by David Jester
I giggled, unable to suppress it.
‘Something funny kid?’
Tickle, I thought with a smile. Hilarious.
‘No, no, not at all.’
He stared at me momentarily and then turned to Kerry. ‘What’s it to you kid?’
‘Don’t you dare call me kid,’ she thrust a finger at him and I was sure I saw him flinch. His friends had seen it too; they had finished their cigarettes now and were watching him intently.
‘I’ll call you what I fucking like--’
‘Don’t you swear!’ Kerry was angry now.
I felt my legs lift and back away of their own accord. As I was edging away from the confrontation, Kerry was edging closer.
‘I know you,’ she said. ‘I know your dad, I know your mother.’
Mr and Mrs Tickle, I giggled again.
Four pairs of eyes turned towards me. I looked away, coughed and began a sheepish whistle.
I felt my stomach kick, an anxious lurch that released more noxious gas.
‘Leave us alone or I’ll tell them you’ve been smoking and swearing at little girls and boys,’ Kerry warned.
The older boy looked defeated. He turned to his friends in vain hope, but none stepped forward. He turned back to Kerry, ready to fight back, but the malice in her eyes told him that not only was she telling the truth but if he tried anything else she would scratch his eyes out.
He muttered something in annoyance and skulked away, motioning for his friends to follow him.
‘Bunch of cowards,’ I said when I was sure the last of the boys had disappeared from earshot.
Kerry didn’t waste any time in getting what she wanted. Without saying another word she wrapped her arms around my neck and lowered her head until her forehead touched mine.
I wet my lips nervously, closed my eyes and prepared.
She locked onto my mouth with sloppy suction. I had time to prepare and I had the earlier kiss as a reference, so the sloppy embrace wasn’t as much of a shock as I expected, but just when I thought the kiss should be finishing, I felt something wet poke through. A slimy tongue tried to get in on the action.
I tried to force my lips together but the slippery organ wormed through the gap and, after glancing off my teeth, forced its way into my mouth.
I felt the tongue slide inside and I thought of the creatures from the film Alien, I had seen it less than a month ago and had only just stopped having nightmares. I tried to force that image out of my head and endure the kiss, but it wouldn’t budge.
I saw their long tentacles, dripping with thick puss. Their thick, scaly skin rippled with the gleam of a million beads of slime. Their bulbous eyes--
I managed to duck out of the kiss just as a wave of vomit was unleashed, but I didn’t have enough time or speed to move away from Kerry. The digestive rejections of a breakfast of sugar and additives hit her like a thick neon wave from a toxic waterfall.
Kerry, caught in a split second of shock, merely closed her eyes and pinned her lips together as the wave washed over her. It soaked and clung to her hair. It dripped down her nose like droplets from a shower-head, running rivulets over her lips.
I avoided her face for the second wave, but only succeeded in covering her shoes and legs with the orange coloured, sweet scented vomit. It splashed onto my own shoes as well, tiny speckles of orange, decorating the black leather like pixels on a broken screen.
A thought of, damn, my mum will go mad, crossed my mind before the third wave scattered over the cigarette covered ground. Kerry managed to jump back to avoid it, she was clawing clumps of vomit from her face, scooping them and flicking them onto the floor with annoyed noises escaping her sticky lips.
The third wave was the final wave. I could feel a rumbling of finality in my stomach. I actually felt better, and that put a smile on my face.
Strands of sick hung from my mouth like spaghetti, I wiped them away with the back of my sleeve and lifted my head to look at Kerry. She was red with anger; under the glaze of the vomit she looked pearlescent.
She wanted to say something, but nothing coherent escaped her mouth. A lot was said and I thought I picked up a few swear words, but there was nothing tangible.
I lowered my head in shame and waited for her to finish, she did so with a flurry of expletives -- some of which I had never heard before and tried to remember for later -- and then, after a momentary silence, demanded, ‘Well? What do you have to say for yourself?’
I shrugged, still looking at my shoes, trying to flick the spots of vomit from the top of one with the bottom of the other.
‘Don’t you have something to say to me?’ she demanded, her voice cracking as it rose above the hustle of the busy playground. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘I’m quite hungry,’ I said honestly.
She ground her teeth together, her eyes flared at me with a flaming ferocity. ‘Is that all you have to say for yourself?’
I shrugged again, then, sensing the lecture was over, I asked: ‘Can I have those sweets now?’
Kerry glared at me. Her eyes darted back and forth. She opened her mouth, suppressed a scream and then slammed it shut again. Her jaw worked aggressively as she tried to pulverise her own teeth. Then, following another loud grunt, she threw up her arms exasperatedly and stormed off, mumbling curse words under her breath.
The story of my sickly exploits was slowly passed around the school. The boys would gather in hordes, asking me to recall the tale as they listened with eager grins, interrupting with cheers at the end. The girls were equally fascinated, but weren’t interested in hearing about the story from Kerry. She had been coated in “lergie”, had dripped from head to toe in “boy cooties”, and before long she became a social pariah.
She lost her friends, became bitter and isolated, and whenever I saw her, whenever I said hello or passed by, there was nothing but hatred and revenge in her eyes.
A few weeks after the incident I was desperate to reconcile with her, I felt bad for what had happened.
During dinnertime, when all the pupils rushed out onto the playground, I found Kerry sitting hunched over on one of the benches in the cloakroom. I waited until the last of the stragglers left with their coats and playthings, and then I saddled over to her, sitting a few feet away and gliding my backside along the wooden surface until I was close enough for her to notice.
I had expected sadness in her eyes -- she was sitting alone and looking pitiful after all -- but a fire still burned there and I had added extra fuel just by showing up.
‘Hey Kerry,’ I said unsurely, trying to avert my gaze from her eyes in case she turned me into stone.
She didn’t reply, but I was sure I heard a small growl.
I plastered on my best smile and stared at her forehead, trying to feign sincerity whilst keeping my gaze away from hers. ‘I was just wondering if you… I don’t know… maybe wanted to come outside and play?’
Again there was no reply. She still stared.
‘It’s a nice day, well, it’s not raining. I mean… you can borrow my coat if you want? You can warm up pretty fast playing football, if you want to come and join me and my friends for a game that is. I mean I know you don’t have any friends anymore and I--’
‘I don’t like you Kieran McCall,’ she spoke slowly.
‘You’d like my friends. And I’m sure you’d like me if you got to know me.’ I wasn’t giving up.
‘Go away,’ she growled.
‘Look, I’m sorry about throwing up on you, but you tried to kiss me, what do you expect?’ I paused; she looked like she was ready to pounce. ‘Not that I have a problem with you, you’re very pretty an’ all that, but I don’t like kissing in general. I don’t even like to kiss my grandma, and she’s family. Although she smells God awful. My dad says it’s just old age, but I’m pretty sure it’s piss.’
‘Go away McCall,’ Kerry said again, her voice deeper and more gravelly, the anger was building and it had a great deal of frustration for comp
any.
I still didn’t want to give in, falsely believing I was on a roll. ‘If I let you kiss me again will that help? You don’t have to give me any sweets or anything; I’ll do it out of the goodness of my own heart. What do you say?’
‘Go away.’
‘What if I let you throw up on me?’
‘What?’ a twinge of surprise tickled the corner of her face and then disappeared.
‘It’s disgusting I know, but hear me out.’ I edged closer, ‘I threw up on you and I got treated like the hero whilst everyone hates you.’
‘Everyone hates me?’ she looked hurt by this.
I lowered my eyebrows and looked into eyes that seemed genuinely hurt. ‘I thought you knew? Why else did you think they were ignoring you?’
‘I just thought--’
‘It’s not important,’ I quickly interrupted. ‘What I’m saying is, if you throw up on me then you’ll be the hero and I’ll get just enough hate to stop me being the hero, but because of the first incident -- when I threw up on you -- it won’t be enough to turn me into a complete Billy no-mates like you,’ I finished with a grin, pleased with myself. ‘What do you say?’
She punched me.
It was the first time I had been punched in the face. I was surprised. I was annoyed. I was hurt. After the initial shock I removed a protective hand from my face to tell Kerry these things, and then she punched me again.
Years later I would laugh along with friends when I told them that my first kiss had been with the first girl to beat me up, but at the time the only thing I could concentrate on was protecting my face as I rolled onto the floor whilst she straddled me like a horse. Her surprisingly powerful fists hammered into every part of my body.
There were no teachers nearby and no students to cause a commotion and bring attention from an elder, and as I didn’t know how to fight or even if I should hit a girl -- my mother had always told me not to, but a situation where my life may depend on it had never cropped up -- I just lay there and took the punches.
The fight was one-sided and lasted for a brutal five minutes. I like to think that Kerry stopped out of sympathy for the blubbering wreck beneath her, but the truth was her arms were tired.
When she finished beating the living shit out of me she crawled off my torso and pulled herself back up onto the bench.
I watched her through a gap in my arms. She stared at me and I could see that the flame in her eyes had died. Something else lingered there, pity perhaps.
I slowly pulled myself to my feet and dusted myself down. I wiped the remnants of tears from my eyes and allowed a few drops to trickle down my cheek. Meeting Kerry’s pitied gaze I told her: ‘There was no need for that.’
She sunk her head into her chest. I heard a muffled groan. ‘Get lost Kieran.’
She didn’t need to tell me twice. I hobbled out of the cloakroom and onto the playground. My body ached but apart from a few scratches on my cheek and a minor cut on my lip, my face remained intact.
I expected Kerry to boast, and I was prepared to allow her that honour. She was a girl but she was tough, my friends would mock me for a while but eventually they would agree that, given the chance, she could beat them up as well. But Kerry didn’t tell anyone. She remained an outcast for the rest of the school year.
2
In Lenny’s Footsteps
After Kerry Newsome had kissed me and then tried to kill me, I became even more wary and unsure of the opposite sex. For most of my youth I thought girls were “icky” and weren’t to be touched or befriended, and my friends, being of the same age, mostly agreed.
There was one exception though. His name was Lenny and he was a lady-killer from the age of eight. At seven years, three-hundred and sixty-four days old, Lenny was just as repulsed by the opposite sex as the rest of us, but after a “word” with his dad on his birthday, all of that changed.
His dad was drunk and clearly unsure about which birthday it was, as he told his son that he needed to: Grow up, be a man. Kiss girls, play the field!
Surprisingly, Lenny’s dad was not insane. Lenny took heed and during his eighth birthday party he put aside his childhood tendencies and turned on the charm in front of a mixed sex crowd which included several unsuspecting females from our class and the local estate.
Lenny wasn’t a particularly good looking boy, but he was the only one in a class of fifteen boys, and an estate of five, that cared or dared to get a girlfriend. After three weeks he had three on the go.
I struggled to understand what Lenny saw in these giggling, whispering humans that smelled of fruit scented shampoo and played with dolls, but I tried my best.
At first Lenny wasn’t popular with boys our age, but after becoming a huge hit with the older boys in school -- walking around the playground with armfuls of girls won him some acclaim -- we decided that we liked him as well.
‘I could ask Kerry Newsome out,’ Max said. He looked around unsurely, received a few worrying stares and then slumped his head against his chest. ‘Or not,’ he repealed, disheartened.
Together with our friends Olly and Peter, Max and I were loitering near the school building. Olly was lying across one of two benches with Peter and Max on the other. I stood watching the playground with my hands stuffed into my pockets.
‘You talk about her a lot,’ Olly said, tilting his head over the back of the bench and looking at Max through an inverted world.
Like Max, Olly and Peter were in the same class as me. I enjoyed their company more than Max’s but they lived further away, so I spent less time with them outside of school.
‘I feel sorry for her,’ Max said unconvincingly.
‘It’s Kieran’s fault,’ Peter said.
‘It was an accident,’ I argued.
Peter shrugged. ‘That’s what you say.’
I hadn’t told anyone about being beaten up. When I realised Kerry wasn’t going to boast I told everyone that the marks on my face were from running into a door in the cloakroom. It was the first thing that came into my head, at the time I wasn’t sure it was going to pass, but they believed it instantly. I was so annoyed with the laughter and mockery that I almost told them the truth.
‘Who’s that with Lenny?’ I asked, seeing him arm in arm with a girl I didn’t recognise. She was taller than him, her left shoulder dipped awkwardly so she could slide her arm through his.
‘Penny Collins,’ Peter explained. ‘Year six.’
‘Year six?’ I blurted.
Peter shrugged, ‘The kid’s a player.’
‘Of what?’ Max wondered, ever the innocent.
We all laughed, but the truth was I didn’t know what he was talking about either and Peter had only learned the word the previous week.
‘Numpty.’
‘Idiot.’
‘Why you always gotta pick on me?’ Max wanted to know.
‘Because it’s so easy,’ Olly replied, his head still lolling over the final wooden slat on the weather stained bench.
Max bolted upright, glared at each of us in turn, and stormed away. ‘Pricks,’ he muttered under his breath. A few feet away from us he turned and declared: ‘I’ll go and play with my real friends,’ before disappearing amongst a cluster of kids trading football stickers.
We all watched silently as Max introduced himself, received a distasteful look from each trader, and then skulked away when one of them shouted: ‘Get lost, shit for brains,’ in a voice loud enough to cover the entire playground. He ambled back our way and threw himself down on the bench with his arms grumpily folded over his chest.
‘Your friends busy?’ Olly wondered.
‘Fuck off,’ Max spat, to a chorus of laughter.
I joined Max on the bench. ‘So how did Lenny end up with her?’ I asked Peter.
Peter shrugged again. He was so nonchalant his parents often said that one day his heart would stop out of sheer apathy.
‘We need to find girlfriends,’ Max said.
‘I hate to admit it, but
the muppet is right.’ Olly shifted upright, the blood had rushed to his head and his face was red, he didn’t seem to mind. ‘Everyone is going out with everyone. Just this morning Dipstick Denny asked out Dorothy from Year four.’
‘Dorothy?’ Max clenched his face in disgust. ‘She’s ugly.’
‘Dipstick ain’t no prize.’
‘Who’s left?’ I wondered.
Olly held up his hands with his fingers spread, pulling down each appendage as he reeled off the names: ‘Laura little-eyes. Cow-shit Lizzie--’ he was a lazy underachiever who was bottom of the class at nearly every subject, but Olly excelled at nicknames and insults. He seemed to spend all of his time thinking them up; when it came to Max he had a never-ending list.
‘She doesn’t smell of cow shit anymore,’ Max cut in, ‘not for--’
‘Shut up slipper-fucker,’ Olly warned. He continued to count: ‘There’s Little Miss Mental in year four--’
That was Kerry. I cringed whenever he called her that. I was convinced I was the one to send her that way.
‘--Billie Blow-job--’
A mild-mannered girl with an unfortunate way of eating ice lollies.
‘--Sock-Tits Tabby--’
We thought Tabatha Williams was the first girl in the class to develop breasts, then one of those breasts fell out when playing netball.
‘--Piss-stain Pepper--’
It turned out to be splash-back from a malfunctioning school faucet, but Olly didn’t do take-backs.
‘--and Spadeface,’ Olly finished, looking somewhat pleased with himself.
‘Spadeface?’ Max enquired.
‘The new girl.’
‘Lisa I think her name is,’ I said.
‘Why Spadeface?’ Max wondered.
‘Because she looks like she’s been hit with a fucking spade, why else?’
‘I think she’s quite pretty,’ Peter jumped in.
A chorus of “oooo” lifted from the group and Peter turned a light shade of red.
‘Well, you said we needed girlfriends, she’s mine,’ he said confidently, ‘or she will be.’
