‘No, but you’re my son.’ He paused, then added, ‘And when that boy next door sent you a postcard from Berlin, you wrote ich liebe dich all over the back.’
I groaned louder than the mummy still shuffling alongside the train, and buried my head in my hands. ‘You found that?’
Dad squeezed my shoulder. ‘Maybe you should tidy your own room.’
The train creaked slowly back into the sunlight, and I got shakily to my feet. There didn’t seem to be any point in using up my last few rides, now everything was out in the open.
‘You’re really OK with it?’ I checked, as Dad joined me in evacuating the train.
‘Since before you decided to learn German,’ he said.
I still felt like I needed some time to myself, just to try and process everything. And I wanted to try and catch Leo again before the fair closed, if I could. I glanced over to the photo tent, but Dad was still talking.
‘They have parades for this, don’t they?’ He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘Pride parades. Flags on buses, chanting, bit like the victory parade when someone wins the Cup.’
‘Oh my God, Dad, I’m not a sport!’ I could see it now: him decked out in rainbows like it was the Gay team kit.
‘Just picture it.’ He waved a hand in front of him the way a painter sweeps a brush across his canvas. ‘Cheering crowds. You and me on top of a bus, waving a banner that says I LOVE MY GAY SON . . .’
Dad wasn’t freaked out that I was gay. Not even a little bit. He was supporting me.
Exactly the same way he supported Woking FC.
My life was still totally over.
FORTY-TWO
Dad’s phone rang just in time to save me from hearing the ‘supportive’ chant he was working on. It started out with TWO-FOUR-SIX-HEY! So I was really fine with not knowing where the rhyme scheme would take it.
While he stepped away, cupping the phone to his ear, I looked over to where a line of hyperactive toddlers was still snaking out of the photo tent – then smiled as I caught myself hoping for a glimpse of orange fur.
I could never tell Kayla exactly how gooey I was starting to feel about something that probably had ‘Caution: highly flammable’ sewn into its tail.
Dad tapped me on the shoulder and I looked round guiltily, hoping he couldn’t tell from my face that I was having fancy-dress-related romantic thoughts. He didn’t need to know everything about me.
‘Mum,’ he mouthed, gesturing to the phone. ‘Got to go.’
From the face he was making, I couldn’t tell whether he meant it was Mum on the phone, or someone else calling him about her. Like the time he’d had to collect her from the security office at the Tower of London after she’d kicked off about the lack of accessibility ramps and made one of the Beefeaters cry.
But it wasn’t just Dad’s face that got my attention. It was the arm he was waving about too.
‘Right. I’ll head back to the caravan in a minute too. Um, Dad . . .’ I raised my eyebrows. ‘What’s that?’
Because I’d just noticed that he seemed to have picked up a new fashion accessory. There was something big and red hanging off his wrist where his watch should have been. Something big and red and varnished, which curved out at the sides into a splintered wooden smile.
Dad quickly hid that arm behind his back.
‘Oh, that? Nothing. New toy for Jude.’ He held the phone away from his ear, and I could just hear Mum’s voice raised in the background.
‘All right . . .’ I watched him start to relax, then freeze up again as I went on. ‘Just one thing though, Dad. You know that golf emergency that meant you couldn’t take Jude to the fair? What happened, exactly?’
Dad forced his frozen face to crack into a grin. A lot like the grin he then accidentally smacked himself in the forehead with as he went to run a hand back through his hair. There was definitely a creepy clown smile stuck round his wrist.
‘Now, before you say anything . . .’ Dad started.
‘Did it have something to do with one of the holes?’ I asked.
‘Before you say anything—’
‘Because they have holes shaped like clowns at crazy golf, don’t they?’
‘Dylan.’
‘Did you get your hand stuck in a clown, Dad?’ I asked him, folding my arms sternly and trying to clamp down on the urge to grin. ‘You were cheating, weren’t you?’
‘Blooming course is fixed,’ Dad exploded, finally, waving his arm so that the mouth jangled round on his wrist. It looked like his own hand was laughing at him. ‘All those castles and windmills ruining the game! How do you judge a shot that’s got to make it through something’s face before it gets to the hole, eh? This idiot clown was turning the ball in circles till I sorted him out.’
He shook his own fist, as though the clown could still hear him.
‘You were cheating.’ I tutted. ‘Dad, you literally tried to take the crazy out of crazy golf. That’s the definition of missing the point.’
‘Improved the game, if you ask me.’ Dad gestured to the mouth. ‘And no one’s asking him any more.’
I couldn’t believe he’d punched a wooden clown. Maybe Margaret had been right about me. I was starting to think a habit of getting involved in ‘incidents’ ran in the family.
‘NIBBLES IS TAKING A FUZZY FIVE, FOLKS!’
I almost leaped into Dad’s arms when Stacie’s voice burst through the speaker behind me. ‘BACK IN JUST FIVE MINUTES, EVERYONE. NOBODY MOO-VE!’
I shot Dad a slightly desperate look. There was just five minutes for me to catch Leo before he got stuck pulling poses with playschool kids for another two hours.
‘Well –’ Dad tapped the phone, giving me a wise wink and wincing at the volume level Mum’s voice had reached when he lifted it to his ear again – ‘better not keep her waiting.’
I made a dash towards Nibbles’ tent the second Dad turned to head out of the fair.
Reaching the backstage entrance to the tent with seconds to spare, I pulled the canvas to one side and stuck my head in to see Nibbles hurriedly velcroing his own back into place.
‘Leo,’ I hissed, stepping through before I could be spotted. The hamster jumped, turning in a clumsy circle to face me.
I knew I was grinning like an idiot. It hadn’t been much more than an hour since we’d been getting pictures together on the cliffs, but I was so pleased to see him again.
‘Can you take the head off?’ I kept my voice low, too aware of the chattering of excited kids waiting in the other part of the tent.
Nibbles gestured in that direction, and shook his chubby cheeks. He didn’t have time. If only I hadn’t been waylaid by Dad’s clown-assault story.
‘It’s OK,’ I said, rushing my words together in an attempt to get them all out in time. ‘It’s just, tomorrow’s our last day in the park. We’re leaving right after the parade and I haven’t even had a chance to get your number. Can you meet me?’
‘Here he comes, boys and girls. Get your selfie smiles ready – the one, the only . . .’
‘I’ll be outside the showhall at three tomorrow afternoon!’
‘Nibbles!’
I was left watching the hamster’s familiar orange backside vanish through the curtain before Stacie could pull it aside. Behind it, what sounded like a hundred children screamed in delight to see him so close.
I knew exactly how they felt.
FORTY-THREE
The next morning I woke up not knowing if I wanted the day to go fast or slow. Three o’clock, the stupid time I’d decided to tell Leo I’d meet him, felt like it was an eternity away.
And four o’clock, the time when me, Mum, Dad, Jude and Kayla would get in the car and leave 131 Alpine Views forever, felt like it was crashing towards me at breakneck speed.
It was our last day at the Starcross Sands. Suddenly everything looked as friendly and welcoming as the brochure had promised. Even Mrs Slater’s gnomes took on a rose-coloured tint when seen through my eyes: their tiny, wize
ned faces seemed to be wishing me well. I didn’t want to say goodbye to Starcross Sands, not when I’d finally come to appreciate its ‘stunning views’, ‘unique community’ and ‘dedication to your dreams’.
Most of all didn’t want to say goodbye to Leo.
I’d even gone out looking for him, not wanting to stand around feeling sick while Mum packed up all our things ready for the car. She’d performed some Mum-wizardry and turned our sofa from pink back to beige and was on a whirlwind tidying blitz, throwing things into suitcases where they landed perfectly folded.
I’d ducked out of the path of the storm and gone down to the Pie-O-Ria to see if Leo was hanging out there, but strangely the whole place was closed all day. There was nothing to see but some rolled-down shutters and a scattering of Chicken and Sweetcorn Fiesta on the ground outside.
Kayla came to find me right when I was considering writing DYLAN ❤ LEO on the shutters in a smear of leftover tomato sauce. She tapped me on the shoulder. ‘Ready?’
I checked my watch. The time I never wanted to come was finally almost here.
A few minutes later, we were heading towards the showhall, with Kayla dragging her feet as she tailed me down the path.
‘Are you sure you want me to be there when Leo arrives?’ she asked. ‘You definitely want me to be the P in your PDA?’
The way she was pulling on my hand was slowing us both down, but I didn’t mind. It didn’t really feel like my feet were touching the floor at all, so having her as an anchor might have been the only thing keeping me from floating away.
‘Obviously I want you to be there,’ I repeated for the thousandth time that afternoon. ‘Why wouldn’t I want the chance to introduce him properly to my best friend in the entire world? You’ve never met him when he’s been able to speak.’
‘I just think you might be overcompensating for ignoring me when you were all about Jayden-Lee.’ She met the warning glare I flashed at her with a bland look. ‘I know, I know, those are the dark days and we don’t talk about them any more. But you know what they say about “two’s company”.’
Kayla’s brain was made up of forty-five per cent legal mumbo-jumbo she’d cribbed from TV shows, five per cent Deathsplash lyrics, and at least fifty per cent weird old sayings no one uses any more. I thought I knew this one though. ‘Three’s a crowd?’
‘No, three’s company plus one person trying not to throw up in their mouth while they’re stuck listening to the other two making gross kissing noises.’
‘Who says we’re going to kiss?’
I kept my focus on the path, but I could feel the look she was giving me. ‘Oh, it’s just a little hunch based on you talking about how amazing kissing him was for at least a thousand hours last night.’
Which was clearly nonsense. Nights don’t even last a thousand hours, unless they’re nights in one of the horror games I suck at, and then it takes me at least that just to get past the screamer zombies in the basement.
I didn’t call Kayla out on it, though, mostly because she was right: I was trying to make up for what happened with Jayden-Lee. If Leo and me were going to become a thing, Kayla was going to be involved every step of the way.
Well, nearly every step.
She was right that I had told her a bit about what kissing Leo had been like too.
And when I say a bit, I mean a lot.
Like really quite a lot.
Like it had probably been my main topic of conversation since it happened, except for when Mum and Dad had brought Jude back in a rented chair (courtesy of the Starcross management) with two arms full of fish and chips. Last night’s dinner had been an agonizing hour of trying to talk about anything except kissing.
Mum had silently popped her head around the door of my room afterwards, right when I was telling Kayla how kissing the right person felt like putting your fingers in an electric socket of love.
‘Your lips, surely? Or was he kissing your hand?’ Mum had asked, startling me so much that I’d fallen off the bed, then considered physically curling up and dying right where I’d landed. ‘That’s awfully romantic.’
She seriously had to not stealth into my private conversations, like some kind of grossly invasive superspy on the weirdest government mission ever.
Coming over, she held out both hands to help me off the floor. ‘Your father told me we were supposed to have a list of questions prepared for this occasion. Were you expecting some kind of test?’
Shrugging awkwardly, I’d climbed back on to the bed and tried to half bury myself under the covers.
‘Darling.’ She pressed a chips-and-vinegar scented kiss to my forehead. ‘There’s no such thing as a right time – there’s only when you’re ready. I am sorry that you weren’t able to choose. But I’m not going to test you. Nobody asks boys who like girls if they’re sure.’
Which was sort of nice, even if I was starting to feel like I might have been ready for a while, and just hadn’t known. Like I’d been wasting time instead.
It might almost have been worth the embarrassment of her having seen me kiss someone, until she turned on the way out and added, ‘Now, if I thought it was hamsters you wanted to date, I might have a few questions.’
She and Kayla had giggled evilly for at least ten minutes after that. I’d just lain back on my bed and wondered why I hadn’t arranged to meet Leo sooner, so I could stop talking about kissing him and maybe try actually doing it again.
If he still wanted to, that was.
It had been almost twenty-four hours since he said he like-liked me. That was plenty of time for him to have changed his mind.
It was enough time for him to have gone off me entirely.
In fact, it was probably long enough for him to have had a religious revelation and gone off kissing entirely. He might have hung up his hamster head by now and left the park to become a silent, kissless monk. Literally anything could happen in a day. For instance, yesterday already felt like it had changed my life.
I pulled up short just at the bottom of the slope that lead to the showhall doors. ‘But what if—’
‘No,’ Kayla said.
‘But—’
‘Dylan, you’ve been through a million of these scenarios.’
I had. But it was no good – I had to go through another one or I was going to explode. ‘But what if he doesn’t come?’
Kayla groaned in frustration, catching me up and making a grab for my hand. She squeezed it, tight. ‘Of course he’ll come. You haven’t been able to go for five minutes without running into him this entire holiday. Do you really think he’d start avoiding you now?’
‘But what if . . .’
What if he’d been lost in romantic daydreams about me on the cliff edge yesterday evening, and had fallen into the ocean?
What if one of the children in the photo tent had coughed on him and given him a terrible disease?
What if . . .
. . .
I’d run out of what ifs. Usually Kayla would have interrupted my thoughts by now, but she was strangely quiet. When I looked across at her she was staring, shocked, at something on her phone. My heart twanged anxiously.
‘It’s not your dad, is it?’
It would be the worst thing to have got through to the last day with no disasters, only to have knocked over the final hurdle.
Kayla gave a small nod, and passed her phone across.
The screen displayed a photo of her living room. There was a thumb hanging half over the camera, but beyond what it blotted out everything looked . . . completely normal. All four walls were still the right way up, and the roof hadn’t fallen through. There were no scorch marks on the carpet; no noticeable holes or dubious stains. Even her two cats, Sid and Nancy, were present and accounted for, curled up on the sofa. I’d never seen her house look so un-chaotic.
When I looked up, Kayla was smiling.
‘Maybe it is safe to leave him for the occasional afternoon without anything burning down, exploding or disintegr
ating,’ she said. She looked different, all of a sudden, and it wasn’t down to any change in her make-up routine. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen her really relax.
Then I checked her phone again, and panicked. ‘Oh my god, fifteen minutes? Kayla, we can’t be here fifteen minutes early. I’ll look totally eager.’
‘You are totally eager.’ She artfully caught her phone as I flipped it into the air, mid-flail.
‘I don’t want to look it though. Maybe we could walk some circuits around the hall.’
‘Dylan.’
‘Or we could go and hide in the trees by the playground and come back in twenty minutes. Is five minutes late enough to look keen but not I’ve-been-waiting-here-all-day-actually keen?’
‘Dylan, it’s fine. I set the clocks on our phones backward last night so you wouldn’t embarrass yourself. You’re already five minutes late.’
My mouth dropped open. For someone who wanted a job promoting justice, Kayla made a remarkably competent evil genius.
By the time I’d run, breathless, to the front of the showhall, I was nearly ten minutes late. Ten minutes late for the most important date of my life. And, as the horror of that slowly settled in, I realized that it meant something even worse.
Leo hadn’t come.
FORTY-FOUR
He wasn’t there. The doors were there, opaque in the sunlight. The yellow Stardance posters were there, brand-new ones that must have been pinned up in a hurry, with edges that curled and flapped in the wind. Twinkle the Talking Train was still there, motionless without Jude to fill her up with pound coins.
I was there.
But Leo wasn’t.
It was just me. Standing in front of the showhall. Alone.
Or almost alone. Kayla wasn’t far behind me. She sped up a bit once it was clear she wouldn’t be interrupting a passionate reunion anytime soon.
‘He’s only ten minutes late,’ I croaked as she joined me. I stared back up the slope the way she’d come, waiting for a head of dark hair to come into view, blotting out the sun and somehow brighter than it at the same time.
Boy Meets Hamster Page 18