Alex in Wonderland

by Simon James Green

  “Cool,” I said. “So this is, like, a load of Barnum statements, right? General statements that sound very specific and personal, but actually pretty much apply to anyone? I see myself as a very creative person, that sort of thing?”

  Eve’s face dropped to a frown.

  I swallowed. “No?”

  Eve leaned towards me, across the table. “Nonbelievers anger the spirits, who put curses on the heretical ones, before carrying them off to the nether.”

  I nodded, trying to look enthusiastic, and definitely like I shouldn’t have any manner of curse placed on me. After all, things were bad enough as they were, without the intervention of malicious spirits.

  “Eve suggests you close down your prejudice and open up your mind.”

  And now she was also taking about herself in the third person. Was she possessed, or simply in character? I felt like I couldn’t ask. Eve thrust the pack of tarot cards into my hands, then clasped hers over mine, closing her eyes and seemingly channelling some sort of energy, or spirit, or something.

  I didn’t really believe any of this stuff but I have to admit, I was too much of a wuss to really call out the bullshit, you know, just in case, which is why I’m also agnostic, rather than atheist.

  “Shuffle,” she commanded me.

  I moved the cards around a bit, then handed them back to her. Eve took a deep breath, then picked off the top ten cards, which she arranged face down on the table between us.

  “Let us consider your past,” Eve said, turning the first card over, to reveal The Fool.

  “That’s me!” I chirped.

  Eve ignored me. “Someone who is just beginning. An innocent.”

  Read: virgin. Oh my god, even the tarot cards were trolling me.

  Eve turned the card next to it over, revealing The Hermit. “You were lonely, withdrawn and isolated,” Eve said.

  So, I was a virgin who was a total loser with no mates. I mean, sure, it was accurate so far.

  “We have two major arcana cards right here, suggesting these are fundamental elements that are maybe hindering your spiritual journey. Eve will now interpret your present and then look to your future.”

  I nodded.

  “Here we have the Knight of Cups, who indicates the arrival of romance.”

  “Ah!” I said.

  “But next to it, we have the Seven of Cups, suggesting elements of fantasy, illusion and wishful thinking.”

  “Oh.”

  “And next to that, we have the Nine of Wands – courage, persistence and resilience …”

  “Ah!”

  “… except this card is reversed, so it paints more of a picture of paranoia, defensiveness and being on edge.”

  “Oh.”

  “Eve will now seek the cards’ guidance on your future.”

  Her hand hovered over the first card and she looked up at me, eyes full of worry.

  “What is it?” I swallowed. “Something bad?”

  She didn’t answer, just turned the card over, and from the way she gasped, I gathered it wasn’t good news. “The Tower!” she muttered.

  I waited for her diagnosis.

  “Disaster!” she said, finally.

  Well, she certainly told it like it was and didn’t mince her words. I admired straightforwardness in a person. Still. “How bad a disaster?” I asked.

  Eve shook her head, and turned the next card. “Ten of Swords – some sort of betrayal. You’re being stabbed in the back.”

  “Great.”

  “And then…” She turned the next card. “The Hanged Man!”

  “Oh god…”

  “The sacrifice, the scapegoat… Five of Cups, loss, regret, despair…”

  I swallowed. “Now all we need is—” I stopped as Eve turned the next card over, and I was actually staring Death in the face. “And there it is,” I said.

  “Endings,” Eve said. “Not necessarily a bad card,” she added.

  I rolled my eyes. No, I loved a bit of death, who doesn’t?

  Eve turned the final card over. “Judgement,” she said. “Rebirth.”

  I was screwed. I’d always suspected it, but now the tarot had confirmed it. “Is there anything I can do?” I asked, thinking maybe I could make some sort of sacrifice, or burn some herbs, to please the spirits and improve my lot.

  Eve shook her head. “The cards have spoken. They don’t make the future, they merely foretell it.”

  I looked helplessly at Efia. “It’s just a bit of fun,” she said, giving me a not remotely convincing smile, like everything was fine. Fun?! At this rate, next thing you know, we’d be opening a clinic at Wonderland to tell people they had STIs, or running a stand selling funeral plans.

  “Ignore the cards at your peril,” Eve said.

  “See?!” I said. “Ignore the cards at your peril. It’s real, Efia. It’s all real. My life is basically ruined. What did I ever do?”

  We all sat in silence for a few moments while they tried to come up with something soothing to say to me, I’ve no doubt.

  “The answer lies in the major arcana cards that underpin your past,” Eve finally said. “The withdrawn, isolated, innocent. You must correct that, learn from that, to change your path.”

  “Otherwise I’m going to be stabbed in the back and hanged from a noose?” I said. “Huh.”

  Eve blew the candle on the table out. “We’ll ask the cards again soon.”

  I could barely wait.

  I still don’t believe in this sort of thing, but the funny thing is, knowing what I know now, it’s scary how accurate the predictions were.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Ben spent the rest of the day making sure he was so busy he didn’t have time to so much as look at me. He didn’t even eat one of the freshly fried and sugar coated doughnuts I had bought for everyone to share, in my attempt to out-nice Bella. He didn’t even have a doughnut. How bad is that?

  As I stood under the steaming shower the following morning, I’d got round to thinking that maybe what I needed to give Ben was a bit of space. I realized I was gay when I was thirteen, but there was a year either side of that where I was confused and scared by it all. Maybe Ben was going through that now? And the last thing you need when that’s happening is someone trying to force you into a corner, demanding answers. Maybe Ben needed to go at his own pace, and maybe the best thing I could do was just to be there for him. Be his friend. And if he ever wanted to be more than that, then let him drive it.

  Or maybe he was straight and I needed to stop all this wishful thinking.

  I tied a towel around my waist and emerged from the bathroom to find Kendra on the landing, waiting. “You’ve been in there forty-five minutes!” she scowled.

  I hadn’t. It was half an hour.

  “You know we’re on a water meter? We get charged for all your rampant water use! And that aside, you know the reservoirs are at historic lows?”

  Sure. You thought it was the oil companies, or the destruction of the rainforests, but here I am – the cause of the environmental apocalypse.

  “I’m meant to have a meeting with the planning committee and I’ll be late now,” Kendra continued as I dripped on to the carpet. “If I miss the slot, the project will get pushed back, and that’ll add several thousand on to the budget. You’re dripping on the carpet; can’t you dry yourself properly before you leave the bathroom?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Why do teenage boys take so long in the shower?” She looked at me with that face. The one that people use when they’re implying we’re doing something else in the shower other than showering.

  “Sorry, Kendra, I’ll try to be a better person.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “Don’t take the piss.”

  “I wasn’t!”

  She pushed past me into the bathroom. “I’m going to speak to your dad about putting an en suite in the master bedroom, this is ridiculous.”

  She slammed the door.

  And good morning to you too.

>   The haunting and melancholy strains of REM’s “Everybody Hurts” filtered through from my bedroom. Another phone call! That was two in the space of this whole month. Madness! I padded across the landing and into my room. Obviously it was Efia, like that girl just didn’t understand how intimidating phone calls are and simply couldn’t bring herself to message.

  “Meet me in ten minutes,” she said when I answered.

  “Efia, I’ve only just got out of the shower!”

  “It’s half past ten.”

  “Exactly?!”

  She sighed down the phone. “OK. Fifteen, then. We’ve got a meeting with one of the journalists who ran the Wonderland story – I told her we had some information and she took the bait. Their office is on Castle Street. I’ll meet you outside.”

  She hung up before I could protest. I pulled on some boxers and shorts, sniffed a T-shirt that I figured would be passable, and whacked that on too. Then I grabbed two handfuls of Coco Pops from the kitchen and hotfooted it over to Castle Street, whilst eating my breakfast.

  “I’m going to use this to try and find out who might have tipped them off,” Efia said as I raced up to her. “Don’t know how willing they’ll be to reveal their source, but it’s worth a shot. Something’s going on – the threatening notes, the article, the tampered golden egg – someone is behind all this.” She picked a Coco Pop off my T-shirt. “Is this yours?”

  “Thanks,” I said, taking it off her and putting it in my mouth.

  Efia shook her head. “Just go with me on everything, OK?”

  I nodded, pleased she didn’t expect me to do anything too taxing which I would invariably mess up. “Do I have Coco Pop breath?” I asked.

  “That’s not a thing.”

  “No, but—”

  “Alex, you’re not going to be snogging the journalist, you’re just accompanying me, OK?” She sighed and handed me a Tic Tac from her bag. “Here, if you’re worried.” She pressed the intercom buzzer on the wall. “I spoke to Ben last night.”

  The intercom crackled. “Hello?”

  “We’re here to see Helen French – it’s Efia Adomako and Alex…?”

  I leaned in. “And Alex Button!”

  “Aw, sweet!” Efia grinned.

  The door buzzed and Efia pushed it open, leading us through into a small hall, the floor covered in flyers for takeaway food and junk mail, with a set of stairs leading up to the first-floor offices. “So, you spoke to Ben?” I said as we climbed the stairs, trying not to sound too interested. “OK.”

  “He wasn’t in a good place.”

  My heart skipped a beat. “What?”

  “Turns out it’s the anniversary of his mum’s death.”

  I stopped dead halfway up the stairs. Oh god. Maybe this wasn’t about me at all. That poor boy had so much else going on in his life. OK, maybe him thinking I was being weird about what happened after our pizza didn’t help, but when you’ve other stuff happening, if you’re feeling sad, or low, it’s easy to blow all sorts of things out of proportion. You can get so wrapped up in your own story, you forget other people have theirs, and sometimes those stories aren’t nice ones.

  “He’s not coming in today anyway,” Efia added. “I think he just needs to be at home.”

  I nodded. “Sure.”

  Efia looked at me, reading my face. “So, maybe that explains some of how he’s been, right?”

  I broke her gaze. Maybe it did. And maybe this was exactly the moment Ben needed a friend, not some romance-obsessed boy chasing after him.

  “Come on, let’s get on with it,” Efia said, pulling me up the stairs.

  A blonde woman in her late twenties, whom I recognized as the “hipster woman” who came into Wonderland, and whom I supposed was Helen French, was standing on the landing on the second floor. “Efia?” she said. She looked at me. “Hello.”

  I nodded at her but played it cool, the snake that she was.

  Helen led us through into the offices, which were a ramshackle bunch of desks and old computers and several people on telephones who were shouting things like, “I can do you five hundred for a ten by two and run it in two editions and a month on digital.”

  It all sounded very high pressure and awful.

  She sat us down in a small and dingy back room that smelled of stale cigarette smoke. “So, what have you got to tell me about Wonderland?” she asked.

  “Mainly that you got it wrong,” Efia smiled. “And we think you should give the place a second chance.”

  Helen crossed her arms.

  “We’ve got a relaunch in a few days, and we’d love it if you’d come along and cover it. You know, in the interests of balance?”

  “We’ll see if we can make it,” Helen said.

  “It’ll be good,” I added.

  Helen smiled at me. “I’m sure.”

  I nodded because I was indeed sure.

  “Who tipped you off about Wonderland?” Efia said.

  “I can’t tell you that,” Helen said.

  “Well, someone must have pointed you in our direction.”

  “Oh, they did,” Helen replied. “It’s just I can’t tell you who.”

  Efia nodded. “Some sort of journalistic integrity thing, is it?”

  “No,” Helen said, getting up and pulling a file out from a set of drawers. She flipped it open, took out a letter and handed it to Efia. “I can’t tell you because it’s anonymous.”

  I leaned over Efia’s shoulder, reading the anonymous letter about the Wonderland. Five paragraphs detailing everything that was wrong with the place – including the stuff that was mentioned in the article, like the supposedly out-of-control customers, and the fact it encourages gambling from a young age, as well as things that didn’t make it in, like the apparent fire hazard the entire place was. It was a devastating diatribe – but my fury was all the greater because, however eloquently it was worded (and it was), and however forceful and aggressive the arguments (and they were), whoever had sent this was not brave enough to put their name to it.

  Efia handed the letter back to Helen. “Please come to the relaunch. We’re changing and we’re proud of what we’ve done.”

  When we got outside, Efia said exactly what I’d been thinking. “OK, if the previous notes were ‘kids pranking us’ that letter definitely isn’t.”

  “Too well written?”

  Efia nodded. “It was … eloquent. Serious.”

  “So what are we dealing with?” I asked. “Different people? All of whom hate us?”

  “I honestly don’t know.” Efia sighed. “It feels like the haters are circling, and all we’re trying to do is save Wonderland for Maggie so she doesn’t lose everything she’s ever worked for. Why can’t whoever it is just leave us alone?”

  “Maybe we need a bit of extra help,” I said. “Maybe I should contact that Tyler guy who gave me his card – he said he could help out with publicity. Can’t do any harm, right?”

  “Good plan. See what he can do.” She checked her phone. “What time do you start?”

  “Not until after lunch. I’ll see you there. There’s something I need to do. For a friend.”

  Efia nodded and gave me a little smile. “I’m sure he’ll appreciate it.”

  There wasn’t time to make my own, but I bought the nicest-looking crusty loaf I could find in the supermarket, along with a pack of bacon and an avocado. I made the sandwiches just like he’d told me, cut them into triangles and wrapped them in brown paper, tied with string. His dad answered the door, but I didn’t ask to see him, I just handed his dad the package and asked if he could pass them on.

  And on the front I’d simply written:

  For Ben. Love from Alex. X

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Oh my goodness, this brings back memories!”

  Tyler Phillips gave me a wide smile as he took in the surroundings of Wonderland. No linen suit today, but he looked just as smart in a checked navy number featuring a waistcoat and one of those pocket watch ch
ains. I admired his ability to regulate his body temperature wearing that outfit in this heat, as much as his sense of style. “I used to come to these sorts of places a lot as a kid,” he continued.

  “With the relaunch, we’re hoping to appeal to as wide a market as possible,” I told him. “Kids and families, obviously, but also hopefully a young, trendy crowd too.”

  Tyler nodded. “Diversifying your market – excellent. These days you have to adapt to survive. Tough market, am I right?”

  I nodded. “Things aren’t easy, I guess.”

  “How can I help?”

  “We really need to get some good PR on relaunch day,” I said. “You kind of said you might have some contacts?”

  Tyler smiled at me. “I didn’t ‘kind of’ say, I did say. And of course, it would be a pleasure.”

  “Really?”

  “Leave it with me. I’m sure we can get Breeze FM here, plus I’ve got some good contacts in the blogger and influencer community – online buzz is just as important these days.”

  “We tried the local paper,” I said. “They said they’d try to come.”

  Tyler flashed me his bright, white smile. “I think I can turn that ‘try’ into a ‘will’. I’ll speak to them too. And let’s see if we can get some local dignitaries too – maybe the mayor.”

  I didn’t know what to say. This all seemed so easy. Nothing was ever this easy. Not in my life, anyway.

  Maybe Tyler read my mind, because he said, “Hey, I admire what you’re doing. Too many people sit around, not taking positive action, and wonder why things don’t improve. So it’s a pleasure to help out in this small way.”

  “We appreciate it,” I said. “Thank you.”

  Tyler patted me on the shoulder. “I’ll be in touch. Give my regards to Maggie.”

  I watched him as he walked out, so confident and assured.

  “Should have asked him for a thousand pounds and a holiday to somewhere fancy whilst you were at it!” Kem said, not turning around from his fruit machine of choice for that day.

  “Guess there’s some nice guys left in the world after all,” I said.

  “Hey!” Kem said, looking at me over his shoulder. “There’s plenty of nice guys! One sitting right here, for starters!”