by Lean, Sarah
“Smart trainers, hey, son?” Dad said from the sofa, taking up two spaces as usual. He spread his hands out towards the coffee table. “We’ve got all your favourites, plus … secret ingredient on the chicken.” He winked and chuckled.
“Garlic,” Mum said, with a knowing nod, and went out to the kitchen.
“Chocolate?” Milly said. “Could it be chocolate?”
“Chilli,” Kirsty said. “I think it’s chilli.”
We did this every time, tried to guess what that extra-special flavour was. We’d probably guessed right a long time ago but Dad would never tell.
“What do you think, Leo, my little dreamer? What’s your best birthday guess?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Leo doesn’t know much about anything, apart from playing gladiators!” Kirsty said. “Don’t you think it’s a bit babyish playing pretend games? No wonder you’ve only got one dorky friend.”
Kirsty had loads of friends and everyone liked her but they didn’t know how mean she could be sometimes.
“I think it’s lovely,” Mum said, before Kirsty and me could argue (although gladiators were not lovely!). She was coming back from the kitchen with my birthday cake. It was all lit up and ready to blow out. “Here we are. Dad made it specially.”
Three sponge layers oozed chocolate cream with a load of sweets all spilled over the top. Awesome.
“As it’s your birthday, you can have cake first,” Mum said.
“Can I as well?” Kirsty said. “I am the oldest.”
“And me,” Milly said.
“We’ll all have a big piece of cake first,” Dad grinned.
“Are you going to make a wish?” Milly said.
I blew out the candles, thinking it was a long time until next year to get a new bike.
“Stop it, Leo,” George said, spinning around on his computer chair. “You’re supposed to be helping with our presentation.”
“I’m doing research,” I said.
“Yeah, right.” George swung back to his computer. “Write your ideas down. And get off my bed, you’re messing it up.”
Sometimes I’d forget what I was supposed to be doing and be battling a new gladiator, swept away by the roaring crowd. If I wasn’t doing that in Clarendon Road I’d be at George’s house and he would help us do our homework (he did most of it). George liked books and words. They were his favourite things.
“George?”
“What?”
“How come things from the past are so deep under the earth? I mean, where did all the stuff on top of ancient ruins come from?”
The Romans left a ragged flint wall here, in our town, straight as an arrow along the back of the Rec, which you can still see. They left pots and coins and buckles and pins in the earth, which we stared at when Mr Patterson, our teacher, took us on a field trip to the museum. We stared at the artefacts and I imagined all the people who might have owned them, wondering about what they were like and what their stories were. Were some of them gladiators like me?
“I don’t know,” George said. “It’s erosion or compost or something.”
I opened his book on Romans to find something interesting. I looked at the pictures and caption boxes and read one out.
“Romans invented amphitheatres and arches, and realistic-looking statues, socks—”
“Socks?!”
“That’s what it says, socks and baths, and a law that we still have today, which says you’re innocent until proven guilty.”
“Although if you’re guilty you know you’re guilty, even if nobody proves it,” George said.
“There was also a man called …” I passed the book to George because it was one of those words that looked impossible to say.
“Ptolemy,” he pronounced “Toll-a-me. It’s a silent ‘P’.”
“Oh, right. Anyway, he mapped the stars and joined the dots, and named them after a whole mysterious collection of mythical beasts and animals and gods and heroes. I think I would have liked him, George.”
I had posters of the universe and everything in it stuck up in my bedroom. You could get posters inside Dad’s newspaper every Sunday for free until they covered your ceiling.
I put my gladiator helmet on and saluted to the sky out of the window, to the audience of the stars. I thumped my arm to my chest.
“I will return,” I said and punched my imaginary sword in the air, just to hear the men and gods and monsters cheer.
“Leo!” George said. “The helmet’s good, but do I have to do everything else myself?”
“All right, grumpy,” I said.
I fell back on his bed and crossed out my three lines of notes and tried to write them again. Something weird happens between your imagination and your pencil. I tried hard, really I did, to describe what it was like to be a gladiator. It all felt real and bold and brilliant inside my helmet – and when I was in Clarendon Road with a cosmic crowd to cheer me on – but it was dull and lifeless on paper.
“George, I think I need your help or I might end up letting us down.”
“Give it to me,” he said.
He typed out some of the information from his book. George had enough words for the both of us. He printed out a few pages and handed me two sheets. Lines and lines of words and paragraphs.
“You can read that out in class,” he said. “It’s lots of facts about gladiators.”
“Do you think we should have some pictures in our presentation?” I asked.
He sniffed. “I’m not doing any more. I don’t feel well and I’ve got a headache. Anyway, it’ll be good.”
I wasn’t so sure. This presentation was like a battle all on its own and I needed backup, even for George’s excellent words. I fell on his bed, let the papers float to the ground. I needed to do something so that Dad, Mum, Mr Patterson and the kids at school would know I had a good imagination, that I was good at something, not just relying on George.
“What if I acted out a gladiator battle? Maybe with a tiger or something?”
George did his you-are-kidding face. George is good at knowing when you need to be invisible. “In front of the whole class?” he said. “In front of Warren Miller?”
It was a warning, not a question, and we both knew I wouldn’t do it.
Kirsty said there’s a Warren Miller in every year at school. Ours was the new boy. He walked into our class in September with his chin in the air like he was looking way ahead of us. Some people just have it, whatever ‘it’ is. Everyone tried to impress him, until he gave them a soft punch in the arm and sealed their popularity fate. Or not.
Warren ignored me and George. Everybody usually ignored me and George. Except Beatrix Jones, but then she’s kind of unusual. George and me sat together in class on the far-side desk of the middle row. It’s like a blind spot, which is good for not answering too many questions, but bad if you do want to get noticed. For something. Just once maybe.
“Anyway, we won’t need any of that,” George said. “You’ve got your helmet and I’ve made this.”
From under his desk he pulled out a cut-out-and-build-your-own-amphitheatre, made from white card.
“Nobody else will have anything like this. What do you think?”
George has a different sort of imagination to me. I didn’t say what I was thinking, that perhaps he should have coloured it in before he built it, or drawn people in it.
“Impressive,” I said because he isn’t usually good at arty things, and because he’s my best mate. But I had a horrible feeling that nobody was going to be impressed by either of us.
Not in the real world.
George was off sick from school.
I was daydreaming out of the window, reliving the battle with the gladiator of Rome and making it turn out differently, with me winning. Then I was thinking about Jack Pepper and that he didn’t know how small he was, when Mr Patterson called my name.
“George isn’t here,” I said, which I thought was a good enough excuse to get m
e out of doing the presentation.
“You can do your part,” Mr Patterson said.
But I’d left the papers at George’s house, and, for some stupid reason, all I could remember about our presentation was the gladiator’s battle with the tiger, which I’d already sensibly decided I wasn’t going to do in front of our class. Especially Warren Miller.
So there I was in front of everyone, wearing my helmet, trying to explain about gladiators, but I wasn’t good with words like George.
“There’s sand on the floor, like a beach, but obviously it’s not a beach, and there’s trap doors. So then the tiger comes out …” I wasn’t sure how to show that so I snarled instead, “Grrrr,” and swung my coat. “This is a net and …” but I couldn’t be the tiger and the gladiator, so I said, “Mr Patterson will you pretend to be the tiger?”
Mr Patterson nodded and kind of hunched his shoulders and made his hands like claws, frowning like Warren Miller was.
“And this is supposed to be a sword … or it can be a trident, which is like a garden fork …” I had Mr Patterson’s metre stick and chopped it in the air a few times. I thought about describing the different types of gladiators but it was easier just to make slashing noises and let the class imagine what I was.
Then, just when I was getting even more anxious about how to end the presentation, I swept the stick around low but hadn’t seen that Mr Patterson was going to pounce and accidentally tripped him over. He fell, sprawling across his desk, knocking books, pens and papers all over the floor.
Everyone burst out laughing and Warren Miller started chanting, “Le-o! Le-o! Le-o!” Then all his mates joined in. My cheeks burned and I couldn’t say sorry to Mr Patterson because my throat was dry and squashed shut, but he just smiled and said, “That was a very enthusiastic presentation, Leo. Perhaps we’ve learned that gladiator helmets may have restricted their view somewhat.” He told the class to be quiet.
I’d really let George down but I was hoping I could rescue things.
“George made an amphitheatre,” I blurted out. I wanted Mr Patterson to know that we’d done some good things for the presentation, I just didn’t have them.
“I’d like to see that,” Mr Patterson said. “You can sit down now, Leo.”
He crawled behind his desk to pick up everything and I ducked my head and went back towards the empty space where George should have been. How was I going to tell him later that I’d really messed up?
“Nice one, Leo,” Warren said from the back of the class. He grinned, showing his sharp crooked tooth. “Who’d have thought, you of all people.”
“I didn’t mean to do it,” I said.
“Even better,” Warren laughed.
I was rigid, humiliated and waiting for more sarcasm.
“Come and sit with us,” he said. Laughter rippled through the back row. “No, I mean it. Move up, Josh. Come on, Leo. We could do with someone like you. I like your style.”
He beckoned me over.
I couldn’t believe what was happening. Not only was it totally unexpected, it was pretty awesome too. I didn’t know what to say or do so I sat next to Warren, and he put his arm across the back of my chair. Warren’s big. Not big and lumpy like Josh, but as if he’s somehow more than a boy. More than me anyway.
He leaned across and whispered, “See what I can do for you?”
I think what he meant was that he was like one of those Roman senators who had a say in what happened to you. Thumbs down: nobody cares. Thumbs up: you’re in. So just like that, Warren Miller made me a kind of hero, even if it was only in front of our class.
“We’ll resume presentations next week,” Mr Patterson said standing up again.
“I hate presentations,” I whispered to Warren, and that got me a soft punch in my shoulder.
I was made up. It was like riding high in a golden chariot after beating the gladiator of Rome, and it felt like the whole universe of Roman gods and Jupiter were on my side too, because Mr Patterson said, “I think we’ll call it a day. You can all go home five minutes early.”
Warren nudged me and was out of his chair.
“Our next project is about space,” Mr Patterson called after the swarming class. “You’ve all heard about the meteor passing over the town in a few days. Perhaps find some photographs from the internet and some investigation into what’s up there in this universe of ours would be a good place to start.”
The room clattered with knocked chairs and shunted desks as we rushed past Mr Patterson to leave.
“Perhaps you could avoid re-enactments of colliding planets or big bangs when we do our space presentation, Leo,” Mr Patterson said.
“Sorry about tripping you up,” I said.
It was easy to say now, but I didn’t exactly feel sorry for the effect it had.
Warren was waiting for me at the bike shed on his bike: all shiny black paint, twenty-one gears and orange reflectors on the spokes. Josh and the swarm gathered around him, chanting, “Le-o! Le-o! Le-o!” again. Waiting for me. Warren flashed his crooked tooth with a half-grin.
I grinned back.
He said, “Meet us at the Rec tonight at seven. We could do with a gladiator on our side.”
It wasn’t just people that gladiators had to fight in the amphitheatre. Sometimes there were beasts. These were the ultimate kinds of battles for a gladiator. The thing about battling animals was that they were unpredictable. You couldn’t count on them behaving like men or other gladiators at all. You had to have your wits about you and, after what had happened at school, I thought I was ready.
I didn’t take my gladiator helmet though because I was going to the Rec straight after. I wasn’t sure whether Warren really meant that he wanted an actual gladiator on his side. Maybe he just meant someone like me, brave or something like that. Anyway, I wore my cycle helmet instead, because it was easy to pretend it was a gladiator helmet.
I rode into the arena.
Jupiter was on his feet; like a tower block in a toga he loomed in the sky at the end of Clarendon Road.
It’s time! he boomed to the audience. They were climbing down the amphitheatre steps, rushing to the edge of the arena to get a better look. It was like being a gladiator on a whole other level. I nodded, held my hands up.
“Okay, okay!” I said. “You all need to stay back. I don’t want people getting hurt.” It all felt so easy.
Send in the bear! Jupiter roared.
The audience caught their breath as the bear padded through the open gate and into the arena. I smelled the sharp smell of him; he huffed, snorted, growled. He lumbered in and showed me his broad head and his rugged side, rippling with thick hair. He was huge, but I wasn’t scared because I knew I was quicker than him.
I swerved around him on my bike, going close, pulling away as he swiped his massive paws. I turned, raised my sword, checked the crowd. On their feet now, they roared my name and I knew I could have defeated that bear with them cheering me on … except Grizzly Allen came out of his house and leaned over his wall. And you don’t want someone else watching, unless it’s George of course.
Grizzly was bundled up in his coat and scarf and cap against the cold winter evening. He beckoned me over. I used my heels to slow down. Jack Pepper peeped through the bars of the gate; his tail swished and I crouched down to say hello.
“Off to see George?” Grizzly said. “I heard he’s not well.”
Grizzly was often outside by his wall, talking to anyone that passed, which is why he probably knew what was going on most of the time. Jack Pepper panted as if he’d already been running along the street like me.
“No, just playing around.”
“Don’t want to catch anything, eh?” Grizzly winked. He folded his arms, too thick to fit easily together. “You’ve heard about the meteor passing over?” he said. “A fragment of our far universe come to shine on us. A little magic to light us up, perhaps to bring us a bit of good fortune, eh?”
I think he said that because all
the adults were gloomy around here. Even Dad sometimes. Business hadn’t been so good, like all the other shops in town. More had closed than opened and they even knocked one crumbling building down.
“Mum says winter makes people sad,” I said.
“So it does,” Grizzly murmured. “Feels like time and the light forget us for a while.”
He looked up. “All that space up there,” he said. “Look at it all. Miles and miles above us, a never-ending place, full of possibilities.” He smiled at the depth of the sky. “When you look up there, do you feel like there’s more than what our eyes can see, hey, son?”
“Yeah,” I said, because I did.
“Good,” he said. “Now do an old man a favour and take Jack Pepper out with you, there’s a good lad. My legs won’t manage it today.”
Jack Pepper had that look about him again, like he knew what I was thinking.
“What time is it?” I said. Grizzly pulled back his sleeve and showed me his watch, as big as Dad’s alarm clock. I still had some time before seven.
“Okay, come on, Jack,” I said.
Grizzly opened his gate. That little white dog came right over and stood next to my bike, looking up, like he was ready and he knew what we had to do. Grizzly turned and shuffled back towards the open front door.
“Door’ll be on the latch, so just drop him off when you’re done.” He leaned on the porch and looked back over his stiff shoulder. “Take good care of him,” he said, but I wasn’t entirely sure that he was talking to me. “And don’t be going down the Rec just now.”
I didn’t know why he said that. I guessed it was to do with Jack Pepper being used to walking around the block and not in the open fields.
There’s something about dogs which isn’t like people at all. The way they’re kind of ready and willing. Straight away I knew Jack Pepper didn’t think that pretending to be a gladiator was a waste of time.
“There’s a bear, Jack,” I whispered. “He’s here somewhere, waiting to ambush us.”
I pushed up on my pedals, felt my bike as if it was part of me, twisting and turning and speeding up, Jack running alongside.