Grow Up

by Ben Brooks

  ‘We didn’t get to meet the murderer,’ I say sadly. Even though I have already met Keith, I thought it might be useful research to see how he compares to other murderers. ‘I wanted to meet the murderer.’

  Before the trip, Mr Mandalay gave us booklets entitled ‘Serial Killers: A Revision Guide’. In them, he describes a theory called ‘The Triad of Sociopathy’, which suggests that common childhood characteristics of killers are: animal cruelty, an obsession with fire and persistent bedwetting after the age of five. I have tried various ways of eliciting details about Keith’s attitudes toward these things:

  Animal Cruelty

  At a family reunion last year, I kicked Grandma’s dog Missy and whispered to Keith ‘What a bag of shit, right, Keith?’ He smiled at me. Because he enjoyed it. Because he is a murderer.

  An Obsession With Fire

  When Mum lights a fire in the living room, Keith gets angry and says she should have let him do it. He tries to hide his penchant for starting fires by claiming this is simply because ‘Women are shit at that stuff.’

  Bedwetting

  This was difficult. In the end, I had to swallow my pride in the name of research. It tasted of dirt and old sick. When Keith came downstairs one morning, I took him aside for a man-to-semi-man chat. He enjoys these. I confided in him that I had wet the bed and asked whether this was normal for a boy of my age. He assured me that it was fine. Because he persistently wet the bed during his adolescence. Because he is a murderer.

  We all light cigarettes then walk to a bar across from the university. It is called Ezee. There are echoes of soft jazz and silence ringing through. Jonah orders the beers because he is the only person who is eighteen, and we all sit around sipping them.

  ‘What do you want to do tonight?’ Ping says.

  ‘We should stay in, then we can go out on the second night.’

  ‘Why do you want to stay in, blood?’ Jonah has taken to referring to me as ‘blood’ because, conveniently, it is both a lower-class colloquialism for friend and also a nod towards my drunken sex act. ‘Abby isn’t even here.’

  ‘Yea, why isn’t she here?’ Tenaya says, mocking, turning her head round to face me.

  ‘She takes Psychology?’ Ping asks.

  ‘She sits by you,’ I say.

  ‘Sorry, blood. I didn’t notice because I was busy learning while you were having staring competitions with her pussy.’

  Everyone laughs. Ping is not a learner. I am beginning to grow accustomed to these eruptions of laughter. I can’t believe I had red sex with Abby Hall. I had red sex with Abby Hall. Abby Hall. Red sex.

  When we have finished our expensive beers, Jonah goes to buy a crate of cheap beers and some vodka from one of the corner shops, then we wait outside the university. When she emerges, Mrs Norton looks surprisingly stable and well, considering her earlier ordeal. Her and Mr Mandalay lead us to where we will be staying: Hope House Hotel.

  ‘Good day,’ Mrs Norton bids the receptionist. ‘We have a reservation for eighteen, it’s under St Mary’s.’

  The receptionist punches some keyboard and rifles through some paper before delivering her conclusion.

  ‘I’m sorry, I can’t find anything.’

  ‘But we do!’

  ‘I’m sorry, miss, I can’t help you.’

  Mrs Norton and the young receptionist eye each other for a while.

  ‘Peter, do something,’ Mrs Norton says. Her hands are swelling.

  ‘I think we do,’ Mr Mandalay whispers.

  The receptionist’s face fractures into a fat smile.

  ‘Only joking!’ she says. Mrs Norton does not get on well with humour. ‘Welcome to Hope House Hotel!’

 

  We are sat on the carpet in our eight-bed dormitory. Ana is lying with her head in Ping’s denim lap and Jonah is sitting in his underwear, rolling cigarettes. He has very slim but defined calf muscles. That sounded gay.

  A surprising fact about Jonah is that he is a devout Catholic, despite his promiscuity. Every time Jonah has sex, he bathes in cold water afterwards to ‘cleanse himself’. He says that this is the only reason he has not had outdoor sex. As a testament to his faith, Jonah let one of the boys from the year above tattoo the Virgin Mary onto his back using a tattoo machine he bought off eBay for a fiver. The boy only had black ink, so it’s just an outline. Sometimes, when flirting, Jonah lets girls colour it in with felt-tip pens.

  ‘What’s the plan?’ Jonah says.

  ‘I don’t want to go out,’ I tell him.

  ‘Does anyone have cups?’

  ‘Yes, I bought fucking loads of cups.’

  Jonah takes the bottle of vodka out of its plastic carrier bag. We swig from it. Ana declines. It is a match down the grit length of my throat.

  ‘I don’t like vodka,’ Ping says.

  ‘No one likes vodka, you dick,’ Jonah says. ‘That’s the point.’

  We open beers and use them to soothe the burn. Ana’s fingers are playing over the top of Ping’s hand. Jonah plays music on his iPhone.

  Tenaya tells me she wants to go out for cigarettes so we follow the concrete stairs down and outside the hostel’s plywood doors. The convivial receptionist is also stood outside, drawing carefully on a Richmond. Ping says Richmonds are the worst kind of cigarettes. He says they are potent at making men impotent.

  She draws in a very sombre way. It is the only sombre part of her. It is a part of her that manifests only whilst smoking. It is strange to see a large aspect of a person given away only through small gestures, like when Keith uses homicide clichés or when Mum winks at my friends. People can never guard their embarrassments enough.

  ‘Hi,’ the receptionist says. ‘Are you from the school?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  We walk away and finish our cigarettes inside an uncomfortable bush, because talking to people who smile a lot is even more tiring than doing triathlons.

  11

  It is 8:45 a.m. My head is a junk band. Jonah just tried to wake up Ping by pulling his duvet off and when he did Ana was underneath it naked, curled around Ping’s coffee-coloured buttocks like a half-sexy leech. Ping swore and Jonah laughed.

  ‘Breakfast time,’ Jonah announces. Today he is wearing a white sleeveless vest and very tight black jeans. His hair is a nest composed of old wax, haunted by the ghost of a pillow.

  We all go down to the canteen, which is like the school cafeteria except full of homeless-looking people and backpackers. It is a ‘Continental buffet breakfast’. Tenaya has a croissant and I have jam on toast. Some of the old men get angry at Jonah because he drank the whole bottle of milk that was meant for coffee and is denying it, despite the white smudges of guilt around his mouth.

  We arrange ourselves along the length of one of the tables. Unshaven men are burning Jonah with their eyes. We may have to fight our way out. Ana keeps trying to hold Ping’s hand but Ping is trying to eat. The result is a sort of unacknowledged battle. They are at war but both acting as though they are not, like when a girl is kissing your neck and you have to subtly try to subtly push her head down so that she will suck you off.

  ‘I had the weirdest dream last night,’ Ana says.

  I stop listening.

 

  We are in the crime museum. We have been here for two hours already. I have seen countless antique truncheons and torture devices and pistols and slave memorabilia. Earlier, Jonah took one of the Ku Klux Klan hoods off its display stand, put it on, and ran up to Imran, screaming ‘Your end is nigh!’ Imran punched him through the hood and Mrs Norton almost fainted. Now Jonah has a swelling field of mould around his left eye.

  Me and Tenaya are looking at an old electric chair from America. It has the nickname ‘Yellow Mama’. Its informative plaque reads:

  Early Electric Chair

>   First invented by Alfred P. Southwick in 1887 as a method of execution to replace hanging. His inspiration came from seeing a drunken man quickly die after touching exposed power lines. It is still in use in America.

  ‘I can’t believe they still use that.’ Tenaya says.

  I shrug. ‘I can,’ I say.

  Next to the chair is a clumsy model of Auschwitz inside a cuboid glass atmosphere. None of the exhibits are grouped logically. Next to Auschwitz is one of the splurge guns from Bugsy Malone. The whole building smells of cats and wet paper.

  ‘Auschwitz,’ Tenaya says. She says it very quietly.

  I know she is thinking the same thing as me. She is thinking about the History trip when we visited it. When we all sat in a semicircle of plastic chairs and listened to a survivor slowly recount his experiences. He looked as frail as a spun-sugar cage and had the blurred ghost of a number across his left forearm. Mr Glover cried. Tenaya squeezed my hand until it didn’t feel like my hand any more. Jonah experienced something not unlike the opposite of a religious experience.

  Mostly people wander around the museum touching things with their hands and noses. This often happens in life. Last year we went to the Tate and everyone tried to look as though they were interested in the art but actually all they wanted to do was touch it. People spent hours groping the marble sculptures. One thing I have learned from being alive for seventeen years is that people like to touch things very much.

  Things that people like to touch:

  Vaginas

  Expensive things in shops

  Jelly that is not ready to eat yet

  Cigarette lighters

  Necks

  Dead things

  Dogs

  Glass

  Scars

  Piercings

  Things that are on the floor but shouldn’t be

  Toddlers’ cheeks

  Snow

  Each other’s knees

  Buttons

  Bottoms

  People also like to touch death. They do this by abseiling or by watching reports about Israel on the news. Touching is about curiosity. Curiosity is about death.

  Once we have seen everything, Jonah insists that we visit the gift shop. The gift shop sells yellow rubbers and pencil sharpeners and large, brightly painted pebbles. Everything says ‘Plymouth Crime Museum’ on it. In one corner of the room an elderly woman is sat behind a grey plastic till, reading a Maeve Binchy and massaging her temples with slow, steady finger-orbits.

  ‘This stuff is so shit,’ Jonah says. He throws a plastic letter-opener back onto its pile.

  The elderly woman winces. She does not look up.

  ‘Can we go?’ I say.

  Jonah does not answer.

  He walks over to a wire stand laden with novelty items. Itching powder, black soap, piss-flavoured boiled sweets. Novelty items are the worst kind of items. Jonah enjoys novelty items. They make him feel as though he is sharing an in-joke with the rest of the world.

  ‘Look at this,’ Jonah says, pressing a small packet into my hands. He is laughing hysterically. I turn the packet over. There is a picture of a crucifix and it says ‘Catholic Condom’ on. Jonah has bent himself in half. He is laughing even harder. ‘It’s a . . . ’ More laughs. ‘It’s a . . . ’ Laughter. ‘It’s a condom with the end cut off.’ He thinks that this is very funny.

  ‘I do not think that is very funny,’ I say. ‘I think that it is highly irresponsible.’

  We walk back out to the main room where Mrs Norton is stood, flapping her arms about, trying to count heads.

  ‘Everyone!’ Mrs Norton says. She is stood beside an early policeman’s uniform. ‘Myself and Mr Mandalay will be leaving now. You may stay as long as you like, or return to the hostel, or visit the town. BE WARNED that curfew is SIX O’CLOCK, and anyone breaching that WILL face SEVERE PUNISHMENT.’

  Everyone nods and shuffles off. Ping and Ana disappear together, their arms looped like Olympic rings.

  ‘What now?’ Jonah says, removing a pouch of tobacco from his back pocket.

  ‘I might go back to the hostel,’ Tenaya replies. She is still wearing the ghost of Tom. Time is the only suitable exorcist.

  We both nod and Tenaya pats my arm then leaves.

  ‘You are not going anywhere,’ Jonah tells me.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. I wanted to do something anyway.

  ‘What time is it?’

  I pull out my phone.

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Good,’ he says. ‘We are going to go and have some coffee now. Then I have a surprise for us. After the surprise we will get beers and go with the night.’

  ‘“Go with the night”, what does that mean?’

  ‘It means that the surprise will make plans for us.’

  ‘The surprise isn’t a hooker, is it?’

  ‘Fuck off, am I paying for a whore for you.’

  We walk out into Plymouth’s dull grey stomach.

  12

  ‘Mephedrone?’

  ‘Yea.’

  Jonah is grinning.

  Mephedrone. The surprise was mephedrone. Mephedrone is a legal drug you can buy off the Internet. It is sold as ‘plant fertiliser’. It lends you the kindness of the Dalai Lama and the charisma of Hitler, and all it asks in return is that, afterwards, you spend a little while in a moody black hole.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘Really?’

  I am currently not emotionally equipped to deal with severe fluctuations in mood.

  ‘Don’t be a Gaylord.’ Jonah nods toward the toilet door.

  We are in the kind of Formica café frequented by builders and people on benefits. All of the waitresses are from Poland or somewhere. Nobody’s eyes even flick up when we both pass through the toilet doors.

  There is barely any room in the cubicle. There are piss puddles on the floor with cardboard toilet-roll cores crumpled inside of them like aborted foetuses.

  Jonah unfolds the powder, concealed in a wrap made from a leaflet for ‘An Evening of Delirious Dubstep’. He uses his library card to make four lines on the toilet seat and we hoover them up.

  We slouch onto the floor. Both sat with backs to tiles, we stare at other tiles for a few minutes. Burning nostrils, throat like a faecal waterfall, then I can feel it growing in my head.

  My head is simmering.

  ‘You okay?’ I say.

  ‘Yea. More?’

  ‘Word.’

  ‘Word?’

  ‘What? I heard it in a rap.’

  Jonah smiles and shakes his head. He scrapes another two lines out of the wrap then licks the side of his library card. We take them and sit back. I feel huge.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘Thanks, really. Not in like a gay way or anything, but I love you, man. You have great calves.’

  ‘I know, we don’t say it enough. I love you, too, man. We’re so young. Everything is good,’ Jonah says.

  His hand is on my arm.

  I put my hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Yes, YES. People don’t love each other enough. People love war and money. I don’t love war and money. I love you.’

  ‘Yea, fuck war and money.’

  ‘War and money can suck my dick.’

  ‘I love you and Tenaya and Ping and Ana.’

  ‘Ping and Ana! They are so happy together. They are wonderful. They are tiny stars.’

  ‘They’ll get married and we’ll all be there.’

  ‘Yea, telling them how fucking sweet they are.’

  ‘All existing happy.’

  ‘Fuck war and money!’

  ‘Weddings, that’s what we should be doing.’

  ‘We shoul
d all get married.’

  ‘Confetti!’

  Our legs are all bending about like blades of grass in a hurricane.

  We push back through the doors and out into the café. We beam at the foreign waitresses then move towards the door. Jonah pushes it.

  ‘Excuse, excuse!’ the waitress says. ‘You no pay!’

  She is beautiful. She is like a porn star or a Vogue model or something. She has huge cheekbones and huge eyes and I am very glad she exists.

  ‘We are SO sorry,’ Jonah says. ‘Please, please forgive us.’

  He pulls a twenty-pound note out of his pocket and forces it into her hand. I pull out a ten and do the same. Thirty pounds for two coffees.

  ‘Very generous,’ she says, returning our sloppy smiles.

  ‘You are so beautiful,’ I say.

  Me and Jonah both descend on her, pulling her tiny body into a fierce three-way hug.

  ‘Please be happy,’ I say. ‘You deserve to be happy.’

  Outside the air is beautiful. It smells of pot pourri. We drink it like drowning men. It fills us up full of sun.

  ‘Lets find a club, spread some love.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘People need to know we love them.’

  ‘Yea, we need to scream it and hug them.’

  It is 8:00 p.m. Probably no clubs are open. We walk, anyway. Just following streets.

  Jonah lights a cigarette. ‘Fucking beautiful,’ he says.

  He passes me one.

  ‘Uh,’ I say.

  We pass a Tesco Express, an unbranded shoe shop, a soap shop, a Starbucks and a Debenhams. They are all wonderful. An alleyway opens to our left. Its walls are splattered with lurid splashes of neon paint.

  ‘Down there,’ Jonah says.

  We both skip through the alley. A sign looms, tacked to the red brick building ahead.

  FUNKYTOWN: THE HOME OF DISCO

  ‘Fuck!’ Jonah says. ‘I fucking love disco.’

  ‘Fuck, disco, yes.’

  With that settled, we both go in. There are no bouncers guarding the doors because a seventies disco is not the sort of place that under-age kids go to. It is the sort of place that middle-age women and slightly-over-middle-age men go to.