Grow Up (10 page)

18

Before the exhumation I drew a penis on back of Tenaya's balaclava in Tipp-Ex so that, if we were seen, people would report a penis balaclava to the police and they would find it in Tenaya's possession and she would be arrested and I would go free. Unfortunately, she noticed before she put it on and insisted we swap, so now I am exhuming Keith's ex-wife with a crude white phallus drawn on the back of my head.

We have been digging for around half an hour at the suspicious mound using only our hands. Tenaya hasn't been doing much because she doesn't want dirt in her nails. I told her that this was a matter of life or death but she didn't believe me. The sun is full up and the sky over our heads is clear blue, as clear as the skin on Georgia Treely's cheeks. In order to brace myself for the horror that waits, I have been picturing Georgia Treely winking at me in a yellow bikini. The family who live at the house will wake up soon. We still haven't found anything.

‘I think we should go,' Tenaya says.

‘Do you want my mum to die?'

‘I don't think your mum is going to die, Jasper.'

‘People didn't think Martin Luther King was going to die, either,' I explain. Tenaya sighs hard.

I keep scooping dirt up with my hands. All I find is a Pog with a picture of Taz the Tasmanian Devil on it. I put the Pog in my pocket and keep digging, my hands turning the colour of chow mein. After a couple of minutes Tenaya pulls me down onto the dirt so we are both laid flat on our stomachs.

‘What the fuck did you do that for?' I ask.

‘I saw someone move in the house.'

‘Then why didn't we run? How is lying in their garden going to help?'

I notice that a small pebble is pushing against my crotch and I move my hand down to pull it away.

‘Jasper, what are you doing?'

A girl dressed in pyjamas covered with small cartoon elephants steps out of the house into the garden. She doesn't see us straight away. The pebble is still pushing against my penis and left testicle. The girl removes a cigarette from behind her ear and lights it. The girl sees us.

Tenaya is the first to stand up. She removes her balaclava. I leave mine on.

‘Thank you for not screaming,' Tenaya says.

‘What the fuck are you doing?' The girl says, quieter than expected. The cigarette stays in her hand, fast turning to a cylinder of ash. Neither of us say anything. My groin hurts so I rearrange my penis with my hand through my trousers. ‘Can you stop touching your cock, please?' the girl says. ‘And take off that fucking balaclava.'

I take off the fucking balaclava.

‘Sorry,' Tenaya says. ‘We were looking for our cat.'

‘With balaclavas?'

‘Human faces scare Rupert.' The girl stares at us. ‘We are going to leave now.'

The girl nods. Her face is red. Her face is an exploded can of tomato soup.

Me and Tenaya turn, run and vault back over the fence at the end of the garden. We run until we are three streets away and then we stop to pant. I roll and light a cigarette. Tenaya takes my tobacco and does the same. We sit on a low brick wall.

‘Rupert is a shit name for a cat,' I say.

‘It was a better excuse than rubbing your dick.'

A bald-headed man hand-in-hand with his small ginger son passes us with a funny look spread across his face like an ugly oriental fan.

‘Do you think she'll tell her parents?' I ask.

‘No.' Tenaya shakes her head. ‘She woke up early and went outside to smoke. It would be easier to say nothing than to try and explain that.'

Once we have regained our breath and finished our cigarettes, we walk back to my house for breakfast. Mum and Keith have already left for work so we do not have to make excuses. We sit at the kitchen table with bowls of Cheerios and mugs of tea. I use my Harry Potter mug and Tenaya uses Mum's ‘Best Mum in the World' mug. I did not buy the mug for my mum. Keith bought it and wrapped it up and gave it to me to give to her on her birthday. He did this because he knows that I am selfish but he does not want Mum to know this because it will make her unhappy, and if she is unhappy she will maybe leave him and he will not get to murder her. He does not want to miss out on murdering her. For Keith, murder is even better than anal sex.

‘It didn't work,' Tenaya says.

‘Yea,' I say. A stream of milk runs down my chin, swallowing the small hairs like poverty-stricken children in a tsunami. ‘I feel bad.'

‘We should revise.'

I do not want to leave Tenaya alone, especially after a failed exhumation, especially in the company of textbooks. ‘We could go to the party tonight.' Her arms will thank me.

‘No, we need to revise.'

‘Do you remember last time we went up the hill?'

Tenaya laughs.

The last time we went up the hill was back when we enjoyed setting things on fire. We would wander around the emptiest suburbs, looking for old sheds and houses. Both of us were excited when we found the shed on the hill. It was locked so we just stuffed newspaper balls in its gaps and cracks then lit them with matches and sat back toasting with beers.

It is exciting watching the shed dissolve into tangerine plumes that flood the dappled green forest light. I can see the reflected orange in Tenaya's eyes. The fire warms the glass of our beer bottles.

Then screaming.

And scratching.

A very desperate scratching, coming from inside the shed.

A man runs out of the building. It is difficult to examine him because parts of his body are on fire, like his trousers and hair for example. His mouth is open. I can see that his teeth are small ivory stubs, laced with black pits and yellow scabs like the heroin addicts Mrs Thorne used to play DVDs of in PSHE.

‘Fuck!' Tenaya screams. I feel a surge of gratitude that she has not adopted her mother's penchant for the beautification of curse words. ‘Fucking do something, Jasper.'

I look at Tenaya and then at the ground and then at the burning man, who is now very close to us and rolling around like a long thin cheese without a hill. I look at Tenaya. I look at the man. I should do something. I feel scared and apprehensive because the man might try to stab me with one of his needles, which could cause me to contract HIV which could in turn cause AIDS which could in turn cause death. I look at the building. I look at Tenaya.

‘WHAT THE FUCK?!' she screams, staring at me expectantly. I always let people down. I am very selfish.

I stand over the man, clutching my small, shrivelled penis and showering him with urine until he kicks my shin hard, which makes me want to kick him back. I kick him back. My instinctive act of retaliation is followed immediately by a swell of guilt because he is still on fire and I am not. His eyes are bigger than any eyes I have ever seen before.

I keep pissing because, as Mum says, he will thank me one day.

‘You were lucky he didn't punch you in the dick,' Tenaya says.

I pick up our mugs and carry them over to the sink.

‘Yea,' I say. ‘So we're going to the party?'

Tenaya sighs again. She sighs often. ‘Fine.'

I am the saviour of adolescent arms.

I leave a Post-It note on the fridge.

Not back tonight, Mum. Have fun.

With love,

your favourite son

(Jasper)

19

4:06 p.m. We are stood outside Ping's house, knocking on the white plastic door. His mum answers. She is wearing a Led Zeppelin t-shirt and her lips are painted the colour of pink glowsticks. Ping's mum is extremely sexually attractive. I consider winking at her. I decide not to wink.

We ask if Ping is in and she tells us he's in bed and we can just go straight up. As we walk past, I make sure to graze her nipple with my shoulder. I apologise and she smiles. I would like to have sex with her very much. If Ping's mum was a prostitute then I would commit credit-card fraud in order to raise enough money to buy sex with her.

Upstairs, we file into Ping's bedroom and begin jumping on his sleeping body and making loud, meaningless sounds. We continue this until he starts shouting ‘Fuck off' and slapping our grinning faces. Eventually he pulls himself into a sitting position on the bed.

‘What time is it?' he says. His voice is blurry from sleep.

‘Four.'

‘Four?' he repeats. ‘Then what the fuck did you wake me up for?'

After saying this he tugs the duvet back over his head. Me and Tenaya punch him through it until he sits up again.

‘We have to go get Jonah,' Tenaya says. ‘Then get up the hill.'

‘It still won't take that long.'

‘Jonah doesn't want to drive in the dark again.'

Ping laughs.

‘Such a pussy,' he says, shifting out of bed. He stands up beside us in his boxer shorts and scratches his head. ‘Okay,' he says. ‘Okay.'

We watch while he finds jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie, then we all go downstairs. Ping takes a slice of toast out of his mother's hand, kisses her cheek and we leave.

The walk to Jonah's isn't long but Ping uses it to try out several new Abby Hall jokes he seems to have come up with.

‘Hey, Jasper, what was it like fucking a girl with Stonehenge for a face?' he says as we turn into Jonah's road. Even Tenaya laughs.

Jonah's parents are at work so he lets us in. We join him sitting on the sofa, watching
Celebrity Big Brother
. We try to guess who the celebrities are. I tell Ping his Mum is fit enough to be a celebrity and he punches my arm. Tenaya asks if the black guy is Will Smith. Ping calls her racist.

‘You want beers?' Jonah asks.

We all tell him we do and he goes out to the kitchen. When he comes back we all sit sipping from cans, staring at the television. We all sit staring at other people sat staring at each other.

‘I wish George Bush would go on
Big Brother
,' Ping says.

‘George Bush wouldn't go on
Big Brother
,' Tenaya says.

‘Why not?'

‘Someone would shoot him.'

‘Didn't someone shoot him already?' Jonah asks.

‘No,' I say. ‘I'm quite sure George Bush is still alive.'

‘You'd think someone would have shot him, though. Americans are supposed to be fucking crazy and all they talked about was how much they hated him.'

‘Nobody's shot Obama, either,' says Ping.

‘Everyone loves Obama.'

‘Because he's black. It's not cool to be racist any more.'

I think of my Klan t-shirt and Julia. I must remember to bring up Obama with Julia. Keith called him an uppity wog once.

‘Can we stop talking about America?' Tenaya says.

‘You know Ana's little sister?'

‘Yea.'

‘She's spent so much time watching American TV, she has an American accent.'

My mouth contorts. ‘That's fucked.'

‘Yea.'

‘Hannah Montana's fit, though.'

‘Yea, she is.'

After
Big Brother
all that's on is a repeat of a
Friends
episode that we have all seen six times, so we leave.

We have to go pick up Ana. It's not far. When we get to her street, she's stood in the road shouting at an old woman in a yellow hat. The old woman has a face full of folds and moles and her eyelids are half closed.

‘The house is that way,' she shouts. ‘You stupid fucking woman, go back, stop following me.' Ana is mean.

Ping explains that this woman is Ana's grandmother and also her sole legal guardian. This makes Ana a Nankid.

In the car Ana tells us that her grandfather died six years ago and that sometimes her grandmother puts on his old glasses and just sits crying into them. I tell her what my mum said about women being able to cope when their husbands die. Ana says that's a stupid thing to say.

It's a half-hour drive up to the clearing on top of the hill and we have to stop off on the way to pick up alcohol and cigarettes. By the time we reach it, the sky is dark and Jonah is pissed off.

20

In the clearing on the hill a healthy bonfire is burning. Beside it, someone has hung a plank of wood from a tree with frayed blue string, making a swing. A tall girl I have never seen before is sat on it with her eyes closed and dribble down her chin. Ketamine. Three tents have already been pitched and most kids are sat on blankets or logs in congregations around the fire. A boy from the year below is sat by a bag of firewood, hurling blocks into the flames. Crystal Castles is playing out of a portable iPod speaker.

We greet the people we know and check out the ones we don't. There are a reasonable amount of attractive girls. Georgia Treely is not there but I did not expect her to be. She would not be allowed to go and she would not have much interest in going. She is probably at home, revising with a decidedly unwet vagina and Mahler on low in the background. Georgia Treely likes Mahler very much. Georgia Treely does not like Sam because in business studies once he said that climate change wasn't happening.

We drink beers until everyone decides that they are drunk enough and then we just sit. After a while Jonah turns to me with a confused look across his face.

‘Jasper,' he says, ‘what generation are we?'

I shrug.

‘I don't know. I think, like, Z.'

‘No, it's Y,' Ping says.

‘I thought we were Generation X.'

‘No, you dick,' I say. ‘Generation X was like Van Halen and shit.'

‘I think we should be Generation Bum.'

‘Why the fuck should we be Generation Bum?'

‘Because we're the first generation to have cast-off the stigma attached to anal sex.'

‘No, we aren't.'

‘Yea, I'm not going near anyone's ass.'

‘Fine, then we're Generation Twat.'

‘You're Generation Twat.'

‘Whatever the generation is, I don't think we're much part of it.'

‘What? Why?'

‘Exactly what percentage of the world's population do you think are middle-class white kids?'

‘It's the rich kids that make the generation, you idiot, of course we are.'

‘Yea, otherwise Generation X wouldn't have been named after a punk band. It would have been like Generation Malaria or something.'

‘Generation X wasn't named after the band, it was named after that book.'

‘No, it wasn't, that book was fucking gash. It's named after the band.'

‘My mum says we're the Facebook Generation,' Ping says.

‘Argh, I would love to fuck your mum.'

Ping raises his middle finger.

Everyone laughs.

An hour later and Jonah is explaining about this thing they do in Eastern Europe for midsummer. He says that they build bonfires and take turns jumping over them, and each time someone jumps over they throw on more wood. He says we should try it. We are all drunk. We agree.

Jonah says that he will work out the order using the random number generator on his phone. I sit next to him. Really he just writes down the order he thinks will be funniest. It goes like this:

Jonah

Me

Ping

Tenaya

Ana

He grins at me then reads out the order. Ping protests Ana's placement but Jonah tells him that God has spoken.

Me and Jonah jump the fire easy. Before Ping goes to jump, Jonah empties the entire bag of firewood onto the fire. The kids from Baccant High are staring at us. Ping pushes Jonah. They are going to start arguing but then someone runs in between them, madly twitching.

‘FUCKFUCKFUCKING HELP ME,' he shouts. ‘WATER. BEER. ANYTHING COLD. HELP. FUCK.'

‘What the fuck's wrong?' Tenaya says.

‘NETTLESFUCKINGNETTLES. FELLORWASPUSHED INTO THEM. FUCKING HELP. HELP.'

His face looks like tiger bread. I like tiger bread. There are long red mountain ranges across his skin.

Jonah throws an empty beer can at his head. He staggers away, trying to shake off the sting.

Tenaya tuts.

‘Shouldn't we have helped?'

‘No,' Jonah says. ‘That kid's a twat.'

‘You didn't know him.'

‘I could tell by his face. Anyway, if he wasn't a twat then why would someone push him into nettles?'

‘Because they were a twat?'

‘You're a twat.'