He frowns again, as if he’s in pain. That’s part of it. You have to be hurt into manliness. Sometimes he dreams of being beaten up. On the corners of his exercise books he draws thickset faces, bald headed, broken nosed.

He checks his pubes.

Maybe a girl will touch him one day. He can’t quite imagine it, though.

Another day, they are coming back down towards the bridge. The path runs into a dense block of shadow under the stone arch. As they get closer, the light from the other side picks out the legs of two figures standing in the darkness.

A faint wisp of smoke curls out from under the arch.

Alisha and Oni walk quickly on. Dillon follows, slower.

One of the figures is Aaron. No one else has trousers that flap around stick-thin legs like that. No one else stands as if interrupted mid-turn. His wonky limbs have a frozen grace to them, like crooked branches.

Next to him, feet planted wide, is a boy who is everything Aaron is not. Where Aaron’s features are delicate, but disturbingly ugly, this boy has a rough, thuggish beauty. Aaron looks like he might snap in a high wind, but the boy next to him is iron-hard, solid as the arch above them.

He smokes like he knows how.

‘Can I get a tab?’ asks Oni. Her eyes catch the low light under the arch; bright and eager against the shadowed stone.

The boy holds one out. He offers the packet to Alisha as well. Not to Dillon.

Alisha and Oni draw a cigarette each. They light them. Dillon waits. He doesn’t want one, but he doesn’t want to be the person not smoking one. The boy draws on his cigarette, then opens his mouth to let the smoke coil out gently. Wiry cords of adult muscle knot his shoulders.

His nose is broken.

‘You’re new, aren’t you?’ asks Alisha. ‘Your name’s Jack, isn’t it?’

He nods.

The girls are ignoring Dillon. He looks at Aaron. Aaron’s smoking too, even though he’s only eleven, but he does it in a different way. He holds his hand by his mouth at all times, and when he draws, his cheeks grow deep hollows. In that moment, you can see that the skull underneath is not symmetrical. His cheekbones are huge, but they are not the same, and his jaw moves in a way that is somehow not right.

Dillon shivers.

‘Easy, mate.’

Jack’s voice has a rasping, mocking quality. It isn’t a question, but it needs an answer. Dillon shrugs, his face carefully blank apart from a slightly pained frown. Jack laughs. When he laughs, he throws his head back, opens his mouth wide. His body moves too. The arms swing, the feet plant themselves restlessly, over and over, in the same spot.

‘Which one’s your girlfriend?’

Dillon goes white. He shrugs again.