Ellie Quin Book 2: The World According to Ellie Quin (9 page)

Her feet pounded the pavement with the determined rhythmic
clack
of her platform boots.

She threw one more, hasty glance at the display…it was counting down the last minute.

Come on, you lazy thigh-slapper!

She picked up the speed once more, closing the final hundred yards with an athletic sprint that drew a passing glance of curiosity from the shuffling pedestrians she swept by.

She took the three steps leading up to the building’s entrance at a leap and burst inside through plastic-flap draft excluders that swung in noisily, slapping and scraping across the grimy vinyl floor as Jez collapsed across several orange bucket-seats opposite the entrance.

The marshal standing behind the glass security-screen above the counter recoiled in shock at her explosive entrance.

‘What the…?’ his voice crackled over the speakers on Jez’s side of the screen.

Jez bent over double, fighting for breath for a moment before pulling the battered and dented warm-box out from under her arm. She opened it wordlessly and presented it towards the officer behind the screen.

He looked at the churned-up mess inside, lit by the flickering blue tube light above the counter. He wrinkled his nose. ‘And this is?’

Jez took another moment to catch her breath before offering up a reply. ‘Four Double-slab StarGurters, a Star-Proti-beef Rib salad, five orders of StarCarboCurls, and three white coffees.’

The marshal studied the contents in silence, then finally shook his head. ‘Uhh…not any more it isn’t.’

CHAPTER 13

‘It’s a revolutionary new drink. This is going to change how we, as a species, view liquid consumption!’ the young woman announced, holding the moment for as long as possible so that her assembled audience could truly understand the magnitude of her statement.

Ellie shuffled uncomfortably as the speaker, a smartly presented business woman who had energetically introduced herself as
Juliette
, momentarily locked eyes on her, before moving on to stare intently at someone else behind her.

This had been Jez’s idea, of course. She had spotted the holographic advert drifting across the street like a lost balloon whilst out and looking for work. Being fired so publicly from StarBreaks a few days earlier seemed to have put a small dent in the self assurance she wore like a force field around herself, and Jez was eagerly looking for a quick opportunity to bounce back spectacularly and prove to the world, perhaps more so to Ellie, that she was a trooper; a survivor who really didn’t need a cruddy job in a burger bar. Jez said she was tired of working for other people anyway and had announced that she thought it was about time that she, and Ellie, worked for themselves.

So it was no surprise that she had been immediately seduced by the promise on the floating billboard of fabulous wealth within only a few weeks. It made no mention of exactly how such an unlikely thing would come to pass, just that it almost certainly would….and of course, offered a number to call for those who were interested.

‘So…you want to know, don’t you? You want to know what it is?’ asked Juliette rhetorically, her voice dropping to the hushed whisper of a conspirator. With a flourish of a well-manicured hand, she hit a button on the lectern beside her. All of a sudden the walls of the small conference cube were alive with the projected images of the most beautiful young people Ellie had ever seen. They were laughing, smiling, frolicking in the tumbling surf of some tropical world, playing games, passing a ball to each other gaily, rolling seductively in the purest white sand. And all of these beautiful people, it seemed, had an insatiable taste for the same brand of bottled drink - a tall, thin bottle with a blue and orange logo spiralling around it. She watched as flashing images of these adorable people enjoying this drink, slurping from the bottles and smiling, exposing impossibly white teeth, flickered across the walls.

‘I give you
Spectora
!’ cried Juliette spreading her arms with an infectious, evangelistic outpouring of excitement and wonder. ‘Spectora, ladies and gentlemen…it’s not just a sodapop, it’s not just a way of life. It’s the future.’

Ellie glanced at Jez. She was grinning like a simpleton. But then, this woman, Juliette, had had Jez hooked from ‘Good Morning’ – she’d been all ready and set to buy into this even before the sales pitch had begun.

‘Now, I’m sure you’re wondering what makes Spectora different to any other bottled drink out there aren’t you?’ She turned away from the flickering images on the walls to face them. ‘Any of you care to take a guess?’ she asked, her eyes scanning the audience.

There was a prolonged silence.

‘Come on, don’t be shy, anyone?’

Ellie hunched down ever so slightly in her seat, hoping the broad, slope-shouldered man in front of her would provide enough of a shield to hide her from this woman’s piercing eyes. Juliette slowly tracked left-to-right along the front three rows, relentlessly towards Ellie.

Agghh…don’t pick me, don’t pick me, don’t pick…

‘How about you young man? You’re not hiding from me now, are you?’ she said leaning to one side and looking around the man in front of Ellie. ‘Come on then, Mr Hide-n-Seek.’

‘Uh, I’m…err…I’m not a man.’

Juliette frowned, took a step forward. ‘Oh, yes. You’re not, are you? Sorry.’ She shrugged like it was forgotten already. ‘So what do you think it is about Spectora that makes it so special?’

Ellie’s pale face instantly coloured. Rose-tinted blotches blossomed across her cheeks. ‘Uh…I…I really….I…I’m not sure,’ she stammered awkwardly, and then thought up an answer just to get her off the hook. She knew it was pretty lame as she said it. ‘Because it’s really fizzy?’

Jez shook her head with pity and
tutted
out loud at Ellie’s answer. She thrust her hand into the air and bobbed up and down on her seat, eager to catch the woman’s attention.

‘Yes?’

‘Is it the taste, Juliette? It IS isn’t it?’ Jez announced loudly. ‘It’s the taste.’

Juliette nodded and her lips spread with a smile. ‘You are a very perceptive young woman! That’s right, it
IS
all in the taste. Let’s have a round of applause for our smart young sales candidate here,’ she said pointing at Jez.

The other members of the audience, twenty or thirty people, clapped dutifully as Jez stood up and took a theatrical bow before sitting down again as the muted applause quickly died out. Ellie hunched stiffly in her chair, annoyed with herself for sounding like an utter dudhead and for being so damned self-conscious and shy.

‘Now, I want you to look at all these beautiful young people in the infomercial. They’re all drinking our wonderful Spectora, but have you noticed anything else?’

This time mercifully Juliette didn’t bother looking for someone else to skewer publicly. ‘There’s only
one
bottle. One flavour. Spectora only comes in one,
wonderful
flavour. Who would like to try it?’

Jez’s arm shot up again. ‘I’ll give it a go!’

Ellie sighed. Jez was as unbearably excitable as usual. Her obsessive desire to be the centre of attention could be somewhat wearing, especially when she was on a roll. She was even worse after a few Spartans.

Juliette pulled a bottle out from behind her lectern and came towards them. She pressed down on the top of the plastic bottle and popped the seal with an audible hiss, before handing it to Jez.

‘Tell me what you think,’ she said nodding knowingly to the rest of the audience with an expectant just-you-wait-for-it grin spreading across her lips

Jez stood up again so that everyone could see her, reached out for the bottle and took a hearty swig, turning to mug at everyone else as she did so.

Ellie rolled her eyes.
Oh please.

A moment passed as Jez theatrically swilled the liquid around in her mouth and swallowed.

‘Well?’ asked Juliette.

Jez nodded. ‘It’s nice. Sort of tastes a bit like…chocolate…no…’

Juliette winked at the audience as Jez’s eyebrows knotted in concentration.

‘No, it’s more like, wow! It just changed to taste like, like….like a fruity, no, hang on, there it goes again! It’s…it’s changing. It’s-’

Juliette waved for her to sit down again, which Jez did reluctantly.

‘Ladies and gentleman, Spectora uses a revolutionary new technique that our men in lab coats call ‘evolutionary bacterial warfare’. It’s really very, very clever, and I’m going to explain to you,’ she said raising two fingers on each hand to do air quotes, ‘the
science
bit.’

CHAPTER 14

Jez was in her element. Of course she was. Street-selling was definitely
her
thing, Ellie noted with a resigned shrug. Selling and flirting…that’s what she was born to do.

‘You see, it contains two very different strains of micro-organisms that react violently against each other,’ said Jez as she handed the free sample bottle to the old man she had cornered. ‘Go on, take a sip…just for me,’ she added with a wink and pursing her full lips ever so slightly.

The non-so subtle suggestive pout worked. The man took the bottle from her, cracked the seal and took a hesitant sip.

‘You’ll feel the liquid hit your tongue and immediately there’s a taste isn’t there?’

The man nodded. ‘Yeah, what’s that?…vanilla?’

‘But then it changes, from second to second, becoming another, entirely different flavour in an instant.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ he said, a look of surprise on his face.

‘I’ll tell you what’s happening,’ continued Jez, effortlessly regurgitating the Spectora
sales shtick
they had been handed by Juliette yesterday. ‘Right now there are two colonies of micro-organisms fighting a desperate war of survival across your tongue. Your mouth is a battlefield, your taste buds…command and control points and both those bacterial armies are fighting ferociously for control of them. As the casualties fluctuate throughout this microcosmic war so the chemical balance of the drink changes and thus so does the flavour.’

‘Crud!’ said the man, swilling the liquid around,’ that’s …I just got a taste of munge-mellow in there for a second!’

Jez smiled. ‘It really is an amazing drink isn’t it?’

The man nodded, silently enjoying the continuing montage of sugary flavours in his mouth.

‘This is the drink of the future. It’s new, it’s fun, it’s exciting and it’s going to kick all the other bottled drinks out of the market. So, why not join me and the Spectora family? You could become your own boss, a licensed vendor and make a fortune, like I’m doing right now, selling this wonderful new drink!’

Jez moved in closer to him, her voice lowered ever so slightly. ‘In a matter of weeks, you could be earning thousands of creds a day. And in turn, not only will you earn money selling Spectors yourself, but also you could earn five percent from the sales of any new vendors you bring into the family.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yeah. If you manage to recruit four or five people to sell Spectora, and they in turn each do the same, pretty soon you won’t even need to bother selling it yourself anymore! They’ll be making your money for you. How’s that for a great deal?!’

The man nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah, I see what you mean.’

‘Good! I mean, it makes sense doesn’t it? Why not take this opportunity now? Be one of the first to become an
Spectora Ambassador
?’

Ellie watched the man’s eyes lighting up. Jez had got her hooks into the poor guy. He wasn’t going to walk away now, he was on the line and she was reeling him in. Another guaranteed sale for Jez.

‘Okay…so uh, how do I join, this…uh,
family
?’

Jez presented him with a card. ‘This is my agency number. You call the number on this card, quote the agency number, and for a small fee that covers the training day, you can become one of my licensed vendors. Easy as easy-peas.’

The man took the card, smiling. ‘Thank you…thanks!’ he said grasping Jez’s hand. ‘Really? You think I’ll be making thousands of creds?’

‘Sure!’ Jez grinned and shook his hand. ‘Let’s do business together soon, eh?’ she added with another suggestive wink. ‘The sooner the better. Remember, you want to be one of the first, don’t you?’

‘Yeah, I…s’pose I guess I do.’

‘Well you get home right now and call that number. Do it as fast as you can. I want
you
to be one of the first on my team, okay?’

The man nodded obediently and turned on his heels. Jez watched him walking briskly away swigging some more of the drink from the free sampler bottle and intently studying the business card she had given him. Then she turned towards Ellie standing sullenly beside her.

‘How do you do it?’ asked Ellie. ‘I can’t seem to get
anyone
to stop and have a go, let alone get them to sign up with me.’

Jez shrugged. ‘You just got to keep trying, Ellie. It’s all about getting your teeth into them and then hanging on. Wait…these ones look good, here we go.’

Ellie studied her friend as she moved out into the stream of walking traffic again and blocked the way of some more hapless pedestrians.

This is what she does best.

She watched Jez, dressed in her Spectora sales uniform; a tight-fitting orange, neoprene-rubber mini-dress with the logo winding diagonally down the front, and a blue bell-boy’s cap tilted at a jaunty angle on top of her head. Ellie grimaced. Basically, not to put too fine a point on it - they were dressed up to look like giant bottles of the stupid drink.

How come she doesn’t feel like a complete gaga dressed like this?

Ellie shook her head in wonder and admiration. She watched enviously as Jez coerced both men into giving it a try. A second ago they’d looked as if nothing would stop them going where they needed to be. And then they had run headlong into Jez, whose sales pitch appeared to be a seamless blend of overbearing pushiness and shameless flirtation.

Ellie caught a reflection of herself in the shop window across the busy street.

Look at me.
She saw a plain, skinny girl with a miserable face that looked like a slapped arse…dressed up to look like a plastic bottle of pop.

What the hell am I doing?

They had been here all morning, since the first early risers had started spilling out onto the lowest ground levels, and Ellie had failed to convince a single person to give the damned drink a try. Jez on the other hand had managed to stop pretty much every person she had accosted, and then of those, easily half of them had walked away clutching her card like found money.

The woman at the seminar yesterday, Juliette, had confidently assured them both that once they got out into the street in their sales costumes and started with the sales patter, Spectora would sell itself.

Yeah…a real breeze for Jez maybe.
Not for her though.

She sighed miserably. The vending franchise that both of them had bought, which included the costumes, the business cards, a start-up stock of the drink and some odds and ends of promotional material, had cost them two hundred and fifty creds each. That had pretty much wiped her out. Jez had talked her into spending what little money she had managed to scrimp and save over the last few months, to buy a franchise, promising they’d make that money back within days.

Crud.
Jez was utterly froob-head over this. By the end of yesterday’s seminar she was well and truly sucked in, ready to throw the last of their money at becoming Spectora Ambassadors. Well, it looked like it was working out for
her
alright, but for Ellie this was looking like a complete disaster. She was reminded of some nursery tale her mother had read her long ago about a boy foolishly selling his cow for some magic beans.

Jez returned across the street to Ellie. ‘Come on sales-chik, you’ve got to look like you’re having
fun.
Like you’re all happy-clappy. No-one’s going to stop for you with a face like that!’ said Jez shaking her head disapprovingly.

Ellie looked at her wearily. ‘It’s as easy as that? I just smile a lot? Come on Jez, it’s more than that.
You
can do it, you can get people to buy things, because….’

‘Because what?’

‘Because…because you look good. And you damn well know that! The men sign up because you do that kissy-kissy thing with your lips, and the women because….’

Jez shrugged, ‘because?’

Ellie struggled to find the words. ‘Because…I don’t know, maybe because they want to be like you or something. I don’t know. It’s hard to…I guess you’ve either got it or you haven’t. And I definitely haven’t.’

Jez came over and put an arm around her. ‘Ellie girl, it’s not about how
sexy
you are. It’s about how
confident
you are. And throwing on a smile is just about the most important bit. It tells people that you
own
the ground you’re standing on.’ Jez gestured to the pedestrians passing them, some curiously glancing their way. ‘Look at them, Ellie. None of them smiling, none of them. That’s because they’re all terrified.’

‘Terrified?’

‘Yeah….insecure. Afraid of standing out from the herd. Maybe because they don’t want to be razzed by some street-hoods, or pulled aside by some law marshal, or even worse than either of those - approached by some smiling stranger dressed like a bottle of pop and actually being
spoken
to! They’re afraid to be
embarrassed
.’

Ellie could sort of understand that, actually.

‘But you know what?’ Jez continued evangelising.

‘What?’

‘Something I’ve worked out in my head. Deep down, they want to smile too, but they’re looking for someone to do it first, to - I don’t know, to give them permission.’

Ellie looked at her friend with an expression of cynicism. ‘You’ve been watching too much Dr FixHeart on the toob.’

Jez laughed. ‘Yeah that did sound a bit paffy. But seriously Ellie-girl, try it out for yourself. Just throw on a smile and see where that gets you.’

Ellie studied her reflection, aware that those passing by were watching her out of the corners of their eyes, watching the daft skinny girl with the stupid bottle-dress on.

Awkwardly, self-consciously, Ellie forced a smile onto her lips.

‘There! See? Now already you look a whole lot different to all these miserable ditto-heads walking past us. I mean, look! Miserable freggers, the lot of them,’ Jez muttered quietly. ‘And wow, Ellie….you look about a billion times prettier! You should do the smile-thing more often, girl,’ said Jez digging her in the ribs and laughing. ‘Come on, wider smile…show some pearlies.’

The taut, manic smile that she had stretched across her lips felt utterly false and uncomfortable. She wondered how the hell Jez could keep it up for hours on end; one big plastic phoney smile.

But, Ellie noticed, she was right about something. One of the people passing in front of her had looked up, hesitantly met her eyes and smiled uncertainly back.

There it was again, another momentary, faltering, restrained smile from someone she had never met before in her life. Maybe Jez was right. Maybe such a pointless, insincere gesture was all it took; all that stood between her and making a fortune.

‘You’re doing well, girl,’ said Jez still watching her. ‘Now how do you feel?’

How do I feel? Like a damned ploob-head…

No – hang on, she didn’t.

To Ellie’s astonishment, for the first time that morning, she didn’t feel like an utter freak. Grinning like this, like a mindless fool…there was something about this stupid, inane grinning thing that seemed to be cancelling-out her painful embarrassment. It was almost as if her face was telling everyone else;

I really don’t care what you think I look like, I
know
I look just peachy.

Jez gently nudged her forwards. ‘Okay sales-chik, now it’s all about confidence. Brassing it out. Don’t wander out there and sheepishly ask whether they
might
like to try a sip. You’ve got to go out there and
demand
it!’ said Jez. ‘So, come on then.’

‘Now?’

‘Yes, now.’

Ellie looked once more at her reflection across the street. Yes, now she looked like another person entirely; in a way, a bit more like Jez, like someone who knows exactly who they are and where they’re headed. She felt okay, not the humble, wretched creature she felt like the rest of the time.

Faking it. Faking being confident. But that’s okay. That’s what other ‘super-confident’ people do. Right?

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’m ready.’

She took several steps forward towards the river of people passing down the street, the smile still frozen upon her lips, and then she picked out a man walking towards her, his eyes, like everyone else’s, cast down and glazed over. Ellie planted her feet in front of him and at the last moment the man stopped and looked up.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Whuh?’

For a moment the sales pitch that she had spent last night rehearsing and role-playing with Jez had vanished from her mind, but then the
opener
came to her rescue.

‘Would you like to be one of the first to join me, and make a thousand creds a week?’ she gushed enthusiastically.

‘Whuh?’ he grunted again.

‘Make a tho-u-u-s-a-and creds a week?’ she repeated, mimicking Jez’s drawled delivery.

The man shrugged, suspiciously curious.

Ellie turned uncertainly to Jez, unsure what to say next, but Jez flapped her hands frantically for her to rattle-on with the pitch. She quickly turned back to face him, fearful of losing the momentum.

‘Yes! Of course you would! I’m Ellie by the way, and I’m well on the way to earning that sort of money. And I’m doing it selling this wonderful, revolutionary, new drink - SPECTORA!’

The man looked dead pan. His shoulders shrugged a ‘so what’. She could see with that announcement his momentary curiosity was satisfied.
So you sell bottled pop, I get it. Big deal.

‘I want you to try just one sip, sir…..just for me. Because, that’s all it’s going to take to totally change your life. Just one little sip.’

‘Uh no, thanks,’ he said looking to step around her.

Ellie’s smile faltered with frustration.
Come on Ellie, think of something girl. Don’t let your first prospect go.

‘One little sip,’ she pursed her lips ever so slightly, the way she had seen Jez do a million times, and winked. ‘I’m sure I won’t disappoint you.’

The man stopped and his eyes darted over her, lingering on her flat chest, her legs and her face, in that order - appraising her in the space of a heartbeat. It made her skin crawl.

‘Okay, guess. Just for you chik,’ he replied cracking the faint beginnings of a smile.