The Boy Who Hit Play Page 6

  I think about what he said. And watch Ten Ways To Know If Someone Is Lying.

  The altitude gets higher. The temperature gets lower. It doesn’t feel any colder. The sunshine through the window is burning my arms. I wonder how that’s possible. We stop and a man gets on with skis and poles and an army backpack. There are icicles in his moustache. The train climbs up and up into the mountains.

  And suddenly I just want to get off. I want to be out there. In the waterfalls and bike tracks bouncing into forests and bright red cabins. Not trapped in here.

  I tap Dad on the shoulder. He turns round.

  ‘I wanna get off.’

  Lloyd looks chuffed to bits. ‘Let’s get off!’ He jumps up.

  Dad looks worried. ‘You wanna get off?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I just do.’ I look at the snow. ‘I want to be out there,’ I say. ‘Plus, we can ditch Floyd.’

  ‘I’m not running away from Floyd.’ Dad slides his phone into its case.

  ‘Is he on the train?’ Lloyd looks around like a meerkat.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shake my head. I don’t. I don’t even know what he looks like.

  ‘Don’t you wanna be out there, Dad?’ We look at the mountains and bubbling streams bouncing by, white froth spraying.

  The announcement says the train will stop in three minutes. Platform on the right.

  Lloyd starts pulling his bag down off the rack.

  Dad doesn’t. His forehead wrinkles. He looks at the man with the icicle moustache. ‘We’ve got no snow clothes.’

  ‘We have vests.’

  ‘We have no idea where we are,’ he says.

  I read the display screen. ‘We’re in Tilse,’ I say. ‘We can get another train tomorrow.’ My heart starts to panic. ‘You said if I wanted to stop we’d stop. I wanna stop.’

  He strokes the side of his trumpet case. ‘You wanna run wild in the mountains?’

  ‘Yes!’ I nod. ‘Yes!’

  ‘OK,’ he says and smiles. ‘Let’s do it.’

  The train starts to slow. I look at the mess on my seat. I try to cram it all into my bag. Shove shove shove. I push my feet into my shoes, put my iPod in my pocket. I grab my coat.

  It stops. Lloyd straddles the platform and the train with his legs and presses the door-open button over and over and over again. The doors jerk open, shut, open, shut, open, shut on his trousers.

  Our cases are stuck behind a massive black one.

  We try to struggle them out.

  We push and pull.

  The guard blows his whistle.

  They pop out.

  We fall on the floor.

  Dad shouts, ‘WAIT!’ and gets up and Lloyd throws himself out the way and we jump off the train. The guard tuts and the final whistle goes and the train zooms off. I don’t see Floyd anywhere.

  Do I?

  A man in a black leather hat walks off quickly.

  There is no green tweed.

  We stand there in the wind.

  My breath blows out in cold smoke.

  My teeth chatter.

  The cold bites into my arms and legs.

  Lloyd puts his extra tracksuit bottoms on over his tracksuit bottoms.

  I put on two extra T-shirts and my fleece.

  The station flags flap about and bang the pole. The wind drills into our ears.

  People disappear like ants down a hole and suddenly we are alone in an empty, blowy wilderness.

  Me and Lloyd look at Dad. Our visible skin has gone bright pink.

  Dad looks around like an owl looking for answers. ‘What’s next, McDuff?’

  ‘A hotel?’ I say.

  Lloyd taps his pouch and nods.

  And Dad says, ‘Yeah to a hotel,’ and ruffles my hair, and we follow the sound of twanging flag poles into the only building around.

  Can’t Things Be Nice for Once?

  The building isn’t a hotel. It’s a tourist information centre and it’s shut.

  We all look at each other and shiver.

  Lloyd hails down a taxi by standing in the middle of the road and I say, ‘To a hotel please.’

  And the man says, ‘Which one?’

  And I say, ‘A cheap one.’

  And the driver whistles through his teeth and drives off

  He takes us to one with a wooden front and a light-up sign that isn’t lit up.

  We go up the steps and into the reception. It smells of plug-in air freshener and lemon wet wipes. I stare at the paintings of bullfights and hunting and whale catching that are all over the walls.

  The hotel man has black curly hair and a deep voice like a gangster. ‘How long?’ he says.

  We stare at him.

  ‘How many nights?’

  ‘Just the one,’ Dad says and pulls a dead face when the man bends over and I try not to laugh.

  ‘Fill this out.’ He gives Dad a form on a clipboard.

  Name

  Address

  Telephone number

  Passport number

  I stare at that last one.

  ‘I’ll fill it out later,’ Dad says.

  ‘You fill it in tonight.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dad says. ‘Tonight.’

  The man stares at both of us.

  ‘I will pay,’ Lloyd says and gets out his wedge of cash.

  The man looks at the cash and takes it plus extra for a key deposit.

  ‘Bathroom’s down the hall,’ he says, and points and hands us keys with wooden ladles on the ends. We walk off to drag the bags up the stairs.

  I nudge Dad. ‘Why did you say that?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The form. You can’t.’

  He sighs and shrugs. ‘I just want things to be nice, Elvis. Can’t things just be nice. For once?’

  ‘You should’ve told the truth.’ I heave up the case.

  ‘It’ll be fine.’

  We stop on the landing.

  The black-leather-hat man slides into room number fifty-two. Lloyd waves. He doesn’t wave back.

  Dad unlocks our door.

  The room has just enough space for two beds and a hotplate with a saucepan and kettle by the window. The wallpaper over the hotplate is peeling off. The lampshade is brown. The bedspreads are grey. The carpet has black bits in.

  Lloyd unlocks his door and says, ‘Well this is lovely.’

  And Dad shoves the cases in and locks it again and says, ‘Let’s go out, eh.’

  Who I’d Be Without You

  We walk fast past the reception man and his pictures of death and dark green velvet curtains.

  ‘Afternoon!’ Lloyd says and waves.

  I drag him outside. ‘Ow!’ Lloyd rubs his arm.

  ‘I don’t like that man.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t like the way he stares at us. I don’t like the way he never smiles. I don’t like the photos of bulls being stabbed and trapped animals he has on his walls.’

  Lloyd taps his Against Animal Cruelty badge. ‘I’m very proud,’ he says.

  We stand on the pavement and breathe in lungfuls of clean crispy non-air-freshener air. The sun heats my skin.

  ‘Wildness here we come!’ Dad says and we go under an underpass and follow a path over bouncy wooden rope bridges and white-water streams which I leap over two jumps at a time and Dad says, ‘Chase yer.’ Dad tags me and I scream and get Lloyd, and we run for fun and to keep warm until Dad gets a stitch. He bends over. Our breath steams out and gets mixed up with snow clouds round the mountains.

  It feels like being in a car advert.

  Beautiful.

  And wild.

  Two people with hats with flaps and a dog like a bear walk past and stare at us. Lloyd asks if we can pet the dog and they say, ‘NEI.’

  ‘What’s blue and white and cold all over?’ Dad says.

  ‘Us?’

  ‘An ice lake.’ He points up ahead.

  We go up to the lake. It’s ice at the edges
. Slushy mush in the middle.

  I put my hand on the ice and poke my finger in to make a hole. I feel the sting of the water on my fingers. I feel it till I can’t feel it any more. I put my fingers in my mouth to warm them back up. They taste of metal and nosebleeds and they numb my tongue.

  There’s a hiss and a rumble. One bark, then two, three, four, five. I turn round. A blur of fur and eyes is snowballing along the road towards us. Kicking up grit and gliding. Six dogs tethered to each other. Tongues lolling. Eyes bright. Muscles rippling. Grey and white fur stood out against the cold. Puffed and prickly. They zoom along. We are hypnotised.

  A man on a box with giant wheels bobbles along behind, holding on like a water skier.

  ‘Hei hei,’ he says.

  They swoosh past.

  We watch them thunder away down the road.

  Silence.

  Dad scratches his head. ‘We all saw that, right?’

  ‘The world is alive with natural wonders.’ Lloyd stretches his arms like he’s talking to God.

  ‘This place is magic,’ I say and scoop up a bit of snow and chuck it at Dad.

  Then we all scrape up bits of snow and chuck them at each other.

  Dad takes a photo of me next to a snow pole. I point at it going over my head. I imagine living in this place with roads like snow caves. It’s weird what happens in the world that you don’t see. And how what’s normal just depends on where you’re born. This could’ve been me. Couldn’t it? I wonder if my bench parents like the cold?

  We follow tiny pattery footprints to a furry thing that looks like a frothy guinea pig.

  ‘Lemming,’ Dad whispers and stands in the middle of the road while it crosses so it doesn’t get squashed.

  The lemming trots off down a hole and we run down the street past a guy on rollerboot skis going up and down the pavement in a Lycra ski suit, and buy tins of soup with orange labels and sticky cinnamon buns from the only shop there is and swing back through the hotel doors.

  The reception man is not at the desk. I breathe out. When I go round the corner I see him talking on the phone. He stares at me and looks away.

  ‘Sleep tight.’ Lloyd scratches his head and shakes his soup and goes into his room.

  We go into ours and heat the soup up on the hotplate in the saucepan.

  I don’t know what it is, but it’s the best soup ever.

  I bite into a cinnamon bun. It is buttery sweet and delicious. The sugar sticks my fingers to the top.

  We open the window to let the soup smell mingle with the crispy mountain air. I think if the mountains sang they’d sound like a finger on the rim of a wine glass. Pure and zingy.

  I think about Bjorn. If I were you I’d ring it.

  I think about Dad. Can’t things just be nice. For once?

  I think about being free in a place like this where no one knows you and you can be anything you want.

  I could look up the number.

  But I don’t want to.

  I just want to be here.

  One day won’t make any difference.

  Will it?

  We put our hands on the radiator. I look at the holes in the carpet.

  ‘I’m glad we stopped.’ Dad puts his arm round me. ‘You can’t just take pictures,’ he says. ‘You need to be in them. You have to live a bit.’ We stare out past the dancing curtains.

  He stands up and shouts out the window, ‘I FEEL ALIVE.’ He raises an eyebrow at me. ‘How about you?’’

  I stand up and stick my head out. ‘I FEEL ALIVE TOO!’ I shout.

  And he picks up his trumpet and plays jazz into the wind and I drum on the radiator with a teaspoon and record:

  Us

  (a trumpeting, dinging, humming-snow

  mountain, laughing kind of sound).

  And I wonder if playing music is something that’s in my blood?

  Or if it’s something I got off Dad?

  And I wonder who I’d be without it.

  And I wonder who I’d be without

  him.

  Happy?

  I sit up. The sun’s coming in through the curtains.

  ‘Morning.’ I pull them open and look at the fresh snow on the mountaintops.

  Sugar dust on granite.

  Dad grunts and rubs his eyes. ‘Hot chocolate?’ he says.

  ‘We don’t have any.’

  ‘Wanna bet?’ He leans over the edge of the bed and gets a plastic bag of sachets out of his suitcase.

  I smile and we put the kettle on and empty the powder out of the mini plastic packet and into an elephant mug and put boiling water in. It tastes sweet and thin, not thick and dark like Aunty Ima’s. But it is still good. I dunk the floaters with my spoon.

  Dad opens the curtains and sings …

  ‘It’s a new dawn,

  It’s a new day,

  It’s a new life for me,

  And I’m feeling good.’

  And has a bit of a dance.

  He looks happy.

  ‘I can’t remember the last time I had a holiday,’ he says.

  ‘We’ve never had one,’ I say.

  ‘We’ve been camping.’

  ‘You set the tent on fire.’ I avoid the last bit of the chocolate that’s all dusty.

  He cocks his head. ‘It was just a little singed hole.’

  ‘I like happy you,’ I say and smile.

  ‘Me too,’ he says and flicks his jumper on my head. ‘Let’s go get some breakfast before he disappears and hungry me gets out.’

  Troll

  Dad takes a shower first.

  I log into the hotel Wi-Fi and think about ratings. Maybe that is how we see everything, how people judge people. We rate each other with stars.

  Five-star friend.

  Four-star friend.

  They just don’t write them down. And no one ever says so.

  You’re just supposed to know it.

  I think about Bjorn and give him five stars.

  I give Chainsaw Badgers 4.5.

  And look up the train time out of here.

  10.35

  It’s 8.15.

  I look up YouTube.

  There’s a whole new batch of red thumb downers.

  I scroll down to the comments.

  One thumb downer is talking to another one.

  It’s kinda weird people talking about me that don’t even know me.

  What the **** is this crap?

  Tell it how it is!

  He’s the kind of kid who kills his own cat, right?

  Cat or Mom?

  LOL

  I thought Elvis was dead?

  Ha! Elvis – do us a favour. Go die so we don’t have to put up with any more of your ****.

  Worst **** I’ve seen all year

  Thumbs up if you agree!

  Dad comes in.

  I don’t say anything. I just show him the string. If they think it, who else thinks it? Is that what everybody thinks?

  ‘Don’t listen to them, Elvis. These guys are just sick-heads with nothing better to do.’ He holds my chin up. ‘They’re just jealous. Don’t let it get to you. OK?’

  I nod.

  But it does.

  It gets right into me. Into a place I can’t get to.

  I chuck my phone on the bed.

  And I think I never want to make another video again.

  Ever.

  Empty?

  We knock on Lloyd’s door. He is dressed and ready. ‘No rocks,’ he says and points to the window, which isn’t broken. ‘Or death threats.’

  ‘Lovely,’ Dad says and grabs my hand and we go down the stairs and into the dining room.

  It’s big and white with a green carpet and a long table with a cloth and plates with squares of cheese and ham and fruit and fresh bread rolls and jugs of coffee and juice.

  The rest of the dining room is empty.

  And still.

  ‘Do you think it’s poisoned?’ I look at all the dead animal heads mounted on the wall.

&nb
sp; Dad laughs and fills his plate.

  I pick up a strange fish thing. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘Herring,’ Dad says.

  I get other stuff.

  We sit down and I put squares of cheese and ham into a crispy white roll and spread it thick with butter. ‘Why is no one else here?’ I look at my plate but don’t eat anything.

  Lloyd nibbles a herring off a fork. ‘Perhaps they’re early risers.’

  I look at my watch. ‘It’s half past eight.’

  KNOCK, KNOCK.

  A man’s voice says, ‘Hello,’ and I think great, actual guests.

  I turn round and see the black uniform, the black hat, the handcuffs and truncheon on the belt. Policemen guests?

  ‘Good morning.’ They look at Dad. They walk over to our table. ‘I’m afraid we’re going to have to ask you to come with us,’ they say.

  Not guests.

  Policemen.

  Sorry

  Dad’s cup of coffee hovers halfway to his mouth. ‘Why?’ He takes a sip.

  ‘Finish your breakfast,’ they say. ‘We are not uncivilised.’

  Dad looks confused. Lloyd looks terrified. My head is buzzy with questions.

  The policemen turn round and pour themselves cups of coffee from the jug and talk in Norwegian.

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ Dad whispers.

  We eat in silence. Kind of. Me and Lloyd don’t eat anything. Dad eats his really slowly. I don’t know how he’s hungry. My stomach has shrunk to a blip.

  I stare at him. ‘I haven’t done anything,’ he says and eats more ham. ‘They can wait, OK.’

  I think about the form, I think about the passport. I think about the mean starey reception man with his death pictures and animal heads. ‘You didn’t do the form.’

  ‘You don’t get arrested for that.’

  Don’t you? ‘You’re not actually arrested.’ I pick my fingers under the table. ‘If you were arrested you’d be in handcuffs.’

  We get up, the policemen don’t handcuff him. This is good.

  ‘I’m coming!’ I say and stand up. I’m not being left here on my own.

  ‘We need you too, sir.’ They look at Lloyd.