Emily Johnson

Blue Giants

Novel extract

Chapter 7

Delly @thatdellygirl
OMG!! Could you imagine talking to Joey and watching him blush as he tries to be cool!! Ahahah I would DIE.

|_Rain @b1tterandsw33t
@thatdellygirl why do they have to bring Maisie Brooks up in every one of his interviews…ugh…

       |_Delly @thatdellygirl
 @b1tterandsw33t I know…he’s way more than some girl’s boyfriend!!

|_Kenz @fairlyserious
@thatdellygirl wot….if he said ANYTHING to me I’d scream louder than my boyfriend could ever make me. LMAO XD

       |_Delly @thatdellygirl
       @fairlyserious RIGHT!! he doesn’t know what he does to us……

       |_ Emma @rickyyyyylover
       OMG @thatdellygirl JOEY LIKED YOUR TWEET!! CONGRATS!!

       |_marielle @birdjoey15
       @rickyyyyylover @thatdellygirl I am trying SO HARD not to be jealous…….

naterichard
ricky’s voice feels like a really fast roller coaster
joey’s voice feels like a warm fireplace and cozy socks
nate’s voice feels like fluffy clouds and puppies
the new album is just so good. 

generallyfake
alex’s is like drums

naterichard
LMAO XD

The band returned to Kingston, back from London, on a Wednesday, which meant it was bin collection day for Ricky and Alex’s parents, Jean and Ant. Ever since Joey knew the Griffins, they had a private waste collection service. Every week, they’d pile up great mounds of rubbish outside and men in orange hi-vis vests would crawl around the curb and through the garden to gather it all. When the Birds moved across the way from them on Marsh Road, they gathered rubbish from all over the house themselves. They stuffed it elegantly into black bags, and Joey took to the curb at 7AM to be collected by the council.

One Christmas, Joey’s mum, Mary, got them a sofa. She’d wanted the new one in the lounge with a big bow on it before his younger sister, Nora, woke up. Joey argued that an eleven-year-old wouldn’t care about a new sofa. But still, he and Mary carried their tattered, scuzzy old piece over to the Griffin’s. They’d said their private service would take it for free rather than the Birds having to pay the council seventy quid. 

This Wednesday, one bin collection day past their arrival back in town, Joey ambled up the walk to the Griffin’s house. A carton of milk sweat in his loose grip. Tree blossoms covered the roads. Nora knelt in the front garden bushes with Ant pulling weeds in the golden July afternoon. It was the season all memories seemed to take place in.

Punk style had grown over Nora like a moss as she aged into her teens. It was quite funny to see her striped long sleeves and Joey’s old, ripped trousers bleach-painted with stars knee-deep, in the Griffin’s garden. 

Ant noticed him first.

“Right,” he said, “there he is, our tea hero,” he pointed to the milk. He craned his neck toward the open window and called for Jean.

“Did you get mobbed on your way to the shop by packs of girls?” Ant’s laugh shook his whole torso.

 “No.” Joey rolled his eyes.

“What? No throngs of adoring fans? I thought you were supposed to be a world-famous rockstar?” Faux shock ran his bushy brow far up his face. “What about your sold-out show tomorrow?”

Nora yanked up a green spiky weed and threw it into the canvas bag with more force than she had before.

“I’m going in,” she told Ant.

She knocked Joey’s shoulder as she passed, tearing the milk from his hand like it was another weed.

“What’s she on about?” Joey asked.

Ant clapped his gloved hands; dry dirt sprinkled onto his knees like confetti at the end of shows.

“I reckon Nora liked being the only child of four lonely sets of parents,” he said.

Just then, Jean opened the door. Nora ducked under her arm into the house. Jean stepped out from the covered step. She wore a checked apron and waved a tea towel at Joey like she was seeing off a ship.

“Birdie–oh, get over here and kiss me!”

 Joey did, and she crushed him in an impressively strong hug, though her head only hit his chest. 

She pushed him away and smacked him with the towel. “You make me feel three feet tall, take those shoes off.”

“You are three feet tall, Jean. Shoes aren’t changing it,” he said.

As he bent down to take his shoes off, Joey got another towel smack.

The house was stuck between seeming middle-class and opulent. With the combined salaries of Ant’s job at the bank and Jean’s as a schoolteacher, there had always been a visible level comfort in the house. Leaks were always fixed quickly, cars were replaced when they broke down, and décor was switched out as trends rose and fell. But now, thanks to the cushy record deal the lads signed a few years ago, signs of greater wealth cropped up everywhere. They had repainted the kitchen cabinets and gotten a stainless-steel fridge. Ricky and Alex had shown them all photos Jean had emailed to them on the Harmonies Tour. Joey had asked them why they didn’t they just buy her a new house. He’d been thinking about it for his mum. Not that Mary wanted to move, but Joey thought it would be a nice thing. Alex had said, we can’t leave Marsh Road, mate.

Their road was not at all impoverished, but the more Ricky and Alex spent on their parent’s semi-detached house the stranger it would look among all the others. It would become noticeably out of place. Joey and the lads kept moving up in the world, due to their band’s success, and they all were taking their families along with them. It was funny to try and squeeze back into their old lives, claiming it didn’t smart where seams started to stress.

Jean had put Ricky, Alex, and Nora to work in the kitchen and installed Joey at the counter beside them. Mary appeared from behind the polished fridge door. She wore the dark green jumper he had brought back from Paris for her. Joey had always found her beauty to be mythological. Her cool pond eyes and shining sheet dark hair leapt right out of the King Arthur cartoons he used to watch. She kissed his cheek as she passed.

“My son with the veggie peeler. My God, I’ve seen it all.” She pinched his inner elbow.

Joey was nine when he learned he could make supper entirely in the microwave. By fifteen he could make spag bol from scratch. It wasn’t that he enjoyed cooking, it had been a necessity for him to learn. And it came easy to him, as most things did under pressure.

“Quit lying to people,” he said.

Mary threw up her hands as she perched at the breakfast bar. Lemonade fizzed over the rim of her glass. Fine parentheses curved around her mouth as she grinned, though the lines weren’t nearly as deep as Jean’s. Mary was, after all, ten years younger than the other mum in the room.

“I didn’t think I’d ever see it again, is all,” she said.

Alex poked Joey’s side with a carrot. “Posh little Jay Bird, back on the line.”

Joey winced. The comment snagged gummily over him, like a rubber band stretched across his skin.

“You should talk. Look at those shoes, mate.”

Joey threateningly lifted his socked foot over Alex’s Air Jordans. Alex flinched away.

“No, mate. Actually, do not.” His voice was grave. He gestured toward Joey with the chef’s knife.

“Quit it,” Jean yelled. “You’ll take someone’s eye out, Alex.”

There was a warm buzz of productivity in the kitchen. Joey peeled carrots and handed them to Alex to be cut into sloppy imitations of Jean’s neat dice. Nora washed potatoes and shelled peas. Ricky poked the meat on the hob with a wooden spoon. Smoke and steam wafted through the kitchen, like clouds drifting in through the window. 

“Go on, Ricky. Finish your story,” Mary said.

Ricky spun around, like the request flicked his switch on. “You wanna hear about Spain?”

Jean poked him in the back, “I want you not to burn me sausage.”

“I wasn’t going to,” he objected. 

“You’ve burnt it before,” Alex said.

“Do you want to hear the story or not?”

Everyone fell silent. The only sound was the sizzling meat and the low Frank Sinatra which always played from the lounge stereo.

Joey and Nora had spent some time living with the Griffins when he was twelve and Nora was nine. In that time, they were roped into countless after-supper plays put on by Ricky. He’d stand before them all like this: arms out like a circus ringleader and face expectantly smug, waiting to begin. It was the same stature he had on stage, just before the encore. He held the crowd on the knife-edge, as they waited for Alex to crash in with the opening measure of ‘Fever Pitch.’

“Okay,” Ricky clapped. “Here we are. Barcelona. It’s our dear Alex’s birthday. And we were absolutely not going to spend it locked in the fucking hotel rooms, you see? We wanted to go out, get proper fucking pissed. I mean, it’s Barcelona— Who wouldn’t? You eat tapas at midnight and stay up until dawn. And Peter told us all we could have was Chicken Kiev in the conference room with the backing band.”

Alex banged his fist on the counter and bellowed, “BOO!”

Ricky joined in and the kitchen briefly took up the same energy as a football stadium. Alex ribbed Joey, to get him to join, but he missed the beat processing that the two of them were booing Peter, and not Chicken Kiev.

Mary’s eyes were a cool weight over him. But when he turned to her, she wasn’t looking.

Nora crossed the kitchen to pass her bowl of vegetables to Jean. As she squeezed between Ricky and the counter, he belched.

Nora shoved him, “Gah, disgusting!”

The boys all laughed.

“Your stupid stories.” Nora swore under her breath.

“Oh, jealous, are we? You wish you could’ve come,” Ricky said.

Nora made a face, “No.”

“Eh, yeah you do,” Joey said.

Nora flipped him off but blocked it with her torso from their mum’s vision.

“I did not want to go, idiot,” she said.

Joey thought, free of her task, she’d go back out to Ant or go sit in the lounge to steep in her seventeen-year-old woe alone. But Nora stayed, joined Mary at the bar, and waited for Ricky to continue.

“So, we’re in the hotel, thinking, what do we do? We’re pacing and coming up with plans to, basically, climb out the window or something. James-fucking-Bond ourselves out of that place. But then, through the fog who comes up with the perfect plot? I mean, the most genius-level, beautiful plan?”

The front door opened. In poured Nate and his parents, Terri and Scott. The lads all lit up in a huge cheer.

“Nathaniel Foy!” Ricky was as animated as an American game show host.

As Nate passed, he tapped Nora on her wrong shoulder which made her look. She tried to smack him but missed. Even with her head turned away, Joey could tell she was stifling a grin. Nora had always hated him the least, of all the lads. But still, he was a bit hurt she seemed happier to see Nate rather than her brother.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the great bassist with timing as right as rain! Nate, do you remember what you said to us in Spain? On Griff’s birthday?” Ricky asked.

Nate slotted into place beside Joey and Alex. “I said ‘let’s ask Maisie.’”

Terri worked her way through the kitchen, greeting each boy with a kiss.

When she got to Ricky, he took her hands like they were about to dance. “Do you know why your son was such a genius in that moment, Terri?”

Terri playfully hit his chest, “Go on, you’ll just say anyway.”

Ricky kissed her head before she detached from him. “It was because Maisie ran the whole thing. She was like the Queen on that tour. She got everything she wanted, d’you know what I mean? She told people where to go, where to stand, what to do. She decided which color the bloody tour bus curtains were.” His voice was airy with admiration.

It had been impressive to watch Maisie run things as she had on that tour. Joey remembered, before he and Maisie got together, watching her soundcheck with the band. Ricky was side stage beside him as she spoke to the crew in firm, short sentences. She described the effect her reverb should have over the house. Roadies and engineers nodded in the booth like her words were an incantation. Fucking hell, Ricky had whispered. Joey found himself nodding too, also under her spell. Watching Maisie was like tossing back a shot of liquor. The silky headrush of I want that, I want to be that. After, Joey sorted his feelings about Maisie with the former statement. By his tone in the kitchen, it seemed Ricky had sorted his feelings with the latter. 

“So,” Ricky continued, “if Maisie Brooks wanted to go out that night with some enterprising young gentlemen—” Several people laughed, Ricky ignored them, “then she would.”

He looked to Joey, “Isn’t that right, Jay?”

Hearing her name in this kitchen was strange. Especially directed toward him. He sort of couldn’t see the entire thing; he only glimpsed the edges of what it meant. Ricky spoke about her like she was a legend, which made her feel not real. And she wasn’t anymore, to Joey. He’d come to that conclusion in Australia. There was a sick, heavy thud in his stomach, remembering that night. He had been spinning out, trying to convince himself his job, his relationship with Maisie, his popularity, and his importance to Peter were things that could all coexist. And, in trying to, he’d royally fucked things with Maisie. But no one knew that. The press had moved on from them, after the tour. But surely, with the band’s second album release and Maisie nowhere near Joey’s arm, rumors would swirl. So, Joey felt he was allowed this one brief, innocent moment of connection to her among his family. Here, at least, their story could be whatever he wanted.

“Alright, yeah. She has her way,” he said.

Alex and Nate cheered. He could see Mary and Jean share a sparkling glance.

Ricky continued the story is his grandiose style.

“She stood right in front of her bodyguard, her little arms crossed, in her flannel pajama bottoms and said ‘Gary, we’re going out.’” He did his best imitation, flattening his expression into confidence and crossing his arms. 

“I’ll skip the details of the party—”

Alex booed again.

Ricky clutched his chest, “Griff, I can’t. There are children present.” He splayed out his hand to Nora.

She tossed a balled-up paper napkin at his head.

 “Let me get to the best part: we’re back in the hotel, four, five in the morning. And we’re waiting for the lift in the lobby.”

Joey remembered this part very clearly, though the rest moved through his head like a decayed film strip. He remembered Maisie’s listless gaze out the lobby window. The sun was just giving off first hints of rising and the only people around were the hotel staff.  It’s really empty, she’d whispered into his shoulder. She couldn’t look away from the quiet room, the empty chairs.

“Then ‘round the corner, quite literally already in a fucking suit, was Peter,” Ricky said.

“And we all froze. Actually, frozen solid in place.”

Alex laughed like a tea kettle. In Joey’s memory, he was hiding behind Ricky.

“But then, Maisie. Her golden hand lifts. ‘We’re just heading up to bed, Peter. Everything’s fine.’ And he let us go.” He snapped his fingers. “Like that. She was magic, I hope you don’t mind me saying, Jay.”             He shook his head. “I don’t think there’s a door that won’t open for Maisie.”