Boyracers (24 page)

his appearance had been that of a ghost.

Belinda pulls up outside the house, her horn calling, insistent. From the window I see Frannie bounding from the driver’s seat (driver’s seat?), his steps athletic and his grin like fresh cheesecake.

‘Guess whit?’ he beams, when I open the door.

‘The Martians have landed?’

‘Nut.’

‘There’s nothing the psychiatrist can dae for ye?’

‘Nut.’

‘Ye’ve shagged Ally McCoist?’

‘Nut!’

‘Whit is it, man? I’m studyin.’

Frannie pulls out a plastic wallet and at first I think he’s joined the police or something. Then I notice the letters DVLA, the name Colin Franton printed beneath and I realise it’s a driving licence.

‘Franman!’ Our hands slap in mid-air. ‘I didnay even ken ye were takin lessons.’

‘Well, I didnay want yese tay ken,’ he shrugs. ‘In case I arsed it up. Comin oot for a run?’

‘I dunno, man. Loads ay studyin tay dae. Big exams soon.’

Frannie is too cheery to accept this. ‘Aw the mair reason. Ye stressed?’

‘Aye.’

‘Shitein yersel?’

‘Aye.’

‘Ye should be. Cos if ye dinnay come oot, I’ll kick yer fuckin heid in.’

so we go on a maiden run to Cumbernauld and Frannie’s sky-high, gripping the wheel like a kid in a go-kart, actually going ‘Wheee!’ as the evening roars dramatically past and I feel sick/exhilarated/stressed/chilled all at the same time and at this speed something feels ending – this Robbie Williams song? My tether? the world as we know it? – Brian winks and passes me a Becks, which I struggle with (beer, to me, still tastes horribly like beer), Fran guided through motorway lanes by the wise Dolby-Wan Kenobi. He has a grin glued to his face, still going ‘Wheee!’ and I decide to play that Pink Floyd song called Several Species Of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together And Grooving
With A Pict (yes, it actually exists) but Dolby slaps the CD away as if it’s an amorous advance.

‘Gie me one good reason why
you
should pick the music.’

‘I’ll gie you three. Robbie fuckin Williams.’

Frannie tells us about something weird that happened to Ace of Spads, the guy he knows in Tesco’s: ‘He’s drivin up north, right, on this back road, an the mist’s comin right at him, thick as, when he sees this thing runnin towards him through the fog.’

‘Whit? A dug?’

‘Well, that’s whit he thought. Then he realised it wis too big for a dug. Far too big. It’s as big as a horse, except it looks nothin like a horse, an it’s chargin right at him.’

‘Whit was it?’ I ask.

‘An ostrich.’

‘Whit?’

‘Get tay fuck!’

‘Tellin ye. He must have been near wan ay they ostrich farms or somethin. But this fuckin thing strides right up tay him, heid gon like that … an then it just veers away. Meep meep, ya bas.’

‘That wis the Road Runner.’

‘Aw Frannie, away,’ scoffs Brian.

‘I’m tellin ye,’ says Frannie. ‘Ask anybody in Tesco’s.’

‘Aye, right,’ says Dolby. ‘The same reliable sources that said the floodlights at Ibrox are hotter than the sun?’

‘Hiy,’ Frannie notes, ‘the
surface
ay the sun.’

‘I bet there isnay even an Ace ay Spads,’ Brian complains, knocking the back of the plastic Han Solo off the dash. ‘I bet you’ve been makin it aw up.’

‘Like Frannie’s got that much imagination.’

‘Well,’ Frannie shrugs, smoothing his hands down the steering
wheel, ‘I’m the one wi the drivin licence, Mr Mann. You couldnay get a licence tay have a
pish
.’

I’m listening, laughing, staring at the Irn-Bru can on the dashboard, the mystery which has evaded me all this time (if it’s not attached to the car, why does it drop in a straight line? whywhywhy?) and realise

How little everything’s changed.

How much everything’s changed.

We’re still in the same car on the same roads, inflicting the same patter on each other, lusting after vague girls, trapped in an endless cycle of stadium choruses, FHM articles, arguments about what the best Superman movie was (the second, obviously).

Except we’re different. There’s a hollowness to Dolby’s Star Trek soliloquies, as if he’s sensed at last they’re lost on the other two. Brian is spending more and more time on his phone, trying to organise his emigration while keeping Smith’s from being a hang-out for the cast of Deliverance. Frannie seems jaded, energy-less, like Coisty after he moved from Rangers to Kilmarnock.

And me?

I hate myself and I want to die.

as the argument over who has the biggest disc spirals out of control, and Bono yips

and Frannie accelerates, whooping, Belinda complaining deep in her intestines and the sky over Scotland is a cool vermillion and I appeal, ‘Guys? Whit does it matter who’s got the biggest disc? I dinnay even own a computer.’

‘Dick,’ Brian explains, ‘we’re arguing ower who’s got the biggest dick.’

It’s then I notice Frannie glancing in the mirror, glancing again. His brow furrows as a car draws up beside us and Cottsy leans from the open window. When he smiles, I notice the gap in his teeth made by Brian’s fist at the Hollywood Bowl.

‘Awright gents,’ he says, as the car veers close, making Frannie swerve and Dolby shout, gripping the wheel: ‘Fucksake, Fran!’

‘Shit, Dolby. You’d better take ower. The fucker’s gonnay ram me aff the road!’

‘Forget it,’ Brian barks. ‘Stop the car an we’ll take these cunts.’

Cottsy is holding up a knife.

‘Mibbe no,’ says Brian. ‘Keep drivin.’

Cottsy’s squad are crammed into their Fiat Uno, HARDCORE sprayed down the side. Dance choons blasting. His noddies crack themselves up at Frannie’s nervy swerving and my stomach goes that floppy way again and the muscles in my arms solidify for battle.

‘Take the fuckin wheel, man!’

‘I canny, you’re in the drivin seat!’

Cottsy’s car pulls close in, almost close enough for him to grab Belinda’s wheel himself.

‘You boys fancy pullin ower for a chat?’

Frannie hits the pedal and roars away. We must be doing ninety. I look back to see Cottsy weaving in our wake. Frannie is accelerating like a madman. ‘Slow doon, fer fuck’s sake,’ Dolby commands. ‘It’s yer first time on the motorway.’ Belinda starts a violent shuddering. The gauges strain and bob.

‘Slow the fuck doon!’

My heart retches. The four of us shout at once, then this happens in crystal stages

things hurtle back to speed as our voices are lost in a prolonged moan from belinda’s engine and shaking starts in the car’s frame and our speed starts to

There is silence for a whole ten seconds.

We get out, slamming doors. The sounds of cars whizzing past and a hissing radiator. Frannie tries Belinda’s engine, but she struggles for breath, making gasping noises.

‘How long will it take them tay come back?’ I ask.

Dolby shrugs, gazing up the motorway.

‘Ten minutes?’ he says. ‘Fifteen?’

Then he turns decisively and tells us what to do.

‘Are ye stupit?’ Frannie argues, holding Belinda’s wheel protectively. ‘That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.’

‘Dae you want tay be here when they get back?’ Dolby asks.

The A80 is bordered by a wire fence, which bars access to a steep slope. We kick at three of the stakes like punk rockers, stamping the wire to create a hole just big enough for a car. We laugh and make jokes. It begins to feel like playing.

Frannie is posted in the front, while we push and grunt against the rear.

‘Bit more,’ he encourages. ‘Bit more. Bit more. Bit mooooooaaaaa–’

Belinda disappears from our palms, trailing a scream, and we realise we’ve misjudged the gradient. She hits the bottom with a tinkling thud.

We charge down to see Frannie’s teeth gritted, his face a terrified rictus.

Belinda cools and gives up her life, while we just stand biting our nails and the evening edges towards darkness.

‘Fuck!’ Dolby yells, hammering her bonnet. ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’

Then he stands. Stares at her. Starts tearing off the licence plates.

‘Whit are ye daein?’ I say, baffled.

He cuts me a look. ‘We’re leavin her,’ he explains. ‘Look at her, she’s a write-aff. Gie us the papers fay the glove compartment.’

We watch him, stunned.

‘Come an help, then,’ he commands. ‘It’s startin tay fuckin rain.’

So there Belinda is left, her bonnet crushed and curled like petals, her windows cracked, her headlights drawing slowly down on the world.

We stand there for a while. Just looking at her.

Then Dolby utters, monotone, ‘Let’s go afore somebody calls the polis.’

We head into the night, boxing our shoulders. Only once do I glance back at Belinda, to see her broken, alone. Dolby’s hands are tight in his pockets, his face giving nothing, but I can feel him shutting down, some part of him dying with Belinda. Rain patters on my brow. Sodium light stretches on the surface of the road. I’ve started to shiver and feel cold. The four of us trudge in stark silence.

This – as David Bowie said at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert – is where the fun stops.

We have no place left to go.

And we have no place left to go.

when I traipse into my house, freezing, the phone is ringing. Derek answers it, as I shuck off my wet clothes, and as he says, ‘Alvin? Aye, he’s just walked in the door–’ he’s seeing the state I’m in, seeing my clothes hitting the floorboards with a dull slap.

He hands me the phone. The room seems to sway. ‘Hello,’ I mumble.

There is laughter from the other end of the line.

‘Hello?’ I say again.

‘Hello,’ someone repeats in a silly voice.

‘Who is this?’

‘It’s a friend,’ the voice answers. There is a host of giggles. ‘Just wanted to, you know, ask if you enjoyed the party?’

Things are starting to swirl gently. I clutch the kitchen door to make them stop.

‘Whit party? Whit ye talkin about? Who are you?’

‘What party?’ he says, a polite, clean voice. ‘Have you forgotten already? Tyra’s party. Your big night out.’

‘Whit big night out?’

‘The one you weren’t fucking invited to.’

‘Tell him, for fuck’s sake–’ people snigger in the background. ‘Put the mink out of his misery.’

‘Whit d’ye mean? Of course I wis invited.’

My hand is starting to tremble, rage or nerves or something else.

‘Du-uh! Do you not know a fake invite when you see one? Sorry I couldn’t catch you at school, Alvin,’ the caller repeats, sarcastically. ‘Would love it if you ca-ame! Sound familiar?’

My legs are weakening. Someone drives bolts into the base of my skull.

‘As if Tyra would invite y–’

I hang up, shaking, my teeth chattering in my head. Derek’s
crossing
the room to me, but all I can focus on is an advert on telly, which is trying to sell me a car using a voiceover from On The Road.

‘Alvin?’ Derek’s peering at me. ‘You alright?’

‘There’s too much,’ I think I say and

that night I am caught between fire and ice. Curled, foetal, shivering. For well-on five hours I am packed in my own sweat and carbon dioxide. The
room pulses in and out of view. My breathing shifts up and down gear. The curtains are not billowing, but somehow it seems they should be. So hot. So cold. Between the hours of 3am and 4am I discover Mum at the end of my bed. She is wearing a floral dress and her blonde hair is
flowing
. I keep asking her why she’s crying and tell her I’m sorry, we should have been better kids, it’s all our fault, but she says, ‘It was nothin tay do wi you, son,’ then becomes Dave Gilmour from Pink Floyd. I interview him about the making of The Wall and he gives full, polite, elaborate answers and some time later I wake making tea for the writer Iain Banks, and Dad comes into the kitchen to find me naked and chatting to an empty chair, a stream of day-old tea spattering onto the floor and

calls the doctor. I feel tiny and huge in the corner of the room,
watching
him, watching the nation start to yawn and stretch on television. A Royal Variety performance. A bomb going off somewhere in Ireland. Brad Pitt. Jennifer Aniston. My teeth chitter like ice cubes in a drink. I am fucked. Exhausted. It’s over, I repeat to myself. It’s all over. I’m dying. Dad’s eyebrows furrow, the phone gripped in his palm, his mouth not moving in time with the words, ‘No, he doesn’t take drugs. There is paracetamol in the house, but … well, he’s been under a lot of stress recently with his exams, and there’s been some family trouble,’ and I start singing, badly, aware of how badly I’m singing God Bless Hookey Street, the end-credits theme from Only Fools and Horses, and Dad glances at me, repeats his urgency to the doctor. He starts to get me dressed and I try to stop myself laughing, hopping into the legs of my jeans, my chest cold and burning and exposed, then I’m in the back of a taxi, Dad asking me questions, and I’m trying to answer them but the causeway between my mouth and my brain is too wide and all that comes out is, ‘I’m fine, Dad. I’m actually fine. Dad. Stay with me. I feel terrible,’ and the stars are silvery and wintry, making me think I’m
ascending, like ET. My back hurts. My joints move like they’re full of broken glass. Words dissolving on my tongue. The doctor feels my head and frowns, ‘No drugs at all?’ and I sing now the drugs don’t work, they just make you worse, and laugh, but he doesn’t seem to find it funny. No, not at all. A woman haunting the fringes of my vision. A vase of white flowers, the heads drained and tired like people at the end of a long, traumatic day in which their lives had felt ill-fitting. One of the nurses looks like Gwyneth Paltrow, a babe, and how annoying that she has to see me like this, as she withdraws the blood slowly, carefully, from my pendulous arm and I try to explain to her that I’m not a junkie or anything, I just have a head like a zeppelin on fire and the ghost of a wedding dress pulsing at the corner of my eye telling me something about misery and the wind and I turn to look but it is