Boy Meets Hamster

by Birdie Milano

  So when Mum and Jude came home, it was this big celebration. Jude was the miracle baby who’d survived against the odds, and I felt like my own superpowers were being unfairly slow to develop, considering he’d had his from birth.

  But then time went on, and people started comparing him against me. He didn’t sit upright, like I’d been able to. He was kind of floppy where I hadn’t been, like a doll in your arms.

  That was when he got his diagnosis. I still remember one of the nurses on the paediatric ward sitting me down to say what a challenge it would be, having a brother with a disability. And yeah, Jude’s definitely challenging. Like, he went through this phase of chewing the corners off my magazines when his teeth were coming in. And he yells when we don’t have the same number of fish fingers, even though I’m obviously twice his size. And he’s always, always touching my stuff.

  Having a brother is pretty challenging. But not for any of the reasons I was told.

  So I’m kind of protective of him now. Not because he can’t do things for himself, but because he’s stubborn enough to insist on doing them. And I want to protect that, because I know how hard it can be to feel different. I’ve felt it approximately all my life.

  Leo said he liked me because I just kept going, no matter what. I think I learned that from Jude, and hearing that he was missing made every part of me want to stop still – including my heart.

  ‘Over there!’ Jayden-Lee had inexplicably followed us, and just then I was grateful for his few extra inches in height. I followed where he was pointing, and there it was: the unmistakable mix of silver and black that was the back of Jude’s chair, swerving wildly through the crowd.

  ‘That’s him!’ Kayla dragged on my hand. I was still trying to put my finger on what was wrong.

  ‘Jude’s a better driver than that. He must be upset.’ He’d been on two powerchair training days, and he could wheelchair slalom like a pro, but he didn’t usually swing around like that.

  Guilt spiked me in the chest. I must have upset him by getting so mad. I’d make it up to him, though, just as soon as we caught him. And we were almost there.

  Until someone with crispy blonde hair and a shiny blue skirt suit clicked her way out from in front of the hook-a-duck pool. Margaret held her arms out wide on either side, one hand clutching a patent-leather handbag that she looked ready to do some serious damage with.

  ‘Mr Kershaw,’ she was saying. ‘What a dubious pleasure it is to see you here today . . .’

  I didn’t have time to listen. I just kept running, glancing over at Jayden-Lee as I did.

  ‘You take left,’ he said.

  I nodded.

  He ran smack into Margaret’s outstretched right arm, spinning her round in the slick mud that surrounded the pool. Two seconds later, I ran into her left arm and spun her back the other way.

  Kayla ducked under both helicoptering arms and ran with us, leaving Margaret reeling like a revolving door.

  None of us slowed down for a second, not even when we heard her dizzily tripping straight into the pool. There were splashes behind us, and a screech of outrage before she started yelling, ‘After him! An incentive, reward and bonus to anyone who can apprehend that boy!’

  One of the cooks from the burger stand climbed over his counter. Someone abandoned the coconut shy. The ice-cream van backfired and started playing a demonic version of ‘Greensleeves’ backwards through its speakers as it began reversing right into Jude’s path.

  ‘He doesn’t know there’s someone behind him!’ I yelled, waving my arms to try and attract the attention of the van driver. He must have thought he was being mocked, because it only made him rev his engine louder. Jude was a few feet away from a collision, and he wasn’t even trying to get out of the way. It was like he’d totally forgotten how to use his chair.

  ‘The sign!’ Kayla shouted. ‘Dylan, the sign!’

  She shoved something towards me, and I looked down to see that it was Jayden-Lee’s football.

  The sign. The huge DON’T CLOWN AROUND clown’s head that was still creaking as it swung from its post. It was the only thing between Jude and the van.

  I dropped the ball at my feet and ran backwards to give myself some momentum.

  Then I kicked like I was in the Cup Final.

  The ball bounced off the back of the ice-cream van and scythed upward, slamming into the clown’s face and slapping it off the hooks that it swung from.

  It dropped like the blade of a guillotine.

  Either everything was happening impossibly slowly, or so fast that my mind couldn’t cope with watching it in real time, but it seemed to take forever before the sign stopped twanging and shivering, wedged firmly into the mud.

  The ice-cream van backed into this new obstacle with a sickening crunch, and as the driver realized he’d hit something, he finally, reluctantly, came to a halt.

  Jayden-Lee reached Jude’s chair first. He put a hand on the headrest, then growled, ‘You little . . .’ and tipped the whole thing over on to its side.

  Tumbling Troy out of the seat.

  FORTY

  ‘IT WAS MY TURN!’ Troy roared, as Jayden-Lee dived to pin him down. ‘HE’S HAD IT ALL WEEK.’

  ‘People don’t take turns in wheelchairs,’ Kayla snapped, kneeling to one side of him. I caught up and dropped to the ground on the other. ‘God forbid you ever meet someone who uses a pacemaker.’

  ‘Where is he?’ I demanded, breathless.

  Chaos was erupting around me: a crowd had gathered to watch the ice-cream van attempt to detach its back wheels from the crumpled sign, while various fair workers were struggling to pick an equally crumpled Margaret out of the mud around the duck pool.

  I was barely aware of it. There was only one thing I cared about. ‘What did you do with Jude?’

  Troy set his jaw tight, until Jayden-Lee leaned in so close that they were almost nose to nose. ‘Either you tell him, or I pick you up by the ankles and shake it out of you.’

  He said it surprisingly calmly, as though casually threatening children was a daily event.

  ‘Like last time,’ he added.

  Screwing his face up like he’d just taken a bite of toilet-freshener flavoured candy floss, Troy spat out, ‘On the bench! He’s on the bench, and I’m telling Mum!’

  ‘The bench?’ I asked. The bench that looked like it was carved out of a fallen tree? The one where Kayla and I had decided to make friends again? ‘The one on the cliffs? You ditched my brother on the edge of the cliffs?’

  I was already racing to get to my feet. My blood ran slow and icy in my veins, and it felt like the tick of every second was lasting a lifetime. I knew Jude was smart; he wouldn’t have gone too close to the rocky edge. But there was a persistent little voice in my ears whispering what if?

  Behind me, I could hear Jayden-Lee let out a harsh breath as he swung Troy up into his arms like a small, aggressive sack of potatoes. ‘You’re coming too. And if you’re lying—’

  His voice was cut off.

  In slow motion, something that looked like a mud monster from the Black Lagoon lurched towards me, letting out a monstrous wail of, ‘Apprehend hiiiim.’

  I left her behind. I left behind the squelching and the string of swearwords as she smacked into Jayden-Lee. I left the jingling tune that started up as the ice-cream van revved its engine again, and the sickening crunch and squeal of grinding metal that followed.

  I was barrelling towards the cliff, and the bench, and the edge.

  The cliff, which I reached in record time, with people stumbling to get out of my way as I ran.

  And the bench, which looked emptier the closer I got.

  And the edge.

  I had to do it. Even if Troy had been lying to freak me out. Even if this was just his idea of revenge. Even then. I had to go to the cliff edge. I had to look over.

  I had to make sure.

  Feeling sick with the thought, I jogged onward, trying not to focus on anything but the pounding of my o
wn feet. It was easy enough to do, given that my eyes were stinging, my vision blurring into a wet, watercolour haze of green and blue, brown and orange.

  And orange?

  I blinked what I would definitely deny later was any kind of liquid out of my eyes and refocused, looking across the clifftop a little way along from the bench.

  Sitting in the long grass was an overgrown orange hamster. And in his lap he had my little brother. They were feeding the seagulls.

  ‘Dylan, look!’ Jude called to me as I ran over. ‘I found the real Nibbles!’

  As relief washed all the panic I’d felt back out of my body, the excess adrenaline that had driven me so far turned into total, full-body exhaustion. For the second time in about ten minutes, I dropped to my knees.

  Reaching out for one of Jude’s hands, I squeezed it tight, making sure he felt as real as he looked. ‘You’re right. The other one was just a decoy lookalike. All the really famous hamsters have those.’

  Jude smiled, but I couldn’t, quite. ‘I’m sorry I got mad at you in the tent. I’m glad you found Nibbles anyway.’

  ‘The real Nibbles,’ Jude reminded me. ‘Who doesn’t like kisses at all. But look!’ His free hand swung high in the air, clutching a scrap of bread that must have been liberated from the remains of somebody’s picnic. He pitched it over the side of the cliff, and within seconds a clever white bird swooped in and caught it. Jude squealed in delight. ‘He showed me the seagulls won’t eat me if they’re already full.’

  ‘He really is the hero this caravan park deserves,’ Kayla called, arriving to join us on the grass.

  It turned out that Jude actually had allowed Troy a turn in his chair, though I didn’t feel very guilty for not having believed it. Nibbles found him waiting alone on the bench and had broken the first rule of being an animal mascot – never speak while in costume – to send someone to get my mum and dad.

  They showed up not long after I did, carrying the twisted wreckage of his wheelchair.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked Kayla, while we watched Jude receive a series of smothering hugs, interspersed with lectures on when it’s appropriate to share. Mum was hugging Nibbles too, squeezing tight enough to flatten his fur.

  ‘Margaret’s to blame for the chair.’ Kayla crossed her legs like she was settling in for story time. ‘She mud-wrestled Jayden-Lee straight into the path of the ice-cream van, so the driver panicked and backed up right over it. If you ask me, you’ve got an easy claim for the cost of a new one.’ She considered for a moment. ‘And maybe for some free raspberry-ripple ice cream.’

  ‘She’s going to try and blame me,’ I said. ‘I can see her version now: heroic hamster rescues child after own brother tries to fling him off a cliff. She’ll say I was doing it just to spoil her celebrations.’

  I kicked at a clump of grass, still sort of feeling like this was all my fault too.

  ‘Well, it would have put a slight dampener on them if you had.’ Kayla just smirked when I glared at her. ‘Anyway, that sounds nothing like Margaret. You didn’t rephrase all the important bits three times. Also, furthermore, and in addendum, I have a feeling the heroic hamster might not go along with that story.’

  ‘He might.’ I couldn’t keep from smiling over at Leo. He still hadn’t escaped from Mum’s grateful suffocation attempts. ‘The fame could go to his big, padded head. This time next year he’ll be demanding they set up a big wheel just for him to run in circles on.’

  ‘Why not.’ Kayla laughed. ‘He deserves it. I did tell you he was my hero.’

  I couldn’t believe how much things had changed. Two days ago the same words had made me storm off to sulk about rodent-based favouritism. Now I finally understood.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, getting up to go and join in with the hamster hugs. ‘Mine, too.’

  FORTY-ONE

  Jude got his hamster photo eventually. I was in it too, holding him up while he and Nibbles waved, and Kayla snapped us on her phone against the best backdrop ever. The whole clifftop scene, with the blue of the ocean and sky meeting behind us, made it look like one of the posters you see in travel agents’ windows, advertising proper holidays to places outside of England where the sun shines more than once a month.

  For Jude’s photo, at least, Starcross Sands really looked like a dream holiday destination.

  Kayla took one of just me and Nibbles together too, which made me blush so much I looked sunburned. I almost thought about using that as an excuse for why I was so flushed, except I didn’t want Leo to think it might be painful if he wanted to kiss me again.

  Because I really, really hoped that he would want to kiss me again.

  Once he’d had a chance to take the hamster head off, obviously. I liked Nibbles a lot more now, but I definitely only fancied the boy inside.

  He wasn’t going to be free of the costume for a while though. I didn’t even get the chance to talk to him – as soon as we’d taken the pictures, he had to run back to finish his photo session. I hoped he’d get there before the children started rioting. A lot of them were in nappies, so it could have been a really dirty protest.

  After Leo had gone, I tried to blend back into the crowds at the fair for a while. Mum, Dad and Kayla were getting involved in sorting out a temporary wheelchair for Jude, and I still felt like I needed some space to take a breath. The relief I’d felt over Jude being OK was starting to melt back into a strange, unsettled feeling in my stomach as I thought about all the things that weren’t.

  Things weren’t exactly back to normal. I didn’t know if they ever would be. Mum and Dad had seen me kissing Leo, and life as I knew it felt about as mangled as Jude’s chair.

  Carefully edging around the spot where I’d left Margaret the manager stuck in the mud, I headed for the rickety-looking ghost-train ride that stood next to Nibbles’ tent, and bought enough tokens for a dozen rides. It was full of plastic skeletons and mannequins dressed in white sheets, and the screams of the other passengers meant I couldn’t hear myself think for a while. It was perfect.

  Then, after my sixth go round, someone opened the carriage door beside me and asked, ‘Is this seat taken?’

  I sort of knew my parents would track me down eventually, but I’d expected the one doing the talking to be Mum. At home she was usually in charge of feelings conversations, while Dad was the go-to for terrible jokes and official backup that chicken in a bucket for dinner counted as part of a balanced diet.

  It wasn’t that Dad didn’t do feelings. It was just that his emotional range usually swung from cheering and singing to sobbing and swearing, and both ends of the scale usually had something to do with sport. He once got them mixed up and cried while telling me how proud he was when one of my goals won us the Surrey Schools Cup.

  ‘Oi,’ he said, giving my shoulder a tap. ‘I said, is anyone sitting here?’

  As I shook my head, and he wedged himself in next to me, I realized just how much I didn’t want him to ever tell me he was disappointed. The train took off through a curtain of witchy rags for the seventh time since I’d got on it, and as we shot into the dark I finally felt scared.

  ‘YOU’LL NEVER GET OUT!’ a voice screeched in my ear, before a ghost dressed in a powdered wig and light-up trainers ran off though a cobweb-covered door.

  ‘That must be true,’ Dad mused, leaning in to be heard over the looping soundtrack of ‘The Monster Mash’. ‘You’ve been round on this thing five times already.’

  ‘Six,’ I admitted, staring ahead to where a collection of ghouls were resetting the bloodied blade that was going to almost fall on us a bit further on.

  Dad gave a low whistle. ‘Keep coming back for the Hollywood special effects?’

  ‘I just needed some space, that’s all.’ The plastic guillotine swung into action, slicing downwards to dangle half a foot above our heads, before being hoisted back up by another ghost-worker. The torch he was holding under his white sheet accidentally illuminated the logo on his hoody. ‘Before everyone started . . . you k
now.’

  Dad gave me a deliberately blank look, eyebrows raised.

  I sighed, pushing my hands over my face before I ended up glaring so hard at the Egyptian mummy creeping up alongside the train that he started to unravel.

  ‘I’m gay,’ I said, finally. ‘Aren’t you supposed to ask me questions, or something?’

  ‘Like what?’ Dad asked.

  ‘Like . . . I don’t know.’ I did know. It was a list I’d run through a thousand times in the part of my mind I tried not to listen to. ‘Like, How long have you known? Like, Are you SURE? And, Why? And, Do you know there are no gay players in the Premier League?’

  Dad was frowning by the time I’d finished. A vampire bat wafted right past his face and he didn’t even blink. ‘I don’t know there aren’t any gay players in the Premier League.’

  That might have been true, but it wasn’t the point. Dad held up a hand to stop me before I could say so.

  ‘And it’s nobody’s business if there are, Dylan. Not if they don’t want to talk about it. But you and your brother? You are my business. Now, aren’t you supposed to ask me questions?’

  I frowned, shaking my head slowly. ‘I don’t think so. Like what?’

  ‘Like, how long have I known?’

  I stared at him.

  ‘Or you can ask how long I’ve loved you. It’s a bit longer than the first answer, but it hasn’t changed because of it.’

  I didn’t know how I was supposed to reply. I didn’t know how I felt. Sort of like I’d been hugged and punched at the same time.

  ‘You really knew?’

  ‘It was more of a feeling.’

  ‘Was it . . . really obvious?’ Maybe I’d been setting off gaydars left and right. Maybe instead of me not telling the world, it had been the world not telling me that it already knew. That wasn’t a good feeling at all. But Dad shook his head.