Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera

Author:Anna Perera [Perera, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4532-3240-8
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 2011-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

18

EVERY SHRED

Khalid wakes up one morning to a new sound. The sound of music. Rap music throbbing in his ears. Drowning out the call to prayer. Drowning out the early-morning noises of the base he’s become so familiar with.

Sparking the memory of the sound of house, techno and hip-hop booming from the old speakers in Nico’s bedroom, black foam pads peeling from the corners. Khalid’s suddenly back there, wide awake. Himself again. Clear in his head for a while. Recalling both of them singing, jumping along to the driving beat, rapping about life in mean streets that were way cooler than Rochdale. Hearts on fire, hands in the air—the delicious smell of fish and chips drifting up from the kitchen. In the ghetto—yeah. Khalid’s just getting into the rapping when it stops. Ending as suddenly as it started. Making him think it’s a trial run for something. An experiment to test the loudspeakers?

Khalid smiles, remembering a time when Nico wrote a rap of his own called “Hey Leona.” It was rubbish. Nico was a good singer but he had too much confidence. Believing the moment he wrote it he was going to be the best in the world, he even entered a rap battle online, where one of the real rappers said it was the worst thing he’d ever heard in his whole life. And everyone, all the people logged on to the site to hear them battle it out, agreed.

The next day Nico bought a trumpet in the school jumble sale, even though it had a massive dent down one side. But Nico didn’t mind. The rest of them did, though, Khalid especially. Every conversation after that was interrupted by a deafening blast from the old thing.

Khalid looks again and again at his life, as though he’s searching through an old photo album for the millionth time. Days and weeks pass by with him revisiting incidents and events he hadn’t thought anything of at the time. Always yearning to be back there, pushing the play button on Nico’s CD player, looking at his collection of Star Wars figures on the windowsill, the poster of Eminem on the wall. It hurts so much sometimes it makes him want to end it all.

He really wishes he’d had a girlfriend. That Niamh had put her arms around him just once. He imagines being married to her and living in a nice big house with a flat-screen TV and music piped into every room. They’d have kids who were brilliant at football and clever as well, and that makes him feel good—for a bit.

With a sudden bout of pins and needles in his right leg, Khalid sits up, totally cross with himself for not yet being able to talk to girls in the way he should.

“First look her in the eye,” Tony said. “Then give her a compliment, say something nice—I like your shoes. Girls have a thing about shoes. Say that, or nice coat. Anything you can think of to make her smile.

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