‘Wait.’
Turning, I found my shoulder grasped tight. He pulled me back round to face him, and he was looking at me with this weirdly intense expression – nervous, but intent. If this had happened yesterday afternoon I’d have been having an internal panic attack that he was going to go in for a Hollywood Kiss.
Now I felt . . . nothing. Except confusion, and a bit of worry that Jude might miss his selfie slot.
Jayden-Lee dropped his hand back down by his crotch and had a thoughtful scratch, then ran his fingers back through his still-perfect-but-maybe-a-bit-less-appealing hair. He cleared his throat. ‘Is your mate around? I wanted to see her. You know, say something about last night. Sorry, or whatever.’
‘Kayla?’ I asked slowly. ‘You want to say sorry to Kayla for what happened last night?’
‘Is that her name?’ He smiled, like I’d told him a secret. ‘Yeah.’
‘Last night, when you yelled about me being a gayboy to a hundred strangers in rubber rings and novelty hula skirts? You want to say sorry to Kayla for that?’
‘Right.’ He nodded readily. ‘But more for just after that, when I said that thing about her face. It looks fine, really. I didn’t know it was permanent.’
‘All those people didn’t know I was gay.’ It wasn’t that Kayla didn’t deserve an apology too. I just couldn’t believe Jayden-Lee was totally ignoring the gay elephant he’d let loose. It was as if all those years I’d spent trying to make it a completely invisible part of me had finally worked at the weirdest possible time. I flung my arms out to the side, practically doing jazz-hands of incredulity. ‘Until you decided to tell them.’
‘Yeah, but they’re not going to care, are they. It’s not like you fancy them.’
He might as well have said ‘What’s the big deal?’ and without finding out one of his biggest secrets and arranging for it to be displayed in neon lights on the Starcross gates, I couldn’t figure out how to explain.
Maybe it shouldn’t have been a big deal. Nobody cares about people knowing they’re straight. Nobody has to tell their parents about their straightness, or worries that their friends might think it’s weird.
Straight people probably never look up the word ‘straight’ in the dictionary and wonder how something with such a totally different meaning could also define who they love.
So maybe it really shouldn’t have been a big deal at all for a load of people who didn’t even know me to find out that my dictionary definition wasn’t: adj. without a bend, angle or curve but adj. joyful or happy.
But it was a big deal. To me.
I backed up a few steps, shaking my head. ‘You know what – I can’t do this right now. I’ve got a hamster to meet. Yeah, you do owe Kayla an apology, so come back some other time if you’re actually sorry. But if you’re just going to upset her again, then don’t bother.’
Turning to head back inside and get Jude, I added, softly, ‘And for the record, I don’t fancy you any more. So you can stop caring about that too.’
He didn’t say anything, just let me go. When Jude and I came out he was still standing there. He watched as I locked the caravan door, then wandered back across to start kicking his football against the side of his caravan. We headed past him, towards the fair.
I looked back, once. I wasn’t sure if what I’d said had been completely true. I couldn’t just turn off all the things that had made me fancy him; he still had gorgeous eyes and nearly perfect hair, and a jawline that Greek sculptors could break a chisel on. I just knew that all those individual parts weren’t enough any more. Once I’d put them all together into a whole person, it was like the same sum adding up to a different answer.
I’d never really understood maths, anyway.
THIRTY-FIVE
Twinkling fairground music broke into my attempts to figure out a precise calculation for true love. Where there had been nothing but a few fractured metal skeletons of tents and half-constructed attractions when Kayla and I had sat on the clifftops before, there was now a whole carnival.
Alongside the big wheel, a collection of stalls and clattering vintage rides were scattered through the meadow just below our bench, with its seagulls and signs to stay away from the crumbling edges. There was a carousel and a ghost train, a van selling ice cream, and another serving up burgers to massive queues.
It was all part of the big end-of-season celebration, and it was packed. Given the size of the crowd, it should have been easy to go unnoticed. That was, if I wasn’t walking alongside a wheelchair containing a four-year-old in a hamster hat, clutching a card shaped into a huge, glittery loveheart.
Next time Mum took us anywhere, I was going to bring a range of wigs and false moustaches, just in case.
‘Now, if you were a hamster, where would you be holding your photo shoot?’
I hunched down over the back of Jude’s chair as we looked around. Somewhere on the opposite side of the field, between the win-a-goldfish hoopla game and the ghost train, I could see a tent with a group of people gathered round it who were mostly too small to be allowed on the rides. Jude spotted it at the same time as me.
‘There! In the hungry tent!’
On closer inspection, the tent flaps had been cut to resemble two big white buckteeth.
‘That’s definitely the one,’ I agreed. Now I just had to get us in, get the picture, and get back out without being busted.
We were hiding in the shadow of a tall red-and-yellow signpost that read: DON’T CLOWN AROUND – HAVE FUN RESPONSIBLY. The words were painted on to a gigantic dangling clown’s head, which was terrifying both in general and because, the way it was swinging, it looked like it could slice down and brain someone at any moment.
Just across the walkway, fair workers were trying to help two elderly Elvises who’d got stuck near the hook-a-duck pool. The ground around it was a waterlogged mud bath, and it had sucked in their blue suede shoes.
This was going to be fine. If there were any security staff, they’d be looking out for things like that: actual problems. As long as Jude and I avoided making any trouble, who was going to come after two kids enjoying a funfair? All we had to do was act casual and style it out. I tapped on the back of Jude’s chair and we started to head across the fairground like we owned it.
Until a hand clasped my collar and yanked me back. ‘Got you.’
Dragging myself free, I whipped round and narrowly avoided getting a face full of Mr Whippy. Kayla had ordered the planet’s biggest ice cream, with raspberry sauce and sprinkles.
‘Kayla! Where have you been?’
She took a lick of vanilla before replying. ‘Um, yoga, obviously? I could have sworn that was you I was talking to about it this morning. Your evil twin hasn’t got out of his cage again, has he?’
‘No, but I might need that excuse in a minute. I sent you an emergency text!’
‘Ice creaaaam,’ Jude interrupted, reaching out with the hand not clutching his card.
Kayla bent down to allow him a few messy licks. ‘Phone’s dead, I forgot to charge it last night. What’s the emergency? I thought you weren’t even supposed to be here.’ She snapped part of her flake off and Jude crammed it gratefully into his mouth.
‘That was the emergency. One of the emergencies. I think I’ve managed to fit more emergencies into one morning than Mum and Dad do working on the ambulances.’
Straightening up, Kayla carefully kept her ice cream away from my anxious over-gesturing. ‘Well, nothing seems to have flooded or caught fire, and I’m assuming neither of you have been arrested yet. You being here doesn’t look like it’s brought about the end of the world, so why don’t you start with the biggest crisis and we’ll work backwards from there.’
I thought about Jayden-Lee turning up out of the blue, and the fact that, once what I’d said had caught up with him, he might decide to object to being spoken to like that. I thought about Mum and Dad’s mysterious crazy-golf crisis, and the pink couch, and about how I might be called in as a witn
ess if Alfie’s mum had actually rammed her flamingo where she’d said she would. And I said:
‘I don’t hate the hamster any more.’
Because I was going to have to see him again, any minute, and somehow that seemed like the biggest emergency of all.
Kayla pursed her lips. She handed Jude her whole ice cream, then took my hands from where I was anxiously flapping them, and tucked them into my pockets.
‘OK. Tell me all about it.’
So I did. I told her about meeting Leo in the loos, and in the hedge. About him giving me his umbrella, and me forcing biscuits on him, and about how warm his back was, and his smile. I told her about his eyebrow bar, and how I’d always wondered what I’d look like with one of those, but I got an infection in my ear back when I had the cartilage pierced and I now I was concerned about ending up with a Vesuvius of pus right in the middle of my face.
And she told me I was getting off the point, so I told her that when I touched his hand there was a real, actual spark between us. And I didn’t even mean the static electricity – just a small, sweet shock.
I might have mentioned the way my stomach had gotten tied up in knots when Leo smiled at me, and how it hadn’t undone itself yet.
Finally, when I’d got through all the important things, I remembered to tell her that I’d had a change of heart when it came to fancying part-time hamsters, too.
Kayla listened, and made approving noises in most of the right places, except for the snort of laughter at finding out Nibbles was Leo all along. Then, when I’d run out of things to say, she put her hands on her hips, businesslike. ‘Right. Well, you’d better tell him you’re into him, then.’
‘You’re so right.’ I sighed, already mentally prepared for the takedown she was going to give me over my second crush in a week. ‘I should just forget all about it and . . . wait. What?’
‘Tell him you like him. Bite the bullet, take the plunge, go for broke, use any cliché you like but, as the Goddess Nike says, just do it.’
‘Did you see what happened the last time I tried that?’ This couldn’t actually be the advice she meant to give me. She was supposed to be the practical one. All my impracticality depended on that balance between us. If Kayla started being reckless and impulsive, I was going to have to buy some cardigans and start going to bed before nine.
But she was smiling at me like there was nothing wrong at all. ‘This time will be different.’
‘You don’t know that.’ I should have factored in her obvious hamster bias. ‘You’re just letting yourself be fooled by his cute, fluffy exterior. When I thought I was madly in love with Jayden-Lee, you kept telling me I didn’t even know him.’
‘And you didn’t, as I think experience proved. But you know this hamster.’
‘I spent all week hating this hamster!’
Kayla clicked her tongue. ‘And you’ve spent all week talking to Leo. Actual conversations, not just him grunting out a few words while you daydream about how swoony his eyes are. You don’t hate the hamster now you know it’s him, do you?’
I shook my head.
(Leo’s eyes were pretty swoony, though. I just hadn’t known before today.)
‘Do you think you’re falling for Leo?’ Kayla asked.
I had to consider that one. I could easily remember the way I’d felt about Jayden-Lee. Which was sort of sick, and terrified, and excited all at once.
I didn’t feel the same about Leo. Thinking about him didn’t make me rush through the same weird combination of awful and amazing.
It was just really nice.
I shook my head. ‘I don’t know. I think I could like him, a lot. Like, really a lot. But I’d need to spend more time with him to find out for sure.’
‘Perfect.’ Kayla reached up to pat my head as if I was a puppy mastering a new trick. ‘That’s how sane people start relationships. Tell him.’
‘But . . .’
‘Tell him. If you’d like me to prepare a written statement clarifying the nature of your intentions, then I’m happy to go back and type one up. But I think it might be quicker if you just went to say hi.’
She nodded across to the Selfie Tent. The crowd of children was temporarily dispersing as Stacie hung up a sign outside reading 20 MINUTE BREAK. ‘There. Looks like the perfect time.’
THIRTY-SIX
The timing really did seem to be right. Twenty minutes would give Jude a chance to recover from the inevitable brain freeze that had followed eating an ice cream as big as his head, and it gave me some time to psych myself up outside the Selfie Tent.
The only thing it didn’t give me was any idea about how to get in there alone.
Sitting at the ticket desk, Stacie looked up from behind a stacked pile of squeezable Squeaky Nibbles souvenirs. She’d had her face painted, and I couldn’t figure out if the blotchy mix of black and white meant she was a cat or a cow.
‘No admittance at the moo-ment,’ she said, giving me a clue. ‘Nibbles is having his hamster ham sandwiches.’
‘I just want to swap this for a ticket – do hamsters even eat ham?’ I asked, handing over the free voucher Kayla had demanded back at the children’s party. ‘I thought they were vegetarian.’
Stacie gave me a flat look. ‘Can you think of a vegetable that sounds like hamster?’
I tried, for a minute. ‘Not really.’
‘Well then.’ She stamped my voucher as if this closed the matter, and handed over Jude’s golden ticket. I looked over my shoulder to see that Kayla had managed to wet-wipe most of the raspberry sauce off his face. She’d stopped to talk to a blonde girl I didn’t recognize, but when she saw me watching they waved goodbye and she and Jude headed over.
Jude’s focus was locked on to all the Nibbles merchandise like a hamster-seeking missile. I just hoped he wouldn’t explode with happiness on impact.
I handed my wallet to Kayla while he dug into the toy pile, setting off a million squeaks. ‘He can have one of them – just don’t get blackmailed into coming away with a Nibbles army.’
Kayla gave me a funny look, jerking her head and shoulder to the side.
‘And I give up. I’m not going to get into the tent while it’s got a guard cow on the door.’ It had always been an impossible dream. ‘I’ll just leave now, while the coast’s clear.’
Kayla jerked her head again, and again, until it looked like it might actually roll off her shoulders.
‘Are you all right? I’m not sure if you’re doing some new yoga move or having a fit.’
As I tried to hold on to her shoulders just in case, she growled at me, ‘Look behind you and to the left, you utter, utter pillock.’
‘Oh, was that supposed to be pointing?’ I asked. ‘Kayla, you don’t have to point at things with your face; that’s why we have hands.’
The noise she made in response sounded like she was ready to bite my hands off, so I did what she said. And behind me, to my left, a sliver of orange fur was poking out through a flap in the back of the tent. It was a way in.
I turned back to Kayla, wide-eyed, and whispered, ‘What do I do now?’
‘Just go!’ she hissed back. It sounded like we were having a conversation in fluent snake. ‘Quick!’
Before I could protest, she lurched towards the ticket desk.
A shower of Squeaky Nibbles went flying in all directions as Kayla stumbled, then more while she tried to regain her balance. Jude squealed and tried to catch one as it rocketed past.
Kayla stood up with an armful of the things, her eyes wide and doll-like in a way I didn’t know she could pull off. She even giggled. ‘Oh my god, I slipped! They’re just so adorable, I can’t help wanting to hug every one!’
As children started to be drawn in by the squeaky bounty, Stacie pulled a megaphone from under the desk and put it to her mouth. ‘NOBODY MOO-VE. THE TENT WILL NOT REOPEN UNTIL EVERY HAMSTER IS ACCOUNTED FOR!’
I ran.
Bolting round to the back of the tent, I ducked in through the openin
g in the canvas and found myself squished up against a massive orange backside. I tried to wriggle past, but Nibbles moved with me, pinning me between his bum and the side of the tent.
So this was how I was going to die. Squished by the bottom of the hamster I fancied. It was definitely a tragedy worthy of Shakespeare.
I couldn’t help picturing the funeral. Leo in a tailored black suit, flanked by police officers who’d be investigating him as a potential murderer, but who’d eventually release him after he confessed his feelings. ‘I loved him,’ he’d tell them. ‘From the heart of my bottom.’
I was starting to run out of air. But I could hear something on the other side of the hamster.
The clicking of heels.
‘He’s been seen at this location,’ Margaret the manager said. ‘Attempting to accompany the boy in the chair. If he tries to sneak in at any point, it will be considered a sackable offence not to sound the alarm, alert the authorities and release the hounds. Do I make myself clear?’
Nibbles’ bottom quivered a little bit and he tipped forward in the hamster equivalent of a nod. I gasped for air as quickly and quietly as I could.
‘He must not be allowed to bring chaos to proceedings today. Understood?’
Another nod.
‘Splendid.’ The heels clicked briskly away.
Just as I was beginning to feel dizzy, Nibbles stepped forward. Without his ample backside to prop me up, I crumpled slowly to my knees, gasping for air. It wasn’t exactly how I’d intended to say hello, but at least I was alive. And I understood now – he’d been protecting me.
Crouching at my side, Nibbles offered a paw to help me up. I took it gratefully.
‘So, I know it’s you in there,’ I said, swallowing hard and trying not to avoid meeting his big, googly eyes. ‘I should have figured it out as soon as you said you were a dancer. I saw you, you know, the other day in the showhall. You were brilliant. But I didn’t quite get it, then. I haven’t quite been getting it all along, have I? I could never figure out how you were always there, but I never saw you. At the party, the karaoke . . . the pool.’
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