Shadowing.

Shadowing

It all added up perfectly. Somehow. I don’t know how it did it. You ever looked at a spreadsheet. Maybe even an excel spreadsheet. Black lines drawn straight across the page in columns and rows. Boxes or cells. To fill. Or leave back. To create use or even destroy. Well the numbers in these cells added up. Everyone had put in money. Six different members of the family. All together, added up it meant the return to be made was just right. Perfect. Quid’s in. Nothing to lose.
To celebrate, my dad. The boss of this operation decided we would go to the cinema. To see the Karate Kid.
I was walking outside the hotel. In the town, people milled about here and there going about their business. Which in this town centre consisted of traipsing from shop to shop occasionally stopping to share the time of day with someone they knew and liked, or hurrying on and feigning ignorance at the sight of someone they didn’t. When I bumped into Miss Chestnut.
My heart stopped. Luckily it started after skipping just a beat or two so I didn’t drop down dead in the street. It was great to see Miss Chestnut, Beth again. Alive. We held hands and chatted. Beths hands were sweaty and hot. I thought maybe so were mine, our fingers clasped together, jostled back and forth in comfort and play. I mentioned I was going to the cinema to see the Karate Kid. Beth said she would come too. Exciting.
We were just on our way straight there, when I realised there were two cinemas in this town. Which one would we be going to? Of course Beth got it right it would be the glass house screen. Only thing was I didn’t think my dad would know where we had gone.
I told Beth id better return to the hotel, and tell my dad, Beth replied this worked out great, as she could play with her hair and face and pick up a few bits and bobs, apparently, amazingly she was staying at the same hotel on the floor above me. Seperated by just a ceiling. I never knew.
On the way to the hotel I began to sing a nonsense tune.
In Shoe City
You only wear one shoe.
I messed up the lines singing shoe shitty before repeating the song over and over. Beth squeezed my hand; she laughed but wanted me to stop, as the song had quite an annoying quality to it. I didn’t stop and she smiled, before doing a funny trick with her eyes and whistling. I fell in love with her right there and then and stopped singing.
On the porch outside the hotel. Myles was there. Hey look its Myles, he reminds me of Zach from goodnight Mr Tom, does he remind you of Myles I asked Beth, but she didn’t agree.
Myles was happy to see Beth but his face fell when he saw mine. He introduced me to his friend. Who I chatted to. Myles seemed to have a warm embrace for everyone except me, still no worries, I noticed he had a lovely bike, and I complemented him on it.
“You can have a go if you like”
Seeing as Beth had already gone inside the hotel and I had some time to kill. I thought what the hey.
Just before setting off, I had a little rant about how the stars and the moon love it if you sing to them, sing aloud to them for they will shine bright, and then I hopped onto the pedal, not the saddle and the bike sped along at a terrific pace, without me even having to pedal, up a hill. What a magical bike. At the top of the hill I was still riding side saddle as it were and zoom, it was exhilarating speeding down the hill feeling the wind blow across my skin. At the bottom of the hill I turned the bike round to go back. I had a bag over my shoulder and it curled up like a sponge being wrung, until it got trapped round the front of the bikes wheel, at about halfway up the hill the handlebars came off, I tried to put them back in but the front wheel stayed stuck to the side. Which meant I could only turn left. Before crashing into any cars which I almost did twice. Beep beep the furious drivers pushed down on their horns. I managed to somehow surf the bike into a wall were it hugged the bricks and came to a gentle rest beside a bus stop. There were tools for fixing bikes on one of those green electrical box things that are full of cables and wires. You sometimes see maintanance men in overalls crouched down on one knee fixing them up somehow or another, a bit like theyre rewiring the matrix, something like that anyway, for sure in this case the box was metal, closed, green and had bike tools on it.
I used the tools to fix the bike. It was tough work. I nearly lost the handlebars. Then they wouldn’t go back on properly a spring mechanism popped up and wouldn’t clip together right.
“What are you thinking” I said out loud in my frustration, just as a voluptuous lady walked past in a tight figure hugging dark pencil skirt and purple silken blouse. She smiled at me and I laughed. This was getting stupid, of course the handlebars were still here and they went on like so, hey presto, the bike was fixed.
Only thing was id somehow got picked up by a bus and was now heading further and further away from the hotel my dad, the cinema and most important of all Beth.
Perhaps Myles had planned this all along. Why was he even there sat waiting on the porch outside the hotel. Then again how was Beth here alive and how come we hadn’t seen each other before if she was staying on the floor above me? Curioser and curioser. The plot thickened like dark storm clouds ready to spew forth rain and thunder. Still I was on a bus going to who knows where, with a magic bike that could ride up hills. I pushed a red button on a green pole, it went bing! The bus stopped at the next stop. Thanking the driver I got off. Not knowing where I was or what was going on. My heart started going thump thump thump and I liked it.