Читать книгу Mine - S.A Partridge - Страница 12

I have one escape from my everyday nightmare – my casual job at the ice-cream shop at Access Park.

I know it’s lame, but no one in my class ever comes here. It’s not proper gelato-type ice cream, like the kind you get at that hipster place in Newlands, the Creamery. It’s cheap suckers and old-school brands that haven’t changed their packaging since the Eighties. And there are cockroaches living in the freezers. It’s actually really gross. Lorenda and Jerome are fine with me working there, because they’re too stingy to give me proper pocket money. They don’t want to spoil me. I mean, honestly – you’d think they’d give me a break. But at least I can sort of call this place my own.

I freeride my longboard to work, breathing in the rush of freedom. I love being on my own, just me on the street, music in my ears – the real Kayla, who can get down an entire rail on my board without wiping out. Well, almost.

Sometimes I go to the skatepark under the unfinished bridge in town and have a go on the half-pipe. I never talk to anyone. I like the idea of being invisible, anonymous, letting people form their own opinions about me. I like this version of me. It’s the one hardly anyone gets to see.

Today I pass my shift at the ice-cream shop sitting on a white plastic chair trying to catch rare kitties on my Neko Atsume app while the fridges hum around me. The only customer so far has been a creepy-looking dude in an Incredible Hulk T-shirt who came in to buy two boxes of Twice as Nice.

But the silence eventually gets to me, and then my brain goes into overdrive. I don’t want to think about what happened with Sebastian or that I really, really liked him. No one ever wants to take my number because they find me interesting or cute. I’m already sixteen and I’ve never had a real boyfriend. But I keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

I have no one to talk to. No one to hang out with. Craig is the only person I see outside of school. In a weird way, he’s my only friend, the only one who knows me.

I message him to ask when he’s coming around, hating myself for needing the little attention he gives me. I am truly pathetic.

Near closing time, I fetch my flute from my bag. No one is going to come in here now, and it’s the perfect time to practise. There’s no Lorenda nagging me. No laser-beam eyes staring into my back. No Lucinda. No Sebastian.

I close the door on the night. As soon as I put the instrument to my lips, the notes flow. The flute is difficult. The flautist always gets the hardest parts in concertos, and everyone is always on my case when I’m too slow at getting the phrasing. People forget that flautists need to manage their breathing.

God, I love Bach. I turn the page of my sheet music on the cold glass and continue to the next stanza.

This is when I love music the most, when I’m alone and can geek out over how cool higher octave notes sound when you know what you’re doing. I stop when the dent in my index finger doesn’t bounce back. Then I help myself to a Jelly Stick because no one will notice one missing. Half of them are congealed at the bottom of the box anyway.

After work, I kick off the gravel and roll down the hill on my longboard, straightening my back so I don’t go tumbling into the gutter, like I did last week, leaving me with a massive copper-brown graze on my chin. I love the downhills of Cape Town, like mini roller coasters. Now you see the mountain, now you don’t. I love the way the wind whips my hair back, the way my heart skips a beat and my stomach lurches on that first dip. Exhilarating.

I never wanted to move here. Ma has Jerome and she’s happy, but I’m the third wheel, the dikbek teenager. We moved from the northern suburbs to Rondebosch so Jerome would be closer to work. And who cares if I don’t fit in?

I’ve been trying to take care of my own happiness and failing dismally. Music, my board, the Reader’s Den comic book store in Stadium on Main – all the things that keep me going – can’t replace the feeling of being accepted.

At the bottom of the hill I kick my board up into my hand and heft it over my shoulder. I hear the screach of tyres and jump out of the way just as a white Citi Golf takes the corner at fullspeed, nearly wiping me out. I look back to see a guy sticking his head out the window, chin-length dark hair hanging in his face.

“Sorry, beautiful!” he shouts.

I lift my middle finger and the car speeds away. My nose twitches from the smell of marijuana.