Never Evers Page 2

  Walking back through Bluecoats school gates felt surreal, like when you dream about something your waking mind has forgotten. Like trespassing on a memory. It looked exactly the same: that manky type of old that isn’t quaint or majestic but just tatty and clearly a mistake. My mum went to Bluecoats back when it had just been built, and they probably haven’t repainted it since. It’s concrete and ugly and angry. It’s only a few miles from White Lodge but it could be a thousand. The first time I saw White Lodge, nestled in a park full of deer, I saw a girl and boy through one of its floor-length windows dancing pas de deux. Me and Lauren had exchanged a wide-eyed look, and I’d known then it was all I wanted.

  ‘I am getting really excited and that always makes me need to wee.’ Connie was jumping up and down on the spot. ‘You know on one night there is a dancing moose? Minnie Porter said it wears dungarees and does the Macarena.’

  ‘Hey.’ A girl flung her rucksack on the ground next to us. At first I didn’t recognize her. She had thick, black wavy hair with little plaits running through it, and she was wearing ripped-up jeans covered in felt-tip drawings. Her bright-green eyes gave her away though. Keira Avakian. I was kind of stunned by how beautiful she had become. The last time I saw her she had a weird short bob that stuck right out because her hair was so thick, and special shoes because she had flat feet.

  ‘Hey, Keira!’ Connie launched at her and gave her a hug. They looked a bit ridiculous next to each other. Connie with her neat, tight curls and smart ironed shirt that her mum probably picked for her, and Keira with her scruffy, moody coolness.

  ‘It’s so early,’ moaned Keira. ‘It’s like being in prison.’ She shot a death look at Miss Mardle.

  ‘I don’t think people get to go on ski trips in prison,’ Connie said matter-of-factly.

  ‘Hey, Mouse.’ Keira said it like we were mates, like the last time I had seen her was yesterday.

  ‘Hey.’ I tried to say it in the same offhand, friendly way, but it came out small and stilted. She just bustled on, unzipping her rucksack and rummaging around. It was full to the brim with food. Thai Sensations and pork pies and Haribo and two packets of cookies. The opposite of protein balls and packets of almonds – the fuel for dancing that my bag was still packed with.

  She held out some Mini Cheddars then emptied a few from the bag straight into her mouth. ‘So how come you left ballet school?’

  Girls had started to line up for the coach and the ones around us quietened down suddenly. Obviously Keira wasn’t the only curious one.

  The brick in my stomach turned to liquid and started jumping around. And then I saw Lauren. She, Scarlett and Melody were all just a few metres away, and none of them were looking at me, but the atmosphere seemed to change. They were waiting for me to speak.

  The truth wasn’t exactly complicated. It would have been so easy to say, ‘Yeah, they didn’t think I had realized the potential I had shown at eleven, so they kicked me out.’ But I didn’t say that. My heart raced and my voice came out squeaky.

  ‘My ballet teacher put me forward for another dance programme in Paris. And I start there in September.’ I said it more to Keira’s rucksack than to her face. I could feel embarrassment creeping in to my cheeks. I wanted to take it back straight away, but it was too late.

  ‘Oh, cool,’ said Keira. ‘So you’re only back here for, like, two terms?’

  I nodded awkwardly and Connie said, ‘Wow. That is amazing. Ooh la la, très bon, baguette.’

  A girl in the year above at White Lodge had gone to train with the Paris Opera Ballet, so it could have been true. But it wasn’t. I waited for someone to call me out on it but they didn’t. Maybe Mum would let me try out for other schools, and maybe I would get in to one. If I did, then it wouldn’t be a lie, really. I took a deep breath to try and squash it all down.

  Keira ate the last Mini Cheddar, then screwed up the packet and hurled it in the direction of the bin. ‘I wish I was good at something so I could sack off my parents. And school. Without those two things my life would be really good.’

  ‘Well, at least you get to come on the ski trip,’ Connie said, giving my arm a squeeze. ‘You can start practising your French while we’re there.’

  I looked up to smile at Connie but it was Lauren’s eye I caught. She met mine for a second, a tiny hint of some sort of smile, and then she looked away and said something to Scarlett and Melody. They burst out laughing like it was the funniest thing they had ever heard. Lauren knew more about ballet than anyone else here. She knew about assessments, we had read every book about the Royal Ballet School that existed. I felt sick.

  Miss Mardle jolted in to action and started herding everyone on to the bus.

  ‘You two sit together,’ Keira said as we clambered on. ‘I’m cool listening to my music.’

  ‘No, honestly, I would feel really bad,’ I told them.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Connie said. ‘I don’t want Miss Mardle to think I’m not looking after you. I’m going to take being your Official Buddy very seriously.’ She put her arm around me proudly.

  I sat on the seats behind them. ‘I’ll probably just fall asleep anyway.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Connie beamed, ‘I’ll say everything twice so you hear it too. Like a parrot.’

  Lauren, Scarlett and Melody walked right past us, but none of them looked at me. I pulled my hoodie over my knees and leant my head against the window.

  We drove out of London and on to the motorway. Connie and Keira were listening to music, one set of headphones split between them. So were the pair in front of them and the ones in front of them. All I could see were little sets of wires splitting through the gaps in the seats. Why is everything in life always split in twos?

  Every so often I heard Lauren laugh really loudly behind me. I didn’t dare look back. It felt like she was doing it for my benefit. To show me how much I was missing out on. Every time I heard them I pressed my head against the window and let the sound of the bus vibrating drown them out. I must have actually fallen asleep at some point because I woke up with Connie’s face right next to mine.

  ‘Mouse!’ Her eyes were huge. ‘There’s something I haven’t told you.’

  ‘She’s pregnant!’ Keira stuck her face between the two seats.

  ‘Again?’ I said, but I didn’t have the punch to carry off the joke.

  Connie shot Keira a look. ‘I’m not the one who kissed Elliot in the disabled toilet at Katie’s party.’

  ‘I suppose. Anyway tell her.’

  Connie looked at me. ‘Mouse, can you keep a secret?’

  I nodded.

  ‘OK,’ Connie said earnestly. ‘I’m not doubting your honour but we need to enact the pact of Cheese Club. Just in case.’

  She unfurled her fist to reveal two Babybels and pushed one into my hands. ‘Remember?’

  ‘I thought we could only enact the pact of Cheese Club in the secret meeting place?’ I said.

  ‘We amended that in year one at the Science Museum, remember? I still have the constitution.’ She held her palm of cheese out next to mine and hissed, ‘Mouse, it’s serious. I need Cheese Club. Kiss. The. Cheese.’

  ‘OK, OK.’ I kissed the cheese. ‘Didn’t we disband Cheese Club in year two, though?’

  ‘Cheese Club never dies.’

  Connie lifted up her rucksack slowly and looked around to check no one could see. I had no idea what she could possibly have in there. She was handling the bag like it was full of explosives. She carefully unzipped the corner.

  ‘Look inside,’ she whispered.

  I bent down and put my face right next to the bag. I could see some thin metal bars. I pushed the zip a tiny bit more. And then I saw him. Peeking up at me through the cage with little black eyes. A tiny ginger ball of fluff.

  ‘Look at his little hamster eyes,’ Connie cooed. ‘He remembers you.’

  I couldn’t believe it. ‘Is it … Is that Mr Jambon? Is he still … ?’ I was a bit dazed by the whole situation.

&nbs
p; ‘Yup,’ Keira said, leaning over. ‘He’s about ninety in hamster years. He’s travelling on his Old Age Hamsters bus pass.’ She laughed like it was no big deal and started to draw a little cartoon hamster with her finger on the window.

  ‘Rub it out!’ Connie hissed. ‘Are you crazy?!’

  Keira slouched down again. ‘Yup, that’s right. You have brought an elderly hamster skiing, and I’m crazy.’

  Jack

  Jamie was still screaming at Max when we arrived at Southampton.

  ‘I bought this T-shirt specially for the trip!’ he yelled, as we all trooped off the coach and on to the ferry. ‘How am I gonna wear it now it’s covered in Sprite?’

  ‘I’m sure you can wash it,’ Toddy offered, helpfully.

  ‘It’s hand-wash only!’

  ‘Well, then hand-wash it, you idiot,’ muttered Max.

  Jamie kicked the metal wall of the ferry, making a loud bwaaang sound. We left him moaning to Ed, and headed up to the top deck. There was a restaurant and an arcade and a sweet shop, but it all smelt so weird and metallic and sea-sicky that we had to go outside.

  ‘Cheers for that, Max,’ I said, trying to sound all breezy and offhand, as we stepped out in to the crazily windy sea air. ‘You didn’t have to tell Jamie it was all of us who bailed on Band Night.’

  Max clapped me hard on the back and grinned. ‘Don’t be stupid, man. We’re a band. We stick together.’

  Toddy bumped his fist against my shoulder. ‘Yeah. I don’t blame you in the slightest for legging it. There’s no way I could get up and sing in front of people. I’ll be scared enough standing at the back with my bass.’

  ‘I still don’t see why you can’t sing, Max,’ I said.

  ‘I’m the drummer, Jack,’ he snapped. ‘There’s no such thing as a singing drummer.’

  ‘What about Phil Collins?’ said Toddy.

  ‘Never heard of him,’ Max sniffed. ‘Which proves my point – he can’t be very successful, can he?’

  Toddy scrunched his nose up. ‘I think he is. My dad’s got, like, ten of his albums.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’re not trying to impress your dad, are we, Toddy? We’re trying to impress girls, get rich and famous, and generally take rock ’n’ roll to dizzy new heights.’

  Toddy nodded. ‘OK, cool. Just as long as we’re not setting ourselves unrealistic goals.’

  Max slapped me on the shoulder again. ‘Anyway, we’ve got the perfect frontman in Jack. He just doesn’t realize it yet. Band Night was a hiccup. Next time, we’ll blow the roof off.’

  Next time. That was the reason Max was being so cool about me bottling it on Band Night: he thought it was a one-off. He thought we could just get another gig, and I’d be fine. But deep down, I knew that I wouldn’t be.

  I love playing guitar and shouting lyrics when it’s just the three of us in Max’s bedroom, but the idea of standing up in front of a crowd and doing it … It just freezes me up inside. That was what happened at Band Night: I froze. I told Max I wasn’t ready, but he signed us up anyway. And when the day finally came, and I peeked out through the curtain at the dining hall full of people, I just knew I couldn’t do it. I headed straight for the exit and didn’t look back.

  We stood at the edge of the deck with our elbows on the railing, watching England disappear slowly in to the fog.

  ‘Jamie is right about one thing, y’know,’ said Max. ‘It’s just … depressing that none of us have got off with a girl yet. You know Ed’s pulled ten girls now? Ten. He’s a month younger than me and he’s on double digits.’

  ‘Seriously?’ I groaned. ‘That’s mental. I can’t see any of us ever getting off single digits.’

  ‘We aren’t even on single digits,’ laughed Toddy. ‘We’re on zero.’

  ‘Yeah, and what’s zero if it’s not a single digit?’

  Toddy opened his mouth to argue with this but nothing came out.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said smugly, though I didn’t feel very smug inside. The Maria Bennett memory suddenly flooded my head, and this time I couldn’t shake it out.

  We’d been sitting in the garden at Sarvan’s fourteenth. She was the one who’d suggested going outside. I remember thinking that was a good sign. It was October, freezing; the only reason anybody went outside was to hook up.

  We sat there, looking up at the stars and the black scraps of cloud, and I kept telling myself to lean in and kiss her, but something stopped me. It was weird. It wasn’t just getting rejected that scared me (although that was pretty terrifying); it was more the idea of doing it wrong. I kept imagining her reeling away in horror because I’d managed to screw it up somehow. So, in the end, I just did nothing. I didn’t even try to kiss her. I bottled it. Just like I did with Band Night. Just like I seem to do with everything.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Max, snapping me back to reality. ‘We won’t be on zero for long.’ He watched a couple of seagulls hovering a few metres above, and stroked the thin, wispy hairs on his top lip. ‘I wonder if French girls are into moustaches,’ he said.

  ‘Oh god,’ moaned Toddy. ‘Not this again.’

  Max had recently become totally obsessed by the fact that he was pretty much the first in our year to show any sign of facial hair growth. He would not shut up about his ‘moustache’. If you could actually call it a ‘moustache’. No one else did.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘I’m sure French girls are well into proper, actual, bushy moustaches. I’m just not sure where they stand on ones that look like three-day-old hot chocolate stains.’

  ‘How is this not an actual, proper moustache?’ Max demanded, pointing furiously at his own mouth.

  ‘You shouldn’t be able to count the exact number of hairs in a proper moustache,’ said Toddy. ‘What’s the latest update, twenty-four?’

  ‘Twenty-eight, actually,’ Max fired back. ‘And that’s twenty-eight more than you’ve got, Toddy. You probably still won’t have any pubes by the time you’re forty.’

  Toddy smiled a smile that was half grimace, and I punched Max on the arm. He can be such an idiot sometimes. He knows Toddy is well sensitive about how young he looks.

  Me and Toddy had both officially been the ‘small ones’ in our year until I had randomly started growing a few months back. Toddy never said anything to me about it, and I never said anything to him, but still … I felt bad. What could I do, though? It’s not like I could shrink.

  Max just doesn’t understand what it’s like. Even in year seven he was taller than half our teachers. He’s big and loud and clumsy, his shaved red hair making him look like a rugby-playing Weasley brother. Toddy is the opposite – small and shy with wonky glasses and an untidy mop of blond hair that he hides behind whenever anyone except me or Max talks to him.

  I’m just … I don’t know what I am, really. I have no idea what other people see when they look at me. That was the whole problem with Maria Bennett, I guess. I just couldn’t accept that she might fancy me.

  The wind was picking up on the top deck, so Max opened his battered rucksack to pull out a hoodie. I noticed his bag had the words ‘PSYCHO SEX DEATH SQUAD’ freshly scrawled across the top in black marker.

  ‘You don’t honestly want to call our band that, do you?’ I said.

  ‘Er, yeah, obviously,’ he snapped. ‘A name like that would get people’s attention. If you saw “Pyscho Sex Death Squad” on a poster, you’d definitely stop and check it out, wouldn’t you? Anyway, it’s better than your suggestions.’

  ‘I think mine’s pretty good, actually,’ said Toddy.

  ‘Yeah, well, you would,’ Max shot back.

  ‘The Parallelograms,’ Toddy said, gazing out poetically at the sea. ‘I heard it once in Maths. I think it sounds cool.’

  ‘Toddy,’ said Max firmly. ‘We are not naming our band after something you heard in Maths. We might as well just call ourselves The Massive Geeks and be done with it.’

  ‘Yeah, no offence, Toddy, but that’s actually worse than Max’s,’ I said. ‘Mine’
s the least rubbish of the three.’

  I want us to be called ‘About Time’. I think it’s got a nice ring to it. I got the idea a while back when I told my dad about Max’s ‘Psycho Sex Death Squad’ suggestion, and he said it was ‘about time Max saw a therapist’. I imagine myself telling that story in interviews once we’re famous. It always goes down quite well, in my head.

  ‘We do seriously need to decide on a name soon,’ Max said. ‘It’s getting ridiculous that we still don’t have one. All the best bands have names.’

  ‘We could vote on it,’ Toddy suggested.

  ‘How’s that gonna work?’ snapped Max. ‘We’d all just vote for our own suggestion.’ Suddenly, his eyes lit up. ‘I know!’ he yelled. ‘I’ve got it. This is how we’ll decide … The trip!’

  ‘What are you on about?’ I said.

  ‘Whoever gets off with a girl first on this trip gets to name the band!’

  Toddy slumped down on to one of the plastic benches, his blond hair flapping about in the wind. ‘Oh, great. Well, that’s me out then, isn’t it?’ he muttered.

  ‘Yeah, I’m not sure about that either, Max …’ I started, but he wrapped his arm around my shoulder and groaned. ‘Jack, you’re not still beating yourself up about Maria Bennett, are you? That was, like, six months ago, man.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Look,’ he went on, ‘the point is: I’m not coming back from this trip still on zero, OK? And I’ll never get off zero without my wingmen. So, maybe this bet will mean you two at least talk to some girls.’

  He leant in closer. ‘I mean, you really don’t want our band to be called Psycho Sex Death Squad, do you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well then,’ he grinned, ‘you’d better make sure you get off with a girl first.’

  The coach pulled in to the ferry terminal at Dover and stopped at a little hut marked ‘Passport Control’.

  ‘Oh my god!’ Connie hissed, pulling her bag close. ‘Do you think they know?’

  ‘No, but what you’re doing is probably illegal.’ As soon as I said it Connie’s eyes went huge and I wished I hadn’t. ‘Well, not illegal illegal.’