The Bubble Boy (18 page)

I smile. I’m winning. I need to get off the phone before she changes her mind.

I turn my phone off and put it down by my side. My chest is aching and my head is too. I wish I hadn’t cried on TV. I wish Graham hadn’t asked that question, or they
had cut it out.

11 years, 3 months and 9 days

There’s a queue twenty people long in the reception. Julie has been busy taking presents all morning. They’re stacked up against the wall behind her desk. I
can’t see what they all are but if it’s the same as last year they’ll be mostly teddies, dolls and remote-control cars. Some of them are old toys that people don’t want any
more, but some are newly wrapped with labels with kids’ names written on them. They cut most of them off but I don’t mind. It’s not fair that just those of us who were on TV get
to have everything, and my room isn’t big enough for them all anyway. But I would like the FIFA 15 game that a man and his little boy brought in an hour ago.

The queue grows even longer after midday as people take their lunch hour and go to the shops and bring more presents in for us. Then after 2 o’clock the reception is quiet again and the
pile goes down as Keith takes them down the corridor and locks them in a room. I switch cameras and watch the workmen for an hour until I spot Amir walking along the pavement with his rucksack on
his back. He nods to Keith, then when he’s in the reception he turns, glances up at the camera and gives me a thumbs-up. He’s so silly.

It usually takes him twenty-two minutes to get to my room from the reception but today nearly two hours have gone before I hear him in the transition zone. He smiles as he walks into my
room.

‘You okay?’ he asks.

‘Yes, I’m okay, but where have you been?’

‘Sorry, things are a bit busy.’

‘With the others?’

Amir nods his head quickly. ‘Yes, but I was looking for this, too.’

He holds up his hand and shows me a tiny square chip between his finger and thumb.

‘What is it?’

He grins. ‘My brother got us a decoder upgrade – Quantax 635i with tri-media processor.’ he says. ‘It scans through all networks at the same time, every country, every
city, terrestrial, satellite and cable.’

‘But I don’t watch all the ones I’ve got.’

‘You can’t have enough,’ he says. ‘Everyone wants more channels, you can’t have too many channels. The world is so big you might miss something somewhere.’ He
kneels down by the receiver.

I get off my bed and kneel beside him. ‘Amir, where does all this come from? It must cost a lot of money.’

He takes the cover off the receiver and looks at me. ‘No, it free. My brother gets it from backs of lorries.’

‘It’s stolen?’

‘No, we just borrow.’ Amir grins at me as he clicks the new parts into place.

‘There,’ he says. ‘Now all we’ve got to do is find the channel.’

‘Which one?’

‘The one your friend will be on.’

‘Henry?’

‘Who else? No point in sending a man to the moon if no one turns on the TV and watches him.’

I smile. Henry isn’t going to the moon, but I know what Amir means. It wouldn’t be the same if Henry just told me what it was like to walk around the mall; he’d leave things
out that he thought weren’t important and he might make things up that didn’t happen, which he sometimes does when he’s excited. It would be much better to see him.

I stand up. Amir points the remote at the TV as we walk backwards towards my bed. The monitors flicker but all we see are fuzzy pictures and all we hear is white noise.

Amir looks confused. ‘It’s not on Galaxy,’ he says. ‘But it must be on here somewhere.’

The channels change again – cars on a racing track, a girl on a motorbike, camels walking across a desert – Amir taps the remote against the side of his head.

‘I call him,’ he whispers.

‘Henry?’

‘No, my brother.’ He takes his phone out of his pocket and walks over to the window. As he presses the keys I try more channels but all I find are silly adverts about cornflakes and
washing powder. Amir holds his finger in the air. I stop scanning.

‘Rashid, we can’t find it!’ Amir listens then starts talking faster. ‘’Kay . . . ’kay.’ He turns off the phone.

‘What did he say?’

He walks over and takes the remote from me. ‘My fault,’ he says. ‘We on Astra when we should be on Echo Star.’ He glances at his watch. ‘But we haven’t got
time now. We’ve only got two days.’

‘Until the aliens come?’

‘No,’ he says. ‘Until you go outside.’

‘What? Am I really going?’ My breath starts coming out in quick little bursts and my heart rate speeds up straight away. Outside. Outside!!

‘Am I really going?!

‘Of course, it short notice but it the only day my brother can lend us his car.’

We’ve only got two days but he hasn’t told me anything! Henry had a plan mapped out for three months. He’s been on a special diet and been out for trial runs. All I’ve
done is watch TV on my bed!

‘What’s wrong? Are you nervous? It okay. Everybody gets nerves, even him.’ He nods at Theo Walcott.

I bite my lip.

‘Come on,’ says Amir. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m a bit scared. I don’t know what I’m wearing or where I’m . . . going.’

Amir leans towards me. ‘Don’t worry.’ He taps the side of his head. ‘It’s all up here. I know everything.’

‘But I need to know, too.’

Amir looks at his watch, then back towards the door.

‘Yes, of course you do. Sorry. Quick, pass me that.’

I reach over to my table and hand him my laptop. Amir looks cross, suddenly.

‘What’s this?’

He reads the post about me being in KFC.

‘That rubbish,’ he says.

‘I know.’

Amir types:

He presses Send and then grins at me. ‘So,’ he says. ‘I tell you what we going to do.’

He opens a blank document then starts to blink quickly like there’s something in his eye.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Of course, I just thinking.’ He blinks again and starts to type.

‘This is a checklist,’ he says. ‘Things you have to do, things I have to do. Don’t save the document, just remember what I type and then delete.’

I look at the screen and try to follow what he’s writing but his fingers move so quickly the page scrolls up before I can read.

‘There.’ He turns the screen towards me.

E T D 03:06

Compressed Air 19.5%

Oxygen 80.5%

Nitrogen.

Volume 1 litre. Air flow 3 cubic feet per minute. Duration 2 hrs 52 mins 26 seconds

E T A 06:58

‘Ha,’ he says. ‘Did I tell you I used to work on the trains?’

‘So this is all we need?’

Amir nods quickly. ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I worked it all out. I give you an extra 26 seconds of air in case we get stuck in the lift.’

I read the rest of the list, some of it makes sense, some of it is numbers and words I don’t understand. There are things on it like cubic capacity, internal and external temperature
variability, light pollution and density of traffic. At the bottom of the document there’s a picture of a person with my name by its head.

Height 150 cm.

Weight 54 kg.

Body Mass 12.2.

Lung capacity 4.5 ltr.

Resting breath 23 per minute – variance 100% increase for PA.

I look up. Amir grins at me.

‘Some I got from your records, the rest from
wiki-how
.’

I scratch my head.

Amir laughs. ‘I joke,’ he says. ‘Trust me. I consult the best doctors. I no ask anyone here but I know some of the top people in India. Oh, I nearly forgot.
seven-eleven.’ He takes a deep breath.

‘What’s seven-eleven?’

Amir lets his breath go.

‘Increases lung capacity,’ he says. ‘and it keep you calm, too. Breathe in for seven seconds and out for eleven, try it. Like this.’

I watch him and breathe in for as long as he does, then let my breath out.

‘Good,’ he says. ‘And again. Does it make you feel good?’

‘No, it makes me feel sick.’

Amir laughs a lot. ‘Me too, but it goes after a while. Practise tonight.’

I tell him I will, then I read the list again. There are so many numbers, he’s done so much research, but I don’t know whether to trust him or not. This is a really, really important
thing. If he’d installed the TVs wrong, all that would have happened was the channels would have been mixed up or maybe they wouldn’t have switched on. If he’s got this wrong, I
could go outside and die.

Amir’s pager beeps. ‘I’ve got to go,’ he says. ‘Keep watching the screens. Especially Jim.’

‘But he doesn’t do anything!’

‘You no find him and Phil funny? They like them Chuckle Brothers. Or Ant and Dec. Maybe you take notes, Joe. They so funny you should watch them all night.’

‘Why?’

‘I like to know what happens when I not here. Have you got any more messages on here from the people?’ He turns my laptop round before I can answer.

Amir tuts. ‘Some people,’ he says. ‘They no understand.’

‘Brilliant!’ I laugh.

Amir’s pager beeps again.

‘Must go,’ he says. ‘Somebody else need me. I might see you later, but I’m not in tomorrow.’

‘But Amir . . .’ I look back at the screen.

‘Yes?’

‘Why are we going out at night?’

‘It’s too risky during the day. And this way you get to see what the aliens come here for.’

‘What’s that?’

‘The greatest show on earth.’

‘What’s—’

Amir grins and slides out the door.

I turn the screens off and lie back on my bed. I really am going outside. I really am. I really, really am! I pick up my phone. I want to tell Beth. I want to ask her if she thinks I’m
being stupid believing that it could really happen, or even for going at all. But I can’t tell her. She’s already worried about being so far away from me. I don’t want to add
another thing. I know she would think it was too risky and I can’t tell Greg because he would think that, too. I want to go outside, even though it might be dangerous. No one can understand
how much. Only Henry knows what it feels like to be stuck in a bubble. But my legs start to twitch and my chest feels tight.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths.

I get up and walk up and down the room. My laptop beeps again. A new message.

I walk over to the window. The workmen are digging the trench, the people in the offices are staring at their computer screens and the planes are flying over the Lucozade
building into Heathrow. If I really only had eight minutes, what would I do? I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t go anywhere. I might make it through the transition zone and the
corridors and the lifts. I might be able to make it to reception but by the time I got there it would be time to go back. But now I’ve got more than eight minutes. Amir said I’ve got
nearly three hours. Three whole hours outside. I walk back to my laptop and open a new tab.