Graffiti My Soul by Niven Govinden

within Surrey’s safeborders, and Kel’s mum has been informed, and Kel’s dad is driving past the station, I spot something standing at the taxi rank.
    There’s two of them, a man and a boy, the shorty slightly behind the man, both in shadow, and both in trackies I’m now noticing. They’re the last in the taxi queue, a line of around twenty people, and are laughing about some bollocks. The kid is cracking up so the older one must be a hoot. He’s holding a rolled up Britney poster, identical to the two I picked up outside Wembley after the show; supersized so that the tits are bigger than the average human head – one for me and Jason. The older man is in and out of shadow, but the build, the laugh, the Nike airs with the exaggerated red soles like Coco the clown, are all photo-fit material; match my disgraced ex-Harrier trainer 100%. Someone call Crimewatch .
    26
    Pearson is a volleyball-playing shit-for-brains lump who thinks he’s popular just for punching a stupid ball around an indoor court like a faggot. Sure, the volleyball squad are the glamour elite of the school, twelve guys and girls riding the crest of a wave, the closest thing we have to jocks, but even this status doesn’t protect him from ridicule.
    He doesn’t realise that everyone laughs at him behind his back. Thinks of him as an oaf, which, at this place, is saying something. The other members of the squad are protective of him and all, on the court they’re like brothers, but away from the sports hall they’re not as defensive as they should be. Must be something in his manner: loud, overbearing, know-it-all smartarse. Has a habit of hogging the ball and busting a few solo moves on the court, whether it benefits the game or not. Coming out with all kinds of shit just to get some attention. Dumping the flid kids’ clothes in the shower whilst they’rein PE, bullying the pikeys in the changing rooms, challenging them to prove that their underwear wasn’t 2p from Oxfam. General stupidness we should all have grown out of at twelve.
    The team seem to agree. Me and Jase would have got a cleaning from them otherwise.
    Moon used to realise this, I think, but seems to have forgotten now that her eyes have gone heart-shaped. Now they walk around the corridors hand in hand, barely out of each other’s sight.
    Normally I have respect for the jocks. Fellow sportsmen, and all that. It should be a mutual thing. We all give each other a heads-up around school, some more enthusiastic and exuberant than others. Since I do most of my training out of school, do all of my competitions out of school, steer clear from competing in lacklustre class athletics, I keep it low-key. I’m not a show-off like some of these volleyball and footie idiots. But nothing will make me like this guy. Rich boy trying to be like one of us? Fuck off! What’s the appeal of that? Putting my feelings for Moon aside, he just ain’t right for her.
    â€˜They’re sweet together,’ Kel said once, when we saw them feeding each other chips in the canteen. Thought it was all right now that we were a couple ourselves, thought she could relax her neuroses a little, but she saw my look, realised I wasn’t laughing.
    â€˜If you want us to stay together, you’re going to have to stop saying things like that,’ I go, voice so low it’s virtually in the gutter; where tone ends and a snake-like hiss begins. ‘Don’t keep talking about them. Don’t even mention them. Doesn’t do anyone any good.’
    It came out tougher than I meant it to. I was going for jokey, but something in Kel’s observation set something off. Made me panic that she was possibly right. Panicked me more when I thought about how everyone else at school might be thinking the same thing; that Moon was better off with a proper boyfriend, and without me.
    Glance over in Moon’s direction whilst Kel goes to the loo for