That was the rumour going around school. Only we said, Dick Hands is dead, because that was what we all called him. Which, to be fair, was still technically his birth name. I can only assume his parents took one look at the miracle they’d created and had exactly the same thought: I hate this kid. What other explanation can there be for a family of Hands to call their son Richard?
I, myself, had a nice, regular name: Will Simpson. It rolled off the tongue and on through school completely unscathed. I’d be walking to class and hear someone somewhere shout, DICK HANDS, and very quietly thank my parents for thinking things through. By the time some clever bastard thought to swap my S with my W and pronounce me Wimpson, school was long since over. The world didn’t need a name to demean me then. It had other ways.
I liked Dick Hands, and not just for reminding me of my good name fortune, too. He was a good guy, a sweet guy. He was tall and skinny and stood with his body curved to such a point that his shoulders hung over his toes, his stomach concave like he’d had all the hard meanness of him scooped out, his always-on smile pursed-tight. It was clear to me he just needed an in. But I never once offered him one. I didn’t bully him or anything. I don’t think anyone did–Dick Hands was just Dick Hands. It’s just that we never included him either. He’d drift around school and spot our group and wander over and just stand bobbing up and down behind us, laughing along at nothing in particular, until we’d go, Ahhhhh! Dick Hands! And he’d go Ahhhhh! And wave his hands like they were really dicks. Sometimes he’d wave them in a way that’d trick your eyes and make his fingers look floppy. We’d all laugh at that–especially his floppy bit–but then we’d turn away, go back to whatever stupid conversation we were having. We didn’t know what else to do, never stopped to think what we were doing wrong. The next time I’d look up, over the shoulders of my friends, Dick Hands would be gone.
Gone where, I don’t know. I assumed he had a group of his own, although I can’t remember ever seeing him with one. But everyone had a group, didn’t they? How you’d get through school without a friend or two is beyond me. I knew there were kids who didn’t fit in too well. I felt like one of them 99.9% of the time–maybe that’s another reason I’m saying all of this. But there were some for whom the phrase, ‘Struggles to fit in’, was wholly true. Kids whose mums would bribe you with ice lollies to come over to their house and play video games, smiling in desperation, wanting to ask if you’d like another, maybe stay for tea. Until we all grew too old to be bribed with ice lollies unless they were made with vodka and came with cigarettes and more vodka. At that point their kid would be on their own in the world. But even then I assumed those kids found their group sooner or later. I don’t know, maybe I didn’t think about it too hard. Maybe Dick Hands never found his group. He always walked home alone, that I know of. We used to see him waiting at the bus stop on his own. One time he had his hand stuck out to flag the bus down and my friend shouted, ‘Stop flashing the driver, you perv!’ Dick Hands quickly stuffed his hand in his pocket and turned to us, softening his tight smile just enough to help us believe he knew we were joking, but like he forgave us, too. It made me feel disappointed with myself. I stopped laughing and looked away. The old school stood still behind us as we walked on, like it was perfectly fine to be by itself. Its windows were high and lit mostly dust. If you caught a person lingering in its corridors you’d be forgiven for thinking, for just a moment, that they were a ghost. To me, Dick Hands was always one of those ghosts.
The rumour spread from two main groups: the cool girls and the cool boys. It seemed to work its way round both sides of the school in a pincer maneuver until it hit me in last period in Chemistry. ‘Did you hear about Dick Hands?’ a girl loosely associated with the cool girls said, ‘He’s dead.’
‘What the fuck? He’s dead?’
‘Yeah. He’s just dead.’
The whole table leaned in: A shy-ish, bookish, clever girl. A lad from the council estates. The loosely associated girl. They all leaned in with faces fighting a civil war, their downwards brows attacking their grins. There was a beaker in the middle of us just like Spin The Bottle. I wondered who it’d land on next, what they’d say about the life of Dick Hands, and how they’d have to make something up because no one really knew anything about his life besides the name we put on it. I caught my reflection in the beaker and I looked exactly the same as the others.
The council estate lad broke the silence and said: ‘Did he catch the clap in one of his fingers or something?’ and we all laughed through our weird expressions. The sound of our laughter made me feel like I was floating above my own body, looking down from above. We all looked different, all the same. Then a line every kid had unconsciously agreed upon was suddenly crossed and the texts came pinging in, phones vibrating throughout the class.
‘U herd about Dick Hands?’
‘Duck Hands is DAD!!!’
‘DEAD***!!!!’
‘dick handses dick fell off and he died!’
‘…his actual dick!!!!!’
‘TEN CIGS FOR 6 QUID IN HONOUR OF THE DEAD DICK HANDS.’
Davey shouted from the back of the classroom, ‘Ten cigs for 6 quid. Fucking bargain!’ and the whole class laughed and we sounded wild and hollow. The teacher asked Davey to shut up and what was he was talking about and finally clocked on a whole minute later. He asked the clever girl on our table to give him her phone. He read through the texts, told everyone to be quiet and to get back to work, and left the room. And the class really did go quiet, if just for a moment. The silence made me think about what was true and what was so childish it was below even us. About his funeral and if anyone from school would be invited. Or be bold enough to go if they were. I imagined myself there, saying sorry to his parents like you’re supposed to, and felt sick. But talk of the dead Dick Hands quickly resumed.
The walk home that day was different. The grass looked sharp, the trees black, the wind like strange laughter. Outside the school gates, some of the cool boys stood in a line, heads down, as if beside a grave, waving their hands, trying their best to keep up the gag and not laugh. Some kids waved their hands back in solidarity as they passed; for the boy or the joke, I don’t know. I’m not sure anyone truly believed the rumours. But then Dick Hands wasn’t in school, so who was to say what was true or not. I tried not to think about it too hard, let myself be carried home by that strange wind.
That night I spent watching cartoons and re-runs of sitcoms and ate tea and went to bed. But I couldn’t sleep. My mind drifted through school. I found myself thinking up dick jokes to tell the next day. I saw myself perform them in class and everyone laughed. I told dick joke after dick joke and each one killed. My range spanned from foreskin gags to pubic-hair-based non-sequiturs. Ms Appleby gave me a look out of the corner of her eye like she wished I was a few years older and then one like she didn’t care. I rolled out of my half-sleep and grabbed my phone. Typed out my best joke in a message to my best friend. But it wasn’t that funny written down. It was kind of sad.
The shitty jokes ran through my head the next morning as I walked slowly through the corridor towards the school’s assembly hall. But the punchlines stopped when I saw the stunned-silent-crazy faces sitting there. Near the back, the ghost of Dick Hands sat in a chair, smiling tight, drawing all the air in the room towards him.
‘And can we put the rumours surrounding Richard’s whereabouts yesterday to bed, please. He is not dead. He was just at his Grandma’s,’ the Headmaster said.
Everybody twisted round to see the ghost and he softly laughed, ‘Ha, ha. No, I’m not dead, guys. I’m alive. Ha ha.’
His head darted around so quick it was like he was trying to make eye contact with as many people as he could. Then the assembly ended and we all got up to leave, still whispering, and that’s when everyone’s pockets buzzed in sync.
‘TEN CIGS FOR 5 QUID IN HONOUR OF THE RETURN OF THE DEAD DICK HANDS.’
We went nuts. We roared, we cheered, we drummed the metal legs of chairs against the wood floor. I barely smoked. In fact, I bet that deal would’ve truly benefitted less than 1% of us. But that wasn’t the point. A few of the cool kids hoisted Dick Hands up on their shoulders so you could see him floating above everyone else. His form tutor even joined in, a 6ft 3 guy, lifting him way higher, having not seen the text, maybe thinking this was good. Dick Hands kept on quietly saying, ‘Ha, ha. I’m not dead. I’m alive. I’m not dead, guys, ha, ha,’ and I saw teeth through his smile for the first time. I screamed along with the rest of them until he was lowered to the ground and everyone dispersed, the cool kids still shouting as they left the hall in the direction of cheap tobacco, Dick Hands’ teeth disappearing.
I had Chemistry again, last period. Everyone was quiet, heads down, serious about their futures now like the other time in chemistry didn’t happen. The lad on my table asked the teacher to go to the toilet and out of nowhere Davey shouted, ‘HE’S OFF FOR A DICK HANDS CIGGIE, SIR!’ He actually stood up and pointed at the lad. No one laughed. And not just because he ballsed the delivery, stuttering on Dick, but because no one cared anymore. Davey sat down and pretended to understand his textbook. The whole scene made me glad I lacked the confidence to tell one of my own jokes from that sleepless night before. It was over, I thought.
And it was until a few days ago. I was in my kitchen scrolling through Instagram and suckling on a blue-razz vape like an I.V. drip–I’ve ditched the cigarettes. We’re all in our 30s now, school is a ghost itself. I was trying to find the easiest dinner recipe the internet could offer. One that would involve nothing but the few tins and jars I had in my cupboard and yet somehow make me feel like I’d cooked something. It was proving not easy to find.
Scroll.
Scroll.
Scroll.
And there was a familiar face in a picture a girl I knew from school had posted. The face was bearded now but I recognised the tight smile, the scooped posture below it. The girl was his distant cousin, the caption read–I never knew. She was raising money for a run in his honour. She called him Richard. I clicked the link. He had taken his own life. I forgot about my easy dinner, slumped down at my little table, put my phone down. He had a wife, a child. But in my mind, all I saw was Dick Hands smiling at me and laughing softly, saying, ‘I’m not dead, guys,’ and I saw myself turn away a thousand times. I remembered chemistry, last period, like it was last night. I wished the sound of laughter would force me out of my body like it did then, but it just grew inside me. I opened Instagram again. Tapped through all the stories of my school friends, those whose lives I still follow and who still follow mine. But there was nothing else. Maybe they remembered it differently, that he had died in school and this person was a stranger. I didn’t message the girl or post anything, didn’t send a contribution.
Instead I looked at the tins and jars in my open cupboard laid out like the preparations of a pretty shitty survivalist. Soup. Spaghetti hoops. Soup. Hot dogs. I had an idea. To take those hot dogs to Dick Hands’ grave at night. Skewer five of them upright on sticks. Tape those sticks together like a floppy hand. Wedge it into the fresh soil right next to the flowers. Watch it wave in the wind and moonlight and wait for the foxes to come and eat that hand all up. So no one would see my confession. No one but myself and the real ghost of Dick Hands. But I don’t think I’ll even do that. I’m different now, but I’m still the same, still Wimpson.