“Is there swelling?”
“Yeah, a bit. You proper whacked it,” she said. She turned to Ben. “Did you tell Maggie?”
“Yeah, she’s on her way,” Ben replied.
“She’s gonna kill us and I can’t get fired right now,” the girl said, turning back to me and then narrowing her eyes. “Are you staring at my breasts?”
“You’re looming right over me,” I told her. I mean, they were literally taking up my entire field of vision. “Also, I’m gay.”
“Being gay doesn’t stop you looking at my breasts though.”
“No, but…” I wasn’t sure, maybe she was right. In any case, I was too concussed for this chat.
“I thought you were gay,” the girl continued. “My gaydar is always spot on, isn’t it, Ben? A1 accurate, right, Ben?”
Ben sort of shrugged. “Apparently.”
“And when you were coming round you were muttering stuff,” she continued.
I swallowed. “What stuff?”
“About some boy.”
“What boy?”
“Lemon Boy. Who’s he?”
“No one.”
“Sounds sexy.”
“It’s no one,” I said. “I was delirious. People say stuff they don’t mean when they’re delirious.”
The girl blew out her cheeks and shook her head. “Not necessarily true, Alex, because this girl, yeah? She’s one of my best friends, and she had to have this tooth out before she could have braces fitted, but she’s dead scared of dentists, yeah? So she had to be sedated, and she wanted me to come with her, ’cause her mum had legs, bums and tums that afternoon, and she’s gotta have someone with her, to get her home OK after the sedation, yeah?”
I could feel myself drifting off again. “Yeah?” I muttered.
“Right,” the girl continued, “so the procedure goes fine, but after, as she’s coming round from the sedation, she starts muttering all this stuff – like, ‘I love you, Efia’, and ‘I’ve got feelings for you, Efia’.”
“Is your name Efia?” I asked.
“Yes, I told you that.”
I knew she hadn’t, but I also knew it was pointless disagreeing with her. “Maybe she was just delirious,” I said.
Efia shook her head. “No, because when I asked her about it later, she goes dead serious, and says all this stuff about how she didn’t want me to find out like that, but it was basically true and how she’s a lesbian. I mean, I’m bi, but I wasn’t into her, you know?”
I sighed. “Right.”
“All I’m saying is, whoever this Lemon Boy is, you are smitten. You are luuuuurving him. You are…”
“I get the picture.”
“WHAT THE BLOODY HELL HAVE YOU LITTLE SPUNKERS DONE NOW?”
I twisted my head round to where the somewhat fearsome figure of the woman I knew to be Maggie Clapp stood in the doorway. You know how, in small towns, some residents become local celebrities? So, maybe they’re the mayor, or they once worked on local radio, or, like my dad, you’re the guy who came up with the winning entry to Brownfield’s Foods’ “name our new margarine” competition, which was, I kid you not, “Butter Me Up”. Well, Maggie Clapp was very much a local celebrity, mainly because she was known for ruling Wonderland with an iron fist, taking crap from no one, and, legend had it, once hospitalizing three troublesome blokes on a stag weekend with nothing but her bare hands and some tricks she learned from an ex-lover who used to be a KGB spy. She was a big woman – tall and broad, and it was entirely believable she could hospitalize three rowdy blokes, with or without the KGB tricks.
She took a long drag from an electric cigarette then blew a plume of steam into the room.
A sweet caramel scent hit me.
“Frig me sideways,” she muttered, walking towards me. “This is exactly why I dread hiring you kids over the summer!”
Efia opened her mouth to speak, but Maggie held her hand up at her. “But you’re cheap, so it’s swings and roundabouts.” She sighed and shook her head at them both. “Is he gonna sue?” She bent down to look at me. “Are you gonna sue?”
I shrugged. How should I know? It hadn’t occurred to me I could claim money for my accident, but there was a chance this could make me way more than any job could. That is, if there was any actual damage. I wiggled my toes about – not paralysed. I guessed we’d only be looking at five figures then.
“He slipped and whacked his head on the door,” Ben said.
“Very unfortunate,” Maggie said. “But accidents happen. No one’s fault.”
“He slipped on some wet on the floor,” Ben added.
Maggie screwed her face up a bit. “Some wet?”
“Some … pee,” Ben said.
Maggie had another long suck on her electric cigarette and looked at Ben. “Some pee? Who the frig’s been pissing in here?”
“I guess we should have mopped it up, but—” Ben looked down to where I was still lying. “I think he’s sat in it.”
Maggie gave me a look that I’m quite familiar with, which was somewhere between sympathy and disgust. “All right, kid—”
“Alex,” Ben interrupted.
A flicker of annoyance passed over Maggie’s face. “Alex. Does anything hurt?”
“My head, mainly,” I said, leaving the door open for other possibilities, if they were potentially lucrative.
Maggie nodded, looking up and down my stricken form. “Bit of mild concussion, huh? Bit of a knock – be better by morning. No harm done, right?”
I shrugged.
“Your parents here?” she asked.
“I’m sixteen,” I told her. I hated it when people thought I was younger than I was, but my blond hair, baby face and complete lack of even a hint of facial hair tend to suggest I am.
Her eyes lit up a bit. “Sixteen, are ya? I see.” She nodded, then looked at Ben and Efia. “Know him, do you?”
“What school do you go to?” Ben asked.
“Castlegrove.”
“Ah. I go to Sherwood Academy and Efia’s at St Mary’s High. Isn’t Castlegrove in special measures?”
“Yes,” I said, increasingly feeling like I should be too. That’s what I needed. I just needed someone to identify that I was a calamity, and have a team of people sent in to rectify me, until I was “outstanding” or at least “good”. But there I was, no friends, no job, sitting in a little puddle of piss, a loser in the heart of Loserville. And I didn’t want to go home, because I knew how small and pathetic Kendra was going to make me feel, I knew how—
It was then it occurred to me that I didn’t know where my candyfloss was. I came in with it, I knew that much, but now…
“Um, where’s my candyfloss?” I muttered.
“Oh,” Efia said. “There wasn’t much left.”
My eyes widened.
“I ate it,” she added.
So, I don’t know if it was the bump to the head, or just this realization of how bad stuff was, or maybe this candyfloss business finally tipped me over the edge, but I started to cry at this point. Just sniffles to begin with, but pretty soon I was gulping down buckets of air and bawling my eyes out.