SHRUBS (Part One)

(11:04)

I skidded down the last few feet of the dirt slope, dived through the overgrown entrance to The Shrubs and encountered a harsh example of parental optimism: ‘Kylie’. Kylie Trent, hunched up over her knees in my corner, her short skirt riding up so that I got my first look at a girl’s thighs and underwear. They were light blue – her pants, not her thighs. Kylie wasn’t supposed to be here, I barely knew her. My big plans for the afternoon started to evaporate; The Catcher in the Rye, waiting for me in my school bag, might as well have been on another planet for all the enjoyment I was likely to get out of it now. I could feel a ball of anger start to expand in my chest. She hadn’t even noticed me because her stupid hair was hanging in her face.

Although I could have escaped without any hassle, there was nowhere else for me to go. Retreating a few paces, I perched on the edge of a concrete, rectangular flower-bed that contained more cigarette filters than plant life. The Shrubs was a cleared patch of woodland, once intended as a picturesque communal eating-area behind the Art and Design block, but it had since become a large, barren crater hidden by a dense network of shrubbery and tangled weeds; an afterlife for broken school chairs and faded crisp packets.

Kylie must have sensed some motion, because her head snapped up. “What?”

I didn’t get what ‘what’ meant. “Um, nothing,” I said. “Hi?”

“Piss off.”

I couldn’t believe Kylie Trent was glowering at me and telling me to piss off. It opened my eyes to exactly how far down I was in the school hierarchy. Kylie was Year Eight’s punching-bag. Kids could recite the litany of sexual services she’d allegedly perform for a cigarette better than they could their times tables. No one sat next to Kylie voluntarily, and if a teacher forced you to: Urrrghhhh! You fancy her! You’ve shagged her! Your kids will all be mingers! That’s bestiality, man! Woof! You’ll get AIDS and die! She’s an ugly, diseased slag and anyone who walks near her sans abusive comment and throwing something at her head must also have something wrong with them!

You get the picture. Like that, only less articulate.

I probably would have obediently pissed off, dogged closely by shame, if Edward Brown hadn’t suddenly swung into sight, dangling from the flexible branches of the sprawling trees that shaded The Shrubs. “Yes, B – nice one, fam. Wagging footie again!” he yelled, and dropped to the ground. Classic Ed Brown entrance: a little surreal. Scrambling agilely to his feet, he saw Kylie. “Whoa, what’s going on? We havin’ a party?”

For a second I envied his loud, liberated attitude and how he didn’t even bother to brush the mud off himself. Then I registered his shabby school trousers, hovering a good inch of sock above the battered shoes. Ed knew one more layer of dirt wouldn’t make a difference to anything.

“Alright, B?” said Ed.

“Um, why’d you call him Bee when his name’s Gareth?” Kylie asked pointedly.

“No one else calls him Gareth, do they?”

“Nah, they call him Buddha – ”

“Well then. Fuck’s sake.”

I’d always assumed ‘B’ to be Ed’s abbreviated form of brother, the new-skool ‘bro’. Kylie had shattered two illusions for me in the same number of minutes. Crestfallen, I stared across the small plain of cigarette butts and litter, and locked my vision upon the surrounding bushes. Coca Cola, the international symbol of good times, winked at me in the overcast sunlight. The can was crushed and dented.

Enclosed within the trees and bushes, like a picnicking family protected by windbreakers, ours was a strange and fragile fellowship. The Shrubs was our refuge from changing-room stares, scorn and the deliberate bite of football studs into shins. During breaks and before school started, this sanctuary turned traitor and became off-limits; instead, an assembly-point for small crowds of hard kids, where they could pass time smoking and groping until the bell clamoured for them to get to class.

It was the third Tuesday in a row that I’d skipped PE.

(11: 09)

“Tur – Ed, can I have a fag?” Kylie asked.

I watched Edward watching Kylie, wariness chiselled into his face by experience.

“Not got many left.”

“Not even twos? Go on, please.”

 “Alright, twos,” he said gruffly.

This was an historic moment.

No matter how desperate a smoker might be, unwritten law of the jungle dictated that your lips must never touch the same object that “Turd” Brown’s had. Even if you went first, or simply snatched one from his packet, that cigarette was still classed as Turd’s property and therefore contaminated. Ed didn’t smell of shit (I’d testify to that, it was all just an urban myth that had followed him from primary school and spiralled out of control) but he seemed to have a personalised odour. Living in the kind of house where only the empty shell of a washing machine existed, stripped down and tossed out onto the front lawn to rot amongst crumpled lager cans and the amputated limbs of mistreated toys, he couldn’t help it.

Silence descended over us. Ed sat and smoked – his sprawling pose exuding a tough confidence that was sadly belied by his day spent dodging fists and kicks. Kylie, rebellious strands of hair continuously escaping from behind her ears, was focused on the fast-diminishing cigarette between his fingers.

I wanted to cry. How had I, Gareth Berry, washed up at the age of twelve as ‘Buddha Belly’ – a miserable lump who spent his mornings hiding in the bushes with society’s other rejects? It was over for us, life. I knew it. Every time I looked at the other two, the future leapt out at me. Ed would become an alcoholic waster, Kylie a love-starved, suicidal teen-pregnancy statistic. I would die alone in my thirties from some obesity-related disease, probably with half a Big Mac clutched to my flabby chest.

From somewhere far off, we heard childhood play on in our absence: laughter, enthusiasm, teams. I spared a thought for the poor moron currently taking my place as the last to be picked, staring shamefacedly down at the grass, shifting from one foot to the other. Glancing at Kylie, I wondered if she did the same for her own PE understudy.

As if he’d read my mind, Ed saluted me with his smoking hand and said, “Cheer up, B. Best years of your life, mate.”

Involuntary laughter snorted out of me.

Ed suddenly pitched the cigarette and stamped on it.

“Aw, Ed, you’re well out of order!” said Kylie.

“Fucking hide. Someone’s coming,” he hissed.

My stomach flipped over like a lively pancake. To get caught wagging lessons in The Shrubs by a teacher guaranteed you a detention and possibly a letter sent home, and I figured being found in The Shrubs by anybody else would result in getting battered.  Ed and Kylie were already ducking behind the cluster of dense hedges at the far end of The Shrubs; grabbing my bag, I plunged after them, silently thanking whoever designed the school for including it. The blood was pounding in my ears like a war drum and I couldn’t stop panting; the tension cut into me deeper than the over-stretched waistband of my briefs. We stayed crouched behind the partition for about three minutes (although it felt more like twenty) and then Kylie suddenly stood up and said, “Fuck this. No one’s coming.”

Ed scrambled to his feet too. “Alright, chill out. Could have been someone.” He bent down to retrieve his discarded cigarette and examined the squished mess of tobacco sadly, then held it out to Kylie with a grin. “You still want this?”

“Piss off, Turd.”

Something had changed. Potential danger had sent our adrenaline flowing and it swept through our fragile group, flushing us out as three separate, miserable islands.

“What’s up, B? You look proper depressed.”

Yeah, I thought, that’s because I am. Take a look around at where we are and see if you feel like dancing a merry fucking jig.

“Just thinking,” I said.

“You wanna pack that in, mate. Dirty habit.”

I flashed Ed the expected weak smile. Had we been friends, I’d have attempted to keep the banter going – but we weren’t friends, merely people flung together by pathetic circumstance. The other two now lapsed into a contemplative silence, as if this knowledge had simultaneously dawned on all three of us. The only sound was the grainy scratching of metal against plastic, as Ed traced swearwords onto the back of a three-legged chair with the edge of his lighter.