Junk - Melvin Burgess [53]
Sometimes I look out of the window and I see all the straights crawling past, going to work, coming back from work, going to learn how to go to work, whatever. And I want to shout out, ‘Hey! Listen to me! It isn’t like that, it really isn’t like that…’
Only I never do it. It’s useless. They must weigh about sixty thousand tons. I’m so far away from people like that, they can’t even see me.
Do you want to know more? Listen, I’ll tell you everything.
You can do anything you want.
You don’t believe me. You think, she’s out of her head. Yeah, I’m out of my head – on being me. What are you on? On being them. You don’t even know. I bet you were never even given a chance to know.
Remember when you were little and they used to say, ‘Naughty girl, naughty boy,’ because you broke something or said the wrong thing? They told you, ‘You are a bad person.’
But it wasn’t like that, it was just you were doing a bad thing. It wasn’t you who was bad. You’re beautiful. You’re wonderful and everything that you do is wonderful because it’s you doing it. You’re that strong. You can do it bad and know it bad or you can do it good and know it good but it doesn’t do anything to you. You’re still you.
Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It’s a spell. It’s magic. Listen to the words. You can be anything, you can do anything, you can be anything, you can do anything. Listen to the magic.
You are anything… everyone, anyone. Whatever you want. I’m showing you. So long as you stay yourself inside, you can eat dirt and it’ll taste good because it’s you that’s eating it. You can even lick their arses if you have to. You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They’re always saying, if you steal you’re a thief, if you sleep around you’re a slut, if you take drugs you’re a junkie. They want to get inside your head and control you with their fear.
Maybe you think your mum and dad love you but if you do the wrong things they’ll try and turn you into dirt, just like mine tried to turn me into dirt. It’s your punishment for being you. Don’t play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful.
I’ve done everything. All of it. You think it, I’ve done it. All the things you never dared, all the things you dream about, all the things you were curious about and then forgot because you knew you never would. I did ‘em, I did ‘em yesterday while you were still in bed.
What about you? When’s it gonna be your turn?
Chapter Fifteen
Gemma
JUST LURKYING ABOUT, LURKYING ABOUT
LURKYING ABOUT, LURKYING ABOUT
WE’RE JUST
LUUUURRK-LURKYING ABOUT
Lurky
I’m flying, but a lot of people end up dead inside. You can’t tell to look at them but as soon as they open their mouths you know they’ve lost it. They got murdered by life.
I look back at where I came from and I think, What a mess most people make of their lives. My dad. Too scared to live, too scared to die. He works all day for that firm, managing this, managing that. Apart from the fact that it’s other people who do the work – I mean the real work, the making things; he just burns himself out making himself look important, he doesn’t actually do anything. And he hates it. And what for? He makes this money and spends it on a new TV when the old one still works, or a new car because the one he’s got is old, or he spends it on a holiday to get away and relax from that ghastly job he’s got to have because he needs the money…
I don’t need money. It’s the people who want things gotta work.
You should come round to our place sometime. You’d love it, everyone does. You’d come in and there’d be people about but we wouldn’t expect anything. You could sit in a corner and watch or you could talk or do what you wanted. There’ll be music, there’ll be something to drink, maybe there’ll be food later on if some turns up. We usually open up the French windows and people sit in the garden. It just turns into a party. We don’t have to plan it. Like, Col brings round some booze and Sal turns up with