ok! So this is the first chapter and a bit of Ice Cubes, for those of you that remember it - it's very different now, and it still needs a ton of work. Anywho, I'm not sure if I'm happy with this, so, instead of sitting at my pc staring at it for another hour i shall leave it in the hands of you, my trusty YWS peeps to tell me what you think, should it stay like this, or how it used to be? *old version can be found on here*

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Ice Cubes

When I was six years old I developed a strange obsession with ice. I loved nothing more than to sit with a large chunk in my mouth - silently savouring the sweet sensation of it melting against my tongue. What I liked best is that eerie noise it makes when you push your teeth through it. It makes the hairs on your arms stand up. My Mum never approved of my obsession. Every time I gently slid my finger tips down an empty glass to grasp my cold prize she would slap my hand away as hard as she could. I used to try and eat every piece of ice in everyone’s glass, until Mum would stop and slap my wrist, sending the ice skidding across the table, leaving a wet trail in it’s wake. It used to really upset me, I would sometimes cry for hours over the ice I was forbidden to eat. Mum simply told me to go to my room and learn some manners. Manners were the only thing she really cared about.

I was what you would call a typical ‘Mummy’s boy’. I simply adored her. Fair enough, she used to make me so frustrated that I would stand in the hallway screaming and stamping my feet, throwing myself against the walls, but she was all I had. I saw her as a movie star - I used to dream of her name in lights, dancing in ball gowns. In those dreams I would tell everyone that she was my Mum. I spent most evenings rummaging through her make-up box, running my fingertips through her powder. Her hair was always tied crudely back into a bun, crystallised nicely with an obscene amount of hairspray. The bun always used to look so crackly, I used to lick my lips with anticipation of biting it. It was sure to have made the most satisfying crunch you could possibly imagine. Her shoes were always polished - stilettos, her ‘killer heels’.

Like my obsession with ice Mum had an obsession with food, or more like lack of it. She didn’t want to eat it 24/7 or anything like that. Mum hated food, she hated cooking and buying it - so naturally she hated eating it. She used to tell me that you had to be skinny to get by in life - the more you ate the fatter you got. But being so young I never understood why I could count all of my ribs or why my wrists always looked like they were about to break. I never told her that I used to beg my friends for the cupcakes in their lunchboxes.

I will never forget the day Mum’s glamorous charade shattered right in front of my eyes. She had taken me to town to buy new school shoes; but as it began to rain she took my hand as she ran down the street back to our little red car. Her heel broke and her knees jolted suddenly, sending her spiralling to the pavement in a twirl of her colourful clothes. And there she stayed, her thin fragile body heaving with her sobs, her tears intertwining with the salty rain. I stood in my shiny blue rain mac with matching wellies, grimacing down at her. In utter confusion I began to laugh because I had lost all sense of what was happening. She broke two of her ribs that day.

After Mum was better she took me to the beach. The beach was some kind of sanctuary to us, I loved it, and I never felt as close to her as I did when we were at the beach. On those special beach days Mum would tie her hair back into a high pony tail, wear tight little blue shorts and a bikini top, she would always finish off her look with a pair of cheap but designer looking sunglasses. The men would whistle at her as she treaded along the sand, I didn’t mind because she was my Mum and she was beautiful. She would lay out a large towel on the hot sad and would pull a red cap over my unruly blonde curls. I got my hair from her, she never let me forget it. She just always forgot the sun screen, but we didn’t care - walking home with red shoulders and a red nose was just part of the fun. We would collect shells, never stones, and we kept them on a dusty shelf In my bedroom. The last day we went to the beach was the last day of summer, Mum had bought me a yellow ‘spot the dog’ spade, I was far too pre-occupied with scooping up the sand and throwing it around that I didn’t notice her in the water. The waves crept up over her head and she was gone. And there I was, having too much fun to notice the people running into the sea after her. It’s a good job that someone was paying attention.

It was about a week later when Mum was released from the hospital. I was told to sleep at my neighbours house, which was scarier than the fact that my Mother had tried to kill herself. Our neighbours were strangely obsessed with cats and dolls. I would sit in their living room, one million glassy doll eyes focused on me and a bear rug under my feet. It smelt of cat sick. Mum took me into the kitchen almost immediately after entering the neighbours house. The kitchen also smelt of cat sick.

“Jamie…” She stuttered as tears fell from her eyes, if she was wearing make-up it would have smudged, I could almost imagine it. She always used to call me ‘Jamie, the supplanter’ but I never knew what she meant. She put her thin hand on top of mine, I could feel the coldness of her dry skin upon mine; it made me want to be sick like the bear rug did. “I can’t keep you anymore Jamie, they…they wont let me anymore” I felt completely useless, at that age I didn’t have the vocabulary range to express what was going through my mind. If anything was happening at all. I felt completely bewildered, ashamed of what was happening. All I could really focus on was the constant beeping noise that was in my ears, almost like they had switched off.

Most people never know the absolute feeling of being alone. It overwhelms you, creeps over your body then suddenly you find yourself staring into space, blank walls, reaching out your hand, feeling nothing, and what you do feel is empty. Nothing there. Cold. Its that feeling of waking up in the middle of the night after a heavy night of drinking, your whole body feels cold and your head feels so heavy that you cant even open your eyes. And in the morning you are sick, so sick that you just go back to bed and feel the cold sensation wash over your body again. The same day Mum spoke to me I was taken away in a police car - my nose pressed up against the window - eyes glazed over with tears. I couldn’t smell her perfume anymore - I would never be able to run my fingertips through her ivory powder again.

Mum used to smell of peppermint on Friday nights.

Singing with Madonna

Yvette’s office was small and unusually round. The whole building seemed to be a converted water tower or something else ridiculous like that, so naturally the walls were round, but she had somehow managed to accumulate round furniture too. It was extremely odd. She had even got circles painted in all manners of colours on the walls. There were round picture frames. Still, the building and the office suited her well as she was a very round woman. I was sure that if I mustered up enough strength I could push her over and she would roll around. She looked like a juggling ball. Because of this I decided that she would make a very fine prick cushion - she could just sit there, stick pins in her, and she wouldn’t feel it because she was so fat. Mum would have been proud of my idea. But she wasn’t there.

“Now then Jamie, we have many families that are suitable for you to go and stay with,” Yvette had a very manly voice which surprised me, I was expecting a high pitched squeak to come out of her “We will have them come in for meetings with you, and then you can choose which ones to live with…with my input of course,” She looked at me suddenly from across her desk, her tiny brown eyes scanning my body. “We should get you some new clothes.”

“I’m ok thank you.” I didn’t look at her.

“That’s the first I have heard you speak young man, polite little thing aren’t you?” she got up from her chair and came over to the beanbag that I had somehow sat on and sunken into. She ran her fingers through my hair, she stopped when she came to a knot and tried to untangle her fingers. Her eyes kept glazing down at me and in the silence I felt so awkward that I wanted to cry.

“Mum cared about manners the most.” I didn’t look up at her - those beedy little eyes were sure to have been scanning my body again. I was fully aware that her fingers were still stuck in my hair.

“Well…let’s get you bathed shall we?” She yanked her hand away from me quickly, I was almost certain she had taken a whole chunk of my hair with her. She pulled at my wrist rather suddenly, I could feel the beans in the beanbag suck away at my legs as I was pulled out of it, it felt like cellulite.