Alex in Wonderland Read online

That hadn’t happened in this instance.

  “It’s not going through,” Dolly said, giving me a sympathetic look.

  “Oh,” I muttered.

  “On me, mate,” Will croaked as he pushed his basket on to the counter. “Just put it on mine,” he told Dolly.

  “Oh, er, really?” I said, staring down at my trainers.

  He was staring down at his trainers too. “What are mates for?” he said, finally.

  “Huh, thanks,” I said. I looked up at the cashier. “And a bag, please?”

  “Alex?” The softness in his voice caught me off guard. I swallowed and finally met his eyes. “We’ll have a nice summer. We’ll definitely plan stuff. Like, I know me and Annie are together now, and I guess there’s some stuff I’ll be doing with her, but you’re still my mate, so we’ll do stuff too.”

  I got why he couldn’t tell me. He genuinely felt bad. He knew everything was changing, and he was clinging on. I didn’t blame him. I cried when I got home after the year eleven leavers prom. Everyone was moving off in different directions, growing up, chasing dreams, excited for whatever came next. But I didn’t want to let go of the known and comfortable. It was horrible. It felt like everyone was jumping into the river of our futures and being swept away by the rapids of life, and I wasn’t even in the water. I couldn’t be. I can’t swim.

  Like, not metaphorically. I literally can’t swim.

  “Yeah, yeah, totally,” I said. “It’ll be great.”

  “It’s gonna be a sweeeeeeeeet summer, man!” Will said, although something in his voice made me think he didn’t quite believe that.

  I sighed as Will put his PIN into the machine and it all effortlessly went through. At that point, I was pretty much resigned to it being The Vile Summer of Total Arse. All signs pointed in that direction. Turned out I was wrong. It was going to be sweeeeeeet. Just not in any way I was expecting.

  I was also going to use all the condoms.

  Just not in any way you might be expecting.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I sent Annie a text back:

  Have a good time.

  I was pretty confident she would pick up on the fact I didn’t say “great” time, didn’t use an exclamation mark, and didn’t put any kisses. I wanted her to know I was hurt. But I didn’t have chance to wallow in any further self-pity (something I do really well, by the way – I have numerous playlists for it and everything), because Kendra was coming up the stairs, calling my name.

  Kendra and Dad met on Tinder, not that either of them knew I knew that. She had a peroxide-blonde bob and, like most people with too much money and no class, drove a white Mercedes with personalized plates: K3 NDRA – the three forming a backwards “E” that made it look like her name had been written by a toddler. The severe hair, combined with her penchant for wearing turtleneck sweaters, meant she looked a bit like an android in a movie. Like, she didn’t want to reveal her neck, because that was where the little compartment that accessed her circuit board was. Ultimately, androids always turn rogue and wipe out the humans with a cold, ruthless efficiency, so I was constantly on my guard with her.

  “There you are,” she said, pushing my bedroom door open. One of these days, she’ll regret not knocking and end up seeing me doing something awful that she wouldn’t want to see … like smiling, or enjoying my life, for example. I did my best to not have resting “I’m totally indifferent towards you” face. That was one of my first faults that Kendra pointed out to me, by the way, when she moved in, six months ago. The truth is, she’s not my kind of person. She’s flashy and pushy, and she’s rude to waiters. But I was doing my best for Dad, toning my real feelings towards her down, because he seemed to like her and I guess I just want him to be happy. Indifference was the best I could manage. Anything more positive would have been too tall an order.

  She wrinkled her nose. “Do you need to open a window?”

  OK, here is a fact: my room does not smell. It doesn’t. I’m really clean and tidy – there’s no clothes dumped all over the place, no old food under my bed, and I Febreze the living daylights out of everything several times a week. But that was never good enough for Kendra. Kendra was always convinced she could smell something. It drives me mad when people say teenage boys smell, because we don’t. Well, not all of us anyway. And no more than anyone else smells. And she could talk. You should smell her when she comes back from hot yoga.

  She also loves eating beef jerky, by the way, and that stuff reeks.

  But I opened the window.

  Kendra perched on the edge of the bed. I stayed by the window. She rubbed her fingers along a tiny bit of my duvet. “When did you last wash this?”

  “Last week.” That was more or less true.

  She narrowed her eyes at me. “In the washing machine?”

  “Yeah?” What did she think I’d done? Carried it down to the river and rubbed it over some rocks?

  Kendra took a breath and nodded. “So that’s why there was fabric softener in the pre-wash compartment.”

  “Huh?”

  “What compartment did you put the fabric softener in, Alex?”

  I just stared at her. I’m not even sure I used fabric softener. What compartment? I squeezed some liquid into one of those plastic balls you put straight in.

  She shook her head. “OK! We’ll have a little lesson about how to use the washing machine then!”

  Couldn’t wait for that.

  “It’s a Neff appliance,” she added.

  I didn’t know what to do with that information.

  “Expensive,” she explained. “So it’s a good idea to use them correctly, in accordance with the instructions.” She looked me in the eye. “Right?”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Are you going to stand there or come and sit down?” she asked. “I thought we should have a little chat.”

  My stomach lurched at the anticipated horror. “Little chats” are never fun. I perched on the edge of the bed by my pillows, as far away from Kendra as possible, looking down at my white socks.

  “It’s OK, Alex, we’re not going to talk about private teenage boy stuff.”

  Well, thank god for that.

  “What are your plans for the summer?”

  Actually, let’s just talk about private teenage boy stuff.

  “What are you going to do with all that time?” she said, in a way that made it very clear I should definitely be doing something really constructive. Sitting in my room playing Fortnite probably wasn’t going to cut it.

  I swallowed and shrugged. “Well, Mum and Dad always said that if I knuckled down for the exams, the summer was mine, so—”

  “Well, your mum’s on that commune with her female friend, so…” Kendra countered.

  I flicked my eyes away from her. It’s not a commune. She’s joined a voluntary group for a year, committed to various environmental causes. It’s a sustainable eco-village in South America. And this whole “female friend” business annoyed me too. There was an insult hidden in it, but I couldn’t quite work out how.

  “Also,” Kendra said, “you should know, because you’re old enough to know, despite what your dad thinks, that money is pretty tight. The divorce costs money, and your mum is being pretty inflexible. It’s fine, no one wants to see her out on the streets, but we’re all having to work extra hard to give her what she wants.”

  I didn’t think that was true about Mum for one minute; I’d ask Dad later. But OK, I got it. She wanted me to get a job. And I had no objection to doing some work and earning a bit of cash. The independence would be a good thing, to be honest, then I wouldn’t have to endure Kendra saying “Don’t spend it all on sugary drinks!” every time Dad gave me my allowance. Trouble was, my ideal job would be getting paid to be in a science experiment to study the effects on humans of solitary confinement. I’d gone as far as to look if there were any opportunities in that field, but apparently humans need contact with one another, and solitary confinement for extended periods is c
ruel. I couldn’t understand it. It sounded pretty much perfect to me.

  But there should be loads of other options. Although Newsands had been in permanent recession for as long as I can remember, it had recently turned a corner. Thanks to the rock-bottom housing market, lots of middle-aged Londoners had started buying places and doing them up, apparently loving the “faded seaside glamour” of the town. They were opening galleries in empty shop units, and pop-up street-food stalls on the rotting pier. They were spending money. And when people spend money, more stuff opens, creating job opportunities. Surely one of them would be right for me? I could work in a gallery. They’re notorious for having no one visit them.

  “OK,” I said.

  “Is that an ‘OK, I’ll get a part-time job’?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Well, that’s great!” Kendra said. “Pulling your weight a bit – your dad and I would really appreciate it!”

  I nodded and looked down at my socks again.

  “What do you think your selling points are?”

  I looked up. “Huh?”

  “Tough job market out there, Alex. What do you think is going to make you stand out from the crowd? If I was taking someone on, how would you convince me it should be you?”

  She was staring right at me, expecting an answer, and I couldn’t think of a single thing that made me “stand out from the crowd” unless my insane levels of misfortune qualify me for some sort of world record.

  “Come on!” she demanded. “You’ve got ten seconds – sell yourself!”

  “No, I—”

  “What’s so special about you?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “What’s going to seal the deal?!”

  “I—”

  “Are you confident?”

  “No.”

  “Good at maths?”

  “Not really.”

  “Team player?”

  “I dunno, I guess some people say I’m pretty good at oral.”

  She stopped dead and stared at me for five silent seconds. “You’re. Good. At. Oral.”

  It was only when she spelled out what I’d just said that I realized what I’d just said.

  She cleared her throat. “You know, Alex, you really shouldn’t be sharing that sort of—”

  “Oral communication. It’s part of the English syllabus,” I muttered quickly. I stared harder than ever at my socks, the heat billowing from my cheeks.

  She laughed. “Talking?”

  I sighed, unsteadily. “Uh-huh.”

  She laughed again. “OK, so you’re telling me you’re predicted a good grade for talking to people in public? Well, you do like to hide your light under a bushel, don’t you?! Wow.”

  I didn’t like that “wow”. Also, at no point did I use the term “good grade”. I just said other people thought I was pretty good at it. Which they do. Relative to my other predicted grades – which, just so you know, are pretty ropey.

  “OK, well,” she said, “being able to talk to people is a good skill. A valuable skill. That could put you in the running for all sorts of customer service positions.”

  Oh, brilliant.

  “Just do me a favour and don’t refer to it as… Don’t use the word ‘oral’, OK? That’s something quite different.”

  Did she imagine I didn’t know that?

  “Could lead to all sorts of misunderstandings and trouble,” she said.

  I should be so lucky.

  “But it’s good to hear you’re on board. Glad you’re engaged in this. Committed. I admire that in a young person.”

  “OK,” I said.

  “Especially one like you.”

  I looked at her with wide eyes.

  “Well,” she said, “I just mean you can be a bit…”

  “Withdrawn?” I offered after a long pause, because it’s basically true.

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “I was going to say ‘antisocial’ but let’s go with ‘withdrawn’. Sounds a bit better, doesn’t it? Like when people say ‘passed away’ instead of ‘died’.”

  I looked straight down at my socks again. This was unbelievable.

  There was a silence. I could feel her robotic eyes scanning my room. There was nothing for her to latch on to in here. The boxes of condoms were well hidden and there was no evidence of anything else she wouldn’t approve of.

  “Why have you got so many cushions in here?” she said.

  “I like them.”

  She stood up and surveyed the cushions with this massive air of suspicion. I know it’s probably stereotypical, but I saw these pictures in a travel magazine of luxury hotel rooms, and I liked all the cushions they would put on the beds. I like making things look nice. I wanted sophistication. I wanted my room to look like I had style and maturity. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, so I didn’t understand why she was looking at me in such a weird way. I couldn’t quite place it. Mild disgust?

  “Loop me in with the job progress,” she said, turning and walking out.

  I sat on my bed in despair, the entire summer now looking nothing remotely like what I’d expected.

  “He’s got a lot of cushions in his room, Tom!” I heard her say to my dad as she got to the bottom of the stairs.

  “I know, what’s that about?” Dad replied.

  Great. So everyone was thinking stuff about me and was busy contemplating how I had some sort of dysfunctional cushion thing going on.

  “Well, you know what teenage boys are like. They’ll try to hump anything,” she said, laughing.

  I stared into the middle distance, so shocked I couldn’t move.

  For the record, I’d never tried to hump a cushion.

  At least, I hadn’t until that point.

  Sorry, that’s probably too much information again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I decided to change my clothes. Board shorts and a baggy T-shirt weren’t really going to cut it. I reluctantly pulled my chinos on, along with a white shirt and the only tie I had that wasn’t my school tie. It was actually one of Dad’s old ties, which he lent me when he and Mum took me to a posh restaurant to announce their divorce, and after telling me it was “all amicable” and we’d “still be doing fun things as a family”, we spent the whole meal in agonizing silence, until Mum stormed out, saying to Dad, “You couldn’t even make an effort for this!” A tie of happy memories. It had a horrible pattern, and was very wide, but it would have to do. I ran some wax through my hair and tried to make it do something that wasn’t random sticking up in all directions. I couldn’t say I was particularly successful.

  “Do I look OK?” I said, walking into the kitchen.

  “You’re wearing that tie?” Kendra said, perched on a stool at the end of the breakfast bar, looking up from her laptop.

  “Yes?”

  “OK then.”

  “Why? Do you think it’s—”

  She held her hand up, distracted by her ringing mobile, which she answered with her other hand. “Georgie? Do we have news?”

  I waited while Kendra jabbered on about whatever the hell it is she actually does. Property or something. I looked down at my tie. Maybe it was wrong, I didn’t know. My chinos also had a little stain on them, just by the flies, and that was definitely not a good look. I glanced back up when I realized it had gone silent.

  Kendra was looking at me, her cupped hand over the mobile. “Alex?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Just be confident? OK? Walk into wherever has a vacancy, and say what you want. Don’t ‘um’ and ‘ah’, just say it. What do you want?”

  “What do I want?” I repeated.

  A flash of annoyance crossed her face. “Yes! What do you want?”

  “A job?”

  “With confidence!”

  “I want a job.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  I licked my finger and tried rubbing the little stain by my flies.

  “Alex?!”

  I looked up.

  “
Stop playing with it.” She lifted the phone back to her ear. “Sorry, Georgie. Just trying to coach the boy in a few job-hunting skills.” She looked at me, mouthed “Go!” and got back to the call. “Yeah, no, he is a bit,” I heard her say as I walked towards the front door.

  I didn’t even want to know what I was a bit.

  One result from the influx of Londoners to Newsands was the increase in the number of shops aimed at pretentious types. There was a café now, for example, that did stuff on toast that really had no place being on toast. And the place I was standing outside of now had also recently opened.

  RAW

  That was its name. The interior had a stripped industrial feel: air-conditioning ducts on the ceiling, bare brick walls, polished concrete floor, and those old-fashioned light bulbs, where you can see the filaments, hanging down from the ceiling.

  RAW sold clothes – although not many, by the looks of it. A few rails were sparsely scattered around the store, each of which had only one or two garments hanging from them, and there were some tables, also with just a couple of tops or trousers folded on them.

  It was quite dark inside. And the music was quite loud. Occasionally, you would get a fleeting glance of an aloof, cool figure, casting their eyes lazily over a T-shirt, like they were the judge on a TV talent show and the T-shirt really needed to work to impress them. I felt like I was being watched. And I felt like whoever was watching me was also laughing and bitching about how someone with my (lack of) fashion sense had no place being in a place like RAW. But they had a small sign by the door advertising “Sales assistants required – apply within” so I guessed that, depending on their level of desperation, they might give me a chance.

  I repeated Kendra’s words, like some sort of affirming mantra. Walk in. Say what you want. Don’t “um” and “ah”.

  Well, I’d already walked in, so now I really needed to tell someone what I wanted.

  I looked around. There was absolutely no one who appeared to be actually in charge. There wasn’t even an obvious place to pay for stuff, which I could just hover near. I mean, stride confidently up to.

  Then over in the corner, I saw two women – early twenties, maybe. They were putting some clothes back on a rack and had that disinterested, superior and disdainful thing going on which I think is a prerequisite for anyone working in a high-end clothes shop.