Billy pulls the back door shut behind him. His mum has gone to bed to stretch out for a bit. The atmospherics are playing havoc with her head. She’s taken a shot of Bachs rescue remedy and is snoring in a most unladylike manner. Or perhaps it’s very ladylike, Billy can’t be sure. Either way, it’s loud.
The Day of the Dead – of all days he shouldn’t be outside, but Billy doesn’t like doing things ‘just because he should or shouldn’t do them…’ well.
The day has begun to mist. It is heavy and damp. He pulls his green hoodie over his head and hoists his backpack onto his shoulders. He kicks one foot out in front of the other and starts walking. Twenty minutes later, he is walking past Miss Beetle’s cottage. She is home, a light is twinkling and a plume of smoke has just belched delicately3 through the chimney. It’s easy to see, even in the mist, that the smoke is a grubby dark colour.
Billy pauses to glance through the front window, his curiosity stalling him, but he can’t see Miss Beetle. After a moment, he resumes his shuffle. One of his sneaker laces has started to come undone. Billy compensates with his other foot until it’s no use – there’s nothing for it but to bend down and redo it. He uses a complex manoeuvre to tie up the knot; a ritual that always results in his mum tilting her head to one side and going slightly pink as she fights every urge to jump in and do it up ‘the right way’. With his mum, there’s always a ‘right way’ and a ‘wrong way’. She has never followed grey, whereas Billy tends to sit somewhere on the fringe between black and white. They have as yet to reach an understanding. Still, his shoelace knot is sound. He walks on.
It takes a further ten minutes for Billy to realise he is famished, starving, exclamation mark. He feels his stomach growling before he hears it – a great big feeling and an even bigger sound.
Billy remembers the Curly Wurly he stuffed into his hoodie pocket. It’s a bit melted and crumpled but apart from that it’s grand. When he’s finished, he wipes his hands on his jeans, then he licks the chocolate off the inside of the wrapper. Once done, he shakes the plastic off his fingers and watches it sink limply into the grass.
“Oi!” a loud, tinny and – it has to be said – annoying voice yells very deliberately at him. The one time, he thinks to himself. He stalls, it’s pointless running. Besides, the other shoelace has started to unravel.
“You cheeky little brat, I saw that, what do you think you are doing?”
It’s Missus Furnish, that voice.
Billy bends down and picks up the wrapper; it’s still a bit sticky, he missed some of the chocolate, but the toffee is steadfast, anyway. He straightens up. He can feel her bustling beside him. Billy turns and looks up at her, his eyes wide like saucers.
“Don’t bother, young man! That’s wasted on me, I could have you sent to jail for that! How would you like that?” Missus Furnish exclaims.
Wouldn’t half mind, Billy thinks mutinously, if it meant I didn’t have to put up with this.
“Just wait until your mother hears.”
Billy hands her the wrapper. Instinctively she whips it off him, then she starts flapping – it is disgustingly sticky. Billy smiles benignly and walks off. When he remembers his other shoelace, it is almost irredeemable, sodden and mucky after trailing him. It doesn’t bother Billy, in the same way that worms and muck accompany all small boys.
A small sweet voice whispers, “That’s really mean, what you did, she’s trying to stay off chocolate. Weight Watchers. Now look! It’s stuck fast, chocolate’s all she can smell.”
Billy arches an eyebrow; he recognises the voice. It belongs to a sombre girl who takes life very seriously, thank you very much.
Billy breathes in through his nose, filling his chest with air.
“Plus,” she says emphatically, “what you did, it’s bad, for the en-vir-on-ment. A bird could have choked on that.”
Billy rolls his eyes.
“It would’ve been a pretty stupid bird then, better off gone.” He shakes his head.
The voice replies, “So long as you are comfortable with the murder of an innocent animal that wasn’t even thinking of harming you.”
Billy falters, he wasn’t expecting this. “Didn’t mean it, just, well, I think birds like Curly Wurlys.”
“Mmm, hmm,” the voice has taken on the air of the righteous.
Missus Furnish is storming off. “You should be inside,” she yells after them. “Today of all days!”
Billy shrugs and stays silent. He looks at the solemn voice, her serious face; slate grey eyes framed by an orb of blonde tightly wound curls, so blonde it is almost white. She is wearing a bright yellow rain mac, the hood is down, her hair is wet through but it still springs out in every direction. She is wearing a pair of pink cords and Doc Marten lace-ups, which are cerise pink. She wrinkles her nose.
“You’ve a patch on your jeans.”
Billy nods, glances down. Yes, it’s still there.
“And your top is letting in the rain.”
Billy looks up, it’s still raining.
She watches him fastidiously, waiting for a response.
“You always look scruffy in school too, why is that?”
Billy throws his eyes up towards the sky.
“Daisy Milicent, shut up! You are such a… a… a whine!”
Daisy glares at him.
“Am not. Just sayin.” She kicks at a pebble ferociously. The pebble ricochets off the footpath, flicks up and bounces off Billy.
“What did you go and do that for?” Billy says, rubbing his elbow; the funny bone.
Daisy’s cheeks have turned pink.
“Where are you going anyway? There’s school tomorrow.”
The mist and rain are beginning to lighten off, the day is still grey. Billy pushes his hood back.
“Daisy…” he pauses. “Daisy, that’s none of your business.”
“I never said it was!” she exclaims in response. “But if Miss Beetle asks, I won’t tell a lie.”
Billy watches her and knows that she’s telling the truth. Daisy’s face is incapable of bluffing.
“I’ve lost something,” Billy says.
Daisy’s eyes widen, “What did you lose?” She takes a breath and makes a decision. “I will help you find it.”
Billy starts to shake his head and say, “No…”, but Daisy steps to stand beside him and cuts him off.
“Yes,” she says firmly. She hooks his arm and drags him in the direction he was facing. “This way, right?”
Billy nods, he neither wants nor needs company but Daisy’s enthusiasm will wane, so he will just wait it out.
They hear the bike before they see it. The rusty chain catches as the cyclist presses down on the pedal. It lumbers on the road and clatters with each spin of the wheel as though a spoke has come loose4.
Billy turns to see who it is. A thin boy with long gangly limbs is riding the bike. He is wearing a helmet with a set of bristles spiking through its middle, like the gremlin stripe. He’s wearing glasses, round, brown-rimmed and sturdy. The bike and boy are not stable, both wobble and veer. Billy is the first to notice the pothole and starts to call out to the boy but it is too little too late. The boy’s bike catches the pothole, he tumbles off and finishes up sprawled on the footpath, the bike upturned, wheels spinning and making an annoying scratching noise. Billy and Daisy run over to him.
Billy says, “Are you OK?”
The eyes blink, glasses and helmet intact, though the helmet is now at an odd angle, skewed just enough to make his face look lopsided.
“Missus Furnish told me you were out and going somewhere,” he says, his voice crackles. “You’re not going there, wherever that is, without me, ouch!”
“Screech, you can’t come,” Billy says quietly. Screech shakes his head; the helmet wobbles a bit more. He sits up, then sees Daisy.
“What are you doing here?”
“Last time I saw, it’s a free country, besides,” she replies loftily.
The sky darkens, the clouds turning from an off-white colour to take on such a deep darkness they hang over the ground and buildings, covering them in charcoal-coloured candyfloss.
Billy watches Screech and Daisy. There’ll be no budging them now – their combined stubbornness would face-off Missus Furnish and the entire parish council.
Screech moves to stand up, it’s a complex motion that involves unfolding lanky limbs and disentangling bits of him from his bike. Standing, Screech is taller than both Billy and Daisy – who are both roughly the same height. Daisy thinks she is taller than both of them but that is through sheer force of will. She has unhooked herself from Billy and is watching Screech, hands on hips, disapproving.
“Oh for heaven’s sake, Peter,” she marches over to him and yanks the bike away in one swift motion.
Daisy always calls Peter by his proper name; she thinks the nickname Screech is just ridiculous.
“Daisy, mind the bike! I just got that fixed, did it myself with my mum’s toolbox,” Peter, aka Screech, says proudly.
Peter’s mum is the woodwork teacher in the vocational school. She makes furniture in her spare time. She is currently working on a coffee table that can turn into a surfboard. She likes to say things like, ‘I think outside the box’. Peter thinks she’s the cleverest woman he knows. She doesn’t disagree.
Daisy looks at the bike sceptically; it doesn’t look particularly fixed to her.
Peter takes off his helmet, his hair is all squashed. It’s a mousey brown colour and stuck to his head, a bit like Clark Kent. He cradles the helmet under his left arm and uses his right hand to grab the handlebar on his bike, and gently but determinedly pulls it away from Daisy.
“Billy, Missus Furnish said you were up to devilment, you’re not are you?” Peter’s mum is also a born-again Christian. She takes God and the Devil very seriously and has drummed this seriousness into Peter. Peter peers at Billy.
Little boys have a capacity to shrug that can infuriate the most easy-going adult but when they shrug at another little boy, even one who wears thick glasses, they meet their match.
“Billy, devilment is bad, answer me.”
Billy looks at Peter and says, “No, course not, just being myself.”
“That’s OK then, if you can’t be yourself, well then, you’re nowhere,” Peter replies sagely.
Daisy has taken this whole exchange in quietly for once. She looks from one to the other.
“Well,” she bristles, “are we going to stand here all day or get a move on? Billy, the clock is ticking.” She taps her wrist even though she isn’t wearing a watch.
Billy looks urgently at her and remembers the contents of his backpack. Daisy is right. He has one last stab at going it alone.
“I don’t know when I’m going to get back.” He pauses. “And there is certain danger.”
This perks the pair of them up, certain danger is what it’s all about. They both step closer to Billy, the pedal on Peter’s bike whacks him on the shin.
Billy says quietly, “We may not all make it back…”
Daisy glances at Peter. Now that’s what I’m talking about, an adventure.
“So, Billy, where to?”
Billy’s eyes widen and he looks her straight in the eye. “The Golden Gate.”
Daisy narrows her eyes. “Never heard of it, Billy, are you having a laugh?”
“Nope.” Billy reaches into his bag and pulls out the book. He flips open the inner sleeve and opens out a large page that has been folded into the pocket of the book.
Peter pushes his glasses up to the bridge of his nose and takes hold of one corner, while Billy traces out their journey. Sure enough, they see their pretty village; the cobblestone path, the river, the forest, Mad Madge’s house, the quarry, and there in the far right-hand upper corner of the map, a drawing of a gate. It sparkles.
Daisy’s eyes are still narrowed. “That’s a funny looking map. There are no grids or anything.”
“That’s because it’s a very old map, with bits added on,” Billy replies.
“Doesn’t sound very official, ‘with bits added on’,” Daisy sniffs.
Billy looks at her and shakes his head in resignation. Some people will just never understand.
“Of course it’s not official, it’s magical. It only shows itself on the Day of the Dead.”
“Ohhhh,” Peter and Daisy reply in unison, “if it’s magic then it must be true.”
“So what’s at the Golden Gate then?”
“You’ll see.”
They start walking. Peter is still holding on to a piece of the map and looking at it, the far pedal of his bike is repeatedly clanking against Billy’s shin. Peter stalls and asks Billy, “That bit there, Billy. What does it say?”
“Certain death.” Billy nods seriously.
“You weren’t joking then.”
“Nope.”
Peter glances at Daisy and mutters, “Not half.”