by Juno Dawson
Hole 1: Hole 1 was a straight putt through a giant fibreglass skeleton’s mouth. It was purely decorative, Alex explained – it’s dramatic and foreboding, but it was actually a clear shot to the hole. Beasley swore that once upon a time the jaws used to open and close mechanically, but literally everyone else thought he’d dreamt that.
Hole 2: this was where it got exciting. On Hole 2, you hit your ball down a slope to the lower level. Polly told me that this one was pure luck – no amount of skill could compensate for the gravity and acceleration of the ball as it rolled downhill. Your only hope was if you bounced back off the guard at the bottom and rebounded into the hole. ‘Just smack it and hope for the best,’ Polly told me. ‘Coincidentally, my life mantra.’
By Hole 3 – a water feature with a hump bridge – it was clear that, while it was true no one was keeping score, everyone except Daisy was competitive. In fact, never had crazy golf been so hard core. In particular, Beasley, Polly and Alex seemed in it TO THE DEATH. Polly had a love/hate relationship with her ball – if it went the right way she’d kiss it, if it didn’t go in it would get called a ******* little ****. Even Alice lightened up – when she potted her ball she performed a fairly convincing pole dance around her club.
If we had been keeping score, I’d have been doing pretty well – I totally fluked the third hole and got a hole-in-one.
Hole 4 was Daisy’s favourite – the ‘Disapproving Seal’. It was a straight line barricaded by a painted stone seal. Time and weather had worn its face, and Daisy was right – its expression could only be described as ‘disapproving’. I felt judged by this statue. I judged him right back. There was no way you could get a hole-in-one on this one unless you got lucky.
Hole 5 was a hard chicane, and then there was Hole 6.
Oh, Hole 6.
Hole 6 is where I met him.
That creaky little windmill would become a memorial for our meeting. He is Nico Mancini. If his name sounds like he’s out of a romance novel, it’s because HE SHOULD BE IN A ROMANCE NOVEL. He loudly announced his arrival with a cry:
‘I can’t believe you started without us. You are all dead to me.’
I turned round to see who was calling. I actually saw Zoë first – a strikingly beautiful black girl with silver glitter framing her eyes. Her ears were so pierced they seemed weighed down by metal.
Nico was behind her. However I describe him he’ll sound hideous, so rest assured he was beautiful. Seriously, if Nico had been born five hundred years ago he’d have been a muse to artists and sculptors and poets. He had thick curly hair falling over his forehead and heavy straight-line eyebrows. They were what I noticed first about a second before I noticed his smile and accompanying dimples. And then he noticed me.
‘Oh, hi. You must be the new girl.’
‘Yeah. I’m Toria.’
‘I know. Pols has been telling us all about you.’
Zoë introduced herself with a broad hug (she also asked where I got my coat, so she passed). I couldn’t think of a single thing to say. I couldn’t take my eyes off him and, although he greeted the others, he kept looking back at me.
Let’s talk about Instalove. A lot of my online friends have book blogs and, by and large, Instalove is one of the worst tropes of young adult fiction. I mean, it’s crap, right? Two people – be they undead or not – meet and know within seconds that they’re gonna get married and be together until Happy Ever After.
Until that moment by the windmill, I was one such haterade drinker, but that was because I’d never felt Instalove. Turned out it was very real. It’s not love: love I think, like a pretty weed, needs time to put down roots. Instalove is a separate thing. Within the first two minutes of meeting Nico, I’d unlocked a fictional photo album in my mind – all the dates we’d have: the pier, the park; all the kisses; all the arguments and in-jokes. Does anyone else do that or is it just me? I couldn’t stop it; it was an avalanche of fantasies and now I was buried.
Instalove, Instalust, call it what you want. I just wanted him.
It was decided that Zoë and Nico could pick up the game from where we were. Nico seriously affected my A game; all of a sudden I was square-shaped and tongue-tied. Trying to play crazy golf sexily is no small feat, let me tell you. Worse still, the windmill was pretty tough – there was only a narrow pipe going through the middle and you had to avoid the creaking, rotating sails. Could I get my ball through that hole? No, no I could not. Luckily Nico and Beasley were having similar difficulty, either that or they wanted to linger with me while the others moved on to Hole 7.
‘So where did you move from?’ Nico asked. He stood like Jesus; his club across the back of his shoulders and his hands dangling over that.
‘Up north,’ I replied, suddenly wary of my cloddish accent. ‘My dad got a job at the university.’
‘Sucks. You miss your mates?’
‘Not as much as I thought I would.’
This was true. My old friends would never have done this. Chloe and Katie from back home were very into doing work on school nights (nail-biting high achievers – you know the type. Being perfect looks exhausting, I’m very glad I’m not), and doing things with their families on a weekend.
‘Woo-hoo! Your turn,’ Beasley said, finally getting his ball through the tunnel.
I positioned myself in front of my ball and managed to tap it into the side of the windmill, in the process blocking Nico’s next move.
‘Nice one! Thanks for that!’ he said.
‘Sorry, I snookered you. Or golfed you … Is that a thing?’
‘It can be.’ I wondered if I could trick him into showing me what to do, like in the movies where the guy stands behind the useless girl and shows her how to make the swing. ‘So Pols says you’re pretty cool.’
‘And she’s hard to impress,’ Beasley chipped in from the other side of the windmill. ‘I don’t know what you did to win her over. We tried to introduce someone new into the group last year, and she killed her and wore her skin to school.’
I smiled with a self-impressed glow in my stomach. ‘Did she really say that?’
‘You’re in her friend bag. She doesn’t mess about with that.’ Somehow Nico used his ball to knock me through the tunnel.
‘Wow! Good shot! Yeah, she mentioned the friend bag.’ The fact that Polly, the COOLEST GIRL IN THE WORLD, had been talking about me with Nico, THE HOTTEST GUY IN THE WORLD, made me so freaking happy. A hugely optimistic part of my brain wondered if she was trying to set us up.
The game gave us plenty to talk about, and before we knew it we’d sailed past Hole 7 and caught up with the others at Hole 8.
Hole 8: was amazing. By far the most impressive hole on the course – a pirate ship, skull and crossbones billowing in the sea breeze.
We took the stairs up to the ‘top deck’ of the ship where the others were waiting for us.
‘This one is a capricious tyrant,’ Alex told me. ‘Regard.’ On the top deck of the ship there were three holes. ‘Two of them lead to the target, but one takes you back to the entrance.’ I looked behind me and saw there was a funnel at the foot of the stairs we’d just climbed.
‘Well, which hole is it?’
‘We’re not telling you that!’ Polly grinned. ‘That’s cheating.’
‘It’s all very metaphorical,’ Alex went on. ‘Like how we’re all shooting blind, unsure whether we’re really going forwards or backwards.’
‘How deep of you,’ I said, setting up my shot. ‘It’s not a metaphor. It’s multiple choice. This has a two-in-three chance of success. I reckon real life isn’t so stacked in your favour.’
‘In real life,’ Polly added, ‘they’d all take you back to the beginning. The way to get ahead is to do this.’ She picked up her ball and tossed it over the side of the pirate ship. It landed on the level below and rolled towards the hole. It stopped short of getting her a hole-in-one.
‘That’s cheating!’ Daisy exclaimed.
‘That’s the point,’ Nico
said. ‘Cheaters usually win.’
‘That’s the way to win,’ I agreed, ‘but it’s more fun to play.’ I tapped my ball and it rolled into the left-hand-side hole. There was a sharp intake of breath and I heard the ball plop out of the hole underneath the steps and back to the beginning. ‘I lived, I learned, I won’t do it again. See – it is like real life after all.’ I swung my club over my shoulder and headed back to the start.
Hole 9: Hole 9 was an anti-climax to be honest, like they’d spent all their time, money and imagination on the pirate ship. This one was a straight line but with lots of bumps along the way. Theoretically you could get straight down the middle, but it was pretty tricky. Tricky but boring. The worst.
‘Hole Ten looks like a ****,’ announced Polly and it really did.
Hole 10 was supposed to be the Loch Ness Monster emerging from the water but, like the seal, the paint was worn and chipped, and rather than a prehistoric beast, it looked like a partially submerged member. You had to steer your ball through the humps. Nico set about giving the head of the beast a handjob with both arms wrapped round it.
‘I really think I’ve mastered the technique,’ he bragged.
‘Oh, he’s loving it,’ Beasley laughed. ‘You can see it in his eye.’ The poor thing, appropriately, only had one eye.
‘You’ve certainly had enough practice,’ Zoë said and everyone called BURN.
‘What’s up, Zoë? Scared of the schlong?’ Nico put on a voice, apparently like how he thought a penis would sound. To Nico, a penis would sound Swedish. Or kinda deaf.
‘Oh, Zoë, don’t hate me, I don’t want to hurt you. I want to be your friend …’
‘Sorry, dickmonster. Just not my bag.’ Zoë turned to me. ‘Yes, I am a lesbian.’
I shrugged, unsure if I was meant to be horrified or impressed. My old school had an LGBT committee and was in the local papers when two Year 13 guys proposed to each other in the canteen, so this wasn’t especially exotic. I realised though, that for Brompton, it probably was.
‘Oh OK. Cool.’
I sensed I was being tested again and evidently I passed because the game carried on.
Hole 11 was the hardest yet and the only one where you had to putt uphill.
Poor Beasley, who I increasingly sensed was the butt of many a joke, stood behind the hole, in charge of fishing the balls that overshot out of the bushes and palms.
I simply couldn’t get my ball up. Even if I could get it up onto the flat, the ball rebounded off the backstop and rolled back down.
‘OK,’ I said to Nico once my arms were dead weights. ‘This one is starting to feel like a metaphor.’
He laughed. ‘You want me to go catch it up at the top?’
‘I don’t wanna cheat.’ I hit my ball up to the top again, where a Converse-clad foot pinned it down.
‘Oh we all do it,’ Polly called down from the top of the ramp. ‘We don’t keep score, remember?’
I smiled, unconsciously covering my mouth with a hand. I forgot I didn’t have teeth like tusks any more. Nico took my other hand and we ran up the slope in tandem.
Hole 12: the final hole. What had once been a grand volcano finale, with a working fire on top, was now a damp squib. As Beasley explained, the working flame was against health and safety regulations and so it had been permanently turned off. It was still quite tricky: you had to get the ball up a little ramp, through the volcano and out the other side.
And then it was over. My ball plinked into the hole in three moves and the course was done. I didn’t feel as triumphant as I might have; I didn’t want the night to end. Somehow two and a half hours had vanished in a matter of seconds. See what I mean about time changing? My face hurt, actually ached, from laughing.
This lot were so good. The way they held hands, and groomed each other, and took the piss … They were speaking a foreign language I so badly wanted to learn. I suddenly felt a terrible pressure to be funnier, cleverer and more like them, but I only felt like an outlier as they slowed to translate for my benefit.
Game over, we gathered by the kiosk and handed in the clubs and balls. Daisy had lost her ball at Hole 11, so we had to fish a rogue one out of the bushes before we could return.
‘That was fun,’ I said, trying to wedge myself into conversations that were going on without me. ‘I was sceptical, I’m not gonna lie. Who knew crazy golf could be so good?’
‘Are you tripping?’ Nico said. ‘When wasn’t it amazing? You’re not one of those hipsters who pretend everything’s awful are you?’
I answered that with a question: ‘If I was a true hipster, wouldn’t I think this was ironic retro fun?’
‘You have a point,’ Polly interjected. ‘We like that no one else ever comes here. Some nights we don’t even play, we just sit on the pirate ship or swings and shoot the ****. None of our ***** parents let us all go to each other’s houses. It was either here or the graveyard …’
‘And that’s where the Goths go.’ Beasley finished her sentence, reaching over her to hand his club to Jamie.
‘****!’ Polly suddenly announced. ‘I was meant to be home, like, half an hour ago. Basically, my parents are ******* psychotic. I’m actually running. Toria … you’re a dude. See you outside school tomorrow at eight thirty.’ And with that she was gone, her pink ponytail swinging behind her.
‘They really are really nuts,’ Daisy said. ‘If you think her dad’s bad, wait till you meet her mum. She is so scary.’
‘It’s true,’ Beasley added. ‘Imagine if Satan and Cruella de Vil had a baby of pure evil.’
‘Wow. I thought my mum was bad.’
‘Hey,’ Nico said, unchaining his bike from the rack. ‘Are you doing anything Friday night?’
I pretended to think about it for a second. I was clearly doing nothing. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘Awesome. Come to our gig? It’ll be awful, we’ve barely rehearsed, but everyone’s coming.’
I was ‘everyone’. I had a genuine inspirational teen-movie moment and my eyes glazed over. I wondered if this was what belonging felt like. Maybe this was an unexpected upside to moving; I might get to reinvent myself as someone who got invited to stuff. Yeah I know that sounds mushy but it really did feel special. Oh, who cared: if Nico was going, I was there.
Chapter Four
Dandelions
The next morning I walked to school with bumper zip-a-dee-doo-dah in my step. I practically twirled through the park like a Disney princess in song. My head was full of the fake Nico memories I was determined we would one day share. Maybe we’d come to this park and hold mitten-clad hands. Maybe we’d have a picnic and he’d feed me strawberries dipped in melted chocolate on a rustic tartan throw. Perhaps we’d roll in the autumn leaves and I’d cackle when he rolled in dog turd.
I knew this was borderline mentally ill, but my mind was galloping way ahead of itself. He probably didn’t even fancy me. If I were a lesbian, I don’t think I’d fancy me. I’m not really my type.
This much was certain: I’d never been as convinced of a crush. I had dated a guy at my old school. It didn’t end well. He was called Nick ‘Smithy’ Smith. I vaguely knew him because we went to the same primary school, and he asked me out in the run-up to the Year 11 ball. His best friend was dating my friend Chloe, so they set us up. He was cute – really cute – but had nothing to say for himself. He was very into hockey. I was not into hockey. I am still not into hockey.
We dated for a while. By ‘dated’, I mean we made out at the few parties I was invited to. I lost my finger virginity to him. After a while it was pretty clear I was doing it because everyone else was doing it, not because I was madly in love. Call me corny (‘Hey, Corny!’) but I kind of wanted my penis first time to be with someone I properly cared about, not just someone who shared my urgency to cast off virginity like a cursed shawl made out of leprosy. I’m not some creepy abstinence cult member, I just wanted it to be good. So many of my firsts were crap, I felt I should try to ensure one was
done the right way.
A word on ‘slut shaming’: if you think me fooling around one time at Chloe’s End-of-Term Barbeque in some way affects me, my ‘character’ or my story, I want you to sit down with a calendar and see if you can pinpoint the exact moment you were brainwashed by the patriarchy into thinking women aren’t allowed to have sexual feelings.
We do. Well, I do.
When I dumped Nick it got ugly. He told his friends I was frigid, I retaliated and said he had ‘farmer fingers’. I regret that (although he does live on a farm). I learned the hard way that these things do tend to get messy. Why is it that however hard you try to avoid drama it always pops up like dandelions? One more reason to be grateful for the new start in Brompton.
I met Polly outside the sixth-form entrance as promised. When I arrived, she was reading Edgar Allan Poe and drinking coffee (or tea, I guess) from a slick chrome flask.
‘Ooh I love Poe!’ I said, really, really hoping to wow her with my knowledge of American literature. ‘Which one are you reading?’ I hoped it was one of the three I had bothered to read.
‘“Tell-Tale Heart”.’
Oh thank god for that. I hadn’t read it, but it was in that episode of The Simpsons.
‘Love that one. The heart still beating under the floorboards. Creepy.’
‘It’s hilarious,’ Polly told me. ‘He kills the old dude for giving him side-eye! Harsh or what?’ Today she was wearing a smart shirt, buttoned all the way to the top, with men’s slacks. Effortless and cool as ever. I always felt like I was dressed like a kid around Polly. I wondered if it was time to bin the leopard-print Cons. ‘Do you want some coffee? It’s my mum’s and it’s ******* rocket fuel.’
‘Sure, why not?’ Because I’d be jittery all morning is why not, but I didn’t want to seem rude. Polly slid the chrome beaker across the bench. ‘Thanks,’ I said. Dear god, the coffee was strong. I fought to stop my eye twitching. ‘I had so much fun last night. Like, the most fun in ages.’
‘Fantasyland is the nuts. And I saw you getting along with Mr Mancini …’