Ostrich Boys (22 page)

Kenny looked hopeful. “Really?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Sim stood up. “She’s there, come on.”

Kayleigh emerged from her house and scurried over to the stable doors. The three of us kept our heads down and stayed behind the trees as we hurried up the driveway. She
looked almost as nervous as us. Her long hair kept falling in her eyes as she fumbled with the keys in the padlock and she swore at it, irritated and anxious.

“Has he called them?” I wanted to know. “Has your brother—?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t see him to ask.” She pushed the heavy wooden door open just enough for us to squeeze through. Shut it behind us the second we were inside.

Even though there was still some straw on the floor, these stables no longer housed horses, but motorbikes. I counted nine. There were a couple of modern, bullet-like racers, a low-slung Hells Angels chopper, an old-fashioned black chunky thing as big as a horse, one that looked like a caravan on wheels with its massive panniers and saddlebags, a couple of dirt bikes and a pair of twist-and-go scooters. The still air smelled of grease and petrol. In any other circumstance I would have wanted to sit on them all.

“My dad and brother collect them,” Kayleigh said.

Kenny, Sim and I looked at each other. Could we really steal a couple of motorbikes?

Sim shrugged. “We’ll bring them back.”

“If you’ve never ridden before you should take these scooters,” Kayleigh said, pointing at the twist-and-goes—the kind of things that sounded like angry hair-dryers. We often saw sixteen-year-olds buzzing up and down the sea front on them back home. “The green one’s mine anyway.”

Kenny pulled a face, but I told him if he’d rather get done
for nicking something twice the size and probably five times as expensive, he was welcome to do it. “But there’s only two,” he said.

“You can go on the back with me,” Sim told him.

“And there’s only two helmets,” Kayleigh said, taking a white and a red crash-hat down from hooks on the wall. “Calum must have taken his in the house with him.”

Sim gestured that me and Kenny should take them. “Admit it,” he said. “You two’ve always been softer in the head than me.”

“What’s gonna happen to you when your dad finds out?” I asked Kayleigh.

She shook her head—didn’t want to think about it.

“We really don’t want to get you into trouble.”

“Aye, well, it’s not me that’s stealing them,” she said. “I’ll break the lock or something. But don’t tell on me because I’ll just say I never met you.”

I said, “Thank you.” But wasn’t sure I meant it anymore.

She was anxious when she asked: “You’re not lying to me, are you? I’m not helping you to kill yourselves, am I?”

“You’re helping us get deeper and deeper into trouble,” I said. “But most of all, just helping us do something proper for our best friend.” I shrugged, smiled. “Nothing else—promise.”

She nodded but didn’t return my smile.

“So why
are
you helping us?” Kenny asked.

It was her turn to shrug. “It’s horrible that everybody
thinks your pal killed himself. I’d hate it if people thought that about me. And I’d want Hayley and Kat to stick up for me too, like you’re doing for him.”

I rocked the green scooter down off its stand. It was lighter than I’d anticipated—so maybe easy enough to ride. Sim did the same with the blue one.

“That’s mine, remember,” Kayleigh said to me.

“So you could say it’s only half stolen?” I asked.

“Aye, right.” But she said it in that Scottish way, the way that’s far from an agreement. “Don’t crash it is what I’m saying.”

“I’ll try my best.”

“And don’t start them up until you’re on the road and away from the house,” she warned.

“Which way do we go?” I asked. I started fumbling for the map.

“Follow signs for Kirkbean first, then Dalbeattie. It’s the longer way, but maybe there won’t be so many other people driving along there. And then Kirkcudbright’s easy from Dalbeattie.”

If this had been a movie, I know I would have kissed her. But we just left her there as we ran off down the driveway, wheeling the scooters beside us, checking the house over our shoulders again and again. She watched us go before running back inside.

Back out on the road we pushed them for another hundred meters or so before we dared climb on. Because we’d
never ridden before, we began by copying TV and looked for the kick-start. Of course, these little things didn’t have anything like that. Kenny was the one who said, “Why don’t you push the button?”

On a quiet, sunny Sunday morning in the middle of nowhere the buzzing engines sounded so loud. With more wobble than felt necessary or comfortable, we managed to get moving.

“You don’t have to hold me quite so tight, Kenny,” Sim said. “Not unless you fancy me.”

We started slow, but it got easier. We rode side by side. We picked up a little bit of speed with confidence. The fences and hedgerows on either side of the country road began to move by at a decent clip. I was impressed with myself when the speedo hit thirty-five, then (almost) forty. It didn’t take long before I wished the top speed was even higher.

Two or three cars passed us. I wasn’t sure how many of them noticed Sim wasn’t wearing a helmet. I hoped his shaved head might fool anybody shooting by who wasn’t paying too much attention. He rode closer into the grass verge, me on the outside of him, making him more difficult to see.

We were extra careful at junctions, slowing right down to make sure we knew which way to go. Not every signpost had Dalbeattie or Kirkcudbright on it and a couple of times we had to guess which road felt like the right one. We had to
double back once when the road led us straight into a farmyard. I kept stopping to check the map. Our thirty-five miles per hour began to feel slower and slower.

We’d been on the road for almost half an hour, but it still seemed like we’d only traveled a handful of miles and I was a long way from relaxed. I had at least managed to push the ever-deepening trouble we were in to the back of my mind. Strange thing was, my paranoia felt nowhere near as bad as it had yesterday. Now I knew for definite that they were after us, so it was simply a race. We just had to get to Ross before they found out that was where we were going and managed to cut us off. I leaned forward and urged the little scooter on.

“Can I have a go, Sim?” Kenny shouted. “Sim? Come on. Let me drive.”

Sim pretended not to hear.

“Sim? Can I—?”

We didn’t see the police car until it was too late.

The road ahead was a slight curve and the trees blocked our view of anything coming toward us. And what was coming was a cop car. It was going fast; flashed right by us. But I saw two uniformed policemen in the front. I saw their faces turn toward us.

“They’ve seen us!” Kenny yelled. “I’m telling you: they were looking right at me.”

“Of course they saw us,” I shouted back. “It’s whether they were
looking
for us or not. That’s what I’m worried about.” Or if they’d noticed Sim without a helmet.

I could see them in the scooter’s mirror. I swore when the red of their brake lights came on.

Sim had seen it too. He hunkered over the little scooter’s handlebars and gunned it for all it was worth. Kenny was trying to twist in his seat to look back over his shoulder. But Sim had also spotted a gap in the hedgerow. He swerved off
the road toward it, making Kenny yelp and cling on tighter. They disappeared through the hedge in a puff of leaves.

I hadn’t seen the gap in time and had to spin my scooter round in the road to be able to follow. As I did, I saw the police car trying to do the same. It was a simple enough maneuver for me, even on the narrow road. The cop car found it much more difficult, having to do a laborious three-pointer. It would be quicker just to run back this way. And as I thought that, I saw the passenger door fly open and an emerging copper’s leg. But too late. I was through the gap in the hedge and after Sim and Kenny into the field beyond.

It was a cow field. Luckily for us the cows were a good distance away, but I still had images of stampedes flashing through my head. They raised their heads from the grass to watch us shooting by. And the field looked flat, but it didn’t feel it on those scooters. It was like riding a bucking bronco. Sim couldn’t go as fast as me because of Kenny clinging on the back. I soon caught him. Kenny had his eyes squeezed tight shut. Sim looked scared but determined. We raced over the grassy, tussocky ground, splatting through cowpats.

Were the police after us because we’d stolen Ross? Were they after us because we’d stolen the scooters? Or was it because they’d noticed Sim wasn’t wearing a helmet? It didn’t matter. I wasn’t about to stop to find out.

But when I looked back the cop car was nowhere in sight.

“They’re not following us,” I shouted at Sim. I could feel my hot, damp breath on the inside of the helmet’s chin
guard. “They won’t be able to get through the gap in the hedge.”

Not that Sim looked like he was going to slow down anytime soon. “They’ll know a way round,” he shouted back. “They’ll try to cut us off on the roads.”

We bounced and flew across the bone-shaking, spine-jarring, ball-jangling field—our little engines howling every time both wheels left the ground. I couldn’t believe I was doing this. Wasn’t I the kind of person who handed his homework in on time
and
got top marks? When was it I’d become the kind of person who got chased by the police across cow fields on a half-stolen scooter? It was like I was riding alongside myself, watching myself, not believing that the person on the run from the police was me.

Ross
, I thought.
What kind of person have you made me into?

The other side of the field was enclosed by another hedge, but this time there was no way through. We sped along the side of it, looking for some kind of opening, the green leaves so close they were a ragged blur. And it was me that spotted a gap.

“See it? See it?” I shouted at Sim, and turned sharp. He was right behind me.

There was a dip in the ground, a dry ditch where the hedge didn’t grow. Riding down and up it at thirty-odd miles an hour was as bad as any roller coaster. It reminded my stomach of yesterday’s bungee. The scooter’s suspension
banged. My foot slipped on the rests and I scuffed the toe of my trainer on the hard ground. My heart leaped. But I didn’t fall off. And neither did Sim. I could hear his hot, buzzing engine right behind me.

We emerged onto an enclosed farm track. Tall trees, thick bushes and high hedgerows on either side. Purple heather splashed here and there. The track had deep ruts of mud where a tractor had driven along in the wet, then its tracks had dried. I kept my eyes glued to the ground as the scooter skittered and skidded beneath me. I had to slow, didn’t dare push it too fast. Didn’t trust it to stay beneath me. Didn’t trust me to hang on. It felt like the handlebars wanted to twist out of my grip. All I could do was hope Sim stayed upright too—no way was I going to risk looking back over my shoulder even for a second.

Then a space between the trees into another field. We had to duck overhanging limbs, branches whipped at us. I was lashed across my arms and almost got smacked right between the eyes. But I kept my head down and refused to let go. Out into this second field and right there, across the other side, miracle of miracles, an open gate onto a road. Again the field was bumpy but I fixed my eyes on that gate and hung on all the way across. I knew Sim was still behind me, and as soon as our tires hit the smooth tarmac we twisted our throttles for all they were worth.

I was scared, wild-eyed. My bones hadn’t stopped vibrating yet. My heart felt like it might never slow back to
its normal rate. I ignored every sensible thought I’d ever had and kept going.

Sim caught up to ride beside me. He looked like he couldn’t believe he was still in one piece. There was a crossroads and I turned without even slowing or checking for a signpost.

“Kenny!” I shouted. “Keep a lookout for the police, okay?” I didn’t dare look myself. “Tell us if you see them.”

But Kenny couldn’t tell us anything. Because he wasn’t there.

“How the hell could you lose Kenny?”

“I didn’t feel him let go. I don’t know. Maybe it was in that ditch between the fields. Or he got hit by a branch or something. I just didn’t feel him let go.”

“We’ve got to go back for him.”

“What if the police have got him?”

“He could be dead.”

“We weren’t going
that
fast.”

“Fast enough. He could still be messed up pretty bad.”

“And the police could be with him too.”

We’d got off the scooters and dragged them into a hedge to hide them as best we could. We’d been hoping Kenny would come running along the road after us. But there had been no sign. Several cars had gone by and we’d ducked our heads. None of them had been a police car.

“He could be dead,” I repeated.

“He was wearing a helmet.”

At least that much was true.

“Jesus, Sim,” I said. “This is really getting out of hand.”

We waited some more. My watch said it was just after half-ten. We’d been sitting in this bush for much longer than I wanted to, not knowing what to do.

“We’ve got to go look,” I said. “We can’t leave him lying there if he’s broken his back or something.”

“We can’t lose two mates in one week,” Sim said. And I knew he meant it as a joke, but I was too scared to laugh.

We decided to go back on foot so left the scooters and my helmet hidden and walked back the way we’d come. But we walked back slowly. Listening for any sound of a car. We were ready to dive into the nearest hedge at the slightest noise. We walked back along to the crossroads.

“Which way did we come?”

Sim pointed left.

“You sure?”

He shrugged.

The noise of an engine startled us and we were quick to run for the hedgerow. Too thick to dive through. We leaped straight over into the field on the other side. I winded myself as I landed on the hard ground. Then, lying flat on our bellies and peering back in between the leaves and branches, we saw a knackered old Mini slow at the crossroads, then trundle off across the other side.