Chapter 2: 2: The Warning

As we finished our lunches, Dee held up the forefinger of his right hand to get my attention. I realised from the grin on his face that something was about to happen. I’d seen that impish expression dozens of times. I swivelled my head to look in the direction he was pointing, already getting ready to laugh.

If Dee had a superpower, it would be predicting when people were about to do stupid things like trip over a loose paving stone, knock a glass of water over a computer, drop an ice cream on a toddler’s head and so on. He had an uncanny knack for spotting when body language and catastrophe were about to collide.

Admittedly, being able to predict when people are about to take a pratfall would be one of the most useless superpowers ever, but it gave us a lot of laughs.

Case in point: Walking across the school canteen was a fourteen-year-old girl carrying a set of three lunch trays back to the serving area.

Dee pointed at the girl’s shoes. Her untied left shoelace was flopping about as she walked.

“Wait for it, wait for it...” Dee said.

The girl took another couple of steps, oblivious to her untied shoelace.

“Any second...now!”

Right on cue, the girl’s right foot stepped on her left shoelace and she went sprawling head first. She managed to break her fall and avoided any serious injury, but the three plastic trays she’d been carrying went spinning out of her hands. Bits of leftover mashed potato and baked beans flew everywhere, spraying several of the other kids with stray food. The girl recovered but then had to endure a round of applause from the kids who’d been out of range and groans from those who hadn’t.

Dee roared with laughter and I chuckled along.

“How do you do it?” I said, shaking my head, “Every damn time.”

“You just have to know what to look for,” Dee grinned.

The bell rang, and we headed to our classes.

I snoozed my way through Maths and tried to stay awake through History. I was just looking forward to my shift at the garage later in the evening. Joe had a classic 1970s BMW brought in for restoration, and it was a real beauty, one of only 150 ever built. A collector’s item that would be worth well over two hundred grand when we’d finished with it.

Ok, look, everyone has that one thing they geek out about, right? For some people its sports, for others its computers, or comic books or learning Klingon or whatever. With me, it was cars. Especially classic and vintage cars.

It had all started when I was seven and had accidentally been sitting in front of a Saturday re-run of the James Bond movie ‘Goldfinger’ - the one with the Aston Martin and the ejector seat. My seven-year-old brain had been astonished by the idea of a car which could send you in two directions: Forward and up. For the next few weeks I did drawing after drawing, fascinated by this concept. My mum, Sally, was excited because she thought I’d discovered my artistic streak.

It took her a while to realise that all my drawings were of multi-coloured cars with stick figures flying through the air.

Anyway, ‘Goldfinger’ was the start of my car enthusiasm, which only increased when I realised 1) I couldn’t do sports anymore (we’ll get to why later) and 2) my mum briefly dated a car mechanic, Joe, who owned a garage specialising in fixing up high end and vintage motors. Joe took me under his wing despite him and mum splitting up. Ever since then I’d spent a lot of my spare time in his garage, learning everything about fixing cars, motorbikes, scooters, vans, you name it. I was the first kid in our year to get a learner driver licence (swiftly followed by Jess) and couldn’t wait until I turned seventeen and passed my driving test.

Joe in the meantime, I guess he became a substitute father figure since my dad took off when I was less than three years old.

*

With school done, I headed for the garage. I didn’t get far before Jess’s boyfriend and his two thick-as-planks henchmen rounded on me. They cornered me just outside the school gates.

Travis was a year above me, in the sixth form. Outside school he wore a red leather jacket and had his dark hair groomed in a spiky style straight out of an Anime film.

He thought he was cool, especially now he was both dating and in a band with Jess, the daughter of Johnny Legend.

He wasn’t cool. And The Misdemeanours were only half way to decent because Jess knew her way around an electric guitar. And a bass guitar. And a keyboard, come to mention it.

None of which stopped Travis from pointing out at every opportunity that it was his band since he was the frontman.

I never got what Jess saw in him.

“Shrimp,” he said, “stop right there.”

“What do you want, Travis?” I asked.

I ignored the fact that he’d called me a shrimp. I was 5 foot 9 inches tall but seemed shorter because of my slim build. Plus I hunched a lot, hoping that no-one would pay me any attention.

Travis, three inches taller than me, tried to appear menacing. Not an easy thing to do when you essentially look like a Pokemon reject.

“A word in your ear. You aren’t going to the Halloween party tonight.”

“Why’s that?”

I knew why, of course.

“I’ve already told you, shrimp. I don’t like you hanging round my girl.”

I sighed and rolled my eyes.

It was pointless trying to argue with Travis. I’d known Jess for years, he’d been dating her for, what, three months?

There was also no point trying to tell Travis that things weren’t ‘like that’ between Jess and me. This was partly because he wouldn’t listen, but mostly because I wasn’t sure that things weren’t ‘like that’ anymore. Recently, stuff had been awkward between us. I’d started to like-like Jess. It was confusing, and I was doing my best to ignore and hide these new feelings because she was one of my two best/only friends and anything else would mess everything up. So instead of protesting, and resisting a sudden urge to hit him, I simply thought: You’re a moron, Travis.

It was better than saying it or lashing out.

The fire was building up inside me and knowing what it might lead to scared the hell out of me.

Don’t do it, I thought, it isn’t worth it. You know what could happen.

The worst part was that as the fire grew, I could feel that I wanted to hit Travis. It was like the power fed on some ugly, primal desires and instincts. Ones I didn’t want to entertain.

Travis, mistaking my silence for fear, pressed the advantage he thought he had.

“Stay away from the party tonight and stay away from my girl for good. Clear?”

I shrugged, muttered ‘whatever’ and slipped between Travis and his minions.

“Last warning, shrimp,” Travis said as I walked away.

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I wanted to say something cool and tough like “Yeah, the last warning for you,” but I left it.

*

Despite having walked away – or more likely because I’d walked away - by the time I got to the garage I was seething. What right did Travis have to tell me who I couldn’t hang out with? Especially my oldest friend, Jess. Ok, so we hadn’t properly started hanging out until we were twelve, but that wasn’t the point.

I worked on the Beamer’s engine. Joe could see my heart wasn’t in it though.

“What’s wrong, fella?” he asked.

“It’s nothing,” I mumbled, “just people being people.”

Joe grinned.

“Girl problems, right?”

“No,” I started, but didn’t get any further.

“Let me guess, that pretty little redhead, is it? What’s her name, Jess? She’s a peach, that one.”

“Come on man, that’s my friend you’re talking about.”

Joe shrugged, “Your ‘friend?’ Really?”

“There’s nothing going on. It’s not like that. Her boyfriend doesn’t want me to go to the school Halloween party tonight, that’s all.”

“Right,” Joe said. He thought about it. “You should go,” he announced.

“What?”

“You don’t want her thinking you’re scared of him, do you?”

“No, but it’s really not like that.”

Joe took the screwdriver out of my hand. “You’ve got to go,” he said.

The thing was, now Travis had told me not to go, the idea of showing up just to get on his nerves was becoming more appealing by the second. Joe just gave me the last little push I needed.

“I haven’t got a costume,” I pointed out.

Joe scoffed at my weak excuse.

“You’ll find something in amongst all of your mum’s junk at the shop. Go on, get out of here.”

He had a point.

Mum owned a vintage clothes shop. From what I saw, ‘vintage’ meant stuff she’d found in charity shops, cleaned up and then added a zero to the price tag when she put it in her own shop.

Some of it was cool though, and she kept a roof over our heads and food on the table without anyone else’s help. Mum was my hero in lots of ways. I knew she’d had it tough growing up, but she never complained, never lost her temper, always took care of me and rarely said no if I wanted something, within reason.

She made it really difficult for me to act the rebellious teenager role, so I didn’t generally bother.

I didn’t remember my dad, and I wasn’t concerned about that for the most part. Sometimes I wished mum would tell me something about him, but if I ever brought the subject up, Mum said she’d talk to me about it when I was older. Once I tried to insist on knowing more but Mum looked upset, so I just dropped the subject.

“Fine,” I said to Joe, as the idea of going to the party took hold. Why shouldn’t I, after all?

The fact that I hadn’t been interested until Travis had stepped in wasn’t lost on me, but whatever.

I cleaned up, got out of my garage overalls and texted Dee.

Change of plan. We’re going to the party.

Dee texted me back a few seconds later.

What? Why? What am I supposed to wear?

I thought about it.

I’m going as Dracula. Wrap up in some bandages and call yourself the Mummy.

Good grief. Fine. Why are we doing this?

Travis told me not to go.

Oh well there’s a sound reason, Dee texted back.

Even via text message I could hear the sarcasm in his voice.

Mine at seven, I sent back.

Which was how Dee and I - the Mummy and Dracula respectively - ended up going to the party. I bought a set of plastic fangs from a novelty shop and Mum provided me with an oversized red-lined black cape with a high collar. I slapped on some white face paint, black eyeliner and a dash of lipstick (all provided by Mum) for good measure.

I looked at myself in the mirror, bared my plastic fangs and chuckled. Maybe Forrest had a point, given the way I looked. Not that I’d let him know that.

After half an hour of wrapping Dee in bandages and safety pins, we headed out for what would be the school’s first – and last – Halloween party.

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