make a complete jerk of yourself. Yeah, well, lifeâs like that too. It doesnât seem right to me, but there you go. And how bad is it, what I did? Not so bad, right? Itâs a mistake, thatâs all. You hear about boys who refuse to wear condoms, and you hear about girls who think itâs cool to have a baby at fifteenâ¦. Well, those arenât mistakes. Thatâs just stupidity. I donât want to spend the whole time moaning about life being unfair, but how comes their punishment is the same as mine? That canât be right, can it? It seems to me that if you never wear a condom, then you should get triplets, or quintuplets. But it doesnât work like that, does it?
Â
A couple of nights after that, Alicia came round for dinner, and it was OK. More than OK, really. She was nice to my mum, and my mum was nice to her, and they made jokes about how useless I was, and I didnât mind, because I was glad that everyone was happy.
But then Alicia asked my mum about what it was like having a baby at sixteen, and I tried to change the subject.
âYou donât want to hear about all that,â I said to Alicia.
âWhy donât I?â
âBoring,â I said.
âOh, it wasnât boring, I can tell you,â said my mum, and Alicia laughed.
âNo, but itâs boring now,â I said. âBecause itâs over.â
It was a stupid thing to say, and I regretted it the moment it came out of my mouth.
âOh well,â said my mum. âThatâs the whole of history, written off, then. Bor-ing.â
âYeah, well, it is,â I said. I didnât mean that, really, because there are lots of bits of history that arenât boring, like World War Two. But I didnât want to back down.
âAnd also,â said my mum, âitâs not over. Youâre still here and Iâm still here and there are sixteen years between us and itâll be like that forever. Itâs not over.â
And I sat there wondering whether it was not over in ways she couldnât even begin to guess.
CHAPTER 4
Itâs not that things started to go wrong between me and Alicia. It just stopped being as good. I canât really explain why, not properly. I just woke up one morning and didnât feel the same way. I didnât like not feeling the same way, because it was a good feeling, and I felt flat without it, but it had gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring it back. I even tried to pretend it was still there, but the trying just seemed to make it worse.
Where did it go? It was like there had been a lot of food on a plate in front of us, and we ate it all really quickly, and then there was nothing left. Maybe thatâs how couples stay together: theyâre not greedy. They know that what they have in front of them has to last a long time, so they kind of pick at it. I hope itâs not like that, though. I hope that when people are happy together, it feels as though someone keeps piling seconds and thirds on their plates. That night, the night after I hadnât seen her, it felt as though weâd be together for the rest of our lives, and even that wouldnât be long enough. And then two or three weeks later, we were bored with each other. I was bored, anyway. We never did anything but watch TV in her room and have sex, and once weâd had sex, we never had much to say to each other. Weâd get dressed, put the TV back on, and then Iâd kiss her good night and then go through the same routine the next night.
Mum noticed even before I did, I think. I started skating again, and I tried to make out that wanting to skate was just normal and natural, and thinking about it, it probably was. If we hadnât gone off each other, if we hadnât split up, then somehow we would have found some kind of routine, I suppose. In the end Iâd have gone back to skating and playing skating games on the Xbox and all that. It
Â
A couple of nights after that, Alicia came round for dinner, and it was OK. More than OK, really. She was nice to my mum, and my mum was nice to her, and they made jokes about how useless I was, and I didnât mind, because I was glad that everyone was happy.
But then Alicia asked my mum about what it was like having a baby at sixteen, and I tried to change the subject.
âYou donât want to hear about all that,â I said to Alicia.
âWhy donât I?â
âBoring,â I said.
âOh, it wasnât boring, I can tell you,â said my mum, and Alicia laughed.
âNo, but itâs boring now,â I said. âBecause itâs over.â
It was a stupid thing to say, and I regretted it the moment it came out of my mouth.
âOh well,â said my mum. âThatâs the whole of history, written off, then. Bor-ing.â
âYeah, well, it is,â I said. I didnât mean that, really, because there are lots of bits of history that arenât boring, like World War Two. But I didnât want to back down.
âAnd also,â said my mum, âitâs not over. Youâre still here and Iâm still here and there are sixteen years between us and itâll be like that forever. Itâs not over.â
And I sat there wondering whether it was not over in ways she couldnât even begin to guess.
CHAPTER 4
Itâs not that things started to go wrong between me and Alicia. It just stopped being as good. I canât really explain why, not properly. I just woke up one morning and didnât feel the same way. I didnât like not feeling the same way, because it was a good feeling, and I felt flat without it, but it had gone, and there was nothing I could do to bring it back. I even tried to pretend it was still there, but the trying just seemed to make it worse.
Where did it go? It was like there had been a lot of food on a plate in front of us, and we ate it all really quickly, and then there was nothing left. Maybe thatâs how couples stay together: theyâre not greedy. They know that what they have in front of them has to last a long time, so they kind of pick at it. I hope itâs not like that, though. I hope that when people are happy together, it feels as though someone keeps piling seconds and thirds on their plates. That night, the night after I hadnât seen her, it felt as though weâd be together for the rest of our lives, and even that wouldnât be long enough. And then two or three weeks later, we were bored with each other. I was bored, anyway. We never did anything but watch TV in her room and have sex, and once weâd had sex, we never had much to say to each other. Weâd get dressed, put the TV back on, and then Iâd kiss her good night and then go through the same routine the next night.
Mum noticed even before I did, I think. I started skating again, and I tried to make out that wanting to skate was just normal and natural, and thinking about it, it probably was. If we hadnât gone off each other, if we hadnât split up, then somehow we would have found some kind of routine, I suppose. In the end Iâd have gone back to skating and playing skating games on the Xbox and all that. It
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