Boy Meets Ghoul Page 11

  Freddie and I followed not long after, since Leroy and Kayla had gotten into another argument about whether he should be credited as ‘assistant director’ or ‘director’s assistant’, and I already had enough of a headache from taking nine goals to the face, followed by falling off a locker.

  Though I almost managed to add to it by slipping on a copy of MOXY Magazine as we wandered back towards the changing room. We’d missed most of lunch, but I was too worried about Jez assigning team positions to feel hungry. If I got stuck in a defensive spot somewhere in the back, I knew Dad would think I’d messed up somewhere. They weren’t bad positions; they just weren’t where I played my best.

  ‘Isn’t this Lacey’s?’ I said, picking up the magazine. It was much heavier than I’d expected. I hadn’t realized fashion and gossip were such weighty subjects.

  ‘Maybe she’s finished with it?’ Freddie suggested.

  ‘Maybe . . .’ I flipped through a few pages and tucked it under my arm. ‘I’ll give it back to her later anyway, just in case. I feel like I owe her one . . . or, you know, one million, after today. Helping us out with the video, I mean.’

  ‘And helping us out of a human reef knot?’ Freddie raised his eyebrows.

  I’d thought I was doing well keeping my voice at a level audible to humans instead of dogs, but it squeaked upwards in reply. ‘That too.’

  ‘Well –’ Freddie shrugged – ‘once your foot wasn’t cutting off my circulation, it wasn’t so bad. By which I mean, if you wanted to do it again without the film crew, you could always let me know.’

  He shouldered his bag and swung the changing-room doors open, letting out a rush of noise from inside.

  I didn’t move. Just watched the door swing inevitably towards my poor, long-suffering nose. Just then, I didn’t think I’d even feel it.

  But a hand reached out and stopped the door before it could hit me. Freddie leaned back through, eyebrows raised. ‘Are you coming or not?’

  Legs. If I concentrated really hard, I knew I could remember how to use my legs.

  ‘Um.’ I took a deep breath and a wobbly step forward. ‘Yeah.’

  The room fell quiet as I walked in, and for a moment, I thought it was because of me. The whole team were crowded on to the benches or hanging off the clothes rails. Maybe they were shocked I’d bothered to come back after the morning’s humiliation. Maybe my bruised nose had blown up to the size of a blimp, and nobody had told me.

  Subtly, I tried crossing my eyes to check it out. It still looked normal size. It hadn’t even changed colour from its usual pink.

  Maybe Kayla’s video footage had accidentally been beamed on to all their phones, and they’d just been watching me trying not to look like I was at all happy about being tangled up with Freddie.

  Or maybe it was just that Jez Dutton had walked in right behind me, with Leroy and Laurie Deering standing to either side.

  ‘Right then.’ He sniffed and rubbed his nose dry on one sleeve of his shirt, before flapping an A4 sheet of paper out in front of him. ‘I hope you lot appreciate me spending my whole lunchtime slaving over this. Positions for the end-of-week match. First, and most important, central midfield, and your captain from now till then.’

  Freddie sat down hard on the end of one of the benches. Jez didn’t even look over at him.

  ‘Now, I may not look it, but I’m a benevolent man. I believe in second chances. Giving people the chance to prove themselves. And a good captain’s someone who knows they need to prove themselves, not some show pony who finds it easy.’

  Second chances? Prove themselves? I stared hard at the ground. There was no way Jez would give me the captain’s role over Freddie, surely. Everyone knew he deserved that.

  Jez tilted his head to look at Leroy. ‘You said you perform best under pressure, yeah?’

  Leroy nodded, looking anxious.

  ‘Great,’ Jez said. ‘You’re captain. Laurie Deering, you’ll be centre forward. Azi and Josh, you’re in back. Chidi, you’ll be sweeper . . .’

  He went on. It was a list that left almost everyone looking at each other in confusion over what they’d been selected for, but nobody more than me. Because Jez had read out every single position, right through to Aaron Addington in goal, and I wasn’t any of them.

  As if he could read my mind, he fixed his steely eyes on me. ‘And Kershaw, you’re in reserve. You can watch the match from the subs bench, but I wouldn’t get too excited – you won’t be playing.’

  He crunched up the sheet of paper and chucked it into the room.

  ‘Frankly, I’m already letting you closer to the pitch than you deserve.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I was a substitute. Not even a starting player. That meant that if no one else got injured, or needed a break, I’d end up spending the entire end-of-week match watching from the bench.

  Dad had made a banner to wave just for me, and he might as well have been coming to watch me sit in the park.

  I’d spent the whole afternoon in a sort of daze, getting hot flushes whenever I thought about Freddie’s arms wrapped round me, and cold shivers when my brain dragged itself back to picturing Dad’s face when I had to tell him about the match.

  At least, by the end of a long afternoon feeling like I’d got caught in a doorway between the North Pole and the Sahara, I’d come up with a solution to one of my problems.

  I just wasn’t going to tell Dad. Or Mum. At all.

  Something was bound to happen before the match to mean I wouldn’t have to. Somebody would call in with flu, or break something painful but non-essential, and I’d be ready to step up. Or maybe this was just Jez trying to scare me, and tomorrow it would turn out to be a double bluff.

  There was still time. In two days, someone else might annoy him even more than I somehow had, and he’d switch our roles.

  It was all going to work out, so there was no point telling anyone about it before I absolutely had to. Dad would only come down and create a fuss, and then I’d die of embarrassment, and Jez would probably still prop me up on the bench for everyone to laugh at, even as rigor mortis gradually set in.

  I wasn’t even going to tell Kayla. That felt wrong, somehow, but I knew how angry she’d be on my behalf, and my parents were bound to figure out something was up if she started walking round like a bull in search of a matador to gore.

  Although, that was ignoring her weird psychic ability to figure out when something was wrong with me . . . She knew as soon as I got in the car. We were all going to a restaurant for an evening hopefully uninterrupted by hamsters that go bump in the night. I’d been looking forward to it all day. But now I was dreading having to spend a family meal living a lie.

  Kayla needled me in the ribs with an elbow as soon as Dad turned up the radio too loud for him to overhear what we were saying.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  See? I looked at Kayla, open-mouthed. ‘How did you know something was?’

  ‘You look like someone gave your puppy to a farm, then told you it got run over by a car, Dylan. You look miserable. That was my first clue.’

  She really was uncanny.

  I still couldn’t tell her about Jez singling me out, though. She’d be snorting fury over her steak and chips. So I went for the slightly less awful option.

  ‘You know how I’ve been feeling weird about my crush on Freddie?’

  Kayla nodded.

  ‘Well, the part I didn’t say was . . . the part that makes it difficult is . . .’

  Is it would be fine if it was just a crush. If he was just a bit distracting, but nothing would ever – could ever happen. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was . . .

  ‘The part that makes it difficult is that I think he has a crush on me too.’

  Kayla’s eyes widened. I knew it was bad, but I hadn’t expected her to look quite so shocked. She’d had a new boyfriend every term last year at school, plus Summer over the summer, so usually she took matters of romance in her stride. Not this,
though. She clutched my arm.

  ‘Oh, no.’

  I nodded sadly. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘Oh, Dylan.’

  She looked so concerned, I was starting to wonder if I hadn’t been worried enough. I paused while the presenter on the radio ran though his spiel between songs, looking over my shoulder to check my little brother wasn’t listening in from his window seat. Once another ‘ultimate 80s classic’ started rattling the windows, I asked, ‘What? What is it?’

  Kayla bit her lip. ‘It’s just . . . I’d been hoping you wouldn’t notice.’

  She’d what? I blinked at her. ‘You’d what?’

  ‘At least until the week was over. You’re usually so oblivious to obvious things like this.’

  ‘I don’t . . . Excuse me?’

  ‘I mean, you seem to think it’s so impossible anyone might like you. They usually have to put on a tutu and perform their intentions to you by way of interpretive dance before you become even vaguely aware of it. Come to think of it, isn’t that almost exactly what Leo did?’

  ‘What?’ I was baffled by this sudden turn of events. ‘No. I suppose . . . I did see him dancing, and that was when I realized . . . Look, that isn’t important. We’re talking about Freddie Alton now. You know, Freddie Alton, sports captain at school? Perfect in every way? So good-looking even Lacey Laine was willing to follow him into a haunted hallway looking for an imaginary cat?’ I folded my arms. ‘Why would I ever think someone like that would like someone like me?’

  Kayla ticked off a silent checklist on her fingers. ‘Oh, I can think of a few reasons. So why do you think it now?’

  ‘Because he told me,’ I said huffily.

  ‘Ah.’ Kayla sighed and relaxed back in her seat. ‘Well, that explains it. Panic over. You haven’t developed sudden powers of observation at all. Only powers of hearing, and you had those before.’

  Somehow this all seemed very unfair on me. Kayla clicked her tongue.

  ‘I did hope you wouldn’t figure it out while you were still playing together, though.’

  She was so confusing. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because you’re going to find some way to torture yourself about it. I know you,’ she said. ‘It’s just what you do.’

  ‘I do not,’ I hissed, and I slumped back, staring through the car window.

  A second later, I turned back to her. ‘But what am I supposed to do? I’m still getting used to one person I like liking me. How am I supposed to cope with two?’

  ‘Three,’ Kayla said.

  I frowned at her, and she pointed at herself.

  ‘Always nice to be completely overlooked by you, Dylan. I happen to like you too. Not that way, but it shouldn’t be so impossible that other people might.’

  ‘You know what I mean, though. That way makes things different. It would be much easier if it was just you.’

  She laughed. ‘Well, maybe I should try growing a couple of feet and a beard . . . and you can date me instead. I’m much less complicated.’

  ‘Except you like girls now,’ I reminded her.

  ‘No – I like boys and girls,’ she corrected. ‘It’s called being bi.’

  I knew that, obviously. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask, actually. You know there’s supposed to be an instinctive way gay people figure out who else is like them?’

  ‘Gaydar?’ Kayla tried.

  I nodded. ‘Yeah. Well how do bi people do it?’

  Kayla smiled and raised her eyebrows mysteriously. ‘Dylan, I can’t believe you’ve never heard of bi-noculars.’

  Any response I wanted to give to that got cut off as Dad pulled the car into a space on the side of the street, dousing the version of ‘Eternal Flame’ that Mum had been singing along to. He rapped on the window.

  ‘This looks like the place.’

  I wasn’t sure which restaurant he meant, but the street up ahead was hung with bunting, like someone was having a party. The whole place was decked with all the colours of the rainbow.

  Kayla opened the door on her side, and we both piled out to see what Dad had been pointing at. On the wall opposite us, someone had painted a mural. An oversized street sign, marked with the words OUR GAY VILLAGE.

  Dad was grinning. ‘I just thought it might be something you’d like to see.’

  TWENTY-SIX

  It turned out a gay village wasn’t just a rural community full of very happy people. Manchester’s gay village was based around a street right in the centre of the city, running alongside a canal. Dad said it was just somewhere most people weren’t straight, rather than the other way around, but as we looked through the windows of the bars and restaurants, and watched people walking by, I couldn’t help thinking it was a bit more than that.

  It was a place where it didn’t feel different not to be straight. Or at least, not like being different might be a bad thing.

  It’s stupid, really, feeling bad about being different, because the only thing most people have in common is that we’re all a bit different somehow. We’re all a unique combination of differences: like how some people are tall, and some are short, and some people like runny cheese, and some people would rather bathe in the distilled essence of human feet than put a stinky brie near their mouths. It’s our own assortment of different bits that makes us who we are.

  But in the gay village, on Canal Street, men could hold hands with men, and women could hold hands with women, and no one would look at them like it was an unusual thing to do. They wouldn’t have to worry about getting a comment from someone who didn’t understand how other people could be different to them.

  And I thought that must be why the people who came here called it a village, not just a street. Because a village is a kind of community, really, and this felt a little bit like that.

  Just ahead of me, Jude was loudly singing a rainbow, while Mum and Dad reminded him which order the colours went.

  Kayla hooked her elbow round mine and leaned her head against my shoulder. ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘Just that I really, really wish I could come here with Leo one day,’ I said. ‘No offence or anything. I like being here with you too. It’s just not—’

  ‘The same,’ Kayla finished. ‘But it’s Leo you’re thinking about?’

  I closed my eyes for a minute and pictured myself holding his hand. No one else came to mind, even for a moment. Not even Tom Holland and his Spider-Man arms. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Then I don’t think you need to worry about Freddie’s crush.’

  I sighed. ‘But what if things don’t work out? What if Leo came here and thought about holding hands with some gorgeous dancer instead? Someone who can kick their ankle up by their head and lift another person up like they’re making them fly? What if Leo’s already going off me, and by the time I find out, Freddie’s had time to stop liking me too? And what if I end up alone and lonely, photoshopping myself into holiday brochure pictures and posting them on social media to make it look like I have a life?’

  Kayla nudged a pebble with her foot and watched it rattle down into the canal. ‘Well. I suppose that’s possible, in a world where I stop existing for no apparent reason, and Leo and Freddie are the only two people to find you tolerable for the rest of your life.’

  ‘See?’ I said. ‘It’s possible! If I wait for the chance to hold hands with Leo somewhere like this, that could be how things end up.’

  ‘Or,’ Kayla countered, ‘if you wait for the chance to hold hands with Leo somewhere like this, it could happen, and be the best day of your life.’

  ‘So what do I do?’ I asked desperately.

  ‘Well, Dylan,’ she said. ‘I suppose you decide whether it’s worth waiting to find out which way things go.’

  ‘Hurry up! We’re getting tiny sandwiches!’ Jude yelled across from the doorway of a tea room.

  Mum was leaning on the back of his chair, reading the menu for herself despite Jude’s proclamation. And Dad was watching me watching everything else, with the kind of smile on his face that made
me forgive him for dragging me to football camp when I’d wanted to sit at home and mope. It even made me forgive him for most of the terrible football chants he came up with.

  And it made me want to make him proud, even more than ever.

  Something had to get me off that subs bench before the game.

  Dad spent most of the meal finding new ways to ask how things at Feet of the Future were going, while I spent most of it finding new ways of dodging the question.

  By the time we were heading back to the hotel, I had a trickle of cold sweat running down the back of my neck, and I’d somehow managed to convince Dad that Jez wasn’t telling anyone which positions they’d be playing until the morning of the match because he liked keeping people on their toes.

  It wasn’t really a lie. I definitely intended to find out I had a new position before the match, and Jez kept me on my toes all the time, running his ridiculous laps.

  Luckily Jude was happy to take all the attention I was trying to avoid. He showed Dad some of the new moves he was learning in the hotel car park, swerving his powerchair between the cars like they were part of a slalom course. I might have been a gigantic disappointment waiting to happen, but maybe Jude was going to be the real athlete in the family.

  Or, like Dad, maybe I was getting ahead of myself just a bit. I definitely reassessed my opinion once he ran over my toes. ‘Hey, watch where you’re going, or I’ll report you for drunk driving.’

  ‘He only had a milkshake!’ Kayla laughed.

  ‘He had two,’ I reminded her. ‘That’s the problem – he’s drunk on sugar.’

  But Jude was swerving off in another direction now.

  Mum reached out to put a steadying hand on the back of his chair. ‘And where do you think you’re going?’