What She Does Next Will Astound You Page 2

‘You doing it today?’ he said. Neil said nothing.

  ‘You got the ice?’ Ram said.

  Neil looked up, like it was the least important thing in the world. ‘Thought you didn’t care,’ he said vaguely, tugging strands of hair in the mirror.

  ‘No,’ insisted Ram. ‘I do.’ That sounded a bit like a bleat. ‘It’s just, if you’re going to do it . . . I mean, isn’t the ice thing a bit, you know, old? Can’t you do something else? Something better?’

  Neil didn’t look away from the mirror. ‘Got anything in mind?’

  ‘No.’ Ram heard himself trying to laugh. ‘Just, you know. Ice, bucket, gasp. It’s not . . .’

  Neil tugged at his jersey, neatening it even more. ‘So that’s it?’ he said quietly. ‘You’re not joining in because it’s boring.’

  ‘Just don’t see the point.’ Ram faked a big smile. ‘If I do something, it’ll be really amazing.’

  ‘I’ll wait,’ Neil said.

  ‘Also, not sure what Skandis is. That’s all.’

  Neil shrugged. ‘Google it,’ he said, and walked out. Ram got his phone out of his locker. He tapped ‘Skandis’ in, then stopped. He closed the locker and went outside. He’d sort it out later.

  Afterwards, he felt like an idiot.

  ‘I’m doing that ice challenge,’ he announced to April. Very much in passing. Very much conversational.

  ‘Right,’ she said. She was leaning against a pillar, sketching away in a notebook. Somehow she made the simple act of doodling look utterly dismissive. Around them, people ran from one classroom to the next. April seemed completely uncaring, her eyes barely focused on the world around them. Charlie had said that it was because April was connected to a distant planet, could maybe even glimpse it, but Ram got the feeling that April had always been a little bit this way. Some people just aren’t quite in focus.

  Tanya rocked up. Now, there was someone who was completely in focus.

  ‘So, I’m doing the ice thing,’ he repeated, hoping that she’d say something.

  Tanya frowned, and when she did so it was a thing of moment.

  ‘You quite sure about that?’ she said. Her words swung like dumbbells. ‘For Skandis?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Ram. ‘It’s a disease. I saw a video about a girl who had it. You know. Brave in a shaven-headed way.’

  ‘You sure?’ repeated Tanya. She looked doubtful.

  April focused on Tanya in a way that she never did on Ram.

  ‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ April said.

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  That was when Ram heard the ambulance sirens.

  FOUR

  EIGHT THINGS THE MEDIA HASN’T TOLD YOU ABOUT CUP-A-SOUP

  VIDEO TITLE: The Cup-a-Soup Challenge

  The football pitch. Neil sitting in a chair. A crowd of friends. An extension cable. A mug.

  A kettle.

  ‘Hi, my name’s Neil and this is my Cup-a-Soup challenge! Oh yeah.

  Today I’m doing something different. That’s right. Ice is yesterday.

  I’ve picked my favourite flavour of Cup-a-Soup.

  It’s chicken. Yeah. Go chicken! And now I’m going to wear it.

  My friend Paul here has boiled the kettle.

  I’m passing him the mug. That’s right. Stir out the floaters. Nice one!

  Talking of chicken, I’d like to thank Ram for suggesting I do something different. Hey, Ram, I’m doing this for Skandis. Isn’t it about time you did something too?

  Now, Paul, let’s make soup! Tip it! Tip it! Tip it!’

  And then the screaming started.

  ‘Well,’ observed Miss Quill, ‘that’ll be a short-lived craze.’

  The ambulance was pulling out of the car park, leaving behind a mournful crowd taking shocked selfies.

  Miss Quill’s fingers pulled away from the venetian blind, letting the metal slats snap back into place. Almost back into place. One slat was crooked. Earth children were such careless eavesdroppers. She reached out with an expert finger and thumb, pinching the metal until it bent back, just a bit off perfect. Finished, she rubbed the dust from between her fingers and turned around.

  Charlie sat on a desk, watching her carefully.

  They were many things to each other.

  If you’d asked Miss Quill, she would have told you that Charlie was the following:

  Her owner

  Her jailor

  Her next victim

  Annoying

  If you’d asked Charlie, he would have told you that Miss Quill was:

  His very reluctant bodyguard

  A moral snake

  Likely to betray him

  Annoying

  They shared a house. It was quite a nice house. There were many practical reasons for them to share a house. It made the whole business of the last of the Quill guarding the last Rhodian Prince fairly easy. But on every other level it was a complete nightmare.

  Sometimes Charlie would open his bedroom door at night to find Miss Quill standing outside.

  ‘What . . . What are you doing?’

  ‘Same as ever,’ she’d sigh wearily. ‘Watching over you. You going to use the bathroom or should I put the kettle on?’

  This had become even more awkward since Charlie’s boyfriend had moved in.

  If anyone could cope with a boyfriend who’d just arrived from another planet, it was Matteusz. He was easygoing and terribly calm. When he discovered that Charlie had no idea how to cross a road, he had simply ignored the horns, carried him onto the grassy bank of a roundabout, sat him down, and explained how roads worked. ‘Oh. Back home, traffic just stopped for me,’ Charlie had muttered, looking vaguely hurt that such a rule did not apply here.

  But even Matteusz, easygoing, calm, thoughtful Matteusz, found Miss Quill hard to deal with.

  ‘She does not like me,’ Matteusz had said in his measured Polish accent to Charlie one night.

  Charlie had shrugged. ‘She does not like anyone.’

  ‘Yes, but she really doesn’t like me. She follows me around the kitchen. I just go there to make some tea, but she follows my every move. Even when I pick a mug, she is judging me and she is judging the mug.’

  ‘She’s probably wondering if you’re trying to kill me. How is your tea?’

  ‘Fine. Here is yours. Quill drank from it.’

  ‘She would. As I said, she’s probably wondering if you’re trying to kill me.’

  They sat on the end of Charlie’s bed, drinking tea.

  One main difference between Quill and Charlie was that each thought they understood human beings better. They both found things to admire in them, but for entirely different reasons. Quill saw them as angry, selfish, and violent. Charlie found them impulsive, confusing, and strange.

  Sometimes, when they had nothing better to do, Charlie and his bodyguard would stand in her classroom, watching the people go by. It wasn’t that they liked spending time with each other. Sometimes it just happened and it felt sort of right.

  Today they had watched the boy being stretchered into the ambulance, his face wrapped in bandages.

  ‘He’ll live,’ remarked Quill. ‘Unlike a lot of the pupils here. They really are fodder, aren’t they? Still, as I said, at least it will be a short-lived craze.’

  Charlie stared at her, considering. ‘The boy is called Neil. He is my age. He has severe burns to his scalp and face. He is in terrible pain. He will require plastic surgery and will probably be disfigured for life.’

  Quill shrugged. She’d never shrugged before coming to the Earth and now she found it easier than breathing. ‘He tipped boiling water over his face. He deserves what he gets.’

  ‘But why would you do that?’ Charlie said.

  Quill didn’t turn around from the window. ‘Ask one of your pets.’

  As Charlie approached, Ram slunk away.

  Charlie had noticed how little Ram wanted to be around him. There were probably lots of reasons. He noticed that Ram’s artificial leg was still overcompensa
ting, and wondered if he should offer to look at the default settings, but also knew enough about social interaction to realise that it would probably not be an easy conversation.

  ‘Please drop your trousers, I wish to look at your legs’ was all very well with Matteusz, but he doubted it was in common usage. A shame, as he felt responsible for Ram losing his leg and wanted to somehow make it better.

  Human life appeared to be a series of guilty interactions where people told one another how sorry they were for things that either were their fault—or they were pretending were their fault in order to make things better—or else they were apologising for things that had happened because of weather, microbes, or gravity. It was all marvellously confusing and Charlie was determined to find out how saying sorry worked. But maybe he wouldn’t start on Ram’s leg today.

  Charlie casually pretended he hadn’t noticed Ram slinking away. ‘I did not see Ram leave just now,’ he told April. ‘I did not hear the slight creak of his leg.’

  ‘I see.’ April looked up at him. She really was very pretty. Charlie came from a world of rigid rules and structure, where everyone was swept into straight lines. April was a glorious tangle. Her long dark hair should have been rigid as a pendulum, but instead it cascaded and jumped and let itself be pushed about. She was always pushing it from one side to the other and then sweeping it back. When he was growing up, Charlie had been taught the art of sitting still, of maintaining a calm and regal and reserved posture, whereas April gloried in constant movement. If she wasn’t fingering her hair, she was tugging at her clothes or moving her legs or tapping a pen against a book. It was all so unnecessary and he found it delightful to watch.

  ‘Why did Ram go?’ he asked. April liked how direct Charlie was. No hesitation, no caution, no tact. ‘Is it because he doesn’t like me?’

  ‘No,’ said April. ‘The boy who burned himself—he was on the football team with Ram. He’s upset.’

  ‘I see,’ said Charlie. ‘I do not understand. Why did he do that to himself? He has disfigured himself. On my world, the plume priests did something similar as an act of political protest. Is that the case here?’

  April considered. ‘Nooooooo,’ she said.

  They needed a laptop, and they needed Tanya. Normally both were to be found together.

  ‘I can’t believe no one’s taken it down,’ she said, chewing on a strawberry lace as the video played again on truthordare.com. ‘Look at the number of views it has got.’ She tapped at the bottom of the screen. ‘See the little plus sign at the end—that means it’s only an approximation. That means the number of views are growing faster than you can count. People love watching other people do stupid things.’ She clicked to refresh the video.

  It reloaded, paused, and then showed a short video about a famous footballer discussing car insurance with a horse. ‘Ahha!’ Tanya laughed. ‘That proves it’s popular—they’ve slapped adverts on it. They’ll be making a mint off this.’

  ‘But this is a video of human suffering.’ Charlie spoke slowly. It was the tone he used when he was finding out something about human beings he was not entirely pleased by. ‘Who would want to make money off that? Would it be this Skandis charity?’

  ‘Oh no.’ Tanya bit off another strawberry lace. She offered Charlie the remaining half. He declined. ‘No, it’s the site that serves the video. They make the cash. Neil gets the money from people who said they’d pay a couple of quid for the ice bucket challenge. That goes to Skandis. If, that is, anyone pays up—right now they probably really don’t feel like it.’

  Charlie fell silent, watching Neil fall screaming out of his chair, writhing on the grass as the camera whipped up, thought better of it, then closed in on his scalded face.

  ‘So Neil did this for nothing?’

  Neil continued to scream.

  FIVE

  AMAZING, IF TRUE: CHILDREN ARE VANISHING AND YOU’VE NOT NOTICED

  Blog Post on AnotherNewsSite.com

  Kids are vanishing.

  Remember the ‘Welcome to Twin Peaks’ road sign? You’re probably too young. God, I think typing that sentence makes me feel worse than you do reading it. Anyway, they had a similar sign in Sunnydale and in Bon Temps, Louisiana (it’s the town in True Blood, Grandma).

  Anyway, the thing about the ‘Welcome to Twin Peaks’ road sign was that it had the town’s population printed on it. And it never changed. Despite all the serial killers living there. The number never went down. And the joke—the joke that everyone made—was that it should be like the numbers at a gas station. Or a little neon display.

  Just ticking down, every week.

  But that never happened.

  Anyway, perhaps it’s time that it did. Because kids are going missing, and at a rate so fast the digits on the sign would be SPINNING.

  You heard me right. I don’t know how or why—but I tell you this: Educate yourselves, people. Do some Googling: ‘missing kids’. Check your timeline for pictures of the missing—teenagers going out and never being seen again. That’s right—there’s suddenly a lot, aren’t there?

  It’s happening right now, everyone.

  I don’t know what’s causing it, or why, but the children are going missing.

  SIX

  THE ONE WEIRD TRICK ABOUT MOTHERS THAT EVERYONE SHOULD KNOW

  Ram went to the hospital to see Neil.

  He’d been feeling bad about it all day. Well, all week.

  It wasn’t the kind of feeling bad that got better. It wasn’t like a torn ligament. The guilt just made him feel worse. The idea that he’d caused it. Especially as he didn’t feel like telling anyone that it was all his fault. They’d either say it wasn’t (not true) or they’d say it was his fault, which would make him feel worse.

  So, he ignored the guilt. It got worse.

  Strangely, his walking got worse. Of course it did.

  ‘You’re not helping,’ he said to his new leg. It didn’t reply, and instead it led him to the hospital.

  The hospital was one of those grand Victorian redbrick buildings, which has had ugly new bits jabbed into it.

  Signs had been put up everywhere, so many of them that nothing seemed to make sense anymore. There was a little scrubby garden where old men sat smoking. There was a coffee shop full of anxious relatives. Porters wheeled empty beds past. Everywhere there was a smell not quite covered up by disinfectant.

  Eventually he found the burns unit. It was past an unmanned reception area, up a handsome wooden staircase that had been blocked off with netting to stop anyone throwing themselves off it. He clambered up, his leg telling him each and every time one of the steps was just that little bit uneven.

  He wondered about getting the lift—but no, that would be giving in. If he took the lift once, that would be it. After his grandad had that fall, he’d ‘tried out’ a mobility scooter, just for a week or two. He’d never got out of it. No, Ram wasn’t going to give up. Still, four flights of these stairs was quite hard going.

  He got to the top. Instead of a carved oak door, there was an automatic one that slid open to reveal a corridor that was floored with linoleum, the walls covered with hand sanitiser dispensers and posters asking him alarming questions about his bodily functions.

  ‘Well, this is so depressing,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Ram?’

  He turned.

  Staring at him, eyes wet and bright, was Neil’s mother. He recognised her from the touchlines and barbecues. Even in hospital she looked glamorous. Neil’s mother always dressed like it was summer. He’d usually found it a bit ridiculous, but now, here, it looked so sad. As though she was hoping for something better out of life than rain.

  She hugged him, which Ram found surprising and a little bit unwelcome. He’d thought that Neil was the last person in the world he’d wanted to see, but the real answer turned out to be Neil’s mum.

  I am so sorry I maimed your son.

  ‘It’s so good of you to come,’ she breathed into his ear as he took an unwelc
ome gulp of her perfume. It wasn’t that she was wearing too much, or that it was horrible—he just didn’t want to be smelling it.

  I didn’t ask for this.

  She released him from the hug and he stood back quickly, trying not to show his relief. ‘So good of you to come,’ she repeated. Then she stopped. She was waiting for him to say something.

  Ram mumbled a few words about how Neil was.

  ‘He’s asleep,’ she said sadly. ‘He’s had some grafts, and that’s tiring, so . . .’ Oh, that sounded bad. The immediate relief that he wouldn’t have to see Neil today was mingled with the knowledge that he’d have to do it tomorrow. Or the day after. Or next week. It was a problem that wasn’t going to go away.

  She patted at a plastic chair and he sat down on it next to her. In the room opposite, an old woman was crying in front of the television.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Ram. He just blurted it out, and felt a sudden relief.

  ‘Oh, don’t be,’ said Neil’s mum. ‘Not your fault.’ She switched on a smile, trying to look bright.

  It is my fault. It is so totally my fault.

  ‘I feel bad about it,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah well.’ She sniffed. ‘It’s good of you to come. So good.’ She pushed a hand through her hair, and her brave smile gave up. ‘I wasn’t going to say it, but you know what? You’re the only one of the team to have come along. The only one.’ She looked a lot less sunbeamy. ‘The new coach rang up. That was something.’ She folded her hands and thinned her lips. ‘But he was so careful with what he said. I think he was reading from a card. Making sure he wasn’t admitting liability. In case I was recording it. Imagine!’ She threw her hands up in the air. ‘I was in here. Waiting to find out if my son was scarred for life, and he’s wondering if I’m recording my calls for a lawsuit. Some people . . .’ She shook her head, and didn’t seem at all bright or chirpy. ‘I just don’t know. I just don’t know.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Ram said again. If I say it enough times you’ll forgive me.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ She squeezed his hand. ‘I dunno what I was expecting. But it would have been nice if the team had come round. Would have meant the world to Neil.’