‘You can fuck off, now,’ Jack says, sharply.

Dillon smiles nervously, grabs a drink, changes his mind, grabs two. Walks back in the dark to where Alisha sits, his heart pounding.

‘Let’s go,’ he says.

He leads her by the hand back through the garden and the house and out onto the street. The streetlamps have come on, but beyond their yellow light is a deep blue twilit glow.

‘It’s beautiful,’ says Alisha.

It feels like he’s walking along the street with a child. Whatever she’s taken has pulled her back into herself. She walks with little, flapping steps, like a tired kid on the way home from school.

‘You’re not like them,’ she says.

‘Like who?’

‘Callum. Jack.’

He feels a momentary stab of annoyance.

‘In what way?’

Alisha swings into him, holds him, kisses him hard on the mouth. Her lips press in, and the tears on her cheeks touch his, and the snot. Her mouth opens, and her nose presses into his upper lip, and her breathing comes in starts and sobs, and she is kissing him and he kisses her but her body is hard and muscular and inert in his arms and they stop, standing in the road, faces pressed into each other.

‘Sorry,’ she whispers, her lips still touching his. ‘I do love you, though.’

Jack’s dreams are shameful. They wake him, sweating. He lies, in the night, bolstering himself with rage. When his body cannot rest, he rises and does pull-ups. The ache in his muscles tells him he’s strong.

At work he lifts too much. His hands are rough. He touches the rough patches with the end of a finger. They feel like horn. They feel like he’s growing armour.

He drinks most nights. There’s no reason not to. He meets Callum. Callum’s a dirty fuck. They go to Mirage, on the pull. He drinks enough that he forgets what’s in him, then he takes coke to sharpen himself up again. Girls like him. They like him more than Callum. He dances with them. They dance, their skirts short, their faces drawn on with bright makeup. He leans in, whispers. He touches their slits on the dancefloor. When they’re drunk, they let him.

When he fucks, he feels angry. Even when he takes a pill, now, he feels angry.

In his dreams, he sees his father. He sees Rose, laughing, in the bright window.

Pricktease, he thinks. They all are.

When he’s working, he feels OK. He lifts, moves, measures, saws. He works hard. Sometimes Aaron meets him at lunch. When he looks at Aaron he sees himself. Sometimes the need to hurt Aaron is overwhelming. Sometimes he does.

When he left school it felt like everything was clearing. But he’s back in the woods again. The leaves close over him, thick and green. He needs to find the way out. He needs to ask someone the way, but no one has a map. In his dreams, he screams, and he despises himself for weakness.