The Shadow Worlds (The SCI'ON Trilogy #1)

By Nicola Rhodes

Whenever a decision is taken that is of significance to the world. The world divides and two alternate futures are created. In the beginning, there was only one world. That world we name SCI ‘ON. All other worlds that sprang from it we name the shadow worlds. Some believe SCI ‘ON is the only real world and that all others are mere reflections; hence the name

Johnny Hammond is not your ordinary computer nerd. He has the makings of a hero. When a mysterious man shows him the way To SCI ‘ON, Johnny becomes obsessed. And only he can find a way to get there through the myriad shadow worlds that stand in his way. But someone doesn’t want him to get there.

From earliest childhood, Ryan and Kai have been best friends. The fact that they come from separate universes is not allowed to stand in their way. As they grow up, they realise that this ability to travel between the worlds is no mere coincidence, as their ultimate destiny unfolds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nicola Rhodes
• Release date: May 15, 2010
• ISBN: 9781458100641

Nicola Rhodes

About the Author Nicola Rhodes often can’t remember where she lives so she lives inside her own head most of the time, where even if you do get lost, it’s still okay. She has met many interesting people inside her own head and eventually decided to introduce them to the rest of the world, in the hopes that they would stop bothering her and let her sleep. She has been doing this for ten years now but they still won’t leave her alone. She wrote this book for fun and does not care if you take away a moral lesson from it or not. You have her full permission to read whatever you wish into this work of fiction. As she says herself: “Just because I wrote this book, doesn’t mean I know anything about it.”

Book preview

Chapter One – Kai and Ryan

‘Kai!’ There was a silence. Then, more impatiently, ‘Kai! Where is that boy? Yo Kai!’

The bushes rustled, and a dark tousled head appeared. ‘All right – all right, keep your hair on!’

The modern colloquialisms that he had picked up from her still sounded strange in his mouth to Ryan. She could not help smiling, but she soon became serious.

‘Kai, did you get away all right? I’ve been so worried. I wish you’d stay here with me.’

‘Can’t,’ he said, giving her a cockeyed grin. ‘I have to be on the spot, so to speak. You know that. I’m sure Mac would agree,’ he added slyly.

She sighed; it was true. Nothing was more important than the mission – whatever that was. Ever since she had been about twelve and Malcolm O’ Connor had discovered that her childhood playmate came from – well another world, she called it (although Mac said she was oversimplifying it) and it had turned out that only she and Kai could cross over between them, he had been sending them on ever more and increasingly dangerous missions. He had said that they must be chosen whatever that meant. It had never occurred to her or Kai that Mac might know something that they did not, or that he was not who he said he was, or even that he was insane. But they had not argued with him. In fact, Ryan had been rather pleased to be so important, and so had Kai. And now that they were older and not so easily impressed, it was too late, because, chosen or not, there really were a lot of people who needed help in Kai’s world and they did what they did – they helped people because not to, when they could, was unthinkable. They were trapped. Trapped by their own consciences.

‘It’s a good job too,’ said Kai, referring to his earlier comment and breaking in on her thoughts. ‘He’s at it again.’

‘The Count?’

‘Yep, and I wouldn’t have known if I lived here, now would I, eh?’

‘Another baby?’

‘He’s got it in the palace as we speak.’ Kai confirmed.

‘What does he want them for?’

‘Beats me. Not for any good though, I reckon, that’s all we need to know, ain’t it? We gotta get it out, before he …’

‘Exactly,’ Ryan pounced on his perplexed pause. ‘Before he what?’

Kai wrinkled his brow. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘But it can’t be good. We know what he’s like, and if he weren’t up to no good, what’s he want to kidnap it for?’

This was indisputable. The Count Kalas, who was a part of Kai’s world and an absolute ruler of his little empire, had an evil reputation. He had, to Kai and Ryan’s certain knowledge, been previously involved in ritual virgin sacrifices, had had several servants beheaded and was known to consort with witches who, Kai assured her, were, in his world at least, always up to no good.

It seemed strange to think now, that as a child, she had never realised just how different Kai’s world had been, had never realised that it was a different world at all. For such an idea would not have seemed as impossible to a child as it would to an adult. And yet, with a head full of Narnia and Tir Na Nog, still she had accepted that through the little gate at the back of the garden Kai lived in a home without electricity where he had no TV or washing machine or stereo. She had envied him, not having to go to school without ever wondering about it or thinking it strange. Nor had her mother, who had opined that the Lascalles family – Kai’s family, must belong to some weird religion and had expressed some uneasiness about Ryan sharing his company.

‘What kind of name is Kai anyway?’ she had asked. ‘What kind of name is Lascalles, for that matter?’

But Ryan had not known and did not care. Kai was her best friend, and if he did not have a TV, he had something better in his world, as Ryan was to discover – magic. It took her a while to see this as an advantage of his world over hers because, until she was nine, she firmly believed, like all small children, that her world had magic in it too. She just had not seen any yet.

Kai had grown up almost without her noticing it. It may have been because he still, at the age of twenty, was not very tall, at least not for a man, and he was lithely built, although wiry and deceptively strong. In a world without modern conveniences, people had to work hard just to eat and Kai had grown up on a farm. Or it may have been his large blue eyes, which gave his face a still childlike quality, and he still wore the same untidy haircut and peasant clothes that he had always done. In many ways, he had hardly changed at all. Had she known it, but she honestly never gave it much thought, she had not changed much either. Also twenty, she looked no older than fifteen, with her long fair hair scraped back in a ponytail and no make-up most of the time, only the changes in her figure indicated that she had grown up at all. She did not consider herself pretty, and in truth, she was not, but she was attractive. Her green eyes, long but not large, were secretive and seductive, her cheekbones high and her mouth sulky except when she smiled, when it seemed almost to stretch across her whole face. She was tall for a woman, the same height as Kai, and when her hair blew around her face, she resembled nothing so much as a Viking princess. This effect, though, was somewhat spoiled, when in her own world, by the constant wearing of faded jeans and a battered cowboy hat pulled low over her eyes.

This hat she tipped back now to look at Kai. ‘Do we have a plan for getting in?’ she asked him. ‘We can’t use the same as last time.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘Too risky, they know us now.’ He paused. ‘Maybe I should go alone.’

‘I’d like to see you,’ she scoffed.

‘What's that supposed to mean?’

‘I mean I’d never let you do it, we’re a team, aren’t we?’

He looked at the ground.

‘Well aren’t we?’ she persisted.

‘I did have one idea,’ he said, ignoring this. ‘I think we should run it by Mac first.’

Ryan narrowed her eyes at this evasiveness, but said nothing for they were at the door, where Mac greeted them.

‘Morning Kai, glad you’re still in one piece. Hello sulky.’ This last shot to Ryan, who scowled.

Malcolm O’ Connor had been first a genial neighbour and later Ryan’s stepfather, jovially referred to as The Ogre until she had learned to like him and discovered that his arias were worse than his battle scenes. She had been left in his custody when her mother had run off with yet another man who was, less jovially, referred to by both of them as: That bastard, son of a bitch and sometimes That scheming tosspot.

Ryan had been surprisingly unaffected by her mother’s desertion; in truth, she had expected it, and was closer to her stepfather anyway; she had been going on missions for him for three years already when her mother had left. Ryan had been christened Alyssa, and Ryan was her father’s surname. When Malcolm had married her mother he had adopted Alyssa, and she became known as Alyssa Ryan-O’ Connor, but she lost no time in dropping the Alyssa, which she did not like anyway, and from the age of ten had been simply Ryan O’ Connor. She was more than happy to be known by her stepfather’s name, yet she had not wanted to drop her real father’s name entirely, and she was not, as she said, a double-barrelled kind of person.

Kai had been left an orphan at the age of three, and been brought up by his grandfather, Matthias Lascalles, who had disappeared in mysterious circumstances two years earlier. It was only recently that Kai had begun to wonder if the same thing might not have happened to his parents. With the Count around, anything was possible.

* * *

Kai appeared around the corner clutching a bundle of rags, he gave the thumbs up sign and Ryan nodded, holding her finger to her lips. She pointed to the balcony that they had designated their exit route and indicated that the coast was clear. Kai nodded and began to move when they heard footsteps, the unmistakable tap, tap, tap, of the Count himself, in his absurd patent heeled boots.

‘Shit!’ mouthed Ryan, to Kai’s great admiration, he still was not comfortable cursing himself, but he loved to hear her do it. It seemed so daring, all part of her fearlessness. She hesitated; Kai had the baby; it was up to her. She stepped out in front of the Count to his utter astonishment, and Kai ran for it, feeling a coward, but unwilling to face her wrath if he did not. The Count let him go.

He turned an evil smile on Ryan. ‘I’ll get him the next time,’ he said as she levelled her revolver at him.

‘It was a trap,’ panted Kai. ‘He did it to get us there, we’ve been causing him too much trouble lately, and now he’s got her. He’ll kill her for sure.’

Now that the baby was safe, Kai was feeling his burden of guilt, he saw it all clearly now, and he had just left her there. Just run away.

‘Now calm down,’ Mac told him. ‘She’s been in worse situations, you both have. How do you know she won’t kill him?’

Kai stared.

‘What do you mean, he's a vampire?’ Mac roared. ‘A ruddy vampire! And you didn’t think to tell us this?’ He was pacing the room in his fury. ‘Oh my God.’

‘I thought you knew,’ mumbled Kai, shamefacedly. ‘He’s a Count.’

‘What the blue-blazes does that have to do with it?’ bellowed Mac. He paused as this sunk in. ‘Wait a minute, do you mean to tell me that if you are a Count, you are automatically a vampire?’

‘Of course,’ Kai faltered. ‘You didn’t know that?’

‘Of course not fool. How should I? Vampires don’t exist here.’

‘B-but that means that she doesn’t know.’ Kai started to panic. ‘She won’t run. She’ll try to fight, and he can’t be fought – can’t be killed. I left her there, and it’s exactly the same as if I’d killed her.’

The door flew open, and a furious voice called. ‘You could have told me the bastard was a vampire.’

‘Ryan! How? What? Oh thank God, how did you escape?’

‘In a cloud of dust.’ She grinned.

‘Huh?’

‘His dust, I staked him. You know?’

Kai shook his head perplexedly.

‘Like Dracula.’

Kai shook his head. ‘Who?’

Mac was laughing softly by this time. ‘I think I can elucidate,’ he said. He turned to Ryan. ‘You killed him?’ he asked.

‘Yes.’

‘And how did you know how to do that?’

‘Well, books, TV, movies, you know.’

‘And Kai, have you ever heard of a book about a vampire? A story book?’

‘No.’

‘Hmm, I’m not surprised. If vampires are real in your world and hold positions of power, such stories would be suppressed, naturally. You do not know then how to kill a vampire?’

‘But I did,’ butted in Ryan. ‘Because they aren’t real in our world, so we know how to do it – in theory anyway.’

‘Vampires can be killed?’ stuttered Kai. ‘But they’re already dead.’

‘Is much of your world under vampire control?’ asked Mac, ignoring this.

‘Almost all of it, I’d say.’ He thought about this. ‘But if what you say is true, then it need no longer be.’

‘Maybe this is our mission,’ interrupted Ryan excitedly, ‘to free Kai’s world from …’ She stopped suddenly, a new thought had occurred to her. She turned to Kai. ‘You mean you left me there believing I had no chance?’

Kai’s face burned. In his shame, he missed the note of compassion in her voice and instead invested the question with the accusation that he had been heaping on himself.

He turned away. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered. And then, ‘I should go.’

He was out the door and flying up the path before either of them could stop him.

‘What did I say?’ said Ryan.

* * *

Kai was in the middle of a dusty cornfield when she found him. Two miles out from the farmhouse and wielding a scythe like a maniac. She waited for him to see her and meanwhile watched a glorious sunset. Eventually, hot and sweaty and tired out, he stopped and then he saw her. She was standing perfectly still in the twilight, in a long white dress. She was, as she would have said, incognito, her long fair hair shining in the pale light of a moon not quite out and still competing with the last rays of the sun. She seemed, in this unearthly light, to glow of herself, she really looked almost inhuman, angelic even, and quite beautiful. Kai stared at her as if he had never seen her before; he felt dryness in his mouth that had never before been associated with her presence, his heart was thumping painfully. He put it down to guilt.

‘Kai.’ Even the voice was not her own. She held out her hands to him, and he moved toward her slowly, his legs felt like they were full of porridge. He put it down to weariness.

‘You really are a berk,’ she grinned, and the world returned to normal.

Kai shrugged. ‘I’m sorry I left you.’

‘I know you are. That’s all I meant you know. It must have been hard for you. I’m not mad, honest. Anyway, it all worked out for the best, didn’t it?’

Kai shrugged again. ‘I guess.’

‘Let’s get back to the house, it’s getting dark.’ She glanced up at the sky. ‘I reckon there’s a storm coming.’

‘What do you mean? It’s a beautiful night.’

‘Nevertheless, I reckon there’s a storm coming,’ she said in a sombre voice.

Kai laughed. ‘You should be on the stage – sweeping it.’ He clutched a hand dramatically to his breast. ‘Oh save us mere mortals from the deadly influence of a vengeful God,’ he pronounced pompously in the best traditions of bad acting.

Ryan thumped him, laughing herself now. ‘Shut up you cheeky toad.’

He dodged away and picked up the scythe, then walked toward her, brandishing it fearsomely. ‘Ask not for whom the bell tolls …’ he began in a lugubrious tone, when the sky was split by a terrible cry, at once both harsh and shrill and deadly cold.

Ryan started to look about her wildly, but Kai already had her by the elbow. ‘Run!’

Wheeling about in the sky were several large shapes like birds or maybe dragons, except they shot no flame. Indeed they seemed almost like mere shadows or ghosts, but the terror of them was unambiguous enough. They ran.

‘What are they?’ gasped Ryan.

‘Hupia,’ he said, shortly, ‘The Child Stealers.’

‘Oh, but that’s …’ She stopped. After all, in this world they had vampires and witches and God knows what else, why not the vampire ghosts who stole children in the night?

‘We’re not children,’ she objected.

Kai looked at her scornfully through streaming eyes. ‘Do you want to risk it?’ he asked. ‘Run! Besides …’

She nodded – vengeance! She put on speed. They reached the horse paddocks and Kai, who could ride, pulled Ryan, who, despite the cowboy hat, could not, onto the back of a large black horse, which was already snorting with terror at the approach of the Hupia. It reared and foamed at the mouth, then bolted. Ryan closed her eyes and prayed.

‘They’re gone,’ said Kai, pulling the shutters closed. ‘They know they can’t get in.’

‘Will they come back?’

‘Not tonight. I should take you home.’

Ryan looked slyly at him. ‘I’d rather stay – if you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind he said ingenuously. ‘But there isn’t much to eat and only one bed.’

‘Oh.’ There was a strange lilt in her voice, which Kai did not register.

‘No, no, I don’t mind if you don’t,’ he said, ‘but what about Mac? Won’t he worry about you, if you don’t go home?’

‘Let him worry,’ she said heartlessly. ‘He’s the one who’s always sending me – us into dangerous situations. Do him good to worry for a bit.’

‘Well, if you’re sure. The hospitality isn’t up to much.’

Ryan looked around. It had been years since she had been here, she realised. It looked the same as it ever did. The bare, dusty boards and sparse furniture, which looked so uninviting by day, actually looked rather cosy in the firelight. Besides, there were those – things.

‘I’ll get us some supper,’ she said decisively. And it was settled.

‘Bread and cheese? No wonder you’re so thin.’

Kai screwed his face up. ‘I told you there wasn’t much.’

They sat companionably before the fire. ‘Tell me about the Hupia.’ She said.

Kai shuddered. ‘I don’t know much,’ he said. ‘They haven’t been seen since my grandfather was a boy. He told me the stories that his father told him. I always thought that they were just stories to frighten children into behaving, like the bogie man. Then I saw them just recently, oh maybe a week ago. I saw them in the sky, and I knew. I remembered, but I don’t know why they’re back.’

‘What are the stories?’

‘Just that they take children who are out after dark – they disappear in the light. Some say they suck out their souls, but – who knows?’

Ryan shuddered. ‘I believe it.’ she said. ‘Remember how cold?’

Kai nodded.

‘What are you doing? You’re not going to sleep on that chair?’

‘Of course, you don’t think I’d ask you to sleep on it, do you?’

‘I wouldn’t anyway. All the springs are poking out. But the bed’s big enough for two.’

Kai said nothing. He turned red.

‘Oh don’t be such a prude.’

‘I’m not being a prude. How do you know you can trust me?’

Ryan was about to make some joke when she suddenly realised that he was serious – when had that happened? Where was the boy she had known? She surveyed him from under her lids, and then smiled. He really was pretty cute, and in one respect at least, she trusted him more than she trusted any other person in any world.

‘Maybe I don’t want to be able to trust you,’ she told him.

There cannot, surely, be any man in any world anywhere who would refuse such an obvious invitation. They went to bed.

* * *

The surface of the water went cloudy. ‘I think that’s enough,’ said the woman. ‘This is not a peepshow. We know what we need to know.’

‘Which is?’ The man was disappointed.

‘Why, that they need each other, that they must be separated,’ she said, as if this ought to be obvious even to a mere man.

‘I could have told you that,’ he said scornfully. ‘They work as a team.’

‘They are more than that, as any fool can see,’ she told him. ‘No, take her away from him and he will be lost, he will waste time in searching for her, be distracted. By the time they work out what’s going on, it will be too late.’

‘Why can’t we just kill them?’

‘Fool,’ she screeched. ‘Haven’t we already tried that? isn’t that how we lost Kalas? Together they are too strong. They protect each other. Don’t ask me why?’

‘Love,’ suggested the man.

‘Love!’ sneered the woman. ‘And what would you know about that?’

‘Nothing from you, certainly,’ said the man. ‘Although we have fun, don’t we?’ he added hopefully.’

‘Not now,’ she told him. ‘I have things to do.’ She stirred up the cauldron, and a fuzzy image appeared. ‘Why don’t you watch those two for a while, if it makes you happy?’

She seemed somewhat chagrined as he settled down in front of the cloudy basin as if he was indeed, more than happy with the idea. She snorted and swept away.

* * *

The next morning could have been awkward, but as it turned out, there was not time to feel it. Some days just start with a bang – quite literally. Both were jolted out of bed.

‘What is it?’ panicked Ryan.

‘Earthquake,’ said Kai. ‘Pretty bad one, I should go and check the horses.’ He stood up and grabbed a shirt.

‘The Earth moved,’ giggled Ryan. ‘Bit late,’ she observed, still laughing.

Kai laughed too. They were like two silly children, and somehow all this made what had happened seem okay, no big deal, just another game. Kai strode to the door.

‘Er, Kai.’

‘What?’

‘Trousers.’

He looked down at his bare legs, raised his eyebrows and said. ‘What for? The horses don’t care.’ Then they fell about laughing again.

‘Primrose has a broken leg,’ he called, when he strode back in, ‘but the others are okay. She’ll have to be shot.’

There was no reply and Kai tried again. ‘Ryan?’ Where are you? C’mon it’s the way of the world. Don’t sulk. I can’t afford a lame horse. Ryan?’

It did not take long to search the small cottage; she definitely was not there. No note. She would not leave without letting him know, would she? He was doubtful about this, circumstances being what they were. It was possible that she had decided not to face him this morning after all. And yet … no note? It was not like her. Besides, she had been fine when he left, hadn’t she? He looked outside. There were no footprints in the dirt except his own. That settled it – she didn’t fly out of the window for God’s sake. So, something had happened to her. Another mysterious disappearance. Only this time he had an ace up his sleeve. Alive or dead he would find her.

Chapter Two – Johnny And Jez

Johnny Hammond was sitting, as usual, at his computer screen playing a game of horrible complexity and violence. He leaned back in his chair and yawned surveying the screen through sleepy, half closed eyes, his hands moving the joystick with a remarkable speed and dexterity that seemed unconscious and almost unconnected with him. He paused the game momentarily to brush his untidy blonde hair out of his eyes, causing his mother, who had been standing behind him for God knows how long, to say. ‘I do wish you’d let me cut that lot.’

Johnny resumed his game without acknowledging this remark, which was repeated so often that it was doubtful that he even heard it anymore. Like so many of his mother’s remarks, it was just so much background noise.

‘And turn that thing off now,’ she resumed after picking up a number of items from Johnny’s bed and straightening the rumpled sheets. ‘You have a visitor.’ She pursed her lips as she said this although Johnny did not see it, he heard it in her voice. He grinned at her way of putting it. It had to be Jez, whose name Johnny’s mum refused to utter and whom she disapproved of for reasons that Johnny had never been able to get out of her.

He waved a hand offhandedly without looking round. ‘Okay, send her up then,’

‘Jonathan Matthew Hammond!’ his mum sounded scandalized.

Johnny winced; his mother had placed this embargo on Jez visiting his room at the age of fourteen, an act which, at the time he had found extremely mystifying, although Jez had seemed to understand it and find it highly diverting. How could he have forgotten? Still …

‘Oh for God’s sake mum,’ he snapped, pausing the game to turn round and face her. ‘I’ve been friends with Jez, since I was three, what exactly do you think I’m going to do to her?’

The effect of these words was immediate. His mother blushed a deep crimson and turned on her heel and marched out of the room.

Johnny sighed and turned back to his game, he felt a bit guilty for embarrassing his strait-laced mother like that, but honestly, he was seventeen now, old enough to be trusted surely? Besides, well … Jez? It was ridiculous. Okay, so she was technically a girl, he supposed, but to Johnny she was just Jez. Annoyingly clever, slightly paranoid, incredibly bossy and the best friend he had ever had. Besides which, she had a boyfriend, a lanky college student whom Johnny got on very well with whenever they met, although he had had a little trouble at first coming to terms with the idea that someone else apparently did see her as a girl … Too weird.

But Johnny’s mother had always been like this, overprotective and overbearing. It was understandable, she had lost Johnny’s father shortly after he had been born, and Johnny was all she had left, she would never remarry. John Andrew Hammond had been, according to his widow, the perfect man, reproduced again in his son, who she never ceased to marvel at. That she, plain Mary Collins, that was, should have such a son. It was amazing really that Johnny had turned out the way he had. With such devotion and eulogistic admiration showered on him from his earliest years, one would have expected more arrogance, more vanity. But Johnny had the great gift (or curse) of seeing himself as he really was, and he accepted his mother’s adoration with the same detached serenity as he accepted criticism from others, and remained, for the most part, aloof from the opinions of others.

The screen suddenly boomed GAME OVER! bringing his attention back to it with a jerk. He thumped the desk in frustration.

‘Lose, did you?’ came an amused voice from behind him.

‘Nope,’ said Johnny, spinning his chair around. ‘Won again, and I wasn’t even trying. Jesus, I wasn’t even concentrating. They make them too easy.’ His voice rose to a plaintive howl. He turned to a tall red haired girl leaning with her arms folded and legs crossed in the doorway of his room, a sardonic smile stretched across her wide mouth.

Jezebel Basserié, surely the most unfortunately named child in this millennium, even including the children of rock stars, movie stars and flower children. There cannot be many little girls who would have given up their best Ballerina Barbie doll to be called Tinker Bell or Moon Star.

‘They don’t know they’re born,’ she would sigh.

Her mother, a distracted wispy woman, who only seemed to be half in this world at her most lucid moments, had apparently read the name in a book and thought it pretty. No doubt, the book had been called The Most Infamous Women in History or something along similar lines, but Mrs. Basserié could not be expected to have realised that, she probably had not been reading the book at all. All her actions, reading, knitting watching TV even doing the housework, were more in the nature of an affectation than genuine activity. She pretended to do things. It was apparently quite something to see Mrs. Basserié wandering about her house with a duster in her hand and a distracted air, polishing the cat and anything else that came within her reach. Johnny had never seen this, although he had, when younger, made various and sundry forays to the house at unexpected hours in the hopes of catching a glimpse of this or something equally funny. Jez herself was wont to say that it was a miracle that her mother had spotted the name at all in the book that she was not reading. Johnny thought it a lucky thing that she had not been reading the Bible at the moment of uncharacteristic comprehension, Jez might have ended up being called Kerrenhappuch for example or Methuselah and how would you shorten that? It was pointless for a horrified Jez to say that Methuselah had been a man.

‘What difference would that have made?’ As Johnny pointed out.

Jez was also an only child, and for a similar reason to Johnny. Her father had left before she was born. Probably he could not take any more of Jez’s mother’s unhinged behaviour. Even Jez could not blame him for that.

Jez herself had inherited none of her mother’s airy-fairyness; she was a sharp as a tack, in more ways than one. Many people found her shrewd observation and acid tongue disconcerting. She did not, for instance, fail to notice the slightly guilty start that Johnny made as he turned to face her. ‘I was just coming down,’ he said.

‘S’okay,’ she said. ‘Your mum said: He said you’re to go upstairs, HMMPH.’

One advantage of Jez’s talent for precise observation of others was that it made her an astonishing mimic. This last sound, somewhere between a snort and a sigh, had been uncannily like a noise Johnny’s mum was wont to make whenever Jez’s name came up.

Johnny laughed. ‘Don’t.’ he said. ‘She’s a good egg really. She’s just got a blind spot where you’re concerned.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ snorted Jez. ‘And yet,’ she continued in a dreamy voice. ‘What’s in a name? Would not a Skunk Thistle, by any other name, smell as foul?’

But Johnny was staring at her with a horrified expression on his face. He clutched his heart dramatically and pointed at Jez.

‘But – But,’ he spluttered to her utter astonishment. ‘How can this be? This must not be, oh the horror, you – you’re a-a girl! Oh woe, woe, the disgrace, the shame. There’s a girl in my room, whatever shall I do? Call the village elders.’ He burst out laughing, and Jez leapt on him and pummelled him.

‘You rat bastard,’ she said. ‘You really had me going for a minute there.’ Then she became thoughtful. ‘So that’s what it is, is it? She thinks I’m going to corrupt her little boy?’ She gave him a mischievous glance. ‘Would it help, do you think, if I told her you’d already been corrupted by Helen Webster in eleventh grade?’

‘Don’t you dare,’ said Johnny seriously, ‘she might kill her.’

‘She might, yes.’ Jez gave the impression that at least, as far as she was concerned, this would not constitute a major tragedy.

‘Bitch,’ said Johnny lazily.

‘Pig,’ responded Jez automatically.

‘Cow,’

‘Dog.’

‘Okay, okay, whatever. What am I going to do about these damn computer games?’

‘Dunno. Have a lobotomy?’

‘What are you talking about now, you dim-wit?’

‘You know, to make you stupider, if that’s possible?’

‘Hur, hur, hur.’

‘Well, we could go down to the arcade, they’ve got these new VR games in. Apparently they’re really good. Might be a bit of a challenge.’

‘Might be, I suppose.’ Johnny did not sound convinced.

‘Anyway, I think I can hear your mum coming up the stairs with tea and sandwiches. You know in case we’re hungry.’ She winked outrageously at him.

That clinched it. They went out.

Johnny was irritable as they trudged along the high street towards the large games arcade.

‘Why did you have to bait her like that?’ he growled moodily. ‘Like it wasn’t bad enough that she caught us on the bed.’ He brushed his hair back and forth across the top of his head until it was standing up in all directions, a sure sign of agitation.

Jez reacted irritably. ‘We weren’t doing anything,’ she snapped testily. ‘Ugh, as if.

Johnny grinned despite himself. ‘Oh yeah? Thanks!’

Jez waved a hand