Kicked Out, page 3
“Is he being weird about other stuff as well?” asked Sami, picking up a slice of pizza from his box.
“Yeah . . . You see his Gucci shoes?”
I nodded, taking a bite of pizza.
“He made Mum buy him them for his birthday, which is not for another month. They were seven hundred pounds!”
“No way!” Sami gasped.
“There’s definitely something up with him,” I said. “D’you think he’s here ’cause . . . your mum won . . .”
“All that lottery money? Yeah, kinda . . . But I’ve not seen Mum this happy for years, not since Dad . . . so I’m not saying anything. I don’t want to ruin it for her. She’ll just think I’m being jealous or something.” Mark waved his pizza slice around as he spoke. “Plus, I don’t really have any proof he only wants her money. He’s nice to her most of the time. She’s always laughing with him.” Mark shuffled his feet. “And he was with her before she won the lottery—even if it was just for one week. He didn’t know she was rich then.” Mark looked at us as if he wanted us to agree. “Just a shame we’ve got a big house now and he thinks he can just move in all of a sudden. Can’t even say there’s not enough room like I did when he wanted to stay the first few nights in the council flat.”
It was obvious Mark was finding this whole situation hard. I punched his arm gently.
“Shall we go play some footy after we’ve ate?” said Mark, changing the subject and looking out at Aadam, who was now tidying up next to the bench outside.
“Shame Aadam can’t join us,” I said taking another bite. “Do you think he could after he’s finished doing the garden?”
BANG, BANG, BANG.
I looked up midbite. Mark was knocking on the glass doors and waving Aadam over. Aadam dropped his rubbish bag and glanced up. Mark waved harder, and Sami and me joined him at the doors. I waved my pizza slice.
Aadam strode over, smiling and straightening his T-shirt over his joggers. His blue eyes gleamed in the sun.
“You want some?” Mark asked, pulling the doors open and pointing at the pizza.
“Yeah, thanks! I’m so hungry.” Aadam took a slice from Mark.
We all turned to a crashing sound behind us. Mark’s mum and her boyfriend burst through the doors.
“GET OUT!” shouted Callum, pointing at the patio doors behind us.
Sami’s eyes widened and Mark’s jaw dropped. I stopped chewing.
Mark’s stepdad/mum’s boyfriend/whatever he was marched down the steps, his chest out and legs wide. Mark’s mum’s face looked menacing, not the smiley one we’d seen just moments ago. I swallowed the remaining pizza in my mouth whole. Why were they angry with us?
Were they telling Aadam to get out? But he wasn’t really inside. I suppose eating pizza on the job was probably a crime. Or at least a sackable offense. We’d have to own up and tell them it was our fault Aadam had stopped working. He couldn’t lose this job!
“How dare you come inside our house and THIEVE?” shouted Mark’s mum, with a black rucksack swinging from her hand. “I trusted you! I thought you were different!” She pulled wads of cash out of the bag and started chucking it onto the floor. “You wanted this, did ya? Thought you’d get away with it?!” Some notes landed on the tiles and some in the pool.
Huh? I looked around. What was she talking about? Why did she think we’d stolen money?
Hang on. Did she mean Aadam?
I turned and saw Aadam drop his pizza slice.
“AND WE GAVE YOU A JOB! GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE! NOW!” shouted Callum, marching over, his fists swinging.
Aadam ran. And I backed away.
I was just about to open my mouth, when Callum barked, “I told you, Gemma, they’re all the same! These two probably helped him. They’re lucky we found this money, otherwise they’d all be leaving in a police car.”
I glanced at Mark, who was wide-eyed, his mouth still hanging open as if he’d frozen in time.
Callum clapped his hands on my and Sami’s shoulders and forced us to turn to the open patio door that led to the garden. His fingers were digging into me.
“Now get out, and if you’re lucky, you’ll get your clothes back round the front,” he said, shoving us hard out the door and then slamming it shut.
Chapter 4
We stood in the storm porch at the front of the house, mouths open. We had just been kicked out of Mark’s house. His mansion. FOR STEALING MONEY WE’D NEVER SEEN BEFORE!
I couldn’t believe it. Hot air burst out of my nostrils as I tried to calm my breathing.
Sami wrapped his hands around his bare chest and shivered. “So do we just go home now?” The previously sunny May sky had clouded over, and everything looked gray.
“What? No way!” I said, touching my hair to check how wet it was. It was dripping, and I was topless, only wearing soggy swim shorts. “We didn’t even steal anything. That Callum hates us—it was obvious he always has from the moment we first came here. He’s a nasty crudhead. Did you see his T-shirt just now? And he said ‘they’re all the same’ and we ‘probably helped him.’ We ain’t goin’ nowhere.”
I walked off barefoot down the nine stone steps and onto the cold brick driveway, looking up at Sami, still standing on the porch, dwarfed by the size of the house.
It was like we were outside the mansion from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in those reruns Mum made us watch, but the Fresh Prince in this case was my best friend, Mark. And we were in Hale Barns, not LA, and instead of Jazz, the not-good-enough best friend, me and Sami were the ones who had been kicked out.
RIP our pool day.
I considered walking back around the wraparound lawn to find Mark and get him to tell us what was going on.
“Who’d have thought today would’ve turned out like this?” shouted Sami from the top of the steps.
Not us, I thought. That’s for sure.
I saw someone above the porch waving frantically from a window that was as big as the double doors below. Mark. About time!
Mark stopped waving as soon as he saw me running back up the steps. He turned around and spoke to someone. Maybe his mum?
His mum—she’d been so nice! Why did she let her boyfriend kick us out before explaining? I’d tell her we didn’t steal any money and she’d sort it.
The front doors opened, but before I could even say hello, Mark’s mum chucked a black rubbish bag out, followed by a pair of trainers. Sami ducked.
Just as he stood tall again, she chucked another pair of trainers and slammed the door shut. My Jordans!
I sucked my teeth and ripped open the knotted black bag to find our clothes.
“Gonna have to wear these unshowered,” said Sami, smelling his shoulder as he held his T-shirt in front of him.
“I know, I feel nasty,” I said, pulling on my white T-shirt and then my jeans on top of my cruddy wet swim shorts.
We both sat on the top step to get our socks and trainers on. It felt icky to put dirty feet into socks, but we had no choice. Sami hung his shoulders.
“Listen, we ain’t leaving till we get our bags and an apology, yeah?” I said. “They’ll find out it wasn’t us and they’ll have to say sorry, you watch. We don’t know nothing about any money.”
“Yeah, we just went straight into the pool room. What are they talking about?” said Sami, scratching his half-dry head.
The front door opened behind us, and my rucksack landed on the porch’s stone slabs, followed by Sami’s. Callum stood at the door and sneered.
“Don’t make me come and force you to that gate!” he shouted. “LEAVE! NOW!”
Sami scrambled to his feet. I tried to look like I had a bit more courage and walked over to grab our rucksacks, even though I was actually worried Callum was going to come out and punch me.
The door slammed shut. I breathed out. After handing Sami his bag, I pulled out my phone and saw Mark had messaged. Thank God.
M: They’re saying Aadam took loads of money. About £5000. Callum found it in his rucksack in the boot room. Mum is fuming. Just go home for now and I’ll call as soon as it’s calmed down here.
“Aadam!” Sami shouted as he leaned in, reading the message. “Where is he?” He bunged his hoodie back into his bag and slung his rucksack over his shoulder, then stormed down the steps onto the driveway.
I ran to catch up. “Whoa, that’s just madness . . . five thousand pounds. He wouldn’t.”
“Aadam!” Sami shouted towards the back garden. I turned to see Callum standing on the porch, legs apart and his hands on his hips.
“Let’s go,” I said. “We’ll call Aadam from outside.”
We grabbed our bikes from against the wall, and Sami pressed the buzzer. Someone opened the gate for us so we could leave.
As soon as we got to the end of the drive, we spotted Aadam sitting on the curb near the corner of the street, his head down and arms hanging over his knees.
Sami didn’t wait. “You didn’t take it, did you, Aadam? Did you tell Callum about your legal fees?”
“Huh?” Aadam got up, looking confused. “That man scares me. I thought he was gonna beat me like the men in Lebanon, so I got out of there . . . and they had my bag and were throwing money from it. I—I need to find another job, akhi,” he said, his eyes wide and panicked.
“Aadam. They think you stole it from them!” Sami got in his face. Boy, he was angry. “Mark’s mum’s saying Callum found that money in your backpack. Just tell me why it was in there!”
Aadam took a step back. His eyes welled and he looked wounded. He glanced at Sami for a moment and then at me, then turned and ran.
I grabbed Sami’s arm. “Why’d you say that to him, man?”
“Because he’s about to be deported!” he said, watching Aadam disappear around the corner out of sight. “You heard him, he needs about four thousand pounds. And they’re saying he stole five. They’ve got the perfect excuse to blame him. What if he told Callum he needed money?”
“Sami, you didn’t even ask him, man. You just went right in, as if you believed Mark’s mum and her boyfriend over Aadam, your actual bro . . .”
Sami swallowed. “Oh man. Ali . . . I was just so scared for him and trying to get his side . . . What have I done?”
Chapter 5
Sami pulled out his phone from his jeans and dialed Aadam’s number for the fifth time. “He’s not answering, man! I don’t wanna leave another voice message!” He rubbed his hand over his face in frustration and leaned into the bus seat.
“We’ll try your house first, yeah?’ I said over the loud whoosh of a truck that passed our window. I gripped my handlebar to stop my bike from tipping over. We’d decided we’d be quicker jumping on the bus, but bringing a bike on made the journey much more stressful, especially with all the evils some of the passengers were giving us. Man, it was hard to ignore those nasty looks.
Sami gripped the seat handle in front of him as the bus screeched to a stop, then started typing with both thumbs:
S: I’m sorry akhi. I just wanted to get your side of the story.
Aadam pinged right back.
“Finally!” said Sami, before opening the message:
A: I did not take anything. There is no story.
When the bus finally got to Stockport Bus Station, we had to wait for another bus to get to Sami’s house. Sami tapped his foot, checking his WhatsApp every few seconds, waiting for Aadam to answer Sami’s text asking where he was.
“How would he even have known where the cash was kept?” I said.
“I know, it makes no sense.” Sami shrugged.
“Maybe Callum made it up?”
“Yeah, maybe,” said Sami, watching an old lady walking past us pulling a trolley bag.
Once we’d caught the next bus to Sami’s new neighborhood, we raced to his house. It was always awkward coming here because of the way everyone looked at us. As if we were going to rob them. Or already had. But it was better than when Sami had first arrived in the UK and was living with his cousin Hassan and his evil mum, even though that house was only a couple of roads away from mine. Things got better for him once he moved out of there. It was like he believed he could make friends and have a life in England, and he just chilled out more.
Sami ran into his house shouting for Aadam, while I waited outside with my hands in my pockets, hoping no one would jump me or take our bikes. I thought I’d better let Sami and Aadam sort things out first.
Someone tapped the window behind me, and I jolted. It was Sami’s little five-year-old sister, Sara. She had her nose squished against the window, her chestnut-brown hair pulled back into two pigtails, and she looked even cuter than the last time I’d seen her. I waved at her, and she gave me a small wave back. I was just about to pull a face to make her laugh, when Sami dashed out. He’d been gone less than a minute.
“Aadam’s not here,” he panted, out of breath.
“So where next?”
“The library? He might’ve gone there to do his evening class homework?” said Sami.
We jumped onto our bikes and headed down the street to the main road, towards my neighborhood and the library. It was warm, and thankfully my shorts felt less soggy against my thighs as I rode.
We leaned our bikes against the wall in the library entrance area and raced through the barriers, splitting up once inside the main hall. I took the shelves section; Sami went towards the desk area.
“He’s not here,” I said, meeting Sami in front of the reception desk in the middle.
“Okay, the park,” said Sami, heading back through the security barrier towards the doors.
Even though we hadn’t taken any books, it always felt weird going through the barriers. I turned and waved at the librarian, like I had to show I hadn’t taken anything without checking it out first.
We tried the small park near the library first and spotted Grace, our school Director of Sport’s daughter, kicking a football around with her mates. We hadn’t seen her, or any of the footy-practice lot, since Mark had moved to his mansion and we’d got distracted by the pool. It looked like she was still practicing in the park without us though. Even on a Saturday. If anyone was going to make it professional, Grace was. She was way more determined than any of us.
She grinned when she noticed us and waved us over.
“We can’t!” I shouted.
“In a rush . . . We’re looking for Aadam!” called Sami. “Have you seen him?”
“No, I haven’t . . . All right, later!” Grace took the ball from her mate and dribbled it away, her long blond ponytail swinging side to side as she ran off.
We wheeled our bikes down the uneven ramp towards the gate.
Sami nudged me as we headed out of the park. “Are we still gonna practice with her and the others after school?”
“Yeah! It’s not like we’re gonna be going to Mark’s to swim anymore. We got all googly-eyed with that pool. Shouldn’t have stopped playing, man!” I swatted a fly off my arm.
“I’m not sure I wanna play for the school team in Year Nine next year.”
“Seriously? You’re the captain!”
“Yeah, I dunno if I want the stress of having to play with Nathan.”
“Nathan can buzz off,” I said, opening the park gate and dragging my bike out. “I reckon he’ll never go for you again after the telling off he got from Mrs. Hack.”
Me, Sami, Mark, and Elijah had shown our Director of Sport what Nathan was really like a couple of weeks ago. Still, he’d got into Sami’s head by telling him he’d only made the team because he was a refugee and our coach had felt sorry for him.
Ever since then, Sami had questioned his own skills and whether he’d play on the team long term, even though Sami was now our team captain and we all got the joy of watching Nathan squirm at being told what to do at training.
Sami glanced at me. “The weekend’s just flying by, man.”
“I know . . . It’s been well rubbish. Getting booted out of Mark’s house like a pair of criminals topped it off.” I sighed.
“Mark still hasn’t messaged,” said Sami, his voice almost drowned out by a passing bus.
“I bet Callum is still shouting at him.” I squinted in the May afternoon sun. The clouds had cleared again, and it had warmed up, but I still felt as miserable as I had earlier.
“Where next to find Aadam?” Sami looked at me.
“Big park?”
“Yeah!”
We both rode towards the bigger park about half a mile down the road. I took a gulp of breath as we approached the tree-lined entrance and walked through the gates with our bikes. We walked under the cover of trees, our trainers crunching the bark lining the path, each step bringing up a musty, earthy smell. A squirrel rustled through the bushes followed by a little white fluffy dog with brown patches. I stopped, putting my hand out to get Sami to stop too. I did not want to get between a dog and his squirrel. We watched the squirrel scramble up a tree trunk, giving us a side eye as it went, the dog yapping after it.
The dog’s owner came panting out from the side path. “Buffy! Get here now!” She smiled at us as if to say “Sorry, this is a thing.” She grabbed the dog’s blue collar and clipped its lead onto it and led him away. The squirrel was long gone.
Sami nodded at me, and we carried on walking, grateful to be out of the sun and in the shade.
We went through the kids’ playground, past the snaking slide, towards the rickety wooden bridge.
Sami did a double take. “He’s there!” he whispered, and nudged me.
I turned and saw a dark-blond teenager with his hands in his pockets, moping on the swings. A lady with a big baby bump was pushing a squealing toddler a couple of swings away from him.
When Aadam heard our footsteps on the wood chips, he looked up, wiping away a tear. My stomach dipped. This was not going to be good, man.
