My chest was tight.
Say what you want.
Heart hammering.
I gritted my teeth and strode over to them, although my legs felt like jelly. “Hi, I’m here about the job?” I said. I’m pretty sure my voice was wobbling all over the place, but the whole thing is a bit of a blur.
The women glanced at one another. It was a sort of … mildly disgusted glance. Like someone had just farted.
I put my hands in my pockets to help add an air of cool to the proceedings. I shouldn’t have said anything else, but there was this terrible, awkward silence, so I did. “I’m good at…” Don’t say oral! “Selling.” Yes, Alex, good! This is a shop, they’ll like it if you can sell stuff. “I, er … I can sell really good. I mean, well. I could sell … a glass of water to a drowning man, that’s me. So. Boom.”
I wasn’t sure what the “boom” was about.
Nor were the women, by the looks of things.
One of them nodded and called over to this guy who was riffling through some shirts in the corner. “Spence! This guy’s here about the job?”
Spence came over, all skinny jeans, hipster moustache and shirtsleeves rolled up to display his tats. “Cool, man! OK, quick-fire questions—”
“Here?” I blurted out.
Spence winked. “I like to keep it spontaneous.”
The women nodded.
Spence put his finger in the air, and everyone held their breath, waiting for his divine inspiration. “Fashion. Art, or basic human need?”
I had no idea what type of fuckery I’d just walked into, but I wanted to get the hell out as fast as possible. The women made appreciative murmurs as they considered the question. Spence looked smug. You just knew he probably came to work on a penny-farthing and liked his coffee made as complicated as possible.
I wanted to tell everyone, “Sorry, only joking about wanting a job, please get back to your smashed avocados and obscure folk music!” but I had to answer. “Um—clothes are a basic human need. Fashion is art.” Not bad, I thought. Kind of makes sense.
“Is art not a basic human need then?” Spence frowned. “Does art not contribute to our understanding of life, of the world … of ourselves?”
“But … you presented it as either-or,” I protested. This guy! I bet he was really fun at parties.
“Challenge the question, my man!” Spence declared. “Think for yourself! The status quo enslaves us all!”
I swallowed and nodded.
Then he laughed. “Mate, we’re playin’ with ya. We don’t even work here!”
I froze while they all had a good giggle, picked up the bags they suddenly had from the floor, and started making their way out of the store.
“Good luck finding a job!” one of the girls called back to me.
“Make sure you tell them how you can sell to people good!” the other said.
I stared down at my suede high-tops.
I was such a total disaster zone it was a miracle charities didn’t regularly airlift supplies to me.
My stomach was tight and cramped. So was my throat. I started biting one of my fingernails, only remembering that Kendra had made me start putting that anti-bite liquid on them when my mouth filled with a foul bitter taste. I turned and walked out. Maybe I could sort myself out, regroup, try again later.
Or maybe I could try “Splash Down!”? That was the water park that occupied a huge patch of land down the far end of the front. Splash Down! didn’t have employees – they had “dream makers”, and being a Splash Down! dream maker was considered the best summer job any kid in town could get. As long as you didn’t mind entertaining annoying brats and their incredibly rude parents, it paid well, and it was supposed to be legendary amounts of fun – not least because of the end-of-season pool party they hosted every year, which employees got free entry to, and free drinks all night.
I tried to boost my confidence after the humiliation in RAW by striding along the front, thinking about times when things had gone well. It turned out that was quite challenging, so I thought about Caramel Crème Frappuccinos instead, which at least was a happy thing. I took a breath, removed my tie (Splash Down! was definitely not a “tie” sort of place. It was really a Speedos sort of place, but, huh, no way was that happening), and walked up to the information kiosk just inside the entrance, the screams and cackles of people having a good time in water drifting over from the main pools. “Hi,” I said to the girl behind the counter. She was about my age, pink hair, and a stud in her nose. “I was wondering about the dream maker jobs?”
“Fantastic!” she squealed. I had no idea how anyone who was sixteen could be so happy. “You’re in luck!”
I blinked at her. That would truly be a first.
She was bubbling over with excitement. “We’re holding the last of our audition days for this season’s new dream makers tomorrow!”
I let the words “audition day” sink in. “Uh-huh?” I muttered.
“So, it’s gonna be so good?” she said. “Starts with team-building activities in the morning, where you’ll be making rafts, doing assault courses and an orienteering exercise around the park; then there’s a talent show?”
“Talent show?” I said.
“So, like, everyone who works here has a talent?” She was one of those people for whom most sentences were a question. “So, you’ll need to show us yours? Maybe it’s singing? Or magic? Maybe you’ve got a dancing dog?”
I could put my toe in my mouth, that was literally it. (Don’t ask about the sequence of events that led to me finding that out.)
“All through these sessions, people get cut if we don’t feel you’ve got what it takes…”
This was sounding better by the minute.
“And if you make it through the talent section, then it’s instant death.”
I nodded. “What… How does that work, then?”
Her eyes lit up. “Everyone gets two minutes to speak, without hesitation or repetition, about themselves. If we get bored, we buzz, and that’s it, you’re dead. Or at least you won’t have a job here, so you may as well be dead!” She laughed like that was funny. Although, in terms of how things worked socially in Newsands, certainly amongst the teen population, it was basically true. All the cool, popular kids got to work and party at the water park in the summer. The rest of us just skulked on the sidelines, pretending like we didn’t care. “Make us laugh, make us cry, just entertain us. That’s a true dream maker, right there.” And she gave me this stupid wink, like she really thought she was it, you know?
I wondered if that was true. I wondered if I really made them cry, if I told them some sad, tragic story about my gran’s stroke or something, that they would be so “entertained” they’d give me a job on the spot.
“Registration is nine a.m. tomorrow!” she beamed.
“I’ll be there,” I said, smiling.
I would not be there. Every kid in a ten-mile vicinity would be turning up for that tomorrow. There was no way I’d survive building a raft with a group of other teenagers. They would all confidently get on with it and then sail away, probably forgetting about me, and leaving me on the side. That was literally what happened on the year nine trip to Paris, when I got left in a service station in Calais, and they only realized when they got to Dover. And that was my fault for “being so quiet”. Quiet kids have it rough in a world that loves noise.
I walked out of the park and trudged along the front, jobless and friendless. A pathetic little loner with forty-eight own-brand condoms and an unfortunate reputation for humping cushions. This was not how the summer after GCSEs was meant to be. This was not how sixteen was meant to be. I was supposed to be engaged in revelries.
I was reaching for my phone so I could put on my Pity Party playlist when I heard the shouting:
“Hey! Oi! Mate?!”
I did what I always did in situations where someone random appears to want my attention: I kept my head down and carried on walking.
“Mate!
Mate! Hey, MATE!”
But, OK, this guy wasn’t giving up, and my pulse was increasing in line with his volume.
“MAAATE!”
I looked up.
“Fancy a lemonade, mate?”
I stared at him. It was the lad in the giant fibreglass lemon by the entrance to the pier. Every year, some sucker would take the job standing in the stupid thing, serving fresh lemonade to the tourists, and also lemon sorbet and lollies. It’s all lemon-themed … obviously. It’s a lemon. Be weird if it sold hot dogs. It’s always been considered a bit of a duff job. It doesn’t pay well, mainly because the stand is not that popular. I don’t think fresh lemonade appeals to a lot of people round here; I think they’d rather down an energy drink. Or super-strength lager.
He was grinning at me. I hadn’t seen him before, so I guessed he must go to a different school. He was black, my age, athletic-looking, with a cheeky sort of face that certainly seemed to be friendly, although appearances can be deceptive.
“I’m OK, thanks,” I muttered, bowing my head and heading off again.
Lemon Boy (unlikely to be his name, but would have to do for now) whistled. “Man! What does a guy have to do to sell some lemonade around here?”
I vaguely shrugged, and flashed him the briefest of apologetic smiles. The fact is I don’t actually like fresh lemonade. I’ve got a seriously sweet tooth and it’s usually too sour for me.
“I am so gonna get fired,” he sighed.
OK, great, so now I felt sorry for him. You should know there’s only so much I can take, in terms of guilt trips. I made the mistake of glancing at Lemon Boy again, and his eyes lit up with so much hope I just couldn’t disappoint him. I swallowed and approached the lemon.
Lemon Boy watched me, shook his head and smiled. “Bad day?”
Huh. I guessed he’d noticed the little cloud of rain that perpetually follows me around.
“Know what’d help?” he said.
A guardian angel? A genie in a bottle? Frankly, I’d settle for a fairy godmother right now, even the hilariously useless type who accidentally turn pumpkins into pigs in tutus, or whatever.
“Lemonade,” he said.
Well, I should have guessed. “OK, then.”
Lemon Boy worked his magic and placed a plastic cup of lemonade on the counter. “Straw?” he asked.
“Straw,” I said, demonstrating the extent of my charisma and repartee by just repeating his words back to him. I watched as Lemon Boy tried to insert the straw into the tight little hole in the top of the lid. A couple of failed attempts, and the hole finally yielded. In it went, but he must have been squeezing the cup too hard, because a shot of lemonade squirted out of the top.
“Easy, tiger!” he laughed.
The one thing in life I am grateful for is that mind reading is not an actual thing. If you could see what went through my head sometimes, I think you’d be pretty disappointed in me.
“Give it a try,” he said, pushing the lemonade towards me. “You’re my first customer, I wanna check it tastes OK.”
I gave the straw a tentative suck. The bitter sourness hit the sides of my tongue, and I had to seriously fight the urge to wince. I swallowed it down, my mouth stinging. “Mmmmm.”
Lemon Boy raised his eyebrows. “Nice?”
“So nice.”
He looked pleased. “It’s my first batch.”
I took another painful acidic sip, my left eye starting to water as I swallowed. “Nice,” I croaked as my throat constricted. I hadn’t the heart to tell him the truth, although maybe that was just cruel. Maybe he needed to know this stuff seriously needed more sugar. If he got the sack, maybe that would be my fault now.
I put my hand in my pocket to get some coins, but he said, “On the house, mate!”
“Oh, really, but—”
“LADIES!” Lemon Boy shouted as he saw two girls over my shoulder. “Fancy a nice refreshing glass of the best home-made lemonade you’ll ever taste?”
The girls giggled to each other and came over. I wasn’t sure what to do. It felt rude, just slinking off, but I didn’t have any reason to stay. Worse, every moment of indecision and hesitation was making this whole situation a million times more difficult to remove myself from.
“Two glasses, yeah?” Lemon Boy smiled at the girls. He turned back to me and caught me just staring at him. “Anything else, mate?”
“Oh, er, no,” I said, looking quickly away.
Lemon Boy suddenly grinned. “Oh! I know what you want!”
“Huh? No, I—”
He produced a lemon ice lolly from his freezer and handed it to me. “He’s having a bad day,” he explained to the girls, who gave me sympathetic smiles.
I nodded a thank-you because I didn’t want to interrupt him with any of my stupid words, and backed away from the lemon.
“Make sure you tell your mates!” Lemon Boy shouted after me. “There’s a hot new lemonade maker in town!”
The girls giggled again. I held up my ice lolly like I was toasting him (should have used the actual drink, it would have made more sense), and nodded.
I didn’t mention I hadn’t got any mates to tell. I think it would have overly complicated the situation, and if he felt any more sorry for me, I think he’d just have given me the whole stand.
What little confidence I’d mustered for this job hunt had ebbed away. I needed half an hour to do something else, build it up again. I very nearly turned left and walked down the pier, but I didn’t fancy any of the fairground rides at the far end, and all the sideshows required either throwing something or aiming something, neither of which are skills I really possess. Also, there were already quite a lot of people milling about down there, and you know, crowds. I sighed and turned the other way, and despite myself, a smile crept across my face.
Wonderland: it occupied the biggest retail unit on Newsands’ seafront – a monstrosity of austere architecture that I think was built in the sixties, but was done up like some sort of fantasia. A huge pink-and-yellow plastic frontage was studded with lights that glittered and twinkled, with golden ones making the name “Wonderland” in the middle. Right outside the entrances were the kiddie games – the mini cars and fire engines you could ride for fifty pence, a row of claw grabbers, stuffed with cuddly toys and an assortment of shiny trinkets (some of which may or may not have been iPhones), giving passers-by a little taste of the delights within. Neon signs above the doors advertised “Air-Conditioning Throughout” and “Play to Win” – and there was a handy ATM in the wall at the side, just in case you needed some cash, and you would need some.
Yeah, it was tacky. And, yes, it was gaudy. But Wonderland was an escape – like junk food when you’re feeling low. There was something magical about those flashing little bulbs outside, the electronic music from the machines, and the occasional sound of an avalanche of coins from a jackpot win. The rows upon rows of games always made me giddy: Pirate Treasure, Pharaoh’s Fortune, Jungle Fever, Titan Cash Vaults, the old-school arcade machines and the brand new 4D and VR experiences. Hell, even the change machines twinkled at you like they wanted you to come over and play with them. Put a quid in the slot, and Zoltan will tell you your fortune, delivered on a small printed card at the base of the machine. Another quid gets you the worst hot dog you’ll ever experience, or a bag of candyfloss, or a pink-and-white striped paper bag of popcorn. Or there’s the Mirror Maze, or the bingo, or pinball or Dance Dance Revolution or Mario Kart or just good old retro Pac-Man. Once you were in, you had no idea if it was light or dark outside, you were just suspended in time, the lights glittering like crystals, like this place was a million dollars. Like you were a million dollars.
Maybe it was some sort of sorcery, but it calls you in.
It called me in, anyway.
CHAPTER FIVE
Listen, I’m not an idiot. I knew this place was as crooked as they come. It’s not that the games are gaffed as such, it’s just they work in such a way that you never really win. Everyone
knows if you win a bit on the coin pushers, you’re gonna put it straight back in again because it always looks like a whole heap of coins are about to fall off that moving ledge. They never do, but it looks like it. And then a lot of the games churn out streams of golden tickets that you can collect and put towards something from the prize booth. Even if you’re crap at a game, you’ll usually get a few tickets, and a mediocre performance can easily net you fifty. Never mind that a tiny toy rabbit is five hundred tickets, you quickly have fistfuls of the things, and you feel like you’ll surely be able to buy a Porsche.
I mooched about, the few coins I had already burning a hole in my pocket. It was pretty empty in there that day. I nodded at Kemal, who was hovering by the fruit machines with his notepad, as usual. Kemal reckoned he was working on a method – a way of telling when one of the machines was going to give up its jackpot. We weren’t exactly mates – more two loners who occasionally exchanged pointless small talk. I spent a bit of time with him last Easter break, when Will was mysteriously often “busy” (which I know now was because he was permanently suckered to Annie) and I didn’t have anything else to do except sometimes hang out in Wonderland. After I’d apparently gained his trust by offering him one of my treat-sized Mars Bars, Kem showed me his lists, with columns of all the machines and the frequency with which they were paying out. He had scribblings of equations and probability calculations and everything. Reckoned he was going to be a millionaire one day. Reckoned it was foolproof.
I reckoned he lost about a hundred quid that break.
“See that one there,” Kem said, coming over to me whilst keeping his eyes fixed on one machine that an elderly lady was sitting at. “Hot AF.”
Point of reference: when Kem says something is “hot” he’s not talking about the old lady – he means the machine. He means he thinks it’s about to pay out a massive win. At least, I hope that’s what he means.
I raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
He nodded sagely, like it was a dead cert. I’d seen that look before. It hardly ever was a dead cert. I don’t think those machines work on a basis where mathematical probability would ever help you. Kem never seemed to mind that he always lost his money, though. “Investment in R & D, innit?” he always used to tell me. “Gotta speculate to accumulate.”
Alex in Wonderland Page 3