Grow Up by Ben Brooks

Author:Ben Brooks [Brooks, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9780143121091
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

16

I am bored. I have spent the day pretending to revise. Really I was playing 3D Pinball Space Cadet on the computer. Eventually I will reach the rank of Fleet Admiral. My perseverance will be rewarded.

6:30 p.m. I have eaten a filling dinner of sausages, mash potato and onion gravy. I called Jonah and asked what he was doing. He told me he was doing nothing and said I should come over. I am leaving the house now.

‘I’m going to Jonah’s, Mum,’ I say. ‘Bye.’

I shout this at the empty living room.

Mum appears from nowhere.

‘Be very careful,’ she says. ‘Don’t be back late.’

‘Yes, Mum.’

‘Ten, at the latest.’

‘Ten is ridiculous, Mum.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes, I will not be back later than eleven.’

I slam the door behind me.

I have had the last word.

The 38 bus goes to Jonah’s. It only takes seven minutes. I sit on one of the balding seats and watch the sky outside peel like old paint. There is a woman stood in the aisle by my seat. Her hand is curled tight around the pole. She is squeezing hard. All of the colour has fled from her fingers and up into her modest breasts and sad-looking cheeks. Her nails have been bitten down to half-size and they are flecked with specks of red.

I do not understand people very well.

I will not eat my own fingers.

I will not hang myself with a rugby sock.

I will not murder my ex-wife by punching her nose bone up into her brain.

Jonah opens the door after I ring the bell six times. We go through to his living room and collapse on the sofa. He is watching the Disney cartoon version of Robin Hood. The one where Robin Hood is a fox.

‘This bit is so good,’ Jonah says.

A small white rabbit wearing a large hat has just fired an arrow over a wall and into a game of badminton being played between a hen and a vixen.

‘Yea.’

For reasons I do not yet understand, I always cry when I see other people crying on the television. This is why I do not watch Secret Millionaire. I can only hope that the future will tame the wild horses in my eyes. I still believe that the reason Samantha Black would not have sex with me last year was because I cried during Juno and she thought that I was gay.

I hope nobody cries.

The small rabbit does not look very happy.

‘Jonah,’ Jonah’s mum shouts from the kitchen. ‘Jonah, get out of the living room, I want to watch the news.’

Jonah’s mum has watched the news every day since her husband died in Afghanistan. She is just looking for someone to swear at. She swears indiscriminately. I have witnessed it often. She swears at Trevor McDonald, Hannah Montana and Gok Wan. She calls them all cunts.

‘Let’s go upstairs and play Xbox,’ Jonah says.

‘Do we have to?’

‘Yes. We can play Halo on Xbox Live.’

Jonah knows that I like listening to angry people shouting on Xbox Live.

‘Okay,’ I say.

Usually I do

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