The Drowning of Arthur Braxton. Caroline Smailes

It pours from the skies non-stop, largest recorded rainfall forever, and now the bastard’s practically blinded me.

      I reckon that ’bout sums up my day.

      It all started last night. Estelle Jarvis was all over my Facebook wall.

      1 Would I get drunk with you? yepp

      2 Hug, kiss, or more? kiss

      3 Do I trust you? yepp

      4 Share bed or on the floor? bed lol ;)

      5 Friend, best friend, or good friends? good friend

      6 Love, like, hate you? love

      7 Good-looking, gorgeous, pretty, ugly, alright, fit? gaaawjuss

      8 Would I go out with you? yepp

      9 Rate (personality)? 10

      10 Rate (looks)? 10

      11 What’s your name in my phone? Arthur B

      12 Would I give you my number? u ave it

      13 How did we meet? in school

      I didn’t have her number and I was trying to pluck up courage to inbox and ask for it but every sentence I wrote sounded gay. Then she posted ‘inbox me I’ve gotta talk’ on my wall and I did. I inboxed Estelle Jarvis, THE Estelle Jarvis who’s at the top of the year-eleven tree.

      I reckon the other lads from my year were proper wanting to know what was going on, ’cause they were all over my Facebook wall with ‘inbox matee?’ and I was all ‘I will iab’, but I didn’t, mainly ’cause me and Estelle Jarvis were on chat. That’s when she said that she wanted to meet me after school, around the back of the Sixth Form Centre. She said that she wanted to suck my cock and I probs shouldn’t have gone along, but I reckoned it was a chance to get me a nice girlfriend who’d maybes have sex with me.

      ’Course I got to behind the Sixth Form Centre and she was already there. Seriously she was unzipping my trousers before I’d even said a word and my cock was playing along ’cause that’s what cocks do. Then she had my cock out my pants and she pulled my pants down over my arse. That’s when she stepped back and she was having a right look. I pushed it out a bit and prayed to God that it wouldn’t go floppy.

      And that’s when it all went tits up.

      ‘Alrite gay?’ he said. ‘You hoping for stinky fingers?’

      And that’s when I realised there was probs eight or nine of the bastards, all with their phones out, all taking photos of my cock. And that’s when I legged it out through the yard, with my pants around my arse and the rain falling on my boner.

      I’m maybes thinking that I might have overreacted and I should have laughed while I put my cock away, that maybes me having a boner would’ve stopped Tommy twatting Clarke from saying I was gay. And I’m maybes thinking that the twats that took them photos are complete dicks and one step away from lager-drinking ASBO yobs.

      They’ve really upped their game this time. I mean this is a hundred times worse than the shit they kick out of me every twatting time they see me. I mean my legging it with my pants around my arse has probs made everything a million times worse. I mean whoever said your school days are the best in your life, well they were talking utter bollocks.

      It’s not like I can talk to my dad ’bout all the Facebook stuff.

      Everyone at school reckons Dad’s gay. I’ve had many a Facebook-wall post off them saying ‘Braxton’s dad gobblz cock’ and ‘Ur dad is queer’. But he’s not. Dad’s just broken, proper broken.

      Two years ago I came home from school to find my mum sitting at the bottom of the stairs crying. I thought maybes my dad’d died. He hadn’t. He was at work and Mum was gearing herself up to pissing off out of our lives.

      Mum told me that she’d got back in touch with some bloke she’d known at university. She’d found him on twatting Facebook and at first it was all ’bout inboxing. Then she’d met up with him for a pint. She’d driven all the way to Leeds just so as they could meet up in a pub they once knew. Mum said it like I’d be impressed that she’d once been in a pub. Mum said it’d been going on for two years. Two fucking years and my dad didn’t have a clue. At first I wondered why Mum was telling me all the stuff. I mean I didn’t want her getting all menstrual ’bout life and then, Jesus Christ, she made me a bit sick in my mouth when she started going on ’bout how she was still young and needed sex. She didn’t say it exactly like that, but that was the gist of it.

      The fact was that Dad wasn’t giving her any and Mum wanted some.

      Mum said that she reckoned she deserved more than the shit life her and Dad were having and that if she didn’t leave that very day then she’d probs never leave. Mum said she’d waited until I was fourteen, God bless her consideration, but that now I was fourteen there was little more she could help me with. She made some joke about ‘Arthur helping Arthur’, ’cause clearly what with me and my dad having the same name, that meant that I was more his than hers. She reckoned she’d done enough raising me and my dad’d be good at the last bits before I left home. I think she said something ’bout expecting me to be left home by the time I was sixteen. Clearly she had high hopes for my future career, even at that early age.

      Anyways, that’s when Mum stood up off the stairs, I mean she was sobbing so not entirely a heartless slag, but she went upstairs and I followed her into her and Dad’s bedroom. Then she packed one bag, with hardly owt. It was mainly some frilly underwear, make-up, some expensive perfume and a couple of photos of me that she liked best. One was from when I was a baby and the other from when I was two, she didn’t take owt with her to remind her of how I was then.

      I sat on Mum’s and Dad’s bed and I watched her packing her stuff. All the time I didn’t cry and I didn’t shout and I certainly didn’t speak. I just watched my mum putting the only reminders of her life with us into a bag. Simple. And while she was packing she said that that day was the start of her new life with her new bloke and that he was all set for buying her everything she needed. The bell-end. He was a lecturer and Mum was thinking ’bout going back to study creative twatting writing. She had a novel in her, whatever the fuck that meant. She was going to do all the stuff that having me when she was twenty had stopped her from doing. She said I’d made her tits little and taken away her identity. It was bad enough she was pissing off but saying shit embarrassing stuff like that made it all the worse. She even said that she was looking forward to being a mum again one day.

      Then Mum came over to me on the bed and she sat next to me. She put her hand on my knee and gave it a little squeeze. And that was all. No hug, no emotional goodbye. Just my mum standing up, picking up her bag and pissing off down the stairs and out the front door. I was left sitting on Mum’s and Dad’s bed wondering what the fuck I was going to tell Dad.

      And, me being me, I didn’t tell Dad for a few hours. I mean I couldn’t judge the right time to tell him ’bout Mum pissing off. He came in from work asking me where Mum was and I lied, I said I didn’t know. By half ten and after he’d figured she’d gone out without her mobile and left her house keys in the kitchen, Dad was all set for phoning the police. That’s when I reckoned I had no choice but to tell him ’bout Mum being a slag.

      Dad seemed to take it quite well, that night. That night I reckon he did what any bloke would do after learning their wife had pissed off. He drank most of his single malt and passed out on the sofa. Not forgetting that when I went down in the morning to have my breakfast before school, I found him stinking of piss, lying half on the sofa and half on the floor. But I reckoned that was a normal reaction. I expected a couple of days of wallowing and then me and him’d put the world to rights. ’Cause my dad was ace, proper tough and funny, I expected him to sort all the shit out and make everything better.

      I couldn’t tell anyone, probs ’cause I knew that the likes of Tommy Clarke would go on ’bout how my mum’s new bloke was chewing on her tits. And also I didn’t really want anyone to know what a slag Mum was being. I guess in them first few days I reckoned she’d come home. She didn’t. Obviously.