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The Yo-Yo Champion
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2
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An hour later, Ray Jakes was backstage at the Hollywood Bowl, sitting in his
dressing room, nervously biting his nails.
"You'd better stop that," said Brendan O'Leary, "you might need your fingers
come competition time."
"Do you think I ought to be practising?"
"I don't know. Maybe you should be saving yourself, resting..."
A few minutes went by in complete silence.
"It's no good," said Ray Jakes, exasperated. "I've got to do something!"
As he picked up his yo-yo - a much-sought-after Peter Fish Luminator - a head
shot round the dressing room door and a Californian accent yelled: "Five
minutes to show time!" Brendan O'Leary shot out of his seat with fright. Ray
Jakes, realising that the moment of truth was just around the corner, started
to panic.
"I don't think I'm ready for this..."
"You'd better be," said Brendan O'Leary, doing his best to remain calm for
his friend's sake. "It'll be fine, I promise. Here, shoot some of this scag
into your veins, that should sort you out. Now Get out there and show them!"
Ray Jakes took a deep breath, cooked up quickly and then shot up, he fell
back and let the crazy shit go to his brain, his eyes started to roll.
"You're right. I can do this."
And with that, he strode confidently out of the dressing room. Brendan
followed him, rushing to find his seat in the vast arena.
The competition had already been running for an hour when Ray Jakes stepped
out onto the stage. When the compere introduced him, a massive cheer went up.
This felt pretty good, he thought but the heroin is still meshing my brain.
"OK, take it away, Ray Jakes!"
Alone now on the vast stage, Ray Jakes stared out at the sea of heads. He
wondered if Brendan could see him although there was little chance of that,
Brendan had pumped enough Heroin into his veins to drop an elephant, there
was fuck all chance of him seeing anything. Then he noticed the cameras. His
every move was being projected on to giant video screens. Ray Jakes swallowed
hard, and began his display.
He started slowly. Better to warm up slowly than mess up quickly, he thought.
But as one expertly performed trick followed the next, and the display grew
ever more daring, the crowd broke out into spontaneous applause. They'd seen
some brilliant yo-yoing over the past hour or so, but they'd never seen
anything quite like this.
Chants of "Go, Ray , go!" started to go up all around the arena. The roar of
the crowd had Ray Jakes charged up to the point where he finally felt
confident enough to attempt his favourite trick, In The Bucket. This was to
be his pièce de resistance. If he could pull this off, he knew that he'd be
in with a good chance of winning the competition. With only a brief moment to
think about what he was doing, he launched into his big finale...
When it worked, the crowd went wild. The compere came on and shook his hand.
Even the judges - who were supposed to be looking stony-faced so as to avoid
giving too many of their thoughts away - looked mightily impressed. All he
had to do now was wait for the results.
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