Last Bus to Everland, page 4
Kasia scoffs. ‘You don’t even eat biscuits! God, Nico, I could say I liked breathing, and you’d find a way to argue with me.’
We head across the hill and back down the steps to Regent Road. Zahra is singing something under her breath, and Nico and Kasia are still bickering about snacks and oxygen. As the New Town comes into view, all the questions I’d pushed out of my mind start to re-emerge. The river, the trees, the waterfalls. All those people, and all that space. Like, they couldn’t have just . . . They must have come from somewhere . . .
The riddles are snowballing in my head, becoming too big for me to grapple with. So instead, I tune into Nico and Kasia’s conversation and let my questions melt away. For now.
When we reach the west end of Princes Street, I point out my bus stop.
‘This is me,’ I say. ‘Can I, eh . . . Can I come back next week?’
Kasia’s face goes stony, but the others smile.
‘Of course you can,’ Nico says. ‘It’s your place now, too. Here, I’ll give you my number just in case.’
My phone’s still dead, so Nico produces a pen from his pocket and scribbles the digits on the back of my hand.
‘Remember: 11.21 p.m. Don’t be late!’
I watch them head down Princes Street: Sailor Moon, a werewolf, and a boy with blue wings. When they reach the corner, Nico spins on his heel and waves back at me. Two men turn to stare at him, but he doesn’t notice. Or if he does, he doesn’t care.
The skull mask is still on top of my head. I wait until they’re out of sight, then shove it back under my hoody. Unlike Nico, I would notice. I would care.
My phone wakes up as soon as I step on to the number 22. No missed calls, and weirdly enough the time is saying 11.38 p.m. – the lack of signal in Everland must have messed the clock up. As the bus edges back down Leith Walk, my stomach starts to squirm. Mam is going to kill me. There’s not much she can do, really – she could ground me, yeah, but I hardly go out anyway, and I don’t get an allowance for her to take away – but still, I don’t like stressing her out. She’s got enough on her plate without me disappearing.
Not that it’ll stop me doing the same next week.
Fifteen minutes later, the bus pulls up down the road from Mackay House. I race through the courtyard and up the steps to number 9B. Jake is still at the desk, leafing through a textbook while the computer screen flickers sickly white. He looks at me and yawns.
‘Where have you been?’
‘I . . . just needed some air. Got a sore head.’ I look around – Mam’s shoes aren’t by the door, and there’s no coat hung over the back of her chair. ‘Where’s Mam?’
He blinks at me. His eyes are sickly pink around the irises from staring at the screen too long. ‘Not home yet. She’s not done till one or something.’
‘Oh. Right.’
I stare at him, then glance at the bottom-right corner of the computer screen: 11.57 p.m. Wait . . . 11.57 p.m.?
Jake gives me a funny look, then goes back to his essay. An idea, an impossible idea, is gnawing at the back of my head. I take off my jacket, store the mask (now a bit damp from the rain) back in the cupboard, then turn on the old radio that sits on Jake’s shelf. Tink starts, narrows his eyes at me, then goes back to snoozing at the foot of my bed. My hands shake as I wait for the Take That song to finish playing. Finally, a man’s voice overlaps the final bars.
‘This is Forth One,’ the presenter says. ‘The time is two minutes to midnight.’
Two minutes to midnight. My phone could be wrong, my computer could be wrong, but surely this can’t be.
Apparently, though we travelled all throughout the valley, though we went to a dozen parties and festivals and celebrations, though I talked to Nico and Zahra and the others for hours . . . I walked into Everland just thirty-seven minutes ago.
‘Something’s up with you.’
It’s Friday lunchtime, and I’m sitting in the school courtyard with Megan, watching RuPaul’s Drag Race on her phone while she picks at a tuna mayo wrap. We’re on season six, one of my favourites, but the entire episode has gone over my head. I’ve been in a daze all morning; Michelle made a joke about my face having ‘more craters than the moon’ in History, and I hardly even flinched. I can’t stop thinking about Everland – about the way that green door appeared out of nowhere, and how the night felt so long, but I got home so fast, and how the hell I’m going to sneak out again next Thursday without getting caught. And Nico.
I can’t stop thinking about Nico.
‘Hello-o? Brody?’ Megan nudges me with her elbow.
I glance up at her, blinking. ‘Huh?’
‘Seriously, where are you today?’
‘What do you mean?’ I look back at the screen. RuPaul is describing this week’s challenge. A new episode must have started. I hadn’t even noticed.
‘You’re so quiet,’ Megan says. ‘I mean, you’re never exactly the chattiest, but today you’re, like, Silence of the Lambs quiet.’
‘There’s no actually that much silence in Silence of the Lambs, Meg,’ I tell her. ‘Not many lambs either.’
She pulls another crumb from the edge of her wrap. I scoffed my chicken tikka baguette in two minutes flat, but it takes Megan a whole lunch break to get through one sandwich. Her mouth is always talking, and her right hand is constantly scrolling through her phone, which makes eating kind of difficult.
‘I bet there’s more conversation, though.’ She rolls the crumb into a tiny ball and flicks it at me. ‘Maybe I should have lunch with Hannibal Lecter tomorrow. Much better chat than you.’
A football smacks off the wall above my head, making me jump. A kid in a red jacket scrambles across the yard to fetch the ball, ignores me, but apologizes to Megan. Megan is almost popular. That’s partly because her older brother Harry is known for his ‘legendary’ house parties, but mostly because she’s really, really pretty: perfect Hollywood teeth, and hair that looks like a Garnier advert. Smart, too – she’s in all the top sets. We’ve been friends since we were nine, when she moved up here from Manchester after her parents’ divorce. She could have graduated to the popular kids or the overachievers long ago, but instead she spends her lunchtimes hanging out in the music room or watching videos with me.
‘There’s nothing up,’ I say. ‘I’m just concentrating on the show.’
I can feel her studying me as I look back at the screen.
‘Yes, there is. You’re all . . . far away.’ Her eyes darken. ‘Did Leanne and Michelle say something? Do you need me to deck them? I know you’re a pacifist or whatever, but those two are well overdue a beating.’
I grin at her. ‘Nah, it’s fine. I’m just tired. Some drunk guys woke me up playing the bins outside our block like bongos – I couldnae get back to sleep for ages.’
Megan raises two small fists. ‘Well, Dwayne Johnson and the Rock are ready when you need them.’
I push her face away, laughing. ‘Those are the same person, genius.’
For a few seconds, I do actually consider telling her about Everland. Everywhere I look, there are reminders of it: the Sailor Moon badge on Aimee McDougall’s school bag; ‘Heroes’ playing on the radio in the canteen; Rongrong Li’s royal-blue duffle coat, the exact same shade as Nico’s nails . . . It’s been hard keeping it to myself all day, and even harder focusing on our mostly one-sided conversations when all I want to do is think about next Thursday.
I could at least tell her about Nico. Megan’s a huge gossip, but she knows how to keep a secret when she needs to – she’s the only person I’ve told that I’m gay. Besides, it’d prove that there’s more to my life than drumming and my cat. Megan’s always texting or dating or breaking up with some guy. She asks me if I like anybody all the time, but I’ve never had much of an answer to give. The only person I’ve ever even kissed was her, and that was just an experiment when we were thirteen. (Not a successful one – my lip got caught on her braces, and apparently I tasted like chicken Kiev.)
As I open my mouth, Megan’s phone interrupts. She pauses the show and flips to her messages. Her eyes go wide. ‘Oh my God, listen to what Adam just sent me.’
She starts reading out some long, rambling message from her latest crush. By the time the bell rings, I know the guy’s mum’s name (Linda), his star sign (Taurus) and how many times he’s been to Lanzarote (twice). The urge to talk to her about Nico has long fizzled out. Besides, if I tell her about him, I’ll end up telling her about Everland. And if I tell her about Everland, she’ll invite herself along next week – if only to make sure that I haven’t gone nuts and started hallucinating secret villages hidden behind Calton Hill.
I don’t want that. I love Megan. She’s loud and funny and always knows just what to say. Most of the time, that’s a good thing – means it’s easier for me to slip into the background. But sometimes it’s suffocating. Whenever she’s around, I become the one-line bit part to her leading role. I can deal with that at school or at parties, but not around Nico. Not in Everland.
But by the time school ends, last night is already slipping away from me – the way dreams fade as you go about your day. I can remember Nico’s smile as the fireworks exploded above us, the people I met, the conversations I had, but the places and the atmosphere have started to dim. Doubts are starting to creep in. That door. The rivers. The trees . . . Everything.
I need evidence.
I’ve run out of data on my phone, so I have to wait until Jake goes out to his friend Amir’s house before I can get on the PC and start my search. I type everland calton hill, but all that comes up is TripAdvisor reviews and something about a theme park in South Korea. Everland edinburgh isn’t any better, or everland national monument. Nothing.
A shiver runs over me. It’s a bit creepy, all this. The monument was all sparkly colours and golden unicorns; not exactly subtle. There must be some mention of it online: a tourist asking about it on a forum, or even one of the old guests boasting about it on Reddit. I trawl through pages and pages of search results, but there’s nothing. It’s like I dreamed the whole thing.
If I can’t find Everland, maybe I can at least find Nico. I remember Kasia mentioning his surname during one of the scoldings she gave him last night: Clark Calderón. After about twenty goes at spelling it, I eventually find him: a Twitter feed that hasn’t been updated for three years, and an Instagram account. There are only a handful of photos on it, but Zahra and Kasia are in one of them, all dressed up in strange costumes, the outline of the monument’s pillars behind them. They’re real, and so is Everland.
Maybe I should have told Megan about it, I think, as I wipe the search history from the PC. Maybe sharing it with someone from my normal life would make it feel less dreamlike.
But I already have to share my room with Jake; the drums with every wannabe Dave Grohl in school. I can keep this one thing for myself.
Mam’s not supposed to be working the following Thursday. Luckily, one of her colleagues comes down with food poisoning after eating an out-of-date prawn cocktail, and Mam has to go in to cover for her. I sneak out just before eleven, silently thanking my stars for dodgy shellfish and Margaret’s weak stomach. I can feel Jake’s eyes on me as I tie up my shoes, but he doesn’t ask where I’m going. I add whatever boring essay’s keeping him distracted to my list of things to be grateful for and slip through the door into the fresh night air.
It’s cold out again, but Leanne and Michelle are sitting on the swings, their faces ghostly blue in the light of their phones. A familiar sense of dread settles over me. I pull my hood over my head and pick up the pace, but Michelle jumps off the swing and runs towards me.
‘Where you going, Fairy?’ She plants herself on the path between me and the gate, her arms folded across her baby pink jumper. ‘Lost Tinker Bell again?’
‘Piss off, Michelle.’ I try to move past her, but she steps to the left to block me. I switch to the right but find Leanne in my way.
‘Must be past your bedtime,’ she coos. ‘Does your mum know you’re out this late?’
She reaches out to ruffle my hair, but I slap her hand away. I barely touch her, but the girls fake a gasp. Like I’m the one who’s crossed the line here.
‘You gonnae hit me, Brody?’ Leanne says, grinning. ‘Go on, then. Try and hit me.’
I’m not, and she knows it. I’ve never hit anybody, unless all the scuffles Jake and me had when we were younger count. Sometimes, though, I feel like that’s Leanne’s aim. Because she knows she’s a crappy person, that the stuff she’s said and done to me is messed up – but if I hit her, it would erase all of that. It’d put me in the wrong, make me the bad guy. And it would. No matter how much of a nightmare she’s been over the years, there’d be no excuse for hitting her.
So I won’t. Instead I sidestep to the right, trying to dodge past her. Leanne’s too quick and blocks me again; Michelle grabs my bag and pulls me back, laughing and asking what’s the rush. The number 22 bus is turning on to our street. I wriggle my arms away from the straps, ready to sacrifice my school bag and my costume – an Anubis mask that Keira had for her P6 Ancient Egyptians project, jazzed up with black felt tip and gold nail polish – if I have to. The bus moves slower, pulling up to the pavement. Shit. Shit.
‘Oi!’
Nine floors up, Jake’s head appears at our bedroom window.
‘Piss off, Leanne,’ he says, sounding more bored than angry. ‘Let him go.’
Leanne and Michelle aren’t scared of Jake, but they do respect him. Somehow, despite going to a posh school and wearing a uniform that makes him look like an Enid Blyton character, he still gets some kudos around here. I don’t understand it.
Leanne steps back, laughing lightly, and Michelle lets go of my bag. I run through the gate and towards the bus stop, arriving just as it starts indicating to pull away. Leanne’s voice calls after me.
‘Always need somebody to come to your rescue, don’t you, Fairy?’
Her mouth keeps moving, but the bus doors slide shut behind me and block out her words. I flop into the first seat available, my heart pounding. I should be grateful that Jake helped me escape, but I’m more pissed off that he was spying on me from our bedroom window. Clearly he’s not as distracted as I thought.
Nico and the others are already waiting for me at the monument when I get to Calton Hill. Tonight, his face is painted like a cat’s, only in different shades of pink, orange and yellow, and he’s wearing this amazing headpiece of huge neon-coloured feathers. When I take out the Anubis mask, he holds his hand up for a high five.
‘That’s awesome!’ He lifts it up, turning it to see it better in the dim light. ‘You could give me a run for my money, Brody, honestly. This is so good.’
‘Hardly.’ My eyes run over his dark eyelashes, the curve of his lips, the freckles faded beneath streaks of orange face paint. I’m trying not to smile too much, but I can’t help it. ‘I like your feather . . . thingy.’
‘It’s supposed to be a mane. I was going for a neon lion look – Aslan at a rave.’
We have to wait a minute for the door to appear. Even after seeing it all last week, it still makes my head spin: the way the colours slowly seep out of the dark sky between the pillars; how the hazy blur of gold and green thickens and solidifies as it turns into the door. I can see every knot and bump of the wood, every thin line etched around the unicorn’s horn. I reach out and touch the stained-glass windows; they’re hard and cold and wet. This is real.
‘Do you no end up with random people wandering in here, when they see the door?’ I ask, as Zahra turns the unicorn’s horn.
‘Sometimes,’ says Kasia – this week, wearing a dinosaur onesie. ‘Remember that German tour group who wandered in after us last year? They left when we told them it was a private function, but they seemed a bit bewildered.’
‘But how come more people havnae found it?’ The door opens, and I follow Zahra inside. ‘It’s pretty noticeable.’
‘You can only see it from a few metres away,’ Zahra says. She’s dressed as No-Face from Spirited Away, one of Megan’s favourite films. ‘People do see it, but they tend to assume it’s just an art thing – some sort of projection.’
Nico follows me through the gap. ‘If they’re curious enough to come back, or imaginative enough to think it’s something more than meets the eye, that usually means they’re the right type of person to be here.’
The door closes behind us, and a pinkish light floods the sky; the sun is setting behind the mountains, turning the clouds a blazing orange. We must take a different route down the hill, because tonight we arrive at a different square. This one is bigger than the last, with a large, round fountain, pale cobblestones, and old stone buildings with brown shutters over the windows. A few people are clustered around small patio tables, reading or watching the sky. Dani sits alone at a small table in the corner, scribbling in a notebook. The air is balmy, almost warm. I’ve never been abroad, but I imagine this is what Italy or Greece feels like.
Nico claps his hand on to my shoulder. ‘I need to talk to Dani for a bit. You’ll be all right to explore on your own, won’t you? I’ll catch up with you later.’
‘Oh, right.’ It’s a bit of a kick in the teeth after waiting a whole week to see him, but I nod. ‘Aye, I’ll be fine. Where’ll I find you?’
He grins. ‘Don’t worry – you just will.’
I watch him jog across the square towards Dani, whose face lights up as he sees Nico coming. Nico kisses him on the cheek, then flops into the seat opposite. His hands move in the air as he chats in rapid Spanish, probably filling Dani in on the week since they last saw each other. Dani leans forward and brushes something from Nico’s face; Nico catches his hand, linking their fingers together.
There’s another stab of disappointment in my chest, but I push it back. Nico and me are friends. Not ‘just’ friends – friends. That might not be exactly what I was hoping for, but it’s not any lesser either.
