Junk - Melvin Burgess [54]
And it’s a party.
Then at night we’ll light the fire. People’ll go round and find wood in the skips and the fire’ll burn all night long. There’s always something going on – dealing, music, people. There’s Dev, the dealer. He doesn’t go out much but sometimes he comes to sit by the fire and he rolls joint after joint. There’s Col and Sal. She used to be with Dev but they split up. I get on really well with Sal, she’s right on my wavelength, we’re almost as close as me and Lily. Almost. Col’s okay, he’s a bit boring; he does too much stuff, I reckon.
Col… he could be a casualty. Well, you get casualties. Life’s a dangerous business. I reckon Col and Sal’ll split up before long. And there’s Wendy and there’s Jackson and there’s Doll and Pete-Pete. We’re never at a loss for people.
But at the centre of everything it’s me and Tar and Lily and Rob.
Tar’s just so much better now. You wouldn’t recognise him. He always used to be so anxious and worried. He takes it easy now, you can tell just looking at him. He’s sorted out that business with his mum and dad. He had to leave them behind. I mean, he’d left them physically but he was still carrying them round inside his head. Lily said to him over and over, ‘What are you carrying their shit for?’ It’s their problem. They made a mess of their lives; he doesn’t have to make a mess of his for their sakes.
I really love him. When I think how close I was to chucking him! It was a close thing. I must have been crazy. I guess I was so excited, I felt that everything had to be different after I met Lily and Rob. It was them who talked me out of it. I was going on about how claustrophobic he made me feel, and how he was always staring at me like I was a fish in a tank. They said, ‘No, no, he’s really nice, he’s special, why don’t you be nice to him? You gotta be nice to your friends…’
I said, ‘But I don’t love him.’
Lily laughed at me and she said, ‘You gotta look after him, he’s yours, can’t you see that?’
Yeah. He’s mine. We got each other. I’m his.
I ring up my parents from time to time, just to let them know I’m okay. I’d like it to be all right between us. I’d like to ring up and just chat or invite them round for a visit, but I don’t dare. They’re still into this owning me trip. They’d tip off the police and get me back home – a bloody mental home or a remand home if it wasn’t their home.
I said to my mum, ‘When I’m sixteen, I’ll come and visit you and we’ll be friends.’ She said nothing. I know what she was thinking. She tries to keep her mouth shut but it slips out from time to time.
She still can’t forgive me, see? She thinks I’ve done something bad to her. See what I mean? I’m just getting on with my own life and she thinks I’m doing her down. No wonder I couldn’t even breathe in that house.
The first time I rang up home after moving in with Lily and Rob I was scared stiff. I kept putting it off and putting it off. I mean, what could I say to them? I’d turned into something they could never understand. But the others kept going on at me.
Tar always rang his mum up even though his parents were even worse than mine. He’s such a good little boy it makes me sick sometimes. He and Rob and Lily were on and on at me.
Rob’s really soft about mums. It was all right for him, his mum’s really great. She’s an amazing woman. She came round to visit us once and when she saw the sort of thing we were up to, she just laughed.
‘Don’t get caught,’ she said. That’s all. Can you imagine it? It was so wonderful to see there were people like that. I mean, it’s like, once you break away and get out of the brain-washing, you can liberate your children and your grandchildren and all the generations to come. Rob had his first joint when he was about eight. He didn’t smoke tobacco and she reckoned it was the way she’d brought him up. She was really pleased with the way he’d turned out. Most people