Grow Read online

  That’s another thing that’s changed. I used to be pretty popular: lots of friends, active social media, all that. Then I stopped watching and it all just fell away: the online stuff first, then the real-life friends not long after.

  I guess it’s like this: when I came back to school after the first month, it was like there was a cloud of silence around me. At first it was pretty big. You could hear it spread out from me, like a wave. I’d walk into a room and people everywhere – even on the other side of the lunch hall – would notice me and go quieter. Then the cloud got smaller, until it was just a thin, wispy covering that only covered me, not anyone else. It was like a barrier that seemed to stop people looking my way. In fact, when I walk into a room now, people’s voices get louder. If anything, their backs turn further away. They get even more closed.

  Maybe it won’t be too busy. Maybe it’ll be just me and my clinking bottles.

  But the noise from Jamie’s house breaks on me like a tide as soon as I turn the corner into his road. I can see, even at this distance, people standing in his front garden, a few sitting on the wall that his dad always used to get angry at us for sitting on. It’s a huge party – much bigger than I thought it would be. The weight in my stomach gets heavier, but I push against it. People look up as I get closer, the bottles noisy against my leg, and a few raise their chins by way of saying hello. I nod back and slip in through the open front door, trying to find Jamie as soon as possible.

  He’s in the kitchen with Louisa and a few others. He looks up as I come in.

  ‘Josh! Wow!’ He almost spills his drink as he jumps down from the counter he’s sitting on – it was Jamie’s mum who used to tell us not to sit up there. Quite a lot of childhood is learning where you can’t sit. To my surprise, Jamie throws his arms around me in an awkward hug that I’m too slow to return properly, knocking him on the knee with my carrier bag. The people Jamie was talking to – Louisa, Harry and Kyle – all look as surprised as I do.

  Jamie takes the bag, lifts out a bottle and gives me a knowing smile. Of course it’s the same, dodgy euro-brand beer we used to steal from Dad years ago.

  ‘Did you leave the coke in the stack?’

  ‘Of course.’ And I laugh, the weight lessening slightly.

  Jamie puts his soft drink down, cracks the top of one of my bottles and passes it to me, then opens another for himself. We tap bottles. I look around and notice there isn’t much alcohol here except what I’ve brought. I begin to think that maybe I’ve made a mistake, misjudged the party. The weight comes back again.

  I don’t remember the first time I had beer. Probably when I was really young, like eight or nine. But the first time I got drunk started out a bit like this. It was Jamie and me in my kitchen. My parents had gone out for the day and left us to our own devices. We were in the garage looking for the coke, or something more drinkable than water, and when we saw the stack of beer we had the same thought at the same time. We did the coke-switch trick, thinking ourselves criminal masterminds, and must have only had two bottles each. It was enough though, and when Mum and Dad came home, I’d fallen asleep in the lounge under a pile of DVDs, and Jamie was passed out in the toilet, his head underneath the bowl. I’d expected Dad to find it more amusing, but Mum drove Jamie home while I cleaned up the mess Jamie had left – he’d missed the toilet. Dad watched sternly from the doorway and made sure I didn’t miss anything. I could smell the antiseptic for days and it made my head spin.

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ says Jamie. He seems to have forgotten the group behind him as we wander outside, where it’s a bit quieter.

  I smile, and the first beer goes down easily as we talk. About school, football, how his dad used to coach us until he left Jamie’s mum and moved away, about holidays, about everything. Before I know it, we’ve been talking for nearly an hour. Which means I’ve been talking for nearly half an hour.

  I go inside for more beers and spend ages looking for a bottle opener so by the time I’m outside again he’s gone. I walk back in, sipping at one of my two bottles, and sidle through to the sitting room, trying not to look out of place amongst the crowd, music and smiling. The party has now moved inside, the walls heaving with a condensed mass of people.

  Molly, a girl in our year, is kneeling down and fiddling with her iPhone. ‘Josh! Shit, how are you? What do you want to listen to, stranger? I’m on Jamie’s mum’s speakers. They’re awesome.’

  I tell her the name of an old-ish song. It’s the first one that pops into my head, and I cringe as I say it. Music hasn’t been a big priority this last few years.

  ‘Classic!’ Molly shouts over the racket. There’s a second’s silence, then the song comes on. She jumps up and gives me a hug, then dances off to the middle of the room. I look around. I nod to a few familiar faces, then realise that Molly’s shouting at me.

  She wants me to dance.

  I smile and turn around, the weight building back up in my stomach. I try to get back to the kitchen but barrelling through the door at that moment are Will, Mike and Ben – all from the football team. The song was played a lot on a tour we went on together about four years ago, when we’d all just met at the start of secondary school. Ben grabs me around the waist, and I just about manage to keep my mouthful of beer inside my lips as I’m lifted up and planted firmly in the middle of the lounge. Will and Mike are on either side of me, jumping up and down to the music, singing along. Ben puts an arm across my shoulders, and soon we’re a big circle, singing and laughing and jumping up and down to the music.

  There are scenes like this in a few of the naff movies I watch with my mum. Normally it’s the end of the film, or nearly, and all the characters are back together and at some kind of wedding or celebration or birthday that – at some point – they didn’t think they were going to get to. They all look at each other, raise their glasses and don’t speak. I didn’t think these things happened in real life. l thought that the glow you got in your stomach from just watching was as good as it got.

  But tonight, I’m singing and laughing and jumping too.

  TEN

  I don’t know where a lot of the night has gone. It’s almost eleven o’clock and I’m sitting on Jamie’s sofa talking to someone. The music is still on but it’s quieter, or it seems quieter, and I’m shouting. Maybe that’s why the music seems quieter.

  I’m shouting at someone and they’re laughing at me. Or with me. And it’s Dana.

  It’s Dana Leigh from school, the one from school who looks at me and I usually don’t look at because she scares me a bit and is always being called to Mrs Clarke’s office. Dana who stopped wearing her school jumper a year ago and who now wears a jacket instead, and ankle boots. Dana who’s wearing an expensive bracelet on her wrist that I keep grabbing and saying ‘wow’. Dana who’s rumoured to have a boyfriend who’s left school already and picks her up some lunchtimes in his car. She’s got a full face of make-up on, even more than Mum used to wear when she wore make-up to work. Her eyelashes are huge. And I’m shouting at her and she’s laughing. And I’m shouting and doing an impression of Mr White, the Maths teacher, and she’s laughing. And I’m laughing, and we’ve both got beers – not the ones I brought, there must have been more after all – and we’re laughing and she puts her hand on my arm because she says she might fall over because she’s laughing, even though we’re sitting down she says she might fall over. And I laugh. And then all I can hear is me laughing because the music’s stopped.

  And when I realise the music has stopped, I stop laughing.

  In the doorway there’s a man. And I mean a man – not a teenager or even someone a bit older but a man. There’s a layer of short stubble all around his head – his buzz-cut skull the same as his unshaven chin. He’s wearing a white shirt, buttoned to the neck, black jeans, military boots. He’s standing there with his hand on the top of the doorframe, leaning in. He’s standing there and he’s looking at me. And he’s not happy.

  ‘Comfortable?’ he says. I f
eel Dana’s grip on my arm tighten as the man walks into the room. Everything around him seems to shrink back as he passes.

  ‘Carl, I…’

  ‘Shut up. Go and get in the car.’

  ‘Carl, leave him. It’s OK. We were just talking.’ She lets go of my arm.

  ‘I said shut up, you little slut. Think I don’t know where you went? Easy enough to find a kids’ party.’

  I stand up, a little unsteady. ‘Hey, I don’t think you should—’

  And then I sit down again, quickly and without meaning to, my ears ringing, my face warm and getting warmer, a ball of fire centred on my left cheek where the man has punched me.

  ‘Carl, he’s just a kid from school. Don’t. He…’

  The man stares her down. ‘Go and get in the car,’ he hisses.

  Dana goes. I try to stand up again, suddenly more sober, but another fist lashes at me. It catches me on the other side of my head and I’m back on the sofa, head pressed against the cool, soft surface of a cushion. I think I’m groaning.

  ‘Don’t let me catch you talkin’ to her again. Right?’

  And then he goes. ­­­

  ELEVEN

  The walk home is taking longer than it should. It’s hard to walk straight and I can’t see too well. A girl, I think it was Louisa, found a bag of peas in the freezer and pressed them against my cheek where a mouth of warm blood had started to form around the cut from Carl’s fist. I still have the bag with me, though all the peas must have fallen out by now because it’s empty. It doesn’t do much to stop the blood which is now running down my face, along my chin and onto the front of my shirt.

  I can feel a lump coming up on my right temple where his second fist caught me. It’s just under the hairline. When I touch it, it feels like a bag of nails has fallen open inside my skull.

  The party broke up soon after Carl left. Jamie insisted I stay, but I insisted I go. I’m not sure that was the best idea.

  I fall over, the pavement coming up suddenly before I can get out of its way. I lie unmoving for a few seconds, enjoying the world being still, then my phone vibrates in my pocket. It’s a text from Jamie telling me to let him know when I’m home safely. The clock on the phone says half past midnight. I don’t know what time I left. I text back – I’m fine. Nearly there.

  Getting to my feet, I look for an idea of where I am. There are no streetlights, and the road is uneven, with lumps of black tarmac around raised iron manhole covers and drains. There are dim outlines of houses a little way back from the road. They look odd, empty. Behind them is a beaded line of street lamps, softly orange. Did I come from over there, or am I going that way? Slowly it dawns on me that I must have wandered into the new estate they’re building up the hill. I’m not far from home at all – maybe a mile – but a lot further away than I should be. I just need to get back to the main road, so I set off to find a way through between the shells of houses.

  It’s not easy going. The ground, although it hasn’t rained for a while, has been churned into jagged teeth by the heavy machinery, and I fall twice more in the first hundred metres or so, each time finding a shallow puddle at the bottom of a long tyre-track. I aim to get closer to the houses to my right, thinking there won’t have been as much traffic around there, but pretty soon I’m cut off by metal fencing. I use this like a handrail, hanging from it by my fingertips as I tread carefully over the ruined earth, or letting it take all of my weight as I lean in to it, avoiding a huge puddle right along the fence line.

  When I get to the houses, they’re terrifying. The smell of concrete dust makes them seem more like ancient caves, and all of the windows are just empty spaces. Through the upstairs openings, you can see the sky. They look like skulls lined up, peering down at me. For a second I get the idea that Dad is in one of them, watching me. I wretch, and a tide of hot vomit springs suddenly up my throat and onto the clay soil at my feet.

  I have to get away from here. I see a narrow gap between two terrace blocks and head towards it. It’s a tight squeeze. When I get to the end of this makeshift alley, the ground starts to level out and I can move more easily. But it’s not long before I get to another fence. This one is a wooden hoarding and it must be the edge of the developer’s land. There’s mud splattered about halfway up it, as if – like me – it is trying to escape. It’s too tall to climb, and I rest against it for a while, leaning my forehead against the rough, warm boards.

  Then, low down on the fence, I see that the edge of one of the wooden boards has slightly come away from the fencepost. I prise my fingers into the gap and lean backwards, hearing a damp ‘pop’ as another couple of nails pull loose. I can feel something happening to the ends of my fingers, but they’re so numb it doesn’t register properly. When there’s enough room to squeeze through, I drop to my chest and heave myself underneath. A fresh pain starts up in my leg as I scramble though.

  Out from under the fence, I try to stand, managing a couple of steps forwards before the earth comes up to meet me again.

  TWELVE

  I wake up. Or at least my right eye wakes up. My left seems glued down, pushed hard into clammy, wet mud.

  Grimacing, I gather my hands from wherever they have fallen at the ends of my cold arms, put them under my chest and push myself clear of the ground.

  I’m freezing. The cold starts at my shoulder blades, nibbling away, then takes great chunks of my legs and finally swallows my feet.

  I roll over. And last night comes back in one violent tumble.

  My trainers are ruined, caked in yellow-brown clay. There’s a rip, about a foot long, down one leg of my trousers. The top of the tear is red with blood. I must have caught myself on a nail when I squeezed under the fence. I probe it with a gentle finger. It’s swollen and ugly, but the bleeding has stopped.

  My shirt is in strips, blood-stained, covered in mud and stinking like the first time I got drunk with Jamie. I check my cheek, just beneath the eye that won’t open. That too has stopped bleeding, but that may be because of the mud that has crusted over it.

  I stretch my limbs to check that everything’s still there. Nothing feels broken. Just sore. And cold.

  My phone says 5:48. The light feels strange: ash grey and milky, but clean. There’s a smell that is the same: clean. And there’s a song playing in my head.

  It’s not in my head. The rise and fall of notes are coming from nearby. I turn slowly towards it. On the top of the wooden fence that I crawled under last night there is a blackbird. It’s looking at me.

  ‘Morning,’ I croak.

  The blackbird turns its head, flies off. I watch it as it comes to rest on a stone wall about five metres in front on me. Patches of moss, cascades of green leaves and purple flowers cover most of the wall’s significant height. I realise there are walls on three sides of me and, with the wooden hoarding at my back, I’d say I was lying in a pretty even-sided square.

  The blackbird trills on, and above its head a scurry of wings brings two more birds into view. I don’t know what these birds are, but when they move they look like pale blue streaks. One of them arches its flight to land in the branches of a small tree in the corner of the square. When it lands, I see its chest is yellow against the bush’s purple spears of flowers.

  I force myself upright, every joint in my body complaining.

  I realise that it’s not mud I’ve been lying on, but grass – bushy tufts of dew-wet grass. I rip chunks of it off in my fists and rub them gently against the sides of my face. They come away streaked with brown, yellow and red.

  I take my shoes off and beat them on the ground, scour their edges against the grass, trying to get rid of the worst of their clay jackets. This is working. I look for anything else I can use.

  The moss on the wall comes away in great, sodden handfuls. Up close, it looks like it’s made from intricate ropes of tiny, furry stars. Before I question what I’m doing, I jam a fistful against the pain in my leg. At first, the cold water that flows from it is like another nail enter
ing my flesh, but that soon subsides and the sharp pain of the cut lessens and is replaced by a warm throb. I do the same to my cheek and almost sigh in pleasure as a spigot of water runs into the corner of my mouth. My tongue, like my cheek, begins to numb and warm. I start to feel clean.

  Well, cleaner.

  After about a dozen handfuls of the moss, I notice a low wooden door in one corner of the square. It complains against its ancient lock and hinges as I try to force it. I lean against it with all my force and hear something start to splinter. With a dry cough, the lock finally gives way and the door springs open. I almost fall through, finding myself in a narrow, dark hollow under dense bushes growing against the backside of the stone wall. The occasional sound of a passing car tells me the road is to my left, and I part crawl, part walk beneath the thick canopy in that direction, keeping my shoulder against the wall. I have to push through about a metre of weed and nettle before I emerge, bleary eyed and filthy, onto the pavement. Realising where I am, I set off as fast as I can for home. I don’t look at the drivers’ faces in the few cars that pass me, but I can feel their shocked looks fuelling my embarrassment.

  When I get through the door, I go straight upstairs, put all my clothes in a bin bag, and run a hot bath.

  THIRTEEN

  I spend most of Saturday on the sofa, a bag of frozen peas over my swelling cheek. Mum calls in the afternoon. I let her go through to voicemail and almost smile when I listen to her message. She says she is staying away an extra night, and that there is plenty of food in the freezer. I don’t know why she still says ‘an extra night’, and I tell her unresponsive message that there aren’t any peas left. I almost smile at that too.