Joyride Read online

  Tommy hadn’t thought it was funny the first time, let alone the hundredth.

  One of the biggest worries Tommy has about getting old is the fact that he might be stuck using the same expressions for everything all the time: ‘Raining cats and dogs again.’ ‘I’m so tired I could sleep for England.’

  ‘Cheer up, it could be serious.’ Tommy watches his parents sometimes, staring into space, staring at the telly, staring out the window, and he wonders how miserable being old must be.

  But not so miserable he doesn’t want to get on with it, because then he’ll be allowed to stay up as late as Max.

  Tonight, Tommy decides he’ll follow Max downstairs. Not because he’s hungry or thirsty, just because he can. As if it might prove something.

  He gets out of bed and moves as quietly as he can to his bedroom door, turning the handle gently and stepping out onto the upstairs landing. In his parents’ room he can hear his dad snoring. (‘Like a train coming into the station.’)

  Downstairs, Max sounds like he’s unlocking the internal door that leads to the garage. What does he want out there at this time of night? There’s nothing in there but tools and junk. Midnight snack, glass of juice, that’s normal enough, but is Max planning on mowing the lawn by moonlight? The weirdness of it makes Tommy even more angry.

  He goes downstairs, paying extra attention to the fourth step from the bottom because he knows it creaks.

  Once he’s in the hallway he’s not so worried about being careful, as if downstairs is a world away, somewhere you can’t possibly hear if you’re lying in his parents’ bed. He walks into the kitchen to see the door to the garage is open. Max is inside, rummaging around.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Tommy asks, stepping out into the garage. The dusty concrete floor makes him wish he’d put shoes on.

  Max is shocked. ‘You made me jump out of my skin! You should be in bed,’ he says, which makes Tommy even angrier. It’s bad enough when his parents tell him he can’t be awake at this time of night, now he has to take it from his brother too? Besides, he hasn’t answered the question.

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ he says, folding his arms then wishing he hadn’t, because he knows it makes him look like his mother when she’s in a disapproving mood. ‘So what are you doing?’

  Max stares at him for a few seconds, and there’s this weird feeling that this isn’t his brother he’s talking to. It looks like him, sounds like him, but there’s something off, something in the way he’s standing, something in the way his face twitches as he looks at him. Then Max speaks again and the thought’s gone.

  ‘I’ve had a brilliant idea,’ he says, ‘want to see?’ Enthusiasm sweeps some of Tommy’s anger away.

  Max is grinning at him, and that doesn’t happen often. Older brothers just don’t grin at their younger brothers, not unless they’re about to do something really, really horrible.

  ‘Sure,’ says Tommy, unfolding his arms and trying to look grown-up, which is really hard in Iron Man pyjamas.

  ‘Cool,’ says Max, ‘excellent in fact. Go in the kitchen for a minute, I’ll be right with you.’

  If Tommy thinks Max’s choice of words is weird, another sign that this isn’t quite his brother, the thought doesn’t hang around. He’s gone from angry to eager to please with the sort of speed only found in an eight-year-old.

  ‘Pull one of the kitchen chairs out,’ Max says as Tommy’s leaving, ‘put it in the middle of the floor.’

  Which is a weird thing to ask him to do, but weird is interesting and Tommy does it. At the last minute, he thinks to lift the chair rather than drag it as he usually would. Downstairs may be a world away from his parents’ bedroom but now something genuinely interesting is happening and he’s even more determined not to wake them up. He wants to know what Max’s plan is.

  His brother—or whoever it is that looks like his brother—doesn’t keep him waiting, he walks in carrying the large canvas bag his dad uses for his gardening stuff.

  ‘What do you want that for?’ Tommy asks.

  ‘Shush,’ says Max, ‘keep your voice down, we don’t want to wake them up, do we? Where’s the fun in that?’

  Tommy nods.

  ‘Sit down in the chair,’ Max says. ‘This is going to seem weird but you trust me, don’t you?’

  Tommy nods again. He may not always like Max very much but he does love him and he does trust him. He’s mean sometimes but never really mean, never properly mean.

  ‘I need to fix you to the chair a bit,’ Max says, ‘because when I do this I need you to be safe, I need you not to fall off.’

  This sounds properly weird now, but still really interesting.

  ‘I won’t fall off,’ Tommy whispers.

  ‘You say that now, kid,’ Max replies, ‘but you haven’t seen what we’re going to do. This is seriously amazing but I don’t want you to get accidentally hurt, so just go with me on this, OK?’

  Tommy thinks about it.

  ‘I mean,’ says Max, ‘if you’re too scared then . . .’ He shrugs, jostling the bag of gardening tools. There’s a rattle of secateurs and trowels.

  ‘Course I’m not scared,’ says Tommy, ‘it just sounds weird.’

  ‘I guess it does,’ says Max, but he knows he’s convinced Tommy, and he opens the bag of gardening equipment. ‘It is pretty weird actually, but in a good way. Put your hands behind your back.’

  He pulls out a packet of plastic ties and fixes Tommy’s wrists to the bars at the back of the chair. It hurts, and if it were anyone but Max doing it, Tommy would kick off about it. But he doesn’t want to look weak in front of his brother, so he doesn’t make a noise, not even when Max takes two more ties and straps his ankles to the chair legs.

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ Tommy says without even thinking. If he had been thinking he wouldn’t have said it, again, not wanting to look scared. But it’s true, he isn’t sure about this. It’s weird and not in the good way that Max has said it is.

  ‘Shush,’ says Max. ‘You’ve got to be quiet, remember? Really quiet.’

  And then, before Tommy can make a noise, Max has slapped some thick tape across his mouth, winding the roll round and round his head. The tape is so tight Tommy couldn’t make a sound now if he tried. He tries to shake the chair, not caring if he wakes his parents up anymore, wanting to wake them up, in fact. Max grabs his face and holds a pair of secateurs up in front of his eyes.

  ‘Sit still, you little sod, or I swear I will cut you, understand?’

  Tommy looks into his brother’s eyes and again he has that feeling that this isn’t his brother he’s looking at. He’s never been scared of his brother, but he’s scared now, really scared.

  ‘I mean it,’ says Max, ‘I will cut pieces off you. I will take your ears off and laugh while I’m doing it.’

  Max undoes the little safety clip on the secateurs, opening and closing them with a soft clicking sound.

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  Tommy does. That’s the awful thing. He really does. He nods.

  ‘Good. So stay still and stay quiet. Yes?’

  Tommy nods again. And he does stay quiet, even during the times Max is out of the room, fetching stuff from the garage, wandering around the house, splashing stuff on the walls, the curtains, the carpet, the sofa. Tommy is particularly worried about what he’s splashing on the sofa. He was told off the other day for getting a chocolate thumbprint on the arm, because the sofa was expensive and Mum and Dad are still paying for it in monthly instalments. ‘We still don’t even really own it,’ his mum had said. ‘Try and wait until it’s ours before you ruin it.’

  It stinks in the house now, stinks of that stuff Max was throwing around.

  Tommy watches as Max gets another chair from the kitchen table and uses it to climb up and open the smoke alarm in the hallway. He takes the plastic covering off and removes the battery inside. What does he need a battery for? Tommy wonders. Max puts the battery in his pocket and then comes back into the kitchen, op
ens one of the cupboards, and pulls out the large metal tin his parents use to keep the good biscuits, the ones in wrappers, the chocolate ones. Now he’s having a midnight snack, Tommy thinks, after all this? Now he’s being normal?

  Tommy has a perfect view, through the open door of the kitchen and along the hallway, of Max putting the biscuit tin under his arm and stepping out through the front door. OK, he thinks, now you can make noise. But he doesn’t, not yet, because that front door could open again at any minute. Maybe Max is stood right outside it, waiting for an excuse to hurt him.

  Max is stood right outside and Tommy is relieved when he sees the plastic flap of the letter box lift up on the front door. He was right there all along, Tommy thinks, waiting to see what I did.

  Then there is the scratch of a match being lit and the small flame drops through the open letter box and lands on the wet carpet below. There is a heavy, whipping sound, like a rug being shaken, and all of a sudden the hallway is on fire. Not just the hallway, the flames are moving along the wet carpet, running into the lounge, creeping up the first few stairs, just as far as the one that creaks.

  Now Tommy makes noise, rattling his chair backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. Hopping it up and down, even though the plastic ties cut into his skin. It doesn’t matter, it would take more than this to be heard. Even when his parents realise what’s going on and start screaming and shouting, they sound faint against the roaring sound of the flames.

  Outside, Max—or the thing that looks like Max—sits down on the front lawn, opens the biscuit tin, and gets stuck in. He eats one after another, chocolate smearing his smiling lips, as he watches the house go up along with everyone inside it.

  SEVEN

  TWO OF THE THREE OF THEM GOT TO WALK AWAY FROM IT

  ‘Oh God, I burned it . . .’

  April MacLean stares at the charred dustbin lid of a Hawaiian pizza and wants to cry. But that’s the last thing her mum needs right now so she’ll do what she always does: pretend everything is OK. She can do that, she’s always able to do that, it’s her superpower. Besides, she won’t be crying over the pizza, not really, so why give the charcoal git the satisfaction?

  ‘You alright, love?’ her mum shouts from the lounge. April sighs, takes the pizza, and drops it onto the sideboard. It clatters, like a wooden breadboard with bits of pineapple embedded in it. ‘Just burned the pizza a bit,’ she replies.

  She hears the sound of her mum’s wheelchair approaching and she starts trying to cut the pizza into slices, to go about the business of Everything’s Alright.

  ‘I thought I smelled something,’ her mum says. ‘Sorry, I should have checked it.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, it’s my fault, I was . . .’ What was she? Trapped in her own head, that’s what. ‘Miles away.’

  ‘Is it about the girl in the paper? You knew her, didn’t you?’

  Poppy, yes. That was part of it. But not all; let’s be honest, it was just one more thing on top of everything else. One final knife wound in this crazy life.

  ‘A little,’ she says. ‘She took violin lessons for a while.’

  ‘So sad.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Sad. Was that a big enough word? April had run out of words that felt big enough for anything these days. When you shared your heart with a terrifying alien king did you ever really feel something as small as ‘sad’ anymore?

  ‘What makes someone do something like that, do you think? Was she . . . ?’ Her mum is now sidling around the notion of drugs, not quite sure if suggesting them is disrespectful.

  April puts her out of her misery. ‘On something? Don’t think so. In fact, no, I know she wasn’t; she just wasn’t the sort. Poppy was very . . .’ Quiet. Sweet. Nice. Lonely. Very like me. ‘She didn’t do that kind of thing.’

  Her mum nods. ‘I hate to think what her parents must be feeling.’ Her mum goes quiet and April knows what she’s remembering. Because the idea of dying in an out-of-control car is just too close to home, isn’t it? They’re both avoiding that, neither of them wanting the conversation to go there, but that’s what they’re both thinking. When Poppy crashed her car, she killed herself; when her dad crashed his—intentionally, just like Poppy, only with his wife and child onboard—two of the three of them got to walk away from it.

  They were all wounded, of course, crippled in different ways, but at least the three of them survived. Just like this pizza—broken but refusing to give up, April thinks, racking up knife-sharp slices on her plate.

  ‘I need to get on with some homework,’ she tells her mum. It’s a lie and they both know it, but it’s by far the easiest way out of this conversation and, for once, her mum lets her take it.

  ‘OK, love.’ She looks at the pizza and sees something she can fix. ‘You sure you don’t want me to cook another one for you? That looks . . . not good.’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ April says, biting off a brittle corner as if to prove it. She finds a piece of pineapple in among the burned bread and cheese, like a crushed victim buried in the rubble of an earthquake.

  Upstairs she finds a message from Tanya and a link to a Facebook post. She reads about Max Collins and finds she just can’t eat her pizza anymore.

  EIGHT

 

  TANYA:What’s happening? First Poppy and now Max. It’s not right.

  RAM: furled up.

  APRIL: ????

  RAM: furling AC.

  RAM: FURLING.

  RAM: Furl it.

  RAM: FURL.

  TANYA: Shut up now Ram.

  CHARLIE: But what is it? Something must be doing this.

  RAM: alien obvs

  APRIL: Yeah but how?

  TANYA: AND WHY? It’s sick. Why would anyone WANT to do it?

  CHARLIE: Don’t know.

  RAM: Cos sick that’s why.

  CHARLIE: Burning people to death? That’s not just sick, that’s . . .

  RAM: REALLY SICK.

  TANYA: We should get together.

  CHARLIE: Yes. Mine?

  APRIL: Not now, can’t come out now.

  TANYA: Neither can I.

  APRIL: Talk tomorrow?

  NINE

  JUST TRYING

  Yeah, thinks Ram, let’s talk tomorrow, because talking’s great. Talking’s the best.

  There’s been a lot of talking since the prom. He’s done his best to avoid most of it. Which means there’s now been a lot of talking about why he doesn’t want to talk.

  Ram just wishes that, for once, everyone would be quiet. The inside of his head is filled to bursting with what happened to Rachel. The last thing he wants is to be surrounded by conversations about it. He wants peace from it all. Yes, my girlfriend is dead, killed by Corakinus, King of the Weird Shadow Alien Things who also, by the way, found the time to chop my leg off. Why yes, this new prosthetic limb is alien, how clever of you to notice. . . .

  It was difficult enough living through that night, and the scars it left behind; why would he want to talk about it over and over and over again?

  Then there was Coach Dawson, more dead, more blood, more screaming. Now this. Poppy and Max . . . I mean, how many dead bodies is a guy supposed to deal with, you know? This is Shoreditch, the new war zone of the world.

  He lies back on his bed and finds all the new places his body aches. Not only is adapting to a new prosthetic tiring and confusing, it makes you hurt in all the wrong places. He’s twisting wrong, shifting his balance, favouring this alien mass below his knee. Now he’s tearing ligaments, pulling muscles, and generally beating himself up without even trying. It wouldn’t be so bad if he were actually getting the hang of it. For all his effort, he’s playing football like he was only shown a ball a week ago.

  At least you’re able to try, says a voice in his head, there’s no prosthetic for what happened to Rachel. Which is obviously true, but he’s still pissed off that the thought bothered to point it out. See? This is the problem with talking; it encourages you to argue with yourself.

  He
gets up and heads downstairs because that way at least he can find someone else to argue with.

  ‘You finished your homework?’ asks his dad, not even looking up from his magazine.

  See? thinks Ram. And I’m still on the stairs.

  ‘Just getting a drink,’ he says. ‘I haven’t got much tonight, anyway.’

  Varun nods. ‘Just checking. I feel like I have to at the moment.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Ram replies, already wishing he’d just stayed in his room. ‘I even managed to tie my own shoelaces this morning.’

  He heads into the kitchen and pours himself a glass of water. Now he has to decide whether it would be easier to stand there and drink it or walk back through and try to get up the stairs before his dad says something else annoying. His dad, however, is only too happy to throw a surprise tackle in.

  ‘What’s this I see in the paper about that girl?’ he shouts through from the front room. ‘Stole a car and killed herself in it.’

  ‘Didn’t know her,’ says Ram, having decided to take the water and move quickly with it, aiming for the goal of the stairs.

  Another tackle, just as he has one foot on the first step.

  ‘I’m trying my best, you know,’ says his dad. ‘All of this . . . since the prom . . . it’s hard for me too. Not as hard as it is for you. I know that. I don’t mean to . . .’ His dad’s voice falters. ‘I’m just trying, that’s all.’

  ‘I know,’ Ram says, and carries on up the stairs. Trying. Yeah. They were all trying.

  Life had been good. Life had been right. Everything had fit properly, he’d known who he was and what he wanted to be. Now? Now none of it fit. He feels broken, everything around him is broken, and he’s supposed to just keep trying. Trying to make it all alright again. They think he’s sad, heartbroken, filled with pain and loss and all that stuff that talking is supposed to fix. He isn’t.