Ostrich Boys (18 page)

We listened. It was silent. We peeked in. The first room was about the size of my bedroom, with two doorways leading from it. We couldn’t see much in the darkness except the grass and leaves and plastic bags and crumpled cigarette
packets and crushed lager cans littering the floor. It smelled earthy and damp.

“It only seems spooky ’cos it’s empty,” Kenny said.

“You first, then.” Sim stepped out of the way, giving Kenny space to go in if he was brave enough.

He wasn’t.

Although he was probably right. I didn’t like those gloomy doorways leading further into the cottage. Someone could be standing just beyond one of them, hidden by the shadows, watching us. We’d never know.

Sim led the way around the outside of the decrepit cottage, stomping down more undergrowth as he went. All the windows had been smashed and covered over by sheets of metal. One of the sheets had been pried back at one edge and Sim stood on his tiptoes to look inside.

“What can you see?”

“It’s too dark,” he said.

In what would have been the cottage’s back garden was a blackened patch of ground.

“Somebody’s had a fire,” Sim said. He scuffed through the burned-up branches with the toe of his trainer, made them disintegrate into chunky black ash. “Could be tramps, could be kids.”

Where the wilderness and the trees stopped, the murky pond began, separated by a tall chain-link fence. Beyond that the skeletal barn. The cottage’s back door was still in place, albeit one big sheet of metal. Someone had tried unsuccessfully
to force it open—there were what looked like boot prints in the scratched and dented metal.

“Why would anybody want to break in the door when all they’ve got to do is climb over the wall where the roof’s missing?” Kenny wanted to know.

“Probably just wanted to smash it for the hell of it,” Sim said, and kicked it himself. It made the sound of a dead bell.

Which was still much too loud for me. “Did you have to? There could be someone inside, for all we know.”

“Not someone,” Sim said. “Some
body
. A corpse all messed up and gross and rotting.”

Kenny took a step away from the cottage. “Kat said it was haunted.”

I started walking back the way we’d come. “Tramps, yes,” I said. “I can believe that. But ghosts don’t smoke cigarettes, drink cheap lager and build fires.”

Sim crept up close to Kenny’s ear. “Unless they
were
tramps, but they died and were left to rot, and now they’re the ghosts. Go have a look, Kenny.”

Kenny shoved him away. Sim grabbed hold of him and gestured to me. I grabbed his other arm and between us we dragged him toward the front door, getting ready to throw him inside. But he bucked and fought and kicked up weeds as he squirmed away.

“Get Blake!” he shouted at Sim. So they grabbed me next and tried pulling me toward the door. But no way could
they budge me. I dug my feet into the mud and leaves and laughed at their exertions.

So me and Kenny turned on Sim instead. And Sim said, “Touch me and die.”

The three of us messed about, acted up, jumping on each other, trying to knock each other down or trip each other up, fighting and laughing and swearing. Real grown-up stuff … We bombarded each other with pinecones, whapped fallen branches across each other’s backs. And we were soon knackered—it had been a long day. Still grinning, we moved out from under the trees back into the open field.

“Hands up if you want to sleep there,” I said.

Kenny tried hard with the hopefulness. “Maybe we can still stay with one of the girls.”

We wandered back across the field toward the whirligig. It was getting darker as the sun slipped away.

“Maybe we can sleep here,” Sim said, pointing at one of the whirligig’s seats. “We can have one each. As long as it doesn’t rain we’ll be fine.”

“Wish we had a tent,” Kenny said.

Sim sighed. “Like Ross always said:
Wish in one hand, shit in the other, and see which hand fills up first.”
He pulled himself up onto one of the whirligig’s arms and sat there dangling his legs.

Kenny climbed into one of the cage-seats, crawling under the jammed safety bar. He lay on his back, testing it out for comfiness. He stared up at the darkening sky. “You know,
I’ll tell you something: I’m actually having a really good time. It’s, like, I know we’re in trouble and everything. But this
is
cool, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Sim agreed.

I sat in the grass next to my rucksack. Half of me agreed. This was an adventure, right? The other half couldn’t forget the sound of the policeman on my voice mail.

“And Ross would have loved it too, wouldn’t he?”

Kenny said, “He should be here with us, shouldn’t he?” We had to be quiet to think about that. Luckily the girls reappeared and stopped us from brooding.

Kat waved and the three of them climbed over the gate from the road, waded toward us through the long grass.

“I got loads of stuff,” Kat said. “As much as I could without my dad going mad, anyways.” Her shopping bag now carried bottles of mineral water, cartons of fruit juice, oatcakes, bananas and apples. All wrapped inside three thick blankets. “See, I didn’t know if you had sleeping bags or not. Kayleigh said you wouldn’t be stupid enough to not have brought sleeping bags with you. But Hayley said aye, you would be.”

Kenny, Sim and I looked at each other. “Kenny lost his bag,” Sim said.

“Aye, that’s right. Did you have a sleeping bag in it?”

Kenny looked at his feet and mumbled something.

“What did you say?”

He blushed but wouldn’t look up. “I had Travel Scrabble.”

Hayley folded her arms, looked smug.

We spread one of the blankets out on the grass and sat around in a circle. Kenny, Sim and I were quick to tuck into the food. “This is brilliant, Kat,” I told her. “Thank you so much.” Sim had his mouth full but nodded hard.

Kenny was rooting around inside the bag. “Don’t suppose there’s any crisps, is there?”

“Do you know how unhealthy crisps are?” Kat asked. “See, I’ve always said they should be banned.”

Kenny looked at an oatcake like it was something from another planet. “Are these nice?”

Sim punched his arm. “Eat it and say thank you.”

The girls had also brought a couple of torches, and seeing as the sun was long gone now, we switched them on. We told them a bit about Cleethorpes. They didn’t have a clue where it was, but that was okay because I reckoned we wouldn’t have been able to find this place on a map either—and we were here. Then Kenny told his favorite joke: “What did the man with a steering wheel down the front of his trousers say? ‘It’s driving me nuts!’” And after that Kat told us why Tramp’s Hotel was haunted.

“I don’t know all the story, but it’s something to do with a lassie that was murdered. It happened years and years ago. She was from Gretna. See, her dad was like the lord or something, but her uncle murdered her because he loved her too much.”

“Dirty old man,” Hayley explained.

“And she loved someone else anyways,” Kat added.

“So what’s it got to do with Tramp’s Hotel if she’s from Gretna?” Kenny asked.

“See, Tramp’s Hotel is where the laddie she really loved lived—when it was still a proper cottage, before it was Tramp’s Hotel. He was a farmhand. And no one knew she was dead at first. Her family, they thought she might have just run away with the farmhand. So they came here looking for her.”

“And they found her dead body in the house,” Kenny said. “Then everyone blamed the farmhand and—”

“No, the farmhand found her body in a field near Gretna, where he worked.”

“But she haunts the house because she still wants to be near the person she loved all those years ago,” Kenny said.

Kat scowled. “Who’s telling this story? No, see, the laddie found her body in the field, but she didn’t have a head. Her uncle had cut it off.
That’s
what they found in Tramp’s Hotel.”

Kenny looked like he wished he’d never asked. We changed the subject.

But it wasn’t long before he and Kat drifted away together with one of the torches. They didn’t go toward the trees and Tramp’s Hotel, however, but behind the whirligig—close enough that we could still hear the murmur of their voices if not the exact words. And only a few minutes after that Sim and Hayley also wandered off, to a
private spot over in the long grass on the other side of the field. Which left Kayleigh and me alone and torchless.

Neither of us really knew what to say.

“So,” I sighed. “This is awkward.”

She gave a soft laugh.

The night was still warm, the moon and stars brilliant, like you see in movies. Kayleigh was a skinny shadow opposite me, her long blond hair vivid in the moonlight. I couldn’t quite make out her face, but her eyes glinted now and again when she looked straight at me, catching that same light from the moon. Kenny and Sim would be expecting me to make a move. They’d be disappointed in me if I didn’t. And even though Kayleigh seemed a little shy, maybe she was also expecting me to. For all I knew, I might have been the only one who wasn’t expecting anything.

I realized that with the moon right behind me, it was my bulk that was keeping her in shadow. I shifted a little to one side as I munched on an apple and tried not to appear embarrassed or uncomfortable. I hated myself for it. I’d spent years being self-conscious of my size around girls, but I’d thought that these days, thanks to Nina, those kinds of feelings had been consigned to the past. I could talk to girls, I could make them laugh, but it had always been rare for them to want anything other than friendship from me. And I’ve never been as smooth as Sim. Or as opportunistic as Kenny. Or as desperate as Ross.

Kayleigh and I sat there trying to pretend we didn’t know
we were the only ones
not
getting off with each other. In my head I was willing Hayley to slap Sim’s wandering hands and come stalking back over. Or Kenny to say something too stupid even for Kat.

I got up, stretched. “I want to sit in the whirligig. I didn’t get to have a go earlier. You coming?”

She followed me to the nearest cage-seat. It had the safety bar jammed up and was easy enough to climb in. The seat was wooden and solid, but it felt good sitting so close to her, side by side. And now that I wasn’t blocking the moonlight, I could see her better too. I reckoned that if I liked skinny girls, I’d like her a lot. We were squeezed up against each other, but it was far from uncomfortable.

I asked, “Have you known Hayley and Kat long?”

“Forever, really.”

“You’re all at school together?”

“Kat’s in the year below Hayley and me.” I loved her gentle accent—sounded great in the dark.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen. How old are you?”

“Yeah. Sixteen,” I lied. Then changed the subject. “Is her name Katherine, then? Or Katrina?”

Kayleigh giggled. “No, it’s Patricia. But don’t tell her I told you. She decided she hated it, so she forced everybody to call her Kat. She won’t even answer her dad or the teachers if they don’t call her Kat.”

“But you’re definitely Kayleigh?”

“Aye. And you’re really Blake?”

“Through and through. Like a stick of rock.”

I couldn’t tell for definite, but I think she was leaning closer in to me. I stayed still and let myself be leaned against. Her hair smelled of coconut.

After a while she said, “So tell me about your pal?”

“Who, Kenny or Sim?”

“No, the one you’re going to visit tomorrow.”

“Oh, right.” I’d put another apple in my pocket and I took it out, polished it on my T-shirt, gave myself time to decide on an answer. I decided a little bit of honesty wouldn’t matter. “He’s called Ross. He’s an old friend.”

“There’s a place near here called Ross.”

I bit a chunk of the apple. “Is there really?”

“Well, along the coast a wee bit. And there’s a lighthouse.”

“I’ll have to ask him if he’s heard of it.”

“Is he from Cleethorpes too?”

“Yeah. He’s our best friend.”

“Why’s he in Kirkcudbright?”

“Where?”

“Kirkcudbright. You said that’s where he lived.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s right.” I swore at myself inside my head. “He lives there.”

“Has he lived there very long?”

“Yeah. Well, about a year, I think.” All I could do was make it up as I went. “Bit longer, maybe.”

“Do you know which school he goes to? I’ve got some pals who are at—”

“Not a clue.” I forgot to chew and swallowed a far too big chunk of apple that scraped its way down my gullet.

Even though it was dark, I knew I’d be able to see the look on her face if I turned toward her. So I didn’t. But I didn’t need to be my usual genius self to realize she was beginning to wonder how much of our story to believe.

“We met at school,” I said, trying to win her over again. “Well, Kenny and Ross had been friends all through primary—their mums knew each other. They weren’t mates with Sim at first. He was a
bad lad
, you see. They were more like geeks—back then, not now. But Sim hung around with this moron called Sean Munro, and a bunch of other head cases. They used to pick on Kenny all the time, beat him up on a regular basis.”

“So how come they’re friends now?”

“Kenny hit him back. Sim was picking on him one day, same as any other day—Kenny was probably crying. But out of nowhere Kenny just suddenly punched Sim in the face. And it was a lucky punch. Lucky because it hardly touched Sim at all, but he jerked his head back so quick he cracked it on the wall behind him. Knocked himself out.”

Kayleigh laughed. “No …”

“Straight up. Smacked his head back,
bang
, and went down. He was off school for a whole week, I think. But when he got back all his hard mates took the mickey all the
time, and somehow, not really sure how, he kind of drifted in with Ross and Kenny. I guess he didn’t feel welcome with his old mates anymore. Weird, yeah?”

“Aye. Very.”

“But trust me, he has a habit of making Kenny’s life a misery now and again. It’s like the world’s slowest revenge, I reckon.”