Get Me Out of Here!

by Andy McNab

  Plus he’s smart and he never covers up his answers in a test, which makes him doubly OK. He’s a bit too perfect to ever replace old Giraffles, but as a desk buddy I could do a lot worse.

  “You get the new battle passes for Fortnite?” he asks as I sit down.

  “Oh yeah…” I reply, though I had no idea there were any. I gave up online gaming months ago. Broadband doesn’t exist in our flats. Somewhere in the basement there’s probably a hamster in a wheel with a real sweat on, but no matter how hard he spins he’s never going to make our internet fast enough.

  “We should play online together,” he grins.

  “Too much free running to do,”

  “Yeah, I could see you were still doing that from your limp on the way in.”

  I feel my cheeks flush as my brain searches for a speedy comeback, but fortunately Miss D interrupts with the register before breaking into what she calls An Exciting Opportunity.

  “As you know, end of term is fast approaching…”

  Cue cheers from the back row.

  “…I know, I know, we’re all excited about the Easter holidays. But before we have a well-earned rest from adjectives and long division, something a bit special has come up.”

  “Have we all won the lottery?” shout MandM at exactly the same time, sending a shiver of freakiness up my spine.

  “I don’t think any of us would still be sat here if that was the case,” beams Miss D.

  “Oh no, we’re not being visited by the prime minister are we?” asks Giraffles, a question so random it makes me wonder if his long neck has somehow starved his brain of oxygen.

  “Hardly, Thomas. I certainly wouldn’t be smiling if we were. No, we’ve been invited on a very special trip…”

  Cue groans from the back.

  “Please, Miss, tell me we don’t have to go to the water treatment plant again?”

  “Or to the ruins. Piles of old bricks are well boring…”

  I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t exactly jumping on my seat myself. I think it’s some sort of ancient law that school trips have to be:

  A. Properly rubbish

  B. Properly boring

  C. Properly PROPERLY predictable

  I knew where we were going: Tickledown Farm. Year six goes there every year. Dyl went before he left for senior school. The head makes the oldest kids go with the youngest ones, to “build empathy”. But Dyl reckons it was just so the teachers could put their feet up and drink tea all day.

  I wasn’t so sure. Couldn’t imagine Miss D would be up for that either. She looked just as disturbed as us by the smell at the sewer plant.

  “I can see you’re all incredibly excited by the news. So instead of letting me bore you with the details … why don’t you just watch this?”

  With a flick of her wrist and a tap on the whiteboard, a film begins. And the second it starts, I feel my pulse race and my palms sweat.

  I feel like I’m stood on the biggest bloomin’ wall in the world, because on the screen are six beautiful, exciting, eye-popping words:

  Are You Ready…

  TO GO WILD?

  “IMAGINE A PLACE…”the voice-over purrs, “WHERE YOU CAN LIVE OUT YOUR WILDEST DREAMS…”

  I’m already in. I’ve signed on the dotted line, I’ve packed my bag and kissed Mum goodbye. What comes next only makes me even more excited.

  “Where you can climb the steepest mountains, before jumping from the top…”

  I wipe away a bit of spit that’s escaped from the corner of my gaping mouth. I can’t believe what I’m seeing. The biggest rock face I’ve ever laid eyes on, so high the top of it disappears into the sky, which is so blue I swear it’s been airbrushed by a smurf.

  And there, stuck to the side of the rock, is a kid just like me, except with a helmet and ropes coming out of him, and he’s smiling like a loon, just like I am now. And though it looks like hard work, it also looks like the best work ever. And there isn’t a conjunctive wotsit anywhere to be seen.

  The film goes on. And it just gets better, because there’s kayaks and rapids, and zip wires and treetop houses, and all the time there’s this voice, like the one you hear in a Star Wars trailer, telling me, “BREATHE DEEP, FASTEN YOUR SAFETY BELT, AND PREPARE…

  TO GO WILD AT WILD OUT!”

  The trailer ends with the sight of a kid zooming down a zip wire at a hundred miles an hour, and as it ends, there’s a huge cheer from the classroom, and applause and whooping.

  And then I realize that all of that noise is coming from me. And that everyone is looking at me, and laughing and pointing, but I don’t care because I’ve just seen the greatest thing in the world ever, that’s better than jumping off any wall, better than a hundred walls that are taller than the Empire State Building. And even though I don’t know when we’re going to Wild Out, I’m already chalking off the days in my head till we get on the coach.

  “You fancy that then, Danny?” asks Miss D, with a smile as almost big as mine. In my head I’m going to reply with a shrug and a nod and a yeah it looks OK … but what actually happens is that I throw both hands in the air and shout, as loud as voiceover man himself, “MISS, I AM ALL OVER IT!”

  Cue more laughter and pointing.

  Trips to the water-treatment plant are a thing of the past – this is the future, and the future is so flipping bright I’m looking for the sunglasses just so I don’t get an excitement headache.

  “I’m pleased you’re so pleased,” Miss continues. “It really is a wonderful opportunity for us. To visit a place where the landscape is so different to everything we’re used to. Make no mistake, it will be challenging, like nothing any of us have ever experienced…”

  “Come off it, Miss,” laughs Lucky beside me. “We’ve grown up in the city. It’s a jungle here. There’s nothing in the countryside that’s going to scare us. We’re hardly going to get mugged by a sheep, are we?”

  Others agree. Marcus and Maureen shout, “Too right!” at exactly the same time, while Giraffles looks proper excited as well. Probably because he’s thinking about all of the leaves at the top of them tall, tall trees.

  “Well, we’ll see, won’t we,” adds Miss D, though her face suggests she knows something that none of us do. “All you have to do, to secure a spot on the trip, is return this letter by a week today, signed by your parents or guardians.”

  And she hands round the note. I try to read it, but fail. All I can see are the words WILD OUT, which makes me so unbelievably excited that I fear I might actually combust. The rest of the words are swimming in a million different directions, and, anyway, the details aren’t important.

  All that matters is that I’m going to be on that coach. I’m going to climb everything they put in front of me. I am literally going to be the WILDEST kid they have ever met.

  And then I read the sentence that brings me crashing back down to earth.

  “Woah. A hundred and fifty quid?”

  Oh.

  ’Course.

  We have to pay to go.

  My eyes scour the letter, and suddenly the words WILD OUT seem like the smallest ones on the page. The only words I can see, and I can still see them even when I close my eyes in fear and disappointment, are:

  I open my eyes, but the words are still there and I can’t erase them, not with a rubber, not with a flipping nuclear bomb.

  I look around me. Lucky doesn’t look worried, but then his dad works in one of them huge offices in the city, doesn’t he?

  Giraffles isn’t sweating either, and neither are MandM, though they are blowing their noses at the same time and making exactly the same noise.

  The only person who looks even vaguely disturbed by this gargantuan bombshell is me.

  One hundred and fifty quid.

  I headbutt the desk in despair.

  Going wild?

  I won’t be going anywhere.

  “You wouldn’t last two minutes in the wild anyway,” laughs Dyl, above the whirring of his hair clippers.
>
  It’s one of his most annoying habits (one of many many, many), shaving his own head in the kitchen. I wouldn’t mind if he did it over a sheet of newspaper, but he never bloomin’ does. Today he’s simply leaning over the table, showering the fruit bowl with his greasy stubble. I swear he only scalps his head like this because he’s too lazy to wash it.

  I cringe, forcing the image of eating a hairy apple clean out of my mind.

  Fortunately for Dylan, Mum’s paying him no attention: she’s still poring over the letter from school, with a huge frown on her face. Normally, she saves that look for when she’s reading my idiot brother’s report, but today I know it’s me causing her grief.

  I did think about not showing her it. I could have screwed it in a ball and chucked it in a bin on the way home. At least that way I couldn’t keep torturing myself by reading and rereading about a trip I’ll never get to go on.

  But for some reason, I didn’t; I just handed it over sheepishly, with a “Sorry, Mum.”

  She hasn’t said anything since; she just sighs repeatedly and alternates between reading the letter, sighing some more and peering at the banking app on her phone, presumably in the hope that she can magic a hundred and fifty quid from thin air.

  In the end, she finally says what I already know.

  “I’m really sorry, Dan, but I just can’t afford it. Dylan’s got cadet camp coming up, plus he’s grown about a foot in the last six weeks so he’s needed a whole uniform on top.” Dyl kisses his bicep and gazes at it adoringly like its Ariana Grande or something.

  “I’ll pay you back, Mum…” I say, feeling guilty as I say it.

  “It’s not about that, love. I don’t doubt that for even a minute. I just haven’t got it to lend you.”

  “What if I sold some stuff to pay for it? Old clothes, maybe.”

  There’s a snigger behind me. “NO ONE wants to buy your skiddy old kegs.”

  “I’d sell you if I thought anyone would give me a fiver, but I’d probably have to pay them to take you away.”

  I feel Dyl’s response before I hear it: a fist to the back, which really bloomin’ hurts, though I refuse to even flinch. His ego doesn’t need any inflating, it’s already the size of a hot-air balloon.

  “Do you think school would let me pay them back then? You know, before the end of term?”

  “I doubt it. They’re always begging us for donations, so the chances of them stumping up are as small as—”

  “Danny’s six pack?” adds Dyl, unhelpfully.

  What he doesn’t realize though, is that every time he opens his mouth, I become more determined. I want to show him I’m every bit as outdoorsy and up for it as he is. That he’s not the only one who can climb a rope or save a hostage from behind enemy lines.

  It’s like Mum is reading my mind too, because from nowhere she pipes up with a lifeline. A twenty-four-carat-gold lifeline.

  “Fifty quid,” she says.

  “What is?” I reply.

  “That’s what I can give you. For now. Fifty quid. If you can raise the rest, then you can go, Dan. I’d love to stump it all up for you, you know I would, but unless we give up eating for the next four weeks, that’s the best I can do.”

  I do the maths - a hundred quid.

  That’s what I have to raise.

  In a week.

  “Hundred quid,” I say out loud, which provokes another scoff from behind me.

  “No chance,” laughs Dyl. “You couldn’t raise a hundred pence.” I glare at him while he goes back to shaving his oversized head.

  And it’s at that exact moment that I know, surer than ever, that I’m going to raise that money. And that my idiot brother, without even realizing, or lifting a finger, is going to help me.

  “Are you sure about this, D?” asks Giraffles, squirming on the stool.

  “’Course I am, mate,” I reply. “If Dylan can cut his own hair with these, then I’m sure I can cut someone else’s with them.”

  “Maybe you should start with your own mop, though? Looks like it could do with a trim.”

  I ignore the insult and focus on where to start. The most difficult bit is making the lead stretch to the top of Giraffles’ telescopic neck. I momentarily consider an extension lead, or two even, joined together.

  “What style are you after then, sir?” I ask, practising my best customer service.

  “None. I’m growing it out.” Giraffles makes to stand up and leave, but I push him down with my firm grip.

  “You know what’d suit you? A proper David Beckham cut. All shaved and sharp edges.”

  “Mmmmm…” He doesn’t sound convinced, but he doesn’t say no either, so I take that as my cue to start, the clippers already vibrating in my slightly shaking hands.

  And do you know what? It goes all right. I manage to not chop off his head, and I don’t think he even notices when I catch the top of his ear and make it bleed a tiny bit.

  The curls fall to the ground, and with every strand I feel my confidence grow. I even start making chit-chat, asking my customer if he’s got plans for the weekend or if he’s been on holiday lately. I get nothing back though, and I can see Giraffles knuckles turning white as he grips the leg of the stool.

  After only twelve brisk minutes I’m done, and after whipping off the tea towel like a matador’s cape, I confidently hand Giraffles a mirror.

  He says nothing, though his face does change colour. A lot. First it’s green, then it goes deathly grey, and as his eyes burn into the mirror a lot of red starts to appear.

  “What have you done?” he yells. “David Beckham does NOT have his hair cut like this!”

  “He would if he came here,” I reply defensively. “It’s the only style I can do. Besides, now you’re bald I’ve just saved you ten minutes in the morning, PLUS you won’t have to buy any gel for a good two months.”

  “I hate it.”

  “It’ll grow back, mate.”

  “Yeah, maybe, but what about the top of me ear? Maybe we can find that on the floor and glue it back on.”

  Giraffles sulks, with his arms crossed and everything, for a good fourteen-and-a-half minutes before I shove the biscuit tin in front of him and allow him to graze calmly.

  “You’re not really going to charge people for this torture, are you?” he says eventually.

  “’Course I am. Buzz cuts are proper in at the moment, and most kids pay the best part of a tenner down the barbers.”

  “But how will people know to come here to get it done? You live nearer the moon than you do the ground.”

  “Aha, well these little beauties are rechargeable, aren’t they, so I’m going to set up my own pop-up shop round the corner from Jack’s Barbers. Battery life is two hours and it’ll take me fifteen minutes per hair cut, so that’s enough for eight customers before I have to recharge. If people pay me four quid a haircut that’s thirty-two quid before I even plug back in. I’ll have the cash in no time!”

  Giraffles doesn’t look so sure, and asks to borrow the wooliest hat I own despite it being the middle of April.

  But, a mere thirty minutes later, we’re all set up with a kitchen stool, a tea towel, a mirror and a tub of Dylan’s gel (so at least it looks like I can do more than one style).

  I’ve even painted a sign on an old box, saying

  “Spelling error,” barks Giraffles.

  “It’s urban,” I reply.

  “You’re an idiot. I give you one haircut and fifteen minutes till you’re using that towel to stop your own nose from bleeding…”

  But I haven’t got time for worrying. This is going to work. It’s got to.

  And at first, it does! Cos I work out who to target.

  Kids younger and smaller than me, that’s the key. Kids who can’t physically hurt me when I scalp them; kids who have a tenner in their pocket from their mum for a trim, and are delighted when I tell them they can keep some of it to spend on sweets.

  One by one they perch on the stool, and they don’t so much
as flinch as I shear them, not even when I get a bit careless with the clippers. Some of them are even happy with what I’ve done. One kid, who to be fair to him did wear the thickest glasses known to man, even gave me a tip.

  After no time at all I have twenty-nine quid nestling in my pocket. If I’d known it was going to be this easy, I’d have set up my business months ago.

  But then, there’s a glitch. Well, I say a glitch, it’s more a gut-emptying horror show of a catastrophe, for as my back is turned, to professionally and expertly blow the stray hairs off my clippers, I get a new, unexpected customer, who is neither younger or smaller than me. In fact, he’s bigger than most adults. He’s so big, he makes Giraffles look like Thumbelina.

  Tubs Wilkinson has taken up residence on the stool, and he’s already tied the towel around his tree-trunk neck.

  Tubs isn’t tubby. At all. He’s ripped. All over. He’s the only teenager on the planet that has a six-pack … on his forehead.

  He’s not a complete thug. Not quite. Though lifting weights twenty-three hours a day does seem to have done something to the way his brain works … and he is known for random acts of extreme violence. Though, happily, never at me … until now.

  “Take it all off,” he grunts by way of a welcome.

  “R-r-really?” I stammer. “But you’ve been growing your hair for ages.”

  He has as well. It reaches his shoulders and there’s loads of it, proper thick. In fact, his hair looks just like the rest of him: muscular. You could probably knit a rope bridge out of his super-strength locks, I think as I stare at it.

  “All of it. And do it quick. I’m due down the gym in twenty minutes. Do NOT make me late.”

  I have no idea what to do next.

  Do I do it, stuff it up and potentially live the rest of my life as a human bruise?

  Or do I suddenly develop a chronic wrist injury that ends my promising career as barber to the stars…