by Ben Brooks
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 an
d 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.’
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 watc
hing 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.’
