Grow Up

by Ben Brooks

  We wish you the best of luck with your gestation and look forward to seeing you in March!

  Ramad Chankrih

  Head of Babies and Drugs and Stuff at the hospital on London Road

  Tenaya laughs and some tea dribbles out of her nostril.

  ‘Nobody would believe a doctor said that,’ she says. ‘Defective genes and chromosomal abnormalities are not caused by heavy drug use.’

  ‘Her parents don’t know that.’

  ‘Of course they do. I know that.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Doctors don’t use exclamation marks.’

  ‘Enthusiastic doctors do.’

  ‘You wrote the phrase “elasticity of your labia”, Jasper.’ She raises her eyebrows. ‘Nobody would believe a doctor said that.’

  ‘Yes, they would, it’s scientific phrasing.’

  Tenaya picks up the letter and proceeds to read from it, laughing.

  ‘“Ramad Chankrih, Head of Babies and Drugs and Stuff at the hospital on London Road”. And that?’

  ‘It’s layman’s terms. If I wrote Head of Paediatrics and Substance Abuse then her parents might not understand. I would like them to be very clear about what the implications of this letter are.’

  Tenaya scribbles ink over the crest on her pack of Benson and Hedges. She presses it onto the top right-hand corner of the letter so that an inky coat of arms is left. She assures me that this has added to the letter’s apparent authenticity. We pay for our tea and leave.

  At home, Mum and Keith are sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee. I make a cup of tea and start to walk upstairs but Keith begins to talk.

  ‘Hello, sport,’ he says. I believe that he has learned this name from watching American television. ‘Me and your mum were thinking about us all going on a holiday. What do you think?’

  ‘Sounds nice.’

  (He is going to murder us both in a Third World country where the police force are corrupt and he can bribe them to ‘turn the other cheek’.)

  ‘How would you feel about Lanzarote?’

  (Jesus said to ‘turn the other cheek’. Jesus is Keith’s partner in crime.)

  ‘Ping went two years ago and he said it was nice.’

  (Lots of barren land, he said. Perfect for burying bodies.)

  ‘You have the Psychology trip this weekend, don’t you?’ Mum asks.

  ‘Yes, Friday and Saturday. It is in Plymouth. We are going to meet murderers.’

  ‘That sounds exciting,’ Keith says.

  I have already met Keith, who is a murderer, and what I can tell you about murderers as ascertained from him is that they can blend in. Murderers can be social chameleons. You have to have a wealth of empirical evidence in order to get a conviction. This means that meeting murderers will probably not be particularly exciting because they will attempt to appear as normal, pro-social citizens.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Very exciting.’

  I torrent a film noir on my computer then put the letter to Abby in a manila envelope. I got her address from the phone book because I know that her dad’s name is Amadeus. When I take it to the post office, I wonder briefly what happens if front-desk postal employees are handed letters addressed to themselves. It is probably Royal Mail policy that they still put them into the system but I suspect that they secretly take them home. I do not think about it for very long because I am eager to go home and masturbate.

  Inside of my room, the film noir has finished downloading. I do not watch it because, right now, my penis is a pent-up volcano or an old dam or a chubby cloud or a melting bar of bounty.

  I go to www.girlsoncam.com, enter my nickname as ‘Dr Dong7’ and begin a conversation with TghtYngPssy.

  TghtYngPssy: hello

  You: hi

  TghtYngPssy: i don’t want money

  I feel affronted and flaccid. The girl looks young and is wearing a Mickey Mouse jumper. Her legs are bare.

  You: okay

  TghtYngPussy: what do you do?

  You: i go to school

  I am surprised by my own honesty.

  TghtYngPussy: i used to go to school. i had to leave

  You: why?

  TghtYngPussy: money, we needed money. you can get money by putting things in your bum on the internet

  You: um

  You: then shouldn’t you be trying to elicit money from me?

  TghtYngPussy: it doesn’t matter. whether you pay or not, i will still have to spend every day in front of this computer

  She lights a cigarette. Her eyes are like the eyes of an elderly cat.

  TghtYngPussy: what would you like me to do?

  You: i don’t mind, it’s up to you

  TghtYngPussy removes her vermillion thong. This is an unprecedented first. Girls never remove their underwear in public chat. Then she just sits there, dragging on her cigarette, thighs parted like the red sea. I am Moses.

  I pull one of Keith’s golf socks over my penis. I have taken to using them in revenge. I am covertly avenging the death of Margaret Clamwell through guerrilla masturbation.

  After four minutes the sock is full and I empty.

  TghtYngPussy: are you finished?

  You: yes, thank you

  TghtYngPussy: it’s okay. will you promise me something?

  You: okay

  TghtYngPussy: please work hard in school

  She logs off.

  This has been disorientating. In order to orientate myself, I write the draft of an email that I will send when I can be sure that Amadeus Hall has read my letter.

 

  RE: Misfortune

  Dear Abby,

  I am writing to congratulate you on your recent acquisition, a foetus!

  Kiera told me yesterday. I am sorry that your parents grounded you and that you will not be able to attend either the Psychology trip on the 12th, or the cottage party on the 22nd. I’m sure there will be other parties when you are not pregnant, and they will be just as fun!

  I would also like to confirm with you that the baby is not mine because we did not have sex. Although I did touch your vagina with my fingers, I feel 95% sure that they were free of semen and so the baby cannot be mine. Please do not tell anyone that I am the father of your baby! If you do, then we will go on Jeremy Kyle and do a DNA test and everyone will know you are a liar. You know what Jeremy thinks of liars. It would be a very humiliating experience for us both (but mainly for you).

  You also have crabs, Abby! You gave them to me! I know this because I watched you itching your groin when we were doing beer bong, which is why you dropped it and got beer over your t-shirt. I tried shaving off my pubic hair and cleaning the infected area with bleach and wirewool but it did not work. After a brief consultation with Dr Sarah Mathers, I was prescribed Permethrin 1% cream, which comes highly recommended!

  Abby, even though you gave me crabs and indirectly made me pubeless and will probably tell your friends that I impregnated you, I hope you have a good summer, and gestation.

  Yours sincerely,

  Jasper J. Wolf

  The purpose of this email is threefold: it will hopefully convince Abby of my innocence in regards the letter; it will exempt me from fatherhood, should it turn out that I have impregnated Abby Hall; and it will make Abby think that she is not suffering the curse of crabs alone. Even though she is.

  I think Abby Hall is suggestible so, like Julia, she will believe the things I tell her.

  I decide not to show the email to Tenaya because she will probably raise ethical objections to it.

  8

  It is 7:09 a.m. Mum is trying to wake me up using her hand. It is on my shoulder. I am irritated because today is Tuesday, the first real day of Study Leave, so I do
not need to wake up at 7:09 a.m.

  ‘No, Mum, it’s Study Leave, I don’t have to get up,’ I explain. I briefly consider using more aggressive dissuasive techniques (swearing).

  ‘Yes, Jasper, you do.’

  ‘I definitely don’t, Mum, please go away.’

  ‘The school called. Just sit up.’

  I sit up. There is sleep dust in my left eye. I only ever get sleep dust in my left eye. Dad used to call it moon crumbs. Sometimes he caught so much of the moon in his sleep that he would be blind in the mornings.

  ‘Did you know a girl called Tabitha Mowai, Jasper?’ Mum asks.

  ‘No, Mum, I did not know a girl called Tabitha Mowai. Am I now free to return to sleep?’

  ‘The school phoned because they want everyone in this morning. There is going to be a memorial service for her. She hanged herself last night.’

  Mum does a thing sometimes where she lets me say insensitive things without me realising that they are insensitive. She waits until I am done speaking to reveal why they are insensitive. I think she gets some secret enjoyment from it. Once, she let me talk for three minutes about how Keith’s nephew didn’t know anything about streets or gangs or drugs (not that I do) and so he shouldn’t say anything about them. Then she told me that Keith’s nephew had lost his brother in a gang fight and that he himself had sustained several bullet wounds, like 50 Cent, or Eminem.

  I wish Mum would marry Eminem. He would rap about how much he loves me. Me and this gun, we’ll always be there for you, son. Very nice.

  She leaves my bedroom without saying anything else. This way I am left quietly alone with my own festering sense of insensitivity.

  I decide to phone Tenaya in order to elicit details about the incident.

  ‘Hello?’ I say.

  ‘Hi. Have the school rung you?’

  Her voice is wet.

  ‘Yes. Why are you crying? Did you know her?’

  ‘No, but it’s sad.’

  ‘People die every day. It’s on the television. You don’t cry every day.’

  ‘This is different. She was from our school.’

  ‘But you didn’t know her. You didn’t even know what she looked like.’

  Tenaya sighs.

  ‘Why did she do it?’ I ask.

  ‘You know why she did it!’ I begin to worry that I may in some way be implicated. ‘She was the baseball-bat girl.’

  I feel relieved because I did not have anything to do with the baseball-bat girl. Scott Jeppersen was the boy responsible for her humiliating rise to fame two weeks ago. She was somehow convinced to find an interesting use for a baseball bat, live on webcam. Of course, Scott Jeppersen, the lone audience member, decided to make use of his video phone. I saw the video because Jonah had it on his phone. It was just grainy porn featuring an abnormally young girl without real breasts. Not that the breasts in porn are real.

  ‘But that was ages ago.’

  ‘No one shut up about it. Someone filled her locker with baseball bats.’

  ‘Did they? That must have been expensive.’ Tenaya doesn’t reply. ‘How did she do it?’

  ‘She hung herself with Scott Jeppersen’s rugby sock, in her garage.’

  ‘That’s interesting. Is a rugby sock long enough to fit around a neck and up a rafter?’

  ‘I’ll see you later, Jasper, goodbye.’

  She hangs up.

  I put on my school trousers and sit on the bed.

  It is strange thinking about how easy it is to end yourself. It is maybe the biggest decision possible to make and it takes so little effort. You do not need to fill out forms or save money or do a course at a local college. To cross imaginary lines drawn over the planet, you need to do more. You need passports and visas and money. But if you want to die, you can just tie a rugby sock around your neck and be gone for ever. And your body will be taken to a crematorium where Uncle Eb will make screaming sounds and Mum will pass out and they will play Leonard Cohen as you turn to ash.

  Scott Jeppersen must be choking on guilt. He is a sort of murderer, but it is worse for him than it was for Keith because he didn’t mean to do it. Scott Jeppersen did not prepare to murder Tabitha Mowai and so he will not be able to blend in like Keith. He will not have read any books about how to do a murder and then act as though you haven’t done a murder. Also, everyone will know that he murdered her and nobody knows that Keith murdered Margaret Clamwell. Except me, and Tenaya. Although Tenaya only counts as 50 per cent knowing because she isn’t entirely convinced.

  Scott is sort of the murderer but everybody who watched the video and thought that it was both very funny and also quite disgusting was an accomplice to the murder. If nobody had watched the video and passed it around then Tabitha Mowai would still be alive probably and I would still be sleeping and Tenaya would not be crying. Tabitha also played a large role, however. Her downfall was brought about by her own tragic flaw: immodesty. In Shakespeare this is called Hamartia. Tabitha’s Hamartia was necessary for her fate but it alone would not have been sufficient.

  I take my trousers and boxer shorts off and walk across the landing to go for a shower. Keith sees me.

  ‘Bloody hell, mate, put some clothes on.’

  I grin at him.

  ‘Sorry, Keith.’

  He grins at me, too. He is probably a paedophile as well as a murderer.

  In the shower I can feel the water dancing on my skin and I know that I am alive. And Tabitha Mowai isn’t alive, even though she could have been. Her parents will say she should have been, but there is no such thing as should. I feel sad for her family and also jealous of her. I am not jealous that she is dead, I am jealous that her curiosity about death has been satisfied. Or has it? I don’t really know. I think when people kill themselves, it isn’t just to escape overwhelming emotional strain. People just let their curiosity about death grow until it is far taller than their overwhelming emotional strain. They probably experience mild excitement straight before they die. Like before you open Christmas presents, or before you have sex with someone you have not had sex with before.

  I wrap a towel around my waist when I leave the bathroom, in case Keith has been hiding in a doorway with his camera. Then I roll a cigarette and leave for school.

  It is not unusual for me to skip eating in the morning. Breakfast is the least important meal of the day for people who smoke.

  The school looks particularly unattractive before the memorial, as though it’s mourning along with all the crying kids who had laughed right through the video a few weeks earlier. The unwashed panes of glass seem to have dressed up in yet more dirt to show respect and the plastic wood floors are shining like sad eyes. Everyone everywhere is silent. Like completely silent, with their heads down and hands in laps. I do not think anyone really understands.

  Teachers say that people (mainly girls and homosexuals) get particularly emotional when anyone dies because it reminds them of loved ones they have ‘lost’. I think people get emotional because it makes them remember that they are going to die one day, which is something people forget very easily. Eventually, this leads people to resort to the rather cavalier philosophy of living each day as though it’s their last. They always forget again after a day or something. In the West, people think that getting drunk is the most fun you can have; this is why it is the activity of choice at wakes. I think sex is more exciting, so if I ever attend a wake I will probably attempt to ‘pick up’ a girl. This will prove easy because the girls will be vulnerable. I will feel only slightly guilty after I cum on their drunk and teary faces.

  I am sat next to Tenaya in the hall, on the uncomfortable blue plastic chairs that all link together in rows as though they are reluctantly holding hands. She is not wearing any make-up and, although I can tell, it doesn’t really make a difference. She is still fairly pretty. Still abo
ut an 8.5. I am a 7.

  Scott Jeppersen comes in. He is crying into a handkerchief that obscures most of his face. As a murderer, he will have to get used to concealing his identity.

  ‘Poor Scott,’ Tenaya says.

  ‘What? You called him a dick last week.’

  ‘He is a dick, but he has a girl’s death on his conscience now.’

  ‘Well, if you are going to share videos of a girl masturbating with sporting goods – ’ Ana Korsakov shoots me an angry look. ‘ – then you can hardly think that the girl will relish the attention.’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think he wanted her to die.’

  ‘Manslaughter, then. Five years. She’s still dead, and it’s still partly his fault.’

  Someone coughs. The Head has ascended the stage, wearing his pinstriped suit and familiar red tie (Mr Hutchinson is a Labour man, some of the other teachers make jokes about this). He is holding a wad of yellow cards with notes on them. I wonder what they say. Probably just the key facts, these are:

  Tabitha Mowai, Afro-Caribbean origin, free school meals.

  Baseball bat masturbation, YouTube.

  Scott Jeppersen, murderer (not the sort that goes to prison).

  There may also be some handy hints for the orator:

  Avoid words that could be seen as puns on baseball e.g. ‘home run’.

  Refer to Jeppersen as ‘the boyfriend’ and not ‘the murderer’.

  Do not blame the students, even though they are to blame.

  Attempt to sound genuine, as though the girl was well known to you. Use the relationship between Professor Dumbledore and Harry Potter as inspiration. Refer to her as ‘an active member of the school community’.

  Lots of people either cry or allow puddles to assemble along the ledges of their eyes. These people are statistically more likely to have not known the girl, or to have known the girl only through watching the video, than they are to have genuinely known her. This feels very strange to me. I do not understand occurrences like this. I think I am a broken human being. I am emotionally paraplegic and the entire school is playing football.