Dean's Deconstruction

Dean is nineteen years old and he has a problem.He found it three weeks ago at the bottom of his sister's drawer. A pair of pink cotton knickers with a little bow at the front, the elastic going soft, and the second he held them in his hand something turned over inside him that he doesn't have a name for yet.He has a name for the girl in the mirror, though.Debbie.Debbie wears the knickers. Debbie wears the bra stuffed with rice. Debbie wears the pleated black skirt from the charity shop and the white knee socks and the trainers half a size too small, and Debbie has been a secret in a locked bedroom with the curtains drawn for exactly four wanks now, and it is no longer enough.Debbie wants to go outside.Debbie wants to walk down the street in a skirt that swishes against her bare thighs. Debbie wants strangers to look. Debbie wants the white van and the wolf whistle and the terrifying perfect proof that she's real. Debbie wants to get on a bus.Debbie should have stayed home.Because Hayley is at the bus stop. Tall, tattooed, green streaks in her hair, burgundy lipstick, a smile that goes all the way down. Hayley likes Debbie's skirt. Hayley sits a little too close. Hayley puts her hand on a thigh that has never been touched by anything but cold air and pleated polyester, and Hayley, as it turns out, does this for a living.A professional one, she explains, with her mouth at Debbie's ear and her fingers somewhere they really shouldn't be on a public bus.Twenty minutes to the city centre. Four people sitting in the front half of the bus with their faces in their phones. None of them are going to turn around. None of them are going to save her.Hayley has plans for Debbie. Plans that involve a black painted room at the top of a Victorian house, a wooden device with a hole in it that Dean will recognise the purpose of approximately one second before he loses the ability to think, a small brown bottle with a hand written label, and a green kitchen scouring pad you can buy in any supermarket in any town in the country.By the end of Sunday afternoon, Dean will not be quite the same person he was.He will, however, ask for more.This is a story about a boy who put on a skirt and met the woman who was always going to find him. About edges that do not break. About the difference between hurting and being hurt by the right person.