Niven Govinden - Graffiti My Soul

We end up riding the lifts, pissing about like a couple of ten-year-olds. They’re see-through and small, like coffins, running at two miles an hour, but still manage to get us excited. Mum looks disappointed when we meet her outside Tesco empty-handed. She likes her routine, and keeps Wednesdays for the supermarket run, but pushed it forward because we were making such a big deal of hitting the mall to get our stuff.

‘That CD’s not out yet. I got the dates wrong,’ Moon goes.

Mum nods like she doesn’t believe a word, but doesn’t ask me about my laces, in case I give an even more useless lie than Moon.

She’s more than made up for our lack of purchases though, with enough House of Fraser bags to fill two cars.

‘From the sales, OK?’ she goes, before I can get a word in.

People love shopping in this town. You never see anyone on the high street or leaving the mall without a carrier bag. I’m not as fussed. As long as I get some new CDs every couple of weeks (the ones that I can’t download for free that is), and a new hoodie or a pair of trainers once in a while, I’m happy. Can think of several hundred things that are more important than money and the things that it can buy you. Don’t understand everyone’s preoccupation with it.

I don’t lay any of this on Mum, though. I’m not a name-and-blame person. She works hard for the things she shops for. Deserves to buy what she wants. One of the benefits of no longer having Dad around is that Mum doesn’t have to hide her shopping in the garage, eking everything out a couple of days at a time. It almost makes up for the fact that he was such a bastard.

In Tesco, Jason is stacking shelves in the Tastes of Italy aisle, which makes Moon’s day. She’s had the hots for him since last Tuesday, when he smacked Chris Pearson one for saying that Lizzie Jennings is a fat twat. Every girl in that classroom was in his thrall after that. Even I have to admit, there was a certain grace about my mate Jase as he cut Pearson’s nose open. The way the blood hit the floor in one thick spurt, like the cold tap on max, was pure poetry.

He sees us first from behind his boxes of imported pasta.

We break into a round of hugs. Hugging is the new thing — everyone has to hug everyone else. Hello mate, hello geezer, hello darlin’. It’s bollocks, but I have to do it too, whenever I’m with any of that crowd. With Moon it’s a given, and if I’m not showing willing, she gives me a prod, and if that doesn’t work, a punch. Funny, isn’t it, I can’t remember the last time I gave my mum a peck on the cheek, and here I am in aisle 33, passing the love like a fuckwit. At school it’s worse, half the people you hug in the canteen you fucking hate. Girls hugging girls. Boys hugging boys. No one believes you when you tell them how tough it is to be a teenager.

‘What you two doing here? Come to see how I line up the vermicelli next to the rigatoni?’

‘Always wanted to know how they do that.’

‘Heard it was a new Olympic sport.’

‘Mentalists. If I wasn’t working, I’d be having a cheeky spliff before dinner, not poncing about here.’

This one has smoking on the brain. He probably still hasn’t registered that I never touch the stuff. Don’t see the point. Jason is madder than the rest of us, but to most people at school, he’ll always be known as the guy whose sister was killed in that hit and run. There’s no getting away from it.

Aside from me and Moony Suzuki. We’re not into labels and all that shit. At least that’s what we’re currently telling ourselves.

Moon giggles at the first mention of nutters, and its accompanying floorful of dropped Ts. She’s become like that whenever she’s around Jason.

‘We’ve been hanging round the mall,’ I say, ‘looking for evidence.’ By which I mean, hoping to find a couple of God-Squadders out with their embarrassing parents. Digging for dirt. Everyone is looking to have one up on someone at that school.

‘Come round later, if you’re knocking off any time soon,’ I continue, knowing that Moon will have to owe me one if he does turn up.

‘Uh huh, uh huh,’ he goes, kinda interested, kinda not, his eye on the pasta he’s stacking. They drum it hard into those boys, these supermarket managers; Jason takes his job very seriously. He can’t rest until all the boxes are lined dead straight.

‘TV and shit, easy for a Monday. They’re showing Barbershop on Sky, around eight, I think,’ she says, knowing it.

‘Cool,’ he says, ‘I’m there.’

Whilst Mum is at the checkout, Moon drags me back across the mall to the kiosk where they turn a blind eye, buys twenty Benson, and a packet of king-size R. She’s got some gear in a tin under the carpet tiles in her wardrobe and she’s planning on bringing it over.

‘Gotta make our guest feel at home,’ she goes later, when it makes an appearance in my room. She’s always so sure about everything. Knows that he’s going to show. And who would turn Moon down? She’s not popular but she’s perfect. Works out. Isn’t a shortie. Long layered mud-coloured hair, which she swishes to her advantage. Clear skin that’s never seen a spot. This open face that says to potential suitors, mould me, whilst her brain says the opposite. A great rack. Half the school is after her.

She’s wearing her new Nike-girl hoodie, baby pink to match her top braces, with only her push-up bra underneath. It’s an outfit designed for easy access. Luckily I haven’t seen Barbershop , so I’ll be able to keep my eyes on the screen no problem once she and Jason get down to business. Almost.

He turns up on the dot, wearing one of the Triple 5 Soul shirts with only three buttons. They don’t even make it past the titles. Someone should make me a saint, the crazy shit I have to put up with.

The price for not looking whilst Moon is getting touched up is three Benson and a whole tube of Pringles. Both banned substances on my new diet sheet, one stuck on the fridge door, the other above my bed. Multiple fags may sound excessive for a near non-smoker, but Barbershop is a long film. My chest feels it in the morning. There may as well be two Sumos sitting on top of me. At training, I’m coughing up all kinds of shit. Casey isn’t impressed.

‘Cigarettes are a one-way ticket to an early grave,’ he goes, as I hack my way around the track.

He looks at the state of me and prescribes a 1200m warm-up, followed by a series of 200m sprints, because I was choosy about telling him who I was smoking with.

‘Don’t be doing with the bad crowds, V-pen. They aren’t with you when you’re on the track. I’m only interested in one winner, V-pen. The finishing line is only concerned with one winner, V-pen.’

He’s been calling me V-pen ever since I started with him last autumn. Nothing I can do about it.

I trained with the Harriers all through primary school, up until the end of the last summer holidays, when we had a disagreement about me training there after hours. They didn’t like it that when the place was shut, I’d bring Moon, Jase, a couple of others, and a few bottles of sauce. Fences around the place are babyishly short. Even Moon in a skirt finds it an easy proposition. I admit I was mullered on my alcopops by the time we left there, usually no earlier than ten-thirty, but technically I had still been running. I told Mum that I’d reached the top age limit and had to look for training elsewhere. She was too busy to follow it through, so took my word for it.

Casey had been a regional Harriers trainer, one of the local hot shots, but then he disappeared for a while, after some boy started blabbing about being touched up. Bad news for the Surrey Harriers. They were licked at most of their meetings after that. They had replacements obviously, but no one who employed the same technique. The new guys were all about encouragement and nurturing. They worried about self-esteem and hurt feelings. Casey’s the other way. He doesn’t believe in hand-holding. More an all-out bastard who demands you hand over your life. Expects total dedication, and very rarely gives his charges a second chance. Show your fallibility and you’re out of there. The centre, in their panic, forgot all about this, and the sagging silver shelf that he had helped them to accumulate. They lost a good ’un. But fantastic for me. I hired him on the spot.