So: my exercise. I'd start in my room, and do about four sets of twenty. Then I'd run downstairs and start on the Abdominizer. If you've never seen one, they're like half of something fun, half a bike or half a swing. You lie down in them and you do sit-ups. You spend good money trying to make sit-ups something else. In the end, a sit-up is a sit-up. But I'm a big a mug as anyone and I'd try and do two hundred sit-ups in that thing in sets of fifty. The pain was very bad. So I'd think of something that pissed me off, usually Kelly, and the anger would help me push out the last fifty. I wanted to show her that I could develop if I wanted to. Because there was always this thing between her and me that we were both kind of overweight, and always telling the other one that they were obsessed¹ with it. So if Kelly didn't eat lunch, I'd be like 'For fucksake, you're not dieting are you? You're not even fat.' Trying to make her feel pathetic（可怜的） . And if she caught me with the abdominizer（收腹器） (it was hers, she never used it), she'd say something like,' Jono, you're not even developed yet. It's just puppy fat, for fuckssake, give it a chance. We used to swear like troopers. And we like to make each other feel bad about things. Around that time she was also giving me a lot of shit about girls. All about how she didn't want me to sleep with girls because I was too young and under-developed. She was more a mother in that way. And the fact that I started exercising, working-out - that really irritated her. She'd find me with a weight in my hand and start shouting. She'd say I was a boy trying to be a man too soon. I know I'm meant to be the stupid one, but I could work out for myself that it was all about Aidan. Not me. Most days, I just did my best to avoid her.

When I'd finished the sit-ups, I'd normally do about twenty-five press-ups before going to the top of the stairs and doing my chin-ups. The way the bar was positioned meant I could see the people passing in the street. That was deliberate. To be honest, I've never been a natural exercise freak and you need something to distract you, take you away from the reality of it, otherwise you go mad. So I'd watch people without them knowing and then occasionally someone would pot me through the glass pane² in the door, spot my head going up and down, and you could see them double-take, trying to work out what was going on. From out there it looked like magic. Levitation（升空，漂浮） . A nice way to end a heavy-going routine.

But on this morning that I'm talking about, I really wanted to see the street and pull my own weight - I didn't care about the rest. I skipped the press-ups, went straight to the bar and hooked my hands round it. I don't know how much you know about it, but when you do a chin-up you meet your own fingers in a position you don't usually come across. With the nails facing you, like somebody else's hands are reaching out to touch your face. I remember looking at my fingers, all white, all the blood gone travelling elsewhere, and thinking that this was OK, doing this with your fingers. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't holding a camera or writing a concerto³, but it was OK. It made them tingle⁴. It got the blood going, and that's the whole point, isn't it? Whatever gets the blood pumping. Whatever makes you feel high; unreal.

And then I saw Cole coming down the street, heading for our front gate. You couldn't miss Cole because he was black, six foot nine and a half inches and fourteen years old. I had only met Cole a month earlier, after I joined this new school for my re-takes. I failed practically everything the summer before and it was one of those schools where they cram⁵ a lot of stuff into a little time to get you ready to re-take your exams in December. Cole was re-taking practically everything too. But weirdly⁷, between the two of us, we'd managed to fail a lot of totally different subjects. I remember thinking that was hilarious⁸ at the time. Two people being so stupid, but with no overlap⁹. Stupid in two completely different ways. So Cole and I were only in one class together, Performing Arts, a course that had a lot less performing in it than we'd hoped. We'd both taken it because we thought it'd be an easy option. In fact, it was mostly reading about the history of the cinema and the theatre. Really dry stuff. I was bored out of my mind until Cole turned up, late and slow as usual, two weeks into the course. Six foot nine and a half. I remember when I first saw him I couldn't believe it. I asked him all the usual questions. I said, is it weird⁶ being that tall? Do you have to buy different clothes? Are all your family like that? And Cole said, 'No, mate, I'm the only one.' You could tell how often he got asked the lame¹⁰ stuff I'd just asked him. I didn't want to bore him, but it's a hard thing to get used to. Harder than you'd imagine. It still hadn't worn off when I saw him loping up the path, a magic giant, while I levitated¹¹, a genie¹². He spotted¹³ me, and looked surprised, and I laughed and dropped down from the bar. For some reason I always felt so happy to see Cole. So happy! And this was the first time he'd come round to my house so it was like a stamp on our new friendship. It was a green light. I didn't want to be a big girl about it, but to be honest with you, I kind of skipped down the steps.