It was a cold autumn morning; too cold to be stood outside waiting for the bus at ten to eight. Craig Raimi, seventeen years old and six foot two in his worn trainers shoved his hands deep into his pockets, stamped his feet and wished he were in back in bed. A tendon-stretching yawn distorted his long, dark face while a sharp breeze chilled every part of his exposed skin.

"Stop yawning you git, you're making me feel tired."

"Hmm?" Craig murmured.

"I said, stop yawning."

Craig forced his heavy eyelids open and looked across the bus shelter at the figure squeezed into the far corner, similarly hunched up against the chill.

"It's sending me to sleep," Nic Carpenter concluded, shifting a wad of chewing gum from one side of his mouth to the other.

"Fuck off," was the witty retort.

"Fuck off yourself," was the equally cutting reply.

A big petrol tanker sailed past the bus stop, its exhaust belching blue smoke and its engine snarling throatily in the crisp air. In its disturbed wake dead leaves and litter danced out of the gutter, swirling over Craig and Nic's feet. The both stared at the leaping detritus without much in the way of interest.

It was that kind of morning; a Monday morning with the weekend a vague, alcohol-soaked memory and a whole school week falling into place ahead of them with the inevitably of a demolished tower block.

"I can't believe you sold my I.D. to a Polish milkman," Craig complained for the seventeenth time in six hours.

Nic looked affronted.

"I got fifteen quid for it," he protested.

"It cost me thirty to get it from Dodgy Dave."

"Well I got that wrap of Charlie with it."

"That was ninety percent icing sugar, and you snorted the only bit that was real," Craig scoffed. "Every time I've sneezed since last night I feel like I've got half a pound of cake mix shoved up me nose."

"Yeah," Nic sighed. "That's the last time I buy coke from a bloke who says he sells to the 'Boro players."

Craig thought back to the previous night, and wondered how his friend could have been so comprehensively fooled by a cross-eyed Scotsman in a whisky-stained donkey jacket.

"Ah c'mon Nic, that bloke was as bent as a four-pound note."

"Well, I'd had a few."

"Oh that's why you tried to chat up that eighty-year old granny."

"She looked twenty-five."

"She looked like she'd been dragged backwards through the ugly hedge." Craig pulled out a cigarette and lit it up, took one drag and coughed miserably. "Look at the picture I got of her." He pulled out his phone and proffered it to his mate. Nic scrolled through the picture gallery, stopped at the image in question and went grey with shock.

"Je-sus," he groaned in dismay.

"Not exactly a MILF, is she?"

"Not even a GILF," Nic agreed, squinting his bloodshot blue eyes to see if it made things any better.

"Well if you hadn't bought her all them drinks, we wouldn't have been skint and you wouldn't have sold my I.D."

"You were buying drinks for a girl all night," Nic protested feebly.

"Willow's my girlfriend, if I don't buy her drinks I don't get any sex."

"Nobody's that shallow, Craig. Besides which, you didn't get any sex last night 'cos she kicked you into a taxi with me"

"Yeah, she wasn't that impressed with the coke either."

"And you threw up over the back seat; I never thought I'd have to walk back from town again."

Craig took out his cigarette and spat on the ground. "Don't try and wriggle out of this. What I'm trying to say is that basically it was all your fault."

"Well," Nic said thoughtfully as their coach crested the ridge of the hill and began cruising noisily down towards them. "If you're pissed 'cos you didn't blow your load you'll have to take matters into your own hands."

"I'll sweet talk her round," Craig said confidently. He hoisted his bag up onto his shoulder and stepped out of the bus stop.

"You better, you're crap at picking up birds."

The bus was thirty yards away, and the shotgun sounds of its ancient brakes blasted loudly around the quiet village the pair called home. The coach shot past them in with a screech of burning rubber as its wheels locked up and it finally came to a smoky, panting halt ten yards beyond the two students.

Craig and Nic exchanged an amused glance and ambled down the pavement to meet it.

"How that rusty piece of shit ever passed its MOT I'll never know," Nic grumbled.

Craig reached the door and waited for it to open up. The driver reached down to pull a lever, but was rewarded with nothing more than a strangled hiss of a dying pneumatic system. He hauled his thirty stone frame from out behind his seat and instead opened the door with the manual handle.

"Morning Al," Craig muttered, tossing his cigarette aside. Nic merely grunted as the pair of them climbed aboard.

"Morning gentlemen," Al replied with a heartiness that was entirely inappropriate for this time of the day.

"I see your brakes are as good as ever."

"When you're school starts paying me a decent rate then I can get a better coach."

"You mean one that doesn't have seats that smell of piss?" Nic piped up.

Al's face set solid.

"Get in the back and sit down you little prick," he growled.

"Charming," Nic muttered under his breath, squeezing his way along the aisle as Al brutalized the door shut and forced his bulk back into his seat. The students were temporarily thrown off balance as the coach got under way again and an annoying little year nine kid pointed and laughed.

"What didja have to say that for?" Craig hissed to his friend as they reached the rear where all the Sixth Formers were gathered in a riot of non-uniform uniformity.

"I'm tired," Nic grouched. "Hungover, and I didn't do my Geography homework. I fail to see why I should be pleasant to a thirty stone lardarse with grey teeth. Oh hey guys."

"Hey Nic," intoned two voices in unison. Craig looked down at the two similarly dressed boys, eyes focussed on a pair of PSPs. The pop-punk shirts, ridiculously skinny jeans, hi-top shoes, the living embodiment of emo: Tony and Todd Slade.

"Morning lads," Craig offered half-heartedly to the twins, his focus somewhere else.

"Mmh," was the reply in stereo.

"Have fun mate," he said to Nic as his friend tossed his bag onto a free seat.

"You too," his friend replied, plugging the 'phones of his iPod into his ears. Before the sound was cut off, Craig heard a snatch of music.

"Nowhere to run to, baby. Nowhere to hide…"

He could see over the crowd of heads at mane of black hair at the very back and shuffled towards it, composing himself and mentally running through the upcoming conversation. "Sorry" seemed like a good word to start on; he could improvise from there.

Lost in thought he stumbled over a rucksack that had been dumped in the centre aisle with all the grace of spilled bag of shopping.

"Hey, watch it ya tosspot."

Another distraction. Craig glared at the over-muscled lunk who was sprawled across two seats, his feet propped up on the headrest in front.

"Stuff off, Hooper," he muttered.

In reply Jed Hooper kicked out at Craig's knee and presented him with one stubby middle finger.

"Swivel on it you long streak of horse piss."

Craig sighed, gathered up as much dignity as he could muster, and let the captain of the school's rugby team get back to his phone call with his trophy girlfriend on the other end.

One row of seats left.

He became aware of an animated conversation that appeared to be conducted entirely in internet acronyms. He personally, he couldn't read the damn thing on a screen, so it was a mystery to him how two people were able to communicate verbally in a language made up of letters and still know what the hell they were talking about.

Ellie Romero and Jillian King never gave him a second glance; they never had done. They had been in the same year since they were eleven, and Craig remembered that the sight of them in those pleated Catholic schoolgirl skirts had been the first sign that, yes, he definitely fell into the red-blooded hetero camp. Since then, up until he had met Willow, those two girls had sustained him in a series of bedroom ceiling fantasies that had eventually grown to involve him, them, a Penny Farting bicycle and a vat of strawberry jelly.

As it was the two perky, perma-tanned blondes once again completely failed to acknowledge his existence, and on his part he had long ago stopped caring.

Finally he could see onto the back seats. A slim, serious figure was curled up in the corner, reading through the inbox of her slim, serious phone. Her long black hair hung down over one side of her face, but couldn't hide the bags beneath her green eyes, which suggested that she too was suffering from a weekend of excess.

If she knew he was stood there watching her she made no sign of it, staring intently at her phone as if it were the only thing in the world. Willow Snyder, a seventeen-year-old raven-haired Oxbridge candidate and as far as Craig was concerned the most beautiful woman on the face of the Earth. She even snorted ersatz coke with a graceful precision that made him wonder if it was only him that got turned into a gibbering idiot if he so much as sniffed the Devil's dandruff.

Right. Time for action.

"Hey, babe."

Good start, Raimi. Smooth.

Willow gave no sign of hearing him as her slender fingers typed out another text message. Feeling uneasy he swung his bag from his shoulder and sat down next to her.

"So, about last night. I, er…"

Her eyes never left her phone. But Willow's knuckles grew white as her fingers tightened around the casing. Craig noticed that, and the flush of colour appear on her oval face.

"Sorry."

He heard a sharp intake of breath, and he knew that whatever was coming next was not going to be pleasant for him.

I'm gonna kill you Nic.

Craig braced himself as the coach left the nexus of winding country roads and cruised onto the motorway, and his eyes slipped sideways to the roadsign. Some clever sod had - for whatever reason - spray-painted over two of the distance markers and left just one uncovered.

"What?" Willow snapped.

'BIRMINGHAM 180 MILES' it read.