Chapter 24 #2
I like gadgets and inventing stuff in my workshop.
I play soccer with my dad on the beach. I help out at his restaurant sometimes and get money for it, so I’m saving up for a new hoverboard.
My old one got broken by this kid at school (Gus Herrera, he’s really mean).
I made something for you in my workshop!
There’s a photo of it with this message.
I want to give it to you when we meet one day.
My dad calls me Little Lion Man because I get mad fast sometimes.
My mum used to say you were like that too when you were little.
She told me she hoped we’d be best friends one day. I hope we can talk soon.
Love you from Little Lion Man
(Leo) xxx
‘Leo Leo Leo,’ I said, again and again. I googled it – short for Leonardo.
Derived from the Latin word for lion. In Spain, leo is a holy oil used for anointing.
The fifth sign in the zodiac. Same name as one of the constellations.
Brave lion, it meant. Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), an Italian artist and scientist of the Renaissance and an inventor of flying machines.
Leonardo Fibonacci was a medieval mathematician. The blue-masked Ninja Turtle.
Not only that but I looked up Hiedra y Leo again and get this; hiedra is Spanish for ‘ivy’. Rafael named the restaurant after me and Leo!
I could barely see the little lion emoji at the end of his sign-off, I was crying so much.
I clicked on the attached image and it was a photo of a young boy with such a beautiful face and big brown eyes and a brilliant smile, holding out a walnut shell with a tiny carved ladybird inside it.
He’d made it himself. My heart pulsed painfully – oh my God, his face was so adorable!
I immediately hated this Gus Herrera kid for breaking his hoverboard. I knew I loved him already.
My hand was shaking as I clicked reply:
Hello Leo,
Thank you for sending me the picture of you with the ladybird jitterbug.
I love it already and I can’t wait to meet you and see your workshop.
I hope it will not be long now. It’s great you like soccer because so do I.
I support Arsenal and my best position is attacking midfielder.
I’m a good runner as well. I’m sorry to hear about your trouble with Gus Herrera and your hoverboard.
Don’t let him get you down. I kinda know how you feel.
I got bullied at school too and I just gave them a taste of their own medicine.
They don’t like it when you fight back. You seem like a really sweet kid and I hope you are doing okay. Please give your Dad my love.
Your big sister,
Ivy xxx
I deleted the ‘your’ in front of ‘dad’ ten times before adding it back in again, adding an ivy leaf emoji after the kisses and hitting send before I could change my mind, then realised the capital letter in Dad was wrong. Rafael was Leo’s dad but he wasn’t mine. I couldn’t hope for that, not yet.
To my astonishment, I had an immediate message back and fumbled my phone to read it, but my hopes nosedived when I saw it:
Postmaster: undeliverable. The email address you entered no longer exists.
‘Shit,’ I said, slamming my phone down on the sea wall. He must have deleted his account. He must think I ignored him. Shit. Shit. Shit!
I drove myself half mad obsessing over it and needed to get out of my head for a while so I put my phone away and headed into the arcades, consoling myself with multiple games of Down the Clown, Basketball Shoot-Out, Ball Drop, Pirate Wheel of Fortune, and of course Skee-Ball, all the high-ticket machines.
But his face was always there in my mind, smiling, looking like his dad.
Saying he loved me – calling me his sister.
While I waited for my vegan ice cream sundae to melt, I gave in to the persistent voice and re-checked my emails, just to read his again and see the little lion emoji. I found the ‘Postmaster: Undeliverable’ one, and then noticed I’d inadvertently added an x to the recipient line.
I’d added a fucking typo, that’s why it wouldn’t send!
‘Shit!’
I cleaned up the message, checked, checked and checked it again and re-sent it.
This time, no undelivered message pinged back.
It had gone. It must reach him this time.
I was so excited I was bursting. Bursting with hope and happiness for the first time in ages.
Since my mum’s last ‘all-clear’ diagnosis, three years ago.
Since I got Maddox. Since that last Christmas when she was well enough to cook us a veggie roast. Leo and Raf were all I could think about. And I couldn’t stop smiling.
I already had stacks of tickets at the bottom of my bag, but I’d never found a prize worth spending them on.
They seemed a bit shit for all that effort.
So the tickets just accrued. And then I saw the box at the very top of the prize pyramid; a brand-new, box-fresh hoverboard, worth over two hundred pounds.
Or in my case, one thousand tickets.
I sat on the carpet by the Spider-Man fruit machine and counted them out, one at a time.
Just over seven hundred – I needed another two hundred and seventy-one to claim it.
I could do it in an afternoon if I put my mind to it.
I could hit it in one spin if I stalked the Spin to Win machine for long enough.
So I set my mind to it. But as I was getting back on my feet, my plan was thwarted:
‘Hey.’
My face instantly met Chloe’s and my soaring heart sank. She’d got even more beautiful since I’d last seen her and she’d had her hair cut – short and shaggy. New pink hoody. Bootcut jeans with soggy hems and new Nikes. Jesus wept, she was a vision.
‘What are you doing here? You hate the arcades.’
She shrugged, hands in jean pockets. ‘I saw you walk past – I’m at the Fish n Fry with my fam. It’s my brother’s birthday.’
‘Oh,’ I said, before carrying on to the Spin to Win.
And then the crushing realisation dawned on me how we’d left things the last time I’d seen her.
I’d grabbed her by the throat. I’d forced her up against the wall, called her names.
Ugh. The guilt washed over me like the roaring tide and suddenly I didn’t want to be anywhere near her.
Still, she followed me round the place, lingering beside every machine.
Spin to Win was useless. Clearly it had a big win recently. Either that or Chloe was throwing me off my game. I had no real plan except tickets, tickets, tickets.
‘Shouldn’t you be getting back to your fam?’ I said after a while, as I grabbed another pot of tokens.
‘They’re okay. They’ve met up with some people they know – friends of ours, James and Sophie.’
‘Thrills.’ I posted the tokens in the Skee-Ball slot and released the balls.
‘Can I play?’ she asked. ‘I could win you some tickets.’
‘Why would you want to do that?’
‘Just to help.’
‘Don’t.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Pretend nothing’s happened – I can’t stand the bullshit. I’m sorry about what I said and did last time, okay? I’m sorry. I don’t have any excuse for how I acted and—’
‘—you were grieving and I haven’t been there for you, you were right. I’m sorry too. Can I play?’
‘I’m not paying for you,’ I replied, not taking my eyes off the rings.
I aimed for the ones worth 250 points but kept getting 50s and 100s.
Aiming too high, once again. Chloe went and changed up her money for tokens and then played alongside me, every machine.
The tickets spewed out but not for me – for her.
I got all 50s. She played again, and again it happened – 250 three times in a row – I got 100, then all 50s.
‘Fuck’s sake!’ I growled. I glanced over at the basketball game but no way was I throwing with her around. She put me right off my lob.
Chloe bunched up her tickets and handed them to me. ‘Here you go.’
I counted them out and sniffed, not daring to show her any appreciation. Just two hundred and fifty-five to go. ‘Thanks.’
‘I always wondered why you never redeem them.’
‘I’m redeeming them today actually.’
‘Oh right,’ she said, following me to Down the Clown. ‘What you getting?’
‘Not telling you. You’ll probably beat me to it and claim it for yourself.’
‘Ivy, come on. I wouldn’t do that. Let’s talk. I miss you.’
‘Didn’t miss me enough to call me though, did you?’
‘You’ve blocked me.’
‘Didn’t miss me enough to come to my mum’s funeral, did you?’
‘I had rehearsals.’
She stood by the machine and I tried to ignore how the pink flashes illuminated her face, her button nose, the curve of her lips.
‘I told my parents that me and you were more than friends,’ she said.
I laughed, continuing to jab at buttons. ‘No, you didn’t.’
‘I did.’
‘What happened?’
‘My dad went dead quiet. My mum came into my room after dinner and asked if I had any “questions”. It was so embarrassing – she’s obviously been reading some blog about how to guide your kids through gayness.
Dad’s trying to be all supportive but it’s like I’ve given him information he doesn’t know what to do with.
It’s quite funny. I always thought they’d hit the roof but I think they just don’t understand it. They’re trying to be cool though.’
I nodded and continued to down clowns with a heavy ball. I ripped what tickets I’d accrued so far out of the base of the machine before anyone passing by could swipe them. ‘What changed your mind – about telling them, I mean?’
‘I realised what I had. I got scared, Ivy. My feelings were so intense and I didn’t know what to do with them.
They went against everything I’d been brought up to believe.
Handsome princes, white weddings. And then I met someone who made me feel everything those fairy tales did and more.
And I couldn’t believe I messed it up. And what you did to Mr Andrews for me, well … ’
‘You still think I killed him?’
‘Well, you did, didn’t you?’
‘Of course I bloody didn’t. If you still think I had something to do with it then you must have never known me at all.’
‘Who did kill him then?’
‘I don’t know. Can you leave me alone? I still have two hundred and nineteen tickets to get.’
I went back and forth between the Skee-Ball and the Hoops where I netted eighteen balls on the trot.
I could see Chloe watching me and there was a burst of pride in my chest. Separately, we got to two hundred tickets but we did the last few together – a mixture of Bugs Bunny Baseball, Guitar Hero and Whack-a-Maniac – this weird game at the back I’d always avoided, where you have to find the serial killer who’s run away from jail and hiding in the woods.
The evil laughter track and clank of the prisoner’s chains each time he escaped the slam of my rubber hammer was all old and scratchy.
‘Go on, get him, get him! Look, he’s there, behind the tree! Quick, quick!’ Chloe enthused as my hammer came down, slam, slam, slam on the creepy guy’s head each time.
I pretended he was Rhiannon and the tickets came thick and fast.
Before we knew it, we had more than enough for the hoverboard. I counted the tickets through and handed them over to the bored-looking emo behind the counter and he started counting them up too.
Chloe frowned as her phone beeped in her pocket. ‘Aren’t you a bit old for hoverboards?’
‘It’s not for me,’ I said. ‘It’s for … a friend.’
‘Oh okay,’ she said as we watched the emo climb a small stepladder and take down the dusty box. He opened the side door of the cage and handed me my prize and the random leftover tickets.
‘Thank you.’ I said it to the teen, but I was also saying it to Chloe.
‘I enjoyed that,’ she said as she checked her phone and we headed for the entrance.
The Fish n Fry where her family were celebrating her brother’s birthday was three doors down the street.
‘God – eight calls from my mum asking if I want tartare sauce. She’s going to kill me.
’ It was dark outside and the rain came down in sheets on the blue, sparkly pavements. ‘What time’s your bus?’
‘Any minute,’ I replied, covering the box with the hem of my hoody.
‘I can wait with you,’ she said as we crossed the road to the bus stop. ‘Or we can give you a lift back if you want?’
She hadn’t meant that; she just thought it was something she should offer. I could read her like a very shit book. She knew how awkward it would be with her parents in the car now they knew me and her had done sex stuff.
‘You should get back,’ I said, setting the box down on the bench as the rain thundered down on the Perspex roof of the shelter.
‘I’d rather be with you,’ she said, reaching for my hand.
I felt her standing nearer to me. I felt her hand on my hair.
On my face, turning my mouth towards hers.
Her lips on mine. The rain pelting down on the roof louder as she leant against me and kissed me deeper than she’d ever kissed me before.
When we finally came up for air, she pulled back from me and looked me dead in the eyes.
‘I love you, Ivy.’ She held my hand and we gasped into each other’s mouths and put our heads together, looking out at the pelting rain. An old woman with some heavy shopping glanced our way. Stared. Frowned. Grimaced. Tutted.
And in that moment, Chloe dropped my hand and stepped away. When the woman had passed, she reached for my hand again, only to find it was not there. And it never would be again.
I said, ‘I’m leaving soon. Going abroad.’
‘Where?’
‘Australia,’ I lied, inadvertently touching the hoverboard box beside me. ‘Delaney’s Creek, Brisbane to be exact. So I won’t see you ever again.’
‘You can’t leave. You can’t – I’m coming with you.’
‘No, you’re not,’ I said. ‘You say you love me but you don’t. Every time someone looks at us too long, you let go of my hand. If I’m going to be with someone, I want her to be proud to be seen with me. And I’m not going to shrink myself for your sake.’
She was crying now, but I wasn’t. I wasn’t afraid anymore – not of losing her. I was just afraid of losing myself. It was the only thing I had left. ‘Ivy, please, let’s talk.’
‘I don’t want to talk anymore. Your family needs you here. And mine needs me there.’
And then the bus rattled up and chugged next to the kerb as I stepped on and swiped my pass card. And Chloe watched me go. But I didn’t look back, not once.