Lolito. Ben Brooks

that is.’

      ‘I told you. I linked to her YouTube. She makes videos of herself miming to rap songs. She’s gone viral. I’m going to marry her.’

      I laugh. ‘I’ll meet you by the sign in an hour. I’m going now. The kettle’s boiled.’

      ‘Good. Bye.’

      I put a teaspoon of strawberry Nesquik and a teabag into my Forever Friends mug and add water. My hand is shaking slightly. I’m thinking of Alice and Aaron Mathews. I’m imagining a tall boy with impressive facial hair pressing his mouth against her neck while simultaneously squeezing her bum and left boob. I don’t know if that’s possible. I try it on an imaginary Alice and find that it’s awkward and uncomfortable, but not impossible.

      I feel small.

      Like a field mouse lost in a supermarket.

      Amundsen headbutts my knee and does a whine. He’s dribbling and wagging his tail. I empty a can of tripe into his bowl and carry his bowl out onto the patio. Amundsen pushes his whole head into the bowl, motorboating his food. He lifts up his head and blobs of tripe are clinging to his nostrils. He walks towards me and I back quickly out of the room.

      I climb back into bed and turn on my computer. I meet Alice. We say hellos. She says she’s having fun and that she has to go soon. I ask what they’ve been doing. She says they’ve been sunbathing and swimming. I say that sounds great. We watch a video of two men being killed. The men are members of a drug cartel. They are sat shirtless on a dirt floor, backs against a concrete wall. The first man gets beheaded with a chainsaw. He falls onto the other man. The other man stays sat up and the shape of his face doesn’t change and they kill him with a bowie knife. It takes longer and involves less fireworks.

      ‘That one was good,’ she says. ‘I’ve got to go. We’re going out for dinner.’

      ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I miss you.’

      ‘I miss you too.’

      Elliot Trump has uploaded new pictures.

      Katya De Vangelo has got Joseph Gordon-Levitt, popcorn and rosé ready for a night in with the girlies.

      Carly Yates thinks that some people can just fuck off.

      Horney milf wants you’re cum

      Sentence:ass raping til death

      Dirty brit amateur swingers fuck in woods

      A man and a woman are sitting side by side on thrones. They are wearing crowns and medieval clothing. The woman says that she wants King Dick to come back because her vagina is lonely. The man next to her says he is Prince Dick and he gently presses her thigh as she bites into a turkey leg. She shouts for the archery competition to begin. Amundsen wanders back into my room, sniffs at nothing and lies down on the rug. Three men in medieval clothing pull out their dicks and start fiercely masturbating while aiming at a target ten feet away. I feel confused. I don’t understand.

      Carrie Machell is in a relationship.

      I have won a free Macbook.

      I take the sock off my dick and throw it at Amundsen.

      2

      Elliot and Hattie are kneeling on the pavement, rubbing Quiniderm into each other’s cheeks. Aslam’s leaning against the street sign. It’s cold. He’s holding a two-litre bottle of Tesco cola and a half-empty bottle of Captain Morgan’s, looking at something in the sky. The blurry orange streetlight overhead lights up his face and puts his reflection in a puddle between his feet. He flaps his arms.

      ‘Argh,’ I shout.

      ‘Bah,’ Aslam shouts.

      ‘Etgar,’ Hattie says.

      ‘Hi.’

      ‘Hold this,’ Aslam says. I take the bottle of cola out of his hands and sit crosslegged on the tarmac, wedging it in the triangle of my legs. I unscrew the cap and grip it while he pours in rum. It splashes my hands. I spit and rub them on my jumper. Hattie crouches down and reaches into her bag.

      ‘Etgar,’ she says. ‘I got you something.’ She passes me a lump of yellow metal.

      ‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘What is it?’

      Aslam yawns and rum runs down my finger gaps.

      ‘It’s a knuckleduster. You put your fingers through the holes.’

      ‘Do you have Parkinson’s?’

      ‘I don’t think so.’

      ‘I meant Aslam.’

      ‘Oh. Anyway, I thought you could use it on Aaron. Or wave it around in front of him until he wets himself. I remember during that carol concert when that girl wet herself doing a solo at the front in the church and you could see her trousers go dark and then there was wee on the floor. It was amazing.’

      ‘Thanks, Hattie,’ I say. ‘That’s thoughtful.’

      ‘Why do you have a knuckleduster?’ Aslam says.

      ‘It’s shiny. I like it. Elliot bought it for me. He said I was so pretty that everyone would try to rape me at sixth form.’ Elliot’s the only one of us who isn’t going to go to sixth form in the town next door to ours. He’s going to work as a plumber with his dad, who smells of orange peel and cries when football players sing the national anthem before matches. ‘He says I should be prepared to fight them or kill them and he didn’t want me to ruin my knuckles because they are the nicest knuckles he has ever seen.’

      ‘Gay,’ Aslam says. Gay doesn’t mean homosexual. It means something else. It means sincerely saying the kind of things our parents would say.

      ‘Sorry for being nice.’

      ‘Gay.’

      The rest of the rum disappears into the coke and I screw on the lid and mix everything up. We pass it around.

      ‘Have you ever hit anyone before?’ Hattie says. ‘Loads,’ I say. ‘Once. No. Never. Zero times. Have you?’

      ‘All the time. I hit Ella last week because she said I use Brillo pads for tampons, which I don’t. It’s easy. The secret is to pretend they’re your dad.’

      ‘I like my dad.’

      ‘Someone you hate.’

      ‘I don’t hate anyone.’

      ‘Then you can’t really expect to be punching people.’ ‘He has to,’ Aslam says, putting his hand on my shoulder and grinning. ‘If he doesn’t, everyone will start fingering Alice.’ I roll a cigarette and light it, feeling unsure and insubstantial. Aslam makes a cupping motion with one hand. ‘Feeding his pony.’

      *

      A girl I almost recognise opens the door of the house on Huntsdon Street. She has cropped blonde hair and is smiling and holding a bottle of WKD blue against her chest. She tells us to come inside. We come inside. People are scattered throughout the house. People are sitting and standing and talking and kissing. We drop onto an empty island of carpet next to the electric fire.

      ‘There,’ Aslam says, pointing at a group of three boys sat on the stairs. ‘That’s him. The middle one.’

      ‘How do you know?’

      ‘Facebook.’

      ‘Is it really definitely him?’ The boy is wearing stonewashed jeans and a white v-neck so low that one of his nipples is visible. There is a tribal tattoo around his forearm. ‘Like definitely is it that one?’

      ‘Yeah.’

      ‘Doesn’t he look a bit tall?’ He looks extremely tall. The boy on his left looks like a tiger and the boy on his right looks like an aubergine. ‘He has an actual tattoo.’

      ‘He’s probably