Ron and That

by Nick Black

Ron picked me up from school and asked what’s new, I told him I have to write this journal and he laughed. “Mr Big Shot,” he said, so I called him an idiot. “Your idiot, though,” he said, which was sweet.

I’m growing my hair long like Ron’s. He said I look even more like a girl than already but he showed me how to do a ponytail and called me Pony Boy. “Show me your muscles,” he said. His are big and hard from cutting lawns all summer and he rips the sleeves off his t-shirts so you don’t miss them.

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Ron’s thinking of changing his car so we went to a lot to see what they had. They had one of those tall blowy men that whip around in the wind and I asked the sales guy if I could touch it, and he said “I guess so”, and then when I reached out, Ron shouted “BANG!” which made me jump and they both laughed. The cars at this place were all cheaper because they’d been taken off criminals or people had died in them, things like that. I looked at the windshields and imagined people flying through them and their heads rolling off. Ron asked if he could take one for a drive. “I’ll leave the kid behind as collateral,” he said and winked, but the sales guy said he had to go with Ron, so we all went, but it was obvious Ron wasn’t going to buy it, he was just killing time.

Ron gave me one of his old dumbbells. He left it by his door with a note, with my name on. “Knock yourself out,” it said.

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I caught my sister reading this. “Who’s Ron?” she wanted to know. I told her if she wasn’t careful, I’d grab her round the neck, drag her downstairs to Dad’s office and photocopy her head until she went blind. I wouldn’t.

Ron’s sick so I hung out with Lester and Will and we went to the skate park for the first time in forever. Lester’s family are moving to Europe but he doesn’t want to go. Will said he’d move to Europe and talked dirty about sex in France. Some other boys we kind of know came over and talked to us and they had beer, and the sun took hours to go down. It was OKAY.

I went over to Ron’s and rang the bell and threw stones at his window. I thought “Maybe he’s dead and his cats are eating him”, for a laugh, but he was probably just out.

I saw Ron. I said, “Where have you been?” He said, “I was out of town for a couple of weeks.” I said where, and he said “out of town.” He wouldn’t look at me and I wondered if I’d broken out really grossly and touched my forehead when I thought he wasn’t looking, and my nose, and he kind of swatted my hand away from my face a few times and said “Don’t do that.” I asked if anything was wrong and he said “Everything’s great,” but then he drove me home soon after.

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Will said good riddance. He wanted to go to a house party his oldest sister Jenna was at but I wasn’t in the mood so I said he should go. He said no, but all weak sounding, so I made him leave. I had to shout to get him to go, and after that he was fine to go.

It’s raining. I’m so bored. I’m going to go.

So I got to the house, and there’s people on the front lawn, and inside, and they’re all seniors and I found Will, he was inside, but he didn’t look happy to see me, and pretended not to. Then I kind of lost sight of him and was trying to find him, calling his name, and some boys blocked me in a corridor and they backed me into a bathroom and shut the door. “We hear you like older guys,” and I said “No,” but he wasn’t listening and then they took it in turns not listening and

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Ron could be okay though sometimes.