The Boy Who Hit Play Read online

  But what if it’s a door that doesn’t wanna be opened?

  What if you can’t open a door with a newspaper?

  Dad looks at me. His eyes are red and puffy. ‘You OK?’

  I swallow the wobble. ‘Sure.’ I nod. ‘You?’

  ‘Hmmn.’ He strokes his chin.

  Actually I hate flying. Well I’ve never flown. I hate the idea of it. I wish we could teleport. I watch the little red plane giff taking off and lean over and click the screen on to Top 10 Ways to Survive a Plane Crash.

  YouTube is the soundtrack to my life.

  We take ID photos of ourselves at Tesco’s and wait for the summer holidays to come round and school to end and the passports to turn up.

  I can’t believe we’re actually leaving Brymont. If Brymont had a soundtrack it’d be slow and grey. The sound of lorries in snow mush. TripAdvisor gives Brymont two and half stars. I think that’s fair.

  I sit on my bed and click on to YouTube out into the world.

  I started uploading my own stuff last year.

  I do music with images. Weird stuff. My things.

  I have eighty-one subscribers.

  I look at the screen.

  My video has a hundred and thirty-eight likes.

  Cool.

  The looking and checking is kind of addictive.

  JaxOpossum says:

  I like this. Kind of reminds me of the Orb in the early days.

  FelixOpacha says:

  Had this stuck in my head all day.

  CokeCan says:

  I LOVE this.

  StickitSquirrel says:

  This sucks.

  I switch it off.

  Lloyd comes over and we look at maps and travel brochures.

  I look at the prices and think about Lloyd’s plan. Money. I’ll find a way.

  ‘Did you find a way?’ We bunch up on the sofa.

  Lloyd nods and taps his nose.

  I look at waterfalls and wolves and forest mists.

  Dad looks at ships sailing past skies and purple mountains off into nowhere.

  Lloyd looks at naked people in canoes and shuts the magazine.

  And in five days’ time Dad’s eyes unpuff and he brings a big black suitcase into my room and unclicks the lock.

  Ready?

  Dad unzips the lid and Lloyd jumps out eating a Royal Gala.

  I get my phone and record:

  apple-eating excitement

  (an apple-eating, draw-opening,

  ‘out of the way please’ kind of sound).

  I pull open a draw. We stare at my mess of socks and pants. ‘What do we need?’

  ‘Things of the world,’ he says.

  ‘Hot things?’ I think about the naked canoeists.

  We scoop up all of my pants.

  ‘Cold things?’ I think of snow and killer whales and ice lakes.

  We scoop up all of my socks. ‘The key to packing is preparation,’ he says. ‘And layering. You never know what life’s going to throw at you. But generally, if you can layer up, it hurts less. Or at least it’s less of a surprise.’ He looks at Lloyd and pulls his jumper up to show his Wolverine T-shirt underneath. It is a surprise.

  Lloyd looks at his socks and says, ‘Every apple needs its skin.’

  I think of skinless apples. The fruit inside that would be knackered without it. I wonder how thick our skin is to stop us from spilling out. I pick up a jumper.

  ‘Wear your heavy stuff,’ Dad says. ‘It saves on the baggage allowance.’

  Lloyd jumps out from hiding under the duvet and says, ‘surprise!’ and we stick everything in and pull the lid over. Lloyd has to lie across it like a starfish to spread his weight while I pull the zip round from one end. Dad takes the other end. I get a bit stuck going past Lloyd’s knees.

  ‘OW!’

  It is a shame he is wearing shorts.

  Our zips meet in the middle. Lloyd wipes the blood off his knee and gets his fish-weighing hook out of his Asda ‘bag for life’ and we weigh it.

  It is forty-seven grams over the limit. I take out the snorkel set.

  We’re ready.

  ‘Three thousand, six hundred and twenty-eight grammes.’ Lloyd weighs his arms with the case weigher.

  Dad pushes the case out the door. Lloyd takes my HELP Babygro out of my special-things box and shakes it like he expects something to fall out.

  It doesn’t.

  ‘It’s just a Babygro, Lloyd.’ I take it back.

  ‘Just looking for clues,’ he says.

  I put it away in the special box and take my birth newspaper out. I check it over like I’ve checked it a million times. When I was little I was sure there’d be dots under the letters to make code, to make a message. There aren’t.

  I put it in my rucksack.

  And wake up to the Skoda Starline taxi.

  Go

  Three cases stand by the door.

  Mine. Dad’s. Lloyd’s.

  Aunty Ima isn’t coming. ‘Someone has to look after the hedgehogs,’ she says and pulls one out of a tea cosy.

  ‘Where’s Lloyd?’

  Dad knocks on the cupboard under the stairs. Lloyd comes out with a pillow and a blanket and wraps two pancakes in kitchen roll and puts them in his pocket. ‘For the journey,’ he says.

  We hug Aunty Ima and get into the taxi, and out at the airport.

  The driver gets the cases and squints in the sunshine and says, ‘Nice for some, eh.’

  Lloyd says, ‘Life is nice for everyone who is able to love the world,’ and pays.

  We click through the automatic slidey doors. Lloyd disagrees with the grammage on the self-weigh bag-drop check-in and tries to fight it out with the machine, but Dad says it isn’t worth it and we walk off before the assistant comes over.

  Top 10 Ways to Survive a Plane Crash says to sit at the back where you are statistically less likely to die. And you have ninety seconds to leave the aircraft before it explodes.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Where are we sitting?’

  ‘I dunno,’ he says, and we follow the signs to security.

  Lloyd has to empty out his Granny Smiths from his pockets but they are returned. His Not-In-My-Name anti-war badge isn’t. Dad’s penknife isn’t either. They take my compass but pass it back after the metal detector. I put it in my secret inside pocket to keep it close.

  We follow the glittery black path to duty-free. Lloyd takes his travel pouch out on a string from under his T-shirt and pulls out a wedge of cash.

  ‘Where did you get that from?’ Dad points at the wedge.

  ‘Tesco.’ He lifts the travel pouch.

  ‘The cash.’

  ‘I sold the family Winchester.’

  ‘It’s a rifle, Dad.’ I shrug. Lloyd is a pacifist so it figures.

  He hands us each ten pounds. ‘Buy something extravagant,’ he says.

  I buy a supersize tin of Oreos that looks like a giant Oreo and feels pretty extravagant. I look at Dad. ‘What’re you getting?’

  Dad tries all the whisky samples on the bar.

  The man behind it stares at us. Dad says, ‘What’ve you got for a tenner?’

  And he says, ‘Blends are down there, sir.’ And points. We find one.

  Lloyd gets a caramel mocha – we all sit in Caffè Nero passing the cup around and dipping in miniature Oreos from my tin.

  Lloyd takes a handful and says, ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Technically they’re yours anyway.’

  ‘A gift is a gift,’ he says and winks, and then shouts, ‘DUCK,’ and pulls us under the table. A rubber bullet of a bouncy ball just misses his eye and smacks into the mocha. I look up and see a tweed-suit sleeve pull back behind a pillar. Weird.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Lloyd looks away.

  I crawl out and pick the ball up off the floor. It’s see-through with blue writing that says:

  vote for experience!

  protect your family, your propert
y & yourself!

  I put it in my pocket, and record:

  Strange thing number one

  (a kids-fighting-over-an-iPad, shoe-stepping,

  trouser-shuffling, ‘you missed a bit’ kind of sound).

  Lloyd wipes his trousers.

  And we go off to departure gate twenty-two.

  Up

  Why would someone do that to Lloyd?

  Maybe it was a mistake?

  Bouncy balls are pretty bouncy. I got one at Christmas once and broke Aunty Ima’s china yak.

  Maybe it was a joke? At school, year eights stick rosehips down each other’s shirts to make it itch. I think about jokes that aren’t funny.

  ‘Look at everyone, Elvis,’ Lloyd says. He looks round like a cat in a shopping centre.

  The stewardess scans our boarding cards.

  Elvis Crampton MSTR

  George Lucas MR

  Lloyd Rupert Raptar Partington SIR

  ‘Nice to have you on board, Mr Lucas.’ She hums the Star Wars tune and Dad smiles. She smiles back.

  We walk on to the tarmac and up the steps.

  I hand the steward my boarding card and he says, ‘First row at the back.’

  Forty per cent less chance of death.

  Result.

  I sit by the window. This is my first flight and I want to look out. If the engine’s on fire I want to know about it. Lloyd isn’t next to us. He’s further up. Next to the emergency exit. He stands and mimes jumping out. The stewardess stares at him. He sits down.

  I look at the diagrams on the back of the seat in front and remember not to crawl on the floor if there’s a fire or I’ll get squashed. A man with no hair next to Dad says, ‘Unnatural isn’t it. Flying.’

  I look in my bag for my headphones and find a bunch of postcards and pens with a note:

  Draw me what you see.

  Aunty Ima XX

  I pick out a red Sharpie and write:

  I am on the plane.

  I am squashed.

  And draw a picture of a cloud opening up the plane with a tin opener and everyone falling out and going:

  Aaaaaghh.

  The plane rolls off, and the engines start. We blast forwards, the ground speeds, the air pushes my head back, and we go up.

  We go up like riding a bike, like the air has plucked us off the earth.

  My stomach leaps out the bottom of the plane. It is waving from the tarmac.

  I look down.

  Everything pulls away into squares of green and brown and grey and blue.

  We don’t fall out and die.

  I look down at everything fitting into boxes.

  Like a jigsaw.

  With all the bits.

  And I think, that’ll be me soon.

  That’ll be me with all my missing pieces slotted in.

  Won’t it?

  And we go higher and higher

  till

  we

  are

  up

  over the clouds

  and everything is white.

  Downer

  I click on my phone and look at the Wikipedia page I searched up before we got here.

  Aftenposten (‘The Evening Post’) is the largest printed newspaper …

  There’s a photo. The office looks bright and new.

  And BIG.

  When I was five we went to pick out a cake at Simeon’s. I wanted the big one. With marzipan and chocolate writing and white iced flowers. We didn’t have the money but Dad bought it anyway and when we got home I took one bite and spat it out. It had rum cream in. I didn’t know it had rum cream in.

  I remember scraping the plate into the bin.

  And Dad’s face. ‘It’s OK, it’s OK, we didn’t know.’ His hand on my back.

  I remember that taste.

  DISAPPOINTMENT.

  I don’t want to be disappointing.

  I pick my fingers. ‘Dad.’

  The steward hands us two lasagnes on red trays.

  Dad tries to hand them back.

  ‘Courtesy of the man with the holey trousers, sir,’ he says and points to Lloyd who is waving his plastic cutlery at us.

  The man with no hair nudges Dad. ‘Hope it isn’t full of horse meat, eh,’ he says and eats his homemade cheese sandwich out of a lunch box. His crisp bag has swollen up like a balloon.

  I take the plastic lid off the lasagne and steam bursts out. Dad aims the overhead ceiling fan at it on cold at full force. It makes my hair bounce. I poke at it with a fork and hope it doesn’t contain horse. I wonder why horses are worse than cows? Or pigs? All animals deserve to live, don’t they?

  I sit and I wait until it’s edible and won’t melt my mouth skin, and I count the number of seat-belt signs I can see until the captain switches them off.

  BING BONG.

  I look at heads instead.

  I see three bald ones and one hat and a plastic knife that chucks itself out of a seat and on to Lloyd who grabs it out of the air.

  Strange thing number two.

  I stand up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Dad stares at me.

  ‘Looking.’ I look out for other weird things but see none and sit down.

  I like the up. The up is OK.

  We’re not sucked out the windows into the sea.

  I eat the lasagne and the steward takes the tray back. The plane tips. The engines buzz like wasps in bad moods.

  We start to come down.

  Out of the window is rocks. Massive ones coming up out of the sea. And the sea isn’t blue, it’s turquoise-green, and the rocks aren’t grey, they’re black. Giant lava-black rocks like claws with froth.

  We go further over. The land is part land, part puddle. Green and water and water and green and mountains. No fields. No flat. Just islands and wetness. Land and sea pushing and pulling each other apart like drops of sun cream in a swimming pool. And islands. Small ones and big ones and ferries and boats and white-water trails and trees and cabins.

  I put my headphones round my neck and chew.

  ‘I trust a place with boats,’ Dad says. ‘It means people are open to adventure.’

  ‘My favourite colour is green.’ I put my hand to the window.

  The green turns to concrete.

  I look at the millions of people who must be down there.

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘It’s all good, Elvis.’

  Sometimes I think he’s psychic. ‘Is it?’

  ‘You know what I did before we came here?’ He doesn’t wait for me to answer. ‘I quit my job.’ He smiles. ‘I’m free.’

  My inner lasagne turns to acid. I think of the basement: It’s the most expensive place on earth. ‘Why?’

  ‘I hated my job.’

  The wheels come out. The tarmac flashes under.

  Dad hangs his head. ‘They wouldn’t give me the time off.’

  We bang on to the ground.

  He puts his arm round my shoulder. ‘Welcome to Norway.’

  Hamsters in Wheels

  The seat-belt signs bing off. We walk down the steps and the sun is shining on the concrete.

  ‘Won’t you miss your job?’

  ‘I’ll miss my job like raw aubergine.’

  ‘You hate that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How will we survive?’

  ‘I’ll get a new one.’ He soft-punches the wing. ‘When we get back.’

  We get on to a little bus that takes us to the terminal. There are no seats and we hold on to handles so we don’t fall over. Two kids are playing thumb war and a girl keeps poking the window and saying, ‘What’s that, Mummy?’

  ‘An aeroplane.’

  ‘What’s that, Mummy?’

  ‘A bus.’

  ‘What’s that, Mummy?’

  And the Dad says, ‘That’s a twin-engine multirole Typhoon.’

  I think about Dad. I think of his face when he comes home from diagnosing colds and stomach bugs and shingles, sucking Strepsils ’cos people’s ill voi
ces make him feel ill.

  Maybe he’ll find something better?

  The passport man smiles and says, ‘Which one of you is Elvis?’

  Dad and Lloyd say, ‘Him,’ and he sings ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ and nods and looks at our passports and lets us through.

  Lloyd sits on the belt at the suitcase collection point and whirls round and round, and Dad pulls him off and gets our cases.

  We drag them past two men on stools with credit-card leaflets and on into automatic spinning doors, which you have to time carefully, and out.

  We take the suitcases through a car park and over the road, where we stand and look around and Lloyd spreads his arms and says, ‘Behold.’

  Then we wheel the cases all the way back in again and buy some hot dogs wrapped in bacon and wait for the Flybussen.

  The sausages have hot-cheese middles. They are delicious. Lloyd bites off both ends and some hot cheese squirts out and runs down his T-shirt. Sometimes I wonder what having a brother would be like. Sometimes I think it’s like Lloyd.

  I draw Aunty Ima a postcard of a hot dog and a piece of cheese holding hands. On the back I write, ‘Hot dogs and cheese are friends. Who knew?’

  We lick our fingers clean.

  The bus is slick and glidey.

  It has different compartments underneath for different places. Me and Dad put our bags in the one for Oslo. Lloyd refuses to put his in.

  He gets on and drags it up the steps with him.

  The driver raises his arms and says, ‘Tourists! Tourists!’

  Lloyd raises his arms and says, ‘Bus drivers! Bus drivers!’

  Dad puts Lloyd’s arms down and says, ‘Let’s get the tickets, eh,’ and Lloyd takes loads of notes from his travel pouch. He doesn’t get any change.

  CLICK CLICK BRRRR RIP. We tear them off and sit down.

  It is very high up on the bus.

  I look at everyone and think, you are Norwegians. I am amongst Norwegians. I wonder if I am one. If I should feel at home.

  A man says, ‘Wow,’ and takes a photo of a pigeon.

  A Japanese family play I spy.

  Lloyd sits on his case by the fold-down seats opposite the middle doors. He always sits somewhere different. Dad puts his trumpet on his knees and looks at his phone.