cannot do that to strangers as it will scare them and some short people do not like to be reminded that they are short.
‘Hot enough for you?’ he asks as she walks quickly towards the bus stop. But she is in a rush today and has no time to stop and chat about storms. She needs to catch the number 53 bus because that goes to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital where she works. Elvis hates the Queen Elizabeth Hospital as it is where he went when his arm was broken by the car that time and it hurt so badly and he screamed and cried. Then, worst of all, he bit a nurse, which made him scream and cry all over again because he had done something so terrible.
Elvis’s leg hurts now from where he bashed it on the stairs. He looks down at the purple bruise on his glowing white skin and wishes the Filipina nurse had time to look at it for him, but the 53 now pulls away with her on it.
If Elvis tells George, his care worker, all the things that have happened today, maybe he will make him go back into assisted living. Elvis does not want to go back into assisted living. He has only been living alone six weeks, which he knows for sure because he puts a red dot on his calendar each morning.
His glasses will not balance on his face correctly because the left arm is all bent, so he puts them in his pocket along with the packet of Euro ’96 stickers he bought yesterday, then he slowly walks back across the green. He likes the way Nightingale Point gets bigger and bigger the closer you get. He looks up a few times to feel the sun hit his face. It feels lovely. But because he is a ginger he should not get too much of it. One summer Elvis had fallen asleep in the sunshine without his coconut suntan lotion on and his skin had burnt red raw, even his eyelids.
He crosses Sandford Road carefully, after looking both ways and listening for traffic, then heads into the estate. A group of teenage boys sit on the wall that lines the car park; one has a very impressive beard and Elvis wonders if he has a special little brown comb for it like his Sikh friend Mandeep. Some other boys cycle about and laugh loudly, and one sings a song Elvis does not know but would like to. In the middle of the group he notices the bad black boy from the stairs again, the one with the zigzags in his hair who pushed Elvis earlier and made his glasses all bent.
The boy has a bright blue ice pole hanging from his mouth, the kind Lina bought Elvis last week when she was in a happy mood. Elvis has an idea. He stops and gets out his notepad. This is his chance. He will make a description of the boy so that he can report him to George and then maybe even to the police. He sketches the boy’s white trainers, white shorts, white T-shirt, and shiny diamond earring. The trainers are very difficult to draw correctly. He scribbles them out and tries again. He looks up to check what the laces look like and it is then he sees that all the boys are staring at him.
Rumbled.
He tries to place his notepad back in his pocket inconspicuously and pretends to be very busy kicking the stones from the path into a neat pile. Which is a very valid job.
‘What were you drawing there, fatty?’ a voice from the wall calls.
Elvis says nothing, just concentrates on making the path straight. Of course he knows it is rude to ignore someone, but then it is also very rude to call someone ‘fatty’.
‘Oi, I’m chatting to you,’ the voice calls again.
Elvis feels a little bit scared now and no longer wants to kick the stones back into place. He wants to go home. Two of the boys cycle over. One of the bikes has colourful spokes that go click clack click.
‘What you drawing?’
Elvis tries to remember what is best: to ignore or to lie. He chooses to ignore and tries to squeeze himself between the two bikes and off towards home, but he is not as small as he thinks and his T-shirt gets stuck on one of the handlebars. Maybe he is a fatty. He wriggles free and starts to walk away fast.
‘Why you walking off? I’m talking to you, brer.’
He feels someone grab him and pull at his shorts. His notepad is pulled from the pocket. The biker, who Elvis really does not like and is very scared of, now holds the notepad and flicks through all the pages of Elvis’s important information about what takeaway dish is best and what time the postman comes. Then he stops and begins to laugh. He shows his friend, who laughs as well and shouts, ‘Oi, Tris, is this man your bum chum? Didn’t know you were into gingers.’
The notepad is cycled back to the wall, where each of the boys has a look and a laugh.
‘Please,’ Elvis says, ‘can I have it back?’
The boy with the impressive beard lets out a laugh, which sounds like the little girl who lives next door. He then stuffs his free hand down the front of his jogging bottoms, which is not socially acceptable no matter how much your penis needs to be adjusted.
‘Please, can I have it back?’ Elvis repeats, this time slightly louder than the last. He really does want it back.
But the bearded boy ignores him and hands it to the bad black boy from the stairs, who looks at it, then shouts, ‘Is this meant to be me?’
Elvis does not want to look at the boy’s very angry face, so instead focuses on the shiny diamond earring and the bright blue stain across the – otherwise – very white T-shirt.
‘What’s your problem, man? First you’re spying on me in the stairs and now you’re drawing pictures of me.’
The other boys gasp; some laugh quietly.
‘Eh, Tris, this is proper creepy. This brer been stalking you?’ one of them says. ‘That’s some gay bunny boiler shit.’
Elvis plans to grab the notepad very quickly, then run into Nightingale Point and up all the stairs and back into his perfect flat with all his perfect things, but as he reaches out the bad black boy grabs his fingers and twists them. It hurts. Elvis screams. He breaks free and tries to run away but two of the boys on bikes block his path. The bad black boy comes forward and starts to rip each page from the notepad and scrunch them up. Finally, he flicks the notepad over into the car park. The boys all laugh and the bad black boy hoots with them.
‘Sicko,’ he shouts.
‘Don’t let him get away with it, Tris,’ says the bearded one.
Elvis is very frightened of being hurt again. He wraps his arms around his head and squeezes his shoulders up to his ears. The bad black boy takes a step closer but instead of pain Elvis feels a glob of wet spit cover his lips and chin.
The boys all laugh and the bad black boy shouts, ‘Stay away from me, you fucking retard.’
The boys hover around the wall in order of importance, headed by Ben Munday, who sits in the shade offered by Nightingale Point, pride of place. He’s got on the latest Air Jordans, the type of footwear Tristan can only dream of owning.
‘What’s up, Tris? You look nuff prang,’ asks one of the younger boys from his bike.
‘Aw, it’s this heat.’ Tristan wipes his brow with a flourish but is embarrassed when he discovers the back of his hand glistening. ‘What you lot saying then?’
‘Chilling,’ answers the boy.
‘Yeah, yeah. Chilling.’ Tristan relaxes a little, allows his shoulders to drop. What’s twenty quid anyway? Ben Munday probably has so much money he doesn’t even remember lending it. Now that’s the kind of flex Tristan needs to be on. This relying on your big brother for handouts thing is getting long. Really tedious.
‘Here.’ One of the older boys hands Tristan a blue ice pole from a striped off-licence bag.
Ben Munday stands up and fusses with his hands