Grow Up (11 page)

21

When the sky is full black, Tenaya sits staring at her hands in the light of the fire. This means her head is probably clouding. She needs to move. I ask her if she wants to walk. She nods very quietly and we both get up. Everyone else is drunk and in conversation or falls of laughter so we are not noticed.

We walk up out of the clearing. The only light is the light from the bonfire. It slips in streaks between the tree trunks. We follow the patterns it makes across the dirt and leaves. When they soften and drop away, I pull my phone out of my pocket and use that as a torch. We walk upwards some more then turn left until we come out at the steep sloped field with the lightning-blacked oak tree. From the tree's low branches we can sit and see all the streetlights and bright windows below. I smoke and Tenaya swings her legs. She kicks her shoes off her feet and into the tall grass.

‘Tom has a girlfriend,' Tenaya says.

She pulls a small bottle of supermarket vodka out of her coat pocket and sips it. She passes it across to me. It tastes of hospitals. I pass it back and we sit quiet for a while.

‘Who is it?' I ask.

‘Lydia Jenkins.'

‘The one in the year above with nine fingers?'

Tenaya laughs.

‘No, the one in the year below who always wears a bandana tied across her head.'

‘Oh,' I say. ‘Her.'

‘I'm not over him really,' she says.

‘I know,' I tell her.

She passes the vodka back across and turns her head towards me. One of the windows turns black. Several others light. I turn to face Tenaya. Her eyelids are low and the sleeves of her coat are pulled down over her knuckles.

‘Soon, we will be old and I will have a bowler hat and you will have a Labrador,' I say. ‘You won't remember his face.'

‘From up here we can see everything,' she says. ‘But we aren't here yet.'

We pass the vodka back and forth for some time, watching the lights below and wondering which ones will one day be ours. I roll us both cigarettes and we sit blowing smoke rings into the harsh air. After a while Tenaya says that she is cold and asks if we can go. She says we can walk. It will take hours but I agree and I take out my phone to use as a torch as we trip back through the trees towards the main road.

The road down the hill is steep and awkward and full of potholes. We stop every now and again to make cigarettes and lie down on our backs. Stood in the road, Tenaya takes my hand and says I don't know.

A car coming down the hill makes sounds like an old asthmatic man. It pulls to a stop beside us. The car is an old Citroën with a curved bonnet and headlights on stalks. A man's head leans out of the open window. The head has white cloud hair with a small skullcap resting over it.

‘Sup?' the head says. ‘Where you kids goin?'

Tenaya looks at me and I nod. We know we should not get into cars like this but we are drunk and also the car smells of pot, which means the man will not be very fast-moving so we can run away if he tries to kill or rape us. Tenaya tells the head her address.

‘Sweet,' the head says. ‘Get in.'

I have to sit in the front passenger seat because one of the back seats has a car engine on it. Once we are in the car, the man lights a joint and begins to drive. He drives silently for a few minutes then turns away from the road and toward me.

‘Wha's your name?' he asks.

‘Jasper,' I say.

‘You ever had a Bar Mitzvah, Jaz?'

‘Jasper,' I say. ‘And no. My parents are Christian.'

‘You had a lucky escape. Sitting there reading that fat bitch of a book in front o' all them kids. You trip up and your parents give you the fuck? eye. S'like you been caught wanking inta that sock all over 'gain. Fucking hell. Don't ever agree to have a Bar Mitzvah. Not that I had a choice.'

‘Shit,' I say. Tenaya vomits giggles from the back. The Jew doesn't notice.

‘Yea, shit. Being a Jew sucks.'

He draws on his joint. His fingers twitch. The Jew isn't watching the road, he is watching his hands. The car swerves gently and the front left wheel catches the kerb, jolting the car. In the mirror I can see Tenaya's mouth open. The Jew jumps and lifts his head back up. He stays silent again for a while.

‘I'm no Jew. Not fo' real. You know what I am?' I shake my head. ‘I'm a disciple of pussy.'

I don't say anything. Tenaya laughs harder.

‘You ever read the Bible, Jaz?'

‘No.'

‘I read the Torah. I read the Bible. I read the Qur'an. Don't read any of 'em, y'ear?'

‘Yea.'

‘They all just God's word after a thousand years of Chinese whispers. Bent-ass Chinese whispers. You ever play Chinese whispers at school, Jaz?'

‘Sure, a few times.'

‘The teacher always starts it wit like a real normal sentence, ya know? Then there's a few kids who hear it perfect good from the kid next to 'em but they think it'll be fuck funny to change it up. Throw in a fuck or a dick or a shit or a bitch, right?'

‘Yea, I remember.'

‘The kids do it to boost their cool. “Yo, you know the kid who dropped the N-bomb into circle time, man, that kid's hot shit.”'

I nod fervently. He passes me the joint.

‘That's the Bible, Jazzy. It's not God's word. It's God's word with a few fucks and dicks and shits slipped in. Except the Bible don't say fuck or dick or shit in. You know what it says?'

I don't answer. I'm chewing the thick air. Marijuana smoke drifts in tiny clouds between our heads.

‘It says, “Women, cover yo' heads an' gays burn in Hell an' don't you dare use them fucking condom, kids, an' what you doin' working the Sabbath, Mum?”'

He watches the ceiling a while. I join him. The ceiling. There are wide brown rings drawn from his cigarettes, stamped into the plaster like the stains of giant teacups. We watch them until the car swerves again.

The Jew gestures for me to hold the wheel while he rolls another joint and lights it. I hear him whisper to himself, ‘Smoke it like iss yo' woman.'

‘Hey, Jazzy.'

‘Yuh.'

‘You want to know what God's word really was?'

‘Yuh.'

‘He say, “Fuck that bitch in the pussyhole, yo'.”'

When we reach Tenaya's house we say thank you to the Jew and he mumbles ‘No Bar Mitzvah' then passes me a joint. He shakes Tenaya's hand and then tries to kiss her but she pulls away. His eyes don't change shape. He is used to being pushed back, I think.

We go straight down to the basement of Tenaya's house and she boils the kettle for tea. Her mum is sat at the table with a bottle of red wine. There are red smudges around her mouth and stains down her blouse in close splotches, like an archipelago after years of war.

She tells Tenaya that her father is a cuntbucket.

She tells me that I am a good kid.

In bed me and Tenaya arrange ourselves with our spines pressed against each other. They don't match well but it feels good. Before falling asleep she tells me that
Waldeinskameit
is the German word for the feeling of being alone in a wood.

22

The walls of this room are the colour of petrol. There is a boy in the corner wearing a wooden necklace and stroking the hair of a girl without a face. Green numbers are scrolling over the floor.

‘You want to be careful of those,' says the boy.

‘Why?'

‘The Matrix,' he says. ‘The fucking Matrix.'

I pick a vase up off the floor and throw it at the wall. It smashes. The pieces scatter across the room.

‘Watch it,' the boy says.

I take a candlestick off the mantelpiece and throw it at the boy. It catches his head. Blood runs down his forehead, along the valleys either side of his nose, into the corners of his mouth.

‘You're fucking mental,' he says. He takes the girl's hand and pulls her into the fireplace. They run into the black.

‘No,' I shout. ‘Stop it.'

I take framed pictures of nothing off the coffee table and throw them into the fireplace. They shrink then disappear. I pull off my trousers and throw them into the fireplace. I throw my jumper and t-shirt and socks in after them.

‘No,' I say. I curl into a ball on the carpet. ‘No.'

There is a black balaclava on the window ledge. A crucifix has been painted onto the back of it. I can see it from my ball. I stand up and pull it on.

I leave the house.

Jonah is in the garden. A field of wheat. A salmon-pink sun the width of the world. He's chopping wood blocks with an axe the size of his arm. There is a half-built log cabin behind him. He does not stop when I approach.

‘What the fuck is that thing?' he says.

‘What thing?'

‘That thing on your head.'

I run my hands up over my head.

‘It's a metaphor,' I say. ‘It shows how I can be surrounded by people and still feel alone and anonymous.'

A block of wood splits in two. The halves fly away from each other like wrong-way-round magnets.

‘Take it off,' Jonah says. ‘You look like a prick. And go back inside. If you stay out here much longer, I'll have to build you a coffin.'

‘I don't like it in the house.'

‘Then get up from the living-room floor.'

I turn around and go back inside. The walls of this room are the colour of tulips. The floor of this room is Astroturf.

In the kitchen, Tenaya climbs out of an oven. She crawls to my feet and stands up. Her face is close to mine.

‘Take it off, Jasper,' she says.

‘No.'

‘Take it off.'

‘No.'

She grabs the balaclava with both hands and pulls. I throw my right hand into her jaw. It cracks. She falls back onto the lino. Half her face is red with blood. She is a bear that has been messily gorging itself on fish. She fits like an epileptic. Her lips are stretched so wide they meet her chin and nose.

‘What are you doing?' she says.

‘I'm participating in a dream scene,' I shout. ‘For my novel. My novel. It will give readers an insight into my inner feelings. It will make the book longer.'

‘What are you doing, Jasper?'

‘A dream scene,' I shout.

‘What are you doing?'

‘Dream,' I shout.

‘Jasper?'

‘Dream.'

‘Jasper?'

Tenaya is sat on the side of her bed, nudging my shoulder with her elbow. Her skin is cold. She's wearing the white summer dress and holding two cups of tea.

‘Morning,' she says.

I paw at my eyes then smile up at her. I want to cry, but I don't.

‘Morning.'

I take the tea she passes to me and pull myself up into a sitting position.

‘Mum's drunk,' she says. ‘She told me that Dad has fucked off and that he's never coming back.'

‘Are you okay?'

‘I've been waiting for him to go. If he goes, Mum won't have anyone to argue with.'

‘She could argue with you.'

‘I'll try to stay away.'

‘Do you think it'll get better?'

‘I don't know.

‘Okay.'

23

It is important to pass these upcoming exams for several reasons:

• So that Mum's face does not become red and her voice does not get loud and she does not stop giving me money to buy beers and drugs.
  
• So that I can do the next year of sixth form and not have to worry about getting a job and participating in life for one more year.
  
• So that I can get into university and not have to worry about getting a job or participating in life for three more years.
  
• So that Georgia Treely will think I am a man who is going places and who will be a good, hardworking father to her children.
  
• So that Tenaya will not hit me.
  

I am in the bath thinking about these things. In my hands there is a Philosophy and Religion textbook. I am reading about how some people believe in God because they had visions of the Virgin Mary. There is a large picture of the Virgin Mary wearing a blue dress and looking quietly pleased. I am bored. The book says that humans can hallucinate due to extreme emotional distress. I wonder if I will hallucinate because of the emotional stress caused by Keith's constant murder-plotting. I hope I hallucinate Georgia Treely masturbating with a toothbrush.

I fold the textbook back on itself so that only the picture of the Virgin Mary is showing and I hold it in one hand. I move down into the water and hold the photograph directly over my head. I move it towards my face until the Virgin Mary's nose is almost touching my nose. The picture shivers in my hand as I masturbate. Afterwards I sit back up and watch my semen floating sadly in islands on the bathwater.

Next the textbook covers the Trinity. There is no wank fodder on these pages so I just read for a while. The Trinity is a diagram of a triangle with The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit written on different corners with ‘THEY ARE ALL ONE!' written in the centre. ‘Haile Selassie' was the name of an Ethiopian Emperor and it means ‘the power of the Trinity'. Rastafarians believe that he was Jesus. They stand on opposite sides of Copson Lane and shout his name at each other. Mum will not walk past them because she believes that if she inhales their secondhand marijuana smoke then she will become addicted to drugs and eventually die of a heroin overdose in a house where the walls are filled with dead mice.

I shampoo and condition my pubic hair, and then my head hair, and then I step out of the bath. I pull a towel around my waist and tuck it into itself so that it will stay there without me holding it. Mum is stood outside the bathroom door with her hands on her hips.

‘Jasper,' she says, ‘you have been in the bath for over an hour.'

‘Mum,' I say, ‘it is illegal to interrogate people who are not wearing any clothes.'

‘What were you doing?'

I wave the Philosophy and Religion textbook in her face.

‘I was revising,' I say. ‘I am going to make you extremely proud, Mum.'

She makes a sound like hmm, then pushes past me into the bathroom.

In my room I download and watch a Serbian film about a man who believes that his wife is a ghost. In one scene they have sex and afterwards he says, ‘For a ghost, baby, you're pretty good,' and then she hits him and leaves the room.

When all the blue in the sky has been soaked up by clouds, I sit at my desk and recommence work on my novel. I make notes about a man who builds a hut in a forest and uses it to rape girls in. When he has raped them he uses a butterknife to chop their bodies into small pieces, which he bakes into sausage rolls and feeds to his schizophrenic mother. I think it is important to write about things like this. It is important because things like this often happen, mainly in America. Usually it is men with moustaches that do things like this, for example Keith.

Possible novel titles:

And The Trees Said Nothing

Get In My Car And You Will Become Famous

Forced In Tree

She Woodknot

Sexual Bat-Tree

I stare at my hands for a while. I think about all the bad things people have ever done. I realise that I am going to have to phone the police and do an anonymous tip-off and tell them about Keith and what he has done. Margaret Clamwell's body was probably buried too deep for me to uncover using only my hands. When the police learn of the body's whereabouts they will dig up the entire garden, twice. I will have to do the tip-off just before I leave for the end-of-exams party at the cottage because if Mum finds out then she will not let me go.

Carrie Waterman is having a house party tomorrow. Tenaya already said she wouldn't go because she had to revise. I decide to phone Jonah and ask if he's going.

He answers after two rings.

‘Sup?' he says.

‘Not much, just bored. You going to that thing tomorrow?'

‘Carrie's?'

‘Yea.'

‘No, Mum says I have to stay in.'

‘What? Why?'

‘Not sure. Pope's on telly, I think.'

‘The Pope? Why do you still care about him? Didn't he like rape kids or something?'

‘No, that was Irish priests.'

‘Catholic ones?'

‘Yea.'

‘Mum says you are who you associate with.'

‘He's apologising.'

‘Apologies never fixed anyone's torn asshole.'

‘Guess not.'

‘So you aren't coming?'

‘Can't, man. Sorry.'

‘It's fine.'

‘Night.'

‘Yea.'

I hang up.

I stare at the exam timetable pinned to the cork board above my desk. It does not look exciting.

I watch old episodes of
QI
on BBC iPlayer. I wish Stephen Fry wasn't gay and my mum could marry him and he could teach me things like how you can hurt someone more when you're wearing boxing gloves than when you aren't. The only thing that Keith has taught me is constant vigilance.

As a way of avoiding revision, I fill out a long questionnaire on Facebook. This is called procrastination.

1. Your ex is on the side of the road, on fire, what do you do?
   can we do that thing where you break up with someone but then have sex again once or maybe twice afterwards please
   
2. Your best friend tells you she's pregnant, what is your reaction?
   you are going to be a very good mother. i believe in you.
   
3. When was the last time you wanted to punch someone in their face?
   this is gay
   
4. Congratulations! You just had a son, what's his name?
   martin Luther king
   
5. Congratulations! You just had a daughter, what's her name?
   simone olive buckettwat
   
6. What are you craving right now?
   an end to institutionalised racism
   
7. What is your favourite sexual position?
   the ‘penis in vagina' position
   
8. Do you like pickles?
   no
   
9. What colour is your crotch?
   hazelnut brown
   
10. What is in your pocket?
    hummus
    
11. Say you were given a pregnancy test right now, would you pass or fail?
    chance would be a fine thing
    
12. Have you ever blocked someone on Facebook before?
    you shouldn't have done that
    
13. Do you know anyone in jail/prison?
    yes. no. sorry, i'm embarrassed. that was really really childish. i don't want to do this any more
    

+

Because I am stressed about the possible repercussions of implicating Keith in the disappearance of the girl, I am suffering insomnia. It is 3:46 a.m. One of the things I do when I can't sleep is to research insomnia and sleep deprivation. Here are some facts about Insomnia:

• There is little to no increase in mortality associated with insomnia. In fact, there seems to be an increase in life expectancy.
  
• Somniphobia is a fear of sleep.
  
• Thai Ngoc is a Vietnamese insomniac who claims to have gone without sleep for thirty-three years.
  
• Sleep deprivation has shown potential as a treatment for depression. Such treatment is called Wake Therapy.
  

I attempted Wake Therapy when I thought I had meningitis but I fell asleep.

It is 3:51 a.m. If I can't sleep by five, then I sit in the dew outside, drink cups of strong, sweet tea and watch the morning. I enjoy being outdoors during mornings and evenings because I find that the sky is much more creative in its use of colour. For instance, grey may be substituted for fuchsia, saffron, salmon or other romantically named hues of red.

I go to www.girlsoncam.com, enter my nickname as ‘Ebonylonghorn' and click ‘enter room'.

You: hi, babe

Candywife: hey, baby, how are you?

You: horny, babe. you?

Candywife: horny for you too, babe. wanna go private?

No.

You: can you show me some of your bod before we go private, babe?

She stretches out over her bed so that I can see her mediocre middle-aged body. The skin around her thighs is bunched up and pockmarked and her stomach hangs down like a thick slab of chicken over her waistline. She is an average model for the milf category.

You: mmmm

Candywife: ;]

Candywife: private now?

I decide that I am bored. I decide to use Wikipedia to unbalance her. I am going to inject confusion into her strange and distant life.

You: what will you do in private?

Candywife: anything you want, bb

You: will you brush your teeth?

Pause.

Candywife: sure, babe, in private

You: can you do it now, please? i don't want to wind up in a plaque show!

Candywife: in private, babe

You: once i paid for a girl to go private and then she wouldn't brush her teeth

Candywife: i'm not like that, babe

You: i don't know that, please

Candywife: fine, fine

Candywife: you had best go private

Candywife crawls grudgingly off her bed. She is wearing lilac underwear and a stained taupe bra. As she moves I can see that her pubic hair remains untamed, extending down the insides of her thighs and up the wrinkled crescent moon of the valley between her buttocks.

After two minutes she returns and bares her pixelated teeth at the webcam. Candywife thinks that she is a wolf in sheep's clothing. She thinks that I am prey.

You: babe, you are supposed to brush for three minutes

Candywife: what?

You: spend one minute on the lower jaw, one on the upper, and the remaining minute can be used to attack the plaque on the reverse side of the teeth, to brush the gums, or to brush the tongue

Pause.

I think about how her father will maybe hit her if she makes no money. I think about how his voice probably sounds like a monsoon of gravel and vodka. Because he does not know what else to do. I do not know what else to do. I am not being very sensitive today.

Candywife: go private

You: you haven't brushed your teeth properly

Candywife: i did what you said

You: i am only looking out for you

You: decay in a tooth can cause a cavity. if the decay continues, infection of the tissue within the pulpal chamber will occur, which will result in necrosis and necrosis, if unabated, can affect the jawbone

You: it's true, i'm reading about it right now

You: on Wikipedia

You: so it's definitely definitely true

You: and if you have a wonky jaw, no one will go private with you

Pause.

Candywife: please go private

I watch my monitor in fascination as a single tear trips down her cheek. She tilts her head down. Candywife has bleached blonde hair with faint copper roots. I wonder if she knows that the sound of crying can trigger ‘the milk ejection reflex' in the mothers of newborns. When I think about this I imagine Mum, just after having me, watching a film with Dad. In the film a baby cries because goblins have surrounded its crib and are dancing. Milk begins to dribble from Mum's nipples and permeate her t-shirt. This makes Dad want to do sex with her but then I start crying so they can't. Sorry, Dad.

You: knock knock

Candywife: what

You: knock knock

Candywife: who's there?

You: disco

Candywife: disco who

You: disconnect

I log off.

It is 4:06 a.m. Fifty-four minutes until the point of no return.

It would be best to work on my novel in the shed. In the shed, I will be able to feel the rapist's motivations better.

I slowly toe my way into the garden, wearing only boxer shorts and a duvet. I am worried that Keith will wake up and kill me with a spade or other blunt garden tool then bury me under the apple tree with Margaret Clamwell and any of his other victims I am yet to find out about. Margaret Clamwell will be undergoing putrefaction at present. This is the second stage of decomposition, characterised by the abdomen turning green due to bacterial activity and a build-up of gases that force liquids and faeces out of the body. I am not prepared for this to happen to me yet. If I see Keith, I will fight him. I will stab him in the eye with my Biro and I will click it repeatedly once I get it in. This is called ‘adding insult to injury'. My email to Abby Hall also falls into this bracket.

Sat under the duvet in the shed, using my phone as a torch, I chew the end of my pen until it resembles roadkill. I can't write. I try to remember and draw as many different Mr Men as I can. I score four. I fall asleep.