But Steve Forrester was still his number one fan. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a bit of enthusiasm,’ he would say if one of us laughed at some lame answer he gave. ‘At least Sam is trying, unlike some people I could mention.’ And then, when the teacher wasn’t looking, Sam would turn in his seat and stick out his tongue.
Yes, you heard that right. He stuck out his tongue. He may have been teaching the girls how to walk and talk and look and chew like a boy, but he was moving even faster in the opposite direction. A few days in a skirt and Sam was essentially a girl in his gestures: the way he talked all the time, and bumped up against his friends when they were walking down the corridor, or touched their arm when telling them some little titbit of gossip.
A weird and frightening fact began to emerge – something so strange and uncomfortable that none of us actually mentioned it, although each of us knew it was true. Sam was changing. He was actually becoming nicer, easier to talk to, human.
Jake
I still thought he could turn at any moment. I remembered what happened at Burger Bill’s after I made a joke about his dad, even if no one else did.
He didn’t do much to improve the girls either. They just talked even more than they once did. Oh, and they were all wearing these ridiculous sports watches – in fact, the craze had reached right up to the Sixth-Form girls.
If you need any evidence about how pathetic girls can be, there it is. Sports watches. This years fashion accessory. Do me a favour.
Zia
This was the big moment. Even now, when I think about it, I get goosebumps down my spine.
During breaktime, I mentioned to Sam that I had been listening to the Doors. She laughed and asked me what my favourite track was.
‘“People Are Strange”,’ I said.
‘You’re kidding,’ she said. ‘Not “Light My Fire”? Everyone usually goes for that.’
‘Well, I like “People Are Strange”. I’ve worked out the chords. I can play it on the guitar.’
She looked at me as if she had just heard the best news ever. Then, to my utter amazement, she began to sing.
It’s a weird song, about being unwanted, about how people look different and ugly when you’re alone in the world, and Sam’s voice – high, with a hint of rasp in it – went with the lyrics and the melody.
I couldn’t help it. The music gathered me up and carried me along. I found myself singing out the guitar line, cutting across the vocal melody with the staccato rhythm, the minor chords changing to major at the chorus, hitting it with a high, spooky harmony, strange and haunting like the song itself.
As we finished the chorus, there was silence for a few seconds. That had been a good noise we had just made between us – an excellent noise, in fact.
Sam gave a little laugh, almost embarrassed at how great it had sounded. Then she started the next verse. More confident now, I joined in.
We smiled as we sang. Something truly astonishing was happening. Nearby, people glanced in our direction – I mean, nobody sings two-part harmonies in the play area of Bradbury Hill – but then, just as they were about to laugh at us or tell us to shut up, the music gathered them up too.
By the time we reprised the first verse, a small crowd had gathered around us. When we finished, there was a smattering of applause.
‘When did you practise that?’ someone asked.
‘We didn’t,’ I said.
‘Musical instinct,’ said Sam, shaking her head.
We moved away from one another, almost as if we each needed time to work out what had just happened.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it, hearing the music in my head for the rest of the day.
Crash
It was grey at the airport. Outside it was raining in that typically British way, thin and indecisive. There were too many people. When Ottoleen and me asked anyone a simple question, they looked at us like we’d just crawled out from under a stone.
‘Here’s the thing,’ I said as we waited in line for the taxi. ‘We rent a car. We track the kid down. We grab him. We get the hell outta this dump and beat it back to civilisation.’
‘Gotta sleep.’ Ottoleen was swaying gently. She was never great at holding her liquor, that one. ‘Take me to a hotel, Crash.’
Normally when I hear these words from the gorgeous mouth of a young babe, I don’t need to give the matter too much thought, but right now I had family business to attend to.
‘We check in, then we rent a car. Then—’
But Ottoleen had rested her head on my shoulder and was making those little mewing noises that she knows I can’t resist. ‘Kitty’s sleepee,’ she said.
‘All right,’ I snapped. ‘I’ll get you to a hotel.’
‘Miew-miew’ went Ottoleen’s lovely lips as, eyes closed, she nodded her head in thanks.
I noticed that the family in front of us, Mom and Pop and a couple of pug-ugly, red-haired juniors, all of them glowing red from their holiday, were staring at us.
‘You got some kinda problem?’ I asked them, giving them my best you-don’t-mess-with-this-guy look. They turned an even deeper shade of red and turned away, muttering nervously.
I tell ya, these Brits. No goddam manners.
Mrs Burton
We have always been a no-secrets, let’s-sort-this-out-together sort of family, but frankly the whole business of Sam’s inheritance, not to mention the fact that his rather odd-sounding father could soon be sniffing about the place, was proving to be something of a problem for David and me.
Term had started so well, with Sam settling into school and Matthew even managing to find himself a girlfriend, that it seemed unwise to upset the boys at this delicate moment. In the end we decided that on this occasion honesty could wait.
I asked David to ring the police, simply to alert them that an undesirable American might be patrolling the area and that they should be aware that there was a possibility of an abduction situation. I’m not sure that they took him quite as seriously as one might have hoped.
PC Chivers
I have a note that a certain Mr Burton rang to express concerns about the activities of a Mr Lopez. I recorded the call in the police log, but told him that the faint possibility of an American gentleman roaming the streets of our constabulary with a view to abducting his son was not one that we could regard as our highest priority, even if he was, as Mr Burton said, ‘slightly dodgy’.
I was aware that I had heard the name Burton quite recently. Only later did I make the connection with the incident at Burger Bill’s.
Mr Burton
It’s very important not to overreact, not to panic on these occasions. I made the call and suggested to Mary that we should all now get on with our lives.
With this in mind, I decided not to mention to her something else that I had noticed. Sam appeared to have plucked his eyebrows.
There was, in fact, something indefinably different about him. Sometimes he touched the arm of the person he was talking to. The way he spoke seemed softer, less abrasive than the old Sam. He used chirpy, un-Sam-like phrases like ‘Oh, perlease’ or ‘I don’t think so’ or even ‘I am so not interested in that’.
At some point every evening, he announced that he had to go upstairs to write his diary.
I confess that I had never thought of Sam Lopez as a diary-keeping sort of person.
Mark
She was just a girl. I kept telling myself that as I saw Sam Lopez over the next couple of days. She’s just a kid. Get over it, Mark Kramer.
But I couldn’t help myself. I had this empty, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Most days, I snuck out of school after lunch for a quick cig, but now I couldn’t be bothered. I wanted to see Sam. I wanted to talk to her.
What was going on here? I could have hooked up with any girl at Bradbury Hill, but I had to fall for some little Year Eight Yank who seemed not to give a damn about me.
Maybe that’s an exaggeration. I noticed that when I was near her (which was as ofte
n as I could arrange), her friends went all giggly and stupid, but I could swear that from the way she glanced in my direction Sam was not exactly unhappy at the attention I was paying her.
But she also made sure she was never alone.
It was a whole day since I had given Elena Griffiths the message for Sam. I knew from the way she was behaving that it had reached her. Mark Kramer is not used to being kept waiting, least of all by a girl. So as Sam and the three girls, including Elena, were fetching their coats at the end of the day, I made as if I just happened to be walking by.
‘Hi, Sam,’ I said coolly.
She glanced over her shoulder from the coatrack and gave me that long, even look that made my stomach do a triple somersault.
‘Yeah?’ she said.
‘Did you, er, get my message?’
Sam had turned away. ‘Might have,’ she said as Elena and her two friends nudged one another and giggled. ‘So?’ I asked.
‘We’ll see you at the gate, Sam,’ Elena said, virtually tugging the other two away with her.
Suddenly it was just us.
‘Alone at last.’ I gave her the smile. No one can resist the smile.
No one except Sam Lopez.
She took a step nearer to me and, for an instant, I thought she was going to hit me. Instead, she poked me in the chest with her hard little finger.
‘Watch it, buddy,’ she said in a low, almost threatening voice. ‘You’re in way over your head.’
She stepped back and stood eyeballing me, hands on hips like some crazy gangster’s moll from an old film. ‘Back off,’ she said. ‘Capisce?’
Then she turned and flounced off down the corridor, her hair swishing behind her like the tail of an angry pony. God, I love that girl. She just gets better and better.
Ottoleen
Crash Lopez is the most masterful guy I’ve ever been with in my entire life. He is totally, totally focused. I’ve told him he should write a book one day, The Crash Lopez Guide to Making Things Happen Even When Everybody in the Whole World Says It’s Totally Impossible. Maybe the title needs a little work, but the message would be loud and clear and just unbelievably inspirational.
Here’s the Crash method:
1 Decide what you want to do.
2 Kick some you-know-what.
3 Shout.
4 Kick some more you-know-what.
5 Do it.
So we’re in this big, ugly hotel near the airport. We’ve slept a few hours and just had this kind of headache-nausea-jetlag trying to remind us of our flight.
Crash goes to the desk. ‘I need to rent a car,’ he says.
The receptionist, one of those Morticia Addams types with dyed black hair and thin, disapproving vowels, looks up from the computer screen she was staring at and says, ‘Would that be today, sir?’
I can see Crash losing it already. You don’t talk to Crash Lopez like that, you just don’t. ‘No, I’d like to sit around in this hotel for another week just for the hell of it. Of course today!’
‘Yes, sir.’ The woman smiles and pushes a telephone that’s on the counter a few inches towards him. ‘If you would care to ask for the car-rental service, they will be pleased to help you.’
Crash shoots me a look, like do-they-all-talk-like-they’ve-got-a-poker-up-their-you-know-whats? Then he picks up the receiver and snaps, ‘Car rental.’
He talks for, like, five minutes on the phone, giving them all sorts of details. There’s a lot of chat about how much the car is going to cost, whether it’s a family car, if it has air-conditioning. In the end Crash agrees to take a Nissan on account of the fact that he once had a Nissan back in the States. He asks how long it will take to deliver. They say an hour. He cusses a bit. They seem to be saying that the longer he talks, the later it will be. He hangs up. ‘What a country,’ he mutters, pushing the phone back to Morticia.
‘Thank you, sir,’ she says.
An hour later, Crash and me are at the front entrance when this tiny thing, this flea on wheels, pulls up at the kerb. A young, black guy in a tight, shiny suit gets out.
‘Mr Lopez,’ he says.
Crash looks at the car like the truth is slowly, slowly dawning. ‘You’re kidding,’ he says.
‘Your Nissan Micra, sir,’ goes the young guy.
‘I asked for a Nissan. This ain’t no Nissan. This is a toy.’ He walks round the car, cursing and calling it names. The driver stands there, looking embarrassed.
So I decide to take action. This is getting us nowhere and it’s not as if we have to drive across the country, right? ‘It looks snug,’ I say. ‘I like it.’
‘No way is Crash Lopez going to be seen in that tin can.’ Crash stands in front of the car and I can see he’s weakening.
‘No one knows you here,’ I say. ‘You’ll blend in. People will think you’re British.’
‘And that’s a good thing?’ says Crash. Then as if he’s made up his mind to be reasonable he walks round and gets into the car. For a moment he looks kind of lost. ‘Where’s the freakin’ steering wheel?’ he says.
‘I think it’s on the other side.’
He gets out, walks round, swearing more, then gets into the driver’s seat. He wriggles round as if he’s been trapped in some kind of foxhole. ‘Ah, gimme the keys,’ he holds out his hand, staring moodily ahead of him.
The young guy gives him the keys.
Crash turns on the ignition and revs the motor while the porter puts our bags in the back.
‘Someone’s gonna pay for this,’ says Crash as the back door is closed. The porter is sidling up to the open window for his tip when Crash crunches the manual gears and we’re out of there, in our crazy little toy car, hopping like a bouncing bean.
See what I mean? That’s the Crash Lopez method. He just gets things done.
11
Charley
To tell the truth, the bust-up had been coming for some time. El and Zed are the best of buddies most of the time, but that’s because in our little group I stand between them. Just now and then, this huge gulf of difference appears and, for a day or two, we all realise that variety might be the spice of life, but too much variety in a group of three friends can lead to big problems.
Zia is quiet, bright, keeps herself to herself, serious-minded.
Elena is noisy, extrovert. When it comes to school-work, she’s the kind of person who, when asked the capital of America, will say, ‘Hollywood.’
Back in primary school, we could laugh at how different they were. Now, it seems it matters more and more. The big fallout was waiting to happen – it just needed the smallest spark to set it off, boom.
Sam Lopez was that small spark.
Elena had decided that Sam was her project. She has always had these crazes – roller skating, photography, autograph-hunting, basketball – and normally they burn bright for a month or so before fizzling out to be replaced by a new craze.
Ever since Sam had gone back to El’s place and been kitted out with a padded bra, El had taken a special interest in her. There was something in the American girl, a sort of weird vulnerability behind her confidence, that seemed to appeal to El. All that could and should have been blown apart when cute-but-clumsy Mark Kramer asked her to set up a date with Sam. Instead, weirdly, it made El feel even closer to Sam – the whole fancying Mark thing was yet another special thing that they could share. Sam was this month’s craze.
Unfortunately, on that very same day, something happened. Sam and Zia had this massive musical bonding. At first it was funny the way they skipped about the place warbling like a couple of skylarks or chatting about music and groups no one had ever heard of, but after a while, to be honest, it became kind of irritating. Suddenly, as far as Bradbury Hill’s own little singing sisters were concerned, the rest of us had ceased to exist.
Elena took this very, very badly. I noticed her watching them throughout the day, her eyes getting that shifty, narrow look that signals trouble. We had had a plan to go round to Zia’s th
at night, but Elena cancelled, saying she had a headache (‘All that singing’s done my head in,’ was the way she put it).
The next morning, she was in a brighter, harder mood. At breaktime, Zia and Sam were vocalising as usual. Elena, all positive, asked if she could join in. That was when the trouble started.
Elena
All right, so I don’t have the best voice. Was that any reason for them to fall about like they had heard the greatest joke ever told (which they hadn’t)?
I didn’t blame Sam. She’s new round here and no one had taken the time to explain to her that Zia Khan may be all innocent and what-you-see-is-what-you-get, but deep down she’s a scheming, snooty, mean, devious, uppity, smug, swotty, unfriendly, selfish, moody and generally totally horrible little cow.
So I did it. There, in the playground. I told Zia I’d never really liked her and that I felt sorry for her with her perfect little family and high grades. I thought she was crap at guitar and her voice sounded like a Siamese cat whose tail had been caught in the door. And that was just the warm-up.
Maybe I went a tad too far. Suddenly Zia welled up and ran back to the classroom. As Charley followed her, Sam gave me this puzzled look.
I shrugged coolly. Like, was it something I said?
Jake
Result. There was this big barney in the playground. Tyrone, Matt and me checked it out. Would you believe that it was a full-on cat fight between Elena and Zia and it seemed that Sam was the cause of it all?
When Zia ran off to have a good old cry about it, I caught Sam’s eye and gave him a guys-together wink, as if to say, ‘That’s more like it. We’ll have some more of that, please.’
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