ONE MORNING BEFORE school Wesley is waiting on his bike round the corner from Dean’s house. He says he needs Dean’s help with something, so instead of going to school, they ride their bikes straight down the hill to Wesley’s house.
The house is quiet: Wesley’s dad at work and his mum out preaching Jehovah’s word.
The boys drag Wesley’s mattress to the top of the stairs.
Wesley sits on it and tries to ride it to the bottom, but it gets stuck halfway, so Dean pushes it from behind. They get it out the back door, over the high wall and one each end they lug it up the alleyway to the garages.
Most of the garages are open concrete caves that stink of piss. The few that still have doors are covered in permanent marker death threats. Fat dicks firing spunk. There are needles scattered on the concrete. Porno mags with the pages stuck together. A used condom.
Angie Boyd’s Mum is there, in a short leather skirt, squatting in the corner. She stands up quickly, revealing a steaming puddle between her stilettos.
“Ain’t you boys got no manners?” she says. “Anyway, clear off! I’m meeting a friend!”
Her red leather jacket is open, revealing two plastic spheres contained in a string vest. Kids at school call Angie Boyd’s Mum Cher.
The boys let the mattress rest on their feet, without moving. Angie Boyd’s Mum doesn’t budge either, just stares back at them from her heavily painted face.
“Ain’t you boys a bit young to be working?” she says. “How old are you… sixteen?”
“Thirteen,” Dean says.
Angie Boyd’s Mum shrieks.
“What! Him too? Lurch!”
“Actually, he’s twelve,” Dean says.
“And three quarters!” Wesley stops sucking his thumb to interject.
“Hang on,” Cher says, narrowing her eyes. “I know you boys. You’re in my Angie’s class. You’re Daniel Winston, I’m friends with your Uncle Bill.”
“He’s not my uncle,” Dean says quickly.
“He’s a fine man is what he is,” Cher says. “When’s he coming down next?”
Dean shrugs his shoulders.
“Missus Boyd,” Wesley says. “Get out of here will yer. We’ve got a job to do.”
“Sod off!” Cher snaps. “Who d’yer think you’re talking to, yer cheeky git!”
Wesley sucks harder on his thumb. Sweat patches appear on his shirt.
“Please, Missus Boyd,” Dean says. “You’re giving Wesley one of his panic attacks.”
Cher screams with amusement, composes herself and says, “Giz a fag.”
Dean says, “We don’t smoke. We’re kids.”
Angie Boyd’s Mum snorts.
“Yea right! Angie smokes like a Greek! I’m bloody gasping for one! How much money you got on you?”
Dean says, “We’re not gonna buy you cigarettes, Missus Boyd.”
Cher’s eyes look like whirlpools about to overflow, into which Dean falls, and views below the surface. What he sees is a little girl, he sees Angie, the Angie he’s known since playschool, dressed up in adult’s clothes and thrown to the lions. He sees little Angie sitting on the kerb outside her house, crying silently into her hands, while Angie’s stepdad Phil fights with the five policemen attempting to bundle him into the van, and paramedics wheel Angie’s unconscious mother out the front door and into the ambulance.
“I’ll let you see it for a fiver,” Cher mumbles.
Dean and Wesley look at each other, open-mouthed.
“See what?” Dean says.
“Forget it!” Cher says. “If you’re gonna act like children!”
“We haven’t got a fiver,” Dean says. “I’ve got a quid.”
“Fat lot of good you are!” Cher sneers.
“I’ve got it,” Wesley says.
Cher studies his face. Her smile disappears.
“If you’re gonna take the piss,” she says, “forget it!”
Wesley pulls from his pocket a scrunched up ten-pound note. Carefully unfolds it.
“I’ll need the change,” he says.
“Ha! That’s a good one!” Cher says. “What do you expect, the buttons off this jacket?”
“You said a fiver,” Wesley says. “This is ten. That leaves a fiver change.”
“Well, actually,” Cher says, “ten’s enough for both of you to have a look.”
Wesley says he’s not interested in seeing anything Angie Boyd’s Mum has to show. But Dean does want to see. It is negotiated that Dean will have a look at it, then accompany Cher to the shop down the road for cigarettes and she’ll give him a fiver from the change.
After leaning the mattress against a garage door, Dean approaches Angie Boyd’s Mum, while Wesley turns and faces the other way. Angie Boyd’s Mum puts a foot on the wall, edges up her skirt, pulls her red knickers to the side, revealing a patch of curly black hair.
“Touch it!”
Dean runs his fingertips over the fuzz, cautiously, as though petting a stray dog. It feels like Uncle Bill’s beard. Cher grabs Dean’s wrist.
“Not there! Lower!”
She guides his hand into her, as though prodding a bee’s nest for honey, her eyes looking emptily at the clouds. Her breathing becomes irregular, like after a tantrum.
Each time he gently pulls back his hand, Cher squeezes tighter on his wrist, pushing into his pulse with her thumb. Dean stops resisting and pictures all the times he saw this woman staggering drunkenly along his street when he was little, slurring abuse at the kids, him included, that mocked and insulted her. The times Phil came round the house, slapped her black and blue and kicked her out onto the street in her dressing gown. Once, from his bedroom window, Dean saw her being dragged across the grass by her hair.
It feels strange being inside another person’s body. Like he and Angie Boyd’s Mum are one. It’s warm inside a person. Wet. His wrist aches. He wonders what Angie Boyd’s Mum is thinking. Probably about taking a deep drag on that first cigarette. Or maybe she feels love. Who knows what a person thinks about when another person is inside their body.
Dean hears the whispers that follow Angie down the school corridors. Your mum’s this and soon enough you’ll be that. He thinks about how when they get to the shop, he’ll use the pound in his pocket to buy Angie Boyd’s Mum a bar of chocolate.
“WHAT THE—” A man’s voice shouts from the alleyway.
Wesley has escaped over a wall. Dean too is over a different wall before the man has finished his sentence. Radio chatter crackles in the background: the man is PC Parker, the local bobby. Dean listens from the other side of the wall.
“Oh Julie,” PC Parker says, letting out a heavy sigh. “You can’t be doing that! That kid didn’t look older than your Angie. It’s not right, you know that. If word gets about, parents will come for you. Then they’ll come for me for turning a blind eye.”
Silence.
“Well?” PC Parker says. “Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
“Giz a fag, Tony,” Angie Boyd’s Mum says quietly.
Dean hears the flick of a lighter. Then another. Two people inhaling deeply. Blowing out slowly through their noses. He feels the ten-pound note still in the palm of his hand. He’ll have to go to school after all. Find Angie Boyd. Return the money to its rightful owner.
Whatever Wesley has planned with the mattress will have to wait.
Thanks for reading. Maybe you’d like to read PART TWO
More and more I find Fuck It is the way to go.
Ah, man, I find it so strange that something so different from my childhood is still so relatable. I think it's the world building that makes the actions belivable, and this belief in the world makes the escalating actions have so much more impact.
It feels like Dean's life will be fully formed by the end of the story, not just a character but a person.
Top work, mate.