The Bubble Boy (23 page)

‘All good?’ He gives me a thumbs-up. ‘Just breathe slowly or the visor will mist up.’

‘Okay, but how long will my air last?’

‘It 15 litres. It last a diver an hour. But you only little and you not going underwater.’

I smile and put my hands on my head. The new helmet feels much safer than the Frisbee. I go to tell Amir but his back is turned and the door is wide open. He’s fiddling with a red alarm
box on the wall.

I stand by his side. The alley is dark. Darker than it is on my screens. Darker than it’s ever been in my room. There’s a torn plastic bag with bits of paper and food pouring out of
it and three cardboard boxes stacked against the wall. I inch my feet forward.

One more step and I’ll be outside
.

I look across the alley at the brick wall and follow it up past the gutters and the roof. It’s like the building grows out of the ground.

One more step. I only have to take one more step.

Car lights flash by the end of the alley. Amir lifts up his hand.

‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Or they see us on the monitors.’

I step out of the doorway. I try to look up and see the sky. The walls and the roofs start to spin. I reach out and hold onto a metal handrail. Amir grabs hold of my arm.

‘You be okay,’ he says. ‘It just shock.’

A drip of sweat trickles down the middle of my back.

‘Amir, it’s so big,’ I say. ‘The buildings look bigger when I look up.’ I start to fall backwards. Amir puts his arm around my shoulders.

‘Let’s get you in the car.’ He lifts his hand and presses a button on a key fob. Red and yellow lights flash on a small car parked by a wall. ‘Sorry . . . it’s no
Batmobile, but it get us there.’

I try to smile but my head is still spinning. Amir grabs hold of the oxygen bottle and slowly walks me towards the car.

‘Mind your head,’ he says.

I get in. There’s chocolate wrappers and crisps packets in the footwell. Amir reaches in and sweeps them aside, then puts the oxygen bottle between my legs and shuts the door.

He walks in front of the car and gets in the other side. My heart beats against my suit. It seems like five minutes since I was in my room. Now I’m sat in a car with rubbish and tall
buildings all around me.

Amir sits next to me and puts the keys in the ignition.

‘You feel better?’

I nod. ‘A bit,’ I say. ‘But Amir, you still haven’t told me where we’re going?’

‘It a surprise. Surprise is best. Like Christmas. Unwrapping presents is rubbish if you know what you get.’

I give up. I asked him so many times but he still won’t tell me. I like surprises but just being outside is making my heart beat twice as fast.

Amir turns the key. The dashboard lights up. The green numbers above the radio say 03:20. Amir revs the engine. It squeals like a cat.

‘Ah, Rashid. I tell you to fix the alternator.’ He sighs and then presses the accelerator down. The car jumps forward. I grab hold of the door handle. Amir grins.

‘It’s okay,’ he says. ‘We in a car not a rocket.’

He changes gear and we drive towards the bright lights at the end of the alley. A truck roars by. I sit back in my seat.

‘Traffic,’ says Amir ‘You get used to it.’

Across the road, the lights are dim in Starbucks and the telephone shop. I wish I could get out and look inside but Amir turns right and drives past the front of the hospital. Jim is sat at the
reception desk reading his book. I look up and see all the windows . . . hundreds of them. There’s so many that even if I had time to count to my floor I wouldn’t be able to work out
which window is mine. The car goes faster and we leave the hospital behind. Streetlights flash by – bright orange lights, one after the other and behind them are the buildings. Massive dark
buildings made of glass, brick and metal. They climb higher and higher, fat then narrow, floor after floor until they disappear into the sky.

We slow down at the traffic lights. Amir taps his hands on the steering wheel as we wait for the lights to turn green. The diggers are parked up in a row. Mike and Andy are leaning against their
van. Chris and Dave are resting on their drills under the floodlights.

‘They nearly finish,’ says Amir. ‘Then the aliens come.’

The lights turn green and we pull away. I peer into the hole in the road. I couldn’t see any magnets from my room and I still can’t see any now. My heart beats faster again.

Amir taps his head. ‘I know what you thinking. The magnets put them in at the end. Otherwise they drag all the cars and vans down the hole.’

He’s gone crazy again.

I look back out of my window and we pass more lights and shop windows with sofas and dummies and a giant picture of David Beckham on a wall. I yawn. I’ve only been out for five minutes and
I’m already tired. But I can’t go to sleep. I can’t miss anything. I rest my head against the window – more shops, more dark buildings and rubbish bins on the pavement with
bits of plastic and food falling out onto the ground. There are newspapers in the gutter blocking the drains.

Why don’t people pick the rubbish up? Why don’t people empty the bins? They could be full of germs. They could be full of rats. They’re inside the bins, scurrying around eating
bits of meat and fat. They’re crawling over the rubbish up to the top. They’re jumping out of the holes down onto the street.

I shiver and wrap my arms around myself. Here they come.

Massive rats, giant fat rats with giant teeth and tails a metre long. I glance in the wing mirrors. They’re running behind us; they’re catching us. Germs on their feet. Germs in
their mouths. They’re clawing at the car bumper; they’re biting the tyres. No! We need to go back in the buildings. We need to climb back up high. It’s the only way to
escape.

Sweat runs down the side of my face. My visor starts to blur.

Amir waves his hand in front of my face. ‘Joe, you okay?’

I put my hands on top of my head. ‘No, take me back. Please take me back.’

‘You feel sick?’

‘Take me back. There’s germs in the air. There’s rats in the bins.’

Amir looks at his phone. I don’t need to look. I know my numbers are going mad.

My legs are twitching, my hands are shaking. Rats are everywhere. I googled it once. They’re only six feet away from us in city centres. They carry diseases that attack our livers and our
kidneys and they’re out there now. They’re crawling up the exhaust into the car. They’re eating at my suit and creeping up my air-tubes.

I pull at my collar and try to breathe but it’s like someone is sat on my chest with their fingers around my throat.

‘Joe?’

‘I can’t breathe. I can’t—’

‘Deep breaths. Slow deep breaths, Joe. Like you’re stood on a beach looking at the sea.’

I look back out of the car window. The rats are coming. The rats are coming. Giant rats, super rats. They breed them in laboratories.

No. No.

I lift my feet up.

‘Take me back. Please take me back! The rats are coming. They’re in the car, they’re crawling up my legs!’

‘They not. There no rats, Joe. I show you.’

The click of the indicator makes me jump. Amir pulls the car over into a bus stop. He leans over and puts his hand on my arm.

‘You okay. Just be calm.’

I try to take a deep breath. A man and a woman walk towards us holding hands. Amir points at them.

‘You see,’ he says. ‘You think they walk if there giant rats around?’

I let a breath out.

‘I’m sorry. I thought—’

‘It’s okay. It’s okay.’

Amir picks up his phone and increases the air flow.

‘Breathe,’ he says. ‘Breathe.’

‘I’m trying . . . but I don’t want to use up all of my air.’

‘No, you breathe all you like. I calculate it. 100 per cent PA.’

‘PA?’ I shiver as the sweat trickles down my neck.

‘PA. Panic attack. I tell you to read the instructions.’

I try to smile and take another breath but it’s hard when every breath I take uses up more oxygen. I put my hands up to my collar. Amir stops me.

‘No, you can’t do that.’

‘But I still can’t breathe.’

‘Then do this.’ He leans forward and rests his head on the steering wheel. He glances across at me. ‘Come on, you know what to do.’

He closes his eyes.

I lean forward and put my head in my hands. I take a breath. Then another, deeper and longer. Amir opens one eye and smiles. The monitor beeps slowly as my heart does the same. Amir nods slowly.
The rats are retreating, the rats are shrinking. They’re scurrying back up the road and disappearing into the holes. Amir closes his eyes. I close my eyes too.

We start to hum.

Outside temp.
: 11C

Body temp.
: 37.3C

Heart rate
: 120

Air purity
: 96%

Air remaining
: 12 litres

Amir is driving, following the cat’s eyes in the middle of the road. My eyelids are heavy. They start to fall.

Don’t go to sleep. I don’t want to go to sleep.

I shake my head but two seconds later my eyelids are dropping again.

Amir nudges my arm. ‘We nearly there,’ he says.

‘Can you tell me where we’re going now?’

‘The edge of the world,’ he says.

‘Where’s that?’

‘The end of this world. The beginning of the next.’

I don’t understand what he means.

More cat’s eyes. More streetlights. More headlights flashing across Amir’s face.

I yawn. ‘Amir, am I dreaming?’

‘Only you know.’

The road grows wider, two lanes, then three. The buildings get bigger and further apart. We’re on a motorway. They go on for miles and miles but we can’t drive for miles. This car is
so old and rattly it might break down. A whale can hold its breath for ninety minutes; I can’t hold mine for ninety seconds. We’d never make it back to the hospital if we had to walk
from here. We’d have to get out and flag down a car or maybe the police would see us parked at the side of the road. They’d wonder what I was doing out, dressed as a spaceman so early
in the morning. I won’t be able to tell them because Amir will get the sack and I’ll get into trouble too. I hope Dr Moore won’t be too mad with me. I wonder if he would come and
rescue me before my oxygen runs out. I think of asking Amir but he’s too busy watching the road as we pass more cars and more buildings, but I recognize these. I’ve seen them before
from my window: E = Mc
²
, Lucozade, GlaxoSmithKline, and Mercedes-Benz – I look ahead and see the sign for Heathrow.

Wait. We can’t go there.

Amir flicks the indicator.

‘Amir, what are you doing? We can’t go on a plane!’

Amir puts his finger up to his lips. ‘Just wait,’ he says.

‘But I can’t . . . we can’t!’

‘Trust me.’

I sit back in my seat. Amir says to trust him. It’s too late not to, now.

We take the turning off the motorway and pass thousands of cars parked behind fences. The car slows down. Amir leans forward like he’s looking for a gap. ‘It just here,’ he
says. ‘Just . . . here.’

He turns the steering wheel quickly and we go down a dark track. The lights turn off and the car crawls on even though I can’t see anything. But Amir seems to know exactly where he’s
going. He doesn’t need a sat-nav or a map or even headlights. It’s like he knows every bump in the road. I think of the stowaway boy in the plane wheel who cut a hole in the perimeter
fence. Is that what we’re going to do? I won’t be able to run across the tarmac with my oxygen bottle. My legs will have turned to jelly by the time I get there.

I turn around and look on the back seat for fence-cutters, but all I see is a children’s car seat and empty coke bottles.

The car starts to slow, then stops.

In front of us is a big wire fence that stretches as wide as I can see. There’s a ditch in front of it and barbed wire across the top. Amir takes the keys out of the ignition. ‘Come
on,’ he says. ‘We get out now.’

I check the back seat again.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Wire-cutters?’

‘Ha. Why I need wire-cutters?’

‘To cut the fence?’

‘That illegal. I don’t do anything illegal.’ He opens the car door, walks around and opens mine. I don’t say that I think taking me out of the hospital might be
illegal.

‘You coming?’

I pass him the oxygen bottle.

After being in the car for so long it’s like I have to get ready for going outside all over again. I swing my legs out onto the ground. My legs wobble as little stones crunch under my
boots. I take a step and they do it again. It’s like I’m a child trying to walk for the first time. Amir takes hold of my arm. We walk in front of the car and sit down on the bonnet.
Our breath pools out into the cold air like we’re smoking a cigarette. I feel the warmth of the engine through my suit. I’m not cold but I still shiver and wrap my arms around myself. I
wonder if Spider-Man ever felt this cold, like if he ever got caught out in a New York snowstorm. I wonder if he ever found a place like this, in the middle of nowhere, where all you can see is the
dark and all you can hear is the hiss of air.