Gratitude

Dear Gratitude Journal, 

I’m thankful that Religious Education is a non-exam course. I’m thankful that Ms. Nelson is not going to actually read you, just check off that we wrote something in you. I’m thankful that this exercise is finally oooover for today.

Yours sincerely,

Max

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Dear Gratitude Journal, 

I’m thankful I’m not Alastair Bliss. Today he wore a suit to history class. Everyone made fun of him, of course, hooting when he walked in. He smiled as he lowered himself into his chair and then raised a pale hand. It was not too unbearable for anyone. But then Carl, sitting behind him, took out the Vicks he was sucking and stuck it on Alastair’s shoulder. Alastair flipped out, and jumped up and flung it to the ground and called Carl a b—. Carl laughed. Ms Wheelwright came in. She made Carl pick up the Vicks in a paper towel and Alastair tried to clean the sticky off his suit. 

Basically a normal day. 

Yours sincerely, 

Max

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Dear Gratitude Journal, 

I’m grateful that I don’t have a pathological need to share my thoughts, like most of my friends, on and on, endlessly even if nobody else really cares or wants to hear what you think anymore. 

Today we skived off PE. We kind of didn’t mean to. At lunch, Carl, Richard, Neil and I went down to the basketball court at the Poly to shoot around. It was Carl’s idea. 

On the way down, we crossed Julia and Charley who were coming out of the forest that runs along the motorway. Julia is Alastair’s girlfriend, or at least they hang out a lot, and so the Vicks incident hung in the air. Julia and Charley are nice girls and I was praying that everybody would just keep their mouths shut. And, for a minute, that’s what happened. Carl was just walking along bouncing the basketball. We were almost there but, naturally, Carl has to ruin it. 

“You want a Vicks, ladies?” he said and laughed. 

Julia didn’t say anything but Charley straight away yelled, “F—- off, you sh—!” 

While we were shooting around, we talked about whether Charley and Julia were fit or not. Carl said they were “short and plain”. Carl’s type is basically Bella Hadid in a Puma tracksuit. Richard and Neil chipped in to slag off the girls too. I just kept shooting threes. 

We planned to come back for PE but time got away from us. 

Yours sincerely, 

Max

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Dear Gratitude Journal,  

Thank god for cigarettes, sincerely. 

I’m pretty sure my Mum knows that I smoke when I take Bessie out but she doesn’t give me a hard time. She used to smoke herself, and she’ll sneak the odd one when she’s tired or relaxing. 

I’m out there on the school pitch and Bessie is running around. I’ll throw the tennis ball every now and then. Bessie is glad to be out. And I am too, chain smoking and just being alone outside. 

And then I see Charley coming out the Old Building from art class. That class has mature students from the town and so it runs late. She makes up her mind and comes stalking over to me. 

“Your mate’s a right p—, you know?” She doesn’t say it quite as mean as that sounds; she’s inquisitive. 

I think it over. “Yes,” I say with consideration. “Why was Alastair wearing a suit anyways?” 

“Recital,” she says. “He plays violin. Him and Julia.” 

“Anyways. Soz.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says, walking away. 

I smoke another cigarette and keep my eyes on the turrets of the Old Building as Bessie roots around with the tennis ball.  

Yours sincerely, 

Max

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Dear Gratitude Journal, 

Carl wanted me to go to the Lanks pools again with Neil and Eddie. Neil is all right but I can’t stand Eddie. I went with them in March and all they did was talk about Springbrook, their old school. Eddie’s accent is so rough I can hardly make out what he says and Carl is worse than ever when Eddie is around. 

“Why can’t you make it?” Carl asked when I told him I wasn’t going. “You got a hot date with a boy?” 

“I’m just not on it,” I said.

He looked sad. “Aight,” he said. He took my hand and put me in a clutch. “We do it the next time, yo.” 

Carl’s been in my school for a year now and he’s been through a lot of hard times. His real Dad is MIA and his Mum has this new bloke, Christopher, a rich, older guy. I guess he helped their family out but I met him and he’s a real jerk. He’s mean to Carl. 

I watch Carl walk away, bouncing the ball. 

I’m grateful for my mum. 

Yours sincerely, 

Max

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Dear Gratitude Journal, 

My mum has her friends from Uni over, Stacy and Claire. They’re nice people but it’s always quite a gabfest, so I make myself scarce. I just go out for a walk to get some fresh air by which I mean smoke cigarettes

There’s music coming from the old yellow church. The door is open and there is a wooden podium with a piece of paper taped on: “Autumn concert - please celebrate with us.”

It’s starting to rain and, anyways, I don’t want to go back to Mum and her mates. It won’t hurt to sit at the back, I think. I always liked listening to classical music. I like how you can just veg out and think about basketball, about hitting a three at the buzzer to send it to overtime. 

I step inside and breathe in that musty church smell. Sure enough, there is Alastair in his suit, wheeling away on his violin with the others. Julia is there too, at the back, playing cello.

I’m about to turn and head out. 

“Oy,” someone says in a whisper. It’s Charley. She’s smiling at me and points to the space next to her on the pew. 

I sit. It’s nice, sitting there next to Charley, listening to music, out of the rain, looking at the row of candles. 

The music ends, I think I should probably leave them to it but they are all pretty chill. Charley tells me to stay and when Alastair and Julia come out, Alastair says “Max!” in that theatrical way he has. 

They are all heading back to Julia’s place to celebrate and I come along. Her folks aren’t there and so we help ourselves to a few fingers of whiskey. I text my Mum to say don’t wait up. 

A little buzzed, Julia wants to play Monopoly and, since Monopoly never ends, we just play all night. 

No one feels like stopping. I make a joke about one of the community chest cards and it gets a laugh, so then I make the same joke every time it comes up, which is about twenty times. We run out of milk, so we move on to coffee. Then we run out of coffee and move on to espresso. Julia has this old moka pot - the kind they use in Italy - that her parents bought when they were there a hundred years ago. Alastair works out how to use it and from the on it is espresso all the way. 

Finally, finally, Julia runs out of money and everybody is out of steam by that point, so we call it a day. 

I go out to smoke a cigarette and Charley comes with me. We can see the sun starting to rise over the hill beyond the valley that the motorway runs through.

Yours sincerely, 

Max