The Boy That Smoked

There was a good atmosphere in the house, but that was only because there had been bad atmosphere for four days on the trot.
Mam has successfully hurried her two elder children off to school, got back after a visit to the petrol station for her Mail and Bensons, done the washing-up with Kilroy blaring in the background, made a cup of tea for herself, sat down, had a cigarette, read the paper, had another cigarette and finished off her tea for good measure.
All this while little Toby sat cross-legged on his bed watching his elder brothers’ videos.
Toby has an attention disorder. He can’t think straight for more than the required span that the education system set out in its latest report, and so Toby attends only a certain amount of lessons in a class for those with special needs.
He has a knack of hitting people at school, and has therefore been labelled as a troublemaker.
You’d think he was up for the UK’s Under 14’s One-Man Crimewave Of The Year Award the way his neighbours went on about him, but deep down, Toby’s just another thirteen year old boy missing his Dad.
Dad left when Toby was two and although he only lives on the other side of town, they don’t see each other much. If they do, it’s while his dad’s been ejected from a pub, which is the only time he goes out.
His elder brothers are less volatile. They know what the score is and was. They seem to have avoided Toby’s turmoil in that sense.
His Mam lets him smoke because the GP said that this ‘new strain of attention malfunction has the sufferer in a constant struggle between a need to find something to do that will settle his mind and a desire do as little as possible’. She understood all about that. Her lot was very similar.
When he turned eleven, she stopped worrying, losing and forgetting things and blaming Toby, finding things and then going quiet, swearing at the top of her voice as he tried desperately to blank it out with an action adventure presentation up in the bedroom he shared with Jez, his middle brother.
Toby jumped at the opportunity of taking up permissive smoking nine months after his tenth birthday, the precise time his illness was labelled by his maths teacher as ‘BAD’ (bullish attention disorder, she’d said in front of the whole class).
‘He should see someone,’ the teacher had told the head after narrowing avoiding Toby’s flung compass at seventy-five miles an hour.
The head had acted according to strict regulations set down by his education system and decided that Toby needed extra help, so he put him in the special needs class with a spastic, a mumbling girl with saliva streaming from her numb mouth with her finger constantly up her nose, the boy that never spoke and Godalming’s very own paranoid schizophrenic soon to be alcoholic, Desmond, who only spoke when he wanted to. Toby’s two afternoon lessons were the extra help deemed fit for him. No more could Toby sit with his classmates as a normal boy.
He liked having mornings off, but if he was really honest with himself he’d have much rather been at school learning about cloud formations and the British Army in the nineteenth century with his friends.
He felt left out, and in an attempt to satisfy his pride he clung onto the idea that he must be special to be able to loll about every morning while his friends at school slaved away while he toked on his own Benson with a cup of juice and an adult adventure movie, rated eighteen.
Toby has developed a fifteen-a-day habit, which he planned to hike up to the twenty-mark, where his brothers were, by Christmas.
There were a few hiccups in his early months. For example, he heaved up some bloody globules of stomach-lining and when they presented themselves in his mouth, he was forced to swallow them back down, scared that his brothers might call him a wimp if they saw that he couldn’t handle his smoke. He’d puked up every night for the first ten days of smoking, but that was normal, they said. He liked burning the rims of his cuticles when the Benson got down to its filter and he also liked doing mean smoke-exhalation through his nose at the same time as blowing smoke-rings through his mouth, one of Jez’s specialities.
Overall, his initiation was complete. His brothers accepted him as a fellow smoker at the same time as his school friends walked away from him. He’d started hitting people for no reason in the playground and his friends couldn’t stand by and watch him do it. They had been good friends up until he was diagnosed by the maths teacher and put in special needs. There had always been a chance for Toby up till then.
One morning, after smoking five on the trot in his bedroom watching saved clips of The Simpsons, he went out to the playing fields in front of his house and carried on smoking there. He was sat on a swing when a boy who had recently befriended Toby (only to be barred from speaking to him for a month on this occasion by his parents) came up to him.
‘Got a spare one?’ he asked.
‘Na,’ replied Toby, pulling hard and mean on his deathstick. ‘You’re too young, mate.’
‘Fuck off, Toby,’ replied the lad. ‘I’m older than you.’
‘Yeah, but I’m allowed to smoke, in’ I. The GP said so, didn’t he.’
That stumped the lad. He knew everything there was to know about Toby; which windows he’d smashed, which letterboxes he’d thrown household matches into, the graffiti he’d done at the train station, the girls he’d snogged behind the bus shelter, the kids he’d given a pasting, the boys he aspired to and the parents he’d slashed tyres for.
Everyone knew everything about Toby, but no one could stop him from his own mischief.
The lad gave up scrounging when he caught sight of his mother lurking at her bedroom window behind the pulled-to fishnet.
‘Shit!’ the lad said. ‘My fuckin’ Mum’s watching me. I’ll get killed me if she tells Dad. I’ve got to go. Bye!’ and off he ran.
‘Yeah, that’s right,’ Toby shouted after him. ‘Go on! Run back to Mummy like a good little boy! I bet you tell her you only came up to me to tell me that you didn’t want to be my friend any more! Wanker!’
The lad waved back as he ran, only thinking about the probability of his father’s lager breath on him as the leather struck. He couldn’t care less about Toby.
Once Toby had tired of the swings, he got up and strolled in the direction of town. He had his pocket money and he wanted to have a laugh. Noticing that he had fourteen Bensons left in his pack, he wondered whether he could finish them off by bedtime. He relished the thought of becoming a twenty-a-day man like his brothers and all the other tough blokes on the estate.
So, filled with hate and a deep sense of alienation, Toby skipped off towards town tugging on a Benson.
He caught the bus in the village and paid for a return. As was usually the way, the bus appeared the moment he again lit up, so he flicked the burning end off and tucked the remainder behind his right ear for the other end.
Toby lit up again at the entrance of the bus, much to the disgust of the driver, who couldn’t exactly close the doors on a thirteen year old as he hopped off with a sneer.
‘Maybe I’ll go to Debenhams and nick a pair of boxer-shorts,’ he said to himself. And he did. He just strolled in there and took them, quick and simple, no dithering.
With a quick fag and a look at the goods, he stomped up the High Street and took a left on Dolphin Walk. There, in the rain, he waltzed into Jeff’s Bazaar and went straight for the lava lamps. Once there, without fuss, he banged the box into his midriff and tucked it into his groin with a sharp stab of downward palm. The box fitted and Toby exited, just as the proprietor sauntered out of the backroom with his spilt cup of tea.
‘I think I’ll drop this lot off with Reg’ (a local veg marketeer down on South Street) ‘and get a Whopper at BK’s,’ he said to himself, plucking out his ninth cigarette of the day. ‘Almost halfway there.’
Reg took his goodies and put them in a bag behind the counter for him.
‘You’re smoking too much, Toby,’ was all he said.
‘I’ll be back in ten minutes.’
Toby loved BK’s because all the hard nuts hung out there. A well known pick-up point for the police to catch pimple-faced shoplifters, Toby was taking no chances today. He wasn’t going to spend his first day as a twenty-a-day man locked up in a cell. He didn’t have any friends to show off his haul, anyway.
The burger tasted good and the chips went down with ease after swigs on his cola. Another thing he liked about BK’s was that you could smoke there. You couldn’t at McD’s or Wimpy’s.
So untidy were his thoughts, Toby lit up with half the burger and chips remaining.
‘A Benson tastes so good after a meal,’ he said to himself, not realising that he had his brother’s little smirk of smoke-satisfaction on his face.
Exiting without delay, Toby made his way over to Dance2it, a pokey little record shop that sold second-hand hardcore and trance.
Again, this was a smoking place. Toby had two in quick succession. Eight left to kill, he thought with a winning smile as he left to get back to his stash.
Reg wasn’t amused when Toby turned up with another Benson sticking out of his mouth. He just flung his plastic bag over the counter and told him to piss off. As far as Reg was concerned, if Toby wasn’t prepared to listen to his wise words of wisdom, he could find someone else to hide his stash.
Toby wanted to go back to Debenhams for a cola in the cafeteria but decided against it. Instead, he went to the YMCA where for £2.50 you could have a full English breakfast, apple pie and a cola, and you could smoke, of course.
All the town’s loonies either lived there or went in regularly for the breakfast bonanza.
No one talked. They just sat as far away from each other, hidden by newspapers or smoke.
Toby felt safe, picking away at his greasy plate, slopping sweaty bacon rinds over baked bean sauce and undercooked eggs. He pushed the plate away and drew his cola closer.
With a beefy cough full of phlegm, Toby swallowed it back down, took a Benson out and lit it. As he did so, his head started pounding and left him feeling giddy and unsteady.
It was lucky he was sitting down because he’d have fainted on the spot standing up. He felt sick, but by concentrating on the apple pie on the poster in front of the servery, the nausea went. His fag was almost halfway down and he’d hardly touched it.
A massive tug relieved him of the thoughts that had started building up in his brain.
Just as he was wolfing down his second batch of smoke, an old man with a walking stick stopped at his table and enquired after his age.
‘I’m sixteen, mate. What’s it to you, anyway? I work for a living and I smoke. Free world, innit?’
‘I know you, sonny boy,’ replied the old man. ‘You’re Sheila’s boy. Toby, isn’t it?’
‘Got the wrong bloke, mister. My name’s John and I don’t even live around here so you can’t know my Mum and anyway she’s called Teresa.’
‘Mother Teresa, hey? Listen, son,’ the old man said, coming closer to whisper in his ear. ‘Those things’ll kill you. Don’t do it, ya’ hear.’
Toby looked into the old man’s weary eyes for a second, then resumed his gaze on the apple pie with the plastic custard drying and cracking on top of it.
If the old man hadn’t gone when he had, Toby would have smacked him one. Either that or he’d have walked away himself.
A cold sweep of anger clambered into the poor lad’s chest as he eyed the pie, hoping that he could just get up and leave the place without throwing a wobbly at someone.
Toby did that sort of thing when he came to town.
For some reason, he thought everyone was after him, that the world was against him and that the filth were watching his every move.
These thoughts are prevalent in young tearaways like Toby, and he sat there smoking one, then another, and another.
Holding the plastic bag in his hand, he got up and made his way to the front doors, past reception and the religious advice room.
A voice jumped out at him but he missed it in booting open the doors.
He had a quick fag outside the bus depot and another one at the bus stop. As the bus was late, he thought it fitting to realise his status as a twenty-a-day man right there and then.
He savoured the flavour, gobbled down the smoke, looked at its decreasing length, watched for the filter to turn brown, and when he’d finished, he stamped on it and turned it on his heel, just as Jez had shown him.
The bus arrived and Toby got up with the plastic bag wrapped around his hand.
When he saw that it was the same bus driver as on his outward journey, he pursed his lips and rounded his shoulders.
‘Ticket, please,’ asked the driver as Toby smoothed by.
‘You sold it to me about three hours ago,’ Toby replied in motion. ‘Don’t you remember?’
But something very odd had happened as he spoke into the driver’s perspex.
Toby’s mouth was spurting smoke. It took him the whole sentence and his little question to realise.
‘What’s that smoke? Where’s your cigarette?’
‘I’m not smoking!’ he said, but again, out popped a huge burp of smoke with his words.
‘What’s that coming out of your mouth, then?’ asked the gobsmacked driver.
‘I tell ya’ I’m not smoking, ya’ twat,’ replied Toby as evenly as he could.
But he was. Now, though, he was not only smoking as he spoke! Smoke was pouring out with his every breath.
Toby tried sighing, but that didn’t help. A gigantic screen of smoke hit the driver’s perspex and went through the little talkie-holes like snakes to his face.
‘Look, you!’ screamed the driver. ‘There’s something wrong with you!’ But then the driver gave up. There was only an old biddy, far too busy watching her shopping bags like a hawk to even notice Toby smoking, and two other kids at the back wondering whether he might kill them once he was through with the driver.
Toby sat down and smoked through his nose about six rows back.
It really was smoke and he didn’t have the foggiest where it was coming from.
When he got home, his brothers got hold of him and searched him for fags.
‘I haven’t got any!’ he cried, but they wouldn’t listen.
‘What’s that coming out your mouth, then, hey? You think we’re stupid or something?’
Then they realised he wasn’t holding a cigarette, so they started playing games with him to see if they could swallow his breath.
‘It’s definitely nicotine,’ said Jez to his eldest.
‘I can smell, you know,’ came big bro’s reply.
CrimeWatch UK was on, so they quickly bored of smoking off his breath and kicked him out of the room.
‘Piss off, pleb,’ they said, so Toby went upstairs and got into his bed.
He sat up for a while watching his breath get thicker and thicker. He opened the window but there was no getting rid of it.
Toby shut his eyes for one last time and drifted off to the most blissful slumber in his life.
He didn’t wake up the next day.