g
July 18th 2016
There was this day, a few weeks ago. I was walking by the river, like I do sometimes, and maybe I was tired, or maybe I just felt like sitting down, I don’t know – it doesn’t matter. The point is, I sat down on one of those benches that have people’s names on them, dead people, dead people who used to sit there before you did, maybe before you were even alive. I was just sitting there, hanging out. I wasn’t doing anything in particular. Wasn’t thinking about anything in particular. Watching the ducks, mostly, as far as I can remember. I saw a few people I know – Claire, Yan, walking along, maybe holding hands. I wasn’t looking; it’s nothing to do with me whether they were holding hands or not. I couldn’t care in the slightest – but I pretty much ignored them like I usually do. Other people are overrated in my opinion. Unlike ducks. I mean, how could a duck ever upset you? Ducks don’t look at you like you’re a total freak, or say stupid things, or ask you questions they know you don’t want to answer. Ducks just hang out, like I was doing. They just get on with it.
The reason I’m telling you this is that, as far as I can remember, that day was the last time I felt happy. That is the last thing I can remember before everything changed.
Stupid thing is, I didn’t even feel particularly happy at the time. But you don’t, do you? I mean, you don’t generally wake up and think, ‘You know what? I’m really happy today.’ It’s afterwards that you realise – when you look back. Happiness is weird like that. It’s not like the pictures you see in adverts of people grinning manically, throwing children in the air and whooping just because they’ve bought some crappy washing powder or something. That kind of happiness doesn’t exist. At least, I’ve never felt that way. Happiness – well, it’s more like a photograph of someone you keep somewhere safe to look at every so often. You look at it and you feel warm and sad because the person’s gone and you realise that when they were there the sun seemed to shine more. It’s kind of screwed up – like happiness never just ‘is’; it always ‘was’. Or maybe that’s just me.
Anyway, I didn’t know that was going to be the beginning. I didn’t know who I was back then. What I was. Back then, I could hang out by the river watching the ducks for hours and it didn’t matter. Back then, I was just Will Hodges. Hodge, or Will, depending on whether I knew you, liked you. Most people call me Hodge. Which suits me – less personal. Hodge was just someone sitting at the back of the class, walking nonchalantly down the corridor. No one worried much about Hodge, which was just as I liked it. I could take care of myself. Hodge was a survivor.
Mum used to call me Will.
A very long time ago.
But that’s not important. What is important, what I want you to remember, is that you never know. You never know when everything is going to change, when everything you’ve taken for granted for years and years is going to get smashed to pieces and you’ll realise that there’s nothing you can do, there’s no way out.
Or maybe there is. But you’ve got to find it. And even if you do find it, that’s never the end. It’s only ever just the beginning.