Wasted

by Nicola Morgan

  Because nothing is until it is and until then everything is possible. Which is both scary and also reassuring.

  Meanwhile, the fairground awaits Jess and Jack, and fairgrounds contain mysterious darkness. Spirits walk behind the masks and puppets and tricks and deceptions. You can give yourself up to the candyfloss magic in the air and you can laugh with the clowns if you want to. Be careful, though: amongst the fairground lights and their enticing eyes, devils may lurk unseen.

  CHAPTER 24

  FAIRGROUND ATTRACTION

  JACK drags Jess towards the fairground. Drags suggests that she is unwilling, but she is not: she has simply almost lost her shoe. She laughs as he pulls her along. She has forgotten his earlier shadowy mood because such things are easily forgotten. In a summer’s sweat you cannot remember the feel of sleet.

  At night the fairground is a riot of noise and light. Loud and tasteless. Lines of coloured bulbs are looped loosely from every tree, lamppost, fence, caravan, marquee. Rides and stalls are neon-drenched. There goes the giant swing, with a shriek from the passengers as it scoops them skywards. More shrieks from the spinning top and the Ferris wheel.

  A man on stilts swallows a glowing sword and the smoke he breathes is red. The crowd oohs, though one man shouts that It’s a fake and Can’t you do it with real fire? Well, of course it’s fake: there’s health and safety to consider. Two miniature women are juggling knives – the knives must be plastic but they glint as though they are not – and a queen with no head passes by, dipping her bloody neck towards them.

  The music has taken a new tone now that night has fallen. It has darkened, richened, thickened. No longer does it tinkle with childhood games – now is the time when young children are in bed, tucked up, bathed, hair-brushed, kissed and storied. Beneath the grinning puppets, masks and clowns, there is a sinister side to fairs, and when that side begins to walk, small children had better not be there, in case they realize that the clowns are not really laughing.

  “Where first?”

  “Roller-ghoster?” Jack is pointing to a doorway surrounded by painted ghosts and giant jaws dripping blood. A skinny man dressed as a skeleton is taking money from the small queue.

  “Crooked Cottage?” Jess went in this last year: nothing is straight and the senses are disorientated. Harmless fun.

  “Toss you for it?”

  “So you’ve chosen a new coin then?”

  “Head or tails?” he says, his face doing something impossibly between serious and blue-eyed smiling. His hair is back to its gravity-defying swoops, just as when she first met him. And she knows that really she doesn’t care whether it’s Roller-ghoster or Crooked Cottage because nothing really matters except being here.

  “Tails,” she says.

  He balances, flicks, spins, catches, covers, slaps and reveals. Grins. “You lose. So, it’s definitely my new ‘lucky’ coin. That proves it.”

  Jack pulls her towards the Roller-ghoster and they join the queue. He pays the skeleton but pockets his coin carefully. He will not lose it again. Puts his arm around Jess’s shoulders and melts inside with the closeness of her.

  But wait. This is an important moment. We almost did not notice, as Jack and Jess have not noticed. They have just passed a what if moment. If the coin had landed the other way and they had gone to the Crooked Cottage, they would not have been waiting outside the Roller–ghoster for two minutes – they’d have been inside the Crooked Cottage, which has no queue and is mostly hidden round another corner. If they’d been inside the cottage, Kelly, Charlie and Samantha and three skinny lads – all six with bottles pretending to be water in their hands – would not have seen them. And events would have turned out differently.

  But no one knows this. That’s the point. You don’t. If you did, it would drive you mad.

  Kelly holds her hand up. They stop. It’s like a scene from a gangster film. Does she think it’s Chicago or something? There she is with her tight white jeans and silly new shoes, her face glossy, lips glistening, nipped waist like Barbie. She is every tacky plastic cliché; she is in many ways ridiculous. You can sneer at her if you want, yet she has a power. And she knows it.

  Jack and Jess do not see them. Well, how would they? They are wrapped up in themselves, and everything else recedes into the night air. They are pressed together as Kelly and her friends watch. Samantha starts to speak: “Why, if…”

  “Shh,” says Kelly. “Let’s wait.”

  And so they wait. They see Jack and Jess go through the entrance to the Roller-ghoster. They do not see what goes on inside, though they can perhaps imagine. Jack and Jess are in the dark, along with a few other people who mean nothing to them, and the screams are of laughter. It’s not a frightening ride; it’s not meant to be. Fronds of wet stuff brush their faces but they know it’s only cloth recently soaked in water and they scream merely because it’s cold and wet. Spider webs touch them, of course – how could you have ghosts without spider webs? But they know it’s cheap frothy mesh from the market. Plastic skulls glow green and there’s a cackling witchy laugh that anyone could do with a bit of practice.

  They are sitting in a cart thing and it rattles and shakes their bones, but the track it runs on is hardly of terrifying height. It’s all a bit of fun. Not worth the money but no one really cares. It’s just one of the things you do, to enter into the spirit of it. And so, very soon, the ride has finished and the cart comes to a rest. One more wet cloth in the face, one more woooooooo and they are done.

  It’s the sort of thing that makes you hungry though. “Fancy a burger?” says Jess. And they walk towards the nearby burger van.

  “Don’t look round,” mutters Jack, as they approach.

  She looks, of course. It’s them: the Kelly Gang and three skinny lads. Jess’s heart sinks and she draws close to Jack, pretending not to see them. It will be no use pretending and they probably know it.

  They continue to walk towards the burger van. One customer is in front of them and they stand behind him. Kelly and the others are behind them, talking in silly loud voices.

  “Hey, Jack,” says Kelly.

  He ignores them, though Jess can see his jaw tightening. Jess and Jack catch each other’s eyes and smile. They don’t feel like smiling. It’s a defence mechanism, making out they don’t care, even though they do.

  “Two burgers please,” he says.

  “No problem, mate,” replies the burger-seller, stirring onions and flipping two burgers that are already sizzling.

  “Ignoring me, are you, Jack? Quite right too. Need to keep a better eye on your girlfriend, I’d say. Heard she overdid it on the old booze the other night.”

  Jess stiffens. Feels her heart racing. Still Jack does not turn round. If he did, he would see Kelly’s eyes narrow to slits as she gets no reaction.

  “Everyone’s talking about it, Jack. Everyone.”

  “Leave it,” whispers Jess, feeling tension in his arms, sensing him take a breath to speak.

  “That’ll be four-fifty. Help yourselves to ketchup.”

  Jack hands the money over.

  Jess takes her burger. Squirts some ketchup onto it. Puts the roll back together.

  Jack begins to do the same.

  “Actually,” says Kelly, “we’ve been a bit worried, haven’t we, guys?” Mutterings of agreement from her friends, though they don’t know what she’s talking about. “You see, we heard – ’cos everyone’s talking about it… Well, we heard that it was drugs. Shouldn’t get into stuff like that, you know, Jessica. It can mess with your mind.”

  Jess will never forget the look on Kelly’s face as Jack spins round, ketchup bottle in hand, and a trail of the bright red sauce slices straight down her body, from cheek to thigh.

  Kelly gasps, eyes blazing.

  “Oh, how careless of me,” says Jack, coolly.

  “DO something!” screams Kelly. “DO something!”

  Samantha turns to the boys with them. The boys are smirking but they soon stop. “What a
re you waiting for?” she snarls at them. “Are you going to let him get away with that?”

  “Run!” says Jack and he pulls Jess with him.

  CHAPTER 25

  SNAP DECISIONS

  THE three skinny lads should have dumped their so-called water bottles instantly. If it had only been water, perhaps they would have. But a few seconds of dithering give Jack and Jess a crucial head start.

  Jess and Jack duck into the crowds. Jess is wearing flat shoes but they are flimsy and loose and she would be better off without them. In any case, the one that almost fell off before does so now, and she loses a precious two seconds as she stops to scoop it up. But now she is away, running fast, one-shoed, with Jack pulling her between the people and stalls. They can hear from the noise that their pursuers are close behind them: passers-by shouting angrily – Oi, you! Mind where you’re going! Where’s the fire? Hey! Careful, you bloody idiot! Did you see that, Maureen? Really! Freaking kids!

  They cannot know what the lads plan to do when they catch them. Perhaps the lads do not know either. This could be simply three skinny youths chasing a boy and a girl for fun; or it could be very much worse than that. How bad are these boys? They are shouting murderous threats but they may not be serious. Does being skinny make them weak and unused to physical action or does it make them dangerously quick? How dangerous? For all we know, they could be good fighters, brave and cunning, well trained in a martial art, their reflexes honed by boxing lessons or playground tussles or even gang warfare. They could be from violent homes and prison may hold no fears for them.

  Or they could simply be three skinny lads who have had a couple of drinks – which will slow them down and impair their judgement – and who happen to have brought knives with them, out of habit. For self defence, they might say, or because they think a knife is the mark of a hard man.

  In fact, two of them are just skinny lads who’ve had a few drinks; and the other has indeed had many fights in playgrounds and gangs, some of which he has won and others he has not. And this one does carry a knife and he does think a knife is the sign of a hard man.

  If Jack has to face this knife, it will be the second time in two days, which is more times than a decent boy should expect to come across one. But then probability is a weird science and you can easily throw two double sixes in a row, whatever the laws of probability say about it.

  The knife-carrier’s name is Simon. Which is a nice enough name and does not suit Simon one bit. For there is very little nice about Simon. Also, if we look more closely at him, we will see that he is not really skinny. He is hard, lean, fat-free. His skin is tight on his body and wiry muscles strain to escape. He is very much stronger than he appears at first. Simon carries the knife because too many people think his small size makes him unthreatening. He is sick of being called skinny, and calling him skinny is something we should not do.

  Simon lives on the posh side of town but he spends little time there. His polite parents lost control of him long ago and would be upset but unsurprised to see him now, nasty-faced and furiously chasing a boy and girl through a fairground at night, with a couple of drinks (or more) inside him.

  Carrying a knife which did not come from their smart granite kitchen.

  Jack and Jess don’t know that they are running from a knife but something makes them more afraid the more they run. The chaotic noises around them and pockets of darkness with people dressed strangely begin to work sinister magic. Any forces of good are being sucked from the fairground and replaced by menace. Jack and Jess slide and twist round corners, dodging jesters and a man dressed as a tiger, throngs of people, huge stilted giants, acrobats, candyfloss-sellers, everything a blur. Screams from rides, cries from hawkers, bangs of fireworks and fake shooting galleries, all jumbled. A man grabs Jack, thinking that he is running because he has committed a crime, and Jess shouts in fear. “No!” Jack wriggles free and the man is left behind.

  Though they can’t look round, they sense that not all three boys are following them now. They are right. One has stopped, spitting and retching after the unusual exercise. Another is lagging some way behind Simon. Only Simon still follows close. And he is very close. In fact, he could probably reach them within seconds if he pushed himself, but he is waiting his moment. His mind keeps coming back to the knife still strapped to his wrist. It is warm and it makes him feel strong every time he senses it. He can afford to wait for the right moment.

  Jess’s breath comes in shallow gasps now. She is not used to this. It hurts. Her bare foot slips on the grass. Her throat rasps and stings, her chest stabs, her head feels hot. She knows she is slowing down.

  “Let’s stop. Please.”

  “Can’t let him win. Come on!” urges Jack beside her, dragging her arm.

  “Can’t. Go on. Much longer.” She knows. And yes, she’s a bit scared of stopping and facing her pursuers, but not that scared. Though she should be.

  Still they run, though there is hesitation in Jack now. After all, what is the worst that can happen?

  The circus show will begin soon and criers are rounding up the crowds. Movement is in one direction, with Jack and Jess going against the flow. They are coming to a quieter part of the fairground now, away from the noisiest rides and stalls. They need the crowds. Jess is past thinking or caring but Jack’s mind is alert – Must get back to the crowds. Could hide in crowds.

  During the chase there have been many choices of lefts and rights, and Jack has made those choices too quickly to think. Thanks to those snap decisions – and many other things leading to them: spinning the new coin, going in the Roller-ghoster, choosing to go to the fair at all – the chase ends where it does and in the way it does.

  A noise behind them. A curse and a yell. Simon slips on wet mud. It gives them valuable seconds.

  Jack and Jess run faster.

  Gaining ground.

  A turn, then another, doubling back. Have they lost him? Slipping behind some caravans, dodging, leaping over and round buckets and boxes and rubbish. Tangled rope. Flapping newspaper. Plastic bags. A Mexican hat.

  And here they are, gasping for breath, face to face with Simon, who stands there, triumphant. Hot-faced they all are, staring at each other.

  Just here.

  Just behind the fortune-teller’s caravan.

  Fantastic Farantella the Famous Fairground Fortune-teller – Your Future Foretold for a Fiver – She Can See It Coming! Mind you, Jack and Jess can’t see the front of the caravan, as they are hiding behind it.

  “So what are you going to do now, then?” asks Jack.

  “I think you’re going to come with me, so’s you can say sorry to Kelly.”

  “You going to make us?”

  “Yep.”

  “Look, just go back to your owner, why don’t you?” says Jack, trying to sound bored. “She deserved all she got. She even deserves you. Come on, Jess, we’re out of here.”

  “Oh no, I don’t think so.” A voice behind them.

  Jack and Jess turn. One of the other lads is standing behind them. No wonder Simon seems so relaxed. “Meet Joe,” says Simon. They turn to Simon again. He is closing in and his eyes are nasty. And there’s a knife in his hand. Jess feels sick instantly.

  It is strange what the mind is drawn to in times like this and Jack finds himself thinking of the coin in his pocket. He needs to keep it safe. He feels that if he can keep the coin safe then all will be well. It is an illogical thought but it is the only one he has. He does not look at the knife.

  Jess is about to say something.

  From behind them comes Joe’s voice. “Security. Coming this way.”

  CHAPTER 26

  FANTASTIC FARANTELLA

  SIMON’S face shrivels in anger. “Catch you later, jerks, but trust me: you will apologize to Kelly, or you’ll be sorry.” And he walks away, the knife hidden. Joe goes in the other direction. They must be practised at walking away from trouble pretending to be innocent because, actually, they do a good job, Jess thinks:
they saunter, hands in pockets.

  The security men haven’t seen them yet. One of them begins to speak into a radio. It is impossible to be sure whether they are even looking for Simon or if they are simply there by chance.

  “Let’s get out of here,” says Jack. He holds her hand as they slip round the side of the caravan. Of course, in theory, Jack and Jess have nothing to fear, as they are innocent as far as the law is concerned, but they do not want to be involved. Jack’s mind races ahead to possible questions and then being blamed by Simon and his cronies if they get them into trouble. Peering round from behind the caravan again, Jack and Jess watch Simon and Joe slip around a corner of another vehicle and the security men walk in the wrong direction.

  At any moment, Simon will turn his attention back to Jack and Jess.

  “Quick!” whispers Jess. “In here.” Fantastic Farantella’s door is open, draped in a thick red velvet curtain. There’s a handwritten sign, which has fallen on the floor: Open for future business. Come in – I’ve been expecting you. A crystal ball straight out of Pound 4 All sits beside it, trying to sparkle with its cheap glitter covering.

  Simon is turning, peering. Joe is with him. At any moment…

  Jess pulls Jack through the doorway. Several layers of red velvet close behind them and they are in near darkness. A tall woman has been on the phone and she jumps to her feet, startled.

  “Blimey, give me some warning, why don’t you?”

  Jess manages to stop herself from saying, Sorry, we thought you could see the future. Jack knows what she’s thinking and they both feel laughter welling up.

  “Look, I’m on a break,” says Fantastic Farantella. “I’m not supposed to be on again for another half-hour. Can’t you read the sign?”

  “Sorry – but it said open. Really, it did,” says Jack politely.