Joyride Page 11

  ‘Let me out now!’ the man shouts from inside the room.

  Good, Steve thinks, he hasn’t escaped. That’s something at least. Probably just smashed something to kick up a fuss.

  ‘If you don’t let me out,’ the man says, ‘I’m going to cut this bloke to pieces. I’ve got broken glass in here and by the time I’ve finished, he won’t recognise himself.’

  Surely he wouldn’t do that? Cut himself up, just to get out?

  ‘Don’t think I won’t do it!’ the voice continues. ‘I’m not stupid. As soon as you’ve done what you need to do, you lot will kill me anyway. So I haven’t got anything to lose, have I?’

  Steve can’t believe this. If he could just swap them back then the whole mess would be done with. Everything could go back to normal. Yeah, Fletcher probably wouldn’t let the kid live, he knows too much by now, could cause them trouble, but . . .

  Oh God, why do I have to deal with this? It’s not fair! It’s not fair! IT’S NOT FAIR!

  ‘Are you listening?’ the voice shouts.

  ‘Yeah!’ Steve replies, hunting for his phone. ‘Just give me a minute.’

  ‘No,’ he replies, ‘you haven’t got a minute. I’m serious, unless you open this door right now I am going to start cutting.’

  ‘But I don’t have the keys!’ Steve replies and, as soon as he’s said it he knows that’s not actually true. There’s a spare set he uses to lock up when Fletcher goes home early. His boss doesn’t mind him having them, since he thinks he’s too scared to go in that room against orders. (Normally he’d be right. Steve likes being alive—it’s nice.)

  ‘Then you’d better figure something out quickly, hadn’t you? Because if I cut too deeply, this bloke’s going to be dead, and then what are you going to do, eh?’

  Then the voice screams and Steve can just imagine the broken glass cutting into Mr O’Donnell and it’s just the very worst thing and . . .

  ‘Wait! Wait! I’m coming!’

  So how does he do this? Maybe he can convince the kid in O’Donnell’s body that he can transfer him back. And maybe he can! Given a bit of time, maybe he can actually pull that off. Yes! And then, when Fletcher gets back, he’ll have solved the problem and he won’t need this alien he thinks he’s found after all. He might even give Steve a raise!

  ‘Two secs,’ he shouts. ‘The keys are in the desk!’

  He runs into the foyer, opens a drawer in the desk, and pulls out the set of keys.

  ‘Don’t cut him!’ he shouts, running down the corridor, trying to figure out which key it must be by process of elimination.

  He tries one in the lock; it doesn’t work. ‘I’m doing it,’ he shouts. ‘Just finding the right key. Please don’t cut him again!’ The second key he tries works and he opens the door.

  ‘Oh please,’ says Ram as he punches Steve in the face as hard as he possibly can, ‘I faked cutting him the first time. I’m not that stupid.’

  Ram punches Steve a few times, hoping that repetition is as good as skill or strength, then grabs the keys out of the moaning man’s hands and sprints for the front door. He heard the other guy leave earlier, and he’s pretty sure there’s nobody else here, but he keeps on his toes anyway, staying tense just in case someone suddenly appears. Nobody does.

  He’s straight out of the front door and out into fresh air—finally!

  He keeps going, running down a small access road, and then out into a main street. He spins around, sees a sign. Swallow Avenue. He doesn’t know where it is, so he keeps running, making for the end of the road, sure he’ll recognise something if he can just—

  He comes juddering to a halt, a stitch blazing away in his side.

  ‘Oh God,’ he says, pushing his glasses back up his nose from where they’ve slipped down. ‘Fat Man just isn’t built for running.’

  He gets his breath for a minute, trying to figure out what to do next.

  He checks his pockets on the off chance he has anything useful, not knowing Fletcher cleaned them out earlier. He finds a receipt for a hotel booking but nothing else. He needs to find a phone. He can remember Tanya’s number. If he can find a phone he can call her, but will she believe him? He doesn’t sound like himself. Can he convince her? He thinks for a minute and knows he can. What with everything that’s happened to them lately, it’s easy enough to prove he is who he says he is.

  Then what? Somehow, he has to get back in that room with all the equipment and force them to change him back. But what if Joyriders does a runner once the boss knows Ram’s escaped? Could they do that? Just clear off? If they can then he’s really screwed. It’s been hard enough accepting he’s lost some of his skills at football; there’s no way he’s spending the rest of his life in a body that can’t even run a couple of hundred metres without being five minutes from death.

  He needs to stay close to Swallow Avenue, quickly get hold of Tanya, tell her where he is, get her to rustle up as many of them as she can, and then meet him back here. Yes. This is a plan that works.

  So where to find a phone?

  He walks along the street a bit further, trying to see where it leads. Maybe he’ll come out on a main road, somewhere that might have a call box or something. Do they even have call boxes anymore? Ram is not someone who has ever had to worry about not having a phone. The idea of being so cut off from others is frustrating as hell.

  On the other side of the road a woman is walking along with a young child. Maybe he can borrow her phone? She glances at him, sees he’s looking at her, and then grabs her child closer and speeds up. Why’s she being like that? Why is she acting like she’s scared of him? Then he looks down at himself, suit dishevelled, covered in gross alien gunk. Who wouldn’t think he was trouble?

  He tries to tidy himself a bit.

  At the end of Swallow Avenue, he looks each way and decides his chances are better to the right: he can hear traffic and the distant hiss of hydraulic bus brakes.

  He keeps walking and eventually finds himself on Old Street. Now he’s getting somewhere!

  Even better, just up the road he can see a couple of call boxes.

  He jogs along, waiting to be able to cross, and then dashes over to the closest box.

  Climbing inside—Christ, it’s even hard to do that wearing Fat Guy, he’s never realised how small these things are before—he suddenly notices he hasn’t got any change for the call.

  Reverse charges? Is that still a thing? He scans through the instructions on the phone, trying to figure out how you’d call the operator. He finds it, picks up the phone, and dials.

  ‘Hello, operator speaking.’

  ‘Yeah, hi. I need a reverse-charge call, please.’

  ‘Can you give me the number?’

  ‘Yeah, of course, it’s zero-seven-nine—’

  The operator interrupts him. ‘I’m sorry, collect calls are only available to UK fixed lines, not mobiles.’

  Ram’s frustration suddenly bursts and he swears loud enough for people on the pavement to turn and look.

  ‘There’s no need for language like that.’

  Ram panics, not wanting the operator to hang up. ‘Sorry, sorry, it’s been a bit of day. Look, this is an emergency.’

  ‘I can connect you to emergency services, which service do you require?’

  ‘No, that’s OK, I need to speak to this person specifically.’

  ‘Do you have the fixed line of the person you’re trying to call?’

  Ram thinks. ‘No, I . . . Wait, can you look it up?’

  ‘If they’re directory listed.’

  ‘Great!’ Now he might be getting somewhere. ‘It’s Tanya Adeola . . . No, it won’t be listed under her name. Hang on . . .’ What’s her mum’s name? Think, Ram, think!

  ‘Vivian!’

  ‘No need to shout, Sir.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry.’

  ‘That’s Vivian Adeola?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the address?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ He doesn’t know that.
He’s trying to think of it anyway, as if he might be able to just guess. ‘I’m not sure. It’s Shoreditch area.’

  ‘So, an E1 postcode?’

  ‘I guess so, probably. Is that enough?’

  ‘I’m really supposed to get a full address.’

  ‘Oh please! This is honestly an emergency, I really need to get hold of her.’

  There’s silence. Ram is trying to decide what the pause means. Is the operator considering whether to tell him? Are they already looking? Have they hung up?

  ‘There’s only one V. Adeola listed in the E1 area,’ the voice says eventually. ‘Putting you through now. Your name?’

  ‘Ram Singh.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Singh.’

  The phone rings. And rings. Then it rings once more.

  ‘Hello?’ It’s a male voice. Who’s that, Ram wonders?

  ‘I have a collect call from Ram Singh, will you accept the charges?’

  ‘Ram what now?’ says the voice.

  ‘Just say yes!’ Ram shouts.

  ‘A Ram Singh, calling for a Tanya Adeola?’

  ‘Oh,’ the voice says. ‘Yeah, OK, whatever . . .’

  ‘Carry on, Mr Singh,’ says the operator, and then, with an unexpected warmth, ‘Hope she’s worth it.’

  Ram has no idea what to say to that and is relieved to hear the operator disconnect.

  ‘Hi,’ he says, ‘is Tanya there?’

  ‘No,’ says the voice. ‘This is Damon, her brother. Her older brother.’

  Why’s he putting emphasis on the older part, Ram wonders, does he think . . . ? Oh God, he thinks I’m a boyfriend.

  ‘I’m not a boyfriend!’ he blurts out.

  ‘Good, you sound like you’re forty or something.’

  ‘I’m just a friend, from school, but I really need to speak to her.’

  ‘Call her mobile then.’

  ‘I tried that, I’ve . . .’ He decides to tell as much of the truth as Damon will believe. ‘Someone’s stolen all my cash, my phone, everything.’

  ‘Yeah? That sucks.’

  ‘Yeah, so I had to do, like, a reverse-charge thing, but you can’t do that to mobiles apparently so—’

  ‘So here you are.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘But she ain’t here.’

  ‘I know, I know! But look, is there any way you can get a message to her? I wouldn’t ask but it’s really important.’

  ‘What message?’

  ‘Tell her I’m on Swallow Avenue.’

  ‘Like the bird.’

  In the background, Ram can hear the sound of a games console, and Damon calls back over his shoulder to someone else in the room. ‘I’m trying to talk to someone here.’

  ‘Swallow Avenue,’ says Ram, ‘you got that? It’s just off Old Street.’

  ‘OK. What about it?’

  ‘Just tell her that’s where I am. Tell her to bring everyone, I’ll meet them there.’

  ‘This something I need to tell Mum about?’

  ‘How old are you, Damon?’

  Damon laughs. ‘Point. OK, I’ll call her.’

  ‘Thanks, you’re a star.’

  Ram hangs up. OK. That’s good. They know where he is (as long as Damon does call her, of course). He squashes that thought straightaway—of course he’ll call her. He said he would, so why wouldn’t he?

  Ram steps out of the phone box and crosses the road. Now all he has to do is hang around Swallow Avenue and wait, keeping an eye on the Joyriders place. Once they’re all together, then they’ll think of what to do next. There must be a way they can force these bastards to swap him back.

  He cuts off Old Street, heading back towards Swallow Avenue.

  The problem with all this stuff they keep getting caught up in, he decides, is that they can never go to the authorities about it. If you think about what he’s been through, everything that’s happened, Poppy and Max . . . Obviously nobody would believe them, so because it’s so crazy, he has to put up with walking around looking like this. Stupid, isn’t it? He should just be able to walk in somewhere, explain what’s happened, and someone will sort it out. He just wants to play football, get through school; why should he be having to watch out for all this as well?

  He checks over his shoulder before crossing the road and finds himself staring right at Fletcher. The man’s sitting behind the wheel of a car, slowed to a crawl in the middle of the road, staring right back at him.

  Oh, to hell with it all.

  Ram runs, as fast as these old legs will carry him. He should have been more careful! To have got away only to end up wandering along, head miles away, and have the sod right on his tail again.

  Fletcher accelerates, and, obviously, there’s no way Ram is going to outrun a car.

  But he tries.

  TWENTY-TWO

  LYING LIKE A TRUE ADULT

  ‘Ram’s dad still hasn’t heard from him,’ says Tanya, walking away from Ram’s house and back to her friends. ‘I tried to make it seem like there wasn’t anything to worry about.’

  ‘Why would you do that?’ Charlie asks.

  ‘Because he was upset and it doesn’t help,’ explains Tanya. ‘If something does happen to Ram then’—she shrugs—‘it does. But until then, what’s the point in his dad panicking? It’s not like he can help.’

  ‘What did you tell him, then?’ asks April.

  ‘The truth, in a way. I said that Ram has been suffering a lot since Rachel and that he didn’t like people fussing about him. That he probably just needed to be on his own for a bit. I said he’d probably turn up later and that, for now, the best thing to do was just to give him some space.’

  ‘You lie like a true adult,’ says Quill and they start walking again, heading back to her and Charlie’s house.

  ‘He also asked whether there were still weird things going on at the school,’ Tanya says. She smiles. ‘I lied about that too.’

  ‘So, now what do we do?’ asks April.

  ‘Is there anything we can do?’ says Charlie. ‘If there’s no way of finding Ram, or tracing where the people that are doing this are, then I don’t see what options we have.’

  Back at Charlie’s house, Matteusz is waiting outside.

  ‘I do not like that look,’ he says, watching the group walking towards him. ‘You all have it. It is a look that says we are doing something weird again.’

  ‘Your boyfriend’s clever, Charles,’ says Quill, pushing Matteusz out of the way so that she can unlock the door. ‘I wonder what he sees in you.’

  They all file in, Charlie, April, and Tanya explaining to Matteusz what’s been happening or, at the very least, what they think has been happening. Charlie boils the kettle and they miserably settle down in the front room. Quill can no more bear the thought of staying in the same room as them than she can imagine digging out her eyes with a plastic spoon, so she goes to hide on the small balcony where she can pretend to be picking off passersby with a sniper rifle. Occasionally she glances through the window and sneers at them, sitting together and chatting over cups of tea. How human, how pointless.

  ‘So we’re just going to sit here?’ April asks, staring into her mug and wondering how precisely it’s going to help.

  ‘I don’t know what we’re supposed to do,’ Charlie replies. ‘I suppose we could just walk everywhere, see if we can find him, but how likely is it? At least here we’re all together.’

  ‘So we can keep an eye on each other,’ agrees Tanya.

  The fact that this could happen to her again hadn’t occurred to April before. The thought of it makes her shake so much she has to put her mug down.

  ‘I’m going to try and call him again,’ says Tanya, pulling her phone out of her pocket.

  ‘Tanya,’ says April, ‘you’ve tried him, I don’t know, every half an hour or something. He’s not answering.’

  ‘Doesn’t hurt to . . . Oh God! Missed calls!’ Tanya starts tapping at her phone in a panic. ‘I knocked the ringer off by accident, he’s probab
ly been trying to . . .’ She sees who’s been calling. ‘Forget it, it’s just home.’ Never has hope been sucked from a room so quickly.

  ‘You’d better call them,’ says Charlie. ‘You can say you’re staying here if you like.’

  ‘Tell your mum you’re staying with me, not Charlie,’ says April.

  ‘I know!’ says Tanya, as if it’s obvious.

  ‘Why?’ asks Charlie.

  ‘Because you are a boy, stupid,’ laughs Matteusz. ‘Not the sort of boy Tanya’s mum has to worry about, but . . .’

  Tanya waves her hand in the air, trying to get everyone to shut up.

  ‘Hello,’ she says, assuming it’s going to be her mum who answers. ‘I’m over at April’s at the moment, sorry, should have—’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ says her brother. ‘It’s Damon. I’ve tried to call you like a hundred times.’

  ‘Why are you calling me?’

  ‘I can’t call you?’

  ‘You know what I mean!’

  ‘Some guy rang the house. Did a reverse charge thing for the phone so I’m going to get an earful over that when Mum sees the bill.’

  ‘What guy?’

  ‘Someone called Ram?’

  Tanya nearly drops the phone. ‘Ram called you? Why did he call you?’

  Everyone in the room is now staring at her, desperately waiting for more information. Even Quill stops her imaginary takedown of the entire street and pays closer attention through the window.

  ‘He didn’t call me, he called the flat. I think he tried you on your mobile, or couldn’t . . . Anyway, it doesn’t matter, he says he’s at some place called Swallow Avenue. You know it?’

  ‘Swallow Avenue? No, never heard of it. What’s he doing there?’

  ‘How do I know? He just told me to tell you. So I’m telling you.’

  ‘That’s all he said?’

  ‘He said you should bring everyone. Whoever “everyone” might be.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Tanya?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘How old is this Ram?’

  ‘How old? Seventeen, why?’

  ‘Really? Weird. He sounded old. Whatever. He asked me to tell you and I have. You coming back late? Want me to tell Mum you’re at April’s?’

  ‘Yeah, please.’