Ostrich Boys (11 page)

“Okay,” I said to Joe. “But I’m warning you: this story doesn’t feel like we’re even halfway through.”

“Yeah, well. Plenty of time yet.”

I followed him to the counter but he still wouldn’t take my money. I saw he didn’t have the bag of mini Mars Bars anymore and was tempted to run back to get them, to keep Kenny happy. But Joe was too quick paying and I didn’t want to push my luck and hold him up.

When we walked back to the taxi, Kenny and Sim were quiet, twitchy.

“Get in,” Joe said. “Gotta get moving.”

They both looked at me, then were quick to scramble in when I nodded. The relief flooded their faces.

We were back on the road when Kenny asked, “Don’t suppose you got any crisps, did you?”

Before I could answer, Joe pulled the bag of Mars Bars out from under his T-shirt and tossed it to him. I hadn’t even noticed him shove it up there in the first place. He was full of minor miracles.

“Come on, then,” he said to me in that thick accent of his. “Jackanory—tell us your story.”

Me telling the story of why we were doing what we were doing (including plenty of interjections from both Kenny and Sim) had taken over half an hour. Led Zeppelin were starting up on their second go-around. Our route had bypassed Blackburn and Preston, we’d turned off the A59 and hit the M55 at a decent speed—Gus’s driving keeping us in the middle lane like we were on rails. It was going to be a straight cruise all the way to Blackpool from here. And I realized I was in a part of the country I’d only ever heard about or seen on TV, never been to. We were getting further and further away from what we knew.

They’d taken some persuading that our story was the truth and I’d taken Ross out of my rucksack as proof. Gus had recoiled at the sight of it. He kept shooting backward glances at the urn like it was full of actual flesh and blood
rather than just ash. Maybe he was worried I might spill it. But Joe was more philosophical.

“Yeah, Mickey Gee,” he said. “He was just like that.”

I guessed he meant like a really close, best friend. Not like one who was carried around in a marble jar. Even so, I was confused.

Sim too. “You had a mate that died?”

“No. There was this lad I grew up with called Mick, Mickey Gee, and we went everywhere together. My mum always said we were joined at the hip. It was like, if people saw me they knew Mick couldn’t be far behind. And vice versa. We used to have a right laugh.” He laughed to himself as if to prove it.

“What happened to him?”

“Don’t know, really.”

“Don’t you still see him?”

“Not for ages. He didn’t stay on at school like me, just left first chance he got. He still lives our way, though, so my mum says. She still sees his mum in the supermarket, or the bingo, wherever.”

I could tell by the looks on Kenny and Sim’s faces that they were as shocked by this as I was. “He couldn’t have been a good friend,” Kenny muttered.

“What was that?”

Kenny was embarrassed. “Just, maybe, that he wasn’t that good a friend. You know, if he doesn’t keep in touch anymore?”

“No, he was great. We grew up from little together; virtually lived in each other’s houses—me at his, him at mine. We became blood brothers too. We were eleven or twelve or something and did all the cutting each other’s hand and stuff. Still got a scar somewhere.” He searched his palm for the evidence.

“So why don’t you see him anymore?” I asked.

“Suppose it’s just one of them things. Kind of drifted. Just the way it goes.” He knocked on the Plexiglas partition behind Gus’s head and grinned. “Got new mates now. Right, Gus?”

Gus nodded; smoke leaked from between his lips.

Kenny, Sim and I looked at each other. We weren’t impressed. It would never happen to us.

“What did you say your mate was called?” Joe asked.

“Ross,” Sim said. “Ross Fell.”

“And did he?”

“He was run over.”

“Nasty,” Joe said.

“Some people reckon he did it on purpose,” Kenny said. Then shrank away from the dirty looks Sim and I threw at him. “But it’s not true,” he mumbled.

“Why? What happened?” Joe asked.

“It’s all bollocks,” Sim told him.

I said, “It’s just the bloke who was driving the car saying stuff. I mean, of course he doesn’t want to take the blame. Who would? But if everybody knew Ross like we did, they’d
know him doing something like that on purpose is a totally stupid thing to think.”

“No smoke without fire,” Joe said, looking at the tip of his cigarette.

“But it’s rubbish,” Kenny, Sim and I said at once. “No way. He’d never.”

“I’ll tell you the kind of person Ross was,” Sim said. “He got me out of loads of trouble last week. He let me copy his history homework, yeah? We got found out because our answers were too much alike, which was obviously my fault. But our teacher, Mr. Fowler, he just picked on Ross. And Ross could’ve easily said I was the one who asked him, but he didn’t. Even when he got a letter sent home and his mum had a go at him too, he never once dropped me in it. That’s how good a friend he was. Does that sound like somebody who’d go and kill themselves to you?”

“He’d just won a story competition too,” Kenny said. “He was going to get one of his stories published in a book. He had his picture in the paper and everything. He’d always wanted to be a writer.”

Sim jabbed a finger at Joe. “And where’s his note, then? Suicide people always leave notes, don’t they? Saying why they did it? So where’s Ross’s?”

Joe held up his hands in submission. “You knew him better than me.”

“What really pisses me off,” Sim went on, “is that there’s
gonna be some people who’ll believe it. They’ll even
want
to believe it.”

“People like Munro,” Kenny said. Both Sim and I nodded.

Joe wanted to know who Munro was.

“This kid who seemed to get his kicks picking on Ross,” I said. “That thing Sim just told you about—with Ross getting done by the history teacher? Well, Munro went and made it even worse. He sprayed this graffiti on the back of the bike shed and Mr. Fowler blamed Ross for it, thinking he was doing it out of spite because of all the homework trouble.”

“We knew it was Munro,” Sim said. “Just couldn’t prove it. We were in the dining hall when Fowler cornered Ross and accused him, but Ross didn’t even know what he was talking about at that point. And Fowler was virtually screaming at him—his face like this, like it was gonna explode. And everyone watching. Then Ross went and said he wished he
had
written it.”

Kenny thought that was fantastic. “Did he? Honest? I didn’t know that.”

Sim nodded. “He said it under his breath as Fowler was walking away, but he heard him. Sent him to the head, who had a massive go at him too, and made him take another letter home to his mum and dad.”

“His mum went even madder than before,” I said to Joe. “I was there. He kept telling her he hadn’t written anything
on any shed, but she was just going mad at him for having two letters sent home—didn’t care whether he’d done it or not. She said he had to apologize to Mr. Fowler, and Ross said no way was he going to apologize for something he hadn’t done.”

“What did it say?” Joe asked. “On the bike shed?”

“‘Fat Twat Fowler.’”

Joe laughed out loud. Gus found it funny enough to cough out smoke. “Yep,” Joe said. “That’s gonna get you in trouble, all right. And is he?”

“What?”

“Fowler. Is he fat and a twat?”

“Hundred percent,” Sim growled.

“But he was being bullied, then?” Joe said.

“What d’you mean?”

“Your mate, Ross. He was being bullied by this Munro kid. That’s a reason some kids have for suicide, isn’t it?”

I shook my head. “Yeah, but not Ross. He never backed down from anything. Always said he wanted to fight his own battles.”

I remembered Munro and his goons had got Ross the day after. They’d cornered him in Haverstoe Park and beat the crap out of him—it was a threat to make sure Ross didn’t grass anyone up about any graffiti. Ross had come round to my house to try and clean up a bit before he went home, not wanting his mum and dad to see him like that. He got blood from his nose on our towels and I’d had to chuck them out
before my mum saw them and asked awkward questions too.

I’d said to Ross, “You ought to get Sim to have a go at Munro back.”

But Ross wouldn’t do it. He’d said, “The day I can’t stand up for myself anymore is the day I might as well roll over and die.”

It didn’t sound anything like a kid who was going to kill himself by the end of the week to me.

“We got both Fowler and Munro back, though, didn’t we?” Kenny said. He told the story of our own graffiti exploits.

I couldn’t tell if Joe was shocked, amused or simply amazed. He said, “Listen, it’s cool what you’re doing, okay? Kind of a bit mental, but very cool. You’ve got balls—got to give you that. Hey, Gus! You ever met kidnappers before?”

“You can’t kidnap him if he’s dead,” Kenny said.

Joe shrugged. “Urn-nappers, then. Ash-nappers.”

Kenny was worried. “Can they arrest you for that too?”

Sim rolled his eyes.

The conversation shifted then—Kenny, Sim and I kept on telling Ross-stories. About the time we’d sneaked into the girls’ changing room at the local leisure center; about the time we’d built a tree house only to have it hospitalize Ross when not only the house but half the tree fell on him; about the way Ross had somehow talked a really good-looking girl from Humberston into going on a date with Kenny.

I rewrapped Ross in my jumper and pushed him deep down inside my rucksack. There was a stab of realization—again—that we were talking about someone who was dead. These realizations came in different shapes and forms, sneaking up on me. And some hurt more than others.

This one was maybe the most painful so far. This one reminded me that our stories of Ross were about someone who’d no longer be around to make stories for us to tell. Never again.

We made it to the outskirts of Blackpool just after four, so Joe’s prediction was pretty much spot-on. We got lost coming off the M55 and ended up going the long way round to get into the town itself. And the trouble was, none of us had any idea how to find the train station. We kept our eyes peeled for signs but without any luck.

“There’re two stations, I think,” Joe said. “Do you know which one you’re after?”

Kenny, Sim and I did synchronized shrugs.

“Tell you what, then. We’ll go see my mate who’s getting me and Gus jobs. He should know; he’s been here long enough. And he’ll still be at work so you’ll get to see the sights as well.”

Gus aimed for the sea front, ignoring two lots of people who tried to wave us down as if we were a real taxi. It was still a perfect, hot and glorious day, so we reckoned they
shouldn’t be lazy and should be enjoying the weather. There were plenty of others who were. Lots of shorts and sunburn.

Kenny was the first to spot the famous tower. We drove along the wide main street—Central Promenade onto South Promenade—with the beach on one side and a never-ending façade of pubs, chip shops and amusement arcades on the other. We could hear the hullabaloo of greedy slot machines through the taxi’s open windows. We dodged a couple of trams, which was fun. The long piers striding out into the Irish Sea looked impressive in an old-fashioned kind of way. Seagulls perched on top of lampposts draped in colored lights or squabbled amongst the litter. The donkeys on the beach looked bored. And massive hoardings for Burger King or McDonald’s tried to intimidate the candyfloss kiosks.

Up ahead a scary scaffolding of roller coasters filled the skyline. It was the world-famous Pleasure Beach and where I assumed this mate of Joe’s worked. But Joe pointed across the road from the amusement park to the real beach. At first I couldn’t work out what I was looking at—it was some kind of tall crane planted in the sand, a crowd gathered around. But then someone hurled themselves off the top … and bounced before they hit the beach—snapped back into the air by the thick elastic cord tied to their ankles.

“Bacon runs the bungee jump,” Joe said. “His old man owns a bingo hall and a couple of arcades. But he gave
Bacon the bungee business as an eighteenth-birthday present.”

“Can’t be bad if you’ve got a rich dad,” Sim said, looking at Kenny.

But Kenny just scoffed. “Like my dad would get me a bungee. Where am I meant to put it? My back garden?”

“It’s big enough,” Sim muttered.

We parked down a side street and walked back across South Promenade toward the beach and Bacon’s bungee. Joe knew he might get a parking ticket, but seeing as the cab still officially belonged to his uncle—who lived a long, long way away—he couldn’t be less bothered. I was thinking the sun on my back felt like an Australian sun anyway. I knew I had sweat stains under my arms and would have liked to change my T-shirt, but didn’t want to get my pale barrel-belly out in front of everyone to do it.

“Is he really called Bacon?” Kenny asked Joe.

“It’s what everybody calls him. Bacon was always his dad’s favorite thing, apparently. So he started calling his son Bacon too, and it just kind of stuck.”

I carried my rucksack and Ross. We climbed over some railings to drop down onto the beach, kicking up sand where we landed, and headed for the gathered crowd of onlookers and the loud music. Closer to, the crane was more like an open cage-lift that took the jumpers way up to a narrow gantry or platform. It looked high enough to be able to grab a seagull. The sun was in our eyes as we approached, so
when the silhouette of a jumper leaped from the top he reminded me of Icarus falling to earth. The onlookers on the ground whooped.

“Who?” Kenny asked.

“Icarus,” I repeated.

“Is he that clever Polish kid from Mr. Mitchell’s class?”

I shook my head. “Forget it.”

“Cool job to have,” Sim said to Joe.

Joe nodded. “Be a laugh. Right, Gus? Might meet some nice girls. And if the summer stays like this, we’ll get back to York with tans like we spent it in the Canary Islands.”

To one side of the bungee lift was a small wooden hut that had been painted garish colors and clashed with the golden sand.
BUNGEE! BLACKPOOL!! BUNGEE!
was splashed across the side.
CONQUER YOUR FEAR! LEAP INTO THE UNKNOWN!! I DARE YOU!!!
There were two crate-sized speakers in front of its door pumping out bass-heavy music. Joe stepped inside, looking for Bacon. Kenny, Sim and I stayed with Gus, watching the attendant lower the jumper the last couple of meters to the ground now that he’d lost his bounce. He had his ankles untied. And even though he looked a little shaky on his legs, he received another whoop from the crowd when he got to his feet, safe and sound, grinning with lopsided relief.