Landing Gear (18 page)

Fragments of info appeared on a variety of pages as pre-party anticipation built. She had to work to keep up with it all. Jacinta’s parents were away but Jacinta changed her mind about hosting the party when she saw word had leaked out. Paula said her dad had offered their house, but everyone knew that meant he’d be there,
looming in the hallway like the former police officer he was. Abdul suggested Dukes Meadows, and everyone shouted him down on that, who wants to have a party out there in the cold and the dark, and maybe it would rain? Hetem said why not have it there, no parents, no one watching, no neighbours to complain. A bit more banter and then that was it, decided. Now everyone could invite everyone else without worrying about the party busting down the walls of someone’s parents’ house.

She looked at herself in her bedroom mirror. Could she pass for sixteen? The sixteen-year-old girls all looked twenty-six, but that wasn’t the point. Reverse engineering was much more difficult, especially among teenagers who have a sixth sense when it comes to “old” people. She couldn’t decide if the red hair made her look older or younger. She foraged in her closet for the right clothes. Were girls wearing too much makeup or was it the none-at-all look these days?

She arrived on her bike at dusk and the field was already a sea of bodies. There were three cars parked along the access track at the northern end of the common, behind the trees, their boots open. A crew of older guys was doing a brisk trade selling beer; skinny girls and hefty boys waddled away from the cars, laden with cans. As she watched, they finished up, stocks depleted; they slammed their doors shut and she heard one of them say, “Back later.”

She locked her bike, got out her cameras and went to work. She took a photograph of the crowd and her flash
went off, illuminating the young faces. The people closest to her pointed their phones at the source of light and, Emily guessed, a dozen photos of her appeared on Facebook moments later. She made her way into the crowd.

21

Before they headed out to the party, Jack asked Harriet for money “for food.” Harriet always caved at the thought that he might go hungry, and she gave him some cash. He didn’t tell her the party was at Dukes; he said it was at Abdul’s house, as Abdul had an undeserved reputation for being reliable, steadfast and sober due to the fact that he came from a reliable, steadfast and sober Muslim family. She said, “Say hello to Abdul from me,” as if Jack would ever do that, ever. “Sure, Mum,” he said.

Yacub was dressed in his new clothes, looking very pleased with himself. Harriet lavished him with compliments and he was lavish in return, “Thank you, Mrs. Harriet, thank you. I will pay you back soon,” practically lowering his head so she could scratch him behind the ears. Jack was a little worried about what people would say when he turned up with his new best friend; the button-down shirt and brand-new chinos made Yacub look like—well, he looked like an up-and-coming actuary on his day off. Hopefully no one would be that interested in him and, besides, having Yacub with him was definitely contributing to his parents feeling relaxed and happy about him going out to a party.

Jack had been pretty much grounded since David
McDonald died and he and his mother had their “events.” Well, not really grounded, though he used that as an excuse with his friends. He did go out from time to time; he wasn’t a complete loser. Truth was, he didn’t feel like going out much anyway. He had less freedom than his friends whose parents had eased up after a few weeks of searching, heartfelt conversations about personal responsibility and the whole things-were-different-in-my-day-drugs-were-weaker/nicer/better, etc. But he was used to it now. He’d become sort of housebound, institutionalized; he found it difficult to imagine ever leaving home.

However, seeing Ruby again reminded him of how much fun they used to have together. And then finding out that the party had been moved to Dukes Meadows—well, that was it. Jack had to go.

On their way out they stopped at the corner shop and Jack bought them both a tin of the caffeine drink that the school drugs counsellor said contained the equivalent of seven cups of coffee and one cup of sugar. Yacub made a face when he took his first sip, but to his credit he drank it down without spitting it out, which was more than Jack could say for himself the first time he’d tried it. When they arrived at Dukes, it was getting dark, but Jack could see that things had already started. The first person he came across was Frank; he had a huge haul of beer piled up on the ground and he was selling it rapidly.

For months after Jack had passed the bag of weed to Frank and Frank was expelled as a result, Jack had dreaded running into him. He folded it into his overall strategy of
staying grounded and not going out much: better that than run into Frank. When he finally did see him—on the high street, with their mothers—he was stunned to discover Frank wasn’t angry.

“Hi, Jack,” Frank had said.

“Hi,” Jack had replied.

“See you around,” Frank said, and he smiled.

Jack could not understand why Frank had not told on him. If it had been Jack, he would have squealed like a pig. Jack felt indebted to Frank, though he wasn’t about to tell him that. Now, he bought six cans of beer off him and gave three to Yacub.

Yacub looked surprised. Then he said, “I like beer.”

Jack wasn’t convinced. “I guess they don’t drink much in your part of the world,” he said.

Yacub shook his head, and squared his shoulders. “I like beer.”

“Okay then,” Jack said. And they headed into the crowd.

It was a mild evening. It hadn’t rained much of late, so the ground was hard. They made their way down to the river, which was where Ruby and a few of her friends had been saying they planned to hang out. The crowd was thinner there, so Yacub and Jack sat down and leaned against a tree—at least Jack sat down and leaned against the tree. Yacub didn’t want to sit on the ground in his new trousers.

It was great to be back at Dukes Meadows. No one had figured out how to rig up a sound system—bit of an
oversight—so though the common was full of people, it was oddly quiet, voices snatched away by the breeze. Some kids were doing that thing of dancing with their headphones on, no one listening to the same music, but they were a bit half-hearted, as though they’d read about flash mobs online but actually doing it was, in fact, really boring. Like so many things in life, Jack thought.

A while later, music started up in the distance; it sounded like it was coming from a car. Jack got up and brushed himself off and suggested to Yacub that they head over. Yacub looked a little reluctant until Jack said, “Maybe we’ll find Ruby.” Everyone perked up at the thought of Ruby.

22

After the plane had risen thousands of feet into the air and he realized that there was no way off the shelf where he was crouching and into the plane itself, Yacub decided that, if he survived the journey, he would have a beer to see what it was like. Alcohol was illegal in Pakistan, and he hadn’t drunk in Dubai, not even when he worked for Imran, who was half-drunk most of the time. But on that flight, squashed into a metal corner, he decided he would embrace becoming an American. He would play baseball. And he would drink a beer and raise a farewell toast to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and no one would arrest him.

And here he was with Jack at a party, his heart already racing. Jack had given him
three
cans of beer and he drank them, one, two, three. He was determined to like it.

Yacub followed Jack through the crowd toward the pulsing bass of the music. On the way they passed girl after girl who looked like Ruby, though none was as lovely. Yacub had seen western teenagers in movies and on television, though none of them were quite like this. Here people shouted at each other above the noise of the crowd and built pyramids out of empty beer cans before using another can to knock the pyramid over and then
laughing like this was the funniest thing they had ever seen. There were couples kissing right in front of everyone else and Yacub even saw one couple lying on the ground together, kissing.

The music was getting louder as they drew closer to its source. But then the sound switched off abruptly, they heard a car door slam and an engine start. As the car pulled away, people shouted and booed, and soon the party was quiet once again but for the noise of talking and, in the distance, girls singing.

There was still no sign of Ruby. A girl with bright red hair, like hair that had been soaked in blood, came up to Jack; she had a video camera and she was filming him. When she turned her camera on Yacub, he put his hand over the lens. “No thank you,” he said. He’d seen Imran do this to a reporter in the hotel.

She persisted in aiming her camera at him. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“I will not be giving you that information,” Yacub replied.

She lowered her camera. She blinked once, twice. “Are you the falling man?” she asked.

As soon as she said that, Jack stepped between them, and his height completely blocked Yacub’s view.

“That’s a nice camera,” Jack said. “What’s your name?” As he spoke he put his hand behind his back and waved Yacub away. Yacub took his chance and slipped into the crowd. He had begun to feel very unwell. He had started to feel very, very unwell indeed.

He went along, trying not to stumble, not wanting to fall onto the ground in his new clothes. There was nowhere to sit, nowhere to go at all, in the darkness and the great heaving mass of people.

Yacub remembered when he flew back from Dubai to Karachi. After he got beyond passport control and through the exit doors, he emerged into a vast crowd, women, children, men, young and old, jammed into the arrival hall, all waiting for some longed-for family member—he’d never seen such a tight-packed crowd of people. The floor was strewn with rose petals and the crowd jostled in the intense heat as they struggled to spot their relatives. He felt happy to be among his own people at the same time as feeling annoyed that there seemed to be no way to get through the crowd, no way at all out of arrivals.

Tonight the crowd was almost as dense, but whereas in Karachi airport everyone was Yacub’s colour and height and size, here they were enormous, tall
goray
like Jack or tall and black, tall and skinny, but also lots of huge people, people with acres of extra flesh on display, popping out between their T-shirts and their jeans. Yacub was among the giants, all speaking in their indecipherable slang. Having to look up to see their faces was making him feel dizzy.

He stumbled, landing on his hands, which were now covered in mud. When he stood up again, there they were in front of him, the three
desi
boys he had seen in the American shop.

“Oi!” said one. “You! What’re you doing here?” Now
there were more boys in the group, six or seven, Yacub thought.

“He’s got his new clothes on,” another said, as though this in itself was ridiculous.

Yacub swayed slightly.

“He’s fucking hamstered! A good Muslim, you cunt.”

They were also drunk, clutching cans of beer. Yacub found their comments baffling.

“Oi! Speak up,” one of them said, but he didn’t want to talk to them. The crowd came to his assistance, surging around him, and once again, he disappeared into it. He had to find Jack. In the distance, he saw the trees, black against the night sky. Where was Jack?

23

Harriet was at her workstation in the kitchen, checking her Facebook. The boys had gone out to their party. Michael was slumped in front of the TV, catching up with the shows he had recorded. Jack had unfriended Crazeeharree almost immediately but remained friends with the more recent Tracy Wentworth-Fitch; she half suspected that he knew it was her but chose to ignore that fact.

For the last few years, Harriet had fought against the urge to monitor her son online; she was mostly successful. She wanted him to have his own life, a private existence that she knew nothing about, a rich, complex and secret realm. The astonishing truth was that he was a good boy.

But this evening, she gave in to her baser instincts. Instead of worrying less because Jack was with Yacub, she found herself worrying more. Someone had witnessed and photographed Yacub’s fall. And were they out there, looking for him? She checked her feeds once again but found nothing, so she scuttled around the internet, catching up with the plans for the party. Dukes Meadows. Okay. Deep breath. Jack had said the party was at Abdul’s but that didn’t matter. At Dukes there was a good chance the police would shut the party down. If that didn’t happen, she would get in the car and drive over at around
midnight; once there, she’d phone Jack and offer him and Yacub a ride home.

Harriet clicked around the friends’ pages. Photos from the party had begun to appear already. Jack wasn’t posting photos yet but Harriet saw from earlier postings on his page that he had renewed his acquaintance with Ruby.

Ruby. After that McDonald boy had died at his own party, it transpired that Ruby’s older brother was a drug dealer and that he’d been selling weed to Jack, and that they’d been passing around the drugs at school. Frank was expelled, Jack narrowly missing out on expulsion himself, and the name Ruby had become a kind of parental shorthand for “bad news.” “Will Ruby be there?” “Is Ruby going?” What these questions really meant was: will my baby son or tiny sweet daughter be smoking spliff at this party?

But Ruby. Harriet had always loved Ruby, despite all this. How could you not love Ruby? She was gorgeous, and she was very sweet. She made you want to take care of her, with those dark rings under her eyes.

Harriet poked around Ruby’s page for a while. She had already uploaded a few photos from the party. None of Jack. Mostly endless shots of groups of girls hugging each other and smiling into the camera, beers aloft. The dark mass of Dukes Meadows behind them, the sky getting a little blacker with each shot. Harriet was keen on the facial recognition software Facebook had implemented a while back; it helped her keep tabs on who was who in Jack’s wide circle. A photo appeared of a girl, her
bright red hair luminous in the flash, a photo of someone who was photographing the photographer. She looked a bit older, and a bit familiar. Harriet stared at the image. Then the software kicked in and the name appeared on the screen, hovering next to the young woman’s face.