Niven Govinden - Graffiti My Soul

‘You’ve got a lot to learn, Mr V-pen. Damaged kids, whether the cause is real or imaginary, is the Holy Grail when it comes to compensation claims. Me and my shabby lot don’t even come close.’

‘Ask me and I’ll do it. Just say the word. Me and Jase can go round and rough the kid up a little. Persuade him to change his mind.’

‘It’s not about him, young Turk. It’s about the parents. That kid’s no better off than I am. We’re both cash cows as far as they’re concerned.’

At race meets, I do remember the kid’s mother being a little on the showy side. She was always wearing hats.

‘I’m sure they’ve got the best intentions,’ I say stupidly, only because I can’t think of anything better to say.

Better this, than lamely trying to convince him that everything will be all right if he leaves it to the proper channels, because we all know that it won’t. Once your card has been marked as a PPP, there’s no going back. It’s over. You may as well kill yourself.

Casey doesn’t answer. Just opens the door and runs out. Crumbles under the pressure of trying to be brave. Shoulders heave a great deal, up and down until they’re like jelly. I turn on the radio and pretend that I don’t see it.

Moon and Gwyn are the girls that we are all looking for. Even saying their name together over and over makes them sound like thirteenth-century princesses.

Moonandgywnmoonandgwynmoonandgywn.

Magical. If there was any justice or romance left in this world, they should be riding white horses and wearing wimpoles. We’re doing medieval at the moment. Like most of the girls around them, even the ones they’re not friendly with, or hate even, these are sisters who know their own minds. No insecurity here — or none they’ll show to boys, anyway. Also, they are straight-edged all the way — which, for anyone over thirty, means that they’re alcohol-, nicotine-and narcotic-free zones. Moon keeps a bit of gear under her bed, but like me never touches the stuff. Uses it for — how does she put it? — ‘man magnetism hahaha’. The irony being that those girls don’t need a cheeba wand to get any boy hooked. They are beguiling enough. Look at me and Jase. Caught.

Pearson’s success with the ladies post-fight makes me feel a whole load of things, like a sick stew. I don’t like to feel uncertain about anything. On the way home from school I shag Kelly Button under the ropey. It’s too muddy for us to do it properly. We wriggle in the mud like a couple of rugby players. It’s Kelly’s fault for being up for anything. Our route home through the park takes in a clutch of bushes, where we try again, this time with her mouth. Just to make sure.

Moon decides to reappear for the next Challenge session. Nothing to do with having the afternoon off school or anything. As the team’s official bag carrier/supporter, she’s allowed. Everyone else has to pull a sickie or grovel.

This is a week since the so-called exclusion. I’m pissed at her and she knows it. She sits next to me on the minibus all the same, but we say nothing until we’re almost past Chessington, en route to Godalming.

‘I know you’ve been coming round every day after school,’ she goes. ‘I could hear you from my room. It’s been a bitch. But when my parents say grounded, they mean it.’

‘Moon, it ain’t that hard. Haven’t you heard of MSN, slipping a note through the door late night, coming down to training with the dog?’

I knew not to txt after being gloated at by Gwyn outside the newsagent’s, whilst Jason was arguing with the woman inside over why a packet of Benson Silver should pass across the counter.

‘They’ve taken her phone off her, troublemaking boy, so don’t waste your precious 5ps with your texts.’

Gwyn was known as the only girl in the upper school who didn’t own a mobile as a point of principle. She thought it made her cool.

‘There was life before mobile phones,’ she’d more than once said. ‘They’re worse than TVs for vegetising the brain.’

The three of us thought she was sad.

‘It’s lucky she doesn’t have a phone,’ goes Jason, when he finally comes out of the newsagent, fagless, ‘’cos she doesn’t have any friends to call on it. Just a smokescreen, innit?’

Moon doesn’t mention the txt thing either. Too embarrassed probably, but still manages to look affronted the way that only girls can do when they’re in the wrong.

‘I was grounded. That means being a good girl and listening to her mummy and daddy.’

‘Like you didn’t manage to sneak off all those times before? You’ll need a better excuse than that.’

Aside from this, I cannot get any more from her on how she’s spent the last seven days.

She uses the journey to focus solely on the team. Like me, she takes her position seriously. Getting Mr Morgan to crank up the stereo whenever a good tune comes on, doing her impression of every saddo boy band all rolled into one after a horrific car accident; it’s all geared to make the four of us in the bus laugh our arses off. Even Peter Kei, aka Chinese Peter (like Gwyn, a reluctant teenager, who is so serious that he never laughs at anything), broke a smile at Moon’s seated moonwalk for paraplegics.

I love it that she can make a dry old nerdy bus wet their pants. Love that she tells the jokes that I’ve already heard in private. The ones we made up lying on our backs watching MTV Base, and pissing about in my room, waiting for Mum to come home with the dinner. When Moon is on form, when she’s got the charm offensive in her head, she can light up anywhere. And I love it, that everyone loves her silliness the way I do. It’s a proud moment.

By rights Mr Morgan should be slapping her down for most of the things coming out of her mouth. She’s distracting his driving for a start, but he’s in a good mood today; for the same reason, we’re all feeling great, out of the school for the afternoon, and he laughs just as hard as the rest of us.

I take a swig from the Evian bottle the moment after she does. It’s the most intimate erotic thing you can do whilst you’re sat beside of a group of nerds. Normally, this is the kind of stuff she notices. Today she doesn’t.

Moon hugs me at Godalming’s gates. Another love-you-mate, love-you-darlin’ hug. Throws the body in, tight squeeze, small pat on the back, very egalitarian. The whole team gets them. I wait in line for my hug — I’m at the end of the queue — and console myself that this is the best I’m going to get. For the last half hour of the drive, after the toilet stop, she moved to the front next to Morgan, giving him the one to one, ignoring everyone else. Txts on her phone like a maniac. We’re all over the place with each other today, not acting right. It’s only the small peck on the cheek that indicates any recall of past conquests. Feels nostalgic. I want to tell her that she’s special, but Morgan’s nagging us to hurry up so I don’t get the chance.

Godalming’s team are killer. They should be, considering the school. The three on the team, two boys and a girl, are friendly enough. Surprisingly non-nerdish. The first to come over and shake hands, confident and chummy, showing us up somewhat as we were good and ready for our usual tactic — to avoid all prior contact by throwing evils and bitching in a corner.

We’re all presentable enough, but they’re more evolved, closer to mini-adults with the odd patter of teen talk thrown in. There are the smallest of looks on their part, reassuring, expected, when they see our uniforms, a defiant paean to man-made fibres, all shiny and static. They, smug in their grey wool blazers that seem to fit just so, as opposed to ours, which just ‘fit’, are the perfect hosts.