Boy Meets Ghoul Page 19

  ‘No,’ he said, sounding a little stung. ‘But – is that the hamster you’ve been looking for?’

  He pointed to the doors of the bus, which were just sliding closed behind the roadie . . . the roadie and the slightly open guitar case in his arms, through which an orange, whiskery face was only just visible.

  Fluffy.

  ‘Stop that bus!’ Kayla and I both surged forward as one, and I was sure I saw the driver look over at us and roll his eyes, before turning the black, glittering bus out of the hotel grounds and off into the night.

  It was over.

  Fluffy was off to live a rock-and-roll lifestyle, and Kayla and I didn’t even have tickets to watch. We stood, panting breathlessly, in the middle of the car park.

  ‘What do we do now?’ I asked her, staring after the bus.

  She just shook her head.

  ‘Road trip?’ someone asked brightly. Lacey and her illuminated dress stepped forward and took both our hands. ‘How does a visit to Old Trafford sound?’

  ‘But –’ I stared at her.

  ‘We –’ Kayla shook her head. ‘We’ve been trying to get tickets all week. There’s no way they’ll let us in for a hamster.’

  ‘Oh, maybe not the normal way.’ Lacey grinned at us as if we were both just a little bit dopey. ‘We’ll just have to go in backstage.’

  Kayla turned so pale so suddenly that I reached a hand out to catch her arm before I managed to say, ‘Yes! Please? Can we?’

  ‘No,’ said Jez Dutton.

  All five of us spun round to see Jez leaning against the lobby doors. Now the hamster was safely off the premises, he seemed to have regained his composure.

  ‘Excuse me?’ Lacey said.

  He shook his head. ‘I said no, Lace. I forbid you to take those kids out of here. And you’re not taking the car. You try it, and you can forget about us.’

  Lacey’s perfectly pink mouth twisted into a tight knot. ‘I think you’re forgetting one or two things, Jeremy,’ she said.

  ‘Jeremy,’ Freddie mouthed across at me. If there’s one thing mums and teachers have in common, it’s a way of using your full name when they’re really angry. Apparently girlfriends did it too.

  ‘First of all, I paid for the car. Second, the whole world’s forgotten about you already. Do you really think I’ll have that hard a time doing the same?’ She twisted a heel on the ground like she was stubbing out a cigarette. ‘And third, like I told you last night, you don’t get to tell me what to do. Not any more.’

  She whipped a phone out of her pocket and pressed a button before speaking into it.

  ‘Teri, bring the car round. We’re taking the party somewhere else.’

  Jez looked like she’d reached out and slapped him from right across the car park. He was silent for a minute before starting to stumble across towards us. ‘Lace? Lace . . . you don’t mean that. I didn’t mean . . . Lace?’

  She held up the palm of her hand – American reality-show sign language for Please stop talking – as a black car swung in through the car-park gates.

  ‘Everyone coming?’ Lacey asked us chirpily.

  Leroy held up his own phone. ‘I’ve been texting Mum. She says she’ll tell everyone and follow the car.’

  ‘Well, thank goodness for your quick thinking,’ Kayla said, teasing. Though, weirdly, she sounded sort of fond.

  I looked up at Lacey as she opened the back door to the car. It would be so much easier to just get another orange hamster from the nearest pet shop. But we couldn’t abandon Fluffy to a life on the road. He was only little, and rock stars were probably terrible influences. He’d be swallowing too many pellets and wrecking his cage before we knew it.

  So I nodded at Lacey. ‘Yeah, I’m coming. I guess everyone is.’

  FORTY-FOUR

  It turns out to be amazingly easy to get backstage at concerts if you’re really, really attractive and at least a little bit famous.

  Lacey winked at security as we waltzed in through one of the entrances usually reserved for premier-league footballers or rock stars. ‘I’ve got a date with Rick Deathsplash.’

  Kayla flicked her aquamarine hair and followed suit. ‘And I’ve got one with Jenna Deathsplash.’

  Freddie, Leroy and me were up next.

  Leroy smiled coquettishly at the hulking guard. ‘And we’re here to see . . .’ He paused, squinting uncertainly at me. ‘Are they a band, these Deathsplashers? Or some sort of comedy act?’

  ‘They’re with me,’ Lacey interrupted, taking wristband passes for each of us as Kayla dragged Leroy through by one of his sleeves. ‘Every girl needs an entourage.’

  Backstage was madness. There were men in black running backwards and forwards holding rolls of gaffer tape as thick as car wheels and clutching bundles of wires, or electric guitars, or oversized inflatable props. As we edged around to the stage area, I could see backing dancers warming up for the show. There was a troupe of vampire girls in red and black tutus, and a motley collection of other spooky creatures behind them: evil clowns doing high kicks, and apparitions in white sheets or black cloaks bending and stretching. There was even a werewolf practising pirouettes, its giant foam head a blur as it spun.

  For a moment, it almost made me nostalgic. Although when I’d watched Leo warm up with those kinds of moves, he’d been dressed as a giant orange hamster, not something that might eat hamsters as a midnight snack.

  And speaking of hamsters . . .

  ‘We have to track down Fluffy,’ I said firmly.

  The others were gawping as much as I was, even Lacey looked a little bit awed by the spectacle. But there wasn’t much time. In twenty minutes, the band would hit the stage, and we’d probably get penned in somewhere to watch. Our Fluffy-finding minutes were ticking down fast.

  ‘We should find that roadie,’ Kayla said, wrenching her eyes away from the stage. ‘He had the hamster last.’

  ‘But it was in an instrument case – shouldn’t we look for where they stash those first?’ Freddie asked.

  Lacey swept up her skirt in one hand and looped her other arm through Kayla’s. ‘If we split up, we can do both. Kayla, Leroy and I can charm a few people into telling us if Fluffy was spotted on the bus. You two, find where they store the instruments.’

  She swept off, Kayla and Leroy keeping up on either side. I wasn’t sure exactly how Leroy was going to help with their charm offensive, even if he could be quite persuasive when he got that kicked-puppy air about him.

  There wasn’t time to wonder about it for long. We had to find out where the band’s instruments were kept, and it wasn’t exactly the kind of question we could just ask someone. It was one of those situations where if you didn’t know, you probably weren’t supposed to. Asking might make it sound like we planned to grab a couple of guitars and storm the stage during the show.

  Nobody here was going to know that my stage fright was legendary, or that the only instrument I’d ever learned to play was the recorder – and even then, I’d never got much further than the melodic masterpiece that was ‘Gilbert Goblin Gobbled Up Goats’.

  Last time I’d tried karaoke, I was pretty sure people had rioted just to get me to stop singing. I definitely wasn’t cut out for rock stardom. So we had to think. With Freddie looking blank, I tried to remember anything that might be useful from the thousands of concert videos Kayla had made me watch.

  ‘They get through dozens of guitars during the show,’ I said slowly. ‘They’ve even got wooden acoustic ones, just because they look better when they’re smashed. Fluffy hid in one of those at the hotel before. His cage is full of wood shavings – it must have felt a bit like a nest.’

  ‘Sounds like a good place to start.’ Freddie nodded. ‘So if they smash them during the show . . .’

  ‘They have to be kept close to the stage. Really close,’ I finished.

  We looked at each other and headed towards where the dancers were working through their pre-show warm-ups. Most of the ‘backstage’ area at the stadi
um meant the kind of hallways and corridors the players and staff would have used during matches there. But the stage was set up specially, jutting out over the pitch at the Stretford End, with a specially constructed cover over the terraces behind. That was where the preparations were taking place.

  As well as the dancers, microphones were being checked, and someone was on their knees taping over wires. Most of the wires led to a big globe-shaped box with an exclamation mark painted on the side and a black and yellow warning: CAUTION: PYROTECHNICS.

  Freddie and I slid and skidded between the dancers, working on the assumption that if we moved fast and looked like we knew where we were going, nobody would stop us.

  We made it into a narrow half-lit room behind the big screens at the back of the stage, where the walls were lined with racks holding an endless line-up of guitars. They were hung individually, each under a label for the band member who’d either play it or destroy it. One row just read Fakes.

  Another rack in the corner held an almost equal number of empty cases. After taking a deep breath, Freddie headed that way.

  ‘I’ll check those.’

  I walked towards the fakes wall. ‘We’re going to get arrested, aren’t we? We’ll be locked up for unauthorized instrument fondling. I’m sorry I’ve ended up dragging you into this too.’

  Freddie grinned at me, pulling down a case and unzipping it. ‘It’s not so bad. For a while back there, I thought my night was going to turn out a whole lot worse.’

  ‘Because of everything with Jez?’ I asked, peering into the sound hole of one of the decoy guitars, and tipping it upside down to shake out any small, fuzzy stowaways.

  ‘No, because of things with Mum.’

  I looked at him. His mum had seemed over the moon, until we totally destroyed her party.

  Freddie sighed, scrubbing a hand through the back of his hair as he tugged at another casing. He didn’t look at me. ‘I sort of came out to her, right before the whole trophy thing happened.’

  I wasn’t sure exactly when my mouth had fallen open. I pushed a hand up under my chin to close it again. ‘You told her you were gay at a party?’

  It seemed like weird timing, but sometimes you couldn’t help where it happened. I’d waited years for the right moment to tell my mum and dad, and I didn’t realize until after they found out for themselves that there wasn’t any such thing as a wrong moment, really.

  But Freddie was shaking his head vigorously. ‘No, I haven’t told her that yet – although I don’t think that’s going to be too bad. I mean I told her I didn’t want to be a footballer. That I want to be a doctor instead.’

  ‘Oh.’ I let out the breath I’d been holding. ‘How did that go?’

  Freddie grimaced. ‘She told me she’d love me no matter what, but didn’t I think I might just be going through a phase?’

  He shoved another empty case back into the rack, hard, and looked at me. ‘I mean, I love football – I just can’t make myself love it that way.’

  I abandoned the latest hamster-free guitar and walked over to him. ‘She’ll get used to the idea. It might just take her a while.’

  I was reaching out to put a hand on his shoulder, when a dark shadow fell across the floor between us. I looked up to see the dancing werewolf looming menacingly in the doorway.

  ‘It’s not what it looks like!’ I backed up, hands in the air. ‘We weren’t doing anything to the guitars. We’re . . . We’re instrumentologists. This is research.’

  The werewolf only padded towards us, reaching up to take off his huge hairy head, when we all heard a series of squeals and screeches from just outside. A woman’s voice cut in above the rest of the noise: ‘Is that a . . . Is that a rat?’

  Without even looking at each other, Freddie and I bolted for the door, leaving the wolf in our wake.

  FORTY-FIVE

  We raced out of the backstage room, only to be immediately forced back by the wall of noise that hit us. While we’d been hidden away fondling guitars, someone had decided to let in the crowd.

  From our spot behind the stage, we could see the whole stadium. The terraces were filling with Deathsplash fans taking their seats, turning the rows from red to black. The whole place glittered as hundreds of phone screens were lifted up to snap a picture.

  And on the platform that had been put up over the pitch, another barrage of fans was rushing towards the stage. Yellow-jacketed security teams linked arms and braced for the onslaught. It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen in my life, and I’d once walked in on the staff Christmas party at school, where the deputy head was doing an open-shirted, growly impression of Tom Jones.

  This was at least six times scarier than that.

  Freddie had kept running, until he realized I wasn’t with him any more. He turned back to me, looking confused. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Well, except I can’t feel my legs. In fact, the only bit of me I can feel is my stomach, and that’s only because I think I might throw up. Have you seen all those people?’

  Getting back to my side, Freddie turned to take a look. ‘Pretty impressive, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s one way of putting it.’ I’d definitely have put it another way, but just then it was hard enough work remembering to breathe.

  ‘They can’t see us, if it helps. Most of them can’t, anyway. There might be a little section right over that side that can see backstage.’

  ‘So just a few thousand people, then.’ I tried the usually simple task of putting one foot in front of the other. My legs felt like clay. Clay that was slowly drying and sticking to the floor. If I didn’t move soon, I’d probably be stuck there forever, a permanent part of the set.

  Just ahead of us, a man wearing a fire-warden vest and a worried expression ran forward. He set a fire extinguisher on the floor a short distance away from the pyrotechnic globe we’d seen being worked on before. Then he edged back and talked into his headset.

  ‘What do you mean, it’ll take the technician some time? We haven’t got time. There’s a rodent in the box, and if he chews through the wrong thing, we’ll all be seeing sparks.’

  Freddie and I looked at each other. I was pretty sure the look of recognition and horror on his face exactly matched my own.

  Fluffy.

  Of course the stupid hamster would choose that as a hiding place. It was shaped just like the ball Jude let him run around in at home, only bigger and sturdier. He probably thought he’d been given a luxury upgrade. It was just bad luck that his new penthouse suite happened to be filled with fireworks primed to go off.

  I started forward in a rush, as though the rubber bands tying my legs in place had suddenly snapped.

  ‘That’s not a rodent – that’s our hamster. We have to get him out!’ I yelled.

  Obviously we had to. The fireworks were probably meant for the moment when Deathsplash rocked on to the stage. I’d heard of singers biting the heads off chickens as part of their act, but I couldn’t let Rick Deathsplash start his off by catapulting an innocent hamster into the crowd.

  The fire warden held up his hand. ‘I don’t think so. I have to maintain a five-foot exclusion zone around this equipment until we get technical support. It’s been compromised.’

  ‘It’s been nested in!’ I protested, dropping to my knees and starting to crawl towards the globe. Surely it couldn’t be too hard to shake Fluffy out of there without both of us going up in a shower of dazzling gold sparks.

  My arms and legs moved, but I wasn’t getting any further forward. I looked round to find Freddie with a hand twisted in my shirt to hold me back.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Dylan. If Fluffy’s chewing through wires in there, it could go off at any second!’

  The vampette dancers, who’d been crowding in around us since we’d tracked Fluffy to the explosive globe, started tiptoeing backwards again.

  ‘Then we have to get him out fast,’ I said, trying to wriggle out of his grip.

  And failing.
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  ‘Will you let me go?’

  ‘I can’t let you blow yourself up for a hamster!’ Freddie protested.

  A white stiletto clicked down on either side of the trail of wires leading to the globe. The fire-safety officer rolled away to one side. Freddie managed to drag me a few feet backwards on the other.

  ‘It’s all right, boys,’ said Lacey Laine. ‘Nobody dies on my watch.’

  Leroy and Kayla stood just behind her, Kayla’s face lit by the screen of her phone. I could nearly make out the Wikipedia article she was reading, reflected in the gleam of her highlighter.

  ‘According to the serial number, this is a ZF32 golden strobe mine. It can be operated on a timer and requires a vertical clearance of twenty-five feet for the fireworks’ full range.’

  ‘Twenty-five feet?’ the fire officer squawked, tapping his headset again. ‘We’re going to need a bigger exclusion zone.’

  ‘No,’ Lacey said. ‘We’re going to need to cut the power.’

  ‘Should we cut the wires?’ I asked, still trying to tug myself out of Freddie’s hold.

  Kayla produced a small make-up bag and drew out some nail scissors. ‘It’s usually the red one in films. Or is it usually not the red one?’

  ‘No – the first thing we need to do is a little simpler than that,’ Lacey said. She traced the route of the wiring along its path over the stage to a row of plugs set into the section of rigging that made up the stage wall. Even in her heels, which made her about the same height as me, it was way above her arm’s length. She frowned. ‘It’s the third one along, but I’m not going to be able to reach—’

  Before she’d even finished, a hairy shape flung itself at her from the shadows. For a moment, I almost thought Jez had shown up to beg her to come back, but it was the werewolf from before. With an easy kind of grace, he leaped up into the metal rigging and reached out one paw to drag the plug she’d indicated out of its socket.

  The lights across the whole of our side of the stage snuffed out.