Chapter Two

That was, as I’ve said, a couple of years back. Kevin is still my best friend and is doing brilliant at school: sports and all the writing stuff he needs. Me? Well, I get by I suppose. Always hand in my work on time, well, mostly, and get fair to good grades. But I never excel like Kevin does and I was never in the top stream for anything. The only thing I can do better that Kevin is ride my bike faster than him, especially up hills. You see, Kevin is a little too big and heavy for humping his weight up hill, whereas I’m dead skinny so find it easier to defy gravity. And that’ the only time I ever get in front of him. Kevin seemed to grow even larger and I seemed to stay the same size. Dad told me not to worry and always said the same thing, “there’s good stuff in small packages”. I think I knew what he meant and it helped me a bit.

Dad still had the job with the do it yourself company and with a bit more money coming in, and a generous staff discount, had begun to smarten the flat out if its pokiness. Even Kev was impressed by the my room with all its new fittings, a pine wardrobe and bunk bed so that he could sleep over. Kev’s sisters had both finished university, one had a job in a bank and other had started teacher training.

Where I lived though, had, in the few years since we met, got really rough. Not that I didn’t feel safe, I know most of the kids and Kev, well, he feared nobody. It’s just that bad things started to happen. Lots of the flats Dad said, were squatted, so the new occupants didn’t pay rent. When the council evicted them they smashed up the flat out of spite. Stupid if you ask me.

Lots of guys at school began to bunk off and the older kids I knew to talk to didn’t seem to work: though they were never short of cash. To make things worse I lost my paper round when Eddie decided to go back home to Ireland, saying it was safer there than in “these mean streets”. Mrs. Gilpin was upset at me losing the little job, but Dad told me not to worry about it, even though the extra cash it brought in was useful.

The local newspaper was full of stories about drugs, gangs and crime amongst young people. Me and Kev avoided all these things but that’s not to say we knew nothing about it because we did: the guys who sold them, the users, and the kids who were getting hooked. We saw the kids under the blocks of flats, dark hidden corners smelling of sick and oil where the tenants were supposed to park their cars. Only a fool would do that ‘cos they’d be vandalised and smashed mighty quick. Kevin started to avoid even jogging past those places, and me, with my paper round gone, didn’t have to bother. Even though I could use them as a short cut on my bike I wouldn’t any more. Guess we knew all of these things from a distance.

But one night Kevin got into trouble with the police and that changed everything.
Kev had spent the evening around my place helping me understand some maths I just couldn’t get the hang of.

“Look Billy”, he said to me, “maths is about following rules. I don’t know why it works, but it just does. All you need to do is know the right rules to work out the problems”.
But I couldn’t understand how Kev worked out the area of a circle and then a cylinder.

“And who’s this bloke Pye”, I kept asking.
“It’s a rule, like crossing the road, looking right and then left, only it’s to do with numbers”.

We went through it a dozen times, and like I’ve said, Kev was good at everything, and I still couldn’t really understand it. Though I was getting there, I kept trying to convince myself, I couldn’t understand fitting square meters into circles: didn’t make sense to me.

“Imagine the squares are made from rubber”, Kev said, “that can go into any shape; triangles, cylinders and circles, and then bounce back again to squares. It’s still the same area”, he said, “no matter the shape. Look Billy, think about it”.

The only thing I was thinking about then was to give my mind a break. We had a coffee, listened to some music and Kev began to talk about our holiday idea cycling in Wales. I’d get the better of him there, I secretly thought to myself.

When Kev decided to leave he wheeled his bike out the flat and rode it along the corridor and that was that. He left about 9.30, just as it was getting dark and because he’d no lights, decided to take some short cuts.