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And here it is...

 

Scooter: The Trilogy

by Zanna Maybury

Book 1

 

Chapter 1

 

At 37, Bearswood Drive, the threadbare curtains in the box room window twitched as Jake Barley peered out to see what the weather was doing on his tenth birthday. A watery sun was peering through the candy floss clouds piled up over Chimney Pots Park, otherwise known as the recreation ground, or rec. He wasn’t as

excited as a normal boy would be on his birthday but thought that with a bit of effort he could look sufficiently interested.

 

Across the park, Jakes best friend Sam was still asleep, exhausted after playing on his phone until the early hours of the morning. Until his nose registered the delicious smell of bacon baps drifting up the stairs. Sam loved food even more than he loved his phone. He blinked himself awake and wondered if Jake was opening his presents yet.

 

Basher Conroy wasn’t sleeping or playing with the curtains. In the kitchen of 14, Grimm Street his grandmother, Nanny Conroy, was advancing on Basher with a spoonful of cod liver oil designed to keep him ‘regular’. Basher hated it and was bracing himself for the foul onslaught by pinching his nose against the hideous taste and the inevitable retching that would surely follow. Nanny pointed at something invisible on the ceiling, and as Basher looked up she shovelled the spoon into Bashers gaping mouth. If Basher Conroy was nasty before, he was even worse after the cod-liver oil.

 

Back at Bearswood Drive, Jake patted his freshly washed face dry and ran a hand through his dark brown curls, wincing slightly as his fingers tangled in the wiry nest. Since it was his birthday those curls had to go. He tried not to dwell on it, but Basher Conroy described him as a fuzzy lollipop at school yesterday. It was in the school corridor outside the canteen, all the junior school students pouring out into the playground after lunch. Basher was coming in the opposite direction for a lunchtime detention in Mrs Purdue’s office. As Basher got closer, Jake braced himself for whatever attack Basher was going to inflict on him today. It looked like nothing bad was going to happen, but then Basher doubled back, cuffed Jake round the head and shouted, ‘fuzzy lollipop!’ at the top of his voice. It was really embarrassing, and Jake cringed, remembering.

 

He had spent some time working out the solution. Reaching up to the highest bathroom shelf, he grabbed a long plastic tube. It slid into the palm of his hand as if he was its owner.

 

He wasn’t it’s owner.  It wasn’t his and he wasn’t supposed to use it. Nevertheless he flicked off the lid and sniffed the slightly grimy nozzle.

 

When his dad - the actual owner of the hair gel- still lived at their house, Jake was forbidden to use this stuff. It was mega expensive and had a sharp, tangy, manly smell. Not allowing himself time to think about his dad, or the fact he wasn’t really meant to help himself to his dad’s things,  he squirted a huge blob into his hand. It was electric blue and cold to the touch. Sliding it greasily between his fingers he applied it to the despised curls and began dragging his fingers, with some difficulty, through the springy coils.

        This was to be the day he:

 

           Changed his hair style…

 

         Changed being bullied by Basher…

 

Stopped wishing for Dad to come back home.
 

       His fingers tugged through his hair, spreading gel coldly over his scalp. It was getting easier now. Carefully he created hedgehog spikes all over his head, angling the bathroom cabinet mirror so that he could sculpt the back. The spikes had started to set hard, excellent! He looked a bit like Sonic now, that was more like it. No one was going to call him fuzzy lollipop again. Satisfied, he screwed the lid closed and returned it to its usual spot; pointless really, since his dad wouldn’t even know he’d used it. He would never know what the spikes looked like. Jake wished he could see what he’d done to his hair. His dad would have made a joke about it. But it wouldn’t be one of those horrible jokes that made you feel stupid, It would have been something that made them both laugh. There weren’t many laughs in their house any more. His mum tried, but she wasn’t funny like Dad. He pushed this thought to the back of his mind. He wasn’t allowed to cry on his birthday.

 

       Pleased with his spiky look, he turned towards the stairs ready to go down and face whatever his mum had lined up for his birthday. He knew it wouldn’t be much, Mum was one of the poorest people he knew, apart from himself.

 

       Perhaps changing his hair would change his meagre luck.

At the bottom of the stairs he braced himself, painted on a smile, and pushed open the kitchen door. Mum hurriedly rearranged the shocked look on her face when she saw the hedgehog spikes radiating out from Jakes scalp. She couldn’t help thinking he looked like the Statue of Liberty, but without the dress. They had a postcard stuck to the fridge with the Statue of Liberty on it from one of his dad’s friends; that must be where he got the idea, she thought. In a flash though, shock was replaced by a banana shaped smile as she rushed across the room, hugging him and shouting ‘Happy Birthday Jakey! Love the hairdo!’

She’d tackle this tomorrow;  she didn’t want to upset him on his birthday.

 

She hustled him over to the table where he saw a very small collection of carefully wrapped gifts. It was obvious that a pack of felt pens and a colouring book were two of the offerings. The third turned out to be an economy pack of giant pink and white marshmallows. Jake contrived a look of pleasure by consciously forcing up the corners of his mouth and crinkling his eyes. At least the marshmallows were worth having. He hugged his mum, and she hugged him back as they did a little dance of manufactured pleasure around the kitchen. She held her chin out of the way; those spikes were sharp.

 

Jake  was tall, gangly and accident prone. He was always colliding with things in the tiny space that was their home , so it was no surprise when he felt himself over balancing as his sneaker caught on something protruding from behind the table. Mum grabbed him to stop him falling. She had to do that a lot.

‘That was lucky! You could have broken something!’

Jake turned carefully to see what had tripped him. It was a brightly wrapped, awkwardly shaped present wedged between the table and the wall, next to the refrigerator. He performed a little jig of pleasure. Could it be? Was it possible? It looked exactly like...Jake pulled it towards him and tore the silver paper off, noticing that the pattern consisted of moons, stars and spark shapes which seemed to glow. He held his breath. He hadn’t been expecting this. There was a picture on the very large box. He looked at it, not believing what his eyes were telling him.

 

‘It’s a golden scooter! Thank you sooo much Mum! This means I can join the scooter club after school. And Basher’s not in it!’’

Mum, surprised, moved in for a better look. ‘I didn’t buy it, what does the label say?’ Jake thought the scooter might have come from his dad, but he didn’t say anything in case it made his mum sad. Mum thought the picture on the front looked a bit like a scooter that she had owned as a child that her own dad gave her, but as quickly as the thought came, it went again. It couldn’t be, could it?

 

While Jake began dragging the scooter from its box, Mum hunted around on the floor for some clue about who had sent it, but there was only crumpled silver paper-no label to be found. She felt a little sad. She too thought Jakes dad might have sent it. Jake peeled the last of the tape from the box, finally releasing the scooter. The  picture on the front had golden stars coming from the wheels. Would this need batteries then? That could be a problem; maybe Sam could lend him some. Ripping away the last shreds of cardboard, Jake lifted the shiny golden scooter from the box. The air started to shimmer like a heat haze on a hot summers day.  The scooter vibrated slightly as Jake placed it carefully on the floor. For a moment they both just gazed at it. Was it glowing? Then Jake sprang to life, about to head out through the door.

 

‘Mum! I’m taking this to Sam’s, I think it needs batteries! He’s always got spares for his games!’ Jake was desperate to get outside and try out riding the scooter up and down the pavement. And he wanted to show it to Sam who live two streets away. It wasn’t often these days that Jake had a thing that was better than anyone else’s.

‘No chance scooter boy, breakfast first' said Mum '- you’ll be needing some energy. Just park that scooter and sit down until you’ve eaten!’

 

 Mum was obsessed with feeding Jake and tried to fill him full of stodgy food at every opportunity, ‘to keep his energy up’. Since they didn’t have much money this was usually stuff like bread, jam, and cheap margarine. Jake, painfully thin, resembled a pipe cleaner and wore clothes two sizes smaller than his actual age, although sleeves and trousers were always too short due to his length. Mum’s  mission was to make him larger, in any way possible. Today was special, so there was nutty chocolate spread and a fresh white loaf that mum had sliced into doorsteps.

 

She watched happily as he took his first bite. She usually made him eat porridge for his breakfast; it was very cheap and very filling so the toast and spread should have been a treat, but Jake could only think about the scooter. He wondered what Sam would say when he saw it. He couldn’t wait to go to Sam’s house and show him. Today was Saturday so if he was quick he could catch him before he was dragged to town to do shopping with his mum and sister.

 Two more mouthfuls of toast, and he was off.

 

*

 

Jake grabbed the handlebars and started to steer towards the front door which was obligingly holding itself open. The scooter felt alive in his hands, just like next doors cat when it was still a kitten. You couldn’t catch it now. The scooter was throwing out pink and purple sparks which made tiny cinders on the hall rug. That’s weird, thought Jake, considering it had no batteries yet. The scooter seemed to know he was watching it and gave a small hop as Jake wheeled it down the hall. He glanced down, worried that the scooter may have a loose screw somewhere. He remembered that Sam’s scooter had lost its front wheel when the screw came out. That’s when Sam fell off and knocked his front teeth out -the other kids all called him Gappy Sam now. The scooter shook. It was almost as if it was laughing. Jake stopped for a moment and checked in case something had dropped off.

 

But no, everything looked fine, except for a tiny puff of smoke coming up from the hall carpet where a spark had jumped off the back wheel. Jake stopped wheeling for a moment, puzzled. He shouted down the hallway: ‘Mum, I think the scooter has sparks coming out of its wheels!’

 

         For crying out loud, that daft boy, thought Jakes’s mum:

         ‘It’s a trick of the light!’ she shouted back; ‘Go and try it outside.’

He wheeled the scooter over the front step, down the garden path, through the gate and into the street, thinking all the while of Sam’s face when he saw the golden scooter. Sam was his trusty best friend. He never talked about their adventures with anyone else, and that meant something in Jakes world. He couldn’t help imagining what Basher, or the kids at school, would think when they saw this amazing scooter. He immediately became worried. In his mind’s eye he could see Basher chasing him trying to steal it. The scooter had already become a friend, although he had only known it for ten minutes.

 

Jake and Sam were generally scooterless. Usually, if the weather was fine, and sometimes even in the rain, the students of First Tower Elementary School  rode their scooters round the playground at home time. The Year 5’s and 6’s had an after school club learning scooter stunts. Everyone wanted to join, but you had to be really good. Because Jake and Sam didn’t have scooters of their own they had to take turns with the other kids’ scooters. Sometimes they were kind and let them have a go, other times they had to sit and wait on the wall whilst the other children raced around shouting and laughing. They weren’t terribly popular in school themselves. Neither of them was funny; they weren’t good looking, and they weren’t prepared to suck up to the teachers, or anyone else. Being known jokingly as Fatty and Skinny made them objects of fun. No one was willing to suck up to them either. There was no chance whatsoever of Jake or Sam getting into the scooter club, even if they’d been old enough.

 

The scooters in the playground were mostly blue or red, with the occasional pink one, but none of them was golden. Jake, pausing to consider this, had a funny feeling that taking his scooter to school might cause some trouble. But he knew he was going to do it anyway. He couldn’t wait for Monday so he could show it off.

 

Meanwhile, at her table in the kitchen, mum was wracking her brains trying to think who might have sent the scooter. She had taken Jake to Humdinger’s toy shop last week because it was Jake’s favourite shop. She had felt sad looking at all the wonderful scooters in their array of bright colours and patterns. Her normally smiley face had crumpled when she realised she couldn’t afford to buy one for Jake, and she knew he would be disappointed on his birthday with what she had bought. She remembered saying to him ‘If you could have anything from the shop, what would it be?’ She hoped he would say ‘felt pens’, or ‘a toy car’, because she had £5 in her purse, saved for his birthday present. But instead, he said:

‘If I could have  anything in the world, I would like a golden scooter!’ Here he had looked defiantly at Mum, challenging her to come up with a reasonable excuse. It wasn’t a kind thing to do; he knew she couldn’t manage to buy him one, but she had asked, hadn’t she?

Mum, wincing, told him not to be so silly; they had spent ages looking at scooters and she knew there weren’t any golden ones. Jake saw Mum looking sad, felt guilty, and shrugging said: ‘I really need some new felt pens, then I can finish colouring my dragon’. But he was despondent. It was obvious that a golden scooter was just a dream, but just for once it would be nice if something went his way; even a second hand scooter would be ok.

 

 So felt pens was what Mum had bought for Jake’s birthday, carefully wrapped along with a new Monsters colouring book. She was embarrassed by the colouring book and felt pens; other kids got new phones and computer games on their birthdays; She and Jake didn’t even own a computer! She had a phone, but it was old and didn’t always work.

 

She looked at the remains of the packaging and wrapping paper that the scooter had been wrapped in, cast aside on the kitchen lino, and tried to remember when she had first seen the large silver package containing the scooter. She found she simply could not recall seeing it before. Until the moment that Jake had tripped over it she knew it hadn’t been in their kitchen. She knew it hadn’t been there before because she had got the milk from the fridge for her morning tea; it would have fallen over when she opened the fridge.

 

She could hear Jake shouting outside in the street and decided to take some pictures to send to Granny Barley. It was a long time since Jake had exhibited anything resembling excitement. Since his dad left it had been one  miserable event after another. First the money ran out, then the electricity had been cut off. The TV had packed up and the house seemed to have lost all its joy. She glanced down to her empty left hand; she had sold her wedding ring to pay the electricity bill.

 

Hearing Jakes’ happy shouts outside, she forgot all about the puzzle of where the scooter had come from and strangely, never really thought of it again.

 

Outside, Jake had made an interesting discovery; if he put his foot carefully on the scooter, it jiggled about, then started off without him having to scoot with the other. ‘Hey, this is really powerful! It must  have batteries after all’, he thought. He carefully placed both feet together on the patterned footplate and held on tightly as the scooter gently rolled along the pavement, speeding up as it went. Jake had been clutching a triangle of toast and chocolate spread, but he couldn’t hold both it and the handle bar. It fell to the pavement and Jake felt a moment of regret as his stomach reminded him there was nothing much in it.

 

As the scooter gathered speed, Jake could feel the wind whistling past his spikey hair and heard the clicking of the wheels over the paving stones. His hair was flying out behind him in the slipstream, despite the concrete hair gel. He dreaded to think what had happened to his spikes.

 

Alfie, a large hairy dog that lived in the corner house at the end of the street, barked loudly in greeting and jumped up at the gate. Jake put his hand out to stroke Alfie’s ears, but the scooter was going too fast, and he sailed straight past. Jake started to shout, but his breath was taken away as the scooter overtook a  car doing 30mph down their street.

 

Then Jake felt the scooter lift into the air. Gasping, he grabbed the handlebars as hard as he could to stop himself falling off, but the handlebars had disappeared! In fact, the whole scooter had disappeared. If anyone had been watching, they would have seen a beautiful golden scooter flying around one minute but gone the next. The sky simply swallowed it up, and Jake with it.

 

He could feel the scooter’s golden platform beneath his trainers. He could feel the rubber grips under his fingers; but his eyes couldn’t see the scooter any more. With a shock that made his three mouthfuls of toast and chocolate spread start to come back up, he realised he couldn’t even see his own fingers, or his legs, or his feet! His whole self, plus the scooter had completely disappeared.

 

Just as Mum came out through the front door, Jake and the scooter became totally invisible. She looked crossly up and down the street, angry that Jake had cleared off before she had a chance to take a picture.

 ‘That naughty boy’ she muttered, ‘how’s he disappeared so quickly?’

Alfie the hairy dog, who had watched Jake and scooter evaporate into thin air, was hiding under a prickly rose bush, whining, and shaking with fright. Jake’s mum paused for a moment to talk to Alfie, but he wouldn’t come out. Puzzled, Mum carried on with her search, worried that she hadn’t given Jake a coming home time.

 

         The golden scooter now rose skywards with Jake holding tight. The ground was falling away beneath him. The houses below with their red roofs looked like Monopoly pieces; the rec was a tiny strip of green felt, the children playing on the roundabout, slide, and swings, like specks of dust scuttling around in a breeze.

 

Jake was rigid with fright, and his hands had started to blister from holding on so tight. He fought the urge to cry. Shock and horror were what he was feeling now, and all he wanted was for the scooter to stop and let him off. As if it heard his thoughts the scooter began to slow its terrifying ascent and turned in a sharp circle. He thought it was going to throw him off. But it was heading towards the other side of the rec, where Sam lived. He looked down, shuddering at the vast drop between him and the ground. Sam was clearly visible, standing on the pavement outside his house and arguing with his mother about going shopping. Jake couldn’t hear this conversation, he just knew how much Sam hated going to Quickbuy on a Saturday, and that his mum didn’t trust him left alone in the house when they were out. He knew, by the way Sam was waving his arms about, that he had lost the battle. He watched as Sam was bustled into the back of the car. No playing out with Sam just now then!  As he thought this, it was just as if the scooter could hear what was in his head. It turned around and began a gentle, curving descent towards his own home.

 

The paving stones of Bears Wood Drive appeared beneath the wheels, and suddenly Mum was standing in front of Jake, smiling, and taking a picture for Granny Barley. He wondered if Sam had noticed him flying over the rec, and then remembered the scooter had become invisible.

         ‘That’s one Ace scooter! I didn’t realise you were so good at it!’ Jake could see the relief on Mum’s face, and he said:

‘Did you wonder where I was?’ Mum looked puzzled:

‘I thought you might have gone to Sam’s, but I was obviously wrong about that, you were here all the time. Come in when you’re ready and I’ll do some more toast. By the way, your hair’s gone flat’. Jake ran a regretful hand over his wrecked hair and, remembering his rumbling stomach, followed Mum into the house.

 

As the kitchen door opened, Mum stopped so suddenly that Jake bumped into her. Looking past her, he could see that the table was now set with a crisp white tablecloth, and laden with platters of bacon and sausages, still sizzling; the sausages, fat and glistening,  gave off little curls of steam which rose upwards where dozens of blue balloons bearing the words ‘Happy Birthday Jake’ bobbed happily around on the ceiling. There were dishes of grilled tomatoes, tiny button mushrooms, and mounds of fried bread. Taking pride of place in the centre of the table, a mountain of pastries gave off a yeasty, warm, mouthwatering aroma. Jake couldn’t see any eggs, but he didn’t like eggs anyway.

 

Mum’s face had turned pale; she knew she hadn’t cooked all this stuff; where had it all come from?  She glanced behind her at Jake. At first he just gazed, longingly. Then he grabbed a plate and started dishing up all his favourite things, sausages, and fried bread mainly. Mum was about to say something, but in her ear was the unmistakeable, and very loud, sound of a ticking pocket watch. Where had she heard that sound before? A gentle voice said quite clearly.

‘It’s for Jake’s birthday’. Just for a moment she thought she knew the voice. But Jake, who hadn’t heard anything over the clatter of loading crockery,  had handed her a plate piled high with bacon and mushrooms plus two croissants on the side, Mum’s favourite. The voice was immediately forgotten in the sheer joy, for once, of having enough to eat.

 

Mum immediately forgot that she hadn’t prepared the food herself and took a huge bite of warm croissant.  When they had both eaten their fill the leftover food, balloons, plates, and everything else seemed to melt away as if they had never been. Jake forgot about the breakfast and knew he must have imagined flying into the sky on the new golden scooter. He decided not to mention it to anyone, except maybe Sam.

 Later, when his teacher at school, Miss Mason, asked him what he did for his birthday, he couldn’t remember. The only reminder of anything unusual was the golden scooter, which had chosen its own parking space under the stairs. Every now and again it coughed out a couple of tiny, excited sparks, but in its hidey hole in the understairs cupboard, no one saw.