the broom at ankle height along the benches, constantly listening for any sound. “Jack, it’s over. I’ve caught you, you sick pervert. You were spying on these girls!” Still there was no sound; nevertheless, Penny moved around the room like a ninja, swinging at will, trying to catch something, any sign that she wasn’t, in fact, speaking to an empty room, that he wasn’t even there. Five minutes went by, and suddenly there was a rattle at the door. For a second Penny was sure Jack was trying to get out of the changing room, but a call and rattle of keys from outside of the door told Penny it was the teacher coming back to check all was clean. The key turned.

  “Is anyone…” he started to say, clearly checking the room was clear before he spotted Penny, broom in hand. “Penny, what are you doing in here?”

  “I borrowed the broom earlier and was just bringing it back. Thought I’d give the place a quick sweep, first.” Thankfully she’d stopped swinging it around when she’d heard the keys in the door.

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll leave you to it but must ask you to hurry. I need to lock up for lunch now, so have to ask you to leave soon.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, immediately. “I’ve finished,” and she walked over to the door, placing the broom back where she had found it, and walked up the corridor. She heard the teacher locking the door, and he then walked up the hallway as well.

  “Is it okay if I use the weights?” Penny asked once he’d turned the corner, “just for fifteen minutes. Or are you locking down the whole section for lunch?”

  “No, that’s okay. It’s just the changing rooms we lock. Go ahead. You’ll be unsupervised, so please be careful. I take it you know what you are doing?” He’d not once seen Penny using the weights, but knew she was one of the fitter members of year ten––Abbey by far the fittest, of course, who was in a league of her own.

  “Yes,” she said, placing her hand on the top of the machine as if ready to set some weights she was about to lift, before just sitting down on the bench, the teacher by then turned and headed out. It was another five minutes, the whole area in total silence, Penny not doing anything to change that, until she heard the turning of the lock on the inside of a changing room door, the sound of a door opening and then closing again, and the thump thump of footsteps coming up the corridor. She got a few seconds glimpse of Jack as he rounded the corner, his face in a rage, oblivious to the fact Penny was sitting watching him from the other direction. She heard the outside doors swing open and then shut again before everything returned to silence.

  �
�The sick bastard,” she said aloud, to no-one but herself.

  10

  For the first time, the day I sat on that bench and watched my boyfriend round the corner––proving my theory in the process that he’d been in that changing room––I started to understand what I’d done to him. Enchantments have reactions. I’d once made him a beast, once causing his body to produce so much testosterone that he couldn’t control it, which had driven him to do the unforgivable. I had then undone what I’d given him after that. But it had created a change.

  Here, months later was the continued outworking of that change. It hadn’t ended with that rape. It was merely just beginning. Jack was now the boy who stole pornographic magazines right in front of his girlfriend’s face, who sat in female changing rooms to spy on grown women––I’d twigged that this is what he used that leisure centre for––and now had moved onto girls from school after swimming. Swimming! Not hockey, or tennis or athletics, where, let’s be honest, most year nines would just swap their shorts for their school uniform, no need for any further nakedness. But swimming, where it was impossible not to be. And he’d been sitting there, standing there, somehow, in the midst of four classes worth of girls, and just watching, leering. Just like with that magazine. But now in the flesh. Now much younger.