Drive By Page 2

  I smile at her.

  Nan looks at the tools and bits of wood on the table. She shakes her head. ‘Oh, Harry,’ she says. ‘Do you have to do that now? Summer’s here. Can’t it wait?’

  Grandad sighs. ‘You asked me to do it,’ he says. ‘It’s your flipping birthday present.’

  ‘But Summer’s more important than a blinking bird table. I would have thought you’d have enough manners to clear your mess away when you know we have a guest. I want to put these lovely flowers on the table.’

  Grandad puts his tools down. ‘Yes, dear,’ he says sarcastically. ‘Right away, dear.’

  Nan puts the vase down on the table and then goes back through to the kitchen. Grandad starts packing up the tools and bits of bird table. He gives me an exasperated look and I just smile back at him.

  ‘There you go, Summer,’ Nan says as she brings the lemonade out.

  She takes a seat and looks at me. She breathes heavily for a few seconds and coughs – a deep, barking cough. She looks over at Grandad packing away.

  ‘He can be such an antisocial so-and-so,’ she says.

  I say nothing. I’m not taking sides in this. Nan and Grandad are always on at each other like this. Always sniping. God knows how they’ve stayed together for nearly forty years.

  ‘We got you a present,’ I say to Nan. I reach down and get it from my bag.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ she says as she takes it from me. ‘Is it from you?’

  I nod. ‘And Mum. And Sky too, I think.’

  Nan carefully undoes the sticky tape. ‘I had a card from Sky,’ she says. ‘Came yesterday. I haven’t heard her voice for a while though. Is she coming home this summer at all?’

  I shrug. ‘Dunno,’ I say. ‘I hope so. It’s not very exciting without her here.’

  Nan opens the present. It’s her favourite perfume. Mum bought it at the weekend.

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ she says with a sparkle in her eye. She leans over and kisses me again.

  ‘That’s all right,’ I say. ‘Mum knew it was your favourite, so . . .’

  Nan folds the wrapping paper – because she wants to reuse it, I know – and puts it on the table next to the perfume box. ‘So, where is your mum today?’

  ‘At work, like always,’ I say. ‘She said to send her love and says sorry she can’t see you on your birthday.’

  Nan nods her head. She doesn’t say anything for a while. I pick up my lemonade and have a sip. It tastes flat.

  ‘Is your mum taking any time off over the summer?’ Nan says.

  I shrug. ‘Not sure. She said she’d try to, but she only gets a few weeks’ holiday.’

  Nan makes a disapproving face. ‘It’s a shame though, isn’t it?’

  I don’t know how to answer, whether to agree or to defend Mum. So I say nothing.

  ‘You must be getting bored in the flat on your own.’

  I shrug. ‘A bit.’

  Nan coughs again. ‘Well, you’re always welcome to come round and visit us, Summer.’

  I smile. The idea of coming round here every day would do my head in. Don’t get me wrong, I love my nan and grandad, but spending every day of the holidays with them? No thanks. I’d rather be with Holden.

  ‘Your grandad could even come and pick you up. Couldn’t you, Harry?’

  Grandad, who’s nearly finished packing away now, grunts. ‘What?’

  Nan tuts. ‘You’re so rude, Harry. I was just saying that if Summer gets lonely over the holidays, you’ll pick her up and bring her here, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I suppose,’ Grandad says. Then he catches sight of the clock and says, ‘Isn’t it time for your medication, Jean?’

  Nan shakes her head and rolls her eyes at him.

  Johnny

  The two big plastic boxes of free newspapers are on my doorstep, waiting to be delivered. Seeing as Jake’s here, I’ve convinced him to help me. We sit on the step and put the flyers into them, then load up the trolley. It’s like one of those shopping trolleys that old ladies drag behind them in the supermarket, except it’s fluorescent yellow and has the big blue logo of the local paper on it. It’s embarrassing, but it beats the hell out of having to carry the newspapers around in a bag.

  Jake sighs. ‘You know, I think I may be overqualified for this job,’ he says as he stuffs a handful of flyers into a newspaper.

  ‘Really? I’m not sure about that,’ I say sarcastically.

  Jake flicks me the finger and looks at the headline on one of the papers: RECYCLING PLANT PLANNED FOR MITCHAM. ‘Does anyone ever read this rubbish?’

  I nod. ‘My mum does – cover to cover every week.’

  Jake shakes his head. ‘She must be the only one,’ he says. ‘I reckon most of these just end up in the bin.’

  In no time at all, the trolley’s loaded and ready to go. We set off, delivering the newspapers down my street. With two of us doing the job, we manage to get through it much quicker than I usually do. We take a paper each and do alternate houses. Within five minutes the whole street’s finished and we start on the next street, Exminster Avenue.

  ‘How much do you get paid for this?’ Jake says as he kicks a stone along the pavement.

  ‘Tenner a week.’

  Jake snorts. ‘A tenner?’

  I nod. ‘It’s all right. Usually it only takes about an hour to deliver the whole lot, so if you think about it, I’m getting ten pounds an hour. That’s way more than the minimum wage, and there aren’t many other sixteen-year-olds on ten pounds an hour, are there? It’s way more than we get for the footy coaching.’

  Jake doesn’t answer. He takes a newspaper from the pile and goes to post it through a letter box.

  ‘If I worked in a burger bar or something I’d only be on about six quid an hour,’ I say.

  ‘S’pose.’

  I take a newspaper and post it through the letter box of number three, the house where the curtains are always drawn. Apparently an old recluse guy lives there, but I’ve never seen him. As I post the newspaper, I can’t help but sneak a look through the letter box. I can’t see anything much apart from a tatty old carpet and peeling wallpaper and loads of shadows though. I walk back along the drive to Jake and the trolley.

  ‘Another good thing about this job is not having a boss,’ I say as we walk along the road.

  Jake looks at me with a face like he doesn’t believe me. ‘You must have a boss,’ he says. ‘I mean, who gives the papers to you?’

  ‘Yeah. But he’s not exactly my boss,’ I say. ‘I never see him and he doesn’t follow me round telling me what to do. The papers just arrive on my doorstep each week. I’ve only ever met him once.’ And then I think. ‘No. Twice actually.’

  Jake takes the paper to number five, then comes back over to me.

  ‘I met him once when I applied to do the job,’ I say, before taking the paper up to number seven and sneaking a look through the front window. A really fit woman lives there, but she’s not in today.

  ‘And the other time was when I got in trouble,’ I say, when I get back to the trolley.

  Jake laughs. ‘You got in trouble? How can you get in trouble handing out free papers?’

  I push the trolley along, listen to the squeaky wheels for a second. I’ve been thinking for months that I should put some oil on them.

  ‘Every week I’d deliver the papers and wonder why I was bothering, whether anyone would notice if I didn’t deliver them. So one week I decided not to bother. I mean, I did all the houses on my road but then, when it was dark, I took all the others down to the big recycling bins on the high street and dumped them.’

  Jake laughs again. ‘Seriously? Nice one. If this was my job, it’s what I’d do every week. That’s what we should be doing right now.’

  I stop the trolley outside number nine. Jake stands and stares at me, waits for me to finish talking before he delivers the next paper.

  ‘Anyway, it turns out the company that makes the newspaper has these people who get paid to phone hous
es on all the rounds each week to see if the papers have been delivered or not. When they phoned people on my round that week, they found out I hadn’t delivered them. First I knew of it was when I got a phone call from the boss.’

  Jake sniggers. He grabs a paper, but he doesn’t go and post it. ‘You idiot,’ he says. ‘So what did he do?’

  I shrug. ‘Deliver that paper to number nine and I’ll tell you.’

  Jake runs up the drive of number nine and posts the paper. He comes back and looks at me expectantly. We carry on walking.

  ‘Not much really. He didn’t shout or anything. He just told me that if it happened again, he’d find someone else to do my job. Gave me a replacement set of papers and made me deliver them. That was it.’

  Jake laughs. ‘You deserved it – and more. He should have sacked you.’

  I look at him, eyebrows raised. ‘What? You said you’d do the same thing if this was your job!’

  He laughs. ‘Whatever, J.’

  We deliver papers to the next couple of houses without saying anything. I take a paper out for number fifteen and then look up. I freeze where I am.

  ‘Look,’ I say, nodding my head towards the house.

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the porch. The Poisoned Dwarf.’

  Jake looks. He turns to me, a wicked grin on his face. ‘That’s the old witch that slashed Drac’s ball, isn’t it?’

  I nod. I glance at her again. She’s staring at us from the porch of her house, that same scowl on her face, lips pursed, brow furrowed. She looks like she’s spent so much of her life scowling at people that all the other muscles have stopped working properly.

  ‘Gimme that paper,’ Jakes says, and he grabs it from me and marches towards the house.

  As soon as she sees him coming, the Poisoned Dwarf goes back inside and closes the door.

  I wheel the trolley closer, to the end of the drive, and watch Jake. He doesn’t fold the paper, but just shoves it roughly through the letter box. Even from five metres away I can see the paper shredding into pieces as he forces it through. A smile forms on my lips, even though I don’t want it to. The paper drops into the porch in a mess. Jake turns and smiles. Then he rings the doorbell. Not once, but over and over again. When he’s finally done with that, he opens the letter box and shouts through.

  ‘Football killer! Psycho! We’re gonna call the police if you ever do that again!’

  He lets go of the flap on the letter box. It closes with a snap. He stands up and rings the doorbell again for good measure. Then he turns and runs back down the drive towards me, laughing.

  ‘You idiot,’ I say as he gets close. ‘We could get into trouble for that! What if she rings up the paper and complains? I could lose my job!’

  We walk along the pavement and Jake shrugs. ‘So what?’ he says. ‘You can do better than this job, J. She’d be doing you a favour. Besides, if she grasses on you, we grass her up to the cops for killing Drac’s ball. That’s criminal damage, you know.’

  Summer

  I pick up the phone and dial Sky’s number. I hold the phone to my ear and listen as it rings. The same monotonous sound over and over again. Nobody picks up. I imagine her flat, the phone in the tiny lounge ringing and nobody picking it up. I wonder for a second whether they’re all out, but then I catch a glimpse of the clock. It’s nearly eleven. They’re students; they’re probably all still asleep.

  I put the phone down. And I feel lonely. I feel alone. I think of what Nan said yesterday. ‘Phone us if you’re lonely.’ I smile to myself. I’m not that lonely. I pick my mobile up and text Sky.

  R u in? I’m bored — I want a chat. X

  I go back to my room. Petal, our cat, is lying on my bed, legs outstretched. She looks up as I come in. I bend down by my bed and reach underneath it. I pull out a cardboard box – my memory box – and put it on my bed. I climb on to my bed and sit down, pick up Petal and drape her across my legs.

  I say it’s my memory box, but in a way that’s a lie. It’s Dad’s stuff. One of his diaries. A Wimbledon scarf. His battered copy of The Catcher in the Rye. And there are some of his old records and CDs in there. His favourites. All stuff from before I was born.

  Dad died four months before I was born. I never met him. He never met me. He never saw me or held me. I never heard him talk, except I guess maybe when I was in the womb. But I have no memory of that, obviously. I have no actual memories of my dad at all. Nothing. Everything I know about him is from what other people have told me, so I can’t be sure that it’s true. And some things about him I think I’ve made up myself.

  I can’t help but imagine what he would be like if he was here today: what he’d be doing, what he’d say, the things we would have done together if we’d had the chance.

  I pick up his copy of Catcher and look inside the cover, where his name is written. James Hornby. It looks like he wrote it with a fountain pen. The handwriting is different in his diary. Mum says it’s his copy from when he was at school, which explains the handwriting.

  My mobile rings. I put the book back into the box and put the lid on. It’s Sky calling. I smile and answer.

  ‘Hi, Sky,’ I say.

  ‘How you doing, little sis?’

  ‘OK,’ I say. ‘Bored.’

  ‘Mum working?’

  ‘Yeah. Always.’

  ‘That’s a bummer,’ Sky says.

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. I pause. ‘Are you coming home at all this summer?’

  Sky doesn’t answer right away. I can hear other voices at the other end of the phone, talking in the background. ‘I’m not sure, Summer.’

  I sigh. ‘Really?’

  ‘I’m busy up here,’ she says. ‘I have to work to pay the rent.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘And Dougie’s up here too. Things are a bit complicated right now.’

  ‘I’d love to see you though.’

  Sky is silent for a couple of seconds. ‘Look, I’ll see if I can come back for a weekend or something soon.’

  ‘That’d be good. I miss you and I’m so bored here.’

  ‘I miss you as well,’ Sky says. ‘You know, you’re welcome to come up here and stay if you want.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, why not,’ Sky says. ‘It’d be fun. We could get you into some clubs and pubs and stuff.’

  ‘That’d be awesome,’ I say. ‘Can I?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Sky says. ‘As long as Mum says it’s OK.’

  And then I hear more talking in the background. It sounds like someone is talking to Sky.

  ‘Are you still there?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Sorry, Summer,’ Sky says. ‘Gotta go. I’m meant to be at work in a minute. Listen, I’ll give you a call later and we can chat properly.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Promise,’ she says.

  And then she’s gone.

  Johnny

  It’s one of those summer days where it feels like the whole world’s starting to melt, where the air feels hot and moist and heavy, and the tarmac sticks to your feet as you walk along the pavement. We’re sitting on the wall of the little castle on the seventeenth hole of the weed-choked crazy golf course in the park. We’re all soaked to the skin. Our water pistols lie on the parched grass.

  I look out across the park, idly swinging my legs and kicking the castle wall with the heels of my trainers. Next to me, Jake still has a hold of his water pistol. He takes aim and shoots a jet of water at the eighteenth hole. The water sprays straight through the tunnel you’re meant to hit the ball through. I say it’s a water pistol, but to be honest it’s more like a water pump-action shotgun. The thing has a range of fifteen metres. It’s deadly. A total beast.

  ‘Oh, mama,’ Drac says all of a sudden. ‘Pretty ladies at nine o’clock.’

  We all look round. Two girls walk along the fence of the crazy golf course, chatting. They’re good-looking all right. I’d say they’re a year or two older than us. Wearing vest tops and tight cut-off jeans. We stare as the
y walk past. They don’t give us so much as a glance, but they do that thing where they smile to each other as they pass us, like they know we’re looking at them.

  Jake looks at them and then at the rest of us. He grins. He holds up his water pistol and I can almost see the cogs going round in his head. After a second he pumps his water pistol.

  ‘I’ll aim at their tops,’ he says, taking aim. ‘Know what I mean?’

  I laugh. ‘Don’t do that, Jake,’ I say. ‘They’ll think you’re a pervert.’

  Jake’s smile gets wider. Me, Drac and Badger laugh. My eyes dart between Jake and the girls. Jake tracks them with his water pistol. He gets them in his sights and squeezes the trigger. A jet of water flies across the crazy golf course, over the fence and hits one of the girls smack bang in the back of her head.

  The instant it hits her, both girls scream and cover their faces with their arms. They look all around, trying to work out what just happened, and see us, laughing like idiots. Jake waves and smiles at them. They just stare back at us, looking moody. Jake looks down the barrel again, aims and shoots before they have time to move. This time he hits their faces.

  ‘Get lost, freak!’ one of them shouts.

  Jake ignores them, grins and takes aim again. But as he’s sizing the shot up, the girls scream and run away across the park. He shoots anyway. The jet of water hits them in their retreating backs. But in another second they’ve run well out of range.

  ‘Man, I’m deadly with this thing,’ he says as he swings back round and puts the water gun down on the grass. ‘I should be a hitman or something.’

  Drac shakes his head. ‘You’re a tool, you mean,’ he says. ‘You’ve gone and scared off the only decent-looking girls we’ve seen all afternoon.’

  Jake laughs. ‘Girls love that stuff, Drac, man,’ he says. ‘They couldn’t get enough of it.’

  ‘How would you know what girls like?’ Drac says.

  I nod my head. ‘They’ve run off, Casanova. We won’t see them again.’

  ‘Yeah, so what,’ Jake says. ‘There were only two of them, and there’s four of us. It would never have worked out.’