Chapter 6 #3
Pea: It wasn’t fair. One of us was bound to have a boyfriend at some point, weren’t we? And it just happened to be me first. I was sure that if he’d fallen for someone, he would have done exactly the same as I had.
Alex: You see, that’s where she was wrong. I had fallen for someone, hadn’t I, and I hadn’t cast the friendship aside for it. But I couldn’t tell her that, because she didn’t know about AJ and me, and I didn’t want her to.
Pea: We ended up saying we’d put it to one side and come back to it another time, when things had calmed a bit.
And on that walk home, it almost felt normal between us.
It felt as close to normal as it had since AJ had arrived.
We got back to the park and Alex said he thought he’d stay for an hour or two, like he always did, and we went off in search of Zak and AJ.
I did ask if he’d prefer for it to be just the two of us that afternoon.
I said I could catch up with Zak later and we could just stick together for the afternoon, but he said no, it was fine.
Danny: It feels a bit like Pea and Alex’s friendship is falling apart in front of our eyes, doesn’t it? They’re not in touch now, by the way. Haven’t been for years.
Alex: AJ and Zak weren’t on their bus and they weren’t in Adventure City, which were our first two ports of call.
We had to go through Animal City to get to Water City, but we weren’t expecting to find them there.
Just as we went past the hut where all the exotic animals were kept, they came out of the door.
Zak: AJ had seemed like he needed a change of scene, and it was the one thing he couldn’t really have, so I had taken him to Animal City, because we rarely spent time there.
We’d looked at the rabbits and guinea pigs, the goats and the sheep, and then we went to look at the snakes and tarantulas and lizards.
AJ liked animals. At home, we had a couple of dogs, and they always calmed him.
This guy who worked there came into the building and asked if we wanted to handle any of the animals.
AJ looked at me and shrugged, so next thing we knew we both had snakes around our necks.
It was unexpected, and it seemed to do the trick, for AJ.
When we walked out of there, he was in a much better mood.
And then we saw Pea and Alex, and I gave Pea a hug and kissed her, and I sensed there was something a bit uncomfortable between AJ and Alex, but I didn’t think much of it.
Alex: I looked at AJ and he looked at me.
Pea and Zak were hugging and it didn’t go on for that long, but it just served as a reminder of the healthy, functional relationship they had and the secretive shitshow that we had in comparison.
At least Nicole wasn’t there. That was something to be thankful for.
Anyway, we set out with no real destination in mind, wandering.
I guess all of us thought that eventually someone would find a ride they wanted to go on.
At one point, Zak and Pea offered to get us all a cup of tea, and AJ and I sat down at a picnic table to wait for them to come back.
Something hung in the air between us. I just looked at him, refusing to make things easier by looking down at the ground or at the table.
There was a piece of splintered wood and he picked at it with his fingernail.
And when he did start speaking, it was as if everything inside his brain was tumbling out.
Like he’d removed a cork and then he couldn’t get it back in again.
‘Look, I know this isn’t what you want. All this secretive shit.
’ I didn’t answer. He didn’t know what I wanted, because he’d never asked.
He’d just taken what suited him, at his convenience, and left me to watch him being with someone else in public.
‘But I can’t offer you any more than that right now.
Do you know what the press would do to me if they found out I was with a guy?
’ I shrugged. I mean, I knew there had been speculation in the past, and I knew there was an intense interest in who he was seeing, no matter who it was.
There was so much I wanted to ask him, like whether he was gay and the thing with Nicole was just a front, or whether he was bi.
Whether I meant anything to him. Whether we’d be together for real, if things were different.
‘Fine, I get it. You don’t want to talk.
You’re pissed. But this is my life, Alex.
’ Inside, I screamed, And this is mine. ‘It’s not going to happen again.
I’m not gay. It was nothing. Okay?’ As if he needed my agreement to call it off.
I gave a curt nod, and I was biting back tears when Pea and Zak returned, each of them holding two steaming cups of tea.
And they had Sebastian in tow, which was unusual, but I was too busy processing what had just happened to think anything of it.
AJ changed again, then. Started talking about getting the whole crew out, doing the biggest rides.
Sebastian told them that there’d always been this thing, this challenge.
None of us remembered how it had started.
You were supposed to eat a giant hotdog and a cheeseburger from the food hall and then go straight on the Gravity Spin, the Twister and the Canyon, in that order.
If you could do it without throwing up, you were some kind of hero.
AJ grinned. ‘What about the 360?’ he asked.
Pea said that that was new so it hadn’t been part of the challenge.
AJ said he would do all of it and then the 360, and asked if any of us felt like joining him.
I certainly didn’t. I felt fragile, like I was made of glass and I was waiting for someone to drop me.
And I knew Pea wouldn’t do it, because she never had in the past. Zak said he’d give it a try and AJ high-fived him, getting up from the bench.
He said he was going to go back to the buses and see who else was around and up for the challenge.
Pea: We watched AJ jog off in the direction of the buses.
I said to Zak that he didn’t have to do it.
I’d never got it, this challenge. I’d seen countless teenage boys being sick in bins while doing it.
But some people just have to push at things, don’t they?
And AJ was one of them. I knew Zak was just doing it for his brother’s sake.
That’s the kind of person he was. He shrugged and said he was game.
‘AJ will totally hurl, though.’ I laughed.
Alex: I felt like I was breaking and I couldn’t tell my best friend about it.
Zak: When AJ came back, he had the whole gang with him.
He said he’d found them all sitting around watching repeat episodes of EastEnders and they were glad of the interruption.
We all went to the food hall to get the hotdogs and burgers, leaving Pea and Alex at the picnic table.
They said they’d see us back at the starting point.
All the rides were in Adventure City, so we could go right from one to the next.
I do remember thinking that usually people would have the time spent in the queue between one ride and the next.
But what the heck? I wasn’t about to back out.
Spirits were high and it was like the AJ of earlier in the day was a distant memory.
Maybe I’d taken him too seriously, I thought.
He had it easy, and he had it tough, in different ways.
I would keep an eye on him and check he was okay.
AJ insisted on us all having mustard and ketchup on our hotdogs, and Sebastian took the order and went to get them.
I can’t stand mustard. I thought there was an outside chance that I’d spew before I even got on the first ride.
But I went along with it because he seemed so lifted by the idea of this challenge and I didn’t want to be the one to bring him crashing down again.
I watched him, surrounded by his team, laughing and joking, and there was no sign of the vulnerable young man I’d seen earlier. No sign at all.