Sounds perfect. I’ll aim for half past four. Can’t wai
“Charlie?”
My father’s voice, muffled by the bedroom door. Locking my phone, I hid it under the covers and leaned back against the end of the bed.
“Yep?”
The door opened and Dad tentatively set one foot inside the room.
“Can we talk a minute?”
I picked up a pencil and opened my math book.
“Sure.”
Dad hovered. More muffled applause from the television.
“Homework going well?” he asked.
“Sort of. Pythagoras.”
“Ah,” he said, with a slow nod. “That old chestnut. The square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the—”
“—squares of the other two sides,” I said, tugging my sleeves down over my wrists. Dad smiled, frowned, then stared out the window.
In the distance, a dog barked.
“Charlie, I’m sorry about the other night.” He rubbed the side of his neck. “I was annoyed about you missing curfew, but I shouldn’t have … well. What I said, it was…”
“It’s OK.”
Dad cleared his throat.
“I hope I didn’t upset you, talking about Katherine.”
The word sounded stiff and formal in his mouth. She wasn’t some woman named Katherine. She was my mum.
“I’m fine, Dad.”
Dad’s eyes made an awkward tour of my bedroom, as if something on the walls or the floor might help him understand me.
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
He ventured across the room and sat down on the end of the bed. A protractor got caught under his leg. He plucked it out.
“D’you know, I was thinking today about that one Christmas—d’you remember, you were about seven—when Melissa brought that plastic microphone over and the two of you stomped around the house all day, singing at the tops of your voices.” He smiled at the memory. “Singing your little hearts out.”
I remembered every detail of that microphone set. The white, spongy head, the red plastic handle, the musical stickers on the side. We ran the batteries right down.
“Yeah … yeah, I do.”
“It was ‘Cat’s in the Cradle,’ wasn’t it?”
I nodded.
“We used to listen to that song all the time when you were tiny, in the car and things. It was…” He hesitated, as if unsure whether to continue. “It was Katherine’s favorite.”
I stared at the floor, thoughts forming in my mind. Dad had never told me this before, but it made perfect sense. No wonder the song was always in my head. In fact, if “Cat’s in the Cradle” really was Mum’s favorite song, and we used to listen to it in the car when I was a kid, then maybe the memory I’d attached to it, the motorway and the radio and the orange lights dashing by … maybe that was real, too.
“Dad?”
He raised his head, drowsily.
“Uh-huh?”
“What was Mum like?”
A strange look drifted over Dad’s face. He seemed almost panicked, like this was an exam question he hadn’t revised for.
“What was she…?” He searched for the words. “Well … she…”
I held my breath, willing him to finish the sentence. Dad spotted a crease in my duvet and tugged it flat.
“She was … smart. Especially with words. And funny, too.”
I was sitting perfectly still, afraid to move, as if movement would break the spell, and Dad would close up again.
“She was fearless,” he continued, half to himself. “She wasn’t afraid of anything. And, boy, was she stubborn…”
The sound of a neighbor locking their car, bip-crunch, interrupted Dad’s flow. Smart shoes paced up a gravel drive.
“Stubborn?” I repeated, prompting him. Dad looked up and allowed himself a smile.
“She hated being told what to do. I’ve always been a worrier, but your mum … she never worried. She lived her own way.”
I thought back to our fight in the hallway, after the Fire&Lights concert. Dad stressing out because I’d missed curfew, me answering back. Stop being dramatic, I’d said. No wonder I’d reminded him of Mum.
“Anyway. That’s all in the past now.”
Dad was looking out into the garden, his eyes glazed. In the silence, I noticed one of his socks had a hole in the toe, and for some reason it made me feel very sad.
“We’re all right, though, aren’t we?” he said, turning back into the room. “You and me?”
There was so much more I wanted to know. But this was more than I’d got from Dad in years, and I didn’t want to push it.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“I know it’s just you and me here, kiddo, but we’re still a family.”
Dad’s gaze met mine, and I saw, for a vanishing moment, the young man on the picnic blanket. The bright eyes, that unshakable smile.
“I know, Dad.”
“You’re sixteen now, and I need to give you space. That’s what Katherine would have told me. I just … I need you to promise you’ll stick to my rules. OK?”
I thought of Olly’s message, hidden beneath the duvet, and my half-written reply. I said, “OK,” very quietly, and Dad passed me my protractor.
It would take me less than three days to break that promise.
13
An icy wind was blowing through the concourse at Reading station, and I wrapped my scarf tightly around my neck to keep out the chill. It was early afternoon on a Saturday and I was standing motionless in the middle of a busy crowd, hundreds of people milling and chatting and scurrying around me.
Dad thought I was going to a friend’s party, but that had been a lie.
I was going to Brighton to hang out with a world-famous pop band.
As echoey announcements rang out around the building, I stared across the platforms and watched a cross-country service rumble in and slow to a stop, a sea of passengers surging toward it. People funneled into the carriages, herding small children and waving good-bye to friends, dragging their wheeled suitcases, and I wondered where they were headed. London, Cornwall, Birmingham, Manchester …
There are too many ways to escape from this town.
“This is a customer announcement: The two-ten to Gatwick Airport will now depart from platform five.”
It was two o’clock, and that was my train. Weaving through the crowds, I made my way down a nearby escalator, gazing out across the concrete flats of the Reading skyline. As I reached the platform and the train pulled in, from the tinny speakers of someone’s mobile phone came the sound of a familiar song.
… Take me home
’Cause I’ve been dreaming of a girl I know …
Everywhere I go, I thought, Fire&Lights is there.
And I stepped onto the train.
* * *
Brighton was nothing like Reading. It was colorful and pretty and smelled like the sea, and the sloping streets were lined with scruffy little shops and bustling pubs. There were musicians everywhere—buskers on street corners, kids carrying guitars, long-haired hippies chatting in café windows.
I was walking along the busy main road, weaving through crowds on the pavement, when the big, choppy ocean crept into view. The afternoon had been sunny, but now the air felt thick and heavy, like rain was coming, so I hurried down the street to the seafront. Seagull song mingled with the sound of passing cars.
Outside the concert venue, an excitable crowd of Fire&Lights fans had gathered, singing and shrieking at each other and playing “Dance with You” on their phones. One of them was holding a banner that said “HANDS OFF—OLLY’S MINE!!!” Underneath the words she’d glued a photo of herself next to Olly’s face, with a big, red heart in between.
This time, I walked straight up to the nearest bouncer, told him I was one of the band’s photographers, and showed him my VIP wristband. He let me through without question.
I could feel the eyes of every single girl in the
queue boring into me from behind.
“Hey, it’s Charlie!”
Around the back of the building, propped up beside the stage door reading a book, was Yuki. He had one booted foot pressed against the wall, tattered laces hanging down. A security guard stood a meter or so behind him, hands folded at his belt line.
“Hey,” I replied, glancing up at the bruising sky. Rain was now definitely on the way. “What are you doing out here?”
“Enjoying some quiet time,” he said, raising his book as evidence. “We’ve got a meet-and-greet with the fans in a sec. Tons of fun, man, but cah-ray-ZY.”
I pointed at his book.
“What are you reading?”
He showed me the cover. It was called The Human Genome.
“Kinda nerdy for a rock star, isn’t it?” I said.
Yuki held up his hands in surrender. “You got me. I’m a nerd.”
I glanced at his spiky, anarchic hair and black sleeveless shirt, his skinny jeans torn at the knee.
“You hide it well.”
He smiled.
“You should give it a read. Blow your mind.”
I peered again at the cover.
“I don’t know. Looks a bit too much like Mrs. Manning’s physics class to me.”
“Knowledge is power, Charlie Bloom,” he said, snapping the book shut. “D’you know who said that?”
“Um … no?”
“Me neither. Jesus? Socrates? Who can say.” He sucked in air through his nostrils. “Point is, one day, when I’m an eccentric billionaire with a string of supermodel wives and a helipad in my bedroom, I’m going to leave pop music behind and go into something else.”
Yuki’s eyes twinkled in the fading light. I leaned against the wall next to him.
“Like what?”
“Extreme sports. Aid work. Astrophysics.”
“Astrophysics?”
“Or maybe stem cell research.” He smirked. “My only worry is deciding which of my messed-up children gets to inherit the guitar-shaped swimming pool.”
“It’s a tough life,” I agreed, and Yuki sighed theatrically. The security guard shuffled his feet.
“So how are you finding it?” asked Yuki.
I frowned at him. “Finding what?”
“This. Fire&Lights. Stepping behind the curtain.”
A drop of rain landed on my nose. I blew it off.
“You lot are totally dysfunctional. I give you six months before you’re all in rehab.”
A smile broke onto my face and Yuki laughed, switching his feet against the wall. I straightened my hat.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
I nodded.
“You’re not really a fan, are you?”
I broke eye contact, suddenly very aware of the sound of girls singing and shrieking around the corner.
“Um … n-no, course I am. You guys are awesome.”
“I mean, before Olly gave you The Opportunity Of A Lifetime and you started hanging out with pop stars … you weren’t actually into the band, were you?”
I looked up. He was staring right at me.
“Well … look, no offense, but—”
“None taken, Charlie Bloom, none taken. I’m more into psychedelic rock myself.” He poked his tongue into his cheek. “But honestly, that’s fine by me. We meet girls every day, wherever we go, and some of them can be a bit … you know…”
He searched for the right words. I shoved my hands into my pockets.
“Intense and weepy?” I said, and Yuki sniggered. Then he grinned at me.
“Yeah. Yeah, exactly.”
“Hey, Charlie!” Olly had appeared in the open doorway.
“Sorry I’m late,” he said, pointing back inside the building with an outstretched thumb. “I was going through harmonies. You good?”
“I’m good.”
The dying afternoon light fell across Olly’s face as he leaned through the doorway. He was wearing a small silver pendant round his neck, and a tight-fitting, sky-blue T-shirt that matched his eyes.
“Yuki’s not trying to make you read The Human Genome, is he?” Olly asked, glancing at his bandmate.
I wrinkled my nose. “A bit.”
Olly jabbed him in the ribs.
“You’re such a geek, Harrison.”
“Better a geek than a freak.”
“You wanna piece of me?” joked Olly, pulling him into a headlock, and the two boys tussled and tumbled through the door.
The guard nodded at me, and I followed them inside.
“Right, can we have those lighting cues locked down by five forty-five latest, DSM, stand by for props inventory, stage crew, report for drum soundcheck in five minutes exactly, please…”
Backstage, things were as hectic as last weekend, if not more so. There was the customary buffet table, piled high with sandwiches and fruit and potato chips, the legions of staff buzzing one way and the next, and the bearded men carrying cables and stands. Wherever I stood, it seemed I was in somebody’s way.
“So how’s school?” asked Olly, appearing by my side. I was leaning against the back of a sofa.
“School?” I puffed my cheeks out. “It’s quite a bit less exciting than hanging out with you guys.”
He laughed. “You’ll be out soon.”
It was easy to forget that just two years ago, Olly had been an ordinary Caversham High student. The idea of him queuing up outside classrooms, wearing our uniform, sitting through tedious assemblies … it was still so jarring.
“You make it sound like prison,” I said.
“Nah,” he replied with a wave of his hand. “The food is way better in prison.”
We shared a smile, and Olly leaned against the sofa, next to me.
“So you guys have been busy?” I said.
“Always are.”
“I heard the new single. It’s great.”
How much does he know? I wondered, thinking about “Dance with You” and the Speedway Collective. Olly was probably friends with the songwriters. They might even come to the concerts, now and again. Maybe I could meet them, talk to them … find out where their songs came from.
I opened my mouth to speak.
“Hey, listen,” said Olly, before I could get the words out, “I’ve got something for you.”
I looked at him, surprised.
“What do you mean?”
“D’you remember before the gig last week, when we were talking about your photography?”
“Yep…”
“You seemed a bit down about having a secondhand camera, so I gave it some thought, and…”
Olly bent down, past the arm of the sofa, and reappeared holding a soft black case with “CANON” written across it. He passed it to me.
“What’s this?” I asked, although I knew exactly what it was.
“It’s a camera,” he said, nodding at it. I unclipped the lid and, inside, was a brand-new Canon EOS. My dream camera.
There was even a second lens, stowed in a side pocket.
“What … what’s this for?”
He was staring straight at me.
“For you.”
I tried to pass it back to him. “I can’t take this, Olly.”
“Yes, you can.”
“I mean, it’s really, really unbelievably kind of you, but … these things cost, like, six hundred pounds.”
“Don’t worry, honestly,” he replied, pushing the case back toward me. “They pay us too much for this job anyway. All we do is run around and sing songs. It’s people like you who do all the hard work.”
He smiled at me, that perfect smile I’d seen a hundred times on the covers of magazines, and I fumbled for the right words.
“But … this is the camera I’ve always … God, how did you know?”
“It was written under one of your photos.”
I frowned back at him. “What do you mean?”
“The Diamond Storm gig. In the comments.”
Thinking back through the
photo album I’d posted online, I realized what he meant. Beneath one of the pictures, I had written:
This photo’s ok, but I couldn’t get the light right. I definitely need a Canon EOS … #dreamcamera #iwish
I was astonished. This was pretty much the nicest thing anyone had ever done for me.
“Charlie!”
Aiden was hopping toward us with one shoe on.
“H-hi, Aiden,” I said, still reeling.
Aiden beamed at me. “How’s it going?”
“I’m … good, thanks.”
I stared at the camera case in my hands, then over at Olly, then back at Aiden.
“I saw your photos from last week,” said Aiden, slipping on his second shoe. “They’re excellent.”
“Really…?”
He nodded, green eyes gleaming.
“Thanks. But I think I can do bette—”
“Boys,” said a nearby woman with a headset, checking her watch. “Everyone’s waiting in the enclosure. You guys ready?”
Yuki was standing behind the headset woman, unscrewing a bottle of water. He threw me a peace sign, and I smiled. Scanning the room, I spotted Gabriel in the far corner, by the exit, leaning against the wall. Dark loops of hair covered his face.
Olly stood up.
“Let’s do this,” he said.
The woman’s eyes fell on me. “Who are you?”
“I’m Char—”
“She’s with us,” said Olly, stepping forward.
The woman’s gaze lingered on mine. “Oh.”
She blinked at me, silently, then clicked her fingers at the boys. “Come on then, guys, chop-chop…”
As the woman gathered Yuki, Aiden, and Olly into one group and guided them across the room toward Gabriel, I followed behind, blood rushing to my face. Why did the Fire&Lights management team always treat me like a hanger-on? It was their idea to bring me here in the first place.
“Wassup, Westie?” said Yuki, high-fiving Gabriel. “Where you been all my life?”
“Carla’s here again,” said Gabriel, peeling off the wall. As he joined the group, his eyes passed almost imperceptibly over mine. “And she brought her friends. I kind of had to say hello.”
The group broke down into pairs as we passed into a narrow corridor, and I hung back, lifting the new camera from its case. I switched it on and the display screen lit up, a busy grid of numbers and symbols, blinding white in the dark. The machine felt clean and heavy in my hands.
Songs About a Girl Page 10