Boy Meets Hamster

by Birdie Milano

  ‘Ten minutes is nothing,’ Kayla said, putting on her perkiest voice. ‘You were ten minutes late, and you’ve been waiting for this all day.’

  ‘Exactly. I can’t expect him to be on time when I . . .’ I stopped, a shock of panic rushing through me. ‘I was ten minutes late. Kayla. What if I missed him? He must have been here and assumed I wasn’t interested!’

  ‘In ten minutes? I think he’d have a bit more patience than that.’

  ‘But you don’t know. You reset my phone and I was late, and now I’ve missed him.’

  Kayla had grabbed for my wildly gesturing hands as I spoke and was holding them steady, clasped between her palms. ‘Or maybe he’s late and you’re having a heart attack for no reason. I’m sure he would have waited otherwise. Not everyone assumes the other person’s been kidnapped by aliens or run away to become a monk if they don’t turn up exactly when they’re meant to.’

  ‘How did you know about the monks?’

  She raised an eyebrow.

  I suppose I might have mentioned my monk fear once or twice last night. I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared at the ground.

  ‘Maybe you’re right. There isn’t time for him to be running that late though. The parade starts in half an hour.’

  Gradually, all my visions of my first encounter with Leo without a stuffed hamster stomach coming between us were starting to crumble. Seeing him for just a few minutes would be better than nothing though. This was my last day – my last chance. I couldn’t leave the park without getting his number.

  ‘He’ll come,’ Kayla said decisively, climbing up on to Twinkle to swing her legs off the side of a carriage. ‘I saw the way that hamster looked at you. Any minute now.’

  I looked back up the pathway just as a shadow fell across the sun.

  ‘Either of you seen that thieving little brat?’

  Jayden-Lee jogged down the path towards us, out of breath and flushed in a way that, two days ago, I’d have found irresistible.

  ‘I take it you mean your brother?’ Kayla asked, leaning round Twinkle’s engine.

  Jayden-Lee nodded. ‘He’s taken Mum’s reading glasses again. She’s doing her nut.’

  Kayla shot me a glance. ‘What does he want those for? Illicitly reading small-print classics?’

  ‘Ants.’ Jayden-Lee sighed.

  ‘Ants?’ I tried, seeing if the word made any more sense as an answer the second time around.

  Jayden-Lee looked at me like I’d asked him if the world was flat. ‘If you get the sun at the right angle through a lens, you can set fire to ants with it. It’s science.’

  ‘It’s animal cruelty!’ Kayla exclaimed. ‘Not a child’s game! Where do you get his toys from? Murdercare? The Early Murdering Centre?’

  Jayden-Lee shrugged. ‘It’s his hobby. But Mum needs them back for bingo. So he hasn’t come past?’

  ‘Believe me, you’d know if we’d seen him,’ Kayla said, a low threat in her voice that suggested Troy would definitely know about it the next time he ran into her, too.

  I gave up on paying attention to them, looking at my phone and then back at the empty space where Leo wasn’t. He was fifteen minutes late, now. I wondered if there were any monasteries in Starcross. Maybe we could call in at one on the drive home, just to check.

  Kayla’s feet slapping the ground as she jumped off the Twinkle ride brought my focus back to the present.

  ‘So, I was wondering if you felt like going,’ Jayden-Lee was saying.

  ‘With you?’ Kayla checked.

  ‘To the dance.’ He gestured at one of the flapping posters, then pushed his hands into his pockets awkwardly.

  ‘Oh my God,’ I mouthed over his shoulder, as Kayla glared at me from the narrowed corners of her eyes. He was asking her out. The boy of my dreams-slash-nightmares was really, properly, asking my best friend out.

  I checked myself for any slight twinge of jealousy, but I couldn’t feel anything but the sudden, bubbling sensation that I was about to laugh. Choking it down, I stared wide-eyed at Kayla as I – and Jayden-Lee – waited for her response.

  ‘Dylan’s parents are leaving before the dance, actually. We’re not going,’ she said, briskly. I think I deflated as much as Jayden-Lee at the reminder of how little time we had left.

  ‘But,’ Kayla added, as Jayden-Lee’s slumped shoulders straightened out again, ‘even if we were, I don’t think I’d feel like going with you. I don’t think I’d feel like going anywhere with you, ever, not even if we were both at the bottom of a pit and you had the only stepladder out. Not if I was starving and you had the world’s largest Cornish pasty. Not even if you had tickets to the Deathsplash Nightmares’ next big show, and backstage passes, and Rick Deathsplash had personally promised to kiss every fan there.’

  From Kayla, that was probably the biggest no you could get. She carried on:

  ‘You see, unlike you and your little brother, I don’t think it’s very nice to torment things for fun.’

  She folded her arms and tipped her chin in the air. She was more than a foot shorter than Jayden-Lee but still somehow made it seem like she was looking down on him. Mind you, the way he’d shrivelled up as she spoke did make that easier.

  I almost felt sorry for him. Until he spat out a wodge of gum between his feet and snorted, ‘Yeah, well, like I care. You two can stay here and hang out with that dancing freak.’

  He stomped off around the back of the showhall before I could work out if his ears were turning red with anger or something else.

  ‘Harsh,’ I murmured, watching him vanish from view.

  ‘It’s no worse than anything he said to you. As if I’d want to dance with him after that. And what did he mean, “dancing freak”?’

  ‘Oh, last time he was here we were watching Nibbles – Leo – practising his ballet moves. We could see him through the . . .’

  The showhall doors. The way the sun was positioned meant it was impossible to see through them unless you pressed your face to the baking-hot glass.

  Seconds later I was risking burning all the skin off my nose.

  ‘He’s there. Kayla, he’s here. I can see him at the back of the lobby.’

  The hall was crowded with performers getting ready to join the parade. Leo was in full hamster costume already, standing off to one side with a couple of people in security uniforms.

  He must have been waiting for me the whole time. Dizzy with relief, I pushed the door open.

  ‘Leo! I was in totally the wrong place!’ I smiled, even though the security guards were looking at me like I’d just climbed the gates of Buckingham Palace dressed as Spiderman. ‘I can’t believe I nearly missed you!’

  One of the guards stepped forward and grabbed my arm as I got close, issuing me a gruff command. ‘No touching the talent.’

  I frowned. ‘It’s OK, we had a . . .’ I couldn’t say date in front of everyone. ‘We had plans. Didn’t we, Leo?’

  Nibbles looked back at me with cold, blank eyes.

  ‘Leo?’

  ‘The hamster must always be addressed in character,’ the other security guard said, grabbing my arm before both of them started to march me back to the exit.

  Leo didn’t say anything. He didn’t try to stop them at all.

  Even Twinkle seemed to look embarrassed for me as they threw me out of the doors.

  Kayla was still out there, and she must have seen what happened, because she looked as horrified as I felt.

  Then she opened her mouth and screamed, ‘FIRE!’

  FORTY-FIVE

  It was impossible to say where the fire had started, but it caught quick, tearing up the sparkly curtains. The hall evacuated in a glitzy stampede, pushing me and Kayla away from the doors. Most of the parade performers were still half-dressed, clutching props or hair curlers and trailing pom-poms. Some of the Elvises, who had been meant to be having a sing-off on one of the floats, were trying to stamp out the flames from their flares.

  Nibbles rushed out with his
security escort and was bundled into one of the golf buggies. He was probably the most flammable thing there, so it was good to know he was safe, even if he didn’t look at me once as they drove him away.

  Kayla pulled me away too. I walked back to the caravan feeling strangely singed.

  Mum and Dad had rushed down to help at the showhall, but there weren’t any casualties except the building itself. Dad said there was no known treatment for a blackened glitterball, so they’d come back to finish packing the car. Me and Kayla were doing our part by standing at the window of 131 Alpine Views and eating our way through everything in the fridge that wouldn’t survive the long drive home.

  ‘I can’t believe Leo acted like that,’ Kayla muttered through a mouthful of crisps. ‘Do you want me to sue him for you?’

  We were watching the latest screaming match to break out in the Dramavan. It had been going on for half an hour, at least, ever since a fireman had shown up at the door holding a pair of reading glasses.

  ‘Because I could,’ Kayla said. She’d been blazing hotter than the showhall ever since Nibbles blanked me. ‘I could sue him for everything he’s got.’

  ‘Leo’s fifteen,’ I reminded her, scraping the remains out of a family-sized pot of yogurt and gesturing with the spoon. ‘I don’t think he has any valuable assets, except some nice trainers and enough orange fur to carpet a seventies disco. Besides, don’t you need a real reason to sue someone?’

  ‘I have plenty of real reasons,’ Kayla snapped. ‘Gross negligence. Dereliction of Dylan duties. Being an unfathomably massive jerk.’

  She dug her hand down to the bottom of a jumbo bag of nachos and shoved the last few crumbs angrily into her mouth.

  ‘All right, it was a jerky move to just blank me like that. And I’m not sure what dereliction means. But it’s not like he was my boyfriend or anything. He didn’t have a duty to kiss me.’

  I was feeling surprisingly OK with it. Or, not OK exactly, but not like I was going to crawl sobbing into the showhall and beg to just be allowed to burn. Maybe I was getting used to rejection. Maybe I’d secretly known that Leo turning out to be my dream boyfriend would have been too perfect to be real.

  Or maybe I was just feeling anchored by the solidly massed weight of cheese sandwiches and choc ices I’d been cramming into my stomach. I’d filled up the space where my heart used to be with stale Iced Gems, and now I was too full to mourn.

  ‘I just thought he had potential, Dylan.’ Kayla folded her arms and leaned against the window ledge. ‘He was supposed to be the plot twist at the end of this story.’

  ‘The beast turning into a prince.’ I smiled.

  ‘Literally.’

  Opposite us, the Dramavan door flew open. Troy tumbled out, escaping just far enough to kick the head off a flamingo before his mum emerged like a Viking queen in her nylon nightie and dragged him back inside by his ear. Through the glass we could hear her screaming, ‘AM I FINISHED? YOU’LL HAVE SIX KIDS AND A PENSION BY THE TIME I’M FINISHED WITH YOU, TROILUS-CLAY.’

  ‘Troilus-Clay,’ I repeated, slowly, once everything had gone quiet.

  Kayla shook her head. ‘You might be unlucky in love, but at least you weren’t named by Mrs Slater.’

  I nudged the side of her foot with mine. ‘I’m not unlucky.’

  I had her. I had parents who hadn’t blinked twice over catching me kissing a hamster, and I had a little brother who didn’t have a side career as an arsonist. On the whole, I was definitely luckier than most.

  Kayla grinned, gathering up our empty snack packets and crunching them down into the bin. ‘If we both end up single, I suppose we can just raise these food babies together.’

  I groaned, rubbing a hand over my swollen stomach. ‘What are you going to name yours? I was thinking Nacho-Melba sounded nice.’

  ‘Still can’t believe you dipped your crisps into that yogurt.’

  I was about to defend my food choices when Mum swept in. ‘Right then, we’re in the car. Your dear brother insists he doesn’t need the toilet. Have you remembered to pack your waterproofs?’

  We’d been on enough family holidays for me to know those two thoughts weren’t disconnected. I winced. ‘I’ve got them in my backpack.’

  Within easy reach for emergency shielding purposes. I really hoped Dad had remembered to program the satnav to detour past every Welcome Break on the way home.

  Kayla grabbed the last of her things and we headed out to the car, where Jude was sitting with his arms folded and a Squeaky Nibbles toy tucked into the crook of one elbow. The unexpected reminder of yesterday at the fair knocked my zen-like, accepting attitude a little bit.

  Kayla put a hand on my shoulder, but I shrugged her off. ‘It’s all right. At least one of us gets to have him.’

  I took her bag and opened up the boot to toss it in, just as Jude called out, ‘We have to stay for the parade!’

  ‘The parade’s been cancelled,’ Kayla explained, not for the first time. The parade had been cancelled, and so had the Stardance, so at least we weren’t missing anything. ‘The costumes were all in the showhall.’

  ‘The parade!’ Jude insisted. ‘The parade! The parade!’

  I swung the boot closed to see Mum and Dad looking at each other. Jude had been promised a parade all week. He was really looking forward to it.

  I leaned down to peer into the back seat. ‘We’ll have a parade when we get home, OK? I’ll make costumes for me and Kayla, and you can pick the music.’

  ‘We can have it at my house,’ Kayla offered. ‘And dress up the cats.’

  Jude drew his lower lip between his teeth and chewed as he considered this. ‘OK,’ he agreed, finally. ‘But is he coming?’

  He pointed out in front of the car where, standing in the back of a golf buggy that was slowly steering towards us, was Nibbles.

  I grabbed Kayla and we both stared, open-mouthed.

  ‘I told you there was a parade!’ Jude squealed, scrambling to lean out of the car window for a better view.

  Parade might have been a slight exaggeration. There were no other floats, or characters. It was just Nibbles, dancing to the ‘Happy Hamster’ theme tune as the buggy crawled slowly along. Stacie walked behind, clutching her megaphone. As she got closer, the tinny sound it made transformed into words.

  ‘DUE TO UNFORSEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, TONIGHT’S STARDANCE HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE FAIRGROUND FIELD. I REPEAT: THE STARDANCE IS STILL SPARKLING. JOIN US FOR A DISCO INFERNO!’

  ‘Might be the wrong choice of words,’ Kayla observed.

  ‘PLUS THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE PARK OF THE YEAR AWARDS! COME ONE, COME ALL TO OUR SPECTACULAR STARDANCE. ONLY TICKET-HOLDERS WILL BE ADMITTED.’

  I couldn’t help feeling like that last part was directed at us. Mum and Dad were standing in front of our car, watching the one-hamster parade pass by.

  ‘Do they really still think they can win that award?’ Kayla hissed in my ear.

  ‘Maybe they’re hoping for the sympathy vote,’ I murmured, only half listening. I couldn’t look away from the parade’s solitary star: the giant hamster who was cheering and waving to rows of blank caravan windows as if they were all populated by adoring fans.

  I didn’t know if I really counted as a Nibbles fan any more, but as the golf buggy reached us, I lifted my hand to wave back.

  Nibbles turned his back on me. While he sailed past, dancing and waving in the direction of the Dramavan, all I had was a prime view of his wiggling backside.

  I felt a bit sick.

  None of the food I’d eaten to try and squash my feelings had been enough to cushion my heart from breaking.

  The buggy rolled on, Stacie’s voice slowly falling silent. I could feel everyone watching me. Mum, Dad, Kayla, even Jude. It’s weird how feelings can sometimes seem like a physical force. Like sadness. Like pity.

  I slid into the back seat beside Jude. I’d had more than enough of both those feelings for one holiday.

  Silently, everyone else did the same. Only th
e satnav spoke, confirming that we could leave the park by driving in the opposite direction to Nibbles and his entourage. Good. I never wanted to see that bucktoothed face again. I never wanted to see the showhall again, or the Swim Centre, or the neon-lit gates telling me to LET THE DREAM BEGIN.

  But we had to drive through the gates one last time to leave the park. And there, standing under them, with his hair swept up into a wild ponytail, wearing jeans and a white shirt and giving no signal that he might have made a quick change into them within the last five minutes . . .

  Was Leo.

  FORTY-SIX

  Dad wordlessly swerved the car over to the pavement just before I threw myself out of it. Leo must have started running at about the same time, because we met somewhere in the middle, each of us skidding to a stop inches away from crashing into each other.

  I really wanted to crash just a little further, but first I seriously needed to know what was going on.

  ‘I thought I’d missed you,’ Leo said, trying to catch his breath.

  ‘I thought you’d just waved your bum in my face.’

  That needed some explaining, so I told Leo how I’d just seen him – hamster him – totally diss me. He shook his head, biting down one corner of his lip in a way that I thought might mean he was trying not to laugh.

  ‘I’m not Nibbles any more. I got fired yesterday, right in the middle of the photo session.’

  I gaped. ‘Why?’

  And who had I been daydreaming about sweeping off their little pink hamster feet?

  ‘Dereliction of duty,’ Leo said, sounding less than impressed and nowhere near sorry.

  I thought about the reasons Kayla suggested she sue him. He couldn’t actually have been sacked for standing me up, could he?

  ‘According to the new rules, my priority should have been the kids who wanted overpriced photos, not the one who might have gone over a cliff. Margaret stripped me of my buck teeth on the spot. She’s in the costume now.’

  Full-body-shuddering at the thought of the moony eyes I’d been making at Margaret the manager, I spared a glance back to where Kayla and my family were sitting with the car doors wide open, not even trying to be subtle about listening in.