The Boy Who Hit Play Read online

‘I forgot my nail clippers,’ he says and stands up.

  ‘Excellent.’ I keep squatting.

  Lloyd goes in with bendy knees. The door swings shut with a

  SWOOSH

  CLINK.

  He doesn’t come out. He folds himself over the desk, looks both ways and waves.

  I go in.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Lloyd is whispering under the desk.

  ‘This,’ I whisper back and we creep into the hotel man’s office. It has shelves full of folders and papers, a phone, a decanter of whisky and a photo of the man with a dead deer slung round his shoulders.

  I take off my shoes for quietness and run into the dining room and stick one behind the door so it doesn’t bang shut and get a salt cellar and run back and pour it in the whisky decanter.

  I pass it to Lloyd. ‘Shake it.’

  He shakes it. I shake it.

  ‘There.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Good.’

  I picture the man spitting it out all over the papers.

  ‘It doesn’t say anything about our thoughts on animal cruelty though does it.’ I take a biro off the desk and a wedge of paper out of the printer. I pass Lloyd the heavy-duty Sellotape dispenser. ‘Bring this.’

  We creep into the dining room and I stand on a chair and I draw a speech bubble coming out of one of the deer’s heads on the paper with a biro. It looks weedy.

  ‘Use this.’ Lloyd chucks me a pen. ‘I always have my Sharpies,’ he says and together we draw speech bubbles and write messages from the animals and stick them on with tape:

  MY LIFE WAS NOT FOR YOU TO TAKE

  and

  I LOOK BETTER ALIVE

  and

  DOWN WITH DEATH ORNAMENTS

  As we get a bit tired they get a bit surreal:

  GIVE ME A GUN TOO NEXT TIME AND MAKE IT FAIR

  and

  YOU ONLY PUT ME UP AS YOUR HEAD IS SO UGLY

  and

  I WILL HAUNT YOU WITH MY EYES

  AND THEY WILL FOLLOW YOU ALL AROUND THE ROOM

  EVEN WHEN YOU TURN AROUND

  YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE ME!

  The paper bubbles glow in the moonlight.

  I look at the wall of protest. It looks great.

  I look at my arms on the walls. The way they make shadows.

  I make a tortoise. Kind of.

  I pull back and make a deer head by Lloyd’s face. He jumps and nearly falls off the chair.

  My hand is small. The deer head’s massive.

  I think about shadows.

  Shadows freak you from a distance. Made by someone else.

  Someone you can’t see. I chase Lloyd with the deer head. It’s easy. He doesn’t even notice.

  Shadows can follow you around.

  I think about walking out of this room with the policemen.

  Walking back in and seeing the leather-hat man.

  His face pings into my brain.

  And multiplies.

  Images come into focus and merge.

  I know who he is.

  Run!

  He’s been everywhere. So often I didn’t even notice.

  The man with the budgie at the airport.

  The one taking a photo of a pigeon on the bus.

  The ‘after you’ man in the newsagent.

  He just blended.

  He was the perfect shadow.

  He was the shadow man.

  He’s Floyd’s shadow.

  He’s working for Floyd.

  ‘Floyd’s hired a detective to follow us.’ I jump down off my chair. ‘Why would he do that?’ I walk over.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Lloyd looks down and tries to unstick his fingers from the Sellotape dispenser. ‘I have no idea.’

  I don’t believe him.

  ‘The only way to beat him is to tell me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Please.’ I go closer.

  ‘I can’t.’ Lloyd drops the dispenser. It crashes to the floor.

  We freeze.

  There’s footsteps upstairs. Great. I take my shoe out the door and slip it on.

  It swooshes shut.

  We scuttle to the edge of the room and lean up against the wall.

  Lloyd’s hand crawls over and holds on to mine.

  The footsteps come downstairs.

  A light goes on in the lobby.

  Someone pushes the door open. We pull in flat. I shut my eyes in case they reflect.

  And freeze.

  The eyes look around in the dark like stealth lasers.

  Sometimes the best form of defence is attack. Right?

  Right. I run at the door screaming. There’s no leather hat. It isn’t the shadow. It’s the hotel man. I bounce off his stomach, switch the lobby lights off with one hand and pull Lloyd along with the other and steam up the stairs.

  I drag him up one floor.

  The lights go back on. I flick them off on the landing.

  Second floor.

  The lights flick back on.

  ‘You do the lights,’ I whisper at Lloyd. ‘And when he comes, run!’

  Lloyd stays on the landing and flicks the light on and off and on and off like a strobe. I put my hand over my eyes and look through my fingers to find room fifty-two.

  I bang on the door. ‘Open up!’ The shadow man better be in there. ‘Open up! I’ve got a message from Floyd,’ I yell!

  I hear Lloyd shriek and fumble along the corridor. ‘He’s coming,’ he says. ‘He’s coming.’

  I try the handle. The door clicks and uncatches. We fall into room fifty-two and I lock it shut with the switch behind us.

  Remington to the Rescue

  The room is dark. And silent.

  I flick the light on. It blinds us.

  The hotel man pushes against the door and yells, ‘I’ll ring the police!’

  I look around. The bed is made. The window is open.

  The curtain blows in the breeze.

  He leans in and hisses. ‘I’ll have you deported. I know who you are,’ he says. ‘I know your little secret.’

  So shadow man lied about us? Like how?

  I punch the door and bounce his head off the other side.

  Lloyd pulls the dresser and I push and we shove it under the handle and block the doorway.

  There’s a piece of paper on the bed. I pick it up. It’s my birth address. I didn’t even know it had gone. I tap my jacket. The zip’s still done up. But my compass has gone too.

  So he’s a pickpocket. A spy and a pickpocket.

  I turn the paper over.

  Thanks, it says on the back. Most Helpful!

  ‘Do you not think I have a spare key?’ the hotel man says. ‘Idiots.’ And stomps off downstairs to get it.

  I look at the window.

  ‘We’ve got to jump, Lloyd. If he can do it. So can we.’ I run over and look out. Two floors up. How is it possible?

  Lloyd runs behind me, his hands tucked up under his armpits. I climb up on to the ledge. I hear the man’s feet on the stairs.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Another door opens.

  ‘Get back in your room!’

  I grab for the drainpipe with one hand and hold tight to the window frame with the other. It reaches, my other hand gently lets go and I make a jump over, but it doesn’t catch and I slip and fall scraping my hand down the metal and my knees off the bricks all the way to the bottom and go over on my ankle. Lloyd lands next to me with a bounce.

  We hear the hotel man yelling upstairs.

  I try to stand and get a sharp pain all the way up me. ‘Lloyd,’ I hiss-whisper. ‘I can’t walk.’

  ‘Remington to the rescue!’ he says and puts his arms out behind and I fling mine round his neck and we bounce off up the hill like a giant preying mantis with an ant on its back.

  ‘Remington?’ My teeth jangle.

  ‘It was my superhero nickname.’ He strides onward. ‘Remington Sword.’

  ‘In the castle?’

  ‘Yes in the castle,
’ he says. ‘I got great at drainpipes.’

  We zoom up the hill.

  And the blue-black swallows us up.

  And I am glad Lloyd and his long bendy legs are in my life.

  And I wonder if animal cruelty would have been something I would have ever thought about if he wasn’t?

  Connections

  Lloyd settles me down on the floor by the station door. I hop on my good foot and use his elbow as a crutch back into the waiting room.

  ‘What if he comes in here for us?’ I whisper.

  ‘He won’t.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll stay awake all night,’ Lloyd says and picks me up and plops me down on the bench. ‘With mind maths!’

  I put my bad foot up on my rucksack and when I wake up I have red slat lines on my good leg from lying in one place and not moving.

  Dad stretches and says, ‘Slept like a log.’

  Lloyd’s head bobs with his eyes open. He scratches his chin and says, ‘Two hundred and eight sevens are one thousand four hundred and fifty-six.’

  A woman with a carrier bag stares at him and I say, ‘Hmmn, bad late trains,’ and look at my watch like we missed one.

  Lloyd says, ‘I sold Uncle Albert’s emerald earnings last night. Amongst other things.’

  He winks at me and hands me and Dad a cash wedge each. ‘Just in case,’ he says.

  ‘In case of what?’ I rub my leg and try to stand on it. It works. Just.

  Dad strokes his goalpost moustache and tries to hand the money back. ‘I can’t take it,’ he says.

  ‘No.’ Lloyd backs off. ‘Your friendship is my sacred jewel,’ he says and the train pulls in before we can argue.

  I hobble on Lloyd’s elbow on to the platform and we get on and shove the cases in the rack and walk along to the buffet car and when the waiter says, ‘Can I help you?’ This time I say, ‘Ja tak,’ and order Dad and Lloyd waffles and coffee with my cash wedge. I get Lloyd three coffees. I don’t have coffee so I have waffles with waffles and we all have them hot with raspberry jam and sour cream which is so thick it spreads.

  It is the

  BEST

  breakfast ever.

  And I record the sound of:

  buying things for other people tastes nice

  (a silent happy-eating, rail-track-

  bumping kind of sound).

  I imagine the man at the hotel’s face when he comes downstairs.

  And I look around and wonder where the shadow man is now?

  ‘Dad.’ I lick the last bit of jam off my fingers. ‘We had a bit of an incident.’

  Lloyd falls asleep on the buffet car table and I tell Dad everything.

  His face goes pale.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference,’ I say. ‘Now we have the advantage.’

  Dad rubs his head and pulls his hair. ‘How?’

  ‘We have knowledge,’ I say. ‘We know how Floyd’s following us. We know he knows it too. We know what the shadow detective looks like.’ I tap my fingers on the table. ‘Knowledge is power.’

  ‘I want the compass back,’ Dad says and looks livid.

  ‘Me too,’ I say. ‘Me too.’

  We travel all day and watch hills and fjords and lush green fields bouncing along out of the window like it’s a screen. Lloyd wakes up after lunch and I buy us all Dumle ice creams with thick chocolate tops and caramel middles and we play hangman. I look at Lloyd’s writing all neat and curled and flicky.

  I look at the Ks.

  ‘How do you write like that?’

  ‘We had a tutor.’

  ‘In the castle?’ He nods.

  ‘Mrs Phipps,’ he says. ‘I wish we’d gone to normal school.’

  I think he’d have been eaten alive in normal school and tuck that fact into my mind.

  There are three of them then.

  Three possible people with flicky Ks.

  Lloyd, Floyd and Mrs Phipps.

  Three people could have written those notes.

  The sun stretches out over the water. Tucks itself behind trees. Jumps out of rocks. I see a massive boulder in someone’s garden in the middle of a fence. I think if rocks could talk they’d say, ‘I’m here, deal with it. Move your fence.’

  I think about things in the way.

  Bjorn was right.

  We are going to the same place.

  Floyd was following us.

  Now he’s got my address.

  I have to ring it.

  It’s been three days already.

  I stick my phone up my sleeve and wobble off to the toilet.

  Magic Magic Siri

  I shut the seat and sit down. The walls are green leaves to look like a forest. Nice.

  There’s no window. Not nice.

  I feel a bit claustrophobic.

  The wheels thunder under. The hinges squeak and rattle.

  I look down and reach out for the magic hand of the universe.

  ‘Hey, Siri.’

  ‘Hey, Elvis.’

  ‘You have a big brain.’

  ‘Who me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought so.’

  ‘I need you to find a phone number.’

  ‘What kind of businesses are you looking for?’

  ‘I need you to find the phone number for Skriva, Norway.’

  ‘Here’s what I found for screamo no way.’

  ‘Find phone number for Skriva, 8320 Norway.’

  ‘Here’s what I found on the web for scroll that no way. Have a look.’

  ‘Find phone number for

  S

  K

  R

  I

  V

  A

  Norway.’

  ‘I found three places named SKRIVA. Tap the one you are looking for.’

  All it comes up with is a farm.

  And two places that aren’t anywhere near.

  ‘Stupid Siri,’ I yell at the phone.

  ‘That’s not nice.’

  I can’t ring without a number.

  I put my phone back in my pocket and smack my head on the handrail.

  The train lurches to a stop.

  Hmmmn

  It’s a normal train break. We swap platforms – down through tunnel steps, up other steps, through a waiting room portal and on to the new train.

  It’s totally different inside.

  We squeeze the cases down the corridor with locked doors on one side and windows on the other and queue up to get a key card off a guard in the buffet carriage.

  I use my fast eyes to look down the names list. Is Floyd on?

  Did the shadow man follow us here?

  The guard sees me looking. She closes the folder and hands us the key.

  I only got as far as the Ds.

  Not the Ps.

  I kick my foot into the table. Pain shoots up my leg.

  She ticks our names off a list and we squeeze back down the corridor again.

  A family comes towards us from the other end. Lloyd says, ‘Retreat!’ We go backwards. They shuffle down into their compartment. I say, ‘Attack,’ and we go forwards. When someone opens a door no one else can get through.

  Lloyd flaps the side seat down next to the window and blocks the aisle.

  ‘Look at this!’ he says.

  I don’t know what it’s for. Maybe looking out instead of sleeping?

  *

  I slot the key into our door and open it. Inside is a cabin with bunk beds and a washbasin just like the website. ‘Surprise!’ I say. ’Cept now I don’t feel happy. Now I just feel angry. And confused.

  Me and Dad are 68/70. Lloyd is next door. He knocks on the wall. I knock back and eat the square chocolates off the pillows.

  Lloyd comes in and we sit on Dad’s bunk for a while and I flick the light switches – top bunk, lower bunk, sink, reading light – before the train starts to move. I can hear other people banging down the corridor. I wonder who they are.

  The train sways off out of the station and we s
tare out the window, past the curtains at the world going by:

  bright station lights

  grass

  fields.

  I need to get back to the names list.

  I need to ring the address.

  How?

  I look out the window at the yellow sky and the red mountains. I look at my watch. ‘It’s half past nine.’

  ‘It’s lighter up north,’ Dad says. ‘It’s the land of the midnight sun.’

  ‘When does it get dark?’

  ‘It doesn’t.’

  I imagine walking over a mountain at three a.m. that looks like lunchtime.

  Weird.

  But nice.

  Dad goes to the loo and Lloyd leans over and says, ‘Elvis. Keep safe.’

  ‘Why?’ I say. ‘Floyd’s after you, not me, Lloyd.’

  And Lloyd says, ‘Hmmn,’ and pats me on the shoulder and leaves.

  Boldness

  We change into our pyjamas and I get into bed. Dad pulls the ladder down and climbs on to the top bunk. I watch some graffiti flash by on a white wall.

  ‘Will you fall out?’ I imagine him landing on the floor like a heavy sausage. BOOM.

  ‘I dunno,’ he says and clicks the strap that’s a bit like a seat belt and supposed to hold him in.

  I lie in bed and wonder what Lloyd was on about?

  I need to know if Floyd’s on the train.

  If he’s on it I’ll ask him myself.

  I listen to the sound of:

  feeling bold in the middle of the night.

  I was bold once.

  I can do it again.

  I grab a pencil and two drink mats off the sink and get up.

  Dad looks down at me. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Toilet,’ I say and shut the door before he asks anything else.

  I can’t tell him. If I do he’ll say, DON’T. It’s dangerous. Leave it.

  But I can’t.

  *

  I walk down to the buffet car in my socks. It’s kind of weird in pyjamas. My feet bounce over the plastic where the carriages join together. The buttons make the doors open and hiss. They’re like giant yellow hissing wine gums. A door closes behind me. A door opens in front.

  I hold myself up on the wall with my arm and shuffle my bad leg and keep going.