The Impossible Boy (8 page)

Barney stifled a gasp. He reached into the box and pulled out a thick sheaf of paper. Taking a sheet at random from the middle of the pile he studied it, his mouth slowly
sagging open in surprise.

‘I thought I told you to throw those away.’

Gill’s voice cut through Barney like a sword.

‘I’m – I’m sorry,’ he stammered, heart pounding. ‘I was just taking a break. My arms are tired.’ He clambered off the bed hurriedly.

Gill took the sheet of paper from his hand and squinted at it. She snorted and crumpled it in her wrinkled fist. ‘Should have thrown out this rubbish a long time ago.’ She tossed the
ball of paper into the cardboard box.

‘What’s the Society of Highly Unusual Things?’ asked Barney.

‘Nothing to concern you,’ said Gill. ‘A lot of nonsense from a very long time ago, that’s all. Now come on, there’s plenty more of these boxes to shift.’

‘Did you investigate weird things that happened in Blue Hills? Is that what the society did?’

‘Forget it,’ snapped Gill. All friendliness had drained from her voice. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. Now move. Work to do.’

‘It’s just that me and my friend Gabby do exactly the same thing!’ Barney pressed on excitedly. ‘We have a club called Geek Inc. We love investigating strange happenings.
Are all the things written down here true? Can I show the papers to Gabby? She’d love to see them.’

‘No. Just throw everything out.’ Gill turned her back to him, the walker rattling in her hands. ‘Can’t have this old junk cluttering up the house.’

‘We spoke to Fiona Cress,’ said Barney. ‘She told us about the backwards robot. And about . . . Fleur. Was that why you started investigating strange occurrences?’

Gill’s legs suddenly buckled and she clutched at her walking frame for support, her whole body trembling. Barney rushed to help her. Her mouth had puckered into a grimace and big shiny
tears began to form at the corners of her eyes.In that instant Barney thought she looked more like a little girl than a woman in her seventies.

‘Gill? Are you OK? Come and sit down.’ He led her quickly to the bed and sat her down.

‘Leave me alone.’ Gill pushed him away. She was surprisingly strong. ‘Why did you speak to that woman?’ she sobbed. ‘Why would you want to drag up all that pain
from so long ago?’

‘I’m so sorry,’ said Barney. ‘We just like finding out things, that’s all. It was curiosity.’

‘Curiosity!’ spat Gill. ‘That’s what tore our lives apart. Our own stupid, selfish curiosity. We loved mysteries. Highly unusual things, we called them. Loved
investigating them. Fancied ourselves as a right little Holmes-and-Watson team. So many weird things in this town to investigate too. It’s like a toyshop for the curious. We had a fine old
time. Well, I’ll tell you, Barney – it was our curiosity that cost us our daughter. I think I
unleashed
something that afternoon in 1976 – some force. And it took Fleur
from us. It’s the only explanation that makes sense. There was only one mystery in our lives from then on. How to live without our daughter. And no number of cockatrices or invisible men was
ever going to hold our interest for a second after that. We gave up our investigations.’

Barney spoke softly. ‘But didn’t you want to investigate what happened to Fleur?’

She looked him in the eye. ‘It was our dabblings that lost us our daughter, Barney. I was determined that whatever took her away wouldn’t happen again and take someone else’s
child. We’d discovered some miraculous, mind-blowing things, but in the end I decided the best thing was to shut the society down. Curiosity was just too expensive a pastime.’

‘What about Dave?’

‘What about him?’

‘The stuff in these boxes. They’re his memories, too.’

Gill rose slowly and painfully to her feet, knuckles whitening as she gripped her walking frame. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, Barney,’ she said quietly,
‘but my husband has no use for memories any more.’ She shuffled out of the room, the walking frame squeaking and rattling, and closed the door behind her.

Gabby stepped down from the bus and watched as it chugged away along the narrow tree-lined lane. It was a bright afternoon and the sky above was a flawless blue canopy. Not far
away a pair of blackbirds darted among the sun-dappled branches, orange beaks and eyes flashing. A tiny russet face poked out of a nearby hedge and regarded her. She winked at it. The weasel
returned her gaze fiercely for a moment and then scurried back into the undergrowth.

Gabby smiled. She was starting to see the attraction of skipping school.

Thrusting her hands into the pockets of her parka, she set off up the lane at a leisurely pace, humming a tune to herself. It was good to feel the reassuring thickness of her notebook in her
pocket. Making notes about stuff always made her feel more in control of any situation, like she was a proper investigator.

The great part about being a trustworthy, reliable pupil, thought Gabby – one who always did her homework on time, was never told off for talking in class, never late – was that
whenever she
did
stray from the straight and narrow, she was never suspected. Teachers never checked up on her excuses, never doubted whether the signature on a permission slip was really
her mother’s, or, as in this case, never even guessed that the appointment card for a check-up at Blue Hills Cottage Hospital this afternoon had actually been designed and printed off on her
own computer that morning. If you behaved yourself most of the time you could get away with so much more than if you were always on the teachers’ radars. The trick, of course, was to choose
your moments and not do it too often.

Woodlark Grove High School lay at the end of the lane. Gabby had chosen it because it was only a few miles from Blue Hills and relatively small for a comprehensive. Even so, it would be hard
enough to spot a single boy among the mass of children that would soon surge through the school’s front gate. There was an old-fashioned red telephone box on the opposite side of the street
to the school. It stood next to a few horse chestnut trees and beside some steps leading down to a canalside. Gabby decided the phone box would make a good hiding place to watch from. She swung
open its heavy iron-framed door and slipped inside. The air within was still and silent and Gabby suddenly became very aware of the sound of her own breathing. On a whim, she breathed a patch of
hot, grey-white condensation on to the windowpane in front of her face and dabbed a smiley face into it with the tip of her forefinger.

From the other side of the glass, two real eyes appeared through the eyes of the smiley face. Gabby stepped back, knocking the telephone receiver off its cradle. She pushed open the door of the
kiosk.

‘Gabby! Hello!’

He was wearing a different school uniform, but otherwise it was him. Chas ran his long fingers through the flick of blond hair covering his forehead.

‘Chas! Where did you suddenly appear from?’

The boy laughed heartily. ‘Well! That is the question, really, isn’t it?’

‘You’re not the Chas I know from Blue Hills High, are you?’ said Gabby, studying him. ‘You’re another one. A duplicate, absolutely identical. So what are you, then?
A clone? A shapeshifter? A bunch of creatures from Mars disguised as the same human being?’

‘Blimey,’ said Chas. ‘You don’t hang about, do you? Straight in there with the big questions.’

‘Are you going to tell me?’

‘Maybe,’ said Chas with a grin. ‘If your mind can comprehend the staggering truth.’

Gabby snorted. ‘Don’t you worry about me. My mind can comprehend some pretty weird stuff, even if I do say so myself.’

‘It’s a lovely afternoon,’ said Chas. ‘Shall we take a stroll? Before the school empties out and everywhere’s overrun with kids.’ He held out his arm.

A cold breeze suddenly made the hairs on the back of Gabby’s neck prickle. She zipped up her parka, eyeing him uncertainly. ‘OK. But you won’t disintegrate me or suck my blood
or anything?’

Chas shook his head. ‘Wasn’t really planning to, no.’

‘Good,’ said Gabby, taking his arm. ‘I think it’s always better to check these things first.’

They went down the steps and ambled along the canalside. Before either of them could say a word a streak of bright blue light whizzed past Gabby’s head.

‘Did you see that?’ she exclaimed delightedly. ‘A kingfisher!’

‘Look,’ said Chas, pointing. ‘It’s landed on the ground on the opposite side of the canal. By that old bench. You see it?’

Gabby shaded her eyes and screwed up her face. ‘Not really.’

‘Here,’ said Chas, passing her a chunky pair of binoculars. ‘Use these.’

‘Great. Thanks.’ Gabby took the binoculars and raised them to her eyes. ‘I can see it!’ she cried. ‘It’s got a little fish in its beak! Here – you see .
. .’

She passed back the binoculars. Chas used them to locate the tiny blue-and-orange bird. ‘Oh yes!’ He was grinning with pleasure.

‘There’s just one thing I don’t understand,’ said Gabby.

‘What’s that? Oooh – he’s off. There he goes.’ He lowered the binoculars. ‘What don’t you understand?’

‘Where the heck did you get those binoculars from? You weren’t carrying them and you haven’t got a bag.’

Chas pointed a finger at her. ‘You’re good. You notice stuff. No one notices stuff. Even when I parade weirdness in front of them. But you do. You’re pretty unique,
Gabby.’

Don’t you dare blush
, Gabby thought to herself.
Just be cool about this.
‘Am I?’ she blurted out, her face turning bright red. ‘Oh wowsers! Haha! Maybe
I am. I dunno. Haha!’

Oh well done, Gab,
she thought.

‘Well, there are versions of me attending over two thousand schools in this country,’ said Chas. ‘Two thousand Chases out there all doing impossible things. And you’re
the only person to realise it. That’s some brain you’ve got.’

She clenched her fists in her coat pocket, willing herself not to blush again. ‘But how is that even possible?’ she asked. Something felt wrong. ‘Oh
great,
’ she
muttered, suddenly clapping a hand to her forehead. ‘Must have left my notebook in the phone kiosk.’

‘Not a problem,’ said Chas with a strange smile. ‘Try your pocket now.’

Gabby slid her hand back into the pocket of her parka. ‘It’s there!’ she gasped. ‘My notebook! How? How did you do that? Was it there all the time and you just monkeyed
with my brain so I thought it wasn’t? Or are you feeding me illusions now?’ She whipped the notebook out of her pocket and showed it to him, the pages flapping in the wind. ‘Is
this really my notebook or just a figment of my imagination?’

Chas laughed. ‘It’s definitely real, Gabby.’

‘So how did you do it? Is it something to do with that sports bag you disappeared into the other night? I followed you, you know.’

‘I know. And it didn’t take impossible powers to overhear you having an argument with that old lady.’

Gabby snorted. ‘Typical Geek Inc. investigation! Complete foul-up! That’s the organisation I belong to, by the way. Geek Inc. We investigate impossible things. Like you.’

‘That I didn’t know,’ said Chas. ‘Sounds impressive. What other strange phenomena have you looked into?’

Gabby smiled and wagged a finger at him. ‘Don’t change the subject! One impossible thing at a time. How did you do the bag trick? Anything to do with wormholes in space?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Teleportation? That would explain how you make things appear and disappear, including yourself.’

‘Maybe.

‘Is this connected with time at all? Are you able to freeze time? Is that it?’

‘Yes and no.’

‘Oh come on now.’ Gabby halted and stuck a hand on her hip. ‘Enough of the cryptic stuff. Please. If you’re going to tell me the truth, just tell me. I can take it. I
promise. If you don’t want to tell me, fine. There’s a bus due in four minutes and I can be home in time for my dinner.’