Concentr8 Read online

  The whole thing is like heaven and hell rolled into one and I just stand on the spot turning round and round taking it all in – no clue what to think or say or do. All of us got that same look on our face except Blaze. Blaze got a plan.

  I soak it up a while longer until Blaze says follow me and we all do because you just do when it’s Blaze.

  We turn down a side street and five minutes further on everything’s normal again. You can hear it – you’d have to be deaf not to know total mayhem was everywhere – and you can smell the plasticky smoke what pinches the back of your nose – but where we are now is all quiet and empty and ordinary. The only weird thing is that it’s too empty – there’s no cars or even people. Here it’s almost as if the city’s gone to sleep even though the sun’s still up. It’s kind of eerie – me and Blaze and Karen and Femi and Lee walking down the middle of the street as if we got the whole city to ourselves.

  Lee’s got a metal rod in his hand – something out of that skip. He goes up to a parked car – a Merc – and smashes the side windows. He tries not to smile but you can see he enjoys it. Nobody says anything and we just carry on walking. I want a go but I’m too embarrassed to ask.

  We don’t stop walking till we get to the river which is just the usual sludgy brown road of cold tea rolling on like normal like it don’t make no difference everything around it has gone mad. All that water tons and tons of it always moving it’s amazing when you look close. Even though it’s the shittiest water you ever seen it’s still beautiful just the power of it.

  Don’t hardly ever come up this far – ain’t safe. I’m wondering why Blaze has brought us here until I notice that unlike the rest of us he ain’t looking out at the water. He’s facing the other way looking up at that big glass bollock where they run the city from – don’t even know the name of it but it’s where the mayor works.

  Streets ain’t so empty round here. There’s a few people like us who are out to see what’s going on – some others who look like they’re going home from work – and even a few people wandering up and down like it’s any normal evening and they’re off to the cinema or a restaurant or whatever it is people like that do. It’s a weird mix with only the muffled wail of a hundred sirens down near our yard giving away what’s really going on.

  Blaze stares up at that building. He got a look in his eye like an animal that’s found its prey.

  What’s going on? says Femi eventually.

  Are you with me or not? says Blaze.

  Yeah says Femi shrugging like he don’t know if Blaze is taking the piss or what.

  All the way?

  All the way. Ain’t convincing the way he says it but Blaze don’t seem to mind.

  He turns to me. Fixes me with them icicle eyes. All the way Troy?

  I don’t know what Blaze is talking about but it’s not like my thoughts even flicker to any other answer. All the way man.

  All the way? he says again. This time to Karen.

  She don’t hesitate but she don’t say nothing either she just steps forward and kisses him on the mouth deep and long and so hot I actually go a bit hard just watching. Karen’s his girlfriend and she’s the finest girl on the estate or any other estate in fact. She got blue eyes and dark skin and a single diamond stud the size of a pinhead in her nose and a mouth that’s somehow angry and sexy and aloof and cool all at once. She never smiles but in a weird way it also looks like she’s never not smiling. There’s a little curl at the edges like she knows something you don’t. Nobody has any idea how she paid for the diamond or even if it really is a diamond but I don’t care. If I could kiss that mouth just one time I’d be ready to die.

  She don’t like me not as in don’t like me but as in actually hates me but that’s another story. It’s Blaze that breaks it off and pulls away from her. I don’t know how he does but he does and he turns to Lee.

  All the way?

  All the way blud says Lee.

  He don’t ask us to follow but when he turns and walks away we all do. He strolls towards the entrance of the glass bollock then when a man comes out – a slouchy half-bald bloke with a suit that don’t fit right and a grey briefcase – Blaze swerves and changes course. We go with him and now it seems like we’re all following this guy.

  When we’re round the corner – in a narrow street that leads to the main road – Blaze calls out to him. WHERE YOU GOING?

  The guy stops and turns. You can see the whole calculation on his face. Run away or talk my way out of it? Play it cool or spring before it gets any worse? He knows we’re bad news and he’s right. It takes him less than half a second to realise that whatever it is we got in mind for him can’t be run away from. Not a lardy old guy like him up against us – he wouldn’t get more than a few steps.

  Home he says almost casual but with a crack in his voice that shows he’s bricking it.

  You work for the mayor? says Blaze.

  Another telltale pause. More cogs whirring in the guy’s head. No.

  We saw you coming out. You’re wearing an ID badge.

  Like an idiot the guy pulls the ID badge off and hides it in his pocket. I’m in the housing department. I’ve got nothing to do with the mayor. I’ve never even met him.

  I didn’t say you had says Blaze.

  Lee slaps his metal bar into the palm of his hand.

  What do you want? he says. You want my phone? Take it. Have it.

  He hands his phone to Blaze. Blaze takes it glances at it drops it on the floor and stands on it. There’s a little scrape and a crack as it crushes under his twisting heel. I don’t want your shit phone.

  Karen and Lee crack up. The guy’s eyes are flicking everywhere – he knows he’s trapped.

  What do you want?

  Blaze stares at him not speaking. He sucks his teeth making a sinister wet squeak like a mouse being strangled. That’s what I’m trying to decide says Blaze but you can tell he’s only messing with the guy drawing out his terror.

  Well I wish I could stay and help out but I really have to get home.

  The guy turns and tries to walk away but he don’t get more than one step before Blaze grabs him from behind with an arm around the neck. The muscles on Blaze’s arms stand out like the twists in a rope. He ain’t much older than me but he got the body of a man already with a thick fuzz on his top lip and he’s taller than the guy by a head at least.

  I think what I want is for you to listen. You and everyone else. Blaze’s voice is quiet and deep and slow like always. He never shouts but now there’s steel in it.

  The guy’s face is ketchup red. It don’t look like he can breathe. If this was a cartoon there’d be smoke coming out his ears. After a while Blaze slackens his hold and he coughs air back into his lungs.

  I’m listening! says the guy eventually. I’m listening!

  That ain’t what I got in mind says Blaze, and at the same moment the briefcase falls on to the tarmac. It don’t even look like he dropped it on purpose. Something in him has given up and his muscles have gone limp.

  Can you feel this? says Blaze.

  Yes! says the man almost shrieking it. His eyes are rolling in their sockets with red jags popping up like he’s stoned but it ain’t that it’s something else completely. I don’t know what the two of them’s talking about.

  Can you feel THIS?

  The guy yelps and his torso jolts – twisting lurching but not getting out of Blaze’s grip. Now he’s moved I see that Blaze has a shank pressed into his back.

  I glance up. Lee’s licking his lips nervous afraid looking same as me like he had no idea this was going to happen. Karen’s eyes are wide too and she’s half smiling but I have no idea what that means. Femi’s got a face like he just pissed himself. I don’t reckon anyone was in on this.

  Careful I say. There’s cameras.

  Blaze looks up scanning for CCTV and there’s a moment when it’s like we’re dreaming or floating cause time just does this hover – I swear it feels as if the whole city’s gone
quiet waiting for Blaze to decide what to do next.

  It’s Karen what ends it snapping Get him! Just get him! She got the weirdest look in her eye like she forgot everything just gone off the edge wild and animal. It’s like everything’s been stripped away and just for a flash this is the real her – the pure naked Karen and I swear it’s vicious.

  But all this everything what’s happened up to now it ain’t nothing – ain’t even half a step away from normal life compared to what happens next. Takes us all a minute to even understand what he means when Blaze finally speaks up cause what he’s saying takes everything to a new level. He don’t say it loud – don’t say it like it’s even anything special – but everyone hears and it’s so crazy nobody speaks up or tries to stop him. We all just go along with it.

  You’re coming with us he says.

  Hyperactivity . . . was first recognised in the mid-nineteenth century by German physician Heinrich Hoffman, who in 1844 wrote a popular collection of nursery rhymes entitled Der Struwwelpeter . . . One of his creations was Fidgety Philip, who causes chaos at the dinner table.

  Matthew Smith, Hyperactive: The Controversial History of ADHD

  FEMI

  One minute it’s a laugh just scaring the guy, nothing bad nothing actually mental, then next thing you know he’s pulled a shank and we’re dragging the guy off and I’m thinking NO ONE ASKED ME!? I’m thinking I’M NOT INTO THIS WHAT YOU DOING THIS IS CRAZY BAD, but I mean it was too late by then weren’t it?

  That’s Blaze, though. I swear it’s lethal being around him cause you don’t know what you’re going to be dragged into, and Mum always says stay away, stay away from that Blaze and I know she’s right, but it ain’t that easy is it? It’s like a magnetic force, you get pulled in, don’t know how you just do.

  I could’ve walked off. Right then. But nobody said this is your last chance. Nobody said this is your last second to choose to be normal – to go to school and do stuff and be an ordinary person.

  He should have told us. Asked us. I mean this weren’t no small thing, this was big time, but Blaze don’t do that. He don’t give you no choice. I mean he asked me if I was in and maybe I did say yes, but it’s not like he said what I was in for cause if I’d known, it would have been NO WAY! It would have been NO WAY YOU’RE CRACKED MAN! And that would have been it. I would have been out of there.

  So next thing we’re walking with the guy to the bus stop, I mean the BUS STOP!? You can’t kidnap someone on a bus, that’s just stupid, but I mean the shank’s right there and he knows it so he can’t do nothing. You can see from his face like he thinks he’s two seconds away from death, just one false step and Blaze’ll stab him, and I don’t reckon he would, I mean Blaze is bad but not that bad. He’s too clever. Wouldn’t stab nobody out in the open, I mean that’s basically suicide ain’t it? But the guy, he don’t know that.

  Shank’s in Blaze’s pocket and we’re all around the guy all the way to the bus stop. Can’t get over it man, I mean if that was the plan it’s insane, but the guy’s like all limp and he knows he can’t run away so what can he do?

  You can see him pleading with his eyes, staring at people walking past just begging them to help him but nobody’s looking, and even if they were they wouldn’t care or wouldn’t step in, cause nobody wants to mess with our sort. Ain’t worth it. Everyone knows that, even if you only been in the city five minutes.

  Bus comes and we get on. All of us. I swear it’s the maddest thing.

  I could’ve run off then. Easy. Could’ve just not got on the bus, walked away, whatever. I mean that’s what I should’ve done, I ain’t stupid. But it’s hard to describe that feeling, it’s like you’re on rails or something, cause it was all of us, it weren’t like I was thinking for just me. We was a unit and I mean I weren’t in control, I was only a passenger. Blaze had it all laid out in advance or he seemed to anyway, and when he’s decided what’s going to happen, that’s what happens. Ain’t nothing you can do to stop it. I didn’t have the power to change anything. I swear he can make you do stuff you couldn’t even think of, wouldn’t do in a million years if it was just you on your own.

  Sometimes I feel almost like the buzz for him ain’t that he even wants to do it – whatever it is – it’s that he wants to see how far he can push us. Wants to feel what he can make other people do. And the more we’re doing what we don’t like, the more he’s feeling his power, swimming in it, just basking in how he’s got us where he wants us.

  Mum was right with that stay away from Blaze, she was more right than she ever could’ve known.

  Blaze and Troy they got something dead in them, something cold won’t never be warmed up by nothing. Can’t even imagine them ever living in a normal flat, having a normal job just being normal. I’m different, I ain’t like that. Shouldn’t have got mixed up with them, cause I ain’t got the stomach for that life, ain’t got the balls. And I ain’t got the smarts to bail out when I ought to, neither.

  Didn’t even know where that bus was taking us. Should’ve asked. Should’ve just got out and walked home. Wouldn’t have even had to say anything, not a word. Could’ve just walked. Been over it hundreds of times in my head and that’s the craziest thing – all them minutes ticking by slow as you like, and me just sitting there on that bus letting Blaze take me off into his madness – take me out of the life I had up to that day, into some other place that weren’t never meant for a kid like me.

  I don’t even got the excuse that it happened too fast – that I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing – cause I did. I had all that time on the bus and I didn’t do nothing with it, so I suppose you could say I deserve everything what happened to me.

  So eventually we get out of the bus and we gone miles. It’s Hackney or something, I don’t know. The bus empties everyone out before the high street because apparently things are kicking off round here too. Blaze acts like he knows where we are, and leads on without looking worried or confused or nothing. He don’t let the guy further away than the length of his arm. Just stays ready to grab him at any moment. Or stab him. Whatever.

  The guy stumbles around like some zombie, his skin weird and tight around his eyes and his neck so rigid it’s like his spine has turned to metal. His face goes white then red when Blaze drags him over to a cash machine. Don’t know when it happened, but looks like Blaze’s already got his wallet. Asks the guy for his PIN and he just starts begging please don’t do this please, then stupid shit like I’ll give it to you if you let me go. Will you let me go when I tell you? But Blaze don’t even respond and eventually he gives the number.

  Types it in. Nothing.

  You can see the guy’s eyes spiralling everywhere, trying to think of a way out, trying to think of how he can run for it, but he can’t, there’s no way. We got him. There’s people around and he could just scream and lash out but he knows that would be a risk, a big risk with the shank so close and Blaze so cold. He’s working on it though, trying to calculate his options, then you can see his head goes limp and drops when he decides it ain’t worth it, and all slow like his mouth is filled with sand or something, the four numbers come out.

  Types them in. Hundred quid. Just like that. The five neatest flattest notes you ever seen.

  Pulls out the card and pushes it right back in. Types in them magic numbers. Hundred more! Man it’s so crazy we ain’t never done nothing like this, and worse than ever I just want to get out, but there’s a pull now cause I got to see what we do with all that money. I mean it’s ours now, a whole fat stack of it to do whatever we want.

  Blaze puts the numbers in again but this time no dice. It’s maxed out at two hundred and none of us ever seen that much cash in one place. It’s like wings I swear, lifts us up and carries us down the street.

  Blaze gives twenty to Troy to go get some chips and stuff, then gives me twenty and don’t say nothing just points to a sweet shop.

  Walk in and start piling stuff up on the counter and the guy watches me every s
econd, don’t move his eyes off me for a moment, and there’s chocolate and sweets and crisps and everything, and when I hand over that crisp perfect twenty you can see for a moment he don’t even want to take it. He knows it ain’t really mine. But ain’t no difference between me and him, because he takes it right enough. Rings up the stuff and it’s sixteen something so I keep piling on more until it’s right up to £19.73.

  He bags it and passes me the change real slow and reluctant like he’s too good to do nothing for a little shit like me. Holds it out with his arm half bent so I got to reach out to take it. I let it hang there, don’t take the money and tell him to put it in the charity so he knows I ain’t cheap. I wait and watch till he puts it in, like I think he might nick it, so he knows what it feels like cause that’s what he’s been thinking of me all along.

  By the time I’m back Troy’s got two bags of food, Blaze has got bottles of White Ace and WKD, and I’ve got the snacks so we’re well set up for a big night. Don’t let the guy go though. I mean I would if it was up to me. What more do we want from him? But Blaze got other plans and he leads us off away from the sound of sirens and fighting and down weird roads where there ain’t even flats or nothing, just fences and garages and warehouses. Then we come to some train tracks and there’s a gap in the wire and without even asking if we’re up for it he leads us on and over the tracks. And that man is still with us like some puppet at the end of Blaze’s arm.