“How come you’re in here, anyway?” Kem asked. “Not seen you in ages.”
“Just bored.” I shrugged.
“Are you wishing away your summer break?!”
“No…”
“You’re unbelievable!”
I chuckled. Kem was good fun and I thought I should probably make more of an effort to get to know him better. I knew his family was Turkish (he’d told me), and I knew his hair was way better than mine (that much was obvious, he had a proper quiff going on and everything), and even though he sometimes wore wrap-around Oakley sunglasses, he was actually an OK guy. There was a girl he was trying to impress. He wouldn’t tell me who she was, but he described her with words like “enchanting” and “mysterious”, which I took to mean she wouldn’t speak to him. Anyway, all this attempting to win the jackpot malarkey was apparently just so he could impress her. I don’t know, he went on a lot about how he wanted some souped-up car when he was seventeen, and how he wanted to take her to Cyprus, like fast cars and flashy holidays were all girls needed to be wooed.
“Showtime!” Kem suddenly shouted, as the old lady slid off her stool and hobbled away from the fruit machine. He was over there in a flash, kissing the first of his coins and putting it in the slot. “Let’s bring it home, boys!”
I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m gonna get some candyfloss.”
“Bad for you, all that sugar,” Kem said, not taking his eyes away from the machine, and smacking the “spin” button with the palm of his hand.
“Bad for you, all that gambling,” I replied.
But he wasn’t listening. He jabbed at the “hold” button and slapped “spin” again. I’ve never been able to get my head around all the complicated lights and noises those machines have. My tastes are far simpler. I paid a quid for a bag of candyfloss, and changed another quid into two-pence pieces for the Penny Falls – alternately stuffing candyfloss into my mouth and coins into the slot as the moving shelves gradually shuffled the coins forward towards the pay-out hole. There were a couple of five-and ten-pound notes in there too, plus a shiny-looking watch, although, like always, they never actually got beyond the edge.
I was down to my last five coins in no time, and I’d only won about another ten that were sitting in the tray at the bottom of the machine. I considered changing another quid, but then I happened to glance at a couple of kids I recognized from two years below me at school – some boy leaning against the side of a Pac-Man machine, whilst the girl pressed into him, grinding her pelvis into his, mouths all over each other. I got a familiar heavy ache in my stomach, like, would I ever get to do that with anyone? And I kind of didn’t feel like playing any more.
I started to realize that I’d wasted too much time on the unobtainable. I’d wasted nearly two years on Will, ever hopeful that he was definitely in the grip of some sexual confusion that would result in him gently placing his lips against mine. Unobtainable.
Lusting after unobtainable people was how I’d come out to my whole family. I was thirteen and a half, sitting in my pyjamas in the lounge, with Mum, Dad and Gran, watching a TV talent show. And there he was. Alfie McDonald. This beautiful sixteen-year-old, the best sort of boy, soft, not afraid to cry, loved his mum and nan, took his dog for walks and liked cooking. I also bet he would spoon me whilst I slept, whilst listening to mellow indie music. He sang a ballad-y cover of “Born This Way” and all the judges stood up at the end.
And it was then I realized it wasn’t just the judges that were standing up.
I casually and slowly manoeuvred a cushion from the sofa over my lap, but when Mum asked me to get another Martini and lemonade for Gran from the kitchen, and I said I would “in a minute” there ensued a terrible and lengthy argument about why I couldn’t get her the drink “right now” that resulted in the full horror of everything being revealed. Later that night, Mum came into my bedroom, sat on the edge of my bed, and asked me if I liked boys, which, under the circumstances, I felt like replying “No shit, Sherlock” to, but I just said “Maybe”, because I wasn’t sure how she would take it, and I thought it might soften the blow if I introduced a small element of doubt into my answer.
She kissed me on the cheek and told me she loved me, before adding, “We won’t mention it to Auntie Pat because she’s a homophobic old bitch and we want her to leave you something in her will.”
So every year, for the last three years, we’ve seen Auntie Pat at Christmas, and every year she asks me if I’m “courting a lovely young lady” and every year I just shake my head, look down at my trainers, then ask if I can have a biscuit, as a way of taking everyone’s attention off my love life. It’s pathetic.
Stupid Alfie McDonald – I had to stop wanting what I had no chance of getting.
But then maybe there was Lemon Boy. The free lemonade, the free lemon lolly … those two facts didn’t completely stack up to a declaration of romantic interest, but they weren’t a bad start. I didn’t think I fancied him, but maybe feelings could grow … maybe that’s how it’s meant to happen, you know, rather than crazy instant lust, something more grounded and rooted in actual feelings…
“AAAAAAAAH! AAAAAAAAAARGH!”
I looked over towards the “Museum of Curiosities” where a teenage girl had just slammed out of the exit, breathless with apparent terror. “Oh, man!” she gasped, taking a couple of deep breaths. “Shit.”
She was making enough of a drama for Kem to have noticed too. I looked at him and rolled my eyes – she must be a tourist, because everyone round here knows the trick that place pulls. You pay your quid to get in, and the first part of the “museum” is all these exhibits of supposedly weird things – big bell jars containing mermaids in formaldehyde, fake taxidermy, including a pushmi-pullyu from Doctor Dolittle – I mean, please. It’s all dark in there, and they play creepy music, so it sort of gets you in the mood a bit. And then there’s this door with a sign on which reads: Behold the fearsome gorilla-men – half human, half gorilla. Enter only if you dare!
Well, first of all, I was always pretty sure that gorillas shared most of our DNA anyway, so they essentially probably are half human, but that aside, what you get beyond that door is what looks like two stuffed life-sized gorillas with human masks taped to their faces. Proper crap, right? Except when you walk past, one of them stands up and grabs you, and asks for a banana. You’re not expecting it, and props to the guy in the costume for staying so still, but it’s full-on naff, and most people just walk out smiling.
Anyway, I’d just put another couple of coins into the machine when I heard another scream. I looked up and there was this eight-year-old boy who’d just run out of the museum, and he looked like he was crying. And then his mum walked over and hissed, “Oscar, have you wet yourself?”
And Oscar shook his head, denying everything, even though he’d blatantly got this massive wet patch all over the front of his shorts, and now, now I was intrigued. Whenever I’d come here in the past, people would come out of that place laughing. I’d never seen anyone leave screaming, or having pissed themselves.
I stuffed another handful of candyfloss in my mouth and strolled over to the entrance of the museum. “One ticket, please,” I said to the girl manning it. She was pale as a vampire, and looked just as friendly. Tragic, black and heavy eye make-up. Dark purple lips.
“There’s no tickets, you just cross my palm with gold and you may enter,” she said.
I figured by “gold” she just meant a regular pound coin, so I gave her my last and she lazily gestured to the door like I’d totally ruined her day. I pushed my way through into the darkened room, with everything just as I remembered. I nosed around, reminding myself about all the crap exhibits: some old photos that purported to show the Loch Ness Monster (but could just as easily have been an old tyre floating in a reservoir); the skeleton of a unicorn (pretty hard to verify, but sure); some creatures that are apparently imps, stuffed and mounted (although to me they looked suspiciously like spray-painted gerbils w
ith horns stuck on their heads); and the crappiest thing of all, this creature in a cage, also dead and stuffed, that is supposedly the Kludde – a malicious spirit from a desolate part of the Flemish countryside, which takes the form of a winged black dog. Now, I’m not pointing fingers, but the owner of this place used to have a big, black Labrador called Sally, which sadly died two years ago, just a few weeks before the Kludde appeared, so you form your own judgement on that.
I could have bought another bag of candyfloss with my last pound, instead of wasting it on this massive disappointment. I shook my head, beating myself up about how Wonderland gets you every single time, like everyone who walks in has “sucker” written on their foreheads.
I pushed through the door to the gorilla-men and walked directly up to the one sitting down, who promptly stood up. “Got a banana?” he said. I did my best attempt at a scowl, shook my head and turned towards the—
“AAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHH!” There in my face, that face! Haunted! Gaunt! It’s the SCREAM face from SCREAM, the movie SCREAM, I was SCREAMING, it was SCREAMING, who the
Adrenaline splintered and surged
Jerking away
Running towards
Slipping
The floor … wet…
Piss! I’m slipping in kiddie piss!
And then
I’m falling, flying, forward, backwards? Towards … and—
CHAPTER SIX
“Lemons… Lemonade…”
The focus started to come back, the haze became shapes…
“Lemon Boy…”
And the shapes became more solid…
A face. Looming over me.
A girl. A short girl. A short black girl, Afro pushed back with a hairband.
And ping! I was back in the room. Only on my back, on the floor, with a killer headache, but I was back.
“I literally thought you might be dead,” she said.
“I’m not,” I replied.
I tried to shift myself up, but she pushed me back down. “Chill. You banged your head. Ben’s coming with a wet flannel and some paracetamol.”
I closed my eyes, partly because of the throbbing, and partly because I seriously wondered if this day, and life in general, could get much worse. I was pretty sure I was lying in the piss too. Something felt damp.
“Stay with me,” the girl insisted. “Keep your eyes open.”
“I’m just resting,” I told her.
“Open!” she demanded. “I saw it on Netflix. I gotta keep talking to you, stop you slipping away, until the ambulance gets here. Well … not that we’ve called an ambulance, but until you’re recovered, anyway.”
I snapped my eyes open. “You haven’t called an ambulance?”
“We were going to. If you didn’t wake up within a minute. Do you want an ambulance?”
“I dunno. Does it seem serious?”
“You just kinda … ran at the door, kinda slipped, and kinda banged your head on it.” She chuckled, like this was actually amusing. “Never seen a reaction like that! That was pretty special! Ha!”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “Was it you in the Scream mask?”
She reached behind her and put the damn thing in front of her face. “Boo!” she said. “You proper pissed yourself.”
A grim thought crossed my mind. “I didn’t though, did I?”
“I don’t think so. Did you?”
I sighed and closed my eyes again. “That’s why I slipped. Kid before me did.”
I heard the door push open and glanced over as a boy my age walked in, dressed in a furry gorilla outfit, except for the head part, which he had under his arm, along with a mound of soggy toilet roll in one hand. “No flannel – got loo roll instead,” he said. “Oh, is he awake?” The boy peered down at me, like I was an exhibit in the stupid Curiosity Museum. “Hey.” He smiled.
“Hey,” I said. He looked a bit hot and sweaty, with flushed red cheeks, but he had kind eyes and dark hair, short around the back and sides and slightly longer on top, that if it wasn’t for the fact he’d been wearing a gorilla head for god knows how long, would probably not be sticking up at random angles.
“I’m Ben,” he said.
“Alex.”
He smiled again. He had dimples. Bloody hell.
“Do you want some wet toilet roll on your head?” He extended the dripping mound towards me.
“Not massively,” I said.
“Do as you’re told,” the girl said, grabbing the toilet roll from Ben and pressing it against my forehead. “Take the swelling down.”
“Is there swelling?”
“Yeah, a bit. You proper whacked it,” she said. She turned to Ben. “Did you tell Maggie?”
“Yeah, she’s on her way,” Ben replied.
“She’s gonna kill us and I can’t get fired right now,” the girl said, turning back to me and then narrowing her eyes. “Are you staring at my breasts?”
“You’re looming right over me,” I told her. I mean, they were literally taking up my entire field of vision. “Also, I’m gay.”
“Being gay doesn’t stop you looking at my breasts though.”
“No, but…” I wasn’t sure, maybe she was right. In any case, I was too concussed for this chat.
“I thought you were gay,” the girl continued. “My gaydar is always spot on, isn’t it, Ben? A1 accurate, right, Ben?”
Ben sort of shrugged. “Apparently.”
“And when you were coming round you were muttering stuff,” she continued.
I swallowed. “What stuff?”
“About some boy.”
“What boy?”
“Lemon Boy. Who’s he?”
“No one.”
“Sounds sexy.”
“It’s no one,” I said. “I was delirious. People say stuff they don’t mean when they’re delirious.”
The girl blew out her cheeks and shook her head. “Not necessarily true, Alex, because this girl, yeah? She’s one of my best friends, and she had to have this tooth out before she could have braces fitted, but she’s dead scared of dentists, yeah? So she had to be sedated, and she wanted me to come with her, ’cause her mum had legs, bums and tums that afternoon, and she’s gotta have someone with her, to get her home OK after the sedation, yeah?”
I could feel myself drifting off again. “Yeah?” I muttered.
“Right,” the girl continued, “so the procedure goes fine, but after, as she’s coming round from the sedation, she starts muttering all this stuff – like, ‘I love you, Efia’, and ‘I’ve got feelings for you, Efia’.”
“Is your name Efia?” I asked.
“Yes, I told you that.”
I knew she hadn’t, but I also knew it was pointless disagreeing with her. “Maybe she was just delirious,” I said.
Efia shook her head. “No, because when I asked her about it later, she goes dead serious, and says all this stuff about how she didn’t want me to find out like that, but it was basically true and how she’s a lesbian. I mean, I’m bi, but I wasn’t into her, you know?”
I sighed. “Right.”
“All I’m saying is, whoever this Lemon Boy is, you are smitten. You are luuuuurving him. You are…”
“I get the picture.”
“WHAT THE BLOODY HELL HAVE YOU LITTLE SPUNKERS DONE NOW?”
I twisted my head round to where the somewhat fearsome figure of the woman I knew to be Maggie Clapp stood in the doorway. You know how, in small towns, some residents become local celebrities? So, maybe they’re the mayor, or they once worked on local radio, or, like my dad, you’re the guy who came up with the winning entry to Brownfield’s Foods’ “name our new margarine” competition, which was, I kid you not, “Butter Me Up”. Well, Maggie Clapp was very much a local celebrity, mainly because she was known for ruling Wonderland with an iron fist, taking crap from no one, and, legend had it, once hospitalizing three troublesome blokes on a stag weekend with nothing but her bare hands and some tricks she learned from an ex-lover who used t
o be a KGB spy. She was a big woman – tall and broad, and it was entirely believable she could hospitalize three rowdy blokes, with or without the KGB tricks.
She took a long drag from an electric cigarette then blew a plume of steam into the room.
A sweet caramel scent hit me.
“Frig me sideways,” she muttered, walking towards me. “This is exactly why I dread hiring you kids over the summer!”
Efia opened her mouth to speak, but Maggie held her hand up at her. “But you’re cheap, so it’s swings and roundabouts.” She sighed and shook her head at them both. “Is he gonna sue?” She bent down to look at me. “Are you gonna sue?”
I shrugged. How should I know? It hadn’t occurred to me I could claim money for my accident, but there was a chance this could make me way more than any job could. That is, if there was any actual damage. I wiggled my toes about – not paralysed. I guessed we’d only be looking at five figures then.
“He slipped and whacked his head on the door,” Ben said.
“Very unfortunate,” Maggie said. “But accidents happen. No one’s fault.”
“He slipped on some wet on the floor,” Ben added.
Maggie screwed her face up a bit. “Some wet?”
“Some … pee,” Ben said.
Maggie had another long suck on her electric cigarette and looked at Ben. “Some pee? Who the frig’s been pissing in here?”
“I guess we should have mopped it up, but—” Ben looked down to where I was still lying. “I think he’s sat in it.”
Maggie gave me a look that I’m quite familiar with, which was somewhere between sympathy and disgust. “All right, kid—”
“Alex,” Ben interrupted.
A flicker of annoyance passed over Maggie’s face. “Alex. Does anything hurt?”
“My head, mainly,” I said, leaving the door open for other possibilities, if they were potentially lucrative.
Alex in Wonderland Page 4