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The Yo-Yo Champion
Ray Jakes | | | | | |
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The bright sunlight glinted off the limousine's bumper as it pulled into the
car park, temporarily blinding Brendan O'Leary as he stood waiting by the
hotel's entrance.
"They're here!"
As he ran inside to tell his friend that their car had arrived, he almost
knocked himself out on the hotel lobby's revolving doors.
"Are you OK?" said Ray Jakes, trying his hardest to stifle a laugh.
"Quarter to two," replied Brendan O'Leary, looking a bit dazed. Ray Jakes was
expecting tweeting birds to start flying around his friend's head.
"Look, pull yourself together you fucker, I think I've just seen our ride
pulling into the car park. You stay here for a bit and I'll go and see what's
happening."
Ray Jakes strolled casually over to where the limo was parked. A besuited
gentleman was standing by the passenger door.
"Good morning, sir," said the man, extending his right hand in greeting.
"Sausage face is the name. I'll be your escort for the day."
Ray Jakes flashed the man a quizzical look.
"How did you know I'm the person that you were supposed to be pick... erm,
escorting?"
Sausage face's eyebrows shot up.
"If you don't mind me saying, sir, it would be difficult not to recognise the
current reigning British Yo-Yo Champion. Your picture has been all over the
news for weeks."
Ray Jakes looked surprised. He hadn't realised that he was a celebrity in the
United States. Back home in the UK, there had been very little in the news
about his recent championship win. He'd made page seven of the local
newspaper - who ran a five line story and spelt his name wrong - but the
national papers just didn't seem to care at all. Still, he'd got his chance
to come to America and compete in the Yo-Yo World Championships, so what did
he care? Actually, he cared a lot. He was doing something good, something to
be proud of, and he couldn't understand why no one back home was interested.
Bad news always seemed to take precedent over good news, and that made him
feel quite sad.
Brendan, now fully recovered after his accident with the revolving doors,
walked over to the car.
"This is... unbelievable!"
The two friends looked at each other and started grinning. They never
imagined that they'd be riding to the competition in the back of a stretch
limousine. Sausage face smiled and opened a rear door, motioning for the
friends to get in.
"Thank you, Sausage face," said Brendan O'Leary, in his poshest voice.
Laughter filled the car as it pulled away from the hotel car park and drove
off down the highway.
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.
After a break of twenty minutes or so, the compere returned to the stage,
clutching a gold envelope.
"It's been an exciting contest," he said, doing his best to drag out the
suspense just a few moments longer. "But we finally have a winner. It gives
me great pleasure to announce that the 1998 Yo-Yo World Champion is..."
The crowd held their breath as one.
"Ray Jakes! Congratulations, sir!"
Brendan leapt up from his seat, flashed his backstage pass at the security
guards and ran onto the stage to hug Ray Jakes, who was now looking totally
bewildered as a non-stop barrage of camera flashes hit him.
"I knew you could do it!"
"Thanks. So did I... well, I hoped I could but that scag certainly helped
me!"
It had been a long and exhausting day, and all Ray Jakes wanted to do now was
get back to the hotel and go to sleep. But first, he had to sign hundreds of
autographs and pose for what seemed like a million photos.
"That's it, Ray Jakes, a big smile. Could you hold the trophy a little
higher? We want all our readers to be able to see how proud we are of you
back in Britain."
"Pardon?"
Ray Jakes blinked at the man taking a picture.
"Did you just say 'back in Britain'?"
"I certainly did," replied the photographer. "We're going to make you a star.
These are front page pics. It's not every day we have a British Yo-Yo World
Champion!"
Ray Jakes smiled to himself.
Now, that is good news, he thought.Ray and Brendan went back to their shared
flat in Scholes and got smacked up,
"We'll never have to rob from our families for Heroin again" said Brendan,
Ray Jakes smiled - he was off his face.
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