I still didn’t know how much he’d overheard at that last one. Wearing a giant costume head must have had some kind of muffling effect.
Nibbles splayed out his pink paws. Looking into his wide, black, bucktoothed mouth, my stomach started doing gentle loop-the-loops.
‘And I think I might need you to take that head off now, because it’s really hard to talk seriously to someone with little sticky-up felt ears.’
The hamster costume shook in a way that I guessed meant the person inside must be laughing. Nibbles bowed down in front of me, bending his head so I could see the Velcro strap that held his head to his body. I slid a finger between the two sticky strips, and tugged.
When the hamster stood up again, Leo was peering over its shoulders. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I kind of get into character when I’ve been in there for a while.’
I looked down at the empty head in my hands. A few days ago I’d been daydreaming about decapitating him. Now it felt a bit traumatic. The strangest thing was seeing Leo and Nibbles in the same place at once.
‘It’s OK.’ I carefully put the head down on the table and turned it so it couldn’t watch us. ‘Don’t you get sort of cramped inside there, though?’
Leo looked shifty for a second, glancing round just to check no one else was there, before sighing and stretching both arms out through the hand holes. Nibbles’ paws were fluffy pink gloves. The rest of his arms were covered by that skintight black outfit I’d seen him dancing in. He grabbed a bottle of water from the table and took a long swallow, then groaned in relief. ‘Hot, sweaty, and seriously cramped.’
From outside the tent, I could hear Stacie on her megaphone again: ‘TEN MINUTES UNTIL PHOTOS RESTART. CREATE MOO-MENTS TO TREASURE FOREVER!’
I was running out of time. Leo must have noticed my nerves. Setting his water bottle down again, he turned back to me.
‘So what was it you couldn’t say to my ears?’ he asked.
‘I just . . . wanted you to know that . . .’ I cut myself off. This was it, the point of no return. This was where I risked him freaking out and never talking to me again, or worse, reacting like Jayden-Lee.
Or this was where I could walk away silently and be sure I’d never talk to him again.
There was only one choice, really. So I made it.
‘Just that I think I might like you, that’s all.’
I took a deep breath, and waited for the world to fall apart, again.
THIRTY-SEVEN
‘FIVE MINUTES! JUST FIVE MINUTES TO BOOK YOUR MAGIC MOO-MENTS! SQUEAKY NIBBLES ALSO AVAILABLE FOR SALE – SLIGHTLY SOILED.’
Stacie’s voice crackling through her megaphone was the only way I knew time was still passing. Inside the tent it felt like it had stopped the instant I’d said I like you. Or, I might like you. After what had happened with Jayden-Lee, I was careful to pad out saying important things with words that made it sound like I didn’t really care as much as I did.
Just in case.
Since time was standing still, it was impossible to tell exactly how long Leo spent looking back at me before he glanced away and smiled. ‘Well. That’s lucky, because I’m pretty sure I like you too.’
My shoulders had slumped the moment he looked away, and I got ready to say I was kidding, and pretend to laugh as I backed awkwardly out of the tent. I was planning to tread carefully to make sure I wouldn’t trip over the slushy remains of my ripped-out heart. But that hadn’t happened.
I didn’t have a plan for what to do if it wasn’t a disaster.
Slowly, my shoulders pulled upwards again, my head lifting like a puppet’s when someone tugs on the strings.
‘I mean, I like like you.’ I needed to make it absolutely clear. I didn’t think I could bear it if him liking me back was going to be followed up with but not in a gay way.
He laughed, carding his fingers back through his mussed-up dreads. ‘Good, because if you’d just meant you wanted to be pen pals, that could have been embarrassing. I like like you, too. I thought it was obvious, but then –’ he tapped a finger to the arch of a cheekbone – ‘I guess I don’t get too flushed.’
‘You’re blushing?’ His skin was dark enough that it didn’t turn his face into a neon announcement of the fact, unlike mine. The realization made me want to touch his cheek too.
‘I’m just stealthy about it.’
The tips of my ears were starting to radiate an equal heat.
‘But, every time you’ve seen me, I’ve been doing something weird.’ My treacherous mouth was running ahead of anything my brain told it to do, and now it was busily trying to talk him out of what he’d said. Maybe him liking me back was just so unexpected that I needed to test it was for real. ‘The first time you met me I was talking to you through my crotch.’
While I silently cursed my runaway mouth for managing to use the word crotch in the middle of a Very Important Conversation, Leo was shaking his head.
‘The first time I met you, you were making sure your brother didn’t get left out at the party. Do you know how many people our age I’ve seen let themselves get dragged into the kiddie dances like that?’
I bit my lip.
He held a single finger in the air. ‘About the same number who’d hold a conversation while trapped inside their jeans like it was no big thing. And your name wasn’t even on the list at the karaoke, was it?’ he asked.
‘It really, really wasn’t.’ I let out the breath I’d been holding while he spoke.
‘So you still got up and sang, even though it terrified you. You’re here now, even though my boss is out there organizing a manhunt. It doesn’t matter what gets thrown at you, you keep going. I like that. I like you. Besides, if you can handle how I’m dressed right now, I can deal with a little weird on your end.’
My face was so hot I was worried about all that nylon fur catching fire if I got too close.
‘The hamster suit’s growing on me.’ I swallowed hard and smiled. ‘I think you can carry it off.’
I couldn’t believe I was still managing to form words. Usually around someone I liked my throat would have sealed shut by now, and I’d be left to communicate via frantic panic spasms. Maybe that summed up what was different this time. ‘I like that you’re so easy to talk to. It seems like nothing really fazes you, and that calms me down somehow. Because I might keep going, but I’m freaking out a lot of the time too.’
‘Most people are,’ Leo laughed. ‘That’s the big secret. You just need to realize that most of the people who look cool to you are flipping out on the inside too. Then you don’t need to worry about yourself. That’s what keeps me calm. Might even help with your anger-management problem.’
Oh, right, that. I scrubbed a hand across the back of my neck, feeling sheepish. ‘Um, I don’t actually have—’
‘I know.’ He grinned. ‘I guessed it might be more of a freak-out problem when I found you hiding in that hedge. I wasn’t going to push it. You don’t know how long I spent hoping you’d finally turn round and look at me, though.’
My hands were pushed deep enough into my pockets to start worrying holes in the lining as I asked, ‘Why?’
He stepped forward. Just one step. And he lifted a hand until it was almost brushing my cheek. I found myself tilting my head into the touch.
‘Because you’ve got a nice face,’ he said. ‘And because I wanted to do this . . .’
Then he was leaning in, and I was leaning in, and there was a moment where we realized that if we both leaned the same way it was going to mean a painful bump of noses. So he tipped his head just slightly to the other side, and he kissed me.
I kissed him.
We kissed.
It wasn’t how I’d imagined it.
Usually when I’d pictured my first kiss, it had looked like something from a film, or at least a soap opera: it was well lit and perfectly angled, and everyone had really great hair. I’d never thought about my first kiss happening in the dim light of a tent, with me having to make room for
someone’s snugly padded stomach. And Leo’s hair was a little tangled when I caught my fingers in it, and mine was kind of flat.
It wasn’t how I’d imagined. But I’d never really known what perfect looked like before. I don’t think any amount of soft-focus lighting and violin music in the background could have made it feel better than it did.
He pulled back, a little, and I opened my eyes and smiled at him, and then kissed him again. Now that I’d started, I found I didn’t really want to stop kissing him, ever.
Until I heard the swish of canvas tent flaps being pulled apart. And then my mother’s voice saying, ‘Jude, darling, that is not the way in. You’ll just have to wait your turn with everyone else.’
I reeled back, grabbing Nibbles’ head from the table and throwing it at Leo, who wrenched it on as I turned around. And there, framed in a triangle of light at the side of the tent, were Jude, Mum and Dad.
THIRTY-EIGHT
‘Nibbles?’ Jude asked. ‘. . . Dylan?’
He squeezed the squeaky toy in his hand, and for a second I had to check that the pitiful wail it made wasn’t coming from me. Searching my parents’ expressions, I said about twenty prayers begging that they hadn’t seen.
I’d devote my life to charitable service, I decided. I’d move somewhere hot and earthquakey and spend the rest of my days building houses, or feeding orphans, or just swatting flies for people too weak to do it themselves. I’d muck out pigs at the city farm. I’d wipe the bottoms of the elderly. I’d clean my room and wash my own pants, and do all the dishes every single day. I’d do all of it, if only Mum and Dad hadn’t seen.
‘Well,’ Mum said, putting her hands on Jude’s shoulders. ‘Just because your brother’s decided to set a terrible example and jump the queue, it doesn’t mean you can too. Come on now, you can meet Nibbles properly in a minute.’
My heart felt like it was rattling my ribcage with how hard it was beating. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what had just happened, except that it was something important. Something I’d spent years waiting to pick the right time for, and now it had taken me by surprise and I didn’t know what to do.
If Mum hadn’t said anything about it, maybe it meant she hadn’t seen . . .
‘That’s not Nibbles,’ Jude said, putting his hand over the control panel for his chair so Mum couldn’t steer him away.
‘It is Nibbles,’ I tried to argue, my voice sounding like it was somewhere distant from my body. ‘How many giant hamsters do you think this park has?’
‘It’s not!’ Jude said, stubbornly. ‘It’s not a real hamster at all.’
The rattling against my ribs started to feel more and more like someone going at them with a pneumatic drill. Any moment I was going to split open and spill my insides everywhere, in a way that I didn’t think even my parents’ medical training would be able to fix.
‘It is Nibbles,’ I said, through gritted teeth.
‘Come on, darling,’ Mum tried again, but Jude was set on it now.
‘No! Nibbles is a real hamster. That one’s got a boy inside him playing dress-up! I know – I saw! And Dylan was kissing him! With his mouth!’
I threw up my hands, turning violently away to pace towards the back of the tent. That was it, then. The worry I’d had that the world might end when I told Leo I liked him must have been a premonition. It was just a shame that I was too blindly furious to think about my amazing new psychic powers.
Dad stepped forward. ‘Come on, mate. I’m sure they were just having a chat.’
‘They were kissing,’ I heard Jude protest. He hated when people acted like he was stupid, so Dad doing it must have been a total betrayal. ‘Kissing just like you and Mummy when Woking win in the football.’
‘Jude.’ Mum’s tone ticked into something stern.
I turned around to look at her.
‘No, don’t. Don’t tell him he’s wrong when he’s not.’ Knotting my fingers together at the back of my neck, I stupidly wished Leo hadn’t put the hamster head back on. Maybe he’d have been able to keep me calm.
‘He’s not wrong.’ I couldn’t understand why I felt so angry. I was boiling with it. ‘There is a boy in that costume and I was kissing him. And I was going to tell you, when it was the right time. Probably. If Jude hadn’t opened his big mouth, I might have had a chance to choose when that was.’
Jude let out a hurt yelp, but I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t look at anyone. I’d just wanted one thing to be my choice. One thing to not get messed up somehow. I could just picture Mum telling her friends that she’d always been suspicious of children’s entertainers. Dad’s mates laughing about it in the pub.
I couldn’t just stand there waiting for whatever came next. I had to get away, as fast as I could. Breaking into a run, I pushed my way through a curtain into the main part of the tent, and hurtled past the trail of children leading back outside. Shoving past the ticket table, I ignored Stacie yelling at me to come back and pay for all the squeaky toys I’d just knocked into the dirt, again.
I pounded across the fair, skidding past people and barely looking where I was going until I found myself in the dark alleyway between two tents, and stopped to catch my breath. Hiding again. I wasn’t anything like as brave as Leo thought. It took high canvas walls surrounding me before I started to feel even a little bit less exposed.
I might have stayed there until the fair closed, if two people hadn’t stumbled into my hiding place fifteen minutes later, laughing and shh-ing each other between kisses. I recognized the red-haired girl and the boyfriend she’d nearly broken up with at the karaoke, though that fight was obviously ancient history now. They didn’t even notice me, they were so wrapped up in each other, but I couldn’t stay there any longer. Just watching them made my chest hurt.
I bolted out of the other end of the alley, and crashed into someone full on.
‘Oi!’ Jayden-Lee brought a hand up against my chest and pushed me back in one very solid shove. ‘Don’t have to go throwing yourself at me, now.’
My luck was just amazing. If, right after my parents walked in on me kissing a giant hamster, someone had stopped to ask me exactly what might have made the moment any worse, even I would have struggled to come up with this one.
It was like I was being haunted by the ghost of stupid crushes past.
‘Just leave me alone.’ I tried to push past him and go.
He stuck out a hand and grabbed a handful of my shirt, the way you might pick up a kitten by its scruff. ‘No can do. I want a word with you.’
I was too angry to feel scared. ‘What? What can you possibly have left to say to me?’
He let go, and dusted my shirt down carefully. Confused, I watched him swallow down a lump in his throat. ‘Have you seen her yet?’
If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn that his ears were turning pink.
‘Who . . . Kayla?’ I couldn’t focus on this. ‘Yes, no . . . look, I’ll tell her you’re sorry, all right? I will. Now let me go.’
When I tried to move past him again, he sidestepped to put himself back in my way. He still had that football tucked under one arm, and with how quickly he was intercepting my movements I had to think he’d make a better goalie than a striker.
‘Only I’ve got these, you know. Feelings. For her,’ he said. ‘Proper ones.’
I stopped trying to dodge him just to process that. Not that it helped much. My brain just kept throwing up error messages: failure to compute. ‘Proper feelings? Are you trying to tell me you fancy my best friend?’
Jayden-Lee broke into the biggest smile I’d ever seen. He didn’t look mean like that, just big and dumb and hopeful. I must have been smiling at him that way all week.
‘She’s gorgeous,’ he said. ‘And hard as nails. I like that.’
I raised my eyebrows.
‘She could eat you for breakfast, with room for a round of toast after. But you’re going to have to talk to her yourself. I don’t have any good words to put i
n for you. And you’ll have to find her on your own.’
‘Dylan!’
Or, she could find us.
I looked round when I heard Kayla call out, but I didn’t want to speak to her. She’d just try to turn the whole situation into a positive, and I wanted to wallow in my own misery for a while. She was running straight for us though. Jayden-Lee pushed in front of me, and for a moment it looked like she was going to leap into his arms.
I decided to make a quick exit before I was sick.
But she didn’t run into Jayden-Lee’s embrace. She totally ignored him, skidding across the grass in front of me. ‘Dylan, where’s Jude?’
I sighed. ‘Mum and Dad turned up; they’ve got him. He saw—’
‘No, they haven’t,’ she interrupted. ‘They were talking, and Leo had to go back to the photoshoot, and I got side-tracked picking up Nibbles toys. We thought he must have followed you.’
She made a grab for my arm. ‘He’s missing, Dylan. Jude’s gone.’
THIRTY-NINE
‘How can he be gone?’ I asked between quick breaths as we pelted around the edges of the fairground, trying to spot Jude somewhere in the crowd. ‘He’s got a maximum speed of four miles per hour. He can’t just vanish.’
Kayla was keeping up, her hand caught in mine. ‘I don’t know. Everyone thought someone else was watching him.’
Any other time, someone else would have been. Any other day, it would have been me. I pulled us up short, my attention caught by a gleam of sunshine on metal, but it was just light reflecting off the wing mirror of the ice-cream van. Jude’s chair should have been easy to pick out, but the fair was getting busier as the afternoon went on, and all I could see were the tops of people’s heads towering over anywhere he might be.
Kayla squeezed my fingers tight. ‘We’ll find him.’
‘I know.’ I said it automatically. We would find him. We had to. Because I didn’t know what I’d do if we didn’t.
He arrived when I was ten years old. I remember resenting him a bit, at first. Mum had him sooner than she was supposed to, and Dad, Nana and everyone had gone around pretending not to be scared about it. Everybody was snappy with each other, and with me. I’d been promised a baby brother I could play video games with; I never signed up for those few weeks of quiet fear.
Boy Meets Hamster Page 16