Jordana, although they are not friends. I was afraid this might happen.
‘And Tom Jones. You snogged Tom Jones.’
I pick up a handful of wood chip and throw it at her.
‘Not likely,’ I say. I sound like someone who is lying. I roll on to my front and start to examine the soil beneath the wood chip.
There is a worm, half-squashed, writhing about. Worms find it difficult to tell the difference between the vibrations made by rainfall and those made by a human foot stomping rhythmically on the soil above it.
A worm makes its way to the surface only to discover that it is a beautiful sunny day.
I pick up the worm and, returning to my supine position, throw it at Jordana’s hair. All of which, in a worm’s tiny intellect, is entirely unfathomable. I feel young.
‘I read your diary, Oliver. While you were on the loo.’
‘What diary?’
‘You are such a shit liar, Adrian.’
‘Don’t call me Adrian.’
‘Adrian.’
‘It’s a logbook, anyway.’
‘Adrian.’
In school, we looked at an extract from Adrian Mole’s Diary. Chips said: ‘When do we get to the bit where he realizes he’s gay?’
Jordana’s face is turning red as the blood starts to collect in her skull. She may also be blushing – sexual nervousness can do that. She turns her head to look at me. This creates a kind of tunnel of her hair between my face and hers. A spot lives in the hairs of her right eyebrow.
‘Open your mouth,’ she says.
I open my mouth as though I am screaming. Jordana concentrates. She pouts. One minute she’s hot to trot, the next she’s not. I don’t know what she is planning. Then, slowly, delicately, Jordana allows a thread, a thermometer of spit to stretch from her lips. It dangles for a second a few inches from my face. The cord snaps and I feel the cargo hit the back of my throat. I try not to cough. Or be sick.
Jordana pulls herself back up on to the top of the climbing frame. Her hair looks as though she has just had rough sex. I swallow. She climbs down and lies next to me. Her face glows strawberry red.
‘Oliver?’ she says, staring up at the sky, or the climbing frame.
‘Yup.’
I feel post-coital.
‘You should write more about me in your diary.’
15.5.97
Word of the day: pederast – the American version of a paedophile. It took me the entirety of a double lesson of Religious Education to solve this cryptic crossword clue: ‘Deep transformation turns a lost rasta into child-lover.’
Dear Log (and Jordana),
• Jordana’s new cons: her spit is thicker than mine. I do not want to be in an unequal relationship.
• New pros: she has very good aim.
• In double chemistry we were doing potassium. Everyone fears Eliot Shakespeare – he laughs at explosions.
• During geography I solved this clue: ‘Move rhythmically when boy goes to church.’ Five letters. I thought of dance straightaway but then thought that was too easy. While Miss Brow was explaining about oxbow lakes, I made sense of the rest of the clue. The boy is Dan. His religious denomination is the Church of England.
• Sam Portal is Church of England. I tell him that the Bible is a work of fiction. I ask him why he chooses Christianity over the other religions. I write him Post-it notes from God and stick them on the inside of his physics textbook. It is important to keep duplicates of good deeds. See below:
Dear Sam, don’t listen
to your friend Oliver
Tate, I put him on earth
to confuse you.
Keep it on
the hush-hush. Much love, the
one who signs
off with a cross. X
• I got home from school to find my mum had cooked a lemon sponge where the middle had risen too much and popped like a volcano or a spot.
• Each Saturday, and now on Wednesdays as well, I imagine what lottery numbers I would pick if I were of legal gambling age. I write them down on a sheet of paper. My numbers for last night’s midweek rollover were 43, 26, 17, 8, 9 and 33. My numbers didn’t come up. I saved a pound.
Behave.
Love, Oliver
Pederast
I have changed my mind. I’m going to go back to writing a full-blown diary, rather than a log. I have brokered a deal with Jordana whereby she is allowed to read my diary as long as she promises that, in future, she will not distribute it to my classmates.
I am feeling a little emotional.
I had a conversation with my mother. She wanted to have a