Never Evers Page 9

  ‘You and you,’ Tania said but I didn’t realize she had pointed at me, let alone seen who she had paired me with. I saw Keira’s face and knew straight away. Scarlett and Melody were exchanging looks with Lauren. She didn’t move at all, just stayed next to them in a three.

  ‘Who didn’t pair up yet?’ Tania said.

  I didn’t know whether to move or not. It was like a showdown, one of us would have to move first. Lauren kept looking at Scarlett and smiling a kind of ‘this is awkward’ smile.

  I unsteadily took a step forward. Lauren looked at me and then back at Melody and Scarlett. Then she hugged them both like she was leaving them for ever, and started to walk towards me.

  We didn’t speak as Tania taught us how to practise sliding on our skis, pointing them towards each other, guiding each other in turns. We stood side by side, facing outwards, not even letting our sleeves brush. Tania told us to get started and we watched everyone find a spot and start, giggling as they did it. I tried not to think about the ferry. Or the note. What if the boy with glasses had read it? And then told Lauren what was in it?

  Lauren went first. She was naturally good. She is tall and strong and has always been athletic. But she has a long torso to match her long legs. Too long for ballet school. Not the Royal Ballet physique. It’s stupid and ridiculous really, that there can be an ‘ideal torso length’. At first we did the moves without talking. I didn’t know what she was thinking. The last time we had actually spoken to each other was when I had agreed to meet them in the diner. Neither of us mentioned it but we were probably both thinking about it.

  The first time I tried to move, I fell over. And not in a graceful way, but hard, right on to my shoulder. Lauren reluctantly gave me her hand to help me up and I took it. She pulled and as I moved, she fell backwards and suddenly we were both lying together in the snow. I started laughing a little bit, and then when I heard she was laughing too I let myself laugh properly.

  ‘Do they even know you’re here?’ Lauren said, sitting up.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Opera Ballet.’

  For a second my mind just froze.

  ‘Yeah, I mean, I guess if I got injured, that would … be bad.’ I wondered if it sounded as lame as I thought it did. And before I thought it through I said, ‘Do you still dance?’

  The tempo between us changed. It felt horribly electric. I’d said the word. The word that had bound us together and then torn us apart. Dance.

  She looked down and something about her face became weirdly real. She shook her head. ‘I stopped after I didn’t get in. I kind of wish I had kept it up. It was weird, it was like it was gonna be that or nothing. It’s hard to explain.’

  If there are bits of your heart that change when you are rejected, mine and Lauren’s had changed in the same way. Just at different times. And when it had happened to her I hadn’t really got it. It was hard to explain. I had tried. My mum hadn’t been able to understand even though she loves me and wanted the dream almost as much as me. No one could really get it. Except for maybe Lauren. I opened my mouth to say something but the lie just sat there inside me, stopping me. I couldn’t tell her now. I wanted to hug her and say sorry that I had just forgotten about her. That I got why she had stopped speaking to me. I would have hated her, too, if she had got in and I hadn’t. ‘I love dancing at parties, though,’ she said.

  ‘I hate dancing at parties. I never do. I get so embarrassed.’ I picked up a stick and started swirling patterns in the snow.

  ‘You’re not still shy?’ Lauren rolled her eyes. ‘You’re like those girls on the edge of the dance in Grease.’

  ‘A wallflower,’ I said. ‘Yeah, I know. I am. But I can’t help it.’

  She laughed. ‘Scarlett and Alfie had a party at Christmas and I made them play the same song again and again so I could dance to it for hours.’

  ‘Do you still fancy Alfie?’ I giggled.

  ‘Eurgh, no, I forgot about that phase.’ She crinkled up her nose and shivered like it was painful to remember it.

  ‘Keira really likes him,’ I said. ‘They do swimming together.’

  ‘Cute,’ she said. ‘He probably likes her too, she’s really pretty.’

  ‘Who do you like then?’ I asked. Inside my stomach tightened a bit, but only a fraction.

  She looked around and leant closer. ‘I met this boy last night.’

  And then Lauren described Jack. And how he spoke and how he dressed and how he had a friend who was a lunatic and how he looked a bit like Roland. I listened like it was all new information until Tania called us back.

  As we pigeoned over to the group I could feel Lauren harden and separate, like some kind of spell we hadn’t cast had been broken.

  I shuffled back over to Keira and Connie. ‘Are you OK?’ Keira asked. ‘Was she all right with you?’

  I nodded. They hadn’t said anything after the ferry but I think they knew something had happened and could probably guess along what lines.

  ‘Yeah. She was actually nice.’

  Keira raised her eyebrows, but before she could say anything, a trickle of girls started scurrying across the bottom of the patch of mountain we were on. Some of them were carrying posters or banners they had obviously made with the entire contents of Hobbycraft. All of the posters displayed a jumble of illegible French words, but one word was clear: Roland. The trickle turned in to a steady flow and then a kind of gushing, squealing river.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lauren demanded.

  Tania shrugged. ‘Only one way to find out.’

  Jack

  Max spent the whole morning discussing the two breakfast ‘incidents’. By the time we’d all got our lift passes sorted and were in the shop renting boards and boots, Toddy had started listening to his iPod to block him out.

  ‘Keira and that lot are hot, but clearly insane,’ Max reasoned, as he pulled on a snowboard boot the size of a loaf of bread. ‘Lauren, Scarlett and Melody on the other hand, are hot but not insane. The choice is clear.’

  I nodded. ‘Well, yeah. But there isn’t a choice at all, really, since Mouse and Keira won’t even speak to us. What did we do? You don’t think they saw us go into Lauren’s room.’

  ‘Course not,’ Max sniffed. ‘We were like ninjas. Anyway, who cares if they saw? We need to concentrate on Lauren’s lot now. She clearly fancies you, so that means it’s very likely that Scarlett fancies me.’

  ‘Solid logic there, Max.’

  As I took my boots and board up to the counter, I wondered whether Lauren really did fancy me. It seemed way too good to be true. Surely there were other, much cooler, blokes on this trip she’d rather get off with?

  Me and Toddy both ended up with boards that had decent graphics on them – a snake for Toddy, and a silhouetted guy with a gun for me – but Max got stuck with a well embarrassing one that was bright purple with a huge glittery unicorn. His only consolation was that he managed to sneak ‘Ma perruche est dans la zone piétonne’ in to his conversation with the French bloke who was kitting him out, for which Toddy awarded him fifteen points.

  Max was keen to find a fireworks-and-ninja-stars shop, but he didn’t have time; Flynn marched us all straight out of the board store to the bottom of the mountain. One by one, we stepped on to this massive conveyor-belt thing that whirred us up a short distance to one of the beginners’ slopes.

  It was like being on the moon, or something. Apart from the odd clump of snow-covered pine trees, there was just endless whiteness stretching out everywhere you looked, with the zigzagging wires of the ski lifts buzzing away overhead. It was amazing.

  Our instructor was a tall skinny bloke called Sebastian, who told us to call him ‘Basti’. He didn’t look that much older than some of the sixth-formers at school. He had a huge blond quiff that was about half the size of his face, and a ridiculously posh accent. His first words to us were, ‘If you lot can keep it down today that’d be awesome. I’m so hungover I might literally vom at any minute.’ Flynn d
id not look impressed.

  Basti showed us all how to click our boots on to the boards and tighten them up. Then we stood up, wobbling, in a circle around him.

  ‘OK, so how many of you have snowboarded before?’ he asked.

  Only a couple of hands went up. Jamie’s was one of them.

  ‘Woah, right, OK,’ he said. ‘So, you’re all basically never evers.’

  ‘We’re what?’ asked Max.

  ‘Never evers,’ sniffed Basti, as if we should all know what the hell that meant. ‘It’s an American phrase. I picked it up when I did a season in California in my gap year. It means you’ve never ever snowboarded before.’

  Max nodded, and I heard Jamie whisper to Ed, ‘That’s not the only thing that lot have “never ever” done.’ We shot them death stares while they cracked up.

  Basti gave us a short and intensely boring speech about safety on the slopes, and then made us all skate around slowly in little circles, one foot strapped on to the board, the other pushing against the snow. After that, he made us strap both feet in and slide around on our bums. The sun beat down and sparkled off the slope, hurting my eyes, and the snow made funny squeaking sounds under the weight of the boards.

  Finally, after we’d all fallen over about twenty times, Basti said we were ready to try it properly. ‘First up, watch me,’ he said. We were on a pretty tame slope, with a load of little kids mucking about at the bottom, while their mums chatted to each other. Despite that, it still looked scary from up the top; there was no way we were getting down without falling at least once. Basti shifted his weight so he was pointing downhill. He glided slowly down to the bottom, making big ‘S’ shapes in the snow, and then carved right around, to stop himself.

  Max scratched his head under his helmet and shrugged. ‘Don’t see what all the fuss is about. Looks well easy, this.’

  ‘Looks ridiculously hard, more like,’ I said. ‘You really reckon you can get down the bottom without falling over?’

  ‘Definitely.’

  Toddy dusted some flecks of snow off his glasses, and said, ‘Max, the statistical probability of you falling over is very, very high.’

  ‘Yeah, well, so is the statistical probability of you …’ He thought for a second. ‘Being a div.’

  ‘Nice,’ nodded Toddy, putting his glasses back on. ‘Classic comeback.’

  ‘Off you go then!’ Basti shouted up at us. ‘And remember what I told you: you shouldn’t ever be aiming straight down the slope – you want to glide gently across it, turning right and left. Tilt forwards then backwards with your toes and heels. Try to feel your way in to it.’

  I looked at Max and Toddy, who shrugged as if to say, ‘You first.’ Jamie smirked and set off, making it all the way down without falling. We saw Basti clap him on the back, proudly.

  Max pushed off, and so did Toddy, but within about three seconds, they’d both fallen flat on their bums.

  I shifted my body sideways so my left foot was pointing towards the bottom of the slope, and felt myself start to move forward slowly. I leant back very gently on my heels and turned the board left. I wobbled, flapped my arms about, but somehow managed to stay standing. I was picking up speed. I leant forwards slightly on my toes, still gaining momentum. Again, I wobbled. Again, I didn’t fall. Maybe this was it; maybe snowboarding was my ‘thing’. I’d waited fourteen years to find something I was actually, properly, good at, and this was it!

  I was gaining speed, but all my focus was going in to trying not to fall over. I tried to turn again, to slow myself down, but my body wouldn’t do it. It just kept pointing me straight ahead, down the slope.

  I heard Basti yell, ‘Not so quick there, mate!’ but I didn’t really have any idea how to stop. Arms flapping madly, I whizzed straight past him and Jamie, and carried on down the hill, still picking up speed. I could hear Basti shouting and Jamie’s faint shrieking laughter ringing round the slope behind me.

  Just as I was considering how difficult it would be to unclip my boots and jump off stylishly, the edge of my board caught a bump in the snow. I slammed down, flat on my back, with a painful crunch. Even then, I didn’t stop. I carried on sliding.

  Though big clumps of powdery snow were streaming into my eyes and mouth I could see I was aiming straight for a massive blonde lady in a neon-pink ski suit. I tried to call out, but my mouth was so full of snow I couldn’t make a sound. There was nothing to do but close my eyes and hope.

  I heard a loud scream, then felt the full weight of the woman as she thudded down on top of me. All the air whooshed out of my lungs. I opened my eyes to see her huge, bewildered face pressed right up against mine. She was lying sprawled out on top of me and for some reason, the first thought that popped in to my head was that this was now probably the closest I’d ever been to kissing a girl.

  She looked like Thor’s sister. I was having quite a lot of trouble breathing.

  She suddenly found her voice, and started screeching at me in some weird language or other – Russian, I think. I turned my head and saw Max, Toddy and the rest of the class sliding down towards me on their bums, literally crying with laughter.

  ‘That was bloody epic!’ Max yelled. I tried to say, ‘Help me,’ but there wasn’t enough breath in my chest. All I could do was watch as he aimed his iPhone. ‘Say “fromage”!’

  By lunchtime, I was in total agony. Not only due to the massive Russian woman breakdancing all over me, but also because the backs of my legs had completely cramped up. Basti said it was because I was ‘using muscles I had never used before’, but I think it was just because I was falling over every two minutes.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of this,’ I said, as we sat down on the benches outside a big restaurant that overlooked the beginners’ slope. Max and Toddy groaned in agreement.

  ‘Trust me, it’s all about day three.’ Basti winked. ‘It all starts to make sense on day three.’

  ‘Well, if I’ve still got a body left by day three, that’ll be great,’ muttered Toddy.

  We had lunch – an amazing tinfoil-wrapped baguette that had a burger and fries stuffed inside it – then, as we were about to head back, Basti said we could quickly go and have a look at the ‘thing that was happening’ further up the mountain.

  ‘What thing?’ Flynn asked.

  ‘You guys haven’t heard? That French singer, Roland. He’s filming some music video up at the next slope.’

  ‘Oh my god!’ said Max, jabbing me in the chest. ‘Your loser twin brother!’

  ‘Shut up, man. He doesn’t look that much like me.’

  ‘Yeah, well, we’ll be able to judge for ourselves when we see him live in the flesh. Plus, if it’s a music video thing, there might even be some, y’know, industry types that we can chat to. About the band.’

  ‘What, our band with no name?’ said Toddy.

  ‘It’s not gonna have no name for much longer, my friend,’ smirked Max. ‘Once I work my magic on Scarlett on the ice rink, we will officially be Psycho Sex Death Squad.’

  Flynn agreed we could go and have a look, so our whole group, led by Basti, took the magic carpet a little higher up the mountain. There was already a huge crowd at the top. We shoved our way through, with Flynn shouting, ‘Don’t get lost!’ and ‘Stay together!’ but when we finally got to the front, there was just a load of lights and cameras, two massive white trailers with their doors closed, and tons of bored-looking people milling around holding clipboards.

  ‘What a rip-off,’ said Max.

  ‘Do you think he’s already been and gone?’ Toddy asked.

  I said nothing at all. Mainly because, standing right beside me, her shoulder almost brushing mine, was Mouse.

  I panicked and pretended not to see Jack. Which was ridiculous as he was right next to me. And the more people turned up to look at what was going on, the more compact the surroundings seemed to get.

  Connie and Keira were taking pictures of the super fans: girls wearing jackets with Roland’s face on
and deely boppers with boingy capital Rs. One girl had stuck stickers of him all over her face.

  The longer we all waited, the more intense the atmosphere got and the more awkward it was that me and Jack hadn’t spoken.

  A girl in the crowd made herself a human battering ram and launched herself right into the chink between me and Jack in a desperate effort to get closer to the front. She fell hard, right in front of us.

  ‘Are you OK?’ I said and held out my hand to get her up. She nodded but looked a bit tearful and said something in French. Jack bent down and picked up her Roland sunglasses from the snow and handed them to her. She smiled and squinted at Jack, her eyes flickering for a second with excitement. Then she shook her head to herself before saying thank you to both of us in English and pushing back into the crowd.

  To both of us. Like we were there together.

  And then we were looking right at each other.

  ‘It’s a bit mad, isn’t it?’ Jack smiled at me.

  A bit mad that you came to our room last night after we magicked you there from a purple sparkly book? Or a bit mad that we blanked you this morning and have stood here for the last ten minutes ignoring each other? Either way, it was indeed all pretty mad.

  In my head I repeated, ‘Don’t say anything stupid,’ in a stern voice. I tried to look casual by tucking my hair behind my ears. And then untucking it again. He pointed over at a group of hard-core fans who were each holding a huge cut-out letter from Roland’s name.

  ‘It says LANDOR,’ I said. ‘They’re not that dedicated if they can’t stand in the right order.’

  ‘True. Or maybe “Landor” is a secret word only the biggest fans know.’

  ‘It must be weird for him, all this craziness. He only looks about our age. Are you in year nine too?’

  Jack nodded. ‘Weird for him? It must be amazing for him. Look at how many girls have turned up to stare at a bit of snow that he may or may not walk on.’

  ‘Is that your dream, then?’ I said. ‘To have girls waiting around in the snow for you?’ I laughed, but suddenly felt a bit self-conscious. Like I was some straight-edge nun-in-training telling him off for having immoral thoughts.