Graffiti My Soul

by Niven Govinden

  ‘That CD’s not out yet. I got the dates wrong,’ Moon goes.

  Mum nods like she doesn’t believe a word, but doesn’t ask me about my laces, in case I give an even more useless lie than Moon.

  She’s more than made up for our lack of purchases though, with enough House of Fraser bags to fill two cars.

  ‘From the sales, OK?’ she goes, before I can get a word in.

  People love shopping in this town. You never see anyone on the high street or leaving the mall without a carrier bag. I’m not as fussed. As long as I get some new CDs every couple of weeks (the ones that I can’t download for free that is), and a new hoodie or a pair of trainers once in a while, I’m happy. Can think of several hundred things that are more important than money and the things that it can buy you. Don’t understand everyone’s preoccupation with it.

  I don’t lay any of this on Mum, though. I’m not a name-and-blame person. She works hard for the things she shops for. Deserves to buy what she wants. One of the benefits of no longer having Dad around is that Mum doesn’t have to hide her shopping in the garage, eking everything out a couple of days at a time. It almost makes up for the fact that he was such a bastard.

  In Tesco, Jason is stacking shelves in the Tastes of Italy aisle, which makes Moon’s day. She’s had the hots for him since last Tuesday, when he smacked Chris Pearson one for saying that Lizzie Jennings is a fat twat. Every girl in that classroom was in his thrall after that. Even I have to admit, there was a certain grace about my mate Jase as he cut Pearson’s nose open. The way the blood hit the floor in one thick spurt, like the cold tap on max, was pure poetry.

  He sees us first from behind his boxes of imported pasta.

  We break into a round of hugs. Hugging is the new thing – everyone has to hug everyone else. Hello mate, hello geezer, hello darlin’. It’s bollocks, but I have to do it too, whenever I’m with any of that crowd. With Moon it’s a given, and if I’m not showing willing, she gives me a prod, and if that doesn’t work, a punch. Funny, isn’t it, I can’t remember the last time I gave my mum a peck on the cheek, and here I am in aisle 33, passing the love like a fuckwit. At school it’s worse, half the people you hug in the canteen you fucking hate. Girls hugging girls. Boys hugging boys. No one believes you when you tell them how tough it is to be a teenager.

  ‘What you two doing here? Come to see how I line up the vermicelli next to the rigatoni?’

  ‘Always wanted to know how they do that.’

  ‘Heard it was a new Olympic sport.’

  ‘Mentalists. If I wasn’t working, I’d be having a cheeky spliff before dinner, not poncing about here.’

  This one has smoking on the brain. He probably still hasn’t registered that I never touch the stuff. Don’t see the point. Jason is madder than the rest of us, but to most people at school, he’ll always be known as the guy whose sister was killed in that hit and run. There’s no getting away from it.

  Aside from me and Moony Suzuki. We’re not into labels and all that shit. At least that’s what we’re currently telling ourselves.

  Moon giggles at the first mention of nutters, and its accompanying floorful of dropped Ts. She’s become like that whenever she’s around Jason.

  ‘We’ve been hanging round the mall,’ I say, ‘looking for evidence.’ By which I mean, hoping to find a couple of God-Squadders out with their embarrassing parents. Digging for dirt. Everyone is looking to have one up on someone at that school.

  ‘Come round later, if you’re knocking off any time soon,’ I continue, knowing that Moon will have to owe me one if he does turn up.

  ‘Uh huh, uh huh,’ he goes, kinda interested, kinda not, his eye on the pasta he’s stacking. They drum it hard into those boys, these supermarket managers; Jason takes his job very seriously. He can’t rest until all the boxes are lined dead straight.

  ‘TV and shit, easy for a Monday. They’re showing Barbershop on Sky, around eight, I think,’ she says, knowing it.

  ‘Cool,’ he says, ‘I’m there.’

  Whilst Mum is at the checkout, Moon drags me back across the mall to the kiosk where they turn a blind eye, buys twenty Benson, and a packet of king-size R. She’s got some gear in a tin under the carpet tiles in her wardrobe and she’s planning on bringing it over.

  ‘Gotta make our guest feel at home,’ she goes later, when it makes an appearance in my room. She’s always so sure about everything. Knows that he’s going to show. And who would turn Moon down? She’s not popular but she’s perfect. Works out. Isn’t a shortie. Long layered mud-coloured hair, which she swishes to her advantage. Clear skin that’s never seen a spot. This open face that says to potential suitors, mould me, whilst her brain says the opposite. A great rack. Half the school is after her.

  She’s wearing her new Nike-girl hoodie, baby pink to match her top braces, with only her push-up bra underneath. It’s an outfit designed for easy access. Luckily I haven’t seen Barbershop, so I’ll be able to keep my eyes on the screen no problem once she and Jason get down to business. Almost.

  He turns up on the dot, wearing one of the Triple 5 Soul shirts with only three buttons. They don’t even make it past the titles. Someone should make me a saint, the crazy shit I have to put up with.

  5

  The price for not looking whilst Moon is getting touched up is three Benson and a whole tube of Pringles. Both banned substances on my new diet sheet, one stuck on the fridge door, the other above my bed. Multiple fags may sound excessive for a near non-smoker, but Barbershop is a long film. My chest feels it in the morning. There may as well be two Sumos sitting on top of me. At training, I’m coughing up all kinds of shit. Casey isn’t impressed.

  ‘Cigarettes are a one-way ticket to an early grave,’ he goes, as I hack my way around the track.

  He looks at the state of me and prescribes a 1200m warm-up, followed by a series of 200m sprints, because I was choosy about telling him who I was smoking with.

  ‘Don’t be doing with the bad crowds, V-pen. They aren’t with you when you’re on the track. I’m only interested in one winner, V-pen. The finishing line is only concerned with one winner, V-pen.’

  He’s been calling me V-pen ever since I started with him last autumn. Nothing I can do about it.

  I trained with the Harriers all through primary school, up until the end of the last summer holidays, when we had a disagreement about me training there after hours. They didn’t like it that when the place was shut, I’d bring Moon, Jase, a couple of others, and a few bottles of sauce. Fences around the place are babyishly short. Even Moon in a skirt finds it an easy proposition. I admit I was mullered on my alcopops by the time we left there, usually no earlier than ten-thirty, but technically I had still been running. I told Mum that I’d reached the top age limit and had to look for training elsewhere. She was too busy to follow it through, so took my word for it.

  Casey had been a regional Harriers trainer, one of the local hot shots, but then he disappeared for a while, after some boy started blabbing about being touched up. Bad news for the Surrey Harriers. They were licked at most of their meetings after that. They had replacements obviously, but no one who employed the same technique. The new guys were all about encouragement and nurturing. They worried about self-esteem and hurt feelings. Casey’s the other way. He doesn’t believe in hand-holding. More an all-out bastard who demands you hand over your life. Expects total dedication, and very rarely gives his charges a second chance. Show your fallibility and you’re out of there. The centre, in their panic, forgot all about this, and the sagging silver shelf that he had helped them to accumulate. They lost a good ’un. But fantastic for me. I hired him on the spot.

  That makes it sound more glamorous than it actually was. We met in an out-of-the-way Starbucks in Walton, where we both begged each other like a pair of faggots. His begging was more hysterical and outdid mine. He’s still the best trainer in the county. No one can touch him. You can’t accuse me of not giving anyone a second chance.

&nb
sp; Also, I know he’s not interested in me. I did my homework. Twelve-year-olds are more his thing. I could whop it in his face and he wouldn’t so much as flinch.

  Obviously I didn’t tell Mum about Casey, because the mere mention of his name would give her a stroke on the spot. The charges had been dropped, but the alleged incident at the Harriers had been splashed across all the local papers, and had even made an edition of London Tonight. Surrey’s first paedo scandal. Past achievements aside, it made him our newest celebrity.

  ‘Gimmie a break,’ I say, when I’m near to passing out, after a fresh round of sprint hurdles, and he’s getting all Saddam with the stopwatch.

  ‘It was only three Benson, for fuck’s sake. It’s not like I was smoking crack or anything.’

  We have to train on the public track in the park, because the Harriers won’t let us anywhere near their precious facilities. Yes, there are two tracks in the same town. Welcome to Surrey, where you get double everything on a plate. At this time in the morning, six on the dot, it’s perfect. The place becomes my own personal training space. I don’t get psyched out, having to look at the other kids who may be better than I am. Out here, like this morning when there’s only one man and his dog, and Mr Paedo PE, I’m all calm and focus.

  Rep hurdles are a bastard to do. We call them hurdles, but they’re mini-hurdles, more like steps. You could replace them with tyres or beer cans if you wanted to, the principle’s the same. Any old object to jump over. Casey is being a tosser with the reps. Won’t listen when I say I can’t do them. I jump twenty of the steps, twenty seconds’ rest, then jump another twenty, then another rest, then forty, and a rest of ten. I’ve done three of these circuits and feel worn out.

  Casey doesn’t look worried, or bothered. He’s standing inside track, stopwatch dangling onto his chest like some medallion man, and idly glancing at the Sun’s back pages.

  ‘No slacking, V-pen!’ he shouts every so often with a quick glance up.

  This is a harder job for him than it looks, considering how quick the reps are. If I were one of those twelve-year-olds he liked so much, I’d probably fall for it. As it is, the way his eyes flick back and forth indicates that, for this morning at least, he feels as unfocused as me. Someone of Casey’s calibre doesn’t do laid-back, unless there’s a lesson in it somewhere.

  As I’m jumping, I wonder if his lack of attention has anything to do with his fear of being outed as the local child catcher. Most of the locals think that he left the area late last summer; totally unconnected to the mysterious fire which burnt his bungalow to the ground the day after the Post stupidly printed his address. Not even I know where he’s living at the moment, but my guess is that it’s still somewhere along Parkside. The dew on his car windscreen is never quite dry when he pulls up to meet me in the car park every morning. I suppose I could find out if I wanted, get all X Files on him, but I never ask. Somehow I think it’s his business.

  I can understand how having your home unexpectedly going up in smoke can make you nervous. As far as he’s concerned he doesn’t show it, not to me, a kid, when he’s shouting the orders on the track, swearing at me for fucking up the last 50m like I always do on a distance run, and getting all preachy during the cool-down on why I should stop eating so much junk. It’s an act you can almost believe. But when I’m running, always when I’m running, when he thinks that I can’t see him, I notice the way he looks over his shoulder nervously, all the time shouting at me that I’m a slow spazzy fuck-up.

  Then again, it’s just as likely to be a picture of an Under 21s Premiership player that’s distracting him. They’re anyone’s at the first sign of flesh, these PPPs (Paedos in Public Positions).

  Casey’s kind of negligence is like a red rag to me. Sure, I could take it easy, especially now I’m warmed-up, but I’m not like that. It makes me want to kill the speed on those reps. I’m getting through them faster and faster, until the ten-second rest stop becomes this inconvenience I want exterminating.

  At Harriers these days, they just teach you to run towards your goal, nothing more complicated. It’s only since I’ve taken on Casey that I’ve been introduced to visualisation. Casey is a firm believer in seeing what lies at the finish line. Thinks it makes you a better runner.

  I’m at the early stages here, so everything I picture is pretty obvious. In recent competitions, particularly the 100m, where any advantage on the opposition is welcome, I’ve used the image of a girl waiting at the finishing line; hot pants, baseball cap, bare tits, and holding a can of ice-cold Pepsi. It sounds cheesy, but she’s won me two races. Depending on how the run is going, who the actual woman is can vary, from Carmen Electra, to Mrs Maude, the geriatric who runs the library. Also, this morning, I seem to be visualising the whole of Moon’s left tit – the only one I managed to clock last night (Jason’s mouth was pretty much clamped on the other).

  On the longer runs, and also in training, I’m a lion, breaking the leash and roaring to victory, to devour my bareback girl. I know that there are faster cats that I could visualise, but it’s the lion I like. Hair wild and rangy, something like mine (can’t work out whether that’s the Tamil gene, or the Jew gene). A fierce, fast, ferocious hunter, capable of giving any opponent a good mauling.

  Casey calls a take-five, must have done, as he’s now lying on his back with the paper. I’m still proving my point with the reps. I do that sometimes when I’m running, zone out. Really believe in my ability to kick ass.

  ‘Come on, you young Turk,’ he goes. I’ve told him before I’m Indian, not Turkish, but he never seems to remember.

  ‘It’s seven-thirty. Cigarette punishment is over. Say ten Hail Marys, and make a promise to Jesus, or whomever you pray to, that you’ll never touch the weed again. Not if you’re serious about your sport, that is.’

  ‘I am serious, you fruit,’ I laugh, as we head towards the car park.

  He lets me call him a fruit from time to time, so long as I make it sound jokey and not malicious.

  ‘Want a ride home?’

  He asks me this at the end of every session. Today, his tone suggests that his heart is in it more than usual. Normally, he makes it sound desperate. This time, it looks like he means it, really needs to have me in the car.

  ‘No thanks, Casey. I’m best walking.’

  ‘OK, young Turk.’ He turns quickly to the car, a solitary hand held behind. Useless at hiding his disappointment.

  Casey’s feelings fly over my head once we are off the track. I’m not stupid. I know you can only trust a fruit so far. By the time I reach the park gates, and Casey has got into his Clio, I’ve already forgotten about him.

  6

  Everyone calls me Veerapen. It’s a family name, that’s why I’ve got it. Veerapen Prendrapen. Some bright idea of Dad’s. Had a heritage bee in his bonnet. Name your son after your grandfather, and then bugger off. How’s that for motivation? Mum, who’s from Bexhill, and very much not a Tamil, wanted to call me Ari, or Alexander. Thought they were classier. She lost the fight on the first name, possibly because Dad went to register my birth on his own, when he told her he was going out to get a nappy bin. As consolation, he went with her choice of middle name, Isaac. You get me? I’m a VIP. The only kosher Tamil in Surrey.

  I don’t have an abbreviation, a nickname. I could use the VIP, but would have to let on about the Isaac. I only let Casey call me V-pen because I feel sorry for him; because possibly I’m the only friend he’s got. Anyone else is having a laugh if they think they can short-change Veerapen into an acceptable variant. I had all the V-is-for-Vera bullshit when I was at primary school, and Vera Duckworth, and V-for-vagina. I had to kick it all out of them. Veerswamy, Vondripen, Very Pen, Pig Pen, Cow Pen, Play Pen. Kind of enjoyed it. Really got a buzz when some kid thought they had a bright idea. Every booting got me higher up the ladder.

  Vera will crop up every now and again, usually when some new tosser tries to become popular with the group by trying to pick on the Paki. But he gets the wron
g Paki. I’m six foot, so you shouldn’t mess with me unless you really think you can have a go. When you hear ‘Oi, Vera’ bellowed down the corridor, it’s like a siren telling you to run for cover. Anyone who’s in the way is just as likely to get thumped. I had to prove a point fairly similar to this about a week ago. You should have seen the tumbleweed once I’d clocked the guy who’d spat it. It was like some Matrix shit, the way I was flying about.

  Luckily, Jase is around to back me. This guy’s brought two mates with him, one of them being Chris Pearson. Bust lips, dented egos, chipped tooth, broken finger, and a kick in the head. My favourite moment is when Jase holds the guy down, and I stamp on his face. We are all fight, us kids.

  7

  Moon’s in my room, testing me on questions that may come up on a forthcoming High School Challenge. Mum should be doing it, but has been called out because some old biddy has fallen down the toilet pan or something. I’m lucky to still be on the team after what happened to that guy’s face, but the semis were coming up and they needed me. There wasn’t enough of a talent pool in that school for a sub. I was let off with a warning. Two of the guys, who were caught putting the wrong boot in at the wrong time, were suspended. Pearson and Jase got the same deal as me: nag fucking nag. As usual, I kept it all from Mum.

  ‘What’s the capital of Australia?’

  ‘Is that the hardest question you got? This is supposed to be the semis.’

  ‘Stop stalling, idiot, you either know it or you don’t. What’s the capital of Australia?’

  She’s in a bad mood because she missed the fight, and also because there’s been no text from Jase since he had a nibble on her nipple.

  ‘Darwin.’

  ‘Ha! Canberra.’

  ‘Fuck! Like they’re going to ask me that anyway.’

  ‘Don’t get all sniffy, thick boy. Remember how that African kid from Hampton Wick didn’t know the new name for Bombay? Lost them the comp. He looked like he was going to top himself when we saw them in the car park afterwards, remember?’