The first time Darren flew, he ended up breaking Nigel Simpson’s nose with his bum.
One moment Darren was standing arms akimbo at the top of the slide, surveying his kingdom of Deneholme Park, and the next he was several feet higher, so high that he could see right over the wall into the convent school’s garden.
He spent a few moments half-heartedly gawking at the girls running around in their tartan pinafores, and then his gaze wandered. Unfortunately, this view took in his feet and the lack of solid ground beneath them. After some Wily Coyote scrabbling, he was plummeting towards Nigel’s upturned O of a face.
Fortunately, this meant that the only witness to Darren’s newfound supernatural powers was now unconscious on the playground tarmac.
The other kids all assumed that Darren had leapt onto Nigel on purpose – Jason Lewis even claimed he’d heard Darren shout ‘Geronimo’ and everyone agreed, as they always did with Jason. Even Darren’s brother Lee joined in, unenthusiastically, though he gave Darren a funny look, as if wondering whether Darren had finally picked sides after years dodging around in neutral territory.
Nobody offered the injured boy any help at all, because it was nerdy Nigel Simpson, the school boffin, and something about Nigel made him a natural target for everyone – even the school hamster peed on him at every opportunity. If you were going to splat bum-first onto anyone, it would be Nigel.
Nigel’s parents didn’t agree. Neither did Darren’s. As punishment, he was banned from the park for a whole month. Naturally, he stomped around saying it wasn’t fair, because the world would come crumbling down if ten-year-old boys took their punishments with equanimity, but in reality he didn’t mind. It gave him an excuse to stay at home alone and experiment.
His second flight was from the coal shed roof, a whole four feet high. Even that close to the ground, Darren felt the same inner lightness that he’d had on the top of the slide. All his worries were still there – the stolen Jaffa Cakes in his wardrobe, the way the dog had been limping lately, Jason Lewis’s occasional snide comments, Jason Lewis’s occasional friendly comments, everything – all pressing down inside his body, heavier than his bones, but the rest of him was so light that he could carry those worries away, no problem.
He could do anything.
Except stay in the air for more than a few minutes. Darren was proud of his stunt-man landing.
On the first of November the Indian Summer sky had switched to a grey the colour of a dead TV screen, and it stayed that way till well into the Christmas holidays, but that only meant that fewer people were outside to see Darren’s battle with gravity.
The tallest structure in his small world was the Gothic spire of Deneholme Parish Church, covered in scaffolding for as long as he could remember. He hadn’t been inside the church since he was christened, but still, as he approached it he felt a lurch of fear in his belly. Even the wind had stopped, like it was holding its breath. Darren remembered his Nan just before the family holiday to Benidorm: ‘If God had meant us to fly, he wouldn't have invented airplane food.’
All the way through the airport his Nan had been moving her hand from head to heart to the other side of the chest to her tummy and back again. Darren did his best to mimic the ritual, changing the order around sometimes in case he’d got it wrong, then put his gloved hand on the frozen metal scaffold and pretended it was all as easy as if he was on the monkey bars at the park.
At the top of the spire everything seemed brighter, not crowded in by the shadows of the ordinary buildings below. The world was at his feet. Darren had stepped out into the air before he’d even realised that he was definitely going to do it.
When he stayed afloat, he looked at the clouds and imagined a white-bearded old man giving him a nod, a wink and a thumbs up.
Yes!
Darren had never felt such pure happiness. His worries were now as heavy to him as a pack of Maltesers would be to a giant.
The God-cloud separated to reveal a shard of sun before an ashtray-coloured cloud shrouded it. Darren sank slowly towards the Earth, barely having time to take in the sights before his trainers hit tarmac once more.
Flying became easy from then on – or, rather, floating. No matter what Darren did, he drifted with as much control as the autumn leaves around him – only less colourful, his grey school uniform camouflaging him against the sky like a toilet roll tube in a puddle.
After dark, when he had to be indoors or his Mum would start phoning round his friends, Darren pored over comic books with an intensity that surprised his parents. He had never really been into reading before, not even comics, but they decided that it was a good thing, since the more words he saw, surely the more he’d learn.
On parents’ evening, Darren’s teacher, Miss Davies, agreed – Darren no longer stumbled or made things up when reading out in class, and, true, his stories included the words bam and kapow a little more often than necessary, but he would grow out of that in time.
Growing out of it was what Darren feared most. If his comics had taught him anything, it was that superpowers often start when you’re a kid, but they don’t stop. He pretended not to know that his comic book heroes usually got their superpowers shortly after they grew hair in strange places and developed an interest in girls, not when they were still young enough to be playing with Lego. He decided not to remember that comic books weren’t real.
He hid his face and his voice behind The Incredible Hulk issue 223 and tilted his chair rebelliously on two legs against the wall. ‘It’s not just a phase,’ he grumbled.
He heard a cough from nearby and glanced up. Nigel Simpson was sat bolt upright opposite Darren, clearly about to speak.
Darren turned away with deliberate rudeness. He certainly was not going to talk to Nigel Simpson about how great reading was – Nigel’s main topic of conversation - and he definitely was not going to notice that Nigel Simpson was also reading The Incredible Hulk issue 223.
For Christmas, Darren’s parents excitedly wrapped up a Spiderman costume and not two, but three hard-backed annuals, pleased that they were able to get their younger son a present he would surely adore.
Darren did grin with delight as he unwrapped his annuals, and tried to keep the grin in place as he unwrapped the Spiderman costume. There was no hiding from his Mum and Dad, though; they said nothing, but hurried on quickly to Lee’s new Sega game and digital watch, trying not to show their own disappointment.
When they were both out of the room making tea and having a quiet smoke, Lee leaned over and asked him what was wrong with the costume. Darren fingered the polyester material morosely.
‘Spiderman can’t fly. He’d like to, but all he does is swing around on those stupid webs that look like snot. I bet I could do that if I could snot hard enough. Bet even you could.’
That, of course, led to the brothers having a ‘how long can you make your snot’ competition. Mum ordered them out of the room, disgusted but privately amused, while she cleaned the carpet. Lee immediately ran off to try out his new game.
Feeling guilty about his ingratitude, Darren decided to change into the Spiderman costume and go for a wander in the garden. Nobody else would be around, and maybe he could give the whole Spidey thing a go; at least Peter Parker didn’t wear his y-fronts outside his tights.
It was a beautiful sunny blue-skied day, the kind that often seems to come at Christmas when everyone’s hoping for a white one. After a quick nose around to check that none of their neighbours had come out into the cold, Darren shot his arm out like in the comics and zoomed towards the garden shed.
And over it, then over the fence, then over the alleyway, then over the corner shop roof, narrowly missing the TV aerial, and on and on till he was hanging in the air higher than any of the buildings in Deneholme. Even the church spire was a flat slate square from up here. At last! God really must approve – Darren got to do this on Christmas Day!
He continued rising up, more slowly now, till it wasn’t fun any more and he started to fear that God liked him a little too much and was planning on taking him to heaven as a Christmas present for himself.
And it was cold. The Spidey costume covered his face, but Darren hadn’t been able to do the back up on his own and his bum was starting to freeze. He’d heard that people often pooed themselves when they were scared. Would his poo freeze as it hit the air, then hurtle to the Earth and hit some innocent, like perhaps that poor berk Nigel Simpson, causing death by turd? That would be a, well, crap way to go.
So would falling from this high up. Darren chanced a look downwards. He must be at least a million miles up by now.
As if sensing his feelings, the bright sky began to darken. From somewhere over near Darren’s house, which was smaller than a Monopoly house from here, a monstrous anvil of a cloud was marching towards the flying boy like Miss Davies when she caught you picking your nose.
The very sight of it made Darren’s powers grow weaker, and the ground came closer, closer, like a zoom on a TV show.
He flapped his arms wildly, then tried pointing his arms like Superman, then attempted a glide, and even tried to think happy thoughts. Nothing helped, just like it hadn’t all those other times.
Wondering whether his grieving parents would bury him in the Spiderman costume, and whether they’d ever forgive him for ruining Christmas, Darren gave up, lay on his back with his costume flapping loose, and spread his arms wide, freefalling.
The sun, still bright in this corner of sky, almost blinded him. Instinctively, Darren flung his hands in front of his eyes. As his arms moved his whole body spun round, but he thought that perhaps the wind up his bumcrack was rushing more slowly now. He moved his hands away from his eyes, facing up to the sun again, and felt himself come to a standstill.
Gingerly, he tweaked a little finger to the left. His body jerked left with it as if pulled by string. To the right, the same happened. When he made a sweeping movement with his whole hand, he swung around in an arc like footballs always did when he tried to kick them straight. For a while Darren forgot he was still several buses high, and swung himself left and right, forwards and back; if anyone had seen him they’d have thought him a kite.
Excellent. That was horizontal movement sorted. Now, how about down? With the greatest of care, and muttering ‘pleasepleaseplease,’ Darren pointed his fingers slightly towards the ground.
First his body turned into a standing position, and then he seemed to be moving, but so slowly that he didn’t want to jinx anything by being overconfident.
It wasn’t until the corner of his eye saw a shocked round O of a face in a window that Darren was sure it was definitely working. He grinned, but at that moment the wind gave a strong burst, lurching him towards the wall. Then the dark anvil cloud got fed with looming and came crashing right down into Darren’s portion of sky, cutting out all light from the sun.
He ended up tumbling noisily into a greenhouse full of Christmas Roses. The framework caught at his cloak, and he had to tug at it to let himself drop the last couple of feet, landing on a floor covered with glittering glass and crushed scarlet petals.
All wondrous joy at the experience of controlled flight was chased away by fear of being told off. How could he possibly explain smashing someone’s greenhouse when he didn’t even have a football as an excuse?
To top it all, he must be miles from home. He hadn’t aimed in any particular direction, for which he now cursed himself. Darren pelted towards the fence, scrambled over it, and dashed along the alleyway in any old direction.
Years later, he realised that his long run home had probably only taken about ten minutes, going on where he’d landed. His Mum had lengthened the time in her head too, though, going on how much she shouted at her ungrateful son when he finally reappeared at the back door, shivering, damp and smelling slightly of urine and garden centres.
It would have been easier if his face had show his genuine regret for the distress he’d caused. All his face showed was the joy of sudden realisation as he looked at the half-lit sky.
Back at school, Darren spent every spare moment in the library, looking at the geography and science books. Nope, nothing in there about sunlight affecting the ability to fly. Those scientists knew nothing.
Here was something, though:
Lapland, mythical home of Father Christmas, is so far North that, in June and July, the sun never sets, turning night into day.
The library was busy that dreary wet playtime – even Jason Lewis was in there, flicking through the most disgusting bits in the Guinness World of Records, surrounded by his henchmen, all shaven as bald as their Dads. But Darren was in Lapland. Well, almost.
Oh, what a magical place that would be! He’d be able to swoop and soar any time he wanted, at least in the summer (in the winter he’d go to Florida and live at Disneyworld), with no mean clouds to stop him! Maybe there were other people there who could do the same as him. Maybe Darren was a secret Laplander, adopted by his English parents after his real mum and dad got murdered by a cumulonimbus. Maybe he would meet lots of other flying people one day, who would teach him to use his powers for the good of mankind. Oh yes. Darren nodded wisely to himself.
He was brought out of his reverie by the sound of a drawn-out sniff behind him. Only Nigel Simpson had a nose that bunged up all year round, and the smash last September hadn’t helped. Still feeling noble, Darren turned round with a smile.
‘Hey, Nige. Um. You know. Sorry about falling on your head before.’ He’d apologised at the time, but they both knew he hadn’t meant it.
Nigel screwed his hands together nervously. ‘That’s alright. I know it was an accident.’ He continued staring at the floor, at the bookshelves, at anywhere but Darren. ‘That’s a good book you’ve got there, but if you really want to know about Lapland, you should try that one.’ With his head, he nodded towards one of the big books that wouldn’t fit on the normal shelves. ‘Lapland is the main exporter of …’
‘Oy, Daz, what you doing talking to Ni-gel?’ It was Jason Lewis’s voice, with more projection than an opera singer. Nigel didn’t have a teasing nickname – simply saying his own real name in a certain tone of voice was enough, which was much worse.
Jason beckoned authoritatively. ‘Come over here and have a butcher’s at this woman – biggest boobs in the world!’
Now that was tempting.
Darren looked from Jason to Nigel and back again. There was Jason slouching on the best beanbag, surrounded by the coolest boys in class, with a book that promised naked women.
And there was Nigel, hands still twisting together, something green blooming out of his bulbous schnozz, a ‘good work!’ sticker on his jumper that was so well-ironed it had creases. There was a spark of hope in Nigel’s eyes as he looked directly at Darren for the first time.
‘He’s helping me with a project for Miss,’ Darren called over to Jason, then, heaving the big Finland book in his arms, he whispered to Nigel, ‘here, let’s nick this and take it to the classroom – you can get away with it.’
The spark of hope had disappeared from Nigel’s eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he muttered.
Darren was reminded of his parents, and the way their faces had dropped on Christmas Day when the joy they’d anticipated had shrunk into mere polite thanks. This was a test, he knew it. He could fly so high that his bum froze – he could do anything.
‘And … And Nigel’s an alright bloke, really,’ Darren said, loudly so that he couldn’t pretend anyone had misheard. ‘He’s my mate.’
There was silence, for once, in the library, as Darren left with Nigel. Equally quietly, Nigel stopped twisting his hands together, and passed something to Darren: a little piece of red cloth that still smelt of Christmas Roses and the ozone from the clouds high above Deneholme.
‘Thanks,’ said Darren. ‘It’s great to have someone who knows. Maybe even … super.’
He cringed at his own pun, but Nigel laughed out loud for the first time since Darren had known him.,
One moment Darren was standing arms akimbo at the top of the slide, surveying his kingdom of Deneholme Park, and the next he was several feet higher, so high that he could see right over the wall into the convent school’s garden.
He spent a few moments half-heartedly gawking at the girls running around in their tartan pinafores, and then his gaze wandered. Unfortunately, this view took in his feet and the lack of solid ground beneath them. After some Wily Coyote scrabbling, he was plummeting towards Nigel’s upturned O of a face.
Fortunately, this meant that the only witness to Darren’s newfound supernatural powers was now unconscious on the playground tarmac.
The other kids all assumed that Darren had leapt onto Nigel on purpose – Jason Lewis even claimed he’d heard Darren shout ‘Geronimo’ and everyone agreed, as they always did with Jason. Even Darren’s brother Lee joined in, unenthusiastically, though he gave Darren a funny look, as if wondering whether Darren had finally picked sides after years dodging around in neutral territory.
Nobody offered the injured boy any help at all, because it was nerdy Nigel Simpson, the school boffin, and something about Nigel made him a natural target for everyone – even the school hamster peed on him at every opportunity. If you were going to splat bum-first onto anyone, it would be Nigel.
Nigel’s parents didn’t agree. Neither did Darren’s. As punishment, he was banned from the park for a whole month. Naturally, he stomped around saying it wasn’t fair, because the world would come crumbling down if ten-year-old boys took their punishments with equanimity, but in reality he didn’t mind. It gave him an excuse to stay at home alone and experiment.
His second flight was from the coal shed roof, a whole four feet high. Even that close to the ground, Darren felt the same inner lightness that he’d had on the top of the slide. All his worries were still there – the stolen Jaffa Cakes in his wardrobe, the way the dog had been limping lately, Jason Lewis’s occasional snide comments, Jason Lewis’s occasional friendly comments, everything – all pressing down inside his body, heavier than his bones, but the rest of him was so light that he could carry those worries away, no problem.
He could do anything.
Except stay in the air for more than a few minutes. Darren was proud of his stunt-man landing.
On the first of November the Indian Summer sky had switched to a grey the colour of a dead TV screen, and it stayed that way till well into the Christmas holidays, but that only meant that fewer people were outside to see Darren’s battle with gravity.
The tallest structure in his small world was the Gothic spire of Deneholme Parish Church, covered in scaffolding for as long as he could remember. He hadn’t been inside the church since he was christened, but still, as he approached it he felt a lurch of fear in his belly. Even the wind had stopped, like it was holding its breath. Darren remembered his Nan just before the family holiday to Benidorm: ‘If God had meant us to fly, he wouldn't have invented airplane food.’
All the way through the airport his Nan had been moving her hand from head to heart to the other side of the chest to her tummy and back again. Darren did his best to mimic the ritual, changing the order around sometimes in case he’d got it wrong, then put his gloved hand on the frozen metal scaffold and pretended it was all as easy as if he was on the monkey bars at the park.
At the top of the spire everything seemed brighter, not crowded in by the shadows of the ordinary buildings below. The world was at his feet. Darren had stepped out into the air before he’d even realised that he was definitely going to do it.
When he stayed afloat, he looked at the clouds and imagined a white-bearded old man giving him a nod, a wink and a thumbs up.
Yes!
Darren had never felt such pure happiness. His worries were now as heavy to him as a pack of Maltesers would be to a giant.
The God-cloud separated to reveal a shard of sun before an ashtray-coloured cloud shrouded it. Darren sank slowly towards the Earth, barely having time to take in the sights before his trainers hit tarmac once more.
Flying became easy from then on – or, rather, floating. No matter what Darren did, he drifted with as much control as the autumn leaves around him – only less colourful, his grey school uniform camouflaging him against the sky like a toilet roll tube in a puddle.
After dark, when he had to be indoors or his Mum would start phoning round his friends, Darren pored over comic books with an intensity that surprised his parents. He had never really been into reading before, not even comics, but they decided that it was a good thing, since the more words he saw, surely the more he’d learn.
On parents’ evening, Darren’s teacher, Miss Davies, agreed – Darren no longer stumbled or made things up when reading out in class, and, true, his stories included the words bam and kapow a little more often than necessary, but he would grow out of that in time.
Growing out of it was what Darren feared most. If his comics had taught him anything, it was that superpowers often start when you’re a kid, but they don’t stop. He pretended not to know that his comic book heroes usually got their superpowers shortly after they grew hair in strange places and developed an interest in girls, not when they were still young enough to be playing with Lego. He decided not to remember that comic books weren’t real.
He hid his face and his voice behind The Incredible Hulk issue 223 and tilted his chair rebelliously on two legs against the wall. ‘It’s not just a phase,’ he grumbled.
He heard a cough from nearby and glanced up. Nigel Simpson was sat bolt upright opposite Darren, clearly about to speak.
Darren turned away with deliberate rudeness. He certainly was not going to talk to Nigel Simpson about how great reading was – Nigel’s main topic of conversation - and he definitely was not going to notice that Nigel Simpson was also reading The Incredible Hulk issue 223.
For Christmas, Darren’s parents excitedly wrapped up a Spiderman costume and not two, but three hard-backed annuals, pleased that they were able to get their younger son a present he would surely adore.
Darren did grin with delight as he unwrapped his annuals, and tried to keep the grin in place as he unwrapped the Spiderman costume. There was no hiding from his Mum and Dad, though; they said nothing, but hurried on quickly to Lee’s new Sega game and digital watch, trying not to show their own disappointment.
When they were both out of the room making tea and having a quiet smoke, Lee leaned over and asked him what was wrong with the costume. Darren fingered the polyester material morosely.
‘Spiderman can’t fly. He’d like to, but all he does is swing around on those stupid webs that look like snot. I bet I could do that if I could snot hard enough. Bet even you could.’
That, of course, led to the brothers having a ‘how long can you make your snot’ competition. Mum ordered them out of the room, disgusted but privately amused, while she cleaned the carpet. Lee immediately ran off to try out his new game.
Feeling guilty about his ingratitude, Darren decided to change into the Spiderman costume and go for a wander in the garden. Nobody else would be around, and maybe he could give the whole Spidey thing a go; at least Peter Parker didn’t wear his y-fronts outside his tights.
It was a beautiful sunny blue-skied day, the kind that often seems to come at Christmas when everyone’s hoping for a white one. After a quick nose around to check that none of their neighbours had come out into the cold, Darren shot his arm out like in the comics and zoomed towards the garden shed.
And over it, then over the fence, then over the alleyway, then over the corner shop roof, narrowly missing the TV aerial, and on and on till he was hanging in the air higher than any of the buildings in Deneholme. Even the church spire was a flat slate square from up here. At last! God really must approve – Darren got to do this on Christmas Day!
He continued rising up, more slowly now, till it wasn’t fun any more and he started to fear that God liked him a little too much and was planning on taking him to heaven as a Christmas present for himself.
And it was cold. The Spidey costume covered his face, but Darren hadn’t been able to do the back up on his own and his bum was starting to freeze. He’d heard that people often pooed themselves when they were scared. Would his poo freeze as it hit the air, then hurtle to the Earth and hit some innocent, like perhaps that poor berk Nigel Simpson, causing death by turd? That would be a, well, crap way to go.
So would falling from this high up. Darren chanced a look downwards. He must be at least a million miles up by now.
As if sensing his feelings, the bright sky began to darken. From somewhere over near Darren’s house, which was smaller than a Monopoly house from here, a monstrous anvil of a cloud was marching towards the flying boy like Miss Davies when she caught you picking your nose.
The very sight of it made Darren’s powers grow weaker, and the ground came closer, closer, like a zoom on a TV show.
He flapped his arms wildly, then tried pointing his arms like Superman, then attempted a glide, and even tried to think happy thoughts. Nothing helped, just like it hadn’t all those other times.
Wondering whether his grieving parents would bury him in the Spiderman costume, and whether they’d ever forgive him for ruining Christmas, Darren gave up, lay on his back with his costume flapping loose, and spread his arms wide, freefalling.
The sun, still bright in this corner of sky, almost blinded him. Instinctively, Darren flung his hands in front of his eyes. As his arms moved his whole body spun round, but he thought that perhaps the wind up his bumcrack was rushing more slowly now. He moved his hands away from his eyes, facing up to the sun again, and felt himself come to a standstill.
Gingerly, he tweaked a little finger to the left. His body jerked left with it as if pulled by string. To the right, the same happened. When he made a sweeping movement with his whole hand, he swung around in an arc like footballs always did when he tried to kick them straight. For a while Darren forgot he was still several buses high, and swung himself left and right, forwards and back; if anyone had seen him they’d have thought him a kite.
Excellent. That was horizontal movement sorted. Now, how about down? With the greatest of care, and muttering ‘pleasepleaseplease,’ Darren pointed his fingers slightly towards the ground.
First his body turned into a standing position, and then he seemed to be moving, but so slowly that he didn’t want to jinx anything by being overconfident.
It wasn’t until the corner of his eye saw a shocked round O of a face in a window that Darren was sure it was definitely working. He grinned, but at that moment the wind gave a strong burst, lurching him towards the wall. Then the dark anvil cloud got fed with looming and came crashing right down into Darren’s portion of sky, cutting out all light from the sun.
He ended up tumbling noisily into a greenhouse full of Christmas Roses. The framework caught at his cloak, and he had to tug at it to let himself drop the last couple of feet, landing on a floor covered with glittering glass and crushed scarlet petals.
All wondrous joy at the experience of controlled flight was chased away by fear of being told off. How could he possibly explain smashing someone’s greenhouse when he didn’t even have a football as an excuse?
To top it all, he must be miles from home. He hadn’t aimed in any particular direction, for which he now cursed himself. Darren pelted towards the fence, scrambled over it, and dashed along the alleyway in any old direction.
Years later, he realised that his long run home had probably only taken about ten minutes, going on where he’d landed. His Mum had lengthened the time in her head too, though, going on how much she shouted at her ungrateful son when he finally reappeared at the back door, shivering, damp and smelling slightly of urine and garden centres.
It would have been easier if his face had show his genuine regret for the distress he’d caused. All his face showed was the joy of sudden realisation as he looked at the half-lit sky.
Back at school, Darren spent every spare moment in the library, looking at the geography and science books. Nope, nothing in there about sunlight affecting the ability to fly. Those scientists knew nothing.
Here was something, though:
Lapland, mythical home of Father Christmas, is so far North that, in June and July, the sun never sets, turning night into day.
The library was busy that dreary wet playtime – even Jason Lewis was in there, flicking through the most disgusting bits in the Guinness World of Records, surrounded by his henchmen, all shaven as bald as their Dads. But Darren was in Lapland. Well, almost.
Oh, what a magical place that would be! He’d be able to swoop and soar any time he wanted, at least in the summer (in the winter he’d go to Florida and live at Disneyworld), with no mean clouds to stop him! Maybe there were other people there who could do the same as him. Maybe Darren was a secret Laplander, adopted by his English parents after his real mum and dad got murdered by a cumulonimbus. Maybe he would meet lots of other flying people one day, who would teach him to use his powers for the good of mankind. Oh yes. Darren nodded wisely to himself.
He was brought out of his reverie by the sound of a drawn-out sniff behind him. Only Nigel Simpson had a nose that bunged up all year round, and the smash last September hadn’t helped. Still feeling noble, Darren turned round with a smile.
‘Hey, Nige. Um. You know. Sorry about falling on your head before.’ He’d apologised at the time, but they both knew he hadn’t meant it.
Nigel screwed his hands together nervously. ‘That’s alright. I know it was an accident.’ He continued staring at the floor, at the bookshelves, at anywhere but Darren. ‘That’s a good book you’ve got there, but if you really want to know about Lapland, you should try that one.’ With his head, he nodded towards one of the big books that wouldn’t fit on the normal shelves. ‘Lapland is the main exporter of …’
‘Oy, Daz, what you doing talking to Ni-gel?’ It was Jason Lewis’s voice, with more projection than an opera singer. Nigel didn’t have a teasing nickname – simply saying his own real name in a certain tone of voice was enough, which was much worse.
Jason beckoned authoritatively. ‘Come over here and have a butcher’s at this woman – biggest boobs in the world!’
Now that was tempting.
Darren looked from Jason to Nigel and back again. There was Jason slouching on the best beanbag, surrounded by the coolest boys in class, with a book that promised naked women.
And there was Nigel, hands still twisting together, something green blooming out of his bulbous schnozz, a ‘good work!’ sticker on his jumper that was so well-ironed it had creases. There was a spark of hope in Nigel’s eyes as he looked directly at Darren for the first time.
‘He’s helping me with a project for Miss,’ Darren called over to Jason, then, heaving the big Finland book in his arms, he whispered to Nigel, ‘here, let’s nick this and take it to the classroom – you can get away with it.’
The spark of hope had disappeared from Nigel’s eyes. ‘Yeah,’ he muttered.
Darren was reminded of his parents, and the way their faces had dropped on Christmas Day when the joy they’d anticipated had shrunk into mere polite thanks. This was a test, he knew it. He could fly so high that his bum froze – he could do anything.
‘And … And Nigel’s an alright bloke, really,’ Darren said, loudly so that he couldn’t pretend anyone had misheard. ‘He’s my mate.’
There was silence, for once, in the library, as Darren left with Nigel. Equally quietly, Nigel stopped twisting his hands together, and passed something to Darren: a little piece of red cloth that still smelt of Christmas Roses and the ozone from the clouds high above Deneholme.
‘Thanks,’ said Darren. ‘It’s great to have someone who knows. Maybe even … super.’
He cringed at his own pun, but Nigel laughed out loud for the first time since Darren had known him.,
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