Foreword: a note about the contents

It’s what the readers want: Who, What, When. They rarely bother with the Why. Therefore, our paper consists of bingo winners, tower blocks in need of repair, and appeals to help cute kids with leukemia visit Disneyland. We deal in the mundane rhythms of life.

 

So how did I, lowly reporter for a local tabloid, end up getting involved in Joe Harris’s story?

 

Well, did you read the article? That’s mine. Impersonal, I know - any more vanilla and I would have been obliged to supply a free Flake with each copy.

 

The thing is, his parents agreed to do a short interview, so I visited their house that Saturday…and the half hour turned into a surreal sound-bite fest. I learnt nothing about Joe. He was merely a three-letter word, a means through which to sell newspapers…a school mug-shot on top of the stereo, watching me with its crooked grin as I gently questioned his mother. It felt all wrong. I mean, I was due to write an article, by 5p.m, on a kid who had died by his own hand and I had no idea who he was or why he’d done it, and suddenly life felt sad and sickening because the sun was shining in through their window netting, forming strange webbed patterns upon the wall and Joe’s face �" a face that would never feel the sun again �" and I started to wonder what would be left of me when I died; if anyone wrote about me, what would there be to say?

 

I had to see his room.

 

The need for something solid and real was strong; a glimpse inside Joe’s world. I excused myself to the toilet and nipped upstairs. This next revelation could see me sacked or in court, so I’ll tread carefully.

I located Joe’s bedroom by the ancient, peeling Power Rangers stickers on the door; someone had attempted to scrape one of them off, but only managed to rip away some of the picture, revealing that obstinate white linty-residue stuff behind it. Opening the door in a stiffly exaggerated way, preparing for it to creak, I eased my way inside.

There were a few pictures above his bed, ripped ineptly out of newspapers and magazines: Page Three girls, a team poster for Manchester United, a glossy advert of a sleek black Lamborghini. He had a small desk, with a few school exercise books scattered across it; I lifted one, flicked through, but it was new and almost empty. Lowering it back to the desk, I spotted a notebook that had been lying underneath. He’d written his name across the front in jagged block letters. Anxious about spending too long in dangerous territory, I flipped the cover over, saw artwork and writing, flipped the cover back and slipped it into my handbag.

 

I still think I did the right thing, because if I hadn’t borrowed Joe’s notebook then you wouldn’t be reading this now.

 

I was morbidly excited about that book, sensing it would be the key to everything.

I headed back to work and scurried to my desk with it, feeling like one of TV’s many investigative mavericks, the sort who will stop at nothing to get at the Truth.

It was a disappointment; hardly the introspections of a sensitive depressive that I’d anticipated.

You couldn’t class it as a ‘diary’, since none of the scrawled entries were dated and each was just a few lines long. The drawings weren’t art �" they were the bored doodlings of a kid killing time, maybe because he couldn’t be arsed to finish some of his homework.

I tossed it aside in contempt and wrote the aforementioned article, which amounted to little more than an obituary.

 

Work kept piling up for the rest of the day, so it wasn’t until I got home that my thoughts returned to Joe’s crappy little notebook. My mind sneered involuntarily: the kid wasn’t ‘deep’. He was still a blank for me.

 

I skimmed through it again, and then again, perhaps hoping to prove wrong that sneering intellectual-snob part of me. Joe Harris was a contemporary stereotype, my mind lectured, an adolescent waster; a twenty first century good-for-nothing. Hold on though, I countered. If that’s the case then why write anything at all? Why kill himself when he could have spent the next thirty years addled out of his brain on lager, weed and pasties? There must have been something more going on in his head.

 

The whole situation was bugging me. Talking to Joe’s parents had made it clear that they didn’t have a clue what happened, so I decided that his friends, who were given a brief mention in the diary, might be able to fill me in.

 

Yes, I abused my position as a journalist for a second time: phoned in sick on Monday; phoned Joe’s school. The only teacher available to talk to me was a Stephanie Mitchell, who had taught Joe English for three years.

 

“You understand that you won’t be able to publish them?” she said, when I’d told her my plan.

“Yeah, sure - of course. I just want to read them, for my own sanity. I need to feel like I knew Joe, to understand what was in his head and why any of this happened. You know?”

“Yes,” she said softly.

 

It was clear that Joe’s death had upset her. I think that’s why she agreed to do the diaries; I coaxed a little emotion into my voice, made it clear I was on Joe’s side. We’re pretty manipulative, journalists - even ones who just work on their local rag.

 

It was two weeks before I had a phone-call from Stephanie Mitchell. Under the hasty guise of a ‘philosophical writing and personal expression’ module, she had got Joe’s class to each keep a diary. She reluctantly allowed me to make copies and take them home. What follows is a compilation of the diaries I selected, the ones that provided me with some kind of ‘Joe angle’. I’ve played around with them a little, cut and pasted, made the writing legible and done my best with the grammar. I keep it hidden away on my bookshelf.

If you are reading this, assume that I too am dead.

 

We will never have the complete story. It’s a shame.