There are six of them, all about fifteen, and in front, pushed and stumbling, his tie all crooked and his shirt untucked, is the boy who’s been talking to me. No one’s putting on any lights and the squeak from their stupid-expensive trainers echoes around the hall, setting the air on edge. I found him on a self-help suicide site, this boy. He’s thirteen years old and he’s had enough. Once his parents are asleep, he spends his nights trawling the Interzone, finding places that will tell him how to kill himself. He wakes up an extra hour early so that he can empty himself of tears before his mother comes into his bedroom. That’s on the nights he can go to sleep at all. ‘Hey, Derrick, what’s it like to be a meatspinner?’ The pack snigger, and the boy cringes, trying to make himself disappear inside his own body. Derrick. That’s his name. The pack has decided he’s gay, and has fucked him over so much that the pain of living is just too much for him.
