Ostrich Boys (13 page)

Bacon was watching me.

“We’re up here now. Might as well enjoy the view,” I said, sounding braver than I felt.

We weren’t the only ones up there. There was a jumper in front of me, just about ready to go. He’d already had the cord tied to his ankles and could only shuffle toward the gap in the rail at the end of the gantry. I had sudden pictures of pirate movies in my head—of walking the plank. He was being helped toward the edge by a surfer-tanned, blond-haired attendant wearing a
BUNGEE! BLACKPOOL!!
BUNGEE!
T-shirt whom Bacon called Dunc. I noticed the jumper was older than me—looked harder, tougher, braver too. Sticking out from one side of the platform was a short pole with a camera attached, and once Dunc had the jumper teetering on the edge he took hold of the camera’s cable and remote button, ready to take a souvenir snap of him in free fall.

“Why don’t you use his picture?” I asked Bacon.

“Not the right image. Remember what your mate said, yeah? Got to be the right image. And that, dude, is you.”

Dunc was speaking to the first jumper. “Look straight ahead, keep your eyes on the tower and the big wheel. I’ll count down from three, then you go.”

Bacon was watching me to make sure I was watching them. But there was no way I would have been able to tear my eyes away even if I’d wanted to.

The jumper steadied himself. Fixed his eyes straight ahead.

Dunc shouted: “Three—two—one. Go!”

And he went.

There was a flash from the camera, capturing the instant he flung his arms wide and dived into the empty air. Even above the music I heard the split second of silence from the crowd below. But I think I only imagined the
whoosh
as gravity stole him.

I followed his downward rush with bulging eyes, forgetting my own nerves as I leaned over the rail to see. He fell
fast. Head down, hands reaching out for the ground. And as the crowd cheered, the bungee cord stretched, stretched, stretched to its limit….

He was whipped up toward us again. Flung in a rag-doll pirouette, hurled high. He reached much higher than I was expecting. I could see he had his eyes closed, his teeth gritted. Then, at the pinnacle of his bounce, the height of the cord’s recoil, he hung for a brief moment of weightlessness. But gravity was only teasing him like a cat might torture a mouse. And he fell again. But there was no way he could control what was happening, and no way he could stop or get off. It wasn’t that kind of ride.

I realized I’d been holding my breath and half laughed, half swore in a burst of bubbling tension.

I watched until the jumper had at last lost enough bounce that he could be lowered the final few meters back onto solid beach. There was no way I could see the expression on his face from all the way up here. I wished I knew how he looked—relieved, triumphant, afflicted? He was untied and was at least able to stand.

“He made it,” I said. “Nothing happened to him.”

Bacon held his bandanna on to his head as he leaned over the side to look down. “Limping a bit, looks like. But, yeah, you’re right, dude: he survived.”

“So what’s the problem, then? He did it, I can too.”

“You saw him, right? Looked like a right gym-jockey to me, man. And then I look at you …”

I hated him for being so right.

“Hey, it’s not called an
extreme sport
just because it sounds cool. This kind of thing’s easier if you’re a fit dude and your body can take it. And listen, yeah? Best not ignore the stats either, okay?”

“The what?”

“Statistics, man. It’s something like one in every thousand jumpers ends up with permanent injury. You know, their neck or back, maybe their legs—knees pop or something.”

“Bollocks.”

“It’s true, man. It hurts me that you think I’d lie. One in every thousand, yeah? On average.” He turned to Dunc. “Hey, Dunc, man. How many jumpers we had this week?”

“Nine hundred and ninety-nine,” Dunc said.

And they both laughed.

Again I told myself he was just winding me up. The more scared I looked, the more dramatic the photo…. The problem was, it was working.

I stood on the narrow gantry looking a hundred and sixty meters back down to the ground. The roped-off area where I was meant to land seemed too small. What if I hit someone in the crowd?

Inside my head I was swearing at myself, but how else were we going to pay for Kenny’s ticket?

“I’m ready,” I said to Bacon. “Give me the money.”

Bacon counted it out; the edges of the ten-pound notes were ruffled by the breeze.

“Where’re you gonna put this poster?” I asked as I shoved the money deep down in my back pocket.

“Everywhere. You, dude, are gonna be famous. That’s part of the dealio, right?”

I wished it wasn’t.

Dunc was winching up the cord from the previous jumper and motioned for me to join him at the open end of the gantry. “You get weighed?” he asked.

I showed him where it was written on the back of my hand.

He adjusted the cord and gave me a harness to wear around my waist. He sat me down, wrapped a towel around my ankles, then looped the bungee around a couple of times and in between, tugging on it, before fastening it to the harness. Bacon kept asking me if I was sure it was tight enough. I ignored him, but watched Dunc’s every move. The final knot, however, he left me to tug on myself—as hard as I could. Maybe it was his version of an escape clause, I thought. If it all came unraveled, and I hit the beach with a crunch, he’d remain blameless because that final knot I’d tightened myself.

That got me thinking more than any of Bacon’s digs. This could all go wrong, couldn’t it? I could die. I didn’t believe Bacon’s statistics, but there was a slim chance this might be the last thing I ever did. And a slim chance was still a chance.

I thought about Ross. Was it better to be like him and not
know how quickly your last breath was approaching? I thought about him being dead from some stupid accident, and here I was risking my life in a way that people paid for and was meant to be fun. Nobody wanted to die, but we seemed to get a kick out of purposely coming close.

Dunc helped me to my feet. I hoped he didn’t notice the traitorous trembling in my knees. I was shuffled to the edge. I could feel my heart, hear my breathing. I felt like I wanted to sit down and stay there awhile.

I looked at Bacon, who grinned at me. “Fingers crossed, dude. Fingers crossed.”

I took one more toe-tingling step toward the edge, the tips of my trainers poking out at thin air.

“Look out at the tower,” Dunc told me.

I did as I was told.

“Don’t look down,” Bacon said.

But, of course, the second you hear someone say that …

And it was a long,
loooong
way down. My heart kicked; I shuddered, closed my eyes. Bacon laughed.

I wondered if I’d ever risked my life before. Had I ever done anything genuinely life-threatening? I didn’t think so. Driving over a hundred in Sim’s brother’s car? No; didn’t count, not really. Had my life been so dull, so easy? In fifteen years of living had I never once been worried that I might not wake up tomorrow? Did that mean I was boring too?

And then I thought about Ross again. Did people think he’d led a boring life? Which parts had flashed before his
eyes when that car hit him? Did he get slow-motion replays of his favorite bits? I wished he was here to watch me. But if he’d been here, I wouldn’t have been doing this. If he’d still been alive, we’d never have left Cleethorpes.

“I’ll count down from three,” Dunc said.

I nodded.

“Three …”

I wobbled.

“Two …”

I went. Didn’t wait for “one.”

Headfirst. Arms out—my best Superman impression. I noticed the camera’s flash, then …

The rush. The speed. And the crush of noise in my ears. The plummet as I fell.

I could feel the downward hurtle. I could feel the air I sliced through, dived through. I could feel it against my outstretched hands, feel it against my face, even feel it against my eyes. It rattled my eyeballs in their sockets as I fell.

There was no snatch of gravity, no grab of an invisible hand. I was with it all the way. I was racing it, chasing it. Like a swoop or a dash. A brain-flashing, eye-blurring plunge.

What a rush. Wow! What a
RUSH!

The beach zoomed up at me. It leaped toward me in a single blink of my eye. Far, then close—so suddenly close. And I thought I was going to touch it with the tips of my fingers.

The jerk of the cord was a surprise. I hadn’t felt it stretch or tighten. I was yanked back up and a rolling weightlessness filled my stomach. Think of a roller coaster; multiply it by a hundred. Or what you imagine the nightmare of a malfunctioning lift might be like.

But I felt good. Great. Incredible.

Awesome
.

And at the height of my bounce I could see Dunc and Bacon up on the gantry, leaning over, watching me. In that slow second as I hung in the air, I was looking right up at Bacon with his stupid facial hair and his ludicrous red and black skull-and-crossbones bandanna.

I gave him the finger.

Then fell again.

Still in one piece—pretty much. My legs were shaking, buzzing with the adrenaline, but that was okay because it meant they were still attached. The only thing missing was my stomach, which I seemed to have left a hundred meters or so back up there.

The
BUNGEE! BLACKPOOL!! BUNGEE!
assistant was quick to untie the cord from my ankles and offer to help me to stand, but I wouldn’t let him. I wanted to do this by myself. I was loving the applause from the gathered crowd.

I looked back up. I really had just jumped from there, hadn’t I?

I wanted to walk up to strangers and let them pat me on the back. I wanted them to see my face and make sure they knew it was me, yes me, who they’d just witnessed being courageous enough to leap out into thin air at the height of a hundred and sixty meters.

I also wanted to see my photograph—the one snapped of me as I’d jumped. I wondered if there was a way of persuading Bacon into giving it to me. It would be the ultimate, undeniable proof that I’d done what I’d done. It would be something to flash in the face of people like Munro at school. (I wanted to show it to Nina.) But I doubted he’d give me the photo—I reckoned he’d want to charge me forty quid for it.

I saw an orange T-shirt coming at me through the crowd. Kenny was waving, excited, beaming, big-eye amazed. And that made me feel very cool. Sim, Joe and Gus were following him and I went over.

Kenny grabbed at me, pawed me. “I’m telling you,” he said. “Honest, Blake. Really … I’m telling you. I really am.” He nodded hard, to prove he meant it.

“Thanks.”

Sim grinned at me from behind his sunglasses. “You’ve got balls this big,” he said, holding his arms wide to show me just how big.

“Why d’you think I weigh so much?”

Joe clapped me on the back. “We didn’t think you were going to do it for a minute there. But you proved us wrong. Right, Gus?” And Gus nodded, winked at me.

“What was it like?” Kenny asked. “I want to do it now. Was it really scary?”

“Scariest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” I said, bloated with pride. “But it felt amazing.”

“I wish I could do it,” he said. “D’you reckon Bacon’ll let me …? You know, seeing as he let you?”

“He didn’t exactly
let
me, Kenny.” Again I wanted to see the photo, to see how I was going to look on a poster.

“You want to wait for Bacon?” Joe asked.

I looked up at the lift as it descended. I wanted the photo but I was worried he might not be happy with it, might try to insist I jumped again. “No time,” I said. “Let’s get to the station.” And we jogged across the beach, heading for where we’d parked the taxi.

I think I went on a bit to Joe and Gus as we drove to the station—saying how great it had been meeting them both, and how much we really appreciated their helping us out. My mouth ran on so much I sounded like Kenny. But I was on a massive high, still on top of the world, and wanted to share the feeling. As we pulled up outside the station I promised we’d send them the petrol money we owed.

Joe switched off the taxi’s engine. “You might not owe us anything. If Bacon gets more customers because of this poster with you, we’ll have a job and that’ll be payback enough. Right, Gus?”

Gus was lighting another cigarette. He shrugged; nodded.

As we climbed out onto the pavement Joe’s mobile rang. A brief burble to signal a text message. He dug the phone out of his jeans pocket, then swore when he saw what had been sent.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“It’s Bacon. And he … Not really sure you want to know, to be honest.” He showed it to Gus, who tutted, shook his head. Joe was reluctant to pass the phone to me.

I read Bacon’s message.

    Below it was the photo of me as I’d jumped. The quality wasn’t great—but you could tell it was me even if the look on my face was that of a petrified child frozen mid-howl. You could see the sweat stains under the arms of my T-shirt and the way it had rucked up as I’d dived, exposing my pale, flabby belly as it bunched up over the harness. It looked like a saggy balloon in a wind tunnel. Underneath Bacon had written:
If Fat Boy can do it, so can you! I dare you!!

The phone burbled again. This time the message read:

    
Best £40 publicity I ever spent!!!

I felt like shit.

“Hey, listen,” Joe said. “You’re an optimist, right?”

“Hope so.”

“Then you’re gonna do fine.”

We shook hands in a weird, formal way. It certainly wasn’t something I was used to doing. And I felt bad giving Joe such a halfhearted shake, but I’d come back down to
earth with a bump. The thought of that photo being made huge and plastered on view for thousands of tourists, and even put in the newspapers, made me feel sick with embarrassment. The thought of it was worse than how it had felt standing on top of that bungee platform. I wanted to get out of Blackpool as soon as possible.