Zak: I said I hadn’t seduced her. That we’d got on well and we’d kissed.
Maggie: I’d known Zak for a long time and I hadn’t seen him like that about a girl, all flustered and a bit embarrassed. Come to think of it, I hadn’t really seen Zak with many girls, which was strange because he was a good-looking kid.
Zak: It’s not exactly easy to meet someone when you’re the brother of the most famous pop star in the world, you know?
Maggie: I ate toast and watched Zak put away a plate full of sausages, bacon, mushrooms and eggs washed down with a gallon of coffee. Then I asked if he was ready to go. He said he needed ten minutes, and I said I’d meet him outside, that I’d call the car.
Zak: Everyone knows ten minutes doesn’t mean exactly ten minutes, don’t they? But when I got out on the street, after a quick shower and change, the car was waiting and Maggie was inside it, looking pissed. We didn’t speak on the way over to the park.
Pea: That second day was a Saturday, and Alex had turned up at nine, desperate to get in on the action. I didn’t tell him about the kiss. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, though. Zak’s hands, and his lips, and the way my stomach had turned over when he leaned in. I thought Alex might know, just from looking at me. I thought it might show, on my face.
Alex: I didn’t know about the kiss that day, no. I guess maybe Pea was acting a bit strangely but that was sort of to be expected, given that her family’s theme park was being assessed for suitability fortheAJ Silver. It’s not every day something like that happens, and certainly not in our town. It wasn’t long after I arrived that that massive fuck-off limo turned up and Maggie and Zak got out of it. Zak was hot, no doubt about it. He had that lazy, laidback American look, like that guy fromMy So-Called Lifethat Pea and I talked about endlessly. The one who leaned.
Pea: I could tell that Alex fancied Zak.
Zak: Alex was kind of annoying. Pea had mentioned him the night before, said that he was her best friend and that he’d probably be around that day, but all I was interested in was getting her on her own so we could make out again, and it seemed to me that that was pretty unlikely with him hanging out with us.
John: I asked them how they wanted to play it. Whether they wanted to wander around on their own again, or have more of a structured tour this time. Zak just shrugged. Maggie was clearly in charge, but I wasn’t sure about who was going to make the final decision. Zak hadn’t been brought over for nothing, had he?
Maggie: I said what about Pea and Alex showing us around. I didn’t want John doing a hard sell on us, and I thought I’d probably get more of an insight into what AJ might think by spending the day with teenagers. John didn’t look all that happy. He was a bit of a control freak, I think, and he wanted to make sure we saw what he wanted us to see. But I wanted to see it all, even the bits that weren’t so sanitised and clean. Especially those. So that’s what we did. John said if he wasn’t needed he was going to go and oversee the powering up of the bigger rides.He pointed to the walkie talkie on his belt and told Pea to take one, in case we needed him. Cathy went off to the kitchen, and I think Sebastian was watching TV, not taking much interest in any of it.
Alex: I had all these questions I wanted to ask about AJ, like whether he was involved in writing the songs and how he spent all his money, but I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t cool. So I just asked how their flight had been and what they thought of Wildworld so far.
Zak: I tried to engineer it so Alex was a bit ahead, asking Maggie all his inane questions. It worked, too. I brushed my hand against Pea’s and she looked over at me. I said hi. She said hi, then looked down at the floor. She was wearing another band T-shirt. Pulp. I asked her about them, and she started to say she’d lend me a CD but then I guess she remembered I was flying home the next day and she went quiet. I tried to get her talking again, asked if she’d listened to the Pavement album, but she said she’d fallen asleep straight after she got home.
Maggie: It was obvious there was something going on between the two of them, so I played my part. I chatted to Pea’s friend Alex, who was obviously a bit fame-hungry and excited by my proximity to that life. He asked me what AJ eats for breakfast. I said that AJ was a teenage boy and ate pretty much everything he could get his hands on, but that I thought his ideal breakfast was probably chocolate Pop Tarts and about a loaf’s worth of toast with peanut butter.
Alex: Maggie was cool. She was almost our parents’ age but she seemed so different from them. I asked whether she had kids and she shook her head and looked away. I thought maybe it was having kids that made you boring.
Pea: I told Alex to head for the Pirate Ship, and he laughed and said, ‘You and your pirate ship.’ Zak asked why there, and I said it was my favourite ride. We got on the very back row, which is always my favourite place to sit, and when we got to the highest point I reached across and peeled Zak’s hands off the metal bar and he laughed and put them in the air like mine. I snuck a look at Maggie, but she wasn’t giving anything away.
Zak: I’d been on rides like that a hundred times. AJ had always been a theme park nut, and Dad had taken us to tons of parks with tons of rides. But there was something about it, sitting there next to Pea, my hands in the air and my heart in my throat. I felt like I was a kid again, and somehow like I was older, too, and more sure of what I wanted. When it stopped, I felt like something inside me had changed.
Maggie: A pirate ship’s a pirate ship, am I right?
Pea: After we got off, Maggie asked where I’d go next, if it was just me and I could go anywhere. I almost laughed at that, because Icouldgo anywhere. This place had always felt like my playground. I looked at Alex and he raised his eyebrows and we both said it at the same time. Wild Water Rapids. Sometimes, we’d go on that thing five times in a row. It was Alex’s favourite, and I loved it too. You never knew how wet you’d get, or who in the boat would bear the brunt of it. I led them over, raised a hand to Jack, who was getting people on and off the boats, and he waved us through.
Zak: We all got in the boat, Maggie first, then me, then Pea and finally Alex. The seats were a bit wet and I felt the water seeping through my jeans. I looked over at Pea and she was smiling at Alex. It was like the two of them had this private, unspoken language. I didn’t like it. And then I realised I wasactually feeling jealous, of this guy who I was pretty sure was gay, because he was closer than I was to this girl I’d met literally one day before.
Maggie: I thought I’d got through it relatively unscathed but then right at the end this enormous wave crashed over the side of the boat, soaking me through. Luckily, my hair stayed dry, but my jeans were drenched. I said something about this being a great idea as we got off, and then I saw that Pea felt bad about it, so I gave her a quick smile and said it didn’t matter, but I would need to head back to the hotel to get changed. Pea asked if she or her mum could lend me something, but she was a lot smaller than me and I’d seen the kind of clothes her mum wore, so I politely declined. Said I would just get the driver to take me back, do a quick change and meet them back near the gift shop in an hour.
Pea: I kept thinking that if this was what put them off the place, Dad would kill me.
Alex: It felt a bit strange after Maggie had gone. Pea and I had been roaming that park unsupervised for years, but somehow that day I felt like we were kids who’d escaped their adults and were going on the rampage. I asked Pea where we were going next, and she suggested getting an ice cream so that Maggie didn’t miss any of the rides. So that’s what we did.
Zak: I got the ice creams and we found a picnic table. It was getting warm and I was pressed up against Pea and I wished to God that Alex wasn’t there.
Pea: I remember that Zak put a hand on my knee under the table and I felt like my heart would jump out of my body. Or stop altogether. One or the other. Alex was talking about school,how he’d never understood what the different year groups were called in America, what sophomore was, and junior, and freshman, and Zak was explaining it but all I could focus on was the pressure of his hand on my knee, the small, slow circles he was making with his index finger. I kept thinking that I couldn’t wait to tell Alex all about it, and then remembering that Alex was right there, living through this moment with me, but not really.
Alex: Pea was definitely being more girly and giggly than I was used to. She obviously had a crush on Zak. Why wouldn’t she? I certainly did. After we’d finished eating, Zak said he was going for a smoke and asked if either of us wanted one. We said we didn’t smoke, and we both watched him amble away. The second he was out of earshot, Pea grabbed hold of my hands and told me that he’d kissed her. I had to tell her she was so high-pitched only bats could hear her. It felt like a kick in the teeth. It had always been me and her, hopeless romantics and hopeless at anything romantic. And what, now she was just kissing fit Americans? How the hell had that happened?
Pea: I’d thought Alex would be excited for me, but he seemed sort of pissed off.
Zak: There was an atmosphere between them when I got back. I tried to get a conversation about music going but it ended up with Alex asking me loads of questions about AJ, about our family background and how he’d got into the music business. I gave him chapter and verse – the singing and dancing lessons, the agent,The Friday Show, the family move from Georgia to LA which didn’t include my dad. He looked a bit embarrassed at that bit, and then said he’d heard that divorce was much more common in the States, which sounded like bullshit to me. People fall out of love everywhere, don’t they?
Pea: I couldn’t wait for Maggie to get back. When it was just the three of us, it was all wrong. I couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
Maggie: When I came back for round two, we covered a lot of the same ground Zak and I had covered the day before, but it was so much quicker with Pea in tow. Not because of bypassing the lines – John had given us a special ticket for that – but because she knew every cut-through and shortcut in the place. I was pretty sure that, by the end of the day, we’d seen everything that Wildworld had to offer. I was ready for an early night and a flight back to my husband.
