Boy Meets Hamster Page 6

  Then he tripped straight over my foot. He stumbled, grunted, and pushed the glasses up into his hair as he turned and gave me a dismissive look. ‘Watch out, yeah? You might want to straighten up a bit.’

  Walking past me, he hooked an arm around the waist of the girl at the front of the queue, and disappeared into the smoke. It was like witnessing a grand entrance happening in reverse.

  Watching him, I felt my chest tighten up and realized I’d stopped breathing the second we’d made toe-contact. Now I wasn’t sure I wanted to start again. I’d read that people who were oxygen deprived sometimes had amazing hallucinations just as their brain started to give up. Maybe, right before I went into a coma, I could hallucinate that someone I fancied would ever actually give me a second look.

  Then Kayla smacked me on the back and hissed at me to inhale, and I sucked in an involuntary gasp of air. Fantastic, now I wouldn’t even get a hallucinatory date. I had the worst luck.

  ‘He’s got a girlfriend,’ I said, staring down the line of people at the empty space where Jayden-Lee used to be. A group of women dressed in fairy wings and sashes with CHANTAL’S HEN PARTAAAAY spelled out in rhinestones had taken his place. I wanted to crumble into dust.

  Kayla wrapped her arm around my shoulders, which I knew meant she was standing right on the tips of her toes. ‘Or he’s got a me.’

  She did have her arm round me, and we definitely didn’t fancy each other. I couldn’t argue with that. It just didn’t really make me feel any better.

  ‘Don’t be so fatalistic,’ Kayla said. ‘You don’t know who that was. It could have been his friend, or his sister, or anyone. How likely is it that he’d have found a girlfriend in a couple of days, anyway?’

  She kissed my cheek, then scrubbed away the glitter lip gloss she’d transferred, before turning her attention back to another beeping text message.

  Maybe she was right. Though it definitely wasn’t his sister: I’d been observing the Dramavan like a birdwatcher on the trail of a rare tit. There were definitely only three people in it.

  I didn’t want to think about how unlikely it might be for Jayden-Lee to have found a girlfriend in a short stay at the park. Because however slim the odds on that were, they had to be worse for him finding a boyfriend. The days Mum’s £9.50 payment had entitled us to already felt like they were ticking down fast.

  Maybe she was just a friend. People thought me and Kayla were together, sometimes, even though I’m even less her type than she is mine.

  As we moved further down the line, Kayla glanced up, examining my expression. ‘Feeling better? You’re still coming in, aren’t you?’

  I sighed and nodded. ‘I suppose. Although you just want to make sure I’m there to film you ballading people’s bits off.’

  ‘History should not go unrecorded,’ she confirmed with a grin.

  Once we got to the front, it was obvious why it was taking so long to get in. As well as Stacie, who was selling tickets on the door, there was a huge security guy checking the contents of everyone’s bag.

  I was kind of disappointed that it wasn’t Leo. It would have been interesting to see what the rest of his face looked like.

  Kayla put her bag on the table to be checked, and Stacie clipped off two tickets for us, then stamped both our hands with black crosses. ‘No fighting, no aiming projectiles at the performers, and no alcohol to be consumed if underage.’ She reeled the list off like a station announcement system going through stops on the train.

  Kayla nodded her head and, after a moment’s delay, I did the same.

  I hadn’t been to many places where people were drinking before. Someone once tried to smuggle it in for a school dance, but the teachers were on to that. One of them went round at the end of the afternoon walloping everyone’s gym bag with a kendo stick, and the owner of the one that made smashing noises was sent home immediately to wash the smell of Malibu off their football kit.

  Then there was Rohan Ward’s birthday last term, where he tried drinking 0.5 per cent alcoholic mouthwash, and ended up puking minty green.

  Just as we headed in, the music changed and somebody started wailing an off-key version of ‘I Will Always Love You’.

  I’d rather have puked minty mouthwash than had to get up and sing in front of strangers.

  Fortunately, there was no way that was going to happen.

  THIRTEEN

  ‘FLEAS ROVER HAIR,’ Kayla yelled over the music as we tried to shove our way through the crowd. It turned out that people loved karaoke. The whole place was rammed. She put her hand on my shoulder, just in case we got separated. It would have been like losing a blade of grass in a forest.

  ‘FLEAS WHAT?’ I screamed back. ‘IS THERE A DOG IN HERE?’

  Trying to talk and walk clearly wasn’t working. I bent my head down to Kayla-level, bringing my arms in on either side to make a little soundproof bubble in the middle of the melee.

  Well, sort of soundproof. I could still hear the woman onstage yodelling the letter ‘I’ as if it had twenty separate syllables (III-EE-AAIII-YEE-III WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOUUUU), but it wasn’t quite as deafening.

  ‘I said, she’s over there,’ Kayla repeated, tutting at me. ‘The girl Jayden-Lee came in with is over by the bar. Alone.’

  My head snapped up like a meerkat’s. I’d been not-so-subtly keeping an eye out for my new love rival. I wasn’t exactly scoring highly in the avoiding-embarrassing-situations stakes lately, and the last thing I wanted to do was walk straight into Jayden-Lee with his tongue down someone else’s throat.

  I mean, obviously I didn’t want to walk straight into Jayden-Lee at all, but if I did I’d rather it was one of those romantic movie moments where he’d spill his coffee and I’d drop my study notes all over the floor. And then when we both bent down to get them, our noses would bump in an adorable, definitely not nosebleed-causing kind of way.

  But I hadn’t brought study notes with me, or any kind of prop. I was completely unprepared for romantic collisions.

  The girl at the bar was ordering something that came with a cherry and a little umbrella on the side of the glass. I narrowed my eyes, trying to find something to hate about her, but it’s really hard to dislike a person based on the fact that they’ve touched the arm of the person whose arm you want to touch.

  ‘Go and talk to her for me?’ I turned back to Kayla, desperately, only to find her attention had wandered already. I grabbed the phone from her. ‘Seriously, can you get off this thing for five minutes?’

  Her dad couldn’t need that much babysitting.

  Kayla looked stung for a moment, then snatched her phone back. ‘You talk to her. What am I supposed to say?’

  ‘Ask her if the person she came in with was her boyfriend! I can’t do it – what if Jayden-Lee comes back?’ The girl had taken a seat now, running a hand through her neatly curled red hair. She had to be waiting for somebody. ‘Come on, Kayla.’

  Kayla rolled her eyes at me. In fact, she rolled her whole head. Little sprinkles of glitter shook out and mixed in with the shimmer of her dress.

  ‘I’m going to start billing you for my time,’ she told me. ‘Every act as your intermediary will be charged at a flat rate, and you should be grateful I’m not backdating fees or you’d be liable for quite a sum.’

  I looked blankly at her. She knew I was no good at translating her legal jargon.

  ‘What I’m saying, Dylan, is that you’re going to owe me big time for this. Fine, I’ll talk to her. But you have to go and put my request on the sign-up sheet. I’m not missing my big moment because of your love life. Or lack of one.’ She tossed her hair, and vanished into the crowd.

  I wanted to stay where I was and watch Kayla’s progress with the mystery girl, but the hall was so packed I knew if I didn’t fight my way to the front now, I’d never get there. And I had to get her name on the sign-up sheet: I owed her one.

  The sheet was kept on the edge of the stage, right under the microphone, and ‘Whitney’ finally finished
her number just as I was picking up the pen. There was a moment of glorious silence. My ears had never felt so good.

  Then a man in a red velvet jacket, with a black moustache that looked like it was made from curled liquorice, walked over and started talking into the microphone, practically ordering everyone to give the last singer a round of applause. ‘Wasn’t she wonderful, ladies and gentlemen? I’m sure we’d all like to have been the inspiration for that passionate little number, heh heh heh.’

  Puke. I tried not to grimace at his sleazy laugh, and looked over my shoulder to see how Kayla was doing. Immediately, the gang of hen-fairies I’d seen in the queue surrounded me, giggling and daring each other to sign up. One made a grab for my pen, so I held it up out of reach. I hadn’t finished adding Kayla’s name.

  The host was pacing the front of the stage above me, leaning out to peer across the crowd. ‘So if Alex Turville would like to take the mic, we’re ready for you now. Alex? Come on Alex, baby, don’t be shy, step on up.’

  It sounded like someone had chickened out of their song. I didn’t blame them. The list was mostly Elvis numbers with a couple of 80s classics thrown in – some of those weren’t so bad, but that didn’t mean I’d want to screech them at a crowd.

  I tried to get back to putting Kayla’s details down, but yet another fairy went for the pen. I waved it in the air again. ‘No, I’m using it now.’

  She yelled something I couldn’t quite hear, so I shouted back, trying to make her understand. ‘IT’S MY TURN NOW.’

  ‘There you are, Alex. I thought we had a runner!’ the host cheered.

  I glanced up, hand still raised over my head, curious to see exactly how terrified Alex looked. But the host was staring straight at me. ‘There he is, folks, let’s get him up onstage. Give a big hand for Alex Turville and his brave choice of song.’

  I didn’t know what a brave choice of song was supposed to be. All I knew was that my name wasn’t Alex, and I wasn’t brave enough to sing anything. My voice got anxious-squeaky when I was forced to read bits of Shakespeare aloud in class. I even mimed my way through ‘Happy Birthday’. No way was I about to sing in front of all these people. No. Way.

  But I felt a set of hands on my shoulders pushing me, and the crowd were starting to chant: ‘Come. On. Alex. Come. On. Alex.’

  ‘But I’m not—’

  No one could hear me. No one cared that they couldn’t.

  ‘COME ON ALEX! COME ON ALEX!’

  There was no escape route between the crush of bodies. A fairy made another dive for the sign-up pen, and I was almost grateful when she managed to prise it from my hand – until she started using it as a weapon, prodding me towards the steps to the stage.

  I tried to dodge the needling pricks of the biro jabbing at my ribcage, pleading my case. ‘I can’t! I don’t even sing in the shower because it wouldn’t be fair on the rubber ducks. Please.’

  ‘COME ON ALEX!’

  The crowd’s roaring turned into a deafening cheer as two more fairies grabbed my arms and dragged me up the steps into the sparkly-curtained setting of my worst nightmares.

  FOURTEEN

  I must have looked like someone approaching the electric chair, because as soon as the fairies abandoned me on the stage, the host dived in to grab my arm. He kept patting my hand and saying what I thought were meant to be reassuring things, but he had a grip like steel around my trembling wrist, and it’s really hard to feel reassured when you know you’re about to cause grievous eardrum injuries to a whole hall full of people.

  I stared out from the centre of the stage, trying to spot Kayla anywhere among the sea of faces staring back at me. That was a mistake. It felt about as terrifying as looking over the edge of a ravine into a pit full of snakes, knowing you’re about to jump in.

  Everybody seemed to blur together into a single mass of make-up and big hair. If I looked really closely, I could just pick out an Elvis jumpsuit, or a fairy wing.

  ‘You know, I was sure Alex was going to be a girl. You’re full of surprises.’ The host massaged my shoulders like I was a boxer going into a fight, and not just someone who looked too scared to stand close to the microphone in case it bit him.

  What had he meant about it being a brave choice?

  The music started with a quick electro beat and the crack of thunder, and suddenly I got it. I knew why it was brave. I knew why he expected me – Alex – to be a girl.

  ‘Go get ’em, Tiger,’ the host chuckled, and vanished behind the curtain as the big screen in front of me flashed up the first verse of ‘It’s Raining Men’.

  I knew the song, obviously. Everybody knew the song. It got played at least once an hour on the 80s radio station Mum liked to torture us with on long car rides. People were screaming now, just from hearing the intro.

  I cleared my throat and leaned into the mic. ‘Um, the thing is, I’m not really familiar with . . .’

  But that only made them scream more. I was having Aladdin flashbacks: back to the first time I went on in my costume to cheers and applause, right before everyone found out how terrible I was.

  It was a bit like being a rock star, if rock stars only performed because they were scared the crowd might pull a couple of their limbs off otherwise. Those fairies looked feral.

  There was no way out. I was only getting off stage once I’d sung the stupid song. Screwing my hands into tight fists at my sides, I took a shaky breath and half spoke, half whispered the first line.

  Luckily it was quite a talky song, at least in the verse bits. I was just trying to remember exactly how high the notes were in the chorus when I finally managed to pick Kayla’s pink hair out of the crowd. She was staring at me, her mouth open so wide you could fit fifty Pringles in it (which I’d tried to do once on a school trip, when she’d fallen asleep and started snoring on the coach).

  Next to her, the red-haired girl didn’t seem to be paying any attention at all. She was tugging on someone’s arm – another boy her age. He was blond, but he wasn’t Jayden-Lee. I knew immediately, because looking at him didn’t make me feel a bit vomity with love.

  They looked like they were fighting. I couldn’t tell exactly what was going on, but trying to figure it out made me nearly forget what I was singing. By now I’d hit the chorus and was howling at the top of my voice about wanting to be surrounded by soggy men, or something.

  Which, considering I wasn’t exactly public about the fact that I liked boys at all, felt like a weirdly dramatic way of announcing it. Not that announcing I was gay was something I ever really planned to do. I had dreams sometimes where I went to school and everyone already knew, without me having said anything at all. Sometimes that felt terrifying, and sometimes it was almost a relief. Talking to Kayla about it had been surprisingly easy, and I knew I’d say something to Mum and Dad eventually, when I’d picked the right time. But the idea of telling other people I was gay always left me feeling kind of panicked, like I couldn’t catch my breath.

  But it couldn’t stay a secret forever. Otherwise I’d never get to walk through town holding someone’s hand, or share one of the giant chairs with them at the local Caffe Coffee, or kiss them. Which were my top three things I really wanted to do with someone someday, so I’d have to tell everyone I liked boys eventually.

  The original singers of ‘It’s Raining Men’ were definitely clear about liking boys, but I didn’t want to make my announcement in song. Stomach loop-the-looping, I dropped my voice to a growl and tried to sound like one of those croaky blues singers with lyrics about how nothing matters because you’re going to die anyway.

  Which fitted, kind of, because I’d definitely rather have died than do what I did next. Which was spot Jayden-Lee watching me from the crowd.

  I caught his eye. For a few seconds the world narrowed to just me and him.

  Then he started to laugh. It was like getting a shock of cold water thrown right in my face. My skin prickled with the beginnings of a painful blush. There couldn’t be anything worse
than this – nothing. I screwed my eyes tightly closed, not wanting to look.

  But I had to. I opened just one eye, in case the pain of watching him fall apart with laughter could be halved if I only saw it with my right-hand side. Blinking in the glitterball lights, I slowly refocused on the crowd and managed to pick Jayden-Lee out of it again.

  Just as he was knocked sideways by a massive orange bum.

  Nibbles had hit the dance floor, and he was wobbling about every bit as enthusiastically as he had been at the children’s party. The strangest thing was that everyone seemed to be loving it. Loads of people were joining in to throw his hamster shapes.

  Jayden-Lee didn’t look like he was loving it much though. He glared after Nibbles, then turned the dark look in my direction. I was still rasping my way through the song, growling out a warning about feeling stormy weather moving in.

  I met Jayden-Lee’s eyes again without even meaning to, and found myself watching as he was grabbed by the collar and shoved across the floor.

  It was the blond boy I’d seen with the redheaded girl earlier. Now they were fighting over her? Life was so unbelievably unfair. Jayden-Lee stumbled back from the shove, but stayed on his feet, and the next minute he’d launched himself at the other guy and they were rolling together on the ground.

  And that seemed to set off some kind of chain reaction.

  It was like watching a game of angry dominos. Someone knocked into someone else, who knocked into a whole new chain of people. Within seconds, half the room seemed to be fighting instead of dancing. I heard a glass break and tried to see if Kayla was still over by the bar, but she’d vanished.

  Unsure what else to do, I stumbled through a couple more words.

  Then a fairy leaped up onstage, grabbed the mic stand and swung it over her head, yelling at someone out in the crowd, ‘DON’T YOU TOUCH HER – SHE JUST GOT HER NAILS DONE!’