Boy Meets Ghoul Read online

  ‘It got harder and harder,’ Dad finished.

  I was relieved he seemed to understand. In fact, he looked a bit sheepish – scratching the back of his head and not quite making eye contact.

  ‘Well, I can’t really blame you when your mum and I have been setting Jude up on Skype chats with a rented hamster all week.’

  ‘Rented?’

  ‘Your gran got one from a class pet-lending scheme at the local primary school. Bribed one of the kids. He has to go back when term starts, or the game’ll be up.’

  I whistled softly. ‘Who knew Gran was a criminal mastermind. And you too – I can’t believe you’ve had Jude chatting to a faux Fluffy.’

  ‘I can’t believe he knew it was a fake and never said a word,’ Dad spluttered. ‘Sneaky kid.’

  We looked at each other. ‘Must run in the family.’

  While we were on the subject of secrets and lies, I realized this was the time to tell him not to bother coming to the match that afternoon. Jez was bound to do everything to stop me getting off the bench, and I didn’t want Dad sitting there embarrassed to be supporting someone who sat on their bum for ninety minutes.

  I just had to find a way of telling him about it that wouldn’t result in him picketing the pitch in protest at the way Jez had acted. Maybe if I just started talking, the right words would somehow find themselves.

  ‘Dad, I—’

  Some people get saved by the bell when they’ve got bad news to deliver. I got saved by a long, anguished scream from down the hall.

  Alonzo was standing in front of Rick’s hotel room door, clutching a remote control that must have operated all the extra security features that kept Rick locked out last night.

  ‘Empty . . .’ he was muttering to himself, frantic. ‘How can it be empty? Alonzo, you have lost a star. Kidnapped! Why! Why?’ He flung himself against the door. ‘So talented. So innocent. So pure. No, no. Please, let there be a miracle. Let them come back and take me!’

  Dad cleared his throat.

  Alonzo ignored him, beating his fists dramatically against the door.

  So I put two fingers between my lips and whistled. It’s one of my talents besides being decent at football: really, really loud whistles.

  Actually, it was possible my talents were just the football and that. Maybe being good at both meant I had a future as a referee.

  It made Alonzo look up, though. He narrowed his eyes at us, probably wondering where he’d seen my face before.

  ‘Who are you?’ he sniffed.

  I grinned. ‘Oh, just miracle workers.’

  Kayla burst out of our hotel room door, her hands firmly set on her hips. ‘Who made that terrible noise? Don’t you know the world’s most grammy-nominated death-metal artiste has been trying to sleep in here?’

  Alonzo rubbed the tears away from one eye, then the other. He blinked at Kayla. And then he broke into a run.

  After an emotional reunion, Alonzo started to fuss Rick into going back to his own room. Meanwhile, Kayla was trying to fuss him into staying. I thought they might have an actual fight over it for a while, but she was finally persuaded to let him go – though only once he was clutching her sparkly pink travel cup full of fresh herbal tea ‘for the journey’.

  Rick looked genuinely touched by the gift.

  ‘I’ll remember this kindness. And I’ll never forget you, Layla Flores.’

  He drifted out into the hall. I stopped Alonzo for a second, before he could follow.

  ‘So um, I don’t suppose there’s a chance of getting tickets for tonight? For services rendered to rock?’

  Alonzo laughed, as if I’d just asked him to get me a piece of the moon. ‘There is not – how you say – a snowball’s chance in hell. The concert, it has been sold out for months. However, I will leave a bag of merchandise for you at reception, in gratitude.’

  He trotted after Rick, dashing into his suite seconds before the door closed. From behind it, I could hear the sound of a dozen locks being set.

  Nervously I turned back to Kayla. I wasn’t sure if meeting Rick this way had been exactly what she’d had in mind. ‘How are you?’

  She hugged herself, sighing happily. ‘You were right – you should never give up on your dreams. Rick Deathsplash knows my name.’

  I must have looked surprised.

  ‘He knows most of my name,’ she went on. ‘It’s near enough. And it may not have been quite the exchange of beautiful minds I wanted, but maybe an exchange of beautiful travel mugs is near enough.’

  Humming something that might have been ‘Dancing Queen’, she took her own mug of tea and shimmied back towards her bedroom. Dad had gone to begin the slow and delicate process of waking Mum up without getting his head ripped off for it, which left me with Jude.

  He’d stayed on the couch roughly where I’d left him, munching on a breakfast biscuit and watching episodes of Twinkle the Talking Train with the volume turned down so as not to disturb Rick when he slept. Jude knew the words to every episode already, so it wasn’t too much of a sacrifice.

  I settled in next to him, reaching over to break off a bit of his biscuit as he squirmed in protest.

  ‘Haven’t you already had breakfast?’ I asked.

  Jude pushed the rest of his snack into his mouth and spoke through the crumbs. ‘Only one.’

  ‘Well, I suppose you do need to keep your strength up. You’ve got a game today too.’

  Whizzy Wheels were holding demonstration matches all day. Jude was in the youngest group, so he’d be up first that morning. It meant Dad could fit us both in.

  ‘I wish I could come to yours. Want to know a secret?’ I asked.

  Jude nodded – he loved secrets.

  ‘I think I’d rather be at your match than mine. But you have to do something for me, OK?’

  Jude was still young enough to agree to things without worrying whether the question was a trap, so he nodded easily. ‘You’ve got to play the best you ever have. Give Dad something to cheer about. And get him to video it so I can watch you later.’

  ‘On the TV,’ Jude said, perking up considerably. ‘Just like Twinkle.’

  I grinned. ‘You’ve even got the wheels to match.’

  He’d actually had a Twinkle the talking train Halloween costume made that incorporated his chair. It was one of the coolest things I’d ever seen. I was about to go and start getting ready, when Jude pulled my sleeve and kept me there.

  ‘Dyl?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘When will I get Fluffy back?’

  Ooof. I sank back into the sofa cushions, trying not to make eye contact. At least if the hamster had been turned into a coat, we’d know what had happened to him. As it was, the only thing Fluffy was cloaked in was mystery.

  ‘I don’t know yet. We’ve been trying to find him, I promise. I know you wish you had him back and . . . I want you to have everything you wish for. Even if that would probably mean some crazy things, like crisps for every meal or a bed made of Lego. But even if I’m trying my hardest, I don’t know if I can make every wish come true. We’ll keep looking, OK?’

  Jude’s lip quivered, but he squeezed my hand and smiled.

  I grinned back. ‘Anything else?’

  He paused for a minute, then said thoughtfully, ‘I wish I could have another biscuit.’

  Sneaky. It definitely runs in the family. ‘Like I said, we don’t just get everything we wish for.’

  I ruffled his hair and stood up. It was definitely true. I didn’t even know how I wished today would turn out any more. Sometimes you have to stop wishing for things and just let them happen instead.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  The pre-match build-up at Feet of the Future meant there was a weird atmosphere in the training ground. Jez gave us a list of warm-ups and then left Laurie to run everyone through them while he worked with the team of ‘old pros’ – mostly league players who’d gotten a bit too old and slow. That didn’t make them any less impressive, though. They’d played r
eal matches, on actual TV, with proper commentators calling them rubbish and mispronouncing their names.

  Most of our team were watching Jez’s, making their own register of the players they recognized. It was enough to make anyone forget that we were actually supposed to be Jez’s team.

  The nerves were building in everyone. Chidi had stopped talking about the possibility of being scouted. In fact, he’d stopped talking at all, which was definitely a first. He was looking a little bit more ashen every time a new pro player walked through the doors.

  Leroy was worrying too. ‘Mum keeps saying I’ll be the pride of the valleys,’ he said with a gulp, joining me for some lunges and lifts.

  ‘Maybe you will,’ I told him. ‘And if not, who except her is going to know?’

  That seemed to make him more nervous somehow. Any other attempts at conversation were met with a wide-eyed stare.

  I kept telling myself there was no point being afraid of what Dad would think: it was too late to change anything now. Kayla would probably end up telling him before I could, anyway. It wasn’t just me who’d been keeping secrets that Mum and Dad were inevitably going to find out today – she still hadn’t told them she wasn’t a cheerleader.

  In fact, since she wasn’t cheerleading, and the Ghoulish Games contest was over, I wasn’t totally sure where Kayla was. She had a new fake reason for being there – as Lacey Laine’s personal assistant – but Lacey hadn’t arrived yet, so there wasn’t anything to assist with.

  A small thread of worry twisting inside me, I waited until the last break before the match, and dashed down to the back offices to look for her.

  There was no one there. I tried every door, but they were all locked. Even the secret locker shrine to our invented dead player had been taken down – which I thought was pretty disrespectful, actually. There was no sign of Kayla anywhere, even though I pressed my face so hard against the glass of the office she’d been using that it left a nose print.

  ‘I’d been wondering where she was too,’ Freddie said from behind me, startling me so much I tipped forward and left a forehead print on the glass to match the dot of my nose. I rubbed my temples as I turned round to squint at him.

  ‘So you came to look for her?’

  He smiled, rubbing his hand against the back of his slightly pinkish-looking neck. Was he blushing?

  ‘No, Dylan. I came to look for you.’

  ‘But I’m not lost; I’ve been on the pitch all morning. Though I don’t know why I’m bothering to warm up for a hectic afternoon of sitting around watching football.’

  Freddie took a step closer. ‘No – I meant I came to find you because I wanted to catch you alone.’

  I couldn’t take a step anywhere. Freddie was right in front of me, and the office wall was at my back. He’d have moved if I’d wanted him to. It was just that I felt strangely frozen in place. ‘I mean, from what I’ve seen people do on match days at Dad’s pub, I should be warming up by developing a high tolerance for pork scratchings and practising my beer burps.’

  I knew Freddie was trying to say something, but I just couldn’t stop talking. It was like my mouth was Jude’s toy cupboard, and what was coming out was rapid and unstoppable, like all the building blocks that fell on my head every time I opened it.

  ‘I should be warming up by yelling about how blind the ref is and making a list of which swear words rhyme so I can make up chants about the opposition.’

  Freddie was half smiling, but he looked somehow serious too. Intent. That was the word. He looked really intent.

  ‘Then I can spend five minutes doing reps of scratching my bum and waving at a mate to fetch in another round of drinks. That’s how I should be—’

  The next words were going to be ‘warming up’, but they got lost, somehow, somewhere in the gentle press of Freddie’s mouth against mine.

  I’d had dreams like this. Before I’d even spoken to Freddie. Before I’d ever had a boyfriend or knew what kissing was really like, I’d imagined finding out with Freddie Alton. But the trouble with dreams coming true is, sometimes you find out that they aren’t really what you want any more.

  Because I had a boyfriend now. And I suddenly knew for absolute certain that the only person in the whole world I really wanted to kiss was him. More than anything. Definitely more than I wanted to kiss Freddie, who I really, really liked, but in a weird kind of way, where I’d stopped wanting to press our mouths together and just wanted to hang out and chat instead.

  I put my hand against his chest and pushed.

  It wasn’t enough to push him away, not properly. But it made him step back, quickly, and look down at my hand. He looked a little bit sad when he lifted his head again, but sort of like he’d expected it too.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I just had to know.’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s all right – I think I had to know too. I’d been wondering about it all week. And I like you – I like you so much. But—’

  ‘But you have a boyfriend,’ Freddie filled in.

  ‘Yeah. I mean, I hope I do. I spent a whole day ignoring him for stupid reasons yesterday, so I’m not really sure any more. But I still want to have a boyfriend, if he hasn’t totally gone off me and left to join some sort of retreat for single dancers who’ve finished with their idiot boyfriends and plan to devote the rest of their lives to their love of dance instead.’

  I was trying to picture what sort of robes dance monks would wear, when I realized I might have been rambling a bit. Freddie looked slightly confused.

  I reached for my point and tried again. ‘What I mean is, I can’t kiss someone else when I still want to kiss him. It wouldn’t be fair.’

  Freddie smiled. ‘That makes sense. Or I think it does – I’m not sure about the dance retreat bit in the middle.’

  ‘This won’t make things weird, will it?’ I asked.

  ‘No weirder than you are already.’ Freddie laughed. ‘But that’s what I like about you, so – no.’

  He checked his watch and took a couple more steps down the hall. ‘We’d better get back, they’ll be letting the crowd in soon. Mum’s booked three extra seats for her banner.’

  I shook my head, grinning and falling into step next to him. ‘The only reason I haven’t told Dad I’m a reserve yet is that I didn’t want to give him time to come up with a supportive chant rhyming with the word bench.’

  ‘Clench?’ Freddie suggested. ‘Wrench?’

  ‘Oh god, don’t you start too . . .’

  He looked me over and suggested as seriously as he could, ‘Hench?’

  Laughing, I pushed him through the changing-room doors and out on to the pitch, just in time to see Lacey Laine make her entrance.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  There was no other way of describing it: Lacey was wearing the pitch. Her short green dress was covered in the same sort of AstroTurf we were running on, or a designer version that looked exactly like it. She was holding a black and white polka-dot spherical bag and there was something pinned across her face that looked like . . . a net? It was tucked into her hair with little white sticks.

  ‘She’s wearing a goal as a veil,’ Leroy whispered, sounding awed.

  Chidi shook his head. ‘That woman knows how to work a look.’

  She really, really did. I was distracted for a moment thinking about my future as a POD and wondering what I would do to show my support if Leo were starring in a ballet or something. Maybe I could get a jacket made out of red velvet curtains.

  But I wasn’t distracted enough not to notice that one of Lacey’s most important accessories was missing: Kayla wasn’t with her.

  I jogged back to the dugout where I’d left my phone and sent her a quick message.

  Where are you? Need you here to stop Dad rage-rushing the pitch when he sees I’m not on.

  And then another.

  Worried about you too, I suppose. A bit.

  If I’d been honest about it, I’d have said I was considering ditching the match altogeth
er to go and look for her. They’d have to get a reserve reserve. It’s not like I’d be able to focus on the game without knowing where she was.

  Just as I was about to put it away, my phone buzzed in my hand. I’d been sent a video.

  A video of someone’s feet.

  Someone’s feet in jazz shoes, with baggy black dance trousers draping over the top of them. Slowly, the owner of the feet pointed one toe out in front of him, and a gentle voice started to narrate.

  ‘I’ve realized there are a lot of similarities between football and dance,’ the voice said. On-screen, the feet pointed out and pushed upward in one delicate motion.

  ‘We both have to stay on our toes . . .’

  The video panned out, and someone turned the camera round so it focused on a mirror opposite, showing their body from the neck down. He did a little dip, then kicked upwards, his foot easily reaching his chest. And then launched into the most graceful can-can I’d ever seen. Definitely more impressive than the version I’d seen Aunt Julie do on the dance floor at her wedding, right before she put a heel through the back of her dress and fell into the cake.

  The dance kept up for a few seconds before the camera panned up, bringing Leo’s face into shot. I smiled. It was just my automatic response to him now.

  ‘And we both have to keep on kicking. Glad to know you still are – I was worried for a minute yesterday. Anyway, I just wanted to say good luck properly. From my feet to yours. Miss you, Dyl. See you later.’

  I couldn’t wait. I was going to video call him the first spare second I had.

  But I still hadn’t heard from Kayla, and my spare seconds were running out fast.

  Jez had come over from working with ‘his’ team of pros, like he’d only just remembered we existed. He called everyone into a huddle. Even reserves were included in the team talk, but I took my time getting over there so I wouldn’t have to stand too close.

  ‘Now,’ Jez was saying, ‘remember, not only are your folks going to be out there today, but also some people who really matter. People who’ll be eyeing you up, wondering if you’re worth anything. And most of you lot are pushing it for getting into a youth squad, so if you’re not worth anything now, you never will be. Remember that. After today, you may as well forget it. So get on the pitch and just try not to make total embarrassments of yourselves.’