Last Bus to Everland, page 7
‘So,’ I say, as I draw the rough outline of the man, ‘what did I miss last night?’
It’s a relief to finally bring it up: there’s part of me that, when I’m out in the real world, still doesn’t totally believe that Everland is real. Nico glances across the water, then adds a window to one of the houses with a few strokes of his pencil.
‘Not much. The band was wondering if you were coming back, and Zahra and everyone. Miyumi kept asking about you, too. Think she’s got the hots for you, Brody.’
He grins at me. I swallow and draw the outline of the statue’s facial features.
‘She’s cute. No really my type, though.’
‘Oh yeah? Who is your type?’
My cheeks instantly go Sahara-level hot. I look down at my page, trying to hide the blush that always turns my spots from pink to red, I mumble something about not being sure and ask the first question that comes into my head. ‘So, eh, how long have you and Dani been together?’
‘Uh, I don’t know if we are, really. It’s complicated.’ He outlines the statue in quick, free strokes. ‘We’re together when we’re in Everland, and in there it’s perfect – it’s the rest of the time that’s the problem. We used to speak online sometimes, but he doesn’t have internet at home, so that made it difficult. Even when we did, it just didn’t feel the same. It’s like talking to somebody you met in a dream, you know? It doesn’t feel real.’ He shrugs slightly.
‘Then there’s the issue that neither of us can tell our friends or families about each other. His parents are cool with him being bi, but the sort-of-boyfriend-in-an-alternate-reality part is harder to explain.’
I smile sympathetically. Put like that, it does sound pretty nuts.
‘Do your parents mind?’
‘That I’m gay? My mum’s fine with it. My dad doesn’t care, either.’ He takes a pink pen from the packet and pulls the cap off with his teeth. ‘It’s everything else about me that disappoints him.’
There’s an edge to his voice that I haven’t heard before. He draws a cluster of tiny stars just above the statue, his hand tight around the pen. Then he looks up at me and smiles, and the brief flare of anger is gone. Still, it bothers me. I can’t imagine how anybody could be disappointed by Nico.
‘We’ve talked about trying to meet somewhere in the real world. Dani and me. He doesn’t have the money to come here, but I could probably go to Argentina.’ Nico pauses, his hand hovering over his drawing. ‘It makes me nervous, though. What if he hates me or something?’
Even if it’s hard to hear about it, I’m glad he’s telling me all this. It shows that he trusts me. ‘Why would he hate you? Dani’s crazy about you. It’s obvious.’
‘Is it? Maybe.’ He sits up straight, like he’s shrugging off the low mood, and smiles. ‘I mean, I am pretty fabulous. Even in another dimension.’
Sitting by the water with him that afternoon feels almost like being back in Everland. Everything else in my life floats out of my head, and the time flies by. He tells me more of his stories from his past trips there: the tiny island that he and Zahra came across one night, which they’ve never been able to find again, and what they think might be the remains of a pyramid. After half an hour, his drawing looks amazing: a detailed, super-realistic greyscale sketch of the river and houses, dotted with starbursts and shimmers of bright colours. Like a layer of magic superimposed over the real world.
And mine . . . looks more or less like a human being, I suppose.
‘That’s good!’ He bumps his shoulder into mine. ‘“Ah canny draw”, my ass.’
I roll my eyes at his terrible attempt at my accent. ‘Last time I came here, somebody had put a bikini on him,’ I say, nodding towards the statue. ‘He looks a bit chilly without it.’
‘I was gonna say, he must be freezing his balls off,’ Nico says (though as far as I can see, the sculptor didn’t bother to add those). ‘Maybe we should help the poor guy out.’
He unties his boots, rolls up his jeans, and strides into the river. The minute his foot lands, he explodes into swear words and jumps about six inches into the air, soaking himself up to the knees.
‘Oh, Jesus! I immediately regret this decision.’
After a moment, I pull my own shoes and socks off, hitch up my school trousers and follow him in. The water is bloody Baltic – I haven’t been this cold since the time Dad took me and Jake camping in November, and we got caught in an early snowstorm. Still, I clench my teeth and wade towards the dead-eyed statue. Nico pulls his tartan scarf off and wraps it around its waist.
‘There. Protect his modesty,’ he says, tying a knot in the material. He cocks his head to one side. ‘He’s a modern man; I think he’ll be all right with wearing a skirt.’
‘A skirt? Come on, it’s obviously a kilt.’ I click my tongue at him, faking outrage. ‘God, no respect for the culture.’
Nico laughs. For a moment, I forget about the ice-cold water threatening to gnaw my toes off. It feels good to make somebody laugh like that . . . The kind of laugh that transforms his whole face, crinkling at his eyes, making his freckles dance.
I already knew how much I liked Nico. But it’s only now that I’ve realized something else: when I’m with him, I like myself more, too.
We manage another minute or so in the water before I actually start to worry I might not make it out of there with all my toes intact. By the time we’ve waded out of the river and our feet have dried, we’re both shivering and starving. Nico tucks the sketchbooks back into his bag, and we carry on along the water until we find a cafe. I don’t have any money on me, just my lunch card, but Nico insists on buying me a sandwich, a chocolate crispy cake and a Coke.
‘You can get me next time,’ he says, shoving the food and the can into my hands.
Normally it bugs me when people do that – it just makes me stress that they’ll ask me to pay them back later, and I won’t be able to. It’s always a bit irritating seeing people toss about money like it’s nothing, too – it’d probably take my mam a couple of hours to earn the amount Nico’s spent on all this, and he clearly hasn’t given it a second thought. But right now, I’m too happy that he said there’ll be a next time to let it bother me.
By the time we leave, it’s starting to get dark, and my teeth are beginning to chatter again. We’re over an hour away from Mackay House, but Nico walks me all the way home, telling me about some Korean TV show Zahra got him into and the costume he’s making for Everland next Thursday.
Arriving back in Leith, my stomach tightens with nerves, the way it always does when I’m just a few minutes away from another interaction with Leanne and Michelle.
‘Are those girls still bothering you?’ Nico asks as we pass the play park around the corner. ‘The ones who kidnapped your cat.’
The question takes me aback; it’s like he’s read my mind. I give a knee-jerk response. ‘No. Well, yeah. Sometimes.’
‘Idiots. Let me guess: everyone tells you to “just ignore them”.’
‘Aye. Kind of hard when they do stuff like that, though.’ I force a laugh, but Nico doesn’t join in. ‘That’s no even the worst thing they’ve done. My dad’s got agoraphobia – he cannae really go outside – and this one time, they told everybody that he’s faking it for benefits. Another time, they said he was under house arrest for drink-driving.’
I’ve never told anyone that before. It would have upset Dad, obviously, and Mam would have stormed down to 3C to have a go at Leanne herself. Nico’s looking at me with a funny expression. It’s not pity, exactly – I can’t stand people feeling sorry for me. More like he understands.
‘Qué cabronas,’ he mutters, which I’m guessing is the Spanish way of calling them total bitches. ‘People like that are just pathetic.’
‘That day in the car park,’ I say, slowing down before we reach the pedestrian crossing, ‘you said it happened to you too.’
Behind the railings, a tired young mum is pushing a toddler on the swings. The kid gurgles happily, his chunky legs kicking in the air. Nico gives a small smile.
‘Yeah. Not surprising, really, given what an obnoxious little kid I was. I was always putting on one-man musicals or giving impromptu dance performances . . . basically showing off to anyone who came within a hundred-metre radius. I went to this tiny alternative school in Madrid, and it was all right there; I had lots of friends, and people seemed to get me. But then my dad met Jenny and decided to move back to Scotland. The first few years were a nightmare. Everything I was, everything I liked and was good at, was used against me. My accent, too. I couldn’t go five minutes without somebody making fun of the way I walked or talked or what I was wearing.’
He turns his head suddenly, as though trying to shake the memories out. It’s like he’s describing me. Not the show-off side – I was really shy as a wee kid, and I doubt I’ll ever be described as talkative, even if I live to be a hundred – but the rest of it. That feeling that no matter what I do or don’t do, people are going to ridicule it. That it’s easier just to bury parts of myself than let them see the sun and risk getting burned.
‘The worst thing is how it lingers on you, don’t you think?’ Nico says. ‘Those kids went home and put the TV on and forgot about it in five minutes, but I worried about it all the time. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been living with my mum. She was a weirdo, too – she’d have known how to take my mind off it. My dad just kept telling me to stick up for myself.’
‘So what changed?’ I ask.
‘I found Everland. I found my people.’ He smiles and gives my shoulder a little push. ‘And now you have, too.’
Hearing that, the nerves float away. We cross the road towards Mackay House and pause by the corner. Nico stops far enough away that no one’ll be able to see us if they look out from the flats.
‘Thanks for today,’ I tell him. ‘Really. It was fun.’
‘A pleasure, Mr Fair.’ He doffs an imaginary cap. ‘Will we see you next week?’
‘Definitely.’ I don’t care if my parents try to stop me again. I’ll rip up my bed sheets to make a rope and climb out the window if I have to, all nine storeys down.
‘Good. See you – Oh, wait . . . your drawing!’ He starts to tear the page out of the sketchbook, then pauses. He pulls his own drawing from the book, tearing a bit off the top-left corner, and hands it to me. There are wee details I hadn’t seen before: a Coke can floating at the edge of the water; a plastic bag caught in the branch of a tree; ‘Kevin is a prick’ spray-painted on the edge of the bridge . . . I don’t know if they were actually there, and I didn’t notice, or if Nico added them in later somehow. They sink into the greyscale, all but invisible beneath his strokes and swirls of brightly coloured ink.
‘Let’s swap,’ he says. ‘I like yours a lot better, anyway.’
I watch him walk away before I head back towards Mackay House. The courtyard is empty, but right now I wouldn’t care even if Michelle and Leanne were lying in wait – they could bombard me with jokes and jibes, and it would all slide off me. It doesn’t matter what they think. I’ve found my people.
I’ve found Nico.
‘The time has come for you to lip synch . . . for your life.’
It’s half past eight on Thursday, and Megan and I are sitting on her bed with a Hawaiian pizza between us and an old series of RuPaul’s Drag Race playing on her laptop. School’s closed for the October holidays, so I told my parents I’d be staying over here tonight – partly because I’ve hardly left the flat all week, and partly because it’ll be much easier for me to get to Everland this way. Mam normally gets funny about me staying at a girl’s house (cue awkward pauses, Jake smirking into his spaghetti, etc.), but right now she’s still too busy obsessing over his whole Cambridge thing to care. I even found her gushing to the postie about it yesterday.
‘Come on, Monét!’
Megan thumps the duvet in excitement. We’ve already watched this season twice; we both know who’ll be asked to sashay away at the end of the song, but Megan likes to relive each episode as if it were the first time. She stretches her leg out and nudges my foot with hers.
‘So where are you going with Nico tonight?’
On the screen, Monét X Change fakes out a death drop. The judges are in hysterics. ‘That really is a class move,’ I say.
Megan pokes me in the rib. ‘Stop changing the subject.’
I can’t stop the smile tugging at my lips, but I don’t answer. She sighs and flops on to her back, kicking her feet against the drawings of Alaska and Chi Chi DeVayne on her wall.
‘I don’t get why he can’t just come here. That way I could meet him!’
I take a hasty bite of pizza. By the time I got home from my day out with Nico on Friday, I had twelve messages and three voicemails from Megan, all demanding to know who the guy was and where we had been and what we’d done. I told her that he’s my friend, that it definitely wasn’t a date, but she refuses to believe me.
‘Your dad might wonder why some random guy’s turning up at his house at eleven o’clock,’ I say, though her dad’s not actually home yet. He started his own online advertising business a couple of years ago, and he’s always travelling or at meetings. Megan’s mum still lives in Manchester, so she and Harry have the house to themselves most days. They order so many takeaways, they know most of the Deliveroo couriers by name.
‘Fair point,’ she says, picking a piece of pineapple off the bottom of the box. ‘Well, you need to tell me everything when you come back.’
‘Aye, I will.’
‘No, I don’t mean the usual Brody-style four-word summary. I mean everything. I want details, descriptions. Adjectives, Brody – adjectives! I’m not letting you sleep until I get at least ten full sentences.’
I grin. ‘I’ll give you five.’
‘Seven. Final offer.’
The episode ends in the usual flurry of wigs and sequins. Megan clicks on to the next one, then slides the pizza box towards me. ‘Finish that before I do, will you?’
There are three slices left. There were eight to begin with, and I think I had five of them. ‘Have you actually eaten anything, Meg?’
‘I had two slices! I’m still full after lunch, anyway. Harry ordered burritos.’
‘All right, then. If you’re sure.’ I pick up another slice and take a bite.
Megan watches me for a moment, then turns back to the laptop. ‘When are you gonna let me put you in drag? You’d look so good. I’ve thought of a name for you and everything: Rhythmisia. Get it? Cos you’re a drummer.’
I almost gag on the pizza. ‘Sounds like a skin disease.’
‘It’s perfect! Please? Just a bit of eyeliner.’
She’s asked me this, like, a thousand times. I always say no. For the first couple of seasons, just watching Drag Race felt like a weirdly guilty pleasure – I could always picture Jake sneering at the screen, and at me for enjoying it. It’s not like I’d ever want to be a full-on drag queen myself (drumming is the only type of performing I’m up for: people can only half see you behind the kit, and there’s no talking or dancing or sewing challenges required), but I am a bit fascinated by it. It’s like a window to another world: one where you can put on make-up and high heels and still be a guy. No dickheads like Leanne and Michelle to make you feel like crap. No older brothers telling you to man up, whatever that means.
My eyes glide towards the piles of make-up on Megan’s dresser. Maybe I should give it a go. Nico wears nail polish, and eyeliner sometimes. It’s not like anybody at Everland would take the piss. And it’d be a way to cover up my crappy skin.
I take a deep breath. ‘Go on, then. Not the full shebang, though.’
Megan’s face lights up.
‘Seriously? Now?’ She bounces off the bed and scoops up an armful of products from her dresser. ‘Yas! Come through, Rhythmisia!’
‘Keep talking like that and I’ll definitely change my mind,’ I say, but she just laughs and dumps the bottles, tubes and palettes on to the duvet. My stomach squirms with nerves, a dash of regret – and beneath it all, a tiny, guilty bit of excitement.
* * *
Two episodes later, I leave Megan’s house feeling like there are neon arrows hovering over my head. My makeover turned into something of a battlefield. Megan would have gone full-blown Trixie Mattel on me if I’d let her: a kilo of foundation, more blusher than the downstairs floor of Boots . . . I had to actually wrestle some glittery lipstick out of her hand before she attacked me with it. In the end, we settled on eyeliner, mascara, green nail polish, and a layer of foundation to cover up my spots.
The whole time, I sighed and rolled my eyes and acted like I was doing Megan a huge favour, but when I turned around to look in the mirror, my jaw dropped. I didn’t look that different – my skin was clearer, and my eyes looked bigger – and yet it was like looking at an entirely different person. Like with this face on, I could be whoever I wanted to be. Somebody confident. Somebody who could stand up for themselves.
Even so, I walk up Leith Walk with my hood up and my chin tucked into my collar. Nobody looks at me, luckily – or if they do, they don’t say anything. I pick up the pace as I reach Waterloo Place, the nerves dissolving into the excitement of getting to Everland again. The lights of the National Monument haven’t come on yet, but everyone’s already waiting by the steps. Nico starts walking towards me, then stops in his tracks.
‘Oh my God, Brody. Your face.’
I put my hands to my cheeks, stopping just a millimetre from my skin in case I smudge anything. ‘Does it look stupid? My friend made me do it.’
‘Are you joking? You look amazing!’ He pulls his phone from the back pocket of his jeans. ‘We need to take a selfie immediately. This has to be documented.’
He spins around so we’re facing the monument, slides his arm around my neck and pulls me towards him. My whole body goes hot. Just before he taps the screen, the gaps between the stone pillars fill with colour. Blue and green light falls on to my face, orange and yellow on to Nico’s.
