Jack Tumor (17 page)

Plan. That's it. Tell me what to do. And don't just say “be yourself.”

“Be yourself” is rubbish advice. Myself is a useless nerd who's afraid of girls. I need to be someone else.

FIRST OF ALL, COOL IT, CHILLAX, AS I BELIEVE YOU CRAZY KIDS SAY. SCREW YOUR COURAGE TO THE STICKING PLACE, AS I'D PREFER TO PUT IT. FAINT HEART NEVER WON FAIR MAID, AND WINNING FAIR MAID IS WHAT WE'RE ALL ABOUT. AND I WASN'T GOING TO SAY “BE YOURSELF.” WHAT KIND OF CLICHÉ-SPOUTER DO YOU TAKE ME FOR? WHO WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE
?

The Flash was always good with girls, in a slightly cheesy way.

The Flash was regularly mocked by the other Justice Leaguers for his frivolity. Too often he'd be chatting up a couple of girls in a bar when he should be saving the universe. But he usually got there in the end, saving-the-universe-wise.

SO, THINK LIKE THE FLASH. REMEMBER, GIRLS LOVE CONFIDENCE. THEY WANT TO FEEL THAT THEY'VE LANDED A BIG FISH, THAT THEY'VE GOT THE GUY ALL THE OTHER GIRLS WANT. YOU'RE GOD'S GIFT, AND YOU KNOW IT
.

So much for his avoidance of cliché. But I didn't say anything about it. No sense hurting his feelings. Not now, at least, when I needed him on my team. If I was going to be the Flash, he was J'onn J'onzz, great in both age and wisdom, a mind reader, oozing empathy, but powerful also in attack and resolute in defense. And, er, green.

But that's just what I don't know. Nobody wants me. And Uma knows that. I mean, she knows that I don't know that I'm God's gift. If you follow me.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS
.

What?

IT'S ALL SMOKE AND MIRRORS. ILLUSION. CREATE THE
IMPRESSION THAT YOU'RE A SEX GOD, AND SHE'LL SEE YOU AS A SEX GOD
.

And how do I do that?

BY BELIEVING IT
.

But I told you, I don't believe it. I don't believe it because it's not true.

Pause. Tumor thinking.

WELL, I CAN FIX THAT
.

How?

GIVE ME A SECOND
.

Another pause, and then it all went a bit mental. I felt Jack T. begin to rummage around. It was almost as if he was looking for a magazine or a book left in an untidy bedroom. I even heard him curse to himself, as if he'd stubbed his toe or barked his shins.

Whatever it was he was looking for, he found it.

OH YES. YES INDEEDY-DO
.

With a jolt like a slap in the face, the world came into sharper focus. Colors were brighter, the air clearer. I could hear things that I shouldn't have been able to hear—far-off things, silent things. Ideas came into my head, calculations, equations, bits of poetry. Things I'd learned and forgotten years ago all ran together in a mass like a dream or a nightmare: toseetheuniverse inagrainofsandontogenyrecapitulatesphylogenyaspecteris hauntingeuropeifihaveseenfurtherthanyouitisbystandingonthe shouldersofgiantsobravenewworldthathassuchpeopleinitnega tivenumbershavenosquarerootbecauseifyoumultiplytwonegative numbersyougetapositive.

I tried to slow the thought stream, but it kept coming, kept
fizzing, so then I tried to put it back, hiding it, covering it, and that worked, sort of, and the thought became a hum, like electric wires.

I was walking more quickly, almost skipping (but not skip-ping—that wouldn't have done at all), and I sniffed, and my fingers drummed, and I ground my teeth together to some mad rhythm, maybe a rumba or a salsa or something from the jazz age or from the future. And if all that sounds bad, then it shouldn't because I felt great; great isn't the word, the word should be, well there isn't a word, so I'll call it
ofdnz;cljkf9eklgh'dpigfoijfl
and you can make your own mind up about it.

But the best thing was that I knew that it was all going to be fine with Uma Upshaw. How could it not be? Wasn't I gorgeous? Wasn't I as cool as a human boy could be, cool as a penguin sucking an ice pop? And wouldn't Uma melt into my arms like caramel on a tongue? But melt isn't right because I was cool, like the penguin, remember, but it doesn't matter because you understand. Up until this point I'd still kept alive the idea that I might maybe just perhaps be going to Uma's to tell her that Smurf fancied her. Well, now that idea died. Now I had but one idea.

What have you done? I asked wonderingly, fizzingly, frantically.

LIKE IT
?

Yeah, it's fantastic, it's
ofdnz;cljkf9eklgh'dpigfoijfl
. But what is it? What have you done done done done?

DOPAMINE
.

Dopamine . . .? That's a . . . brain . . . thing, right?

OH YES
.

What does it do?

WELL, ALL THE THINGS YOU'RE FEELING NOW. IT MAKES YOU FEEL CONFIDENT AND HAPPY, AND GIVES YOU AN ENERGY HIT. IT MAKES EVERYTHING CONNECT. IT'S ABSOLUTELY MY FAVORITE BRAIN CHEMICAL
.

And you just told my brain to make some?

SORT OF. YOUR BRAIN MAKES IT ALL THE TIME. BUT IT ALSO SUCKS IT BACK IN AGAIN. I BLOCKED THE SUCKING-BACK-IN BIT, SO YOU'VE GOT MORE OF IT SLOSHING AROUND. COOL, EH
?

Pretty cool, yeah.

AND ARE YOU READY TO ROCK
?

You bet. Rock. Yes, let's rock.

GOOD, BECAUSE WE'RE HERE
.

A
nd so we were. Right outside Upshaw's. I could see three or four people in there, queuing, big coats hunched along the counter. And behind the counter were Mrs. Upshaw and, Holy of Holies, Uma. She was wearing a pale green-and-white-checked coat-thing that entirely concealed the wondrous spread of her bosombas, and a little paper hat not unlike a nurse's hat. She was shoveling chips into a bag. Two full scoops, then a flick. Nice action. Then she put a battered fillet of what deduction told me was likely to be cod on top of the chips and dextrously wrapped the combo in white paper. She worked neatly, quickly, but with a hint of anger in the whiteness of her knuckles, and the grim set of her mouth.

Watching her work, I felt some of the chemical effervescence begin to fizzle out.

NOW OR NEVER
.

What's the downside of never?

JUST MOVE IT
.

So I opened the door and went in. I was dazzled by the harsh neon light, fogged with the smell of old chip fat. The blessed chip fat—surely, if anything could, that would block out the Old Tramp.

Almost straightaway, Uma looked up. Her eyes sharpened and then went vague, as though she was trying to hide whatever it was she was feeling. Annoyance, perhaps. Or embarrassment. Unlikely to be lust.

“Hey,” I said, from the back of the queue.

An old man in a heavy coat that looked like it was made from the dead remains of many other coats turned and huffed at me.

“Some of us are waiting,” he said gruffly, taking me for a pusher-in. His false teeth clacked like he was simultaneously sending out a message in Morse code. I was going to say something back, but then I noticed the pink hearing aid and the coiling wire, and I instantly saw all the possibilities for looking like an idiot if I tried to talk to the deaf old geezer. “What? Eh? You said my hovercraft is full of eels? I'll give you hovercraft!” That sort of thing. And looking up I saw that Uma was smiling.

“Hair,” she said, and my fizzing mind decoded it, working as fast as the people in Bletchley Park who decoded the German Ultra transcripts and won the war for us.

I-l-i-k-e-y-o-u-r-h-a-i-r.

Could that be it? I ran it through again.

I-l-i-k-e-y-o-u-r-h-a-i-r.

Yes!

Please let it not just be the dopamine playing havoc with my judgment.

“I thought you always went to the gyppy chippie,” she said, without breaking her rhythm of two scoops and a shake.

It was definitely quite a promising start. She could easily have accused me of being an Eater of the Gay Chip. The very fact that she knew what my usual chip shop was suggested that she had some kind of interest in me. Either that or her concern for local chip-eating trends was purely scientific and business-oriented, which seemed unlikely.

“It's closer,” I said, “but . . . ”

“But what?”

Uma was looking deep into the fryer, as if there was something especially interesting about the fat. Maybe it contained a piece of batter shaped like Mother Teresa.

“But . . .” But what? I had to think of something good. C'mon, Jack, c'mon, dopamine, this is where I need you.

But your cod fillets are a bit thicker?

But you use a better quality of vinegar?

But . . . help! My brain was spinning and whirring but going nowhere.

“But . . .
YOU DON'T WORK THERE
.”

It was Jack. He'd taken over for a moment, done my talking for me. I should have been annoyed, but this wasn't the time. And I'm not saying it was necessarily in the top one hundred all-time great chip shop chat-up lines, but it was a hell of a lot better than silence. I think Jack even managed to get a little extra something into my voice, a certain . . .
swagger
, which meant that the words punched above their weight.

And then the unthinkable happened.

Uma Upshaw, the unflappable, imperturbable, iron-clad Uma Upshaw, blushed. I saw it. She really did. It began somewhere beneath the green nylon collar of her coat and carried right up until it hit her hairline, where, for all I knew, it continued
till it met at a point right beneath the center of her little paper hat. It was the world turned upside down. I didn't make people blush. I was the blusher. I think a little natural dopamine got injected into my system with that minor triumph.

OH BOY
, said Jack.

Without quite understanding how, I found that I was at the front of the queue, and Mrs. Upshaw was looking at me. I don't think she'd taken in the juddering import of what had just occurred: the chat-up, the blushing, the glory.

“What can I get you, love?” she asked mechanically. I guess that if I'd have been a slavering werewolf she'd have said the same thing.

“I'm here for Uma,” I said.

“Chips with that?”

No, Eve Upshaw didn't seem to be quite all there tonight.

“No, er, I said Uma, I've come for Uma.”

Before Mrs. Upshaw had time to respond, a shadow loomed over the counter. Uma's dad had appeared from the kitchen. He was wearing a white apron and carrying a bucket of raw chips as big as a beer barrel.

“Who's this?” he said, aiming at me, but speaking to God knows who.

“I'm here for Uma,” I managed to say, and I don't think it came out as a squeak, but you never know.

Les dropped his bucket of chips. His face was a solid slab of meat, and it seemed to sort of flow into his bald head, so you couldn't really say where face stopped and scalp began. I noticed for the first time that he had a very small mouth. It wasn't a pretty face, but it was an impressive one.

And now it was making a growling noise.

“I've come to ask her out. On a walk.”

“You what?”

He sounded like I'd said, “to the nearest dung heap, on which I plan to ravish her with the aid of a selection of large, misshapen root vegetables, including, but not limited to, turnip, rutabaga, and kohlrabi.”

“For a walk, Mr. Upshaw. Now.”

Blustering outrage took over from puzzled anger.

“She . . .
not a chance
. . . work to do . . . walking the streets with the likes of . . . ought to come around there and—”

“Go and get ready, Uma, love.”

This was, unexpectedly, Eve Upshaw speaking.

“What you on about? I just said—”

“Lesley, this is Hector Brunty. He's a nice lad. His mother works at the charity shop.”

“But there's chips to—”

“Don't make a bother. We're quiet. You can see we are.”

And it was then that I noticed that we were alone in the shop—no one had come in after me. But Les Upshaw wasn't beaten yet.

“Aye, but the rush'll be on soon.”

“We'll cope.”

Without saying anything, Uma dashed past her parents and out the back. Rationally, of course, I had no way of knowing if this just meant that she had cleared off to catch
EastEnders
— after all, she hadn't said yes to going on a walk with me, let alone the ravishing on the dung heap with the vegetables. But the dopamine permitted no pessimism and I knew she'd return to me.

But for now I was on my own with Les and Eve.

Ugh.

Les was looking vaguely stunned now, as if he'd just woken up during an operation. An anal probe, perhaps. His inappropriately petite mouth was hanging open. And, now I looked more closely, I could see that his lips were of normal proportions, and it was the side-to-side measurement of the mouth opening that was unusually restricted. It made his lips protrude somewhat, giving him a guppylike appearance. A very big guppy, mind you.

Eve was smiling at me.

“And how's your mother?” she asked.

“Fine.”

I thought maybe they had counseling together. Something like that.

“Want some chips, while you wait?”

“Er, no thanks, Mrs. Upshaw.”

“Summat up wi' my chips?” That was Les, of course, prick-ling for a fight.

“No! Your chips are great. And your fish. And your, er, pickled eggs.”

“Battered sausage?”

“Oh, they're the best.”

“Ha, got you! We don't do a battered sausage. That's the other place what does them.”

“Les! It's not fair to trick the boy. You got him flustered, that's all, with your battered sausages. Who can think straight when there's a battered sausage at stake? It's no wonder he got a bit confused. Battered sausage indeed!”

Then there was a couple of minutes' silence as Les faffed about with the fryer settings and Eve smiled and the dopamine
drained out of me like air from a punctured bicycle tire, and I began to hope for one of those tears in the fabric of space and time to open up so I could pop into a different dimension for a few minutes. Jack made unpleasant remarks which I tried really hard not to listen to, along the lines of suggesting what Les might want to do with his battered sausage, i.e., stick it up his sole. As in a kind of fish. This being a fish and chip shop, and “sole” being the last syllable of arsehole, the whole thing therefore being a joke.