Grow Up (14 page)

30

The cottage owned by Amanda Forthwart's parents is called Chinkapin Farm. It is large and squat and painted a colour somewhere between pink and orange. The front is covered with trellises of ivy.

People are stood in circles smoking and drinking from cans of beer. The doors and windows of the house are wide open. I do not recognise many people. I cannot see Georgia Treely.

Inside, the carpets have already been marbled with mud and splashes of beer and cigarette butts. There are people on the sofas and crosslegged on the floor.

‘Let's go upstairs,' I say to Jonah. I pull him away from Susan and Jenna. If I cannot have sex with her then I do not want to be near her.

Upstairs, we find a guest bedroom with floral wallpaper. The only person in it is a blonde girl passed out on the bed. We sit on the carpet and start up the small gas stove for cooking ket on.

Once the liquid is powder, we rack up lines on a Danielle Steel paperback that was on a shelf in the room. We take two up each nostril then lie back. The drips run like slug wakes down my throat.

‘Jasper?' Jonah says.

‘Yea.'

‘Earlier, I was feeling funny because I was thinking.'

‘Yea.'

I can hear his voice but I don't really understand the words. I light a cigarette and look at the lines through my hands.

‘I was just thinking how next year is our last year, right? And after that, we leave this town. And, I mean, I fucking hate this place but we've been here for, like, for ever.'

‘Jonah?'

He pushes his hands against his eyes.

‘Yea.'

‘Are you scared?'

‘No,' he says, looking at the girl on the bed. ‘Fuck off.'

‘Yes, you are,' I assure him. Everyone is scared.

‘Don't be a queer.'

‘I'm scared,' I say. I am being honest.

‘You are?'

‘Yea.' I light a cigarette. ‘Fuck the army, let's move to France. We can steal food and fuck girls from villages. Or we can go to Canada and find a log cabin by a lake and fill it with wine and sluts.'

‘Jasper,' he says, ‘I'm going to join the army. Now is for fucking about, later is for doing something. You can't fuck around for ever.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because if you try, you'll end up like Tenaya's parents.'

I look at my hands. All the lines swim.

‘Okay,' I say.

‘You want another line?'

‘Sure.'

‘Then we should go back down.'

‘Okay. I am going to seduce Georgia Treely.'

Jonah laughs.

After more lines, we do not go downstairs. We lie on our backs and stare at the ceiling. The plaster has been scraped into small waves. A modest chandelier hangs over our heads, kicking at the last of the light running in through a single window.

The blonde girl wakes up and ruffles her hair and flops of the bed. She stares at us with glassy, far away eyes with nothing in them.

‘You want a line?' Jonah says.

She nods.

I wonder who she is. I wonder if she ever lies in bed slapping her own face just to make sure she still can. I wonder what she sees in her head when she tries to think of what comes next.

I make a line up for her and she snorts it. She passes out again, this time over Jonah's lap. He pushes her off his trousers and onto the floor.

‘Let's go back down,' Jonah says.

Ping, Tenaya and Ana have arrived. Ping is sat by the television with Tenaya, Ana and six or seven other kids sat around him. He is holding a black metal cream-charger and cracking silver bullet-shaped canisters into brightly coloured glitter balloons.

Nos balloons are religious experiences. They pull you right out your place on Earth and put you right into nowhere. You stop having hands or feet or a head. Everything echoes. Everything echoes. Everything happens extremely slowly and jerkily, as though you're watching a video on YouTube using a dial-up connection. They only last half a minute or something.

You can buy a nos charger and whippits off the Internet for not very much. It is called ‘hippie crack' sometimes.

I sit myself next to Tenaya. Her eyes are wet again. Maybe someone else has died. Maybe someone else has run off the edge of the planet. Tenaya is a very emotional human being. All human beings are very emotional. I am very emotional but I do not show it because if I do then people will think I am weak and they will mug me, emotionally.

‘Hi,' Tenaya says.

‘What's wrong?' I ask.

‘I haven't had nos in a long time.'

‘What's wrong?' I repeat.

Tenaya points over her shoulder. Through the open door I can see Tom smoking outside next to a girl in a purple dress. They are holding hands. The girl is not wearing any shoes.

‘That's my dress,' Tenaya says.

‘Prick,' I say.

‘Yea.'

I put my hand in Tenaya's hair and ruffle it affectionately. I am making her feel better.

‘Get off, Jasper.'

‘Okay.'

Ping passes us both balloons. Someone plays the song ‘Grow Up and Blow Away' by Metric. Music is a very important part of nos. It gives you a ledge to watch things from. The song plays loud.

If this is the life

Why does it feel so good to die today?

Blue to gray

Grow up and blow away...

Ping counts up to three. On three, we all blow out then put the balloon necks into our mouths and begin inhaling and exhaling the pleasant-tasting gas. I can see Tenaya to my left. Her eyes are shut. Soon I can't see anything.

Everything I see and hear is reduced to a serious of blurred circles, rotating over and over. The song slows into heavy ambience. Other sounds sway and replicate and jump apart.

The words of the song slow until they are still and sat in the air in front of me. Grow Up and Blow Away. I'm sat in the
o
of Grow. I'm swinging my legs. I climb through all the words in the chorus.

Tenaya's laughing but her eyes are still red. Things are focusing. There is laughter everywhere. Everyone has jumped up and is hugging and cheering like we have just fought a war and won.

31

Feeling fine. 1:30 a.m. I am stood in the kitchen talking to a girl who believes in angels. She tells me that my aura is blue. I tell her that she doesn't appear to have one. Ping appears. He grabs my arm and tells me to come with him into the cupboard under the stairs. He tells me I will need a beer.

The cupboard smells of damp. It is totally dark because Ping shut the door. I hold down buttons on my phone in order to extract light from it.

‘Are you going to try and kiss me?' I say.

‘Fuck off.'

‘What then?'

‘It's about Abby Hall,' Ping says. He sips from his beer. ‘About her baby.'

I spit out the beer in my mouth like a bad actor.

‘How the fuck do you know about that?

‘Abby told Ana.'

‘What the fuck did she tell Ana for?'

‘Girl's don't seem to like Ana. She has to take all the friends she can get. Anyway, do you want the news or what?'

Something small dies in my stomach. ‘I don't know.'

‘You do.'

I down the beer. ‘Okay.'

‘It's Ben McKay's.'

I scream with laughter. Confetti. This is brilliant. This is the best possible way things could ever have turned out. I compose myself.

‘What? When?'

‘At Carrie Waterman's.'

‘But Abbie's grounded,' I say. ‘How did she go?'

‘Right,' Ping says. ‘But Ben McKay told her that he loved her so she sneaked out to see him.'

I laugh loudly, again.

‘Why did he say that?'

‘He heard she was easy.'

‘She is.'

‘Jasper?'

‘Yea.'

‘Why didn't you say anything?'

‘I don't know. I didn't want to think about it.'

‘Okay.'

‘Did you fuck Ana yet?'

‘No.'

‘Oh.'

‘I'm starting not to mind.'

‘Really?'

‘Yea.'

‘Weird.'

‘Yea.'

‘Let's go back out.'

‘Okay.'

32

I am starting to feel sick. Where is Georgia Treely? I am a very drunk human being. The Georgia Plan. I am not going to be a Dad. 2:35 a.m. I have not seen Tenaya in one or two hours. I decide to look for her.

She is not in the kitchen, the kitchen cupboards, the sofa cushions, the television, or any of the upstairs bedrooms. People are not slumped and sleeping in heaps and on floors yet. People are still drinking and doing sex with each other. The house is still full of loud.

Tenaya is probably outside.

I go to sit in the bathroom. I sit on the toilet seat and stare at my hands. The lines dance. The creases across my fingers spasm.

A sound from across the room.

The boiler cupboard.

I pull open the doors and find Tenaya crouched in amongst the insulation by the boiler. There is just enough space for me to fit in beside her. It feels like we are in a box of jungle air. She has her iPod in. I take the headphone out of her right ear and put it into my left. Bon Iver. Her eyes are estuaries. At least she is not attacking herself.

We do nothing but sit for a while. I know what she is crying about. I feel sentimental. She is crying about Tom but also what Tom is an example of: failure. We all fail often. We fail each other and we fail ourselves. Mum failed Dad, Keith failed Margaret, Tabitha failed Life, Tom failed Tenaya, Jonah failed around thirty girls. I guess I failed Abby. Sorry, Abby.

After half an hour or so, it starts to rain. Water raps at the wall behind our heads as though it has a bladder the size of a coin and we are sat in the only free toilet cubicle. Persistent, steel rain. The sound of rain mismatches the sauna air between us. It is like a girl screaming because she's cut her knee when you're warm in bed reading
Harry Potter
.

When you feel sad, and then it rains, it is called Pathetic Fallacy. Like in
Macbeth
, when Duncan dies and there is a storm. Pathetic Fallacy in real life is like Nature being insensitive. It makes things worse. For this reason, right now, I do not think Mother Nature should be called Mother Nature any more. It should maybe be called Keith Nature or Tom Nature or Bitch Nature. My glass head has shattered and Tenaya is sad. Mothers do not piss on people when they feel like this, they hug them and curse their enemies.

I pull out my wrap of mephedrone and give us both two corners off of my debit card to make everything better.

I light a cigarette.

Tenaya leans her head against my chest. I can feel the wet from her cheeks seeping into my t-shirt.

‘You okay?' I say.

‘I don't know.' She takes the cigarette out of my hand and draws in from it. ‘Just feel weird.'

‘Yea,' I tell her. ‘I know.'

Tenaya lifts up her head. She stares very squarely into my eyes with her eyes. She is trying to climb into my body somehow. She is going to climb in and hide there.

She leans closer and kisses me.

It is a strange thing to be doing, but not too strange because she doesn't look like Tenaya, she looks like a damp blur. I am not thinking about who she is or what she means, I am just thinking about being close to another human body.

We kiss more. She is a confident kisser.

She pushes open the doors of the boiler cupboard. We move out and over to the empty bathtub. She positions her body inside of it. She is a large foetus in a white plastic womb. Her pants are pulled down and off over her lovely left foot.

I shouldn't.

I lay in between her legs. I make simple and enjoyable motions with my pelvis. Her mouth opens. Her head lifts up and smacks against the taps. I do my best.

Afterwards I sit up and she lies with her head against my chest. I realise there were small pools of water in the bottom of the bathtub. There are maps of water across the fabric of my trousers. Her hair is wet. Wet like a girl that has drowned in the ocean. A tiny girl. And by accident. And only once.

And there are tears in my eyes because, I don't know why. I can feel my hands quivering. My heart is going fast. Her face is still buried in my chest.

And I realise I have done it.

I have chewed my fingernails until they have bled.

I have hanged myself with a rugby sock.

I have murdered my ex-wife.

At least I'm not going to be a Dad any more.

I draw myself out from under her and leave the bathroom.

33

I check the time on my phone. 3:11 a.m. I stare at the wall. I check the time on my phone again. 3:12 a.m. There is a half-full can of beer on top of the television, so I take it. I have done three laps of the house and could not find Georgia Treely. My head will not sit still. Nothing will stay in it. A boy and a girl I do not know are huddled together on the sofa. The girl is making small, high-pitched sounds.

Because I do not want to watch people having sex again, I go outside. The air is cold and black. It hurts my throat. There are people asleep in their cars, wrapped in blankets, spooning.

I follow the path hemmed by bushes out through the fields. There is enough light bouncing off the moon to illuminate the path.

I walk for a while then stop. There are sounds coming from behind a section of the bush. There are clothes and shoes at the edge of the path.

I push my head through the bush. Wow. Tom and his new girlfriend are having sex on the grass. They must be very cold. There are goosepimples all over his bare porcelain buttocks.

Pulling my head out of the bush, I unzip my fly. I aim my penis at one of Tom's shoes and shoot neon yellow piss into it. This makes me feel like justice has been done, sort of. Tenaya would definitely approve.

Where are you, Georgia?

Come to Jasper.

I am an extremely creepy young male.

Further down the path there are more sounds coming from a field on the other side of the bush. They are different kinds of sounds. It sounds like yelping and swearing and mooing. Very intriguing.

I climb through the bush. On the other side of the bush Ping, Jonah and Ana are all naked and running around a group of three cows. Why is everyone getting naked? Ping is holding a large stick and a cow is chasing him. I am laughing.

When Jonah sees me he runs over and encourages me to take off my clothes. I tell him to fuck off. He does not take fuck off for an answer. Jonah and Ana and Ping knock me to the floor and begin pulling off my clothes. I struggle but I'm laughing. I scream that I'm not going to be a Dad. I wonder what they have taken. Jonah and Ping tug at my trousers and Ana pulls my t-shirt up. Soon I'm on the floor in my boxers with the grass scratching my legs. Jonah's about to try to take them off me but then a large mahogany cow comes running right at us.

I get up and run.

We start running up the field, away from the house.

Jonah stops.

‘What?' I say

He points into the distance. I can vaguely make out a hovering light. I do not have very good eyes. I would not be allowed to become a pilot or a professional hunter.

‘It's the fucking farmer,' he says. His voice sounds scared but he's grinning.

‘Listen,' Ping says.

We do.

Barking.

‘He's got dogs.'

Immediately we all turn on the spot and begin running back towards the cows and the cottage. Cows are far less terrifying than an angry farmer with large dogs.

We run blindly in the opposite direction to the yapping dogs. I pause only to pull my jumper out of a cow's mouth.

I do not stop to look for my other clothes.

I do not stop until I am outside the cottage and can barely breathe.

Ana, Ping and Jonah aren't next to me but I'm not worried for them. I'm sure they got away. I'm sure nobody got eaten. I pull the arms of the jumper over my legs. My boxer shorts slouch down out of the head hole.

Inside the living room of the cottage, I pause.

Georgia Treely.

Time for The Georgia Plan. Look sexy. Look confident.

She is sat alone on the sofa, holding her head. Her hair is full of bright clips and slides. It looks like a nest of fireflies. I want to wear her fireflies across my shoulders. I want permission to touch her skin and squeeze her hard and not think about Keith or Tenaya or Tabitha Mowai or Abby Hall for just a few minutes. I stare at her feet and say nothing. The bones in her feet catch shadows from the light of the dull ceiling lamp. The second
Jackass
film is playing on the television.

For courage, I pick a half-empty beer can off the floor and down it. Doing this is called Dutch courage. That is offensive to Dutch people because it implies that they cannot do anything without drinking first.

‘Hello, Georgia Treely,' I say, standing directly in front of her.

‘Oh, Jasper. Hi.' She looks me up and down. ‘Jasper,' she says, ‘why are you wearing a jumper on your legs?'

‘No reason,' I say. I sit down next to her. ‘Are you okay?'

‘Yes. No. I don't know. I feel a bit ill. I think I drank too much. I don't usually drink.'

‘Oh,' I say. ‘I'm sorry.'

I put my hand on her back and move it up and down. I am showing sympathy. Sympathy is seductive.

‘Do you want something to make you feel better?'

‘Not drugs, I don't take drugs.'

‘Not drugs, no. Well, sort of drugs, yes, but legal drugs. So, like coffee really.'

‘My mum drinks coffee.'

‘Great. Come on, let's go upstairs for coffee.'

I take her hand and lead her upstairs.

Upstairs, in the guest bedroom, me and Georgia Treely have rather large coffees. I assure her that people always have coffees this large.

Georgia Treely stares at the wall for a while. I imagine her head must be fizzing, because this is her first time taking anything.

I tell her that I stare at her in Psychology and that I tried to talk to her on Facebook chat but she wasn't there. She nods at me. She touches my hand. This is the first time she has done drugs. She is going to think she is in love with me.

‘I love you, Jasper,' she says.

Is this okay? It seems a bit bad. Slightly unethical. Slightly rapey, maybe.

I conduct a very brief moral trial in my head. I use the characters from
Animal Farm
.

Pig: I strongly object. This is hideous. Doing this would be like pissing into a bone china Ming dynasty vase.

Dog: Objection, you are victimising the defendant.

Pig: Objection, only a victim can be victimised.

Rat: Grammatical confuzzlement!

Judge: Irrelevant.

Cow: What is?

Dog: She is pretty fit.

Pig: Very fit, actually.

Judge: Then go for it.

Jasper J. Wolf: Thanks, everyone.

‘I love you, too,' I say.

I stand up and go over to the bed. The passed-out girl is still on it. I lift her up and lay her on the floor. Georgia Treely lies on the bed. I lie on Georgia Treely. I want a nuclear holocaust to leave nothing but me and Georgia Treely intact.

I think it is probably obvious what comes next and how superbly lovely it feels.