Zayden counted. By nine o’clock, eleven different people at his cousin’s engagement party had asked him the same question.
“So what are you up to now?”
Aunties. Uncles. His cousin’s new fiancé’s mum, who he’d met twenty minutes earlier. Every time, Zayden did the same thing: shrugged, looked at his trainers, and said, “Bits and bobs. Looking for stuff.”
Every time, he watched their faces do a tiny polite drop. Ah.
He escaped to the back step with a plate of jollof and his headphones round his neck. His grandad was already out there, sitting on an upturned crate, having escaped for his own reasons.
“You’re hiding,” his grandad said.
“So are you.”
“I’m old. I’m allowed.” He looked at Zayden sideways. “Eleven times, I counted.”
Zayden groaned. “What am I meant to say? I haven’t got a job. Everyone else has got something.”
His grandad chewed for a while. “What did you do this week?”
“Nothing.”
“Try again.”
Zayden thought. “Fixed Mrs Ahmed’s bike. Helped the kid downstairs with his maths. Went for a run. Finished that course online.”
“And last year? Could you do those things last year?”
“…Not really. Not the course.”
His grandad nodded like that settled something. “Then you’re further along than you were. That’s the only race there is, boy. You against last year. Everything else is just noise at a party.”
When Zayden went back in and the twelfth person asked, he said, “I’m helping a kid with his maths, and I’m working out what I want to do. I’m getting there.”
It wasn’t a job title. But this time, he looked up when he said it.