Free Grow Up by Ben Brooks

myself from the letter by sending her an email about it. She hasn’t replied. Her parents have probably banned her from using the computer.’
    â€˜She will find out.’
    Tenaya leans back into her slim book with a sagacious turn of the head.
    Abby Hall will definitely not find out. Even if she does, it won’t matter. At present, I am only interested in short-term consequences. These are: an Abby-free trip and an Abby-free cottage. Room to carry out The Georgia Plan. I will deal with the long-term Abby-related consequences when they confront me. This kind of short-term thinking is called myopia. It is dangerous.
    â€˜Guess what?’ Ping says, his face wedged between the two seats in front of us.
    â€˜What?’ I ask.
    In answer, he produces a surprisingly large press-to-seal sandwich bag of marijuana. I grin.
    â€˜The trip will be good,’ he tells me, turning back.
    My indirectly drug-induced excitement wanes over the next two hours. Tenaya finishes her book and falls asleep on my shoulder. I roll a whole tin of cigarettes and one of the girls behind threatens to tell Mrs Norton until Ping sits up and says, ‘What’s that, Susie? Excess baggage?’ (Ping went down on Susie Smith at a party last year and later described her vagina as ‘a ham Vienetta’.) When Ping falls asleep, I use his phone to send ‘I’m hot for you’ texts to his female cousins. I eat a Nutri-Grain cereal bar and also fall asleep out of boredom.
    +
    Urgh. Plymouth is a hideous concrete blitzkrieg. If it was a person, it would be the sort of person who eats the same thing every day and masturbates over pictures of steam trains. The buildings all seem to have been designed by a single manic-depressive town planner.
    â€˜Everyone line up,’ Mrs Norton says. ‘The university is only a short walk away.’
    It is 11:47 a.m. Everything here is the colour of boredom and surrender. It reminds me of my mum and Keith because they are an extremely resigned couple. They do not attempt to elevate themselves or their offspring (Keith’s daughters both work as lap dancers in Birmingham) and seem perfectly content living in the smallest houses of the least-green suburbs and watching grainy repeats of Holby City every night. They are running on a treadmill that is not getting them into shape. Luckily, this failure of my mother’s has not been bestowed upon me and I will continue to attempt betterment right up until I can afford to drink squash undiluted. This is the mark of a made man.
    When we step off the bus, Tenaya says ‘Wonderful’ as she takes in the scenery. Mrs Norton beams. Ping then says ‘Jesus Christ’, which obliterates the grin.
    The only people I see while we walk have faces the colour of dry clay. They only have eyes for the ground. The pavement. Our double-file walk is a funeral march.
    When we reach the university, a short, shaky man with kind eyes takes us up to a long room with a projector screen. He smiles a lot, not just at the girls. We sit on the green plastic chairs to await further instruction.
    â€˜Shall we go now?’ Ping says.
    â€˜I sort of want to see the rapist,’ I tell him.
    â€˜Why?’
    â€˜Deviant behaviour is interesting.’
    â€˜You’re weird, man.’
    The rapist turns out to be a tall, thin man with skin like Blu-Tack and restless hands. When he speaks, the words bruise him. He makes me feel like a strong, well-rounded individual. I think this is part of the purpose of the trip.
    â€˜H-h-hello, my name is John and I did a bad thing and I am going to speak to you today about it and you can learn from me and help people when you grow up.’
    Tenaya is taking notes. She has written ‘Do not do a rape’ in her exercise book.
    â€˜C-can anyone guess what I did?’
    He jerks his head around. Several girls from other schools put their hands up. Ping also raises his arm.
    The rapist is apparently