Kjartan Poskitt's The Miami Sticker 

It always rained on concert nights. One other figure was already huddled in the bus shelter when I arrived, clutching my case. I stood looking up the dark road, ignoring him, but knew I was being stared at.

“You got a trumpet in there?” came the old man’s voice.

I nodded without looking round. It didn’t take a lot of brains to guess there would be a trumpet in a trumpet case. There were large headlights in the distance – I’d soon be on the bus.

“Cairo, Cape Town, Miami, Berlin...”

He was reading the tatty labels stuck on the case. They weren’t mine – they were there when I’d got it. The headlights went past.

It was a lorry.

“Tell me, is the pearl inlay on the middle valve still chipped?”

This made me look at him. He was wearing an old baseball cap and a shabby overcoat. “How would you know that?” I snapped irritably.

“Sorry!” he grinned. “It’s an old friend. I played that trumpet in the Queen’s Ballroom, Miami.”

“Really?”

“Six of us playing hot jazz for three hours. What a gig – what an audience!”

“Lots of rich people?”

“Nah, it was a real dump. There were just two fat old women with blue hair eating doughnuts. For three hours!”

He chuckled at the memory, and I laughed too.

“Then a month later in Berlin we had two thousand people up dancing. So are you in a band?”

“School concert band. We only play at St Chad’s Hall.”

“What do you mean only? You should put a sticker on that case saying St Chad’s Hall.”

“It’d look a bit naff next to the others.”

“Why? So long as you play with pride, there’s no such thing as a naff gig. I don’t have much in my pockets these days, but thanks to that trumpet I’ve got a head full of treasures.”

There was a swish of tyres on the wet road as the bus arrived.

Before I got on, he reached out and stroked the case.

“Take care of my old friend,” he said. “And don’t forget that sticker. If I put one on for Miami, you can put one on for St Chad’s!”

by Kjartan Poskitt

© Kjartan Poskitt 2008. Story taken from WOW! 366 published by Scholastic Children’s Books. All rights reserved.If you enjoyed this story, why not try some of Kjartan’s books: The Urgum the Axeman series and the Murderous Maths series