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Don’t become a statistic, they tell him. Don’t be just another number.
But he’s done with being a person - maybe being nothing more than a number wouldn’t be quite so bad.
This is what leads Wilbur to quit his job in the middle of May, and why now, on the morning of the sixth of June, he’s heading in the direction of his nearest train station to put an end to it all.
There’s nobody to call and cancel any appointments or anything; he’s never owned any pets, even some Ghibli-style adorable and strangely intelligent cat that hangs around his garden, appealing though the mental image might be; he’s not on any subscription services that need cancelling, since he’s always been a proponent of pirating all his media; he’s already killed off all the attachments he had to other people through sheer lack of conversation, and his lovely neighbour Niki is, he supposes, just never going to know where he went. He’s in the clear. No job and no prospects and no future. Just like he ought to be, really.
There’s just the sun’s most valiant efforts to shine its way through the thick grey blanket of overcast that London loves to drape around itself, dull like smog where the light can’t break, white and uncomfortably blinding where it does. There’s just a chilling and insistent wind pushing his hair back, trying to rip his beanie off his head, take away the last thing he actually loves on this bitch of an earth. There’s just a creeping, hollow chasm running straight through him like an ink blot left to soak into the paper, there’s just the nauseating embodiment of blackrot choking up his trachea as he walks.
There’s just the hope that he won’t ruin anybody’s commute when he hops down on the tracks and waits to become a number.
So he’s not looking at the sky as he walks, no. He’s not looking at his surroundings, at the scattered wisteria plants that hang over garden fences, at the weeds growing out of the cracks in the walls or whatever people might be sharing the road with him. He’s not looking at his phone - he left that shit at home, factory reset, wiped. He’s looking at the floor, one foot in front of the other, dodging chewing gum blobs and wet marks that litter the ground.
Step on a crack, break your mother’s back, and the habit never broke, so he dodges every split and line. He’s looking at the floor and his cheap, shitty trainers and he’s not letting himself think about where they’re taking him, he’s just pinning his hopes on his lack of a future and hoping things will all balance out with this one big -
CRASH CLATTER BANG what the fuck was that and what the fuck is this.
Wilbur stops short and takes the image in.
Because -
“Yeah, take a picture, it’ll last longer,” says the teenage boy that’s crumpled to the floor in front of him, picking himself up and dusting himself off.
“Did you just fall off the roof?”
“And what about it?”
Wilbur blinks. The child’s not dressed for summer - layered t-shirt on long-sleeved-shirt and full jeans . “Are you hurt?”
“What’s pain,” he deadpans. “Will, right?”
Nobody’s called him Will in a good few years. “Wilbur.”
“Nice to meet you, big man. Name’s Tommy.”
“Right,” he nods, breathless, “how did you -”
“So what are you doing here?”
“I was gonna catch a train,” Wilbur lies, “why’ve you just fallen off the roof? Do you live there?”
“Well, do any of us really live anywhere, really, what’s one man’s roof to another man’s ability to fall off it, and I am a big man, actually, really a very large one, and -”
“Right, you’ve fallen off someone else’s roof. Aren’t you meant to be in school right now or something?”
“No,” Tommy nods, very seriously.
“You’re skiving.”
“I’m not!”
“Just my fucking luck, honestly, running into someone. Right, well if you’ll excuse me -” he’ll be off, and out of this random kid’s way and back on the thin black line towards his very short future. He takes a few strong strides around the kid and back on track.
He’s barely reached the next kerb when he heard the boy’s voice again. High, higher than his own, and reedy - perfectly designed to be annoying. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t fuckin’ know,” he replies before he can really think about it, “away from you?”
“Oh. Well, that’s rude.”
“So what?”
“So you shouldn’t be talking to me like that! Words can hurt, you know. What if I went home and killed myself because you were rude to me?”
“What the fuck?”
“Okay,” Tommy mutters to himself, “yeah, a little heavy handed. Bit much.”
“Why are you here?”
“Did you know there’s a park down here,” he says, instead of answering the question, “lovely place. Out of the way. Nice flowers.”
“What, you wanna take me on a date? Because I hate to break it to you, but you’re a bit -”
“Fuck off,” Tommy scowls, “obviously not. I was just saying.”
Wilbur looks away, still walking. There’s no cars on the road. He seems to have unintentionally rerouted into some sort of cul-de-sac instead of heading for the train station like he was supposed to. He can hear Tommy’s footsteps, heavy on the floor, trailing behind him. “Are you just gonna keep following me if I don’t go with you?”
“Probably, yeah.”
“God, don’t you have anything better to do? Why’d you skip school for anyway?”
“School’s got nothing left to teach me any more,” shrugs Tommy.
“Fuck off. How old can you be?”
“Older than you reckon.”
“Sixteen.”
“Might be.”
“Fifteen.”
“I’m not fuckin’ fifteen-”
“Sixteen, then.”
He keeps walking and tries to ignore the ever-present footsteps at his back. At one point he finds himself at a fork - footpath into dense green sideways-ness on one side, steep and narrow stairs up and across an overpass on the other. He turns to Tommy.
“Which way?”
Tommy shrugs. “You tell me, big man.”
He takes the stairs. As he’s walking across the bridge, he’s hit with the strangest wave of - of something, probably nostalgia, although he’s not usually one for fond memories. He stops, rests both hands on the railings.
“What?”
“Dunno. We had a bridge like this where I grew up. You ever been to East London?”
“No. I’m from the Midlands.”
Oh, of course he is. How did Wilbur not pick up on that before - the twinge of Northern that colours his vowels, steeps them like strong tea, the boldness of his consonants, the way he wraps his mouth around every syllable like he’s trying to make them interesting? “How’d you get here, then?”
“Magic,” Tommy deadpans.
“Anyway. Bridge. We had one. Point was, any time I was passing over it, I used to stop and see if the train was coming.”
“Why, gonna - no, wait, can’t make that joke either, shit.”
“What the fuck do you keep talking about?”
Tommy shakes his head. Wilbur returns his eyes to where the train tracks are skating the horizon. He used to stop and see if the train was coming, because there was just something about standing on that bridge above the train, feeling the rumble as it passed below him, counting the carriages, wondering about the people inside. Watching the flicker and the flash of colours. Relishing in the vibrations that would galvanise the soles of his feet through his trainers like he’d struck a nerve, but refreshingly so. Senses activated. Alive.
There’s no train coming right now. Neither of them are moving.
“I,” offers Tommy, “used to live by the train tracks too. Might be… scratch that, forget I said anything. It was, uh, bit noisy, you know? You ever invite someone over for a sleepover or whatever the fuck, you get complaints, they can’t sleep. You forget it’s loud when you live there.”
“Yeah.”
“Didn’t have many friends back then. Nobody wanted to come to my house. And then, of course, you stop inviting, and then nobody lets you come to their house either, and then you’re just not going anywhere, right?”
“Right.” Wilbur’s well familiar with being the kid who doesn’t go to anybody’s house.
“But the trains keep going. And you’re used to the sound by this point - doesn’t faze you. But you never quite get used to the movement, so you’re just… stuck watching trains go by out the window. Always the same ones, you’re only on one line, you can’t be like one of them kids from Trainspotting.”
“You’ve never seen Trainspotting, have you?”
“Yeah, who wants to watch a movie about a bunch of fuckin’ train nerds?” Tommy laughs. “Anyway. Same trains every fifteen minutes. You get good at timing it. You get - I mean, you start looking at the windows and you think, I wonder who’s in there. I wonder what they’re on their way to. Parties. Funerals. Jobs. Christenings, weddings. Meeting old mates for coffee for the first time in ten years. Seeing your parents. Interviews. Everybody’s on their way to something. All you can do is wonder about it.”
Wilbur stares down at the empty tracks and wonders where this is going.
“But the thing is - you don’t get to know if you don’t get on the train. You can’t overhear the phone calls. You can’t see somebody get on at Nottingham and get off at Kirkby three stops later and go oh, they’re for a mate, nobody gets off at Kirkby. You can’t give up your seat for the lady with her shopping and then realise it’s not shopping, it’s a bunch of presents, and think well, I bet her lot are gonna be happy. All you can do is sit on your windowsill and watch.”
“You sat on the windowsill?”
“Bad habit, I know. I thought it would look a lot cooler than it did - you know, I’m six foot three, my head kind of got caught on the window frame, I ended up all hunched over and sad. Death grip on the sides, terrified of falling.”
“No way you’re six three.”
“I fucking am. It was nice, though. Barricaded the door to hell, god forbid my mum come in and see me, she’d think I was suicidal.”
Wilbur wonders what his mother would think to see him slipping down on to the tracks. At Tommy’s age? She’d have told him to stop being such a rebel, told him he’d never get his degree if he had a criminal record for trespassing on private property (even though it’s literally called National Rail), said nothing of the risks and how much he knew them. Now?
Well, there’s not much else a man his age is doing on the train tracks, is there?
“I always thought I wish I knew guitar, you know. I only played piano. Can’t exactly lug a great big keyboard out the window with you - but you could bring your guitar. Serenade the neighbours and all that.”
“Sounds like a good mental image.”
“In theory. I think in practice you’d just drop it, and then your dad comes out yelling at you for being reckless. Maybe a ukulele.”
“Maybe.” He’s too big for the windowsill, too, he thinks. A balcony, perhaps.
“It was nice. That was a good summer.”
Tommy is quiet after that. The air is getting warmer - the wind died down, for the most part, a couple of minutes ago. His hat’s safe on his head again, hiding the fucking mess that it is. He’s not showered in a good few days. He didn’t think he’d have to look presentable.
“I miss it,” the boy continues.
“Miss what?”
“Home.”
“What’s wrong with home? Why can’t you go back?”
“Don’t have the keys,” he says, in a way that must be a joke, surely - but the tone of it, the bitterness -
“What happened?”
“Don’t worry about it,” smiles Tommy, frailly, as if spun on a single strand of sugar, easily snapped and dissolved. “Not your problem.”
“And mine are yours?”
“Sort of.”
Wilbur squints up at the sky. The sun’s trying again. The cloud cover’s mostly passed - now white fights blue instead of grey. He can see the contrails of planes criss-crossing in the atmosphere. Everybody’s on their way to something.
The tracks start humming and his heart lights up. At last, he looks back over at Tommy, who’s looking straight back, something uncategorisable in his eyes. They’re blue, bright blue. Blue like the strips of sky that have freed themselves from cloudcover, blue like the wrapper on his microwave was for years before someone peeled it off, made it boring silver, indistinguishable. Tommy couldn’t stand out more, and the floor’s humming.
“This is what we were waiting for,” Wilbur says, quiet, fighting off a smile, though he’s not sure why.
“What, train noises?”
“It’s coming.”
“And?”
“Stand there. In the middle. With me.” He’s doing mental maths now, trying to work out which direction the shockwave came from, trying to figure out which way to face. Tommy takes a few steps closer, unsure, and Wilbur whirls him by the shoulders, makes him grab the handrail dizzily.
“What are we doing?”
“Just hold on.”
And the vibrations are amplifying, the tracks make a noise a little like what he’d imagine a laser blaster would sound like if he lived in a science fiction movie, an unearthly pew-pew-pew, and for once in his miserable life Wilbur is a child again standing atop the overpass and feeling metal shiver underneath his fingers as the train comes by.
He’s not sure where these tears came from.
He wonders where the people in the train are going.
Eight carriages and then it’s gone. He’s shivered himself cold, now, feels the goosebumps on his arms as sure as he feels the railing below the pads of his fingers, feels his arm hair brush against the fabric of his shirt. Thank god he never got to the skin on his outer arm, god damn, he’s feeling again. The smile, forgotten, parts his lips and hits his ears. The wind presses cold against his teeth and it feels-
It feels.
“How you feeling, big man?”
“Fucking brilliant,” Wilbur murmurs.
“Shall we get moving?”
“Yeah,” he says, breathless, and they do.
And the park’s a lovely one. Out of the way, nice flowers. Tommy and Wilbur occupy the first bench they can find and spend what must be more than an hour talking about the way that Wilbur used to be, his old mates from school he hasn’t kept in touch with but could still recognise on the street or at the shops in half a glance (“We used to call him my son.” “That’s fuckin’ weird.” “You’d get it if you were there!”), the songs he knows on guitar (“Wonderwall? Seriously?” “There’s a reason it’s the one that everybody learns, okay -”), the story behind the keychains on his keys (“Did you really lose your housekeys?” “No.” “So what happened to them?” “Just don’t have ‘em.”). Wilbur picks a daisy and Tommy says hey, d’you know how to make those into chains and Wilbur says I definitely used to and Tommy says well let’s teach you again and he’s tempted to take a picture just to see if his face has really brightened up in the same way it feels like it has, but he’s not got his phone.
It’s at the flat. Factory reset.
“I…”
Tommy looks up. Waits. Quiet, patient.
“Before you showed up. I wasn’t…”
God, can he admit it?
Because admitting it, actually saying it to someone other than himself… well, that’d be dragging them into it. And when there’s more than just him - it’s - it’s not - it’s more than just a number. If Tommy’s involved. It’s people.
He’s people.
And he doesn’t want to be a person.
“Yeah?”
“I said I was on my way to catch a train.”
Tommy nods.
“I lied.”
“You don’t have to -”
“I just fucking,” he exhales all at once, “I’m fucking sick and tired of this city. I’ve been fucking poisoned by it, Tommy, I keep waking up at night and thinking I’m dying, I just - it’s not even dreams, I just wake up and my brain goes this time, this time it’s real. And I’m sick of it. And I quit my job and I gave my shit to charity and I reset my phone and I was gonna -”
I was going to kill myself.
It sounds at once unfathomably ludicrous and impossibly real.
This was much easier when he was just thinking about becoming a statistic.
“Tommy,” he repeats.
“You’re okay, Will. Take your time.”
“I just didn’t want to be here any more. I can’t - fuck - I can’t breathe. I couldn’t - rationalise it, any other way, I couldn’t see it happening.”
“Unless you…?” Tommy gestures in front of them formlessly. Wilbur understands.
“It hurts.”
“I know.”
“It fucking hurts me, Tommy. I can’t be here.”
And Tommy says, “You could move.”
He blinks.
It feels, honestly, like the sun should be coming out from behind a cloud - but at this point it’s already here to stay, only interrupted by wisps of white every few however-big-the-sky-is. Too big, honestly. Too open. Too much opportunity. He could move.
“Are you sure you’re only sixteen?”
“Wise beyond my earthly years, big man,” Tommy quips, with a black serif to it, hanging quietly off the edges of his words.
“You’re smart. Call me back when you grow up. You’re going places, mate, I promise you.”
Tommy looks down. “Thanks, Will.”
And then they sit in quiet, for a while. The wind’s picking back up, a little, so Wilbur pulls the beanie down harder on his head, much to Tommy’s delight and mockery.
When the light shifts, Tommy slaps his hands down on his thighs, very Englishly, and says, “Right.”
“You gotta go? You gonna get in trouble for skiving if you don’t go back wherever you came from?”
“Something like. Was lovely meeting you, though. I’d come back around if I could.”
“Why can’t you? Give me your contact, I’ll get in touch.”
“No, no, it’s nice of you… Can’t. Sorry. Good to save you, though. Speak to you. Was my first - I mean, I haven’t had much of a chance to - not yet, at least - I think it went - it was nice.”
He stares at Wilbur, as if any of what he’s just said made any sense. “Thanks.”
“No problem, no problem at all, big man, happy to help! You know the way home from here?”
“I reckon I can backtrace.” He stands, takes a few steps towards the gate they came through, peers over it and back towards the street they’d walked down, still empty in the middle of a school day. “Because I can find the overpass again,” something flutters behind him, maybe a pigeon, “and then it was basically -” he looks back “- just -”
Tommy’s gone.
“Oh.”
Well. Way back to the flat.
Niki’s in the doorway when he gets back. He’d actually considered leaving his keys on the bed, too, so this would have been a bit of a lifesaver if he hadn’t brought them - but he’s clicking the key into the lock when it opens of his own volition and suddenly she’s there, staring at him, bag of laundry under one arm.
“Hello,” they both say, unnervingly in sync, and then -
“I wondered if you wanted to -”
“I’m moving out soon, by the -”
“Oh,” Niki says, and her face falls a little.
“Wanted to?”
“Get coffee some time. I don’t hear you leave the house a lot.”
“I quit my job,” he offers, by way of shitty explanation.
“Are you happier now?”
“Never better. Coffee would be great.”
“I’ll - I don’t have your number, can I -”
“Knock. Any time. But I’m moving.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Nice talking to you.”
“You too.”
He heads back upstairs. The sun is bright outside his window; the sky is open. And he feels, not insignificantly, like a person.