Kyle lay back in the dust and kicked his legs up. “So what do we do, guys?”
Russ sat down, then stood up with inspiration.
“I know,” he said. “We’ve got Amber in our group. We should do something British!”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, that’s not obvious.”
Russ looked confused. “What do you mean? It’s pretty obvious?”
Kyle grinned at me. “Amber’s being sarcastic,” he explained. “Contrary to popular belief, we Yanks do understand sarcasm. Though, yes, maybe we’re not all such cynics.”
“I’m not a cynic,” I protested. “I’m a terminal pessimist with an edge of angry realism.”
“That’s quite a mouthful.” He smiled again.
I smiled back. “It’s true. What are you anyway, Prom King? An if-you-wanna-see-rainbows-you-gotta-put-up-with-the-rain person? Do you, like, post motivational quotes on a blog somewhere?”
He grinned wider. “And what’s wrong with rainbows?”
“Enough enough enough!” Russ waved his arms against the blue sky, interrupting us. “We’re losing time. What British things do you know, Amber?”
I wracked my brain and looked at Whinnie. “Erm, Winnie the Pooh?”
“I’m not doing Winnie the Pooh,” Russ said.
“You’ll only violate his values anyway,” Whinnie said.
“Why don’t we just sing American campfire songs with morals in them?” I asked. “Isn’t that what campfires are for?” I got a sudden memory of a CD collection Mum brought on one of my childhood holidays to America. We’d played it over and over. “How about Peter Alsop?” I asked, fumbling for the name in my head. “It’s perfect for a campfire, surely?”
Whinnie and Russ pulled a huh-what? face. “Who?” they asked, just as Kyle said: “You’re kidding me. You know Peter Alsop?” His face lit from within, making his tan more golden. “I swear NOBODY knows him.”
“Yeah, I know him. I thought everyone in America knew him? In England no one has heard of him. My friends always thought I was weird when I played his CDs at my birthday parties.”
“Who the hell is Peter Alsop?” Russ asked. “Is he, like, in a band?”
Kyle and I grinned at each other, with that shared positive energy from finding someone who knows the same obscure thing you do.
I thought about how to explain him. “Peter Alsop is a children’s singer.”
“But he’s also a child psychologist,” Kyle added. “And a hippy, I think. He writes all these songs for kids, teaching them important life lessons and stuff.”
I jumped up off the log and started to sing. “My body’s nobody’s body but mine. You run your own body, let me run mine!”
Kyle jumped up too. “Ahh, yes! Oh my God, the please-don’t-touch-me song. I never got that as a kid. Do you remember ‘Where will I go when I’m dead and gone’?”
“That one that teaches you about death? Yes!”
Russ and Whinnie looked totally bewildered but we ignored them, high off the reminiscing. “What’s your favourite?”
Kyle beamed at me again. “Easy. It has to be ‘I am a Pizza’.”
I AM A PIZZA. THIS GUY KNEW “I AM A PIZZA”.
“I can’t believe you just said the words ‘I am a Pizza’ to me. That makes me so happy inside.”
“And then there’s ‘You Get a Little Extra When You Watch TV’. And ‘It’s No Fun When Ya Gotta Eat an Onion’.” Kyle practically jumped up and down with excitement.
“Onnnnnnniion,” I sang, remembering the old lyrics instantly.
Whinnie and Russ just stared at us, their mouths open.
“You two are weird,” Russ stated. “I think that needs to be acknowledged.”
I sat down on the log with a thump, a smile stretching to the widest cracks of my mouth. “You would understand if you had Peter Alsop in your childhood too.”
Russ actually waved his hands to make us shut up.
“Guys, guys. We have a show to put on! And Whinnie and I don’t understand your weird psychobabble singer. I still think we should do something British. Amber, you’re useless, especially as you’re actually English. Kyle, any ideas?”
Kyle’s face had transformed in the short interval I’d not been looking at him. His wide grin gone, he nibbled at a hangnail and stared into the dust. He gave a big boy shrug. “I don’t know,” he said, all personality-transplanty. “Whatever.”
Whinnie and I exchanged another look.
“How about Monty Python?” she then suggested. “Surely we all know that?”
“Monty Python,” I repeated. Dad was obsessed with the Python people and forced me to watch the films all through my childhood. I’d loved the weird animations in them that broke up random scenes. They were so delicately drawn, so perfectly painted – yet all that effort for utter nonsense.
“Monty Python could work,” Russ said. Kyle said nothing, but nodded into the dust.
I sighed with resignation. “I’m in.”
SITUATIONS THAT ARE DESTINED TO FAIL:
Americans
+
Attempts at English accents
+
Vodka
Nine
I had an obligatory “family” dinner to get through before the obligatory campfire humiliation.
Bumchin Kevin had made fajitas. I think to try and make peace after the previous night’s row. He kept saying the word all high-pitched: “Fa-HEE-taz”. It was like torture – so much so that if you recorded it and played it back to me on a loop, I’d tell you all the secret information I held about my country.
I felt a bit sick anyway – from leftover hungoverness, sunstroke, and the thought of all the children arriving tomorrow.
“Here they are,” he said, carrying a sizzling plate of chargrilled vegetables over to the tiny dilapidated dining table. “Fa-HEE-taz. Tuck in everyone.” He carefully put everything into the middle.
Mum acted like he was a caveman who’d just dragged in a mammoth he’d killed with his bare hands. “Kevin, these look INCREDIBLE. Don’t they, Amber?”
I nodded, wishing there was meat in them. Wishing I could be eating in the rec hall like everyone else.
“Don’t they look lovely, Amber?” she pressed again.
I nodded again. “That’s why I nodded.”
“You could say thank you to Kevin too.”
Kevin waved his hands. “Don’t be silly, it’s my pleasure.” But Mum gave me a “look” over the steam of the burning onions.
“Thank you, Kevin.” My voice sickly sweet.
I jumped when Kevin thumped his glass down on the table.
“Don’t talk to me like that in my own house.”
“What?” My heart thumped from the shock of him banging the glass down. “I said thank you.”
“I’m not an idiot, Amber!”
“I…I…”
I didn’t know what to say. I’d broken through Kevin’s fakery, within a day. I was half pissed off, half quite impressed that he wasn’t pretending any more.
“Well, they look great. Just great,” Mum repeated, trying to cut through the tension, taking plates and dolloping on piles of veg before passing them round.
We ate in an anything-but-contented silence. I stared at Kevin’s beer bottle for a long time. He slurped from it occasionally, tipping his head back, dribbling some into his bumchin.
Dad never used to drink in front of Mum. I wondered how she could stand it. But she seemed not to notice as she sipped at her iced tea.
“So, Amber.” Kevin downed more beer. “You looking forward to the kids arriving tomorrow?” He said it sternly, daring me to be rude again.
“I guess.”
“I can’t wait for them to try out your new art class. We’ve never done art here before.” His voice was falsely enthusiastic, but with threat underneath.
“Hmm.”
I hadn’t exactly planned my “art classes” yet – though technically I was supposed to have created my own syllabus. In fact, I hadn’t really thought about the fact that loads f American children were rocking up the next day and I was supposed to look after them. All I’d thought about was Mum. I was jolted by another memory…