Last Bus to Everland, page 14
By the time Thursday comes around again, school has started up. Our teachers won’t stop going on about how our prelims are just a few weeks away and how ‘vitally important’ they are – as if the world is going to end if some of us don’t scrape a pass in Maths – but I’m so desperate to get back to Everland, I can barely concentrate. Zahra and Kasia are waiting by the steps when I finally get back to Calton Hill, dressed up as Princess Mononoke and some weird ox creature, but there’s no sign of Nico.
‘He should be here by now,’ I say nervously. ‘He got home on Monday. He texted me a few times.’
Kasia raises two fuzzy-felt eyebrows. ‘Well, he’d better hurry up if he wants to get in.’
Just as the door appears between the pillars, we see a thin figure running over the grass. Zahra yells at him to hurry. The three of us rush inside, holding the door back to let Nico in; I can feel it beginning to push back as he dives through the gap. It snaps with a bang, pushing me into Nico. He trips over my foot and spins away, his arms thrown out for balance.
‘Sorry, sorry! I got a bit . . . sidetracked.’
His voice is all blurry around the edges. He sways a little as he stumbles forward, and when he hugs me, he smells of something strong and sweet. Zahra watches him with an amused expression; Kasia looks thunderous. As the relief that he made it ebbs away, something else hits me.
‘You’re drunk!’
I don’t mean to sound so scandalized. I’m just surprised. Not that he’s drinking – he’s just turned eighteen, after all – but that he’s drinking before coming to Everland. He’s never done that before.
‘I went out for a drink. A few drinks.’ He puts his hands on his hips. His brown eyes are glazed. ‘What kind of welcome back is this? Didn’t you guys miss me?’
‘You know you’re not supposed to come here drunk,’ Kasia says, scowling at him.
Nico pulls a face. ‘You and your rules, Kash.’ He spins around and takes off down the path. ‘You don’t know anything.’
‘You also have school tomorrow,’ Zahra says, hurrying after him. ‘School? Education? Exams? You do remember what those are, right, Nico?’
‘I’ll skip it.’ Nico looks over his shoulder and shrugs. ‘It’s just sixth year.’
Kasia’s whole body tenses. I remember seeing her surrounded by all those books in the library, cramming in the education she wishes she could have in the outside world. I’m not surprised when, once we reach the end of the path, she storms off without saying anything. Nico mumbles something about her overreacting, and I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from snapping at him. Kasia and I might not see eye to eye on much, but I get where she’s coming from here. It’s ‘just sixth year’ to Nico because he has so much to fall back on: good grades, opportunities, parents who could pay for tutors if he needed them. Most people aren’t that lucky.
‘Let’s find you some water,’ Zahra says wearily. ‘Maybe that’ll help.’
Turns out, Nico is even more talkative when he’s wasted. He strides down the hill, blethering on about friends from back home in Madrid, from his art course, other things I can’t keep up with. Zahra and I both watch him nervously. I’ve been drunk myself a couple of times, and I’ve been around other drunk people loads – family gatherings at my grandparents’ are always a bit of a free-for-all like that. But it’s different in here. Everland is already so unpredictable, and this gives it a strange new filter.
Crossing the bridge, we arrive at a small square with terracotta buildings, floral paving stones, and a bright yellow door standing upright near the centre. Zahra pops into a cottage and comes back holding a mason jar full of water. Nico insists he’s fine but reluctantly takes a few sips.
‘You go do your thing,’ I tell her. She shouldn’t have to take care of somebody in here, too. ‘I’ll look after him.’
‘Are you sure?’ The relief is clear on her face when I nod. ‘Thanks, Brody. Come and find me if you need me.’
Everland feels chaotic tonight. Nico whisks us through bustling streets I’ve never seen before, into a sea of people milling around the metallic animal structures, into parties so loud the floor shakes and the sky vibrates with sound. It’s only when I start actively wishing for things to calm down that the crowds slip away, and we end up wandering through a long purple meadow and into a woodland of thin birch trees. Tucked into a clearing among them is an old-fashioned funfair: a helter-skelter, a coconut shy, funhouse mirrors – even a giant carousel with sea monsters instead of the usual ponies.
‘Oh my God! This reminds me of this place I went when I was little,’ Nico says. ‘I ate too much popcorn and garrapiñadas and threw up on the drive home.’
He steps forward, and the funfair lights up. Golden bulbs flash around the helter-skelter; the carousel begins turn too, the monsters bobbing like boats on a choppy sea. It’s a bit eerie without any music or kids running around stuffing their faces with candyfloss. Nico takes a run-up and grabs the pole protruding from a giant squid’s back, swinging himself on to one of its tentacles. I walk past the mirrors. Different versions of myself stare back at me: some short and squat; some alien and elongated. Nico spins slowly past, gliding up and down with the movement of the monster.
‘How was home?’ I ask.
‘It sucked,’ he says bluntly. ‘I told my mum about my dad and Jenny refusing to pay for art school. Turns out, she agrees with them. She thinks I should do something more useful, do my costumes on the side.’ He leans forward, resting his head against the carousel pole. ‘It’s OK. I’ll still go. I’ll just have to get, like, three jobs to pay for it by myself. If I even get in.’
He sounds pissed off. It’s probably the first time Nico’s ever had to think about money. I feel another quiver of irritation, but I push it down. I haven’t seen him in weeks. I don’t want to be mad at him.
I walk over to the coconut shy and pick up a beanbag. ‘You’ll manage. People do it all the time.’
‘Yeah. You’re right. I’m just being a quejica.’
He mixes his languages more when he’s drunk. It’s cute. He slides down the squid’s tentacle, still a little wobbly on his feet.
‘Sorry, Brody. It’s always a bit weird, going back there. My mum’s husband is nice enough, and I love seeing the girls, but they have all these in-jokes, these little quirks and routines. Every family has a rhythm to it, you know? I can never seem to fall in time with them.’
He grabs a beanbag and tosses it at the middle coconut, but his aim is just a little too low. I get what he means – my family marches to Jake’s beat, even if no one else can keep up. But I’ve never thought about what it must have been like for him: being uprooted from his home, his country, sent across the sea to live with his dad and a woman he barely knew and still doesn’t seem to like much.
‘Sorry,’ I say gently. ‘That must be tough.’
For a moment, Nico’s face looks like it’s about to crumple. But then he shakes his head and gives a bubbly laugh.
‘I’m just being moany again. Pobrecito de mí, eh?’
He throws another beanbag, but this one is too high. He swears at it in Spanish, laughing, then hands me one to try. On my third go, I knock the middle coconut right off its stand. Nico throws his hands up and cheers. I grin. It almost feels like a date, something out of an American teen movie. For a second, I let myself pretend that it is. And that he’s not drunk.
‘First prize to the gentleman in the grey hoody!’ Nico waves one arm up and down, gesturing to an invisible row of prizes. ‘Giant teddy bear? Or how about a goldfish?’
I grin. I’m about to opt for the goldfish – a crappy replacement for Tink, but it’d do – but when I open my mouth, something else come out. Something I didn’t even know I was going to ask.
‘How are you feeling about Dani leaving?’
Nico blinks at me. He looks away, his eyes glistening like beetles in the moonlight.
‘I miss him,’ he says. ‘I understand why he had to stop coming. I do. But it also feels like . . . I wasn’t enough for him. Like I wasn’t worth it.’
‘You know it wasnae like that.’
Nico doesn’t seem to hear. He wanders back to the mirrors, stepping back and forth to stretch and squash his reflection.
‘I know it’s not really about me. He was ready. They say there comes a point when you know it’s time to move on from this place. For most people, anyway.’ He moves forward and his eyes swell in the mirror, deep and dark. ‘He sent me this really long email, talking about coming over here one day, when he has money . . . but I know it won’t happen. He’ll meet somebody else and forget all about me.’
I tell him how ridiculous that is, but he shakes his head.
‘No, seriously. Lots of people don’t remember this place at all after they stop coming.’ He climbs back on the carousel, this time on to the head of a blue whale. ‘My friend Mark – the one from my foundation course that I brought here last year – he came here three times, but it seems like it’s been completely wiped from his memory. I mentioned it to him once, and he looked at me like I’d said I’d teleported to Turkey for the weekend.’
‘Dani was coming here for years, though.’ I lean against the carousel, raising my voice as Nico spins away. ‘He’ll no forget about it that fast. And besides . . . he could still come back.’
‘Nah. He’s gone, Brody. It’s over.’
There’s nothing else I can say, so I don’t try. Above us, the sky is changing colour. I’ve never seen it do that in here before. The usual deep blue turns indigo, then violet, then dusky pink. And then, quite suddenly, a deep blood red.
It’s like a flash of rage on a passive man’s face – just a split second, and then it’s gone. Something about it snatches my breath away. Before I can point it out to Nico, it’s already changed back to blue.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asks. ‘You’ve gone all pale.’
‘It was – Nothing. I’m fine.’
He jumps down from the carousel, staggers a little, then throws an arm around my shoulders.
‘You look like you’re gonna throw up. I thought I was the drunk one.’
The shakiness wears off, but it takes a while for the nervous feeling to fade. Nothing about tonight has been quite right. I feel like I’ve seen something I shouldn’t have seen. A monster baring its teeth.
Rusty Records is the sort of place that you walk past and wonder how the hell it manages to stay in business. It’s a tiny shoebox of a music shop, packed full of vinyls and CDs – I even spotted a pile of dusty cassettes in one corner when I handed my pretty-much-empty CV in there before Christmas. I didn’t think anything would ever come of it, but in the middle of January, some guy called Mark MacNeill phones and asks me to come in for an interview.
‘Saturday morning,’ he says. ‘Around nine o’clock. Actually, make it ten; I’ve got a gig tonight.’
I get to the shop five minutes early and have to wait another fifteen before Mark turns up. He’s nothing like I imagined. I’d expected some ageing rocker with a Ramones T-shirt and a hangover, but he’s wearing a suit and carrying what can only be described as a large black briefcase. He looks me up and down as he unlocks the shop door.
‘So you’re over sixteen?’
I nod.
‘Know much about music?’
‘Um, yeah. More or less.’
He pauses, his fingers gripping the door handle. ‘Name Pink Floyd’s first album.’
I know this. It’s one of Arnau’s favourites; we’ve played a bunch of songs from it at Everland. ‘The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.’
Mark grins and pushes the door open. That seems to be the extent of the interview.
He shows me how to work the till, which looks like it’s almost as old as he is, then gives me a tour. There’s not much to see: just a toilet, a very messy stockroom, and the shop floor itself. He claims that everything’s sorted by category, but there seems to be a bit of genre-jumping going on; I see a Foo Fighters record poking out of the jazz section, and I’m pretty sure that Lady Gaga could never be considered punk.
Still, I love it in here. It feels like a film set. The back wall is covered with old gig posters – Led Zeppelin, the Cure, Shonen Knife – and stickers and gig stubs cover every available surface. There’s a huge vintage record player in the corner, and a makeshift chandelier of cracked vinyls hanging from the ceiling. All the dust is going to have me sneezing non-stop . . . But getting paid to hang out in here? I can’t really believe my luck.
As Mark’s telling me about a shipment of new records that’s due in the afternoon, the bell on the front door jingles, and a girl comes in wearing a green Rusty Records T-shirt. She’s about my age, with light brown skin, glasses and curly black hair, and she’s using a wheelchair.
‘This is my daughter Jett. Her sister used to help out in the shops, too, but she’s abandoned us for Zara. Staff discount, apparently.’ Mark claps his hands together. ‘So, ready to start? It’ll be minimum wage, nine or ten until five or six, Saturdays and Sundays, and you get half an hour for lunch.’
The whole ‘induction’ is over in about three minutes – and to think, I wasted my precious computer time looking up job interview questions on the internet. Mark tells me to help myself to tea or coffee, shoulders the man bag, and hurries out, leaving me alone with Jett.
‘I’ll get you a T-shirt,’ she says, chewing on a piece of bubblegum. She disappears into the stock room, coming out with a maroon version of her own shirt. ‘Sorry, they’re about fifteen years old, and we’ve only got XXL left. I’ll get my dad to order you another one.’
She turns away to move a Blondie record back to the ‘70s Pop’ section. I quickly pull off my jumper and T-shirt and put the new one on instead. It almost reaches my knees, and I have to roll the sleeves up four times to get it past my elbows, but I quite like it.
‘Um, I’m Brody, by the way,’ I tell her. ‘Is that your real name – Jett?’
She turns to look at me. Her bubblegum pops.
‘Yup. With two Ts. My parents have this weird thing with music surnames. My sisters are called Franklin and Lennox. They could have called us Joan, Aretha and Annie, but they just had to be different.’
Her tone is scathing, but I’d pick a rock star surname over ‘Brody’ any day. A dad who owns a music shop beats one who spends his whole life washing up and watching documentaries, too, though I feel bad as soon as I think that.
‘I’ll let you put the first disc of the day on,’ Jett says, pointing to the record player behind the counter. ‘No pressure or anything, but this is a test, and my entire and unchangeable opinion of you is riding on the results.’
I laugh. Well, I try to. I flick through the records, trying to find something cool but not too try-hard, iconic but not too obvious – something that’ll give the room a bit of energy without being aggressive. After a couple of minutes, I go for the first Ben Folds Five album. Heather introduced me to it during our music lessons; I loved ‘Song for the Dumped’ because of all the bad words.
Jett gives me a thumbs up. ‘Good choice! I was only kidding about it being a test, but you would’ve passed.’ She grins, and I try not to show my relief. ‘Here, I’ll show you how to put the record on. Not that I think you’re incapable or anything – it’s just a bit temperamental.’
The aisles are a bit of a tight squeeze for her wheelchair, but she expertly manoeuvres her way towards the record player. It takes her a couple of goes to get it working, but soon ‘Jackson Cannery’ is playing through the speakers.
‘So, um, what do you normally listen to?’ I ask her.
‘Lots of stuff. I like Dylan, the Doors, Nina Simone . . . I also like Ariana Grande and Halsey and Harry Styles.’ She raises an eyebrow at me. ‘You’re not some music snob like my dad, are you? He thinks nothing good was created after 1994.’
‘Uh, well, I was created way after 1994, so no. And I love Halsey. And Harry Styles. Well, I mostly like his face.’ I blink. There’s no way I would have said something like that to a stranger a few months ago. ‘Sorry, that was a bit . . . gay of me.’
God. I wouldn’t have said that either.
Jett just laughs. Her eyes are sparkling.
‘Don’t apologize. I’m pansexual, for the record, so gay away. Next question – do you play anything?’
‘Drums. And a bit of guitar.’
‘You’re a drummer! Nice. I’m a guitarist, mostly, but I play the piano and the violin a bit too.’
We talk about music, TV shows, the festivals that she’s planning to go to in the summer. She reminds me of Megan a little bit: she’s open and talkative and asks lots of questions. When she mentions what school she goes to, my mouth falls open.
‘My brother goes there,’ I say. ‘Jake Fair?’
It’s her turn for her jaw to drop. ‘No way! He’s in the year above me. God, I should have clicked you were his brother. You look so alike.’ I wait for her to ask why I don’t go their school too, but instead she pulls a sad face. ‘Sucks about him and Amir, eh?’
I frown at her. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh – nothing.’ She leans down to the nearest box and straightens the records inside. ‘I just heard they had a fight or something.’
So that explains why Jake’s been at home so much lately. I can’t believe Jett knows him. I never, ever would have guessed that the owner of this shabby wee shop could or even would send his kids to a school like that. He must have another job, because there’s no way this place is doing enough business to pay those fees.
Our first customer comes in at half ten. He’s a regular, according to Jett, so she goes off to chat to him about the new Brian Eno album and the gigs he’s going to at Celtic Connections. A few more customers come in after that: a Korean couple, a woman looking for a birthday present for her husband, and three almost-identical guys with long hair and Nirvana T-shirts.
