Looking Through Crystal

“Over the last few days, your behaviour has been simply unacceptable” Miss Marks said, “You’re late for class, you don’t seem to be bothering with homework and what little work you do looks like a dogs breakfast. What’s going on Jakob?”

Jakob slid further down in the broad, comfortable seat, wondering what to say next. Explaining truthfully wasn’t an option; Joey had sworn him to secrecy, saying that they would both be in terrible trouble if anyone knew they’d been down at the estate.

“Nothing’s going on Miss” he lied, “I’m fine, honestly”
For a moment, Miss Marks was silent, observing the tiny figure slumped miserably in her chair. She had been dealing with children for most of her life, and could spot a liar a mile
away.

“Your Dad’s home at the moment isn’t he?” she asked carefully, “Is it nice having him around the house again?”

Jakob nodded, wondering where this was going.

“Is everything alright with your Dad then” she pressed on, “Mum and Dad getting on okay?”

“Yes” Jakob said almost defiantly, “They always get on”

Seeing that she wasn’t going to get anywhere, Miss Marks sighed and reached for her infamous box of mints.

“Did you want to tell me anything else?” she asked, rattling the box under his nose, “Anything you want to talk about, what about Joey?”

Jakob carefully selected a mint wrapped in a deep green foil and thought hard. If Crystal had lived in the old estate, then there was a very good chance that she had attended Kingsbury. And Miss Marks had been headmistress for nearly thirty years, so it was quite probable that she had known Crystal. Any information she could give him might be of use. Crystal might have found her biological mother, but Jakob was still determined to find her adoptive family. He wanted to know why she had been abandoned, and even through his despair and agony, he wanted to help.

“Was there ever a little girl here called Crystal?” he half whispered, “A few years ago”

Miss Marks looked at him, the colour slowly draining away from her face. She set the box of mints down on the desk and looked him straight in the eye.

“Who told you about Crystal?” she asked, “We don’t like to talk about it, none of the teachers do. It was such a shock…she was obviously a very disturbed child…but I never thought she’d…”

It took a moment for Miss Marks to collect herself enough to say – “Do you know what she did?”

Jakob thought back to what Crystal had told him, how the whole world had thought she murdered the old man. He could imagine their disgust, yet he believed in her. He trusted his sister.

“She didn’t kill Mr Badger” he said quietly, “I’ve met her, I know she didn’t. It was a mistake”
Miss Marks shook her head.

“There was no mistake Jakob” she said, “It wasn’t the first time she was violent. There were all sorts of rumours floating around; some people said that tried to kill another neighbour. She was forever in scrapes, always down at the sick bay with black eyes and split lips. She was only six, but the whole school was terrified of her.”

She said it all very matter-of-factly, rolling a mint around in her mouth. It didn’t seem to matter very much to her whether Crystal was innocent or not. As far as she was concerned, she was one less troublemaker to deal with, one less detention to oversee. Nobody wanted to know, just like nobody wanted to know about Jakob. Wherever he went it was – “Don’t you look like your famous Dad?” or “Saw your Dad on the telly last night”. His classmates were extremely interested in how much money they had in the bank, or how many celebrities dropped over for a wee cup of tea. Nobody cared about what it was really like for him, how he missed his Dad, how they had to get picked up from school to avoid reporters. Just like nobody cared about Crystal anymore.

“IT’S NOT TRUE!” he roared, “SHE NEVER KILLED HIM, SHE NEVER DID ANYTHING! YOU’VE GOT IT WRONG, BUT YOU DON’T CARE DO YOU, YOU STUPID OLD COW”

Miss Marks sat for a moment, her mouth hanging open in shock. No one had ever dared speak to her like that, and she wasn’t sure how to react. She stared at Jakob, who had leapt from his chair and was standing, shaking with anger, in the middle of her neat little office. His face was flushed in fury, tears beginning to stream down his cheeks, and yet he looked her straight in the eye.

“Jakob” she said, collecting herself, “Please wait outside. I’m calling your mother”

***

“He was shouting abusive nonsense for no apparent reason” Miss Marks informed Adrienne, “Started on about a girl who used to come to this school, and when I tried to explain the situation, he became very aggressive”

Jakob stared at the ugly green linoleum, feeling his stomach churn. It would only take one wrong word, and his mother would discover what he had been hiding from her since Halloween.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself Jakob?” the headmistress asked. It wasn’t really an invitation to voice his thoughts, it was where he was supposed to apologise. But he wasn’t going to, he wasn’t going to say sorry for telling the truth, for standing up for his sister. It was odd, how quickly he had come to think of Crystal as that. Suddenly, he found himself in tears again, thinking of what his Dad would think, if the truth were to come out. What if he left and never came back, it would all be his fault.

“Really Jakob” Miss Marks said, “There’s no need for hysterics. Come on now, what’s going on. Why did you ask about Crystal anyway?”

Jakob didn’t need the sharp intake of breath on his mother’s part to know that things had officially changed forever. For a moment, there was silence. A deep, peaceful silence that Jakob hoped would last until the end of eternity. But then there was the howl, the awful noise that sounded like a dog in pain. Then the thud of Adrienne falling to the floor, and the shout of Miss Marks. Jakob sat down beside his mother, desperate to put things right. It was all his fault, and more than anything, he wanted his Dad, or even Joey, to come and hug him tight.

“Mum” he said, “I’m sorry”
Adrienne looked at him; his round face streaked with tears and dirt form the rubble of the old flats, and smiled. It was an extremely forced smile, for she was crying as hard as he was, and more than anything, it was realization that they were in full view of the office staff and several janitors who had stopped working to watch.

“Let’s go home, eh” she said, wiping her face, “We need to have a little chat”

Jakob nodded, glancing round at Miss Marks.

“I’ll expect you back tomorrow Jakob” she said firmly, “In a better frame of mind and ready to work.”

Barely listening, Jakob followed Adrienne out to the car, dimly aware that hundreds of faces were peering out of the windows at them, curious to know what all the noise had been about. Wordlessly, he clambered into the passenger seat and turned to look out of the window.

“I’m sorry you had to find out like this” Adrienne said, “I need to explain properly”

Jakob nodded, wondering how she could possibly justify the mess she had caused.

“Your Dad and I” she began, “We didn’t see each other for a couple of years. It was all long before you and Joey were born. We had a fight, and we ended up living hundreds of miles apart. And while we were apart I ended up engaged to another guy, Brian. But things didn’t work out. He drank a lot, and he didn’t sing daft songs when he was drunk like your Dad does. He used to get into fights, and then he started hitting me.”

Jakob turned around sharply in distress. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. They’d never exactly been a normal family, but this was stuff from soap operas.

“I ran away Jakob” Adrienne went on, “I didn’t know what else to do. And then I found out I was having Crystal, and I was so scared. I always planned on keeping her, trying to make things right. But then I ended up bumping into your Dad again, and you know what he’s like.

He doesn’t have a clue about babies; he used to put your nappies around your head and your bibs round your bum. He didn’t twig that I was having a baby, and then he went away for a couple of months to do some shows, and I had Crystal while he was away”

She paused for a moment to and put her arm around Jakob, but he flinched and jerked out of her reach.

“Keep going then” he ordered, “Tell me the whole story”

“I was going to explain things when he got back” she continued tearfully, “I wanted us to be a family, but then I thought about how much it would hurt him, and she reminded me so much of Brian. Every time she cried, it was like when he screamed, when he got drunk, when he went mad”

She shivered slightly, but pressed on.
“And after three days, I just couldn’t take it. So I asked one of the nurses in the hospital to take her away and find her a good home. They found a lovely couple; they lost their son in a car crash, and couldn’t have any more kids. They’d been waiting to adopt for years, and when I met them, I just trusted them. So I signed the papers, and they told me that they were going to call her Crystal. I swear Jakob, I just wanted to snatch her back and tell everyone to leave us alone. But I didn’t, I let them take her. Then your Dad came back, and I couldn’t face explaining. So I tried to forget, I tried to concentrate on us, and you and Joey when you were born”

Adrienne reached over again, and pulled Jakob into a hug. And this time he clung to her.

“A few years ago I found out that there had been a murder in the estate where she was staying. I went and bought a newspaper, just to make sure it wasn’t Crystal. That’s when I found out that she’d murdered an old man. I should have been sad for his family, but I kept wondering if it was my fault. Maybe Crystal was just confused because she’d been adopted. And then all the rumours started, about how the old man’s spirit was hanging around the flats, and people were getting ill and possessed and all sorts. Then everyone left, and Crystal’s parents reported her missing. The police thought she was disturbed, and she’d run away. Nobody ever thought to look in the flats, nobody goes in them anymore. They had people in to destroy them, but strange things happened to them, and no one ever came back.”

Jakob and Adrienne hugged harder, ignoring everything around them.

“She didn’t do it” Jakob mumbled into his mother’s shoulder, “She’s not a murderer, she liked Mr Badger. And everyone left her, she’s still there Mum, she’s still hiding in the old estate. I found her on Halloween when I ran away, but Joey said I couldn’t tell anyone. Miss Marks said that she was always in fights, but she never hurt anyone. People just hated her because she was a bit different. She’s in the flats, and she’s not evil, she’s just scared. I want to go down there; I need to tell her the truth”

Adrienne fumbled in her handbag for a tissue and wiped Jakob’s face gently. He looked at her, silently begging his mother to understand. She obviously loved Crystal, but that wasn’t enough. They had to help her, before it was too late.

“You’re not going anywhere” she said firmly, “You need to go home and have a bath, and we need to talk to your Dad”

Very little talking went on in the house that night, being overshadowed by tears, tantrums and shouting. After two long hours, the main bedroom of the house was flung open, frightening Joey and Jakob, who were hiding under the bed, almost to death.

“Get out of there” Billie Joe roared, “Joey, go and get the suitcase out of your wardrobe, Jakob, help me pack”

Jakob stood, shivering in his pyjamas, in the midst of this hysteria. In one ear, he had his
Mum telling him to go downstairs, in the other; he was being ordered to pack up half the stuff in the house. And on top of all that he had Joey telling him that the whole sorry situation was his fault, that he should never have told Miss Marks about Crystal, that he should never have gone to the estate in the first place.

Jakob took a deep breath, although he was about to put Miss Marks in her place all over again. As if he was about to blow out birthday candles from all the birthdays Crystal had missed out on.

“SHUT UP” he bellowed, “How is screaming at each other gonna help Crystal? She’s my sister, and I want to get her out of there, I don’t really care what you lot think”

“Good” Billie Joe said, “Because I’m leaving. Joey, you come with me. At least you don’t have any dirty little secrets up your sleeve. Adie, Jakob, you can stay her. Liars stick together, eh?”

He grabbed a pile of clothes roughly from a drawer and threw them untidily into the case Joey had fetched. After a couple of minutes of this slapdash packing, he grabbed Joey brusquely by the back of his t-shirt and said – “Right, we’ll get moving then”

He could have been mistaken for a lunatic, or a very violent man. But the tears glistening in his eyes gave him away, he was frightened. Slamming the door behind him, Billie Joe marched down the winding staircase and out of the house he’d shared with his wife and sons for eleven years.

“I’ll send Mike round to get the rest of our stuff in the morning” he shouted back, “You can do what you like now Adie, you can go and live with you fucking secret little family. Hope you’re all very happy”

And as the car was heard crunching over the stones, Adrienne Armstrong fell to the ground sobbing, for the second time that day.