Bitter Sixteen E-Book

Stefan Mohamed

• Herausgeber: Salt
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Serie: Bitter Sixteen
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 544

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize for new writers A Times Children's Book of the Week A Guardian Top Teen Read of 2015 "Happy birthday, Stanly. We hope you like your present…" Cynical, solitary Stanly Bird is a fairly typical teenager – unless you count the fact that his best friend is a talking beagle named Daryl, and that he gained the powers of flight and telekinesis when he turned sixteen. Unfortunately, his rural Welsh home town is not exactly crying out for its very own superhero. London is calling – but what Stanly finds there is a good deal weirder and more terrifying than anything he could have imagined. Perhaps he should have stayed in Wales …

Leseprobe

Bitter Sixteen

‘I raced through it like I was reading a comic book.’ —CERYS MATTHEWS

‘Stefan Mohamed really stands out from the crowd – a delightfully funny, surreal and original new voice with a great storytelling gift.’

ANDREW DAVIES, Multi-BAFTA and Emmy award-winning screenwriter

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STANLY. WE HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR PRESENT . . .’

Cynical, solitary Stanly Bird is a fairly typical teenager – unless you count the fact that his best friend is a talking beagle named Daryl, and that he gained the powers of flight and telekinesis when he turned sixteen.

Unfortunately, his rural Welsh home town is not exactly crying out for its very own superhero. London is calling – but what Stanly finds there is a good deal weirder and more terrifying than anything he could have imagined. Perhaps he should have stayed in Wales . . .

THE FIRST IN AN EXPLOSIVE NEW TRILOGY FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR STEFAN MOHAMED

‘Thoroughly enjoyable, very funny and touching, with a really great central character in Stanly.’

JUSTIN KERRIGAN, Director of Human Traffic

Praise for Stefan Mohamed

‘Into what seems to be a very real and familiar world, Stefan Mohamed introduces a 16-year-old superhero and his even more remarkable dog. All kinds of crazy, amorous and criminal adventures ensue, but our author’s vivid imagination, story-telling power, humour and mastery of punchy dialogue ensure that we eagerly hang on throughout this refreshingly original novel.’

—PROFESSOR PETER STEAD

Bitter Sixteen

Stefan Mohamed is a 26-year-old author, poet and sometime journalist. He graduated from Kingston University in 2010 with a first class degree in creative writing and film studies, and later that year won the inaugural Sony Reader Award, a category of the Dylan Thomas Prize, for his novel Bitter Sixteen. He lives in Bristol, where he works as an editorial assistant, writing stories and performing poetry in his spare time.

Also by Stefan Mohamed

Stuff

Published by Salt Publishing Ltd

12 Norwich Road, Cromer, Norfolk NR27 0AX

All rights reserved

Copyright © Stefan Mohamed,2015

The right ofStefan Mohamedto be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing.

Salt Publishing 2015

Created by Salt Publishing Ltd

This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

ISBN 978-1-78463-044-7 electronic

for Mum and Dad

Chapter One

THE WORLD’S Aweird place.

Sorry to state the obvious, but it really is. And it’s a lot to take in when you stop to think about it. Luckily, life is generally constructed in such a way that your world starts small and sensible and gradually gets larger and weirder. There’s a gradient, a logical, incremental process that expands your horizons and your perception bit by bit, so that it doesn’t overload your poor little CPU and leave you jibbering in a white room being fed thrice daily through a letterbox. This tends to be the way of things.

Except for when it’s not.

Exhibit A – my life. Up until I turned sixteen, my notion of ‘trouble’ was, while a relatively broad church, still a church preaching the gospel of ‘this is a small world getting very gradually larger’. You had your common or garden varieties of trouble, which might lead to harsh words from your parents or teacher, or maybe to detention, suspension or even expulsion, God forbid. You had your more hardcore varieties, which could lead to embarrassment, fury, heartbreak or serious injury, although I’d still count these as pretty common. Then you had stuff you heard or read about – old ladies being mugged, cars being jacked, animals being injected with stolen plutonium, or whatever – that you were fairly unlikely to experience first-hand.

But there’s also the other stuff. Stuff like:

Cowering behind a table while the room fills with bullets.

Brutal and chaotic battles to the death.

Superpowers. Although, having said that, they’re pretty cool.

Six or so months after I’d turned sixteen, I had cornered the market in trouble. In fact, I pretty much needed a whole new scale for measuring it, and my world had gone from small and – mostly – mundane to proper ‘save me Jebus’ weird.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Friday, September the twenty-third, the night before my sixteenth birthday. I had recently begun my last year of compulsory education and everything was leading up to exams. I was supposed to have mapped out my future, to know exactly where I was going and how I was going to get there. I needed colour-coded timetables and ring binders. I needed a plan. I needed dedication and I needed to be cohesive, and I needed careful structure and guidelines. I needed to be focused. Serious and organised. This would be The Most Important Year Of My Life, if you believed what my teachers were saying, and everyone’s parents were encouraging them to do well. To revise and get the best results so they could do exactly what they wanted when they left.

Well, almost everyone’s parents. My parents just wanted me to make some friends. They said that after four years in secondary school I should have friends. I think one friend would probably have done. Maybe they weren’t entirely wrong, but it’s not as though I minded, which should have been the important thing. Anyway, I had my dog.

I digress. It’s the night before my sixteenth birthday and I’m lying spread-eagled on my bed with a splitting migraine, heat prickling beneath my skin, and although I know my English teacher would mark me down for mucking around with tenses, it’s necessary, ’cos my perception is all a-wonk. My eyes flit around my room, the torn sketchbook sheets I’ve covered with charcoal trees and crumbling cityscapes during too many sleepless nights giving the whole thing an arthouse-animated-horror-film feel, decaying zombies shuffling across the foreground of my brain and the headache pulsating in my eye sockets. I’m trying to distract myself from the pain, thinking about what’s going to change, if anything. Thinking about the conversation I had with my parents this evening.

Mum: So, are you having a party?

Me: No.

Dad: Why not? You’re sixteen! You should be having a piss-up!

Mum: Frank . . .

Dad: What?

Me: I’m not having a party.

Mum: You can invite some —

Dad (anger rising): Friends? For Christ’s sake, Mary, he doesn’t have any friends!

Mum: Frank!

Me (sorry to have caused an argument but not really in the mood to listen to it): I’m going to bed.

Dad slams his fist down on the table. Mum goes to the cupboard, presumably to get a bottle of wine and pour herself a glass. Or three.

I go upstairs.

A party. I’d barely been to enough parties to know how you acted at someone else’s, let alone how you went about organising your own, especially with no real friends to invite. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t feared and loathed at school, at least not by everyone. I’m pretty sure some people liked me, and there were certain people who I liked as well. I just kept them at arm’s length. I didn’t let them in, they respected my very cool and fascinatingly enigmatic need for solitude. Or my social ineptitude, whatever you want to call it. They laughed when they needed to, I answered their questions, they left me alone. Well, most of them. A few refused to and that was why I had enemies. They don’t appear until later, though. So let’s look forward to that, eh?

The seconds are tick-tick-ticking. My clock counting down – up? – towards the sixteenth of sixteen fairly uneventful years.

Being a teenager is like this: an inspirational Hollywood-style montage interspersed with little bits of idealised sadness to give it some spice, scored to some sort of Taylor Swiftian ballad thing. Teenagers studying and laughing together, falling asleep on their beautifully-written essays. Attractive boys and girls kissing. Less attractive boys and girls kissing but in silhouette behind curtains because there’s a reason there is no such genre as ‘ugly-people love story’. Some kids crying and cradling each other in the rain because rain is always good for atmosphere, and crying in the rain looks good in trailers, and even though something awful has happened, their camaraderie ties them together, plus tragedy is character-building. Jumping for joy when their exam results come in, exactly the ones they needed to get into Wherever. Bullies making up with their victims at the end. Everyone getting a piece of cake. The world welcoming them with open arms: ‘Well done guys, you are now free to do literally whatever you want!’

Being a teenager is not really like that. Well, maybe somewhere in America? But I go to a small secondary school in Wales, so America might as well be a fictional country. So who cares.

Maybe it’s more like this: a moodier, stylishly-lit montage, with images melting into each other like frames from a Frank Miller-era Daredevil comic, scored to something like ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ by Nirvana if you want to take it seriously, or some kind of scuzzy emo anthem if you want to go the whole black-eyelinered hog. Subscribing to the Disaffected Outcast cliché where we all sit around in the dark and listen to Loud Music That’s Not Music, It’s Just Noise, and write really bad poetry about the dark pit where hope and love used to live before they were evicted by PAIN. Some of the shadowy space cadets smoke like they recently invented smoking, and in the gaps between re-watching Requiem For A Dream and not really understanding Sartre they read out that idiosyncratic alienated poetry in South Park Goth voices: ‘Love was a rabid cat, with pus where a kiss should have been. And my soul was its scratching post.’

Is being a teenager like that? Hopefully not. If anything, it’s probably somewhere between the two. Except with more texting, and the self-esteem issues turned up to eleven. Either way, visualising montages is not distracting me from my headache.

And for the record, I don’t understand Sartre either.

I was born at exactly one minute past midnight on September the twenty-fourth, and one time my mum got extremely drunk on extremely expensive whisky and told me that the pain of labour was nothing compared to the pain of watching your only child grow up without friends, which wasn’t a mega-nice thing to say, although I didn’t really react. I just took the whisky away from her and went to bed, and when my dad got home there was a lot of shouting. I sometimes wonder why they’ve never divorced. Maybe they couldn’t decide which one would get me. Not that they don’t love me, I’m sure they do. It just sometimes seems like neither of them really knows what to do with me, which makes them anxious. It shouldn’t, though. I’m perfectly happy to be left alone in my bubble. Old people today, eh?

Thirty seconds until I turn sixteen. I’m not expecting it to be dramatically different from being fifteen. I’ll be able to get married, which is unlikely to happen. I’ll be able to ride a moped – I think – which is also unlikely to happen because teenagers who ride mopeds look like pizza delivery boys. I’ll be able to have sex legally. Also fairly unlikely, unfortunately.

I might have missed something, but if I can’t remember it then it’s probably not that important.

Ten seconds. The agony is nearly splitting me open. The two sides of my head straddle the San Andreas Fault and any minute now the back of my head is going to go full Scanners and spray my mattress with bits of skull and brain, and blood will pour, bubbling and steaming, from my mouth and ears and nose and eye sockets, and then my eyeballs will burst with a sound like someone biting into a grape and streams of gore will hit the ceiling, and if by some miracle I’m not dead I’ll drown in my own goop.

Or not.

One second.

Happy birthday. Or penblwydd hapus in the original Welsh. I —

BOOM!

The migraine reaches a crescendo and the white-hot, bullet-kissing pain is more intense than anything that I’ve ever felt before. It eats me alive and spits me into a volcano and I moan, my vision going white. My whole body tingles like I’ve been charged with electricity, my skin fizzes like sherbet and my internal organs are immolated. I throw my head back . . . and hit nothing.

I open my eyes. The pain is gone, leaving a delicious coolness in my head, and I’m levitating a foot above my bed.

This is . . . not standard procedure.

Did I pass out? Am I dreaming? No . . . I know what dreaming feels like . . . don’t I?

Did I die?

Probably not. My migraines are bad, but they’re not that bad, my own hyperbole notwithstanding.

So . . . process of elimination . . .

I’m floating in the air.

What.

What.

WHAT.

I’m not sure how to react. A hysterical giggle slips out, far too loud, and I slap a hand over my mouth . . . and immediately drop back down onto my bed. Bed feels real.

This feels real.

Happy birthday, Stanly. We hope you like your present.

Chapter Two

IDIDN’T SLEEP FORthe rest of the night. Too busy flying. Well, maybe floating is more accurate. Once I had ascertained that I was definitely not dreaming and that what had happened had – pretty much – definitely happened, and decided that even if I had completely lost my marbles I might as well see how deep the rabbit hole went, I set about trying to do it again. With alotof concentrating I eventually managed to levitate above the ground for a maximum of five seconds, although each successful effort left me so drained that I had to wait about fifteen minutes before I could try again. Starry black blurred into the silver blue glow of dawn, and before I knew it half past nine had rolled around and someone was knocking on my door. I was dishevelled and wired, and still dressed in yesterday’s clothes, but it didn’t seem to matter hugely when compared with my discovery. I made a noncommittal grunting sound. ‘Grunt to you, too,’ said my mother’s voice. ‘Happy birthday.’

I got up and opened the door and she hugged me, wearing her black dressing gown that she’d had since I was a child. The smell used to be a comfort. I actually hugged her back and found myself smiling, and she said sorry about last night and asked when I wanted to come down. I said I’d shower then I’d be there. She didn’t say anything about my clothes, and for almost a second I considered mentioning what had happened.

Maybe not, eh?

I shaved and showered, and wondered about this power. My birthday present. The energy that had flooded my body, like fire rushing through my arteries, enabling me to float. I wondered if I had any other new abilities. At this point it didn’t really occur to me to wonder how or why I had this thing. I just accepted it. I’m pretty good at accepting things.

I called upon my vast reservoir of willpower and decided to stay in for the day with my parents. There’d be plenty of time for experimentation tomorrow. In the meantime I went downstairs and my mother had cooked fried eggs on toast and my father was outside smoking a cigarette, and there were a number of small wrapped packages on the table by my breakfast.

‘So,’ said my mother as I ate. ‘Doing anything special today?’

I shook my head. ‘Staying in, I think.’

‘Ah.’

My father came in and smiled formally. ‘Morning, Stan. Happy birthday.’

I smiled. ‘Thanks.’ I don’t like being called Stan. They named me Stanly, which I like. I also like the fact that they left out the e, luckily. I’m sure there are lots of kids who would be quite put out if their parents deliberately spelled their names wrong on a whim. But it was a rare instance of my parents doing something different just for the hell of it, just because they thought it would be interesting, and also one of the even rarer instances where our respective ideas of what was interesting intersected. Stanly. Makes you look twice, doesn’t it? I like that. Or maybe I’ve made myself like it, because the alternative is having a deliberate mistake instead of a name.

But I definitely don’t like Stan.

‘Um . . . Mary?’ said my father. They exchanged one of those conspiratorial looks that parents think children don’t notice and went into the next room. I finished my eggs and toast and stared down at my plate, at my knife and fork, at the crumbs and hardening stains of yolk. Normal plate, one of about twenty identical plates we’d had forever. Normal cutlery, same old faded red handles. Normal breakfast, same old eggs that come from chickens that come from eggs and so on. Normal day, same old being a bit older than I had been before.

EXCEPT I CAN FLOAT IN THE AIR I CAN FLOAT IN THE AIR I CAN FLOAT IN THE AIR WHAT THE HELL WHAT THE SHIT I CAN FLOAT IN THE AIR.

I had to stop myself from leaping up and running around the room, or smashing my plate over my head, or making myself hover in the air, just to see my parents’ faces when they came back in.

What the hell is going on?

I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. Calm down. It’s happening. It’s mental, but it’s happening. It is what is going on. Have a normal, quiet birthday, and completely and totally lose your shit tomorrow.

I’m pretty good at accepting things.

Within reason.

My parents returned moments later, which gave me a good reason to look as normal and nonplussed by reality as possible. ‘Do you want the small things first?’ said my father.

‘Or the big one?’ my mother smiled.

I smiled back and shrugged. ‘The little ones?’

‘OK.’ They sat down. ‘Go on.’

I opened the cards first. As I went through them (twenty pounds from my cousins in America, a cheque for fifty from my grandparents, book tokens from some more cousins, a Happy 14th Birthday from an absent-minded uncle in New Zealand, nothing from my cousin in London), my mind kept wandering. Visions of myself speeding across the wood behind my house, dancing from tree to tree, tugging me away from material things. I shrugged them off. Plenty of time for experimentation tomorrow, remember?

Tomorrow.

And the day after, and the day after.

I was getting ahead of myself again, sort of. There was no guarantee that this power would ever extend further than allowing me to levitate a few inches off the ground. Maybe that would be it. Maybe I’d call myself Floating Boy, and form a League of Thoroughly Mediocre Gentlemen alongside Captain Lampshade, blessed with complete mastery over all the lampshades in the world, The Sometimes A Bit Invisible Girl, able to make her feet invisible every other Wednesday, and The Metaboliser, endowed with the ability to digest things really fast.

‘Stanly?’ said my mother. ‘Are you all right?’

I realised that I’d completely zoned out. ‘Sorry. Not enough sleep.’ They exchanged bemused looks and I hurriedly set about opening the packages they’d handed over. A few DVDs, a CD and a couple of books. They were good ones and I thanked and hugged my parents with more affection than it was usual for me to show them. My father grinned now. I appreciated his enthusiasm – I think it was actually genuine – but the grin was a bit much, it made him look a bit deranged. ‘Do you want to see the big one?’ he said.

I nodded and they left the room again, returning with a large wrapped box and an electric guitar in a case. My eyes widened. A month ago they’d asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I’d said an electric guitar. I could see my mother perking up when I said that. I could almost read her mind. Yet another montage, but a very short one that mainly consisted of me forming a band, doing big gigs and making lots of friends, possibly even getting a girl of some kind. I hadn’t expected to actually get the thing. I momentarily entertained a mental image of my own, windmilling the shit out of ‘Johnny B. Goode’ at a high school dance in 1955, but was quickly shaken out of it by my father asking if I wanted lessons. I said that I’d just fiddle about for now, that’d be fine.

I spent the rest of the day fiddling about. A few of my parents’ friends came by and wished me a happy birthday, some bearing chocolate and cards, and I thanked them politely before going back to my guitar. I knew bugger all about guitars, all I knew was that this one was blue and it looked cool, and when I plugged it into the amplifier and turned it up it made everything shake. And woke Daryl up.

Ah yes.

Daryl was my dog. About a year ago I had been at a sort of free-for-all, no-invitation-required party because I was bored. I was sitting with a group of stoners, trying to keep up with their up-and-down, side-to-side conversation, when a very laid-back skateboarder called Mikey handed me a spliff. I’d never tried it before and almost respectfully declined – but they all seemed to be having so much fun. I wanted to have fun. I very rarely had fun, at least not with people. So I accepted it. I just wanted to try something new and have fun like they were having.

I spent the rest of the night having fun. The memory is sort of filtered through a kaleidoscope: I can see trees and dancing and a bonfire and a band, and I can see myself staggering home at about four in the morning, and I can see a hedge, and I can see a dog. This is where Daryl comes into the story.

He was a small, mostly white beagle who looked more like Snoopy than most beagles, although that might just be my perception of him, and he was ambling along quite happily, sniffing at the bushes by the side of the road, enjoying the country air. I knelt down and patted him and murmured some nonsense to him.

And he answered me.

Now, I’ve seen stoners in films. They’re always talking to dogs and the dogs are always talking back. I didn’t think anything of it. The conversation went sort of like this.

Me: Slurred gibberish.

Dog: Yeah? It’s like that, is it?

Me: More gibberish, then: Yep.

Dog: What’s your name, kid?

Me: Stanly.

Dog: I’m Daryl.

Me: Hi.

We shake hands.

Me: So like . . . you um . . . (More gibberish).

Daryl (laughing): Yep.

Me: Want to come to my house?

Daryl: Yeah, sure.

Me: V’lost my keys. Probably be locked.

Daryl: That’s fine.

Me: There’s a bench.

Daryl: Cool.

So we walked home and my parents found me in the morning, sleeping on the wooden bench on the patio overlooking the railway line, a beagle curled up next to me. I opened my eyes and, strangely, didn’t feel weird at all. I looked down at the dog. ‘Um . . . Daryl?’

My parents also looked at the dog. ‘Whose dog is that?’ said my father.

‘Mine,’ I said. ‘I found him and he came along with me.’

‘Stanly,’ said my mother, ‘you can’t just bring any old stray home!’

‘And I thought you didn’t like dogs,’ said my father.

‘I didn’t before,’ I said. ‘But I do now. Can I keep him?’

‘He might have a previous owner,’ said my father.

‘He won’t mind,’ said Daryl, whose eyes were still shut.

There was a very long pause, finally broken by my father laughing. ‘Very good, Stanly,’ he said. ‘Ventriloquism. Very nice —’

‘No, that was me,’ said Daryl, opening his eyes and stretching. ‘I do have a previous owner, but not one I want to go back to.’

I was as surprised as my parents. I thought it had been the weed talking.

‘What the fuck is this?’ said Daryl. ‘The Piano? Why aren’t you saying anything?’

I glanced at my parents, half expecting them to admonish Daryl for his language. They didn’t, though. Probably distracted by the fact that it’s a beagle talking. For my part, I was trying to work out what was stranger – the fact that he was referencing The Piano or the fact that his reference to The Piano was actually a reference to The Piano from an entirely different film altogether. ‘Um . . .’ I said. ‘What film is that from? I know I recognise it.’

‘Is that really the issue?’ my mother said.

‘What’s the issue?’ asked Daryl, perfectly innocently.

‘The issue is that dogs don’t talk!’ she shrieked.

‘Oh,’ said Daryl. He turned back to me. ‘Dogma.’

I smiled. ‘I knew it!’

My mother spluttered. ‘It’s not . . . it’s not dogma, it’s . . . it’s common sense! It’s —’

‘No,’ I said. ‘The film that he was quoting. It’s called Dogma.’

At which point my mother temporarily lost the power of speech, which was kind of ironic I suppose.

Once everybody had calmed down, Daryl explained that his previous owner was a really boring old man who ignored him ninety per cent of the time. Daryl felt that he was wasted on this singularly un-talkative guy so had decided to leave, and he’d been walking for about an hour when he met me. I immediately said that he could stay, and my parents didn’t seem to have the will to rescind my invitation. I think they were too freaked out to protest.

To be fair to them, they adjusted to the idea of a talking dog fairly quickly. It was amazing really. They had always seemed so grounded in a very specific interpretation of reality, and here they were holding a conversation with a beagle. There were a couple of occasions – mostly instigated by my father – where putting him on the Internet or contacting the national news came up, but I put the kibosh on them by threatening to go on hunger strike, which deeply distressed my mother and baffled my father, who wasn’t used to me showing that kind of enthusiasm about anything. My dad’s last attempt at turning Daryl my new pet dog into Daryl the Amazing Talking Dog, Eighth Wonder of the World, went like this:

Dad (holding video camera and using a ‘talking to unique individuals’ voice): Hi there, Daryl!

Daryl: (stares blankly back at him)

Dad: I said, hi there, Daryl! How are you today?

Daryl: . . .

Dad (getting irritated): Come on, don’t do this. You know you can talk, I know you can talk. Think how much money we could make if we got this on TV or the Internet. Come on. Talk to me.

Daryl (wagging his tail dumbly): Woof!

Dad (really irritated): You’re taking the piss now.

Me (looking up from my fish fingers and chips): He’s not going to do it, Dad.

Dad: But we could make so much —

Mum: Frank. Come on, now. I know it’s been hard adjusting to Daryl. And strange. And . . . hard. But he doesn’t want to go on TV, and Stanly doesn’t want him to go on TV. Let’s just leave it now.

Dad: This is bloody ridiculous! We have the most unique animal in the world living in our house, and you won’t even let me —

Me: I don’t have to eat these fish fingers you know, Dad. I could just as easily not eat them.

Dad (not wanting a repeat of my hunger strike and huffily switching off the video camera): Fine! Fine! Have it your way! (Angrily leaving the room) Bloody dog . . .

And that was how Daryl became part of the family.

He never explained how it was that he could talk. He said he’d never met another dog who spoke any human language, and asked us if it was a problem, and we all said no. Well. I said no. ‘Are there any other things you want to tell us about yourself?’ asked my mother. My father – when he wasn’t trying to trick him into becoming a viral sensation – rarely spoke to Daryl directly. I think he found it too weird.

‘I don’t eat dog food,’ said Daryl. ‘I hate that processed conveyor-belt shit.’

My mother raised one eyebrow.

‘Sorry,’ said Daryl. ‘That processed conveyor-belt crap. I like to eat at the table, but if that’ll freak out your visitors I’ll eat somewhere else, just so long as it’s not from a bowl on the floor. I’ll go for walks on my own if you don’t want to take me. I have a superb sense of direction so I’ll find my way back easily. I like cats. I can use a human toilet.’

‘Really?’ said my mother.

‘Do I look retarded or incontinent to you?’ asked Daryl, frostily.

‘Sorry.’ My mother is apologising to a dog, I remember thinking. In genuinely humble tones. This is the best thing that has ever happened to anyone.

‘That’s OK,’ said Daryl. ‘Um . . . I think that’s about it.’

So that’s Daryl.

Daryl appraised my guitar. ‘That is a piece of work,’ he said. ‘That is . . . the mutt’s nuts. So to speak.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Want to try it?’

He put his large head on one side. ‘Do I look that dextrous? Use yer loaf.’

I played with the guitar until about ten o’clock, when my mother said we should really consider the neighbours – subtext: your father’s patience will only stretch so far, even on your birthday – so I reluctantly packed the instrument away and went upstairs with Daryl.

My room was small, with a dark grey carpet and walls just blue enough to not be white, but too pale to be completely blue. There were film posters all over them, as well as a few of my own drawings – some on paper, some drawn straight onto the wall, to my parents’ chagrin – and a painting of a green lady that my uncle Nathan had done a few months before he died. It had a strange hypnotic quality to it, and I never spent too long looking at it because the last time I stared for more than a minute I went catatonic and my mother thought that I’d OD’d on something. Where there weren’t posters there were shelves stuffed with books, DVDs, CDs and notebooks. My desk was so cluttered I could hardly write on it, and it was impossible to find anything that wasn’t on a shelf because it would either be under my bed (The Dead Zone, as my father once referred to it) or buried on my desk under a pile of old coursework drafts, notebooks, drawings, books that I couldn’t fit on my shelves, or coasters made from scratched CDs. I also had a few curios scattered around the room – a wooden Japanese kokeshi doll named Miko, for example. She was beautifully crafted, very smooth and shiny, with delicate flower patterns on her dress. I found her in a small shop the first (and only) time I’d been to London, and the elderly shopkeeper had told me that a long time ago some families in Japan were so poor that they had to sell their daughters into slavery or prostitution, so they made dolls to remember them by. I’d been so moved that I bought the doll immediately. Might have been a complete lie, but I didn’t really care, a story’s a story.

We watched Casablanca and, as always, Daryl cried at the end. ‘How many times have we watched this now?’ I asked, as the credits ran.

‘Not enough,’ sniffed Daryl.

I switched off the player and the TV and stretched, and Daryl regarded me with his big dog eyes. ‘So. What was your best birthday present?’

I waited a long minute before I answered. I knew he was the only one I could possibly tell. The only one who wouldn’t freak out. ‘My powers.’

Daryl put his head on one side. ‘Um . . . what?’ He had a sort of Rowan Atkinson-esque way of saying what that always tickled me.

‘The moment I turned sixteen I got powers,’ I said.

‘What powers?’

‘Levitation,’ I said. ‘I can float. About a foot off the ground.’

Daryl didn’t say anything for a minute. Then he said, ‘You’re messing with me.’

‘I’m not,’ I said. ‘You know I’m not. Look at my face. This is a truth face.’

He looked, and I knew he knew. ‘Jesus.’

‘I know. It’s . . . I don’t know. This kind of stuff doesn’t happen. It shouldn’t . . . should it?’

Daryl was momentarily lost for words, which was the second supremely weird thing that had happened that day. Then he laughed. ‘Stanly, I’m a dog who talks. QED.’

I shrugged. ‘I suppose.’

Daryl’s tail was wagging. ‘Show me?’

‘Tomorrow,’ I said, yawning. ‘I’m . . . I’m too tired now. I’ve been awake for like thirty-six hours. I’m . . .’ The rest of the sentence drowned in yawns.

Daryl nodded and settled down. ‘Fine.’ I switched off the light and stroked him, and in the dark he whispered, ‘Are you scared?’

I shrugged. ‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Oh.’

Chapter Three

THE NEXT DAYwas cloudy, and the air was moist. Daryl and I were up in the woods behind my house, and I was standing by a very tall tree, feeling energised. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Watch and learn, doglet.’ I closed my eyes and concentrated hard, trying to find the sweet spot, the right mental angle. Hearing a sharp intake of breath from Daryl I opened my eyes again, and sure enough I was floating about a foot off the ground. I slowed my breathing and tried to stay completely focused and calm, managing to stay there for about ten seconds before I dropped. The dog’s tongue was hanging out. ‘What do you think?’ I said.

‘Wow,’ said Daryl. ‘I mean . . . wow. That’s . . . that’s all right, that is.’

I tried again. And again. And again. So many attempts, but I couldn’t beat ten seconds. ‘Have you thought about springboards?’ said Daryl, after a while.

I looked at him, frowning. ‘What?’

‘Springboards,’ he said. ‘Using things to propel yourself. Walls, trees, rocks. That kind of thing.’

The penny dropped with a loud power chord and I smiled and took several strides back so that I had a decent run up. ‘Free your mind,’ said Daryl. ‘You’re faster than this. Don’t think you are. Know you are.’

‘Yeah, whatevz, Morpheus.’ I breathed in and ran straight at the tree. I ran with music pounding in my head, sweat on my skin and a bubble filled with butterflies expanding in my stomach, and at the last minute I jumped, planted one foot on the tree, spun . . .

. . . and floated, almost majestically, through the air. The bubble exploded and the butterflies took flight and I yelled in triumph. Daryl was laughing delightedly. I flew towards another tree, stuck my foot out and kicked myself off it, bouncing across to another one. I danced between trees for nearly a minute before suddenly dropping out of the air and hitting the ground hard, flat on my back, the wind rushing painfully out of me. The thump sounded exactly like a human body hitting the ground, funnily enough.

When I had recovered sufficient breath I got to my feet. ‘Bollocks,’ I said, stamping a foot in frustration.

A rock flew through the air, hit the cliff face and exploded into tiny dusty fragments.

There was a long silence.

I looked at Daryl. ‘Did —’

‘Yeah.’

‘I —’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘It —’

‘Mm.’

I nodded. ‘OK.’ I looked at a pile of twigs and raised my hand. Nothing. I concentrated really hard. Nothing. I concentrated so hard that my temples fused and my eyes hurt and electricity danced in my skull, and a solitary twig rose up off the ground and hung wobbily in mid-air, looking like an extremely dodgy special effect. I moved my hand very slowly, tracing the movement that I wanted the twig to make, and it followed. Trying to avoid letting exultation overthrow concentration, I kept going, managing to keep the twig in the air for thirty seconds before it dropped.

Daryl was shaking his head. ‘Fair play, boyo.’

I grinned, and tried it on him. Nothing. I tried for several minutes, ignoring his profane indignation, but there was nothing. I stamped my foot again, but still nothing happened.

‘Maybe you just need to develop it,’ said Daryl. ‘You’re just starting, you know. It’s not like you can just pick up a tennis racket and become . . . I dunno, some famous tennis player, I don’t know tennis. You need practise.’

‘I have to go back to school tomorrow,’ I said.

Daryl grinned. ‘That’s perfect! The perfect training ground! That rock was way heavier than that twig, but it took more effort to lift the twig, didn’t it?’

‘But I was pissed off when I moved the rock.’

‘Exactly.’ Daryl was doing a funny little dance. ‘Maybe concentration isn’t the key! Maybe emotion is the key! Strong negative emotion might help. And what better place to strongly, negatively emote?’

‘School.’

‘School! It’s possibly the best breeding ground for resentment, anger and misery you could find. Within a week you’ll be like . . . like Gandalf, Willow and Dumbledore got caught in a horrific teleportation accident.’

‘What would that look like?’ I said. ‘I’m picturing . . . like . . . Willow’s head, wearing Willow’s hat – you know the one – on Gandalf’s body, but with the voice of Dumbledore? And one of Dumbledore’s arms sticking unconvincingly out of the shoulder, Eighties BBC Zaphod Beeblebrox style?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Wouldn’t it be confusing, though? They’ve each got powers derived from a completely different set of magical laws . . . would it be a combination of all of them? Or could they pick and choose? They could probably pick and choose, right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And do you think the whole entity would be gay? Seeing as how two of the component people were?’

‘Probably.’

‘So in a week’s time I’ll be an old lesbian dead gay guy? With three arms?’

‘Nothing wrong with being old, a lesbian or a dead gay guy,’ said Daryl, reproachfully. ‘Or having three arms.’

‘Sorry. Just spitballing. It’s not all going to be fried gold.’

‘Fair enough.’ The dog put his head on one side. ‘Seriously, though, you know I’m talking sense.’

I nodded. ‘You’re quite insightful, for a small dog.’

Daryl shrugged, which is an especially funny movement for a dog to do. ‘Judge me by my size, do you?’

By the time we returned to the house I was no better at levitating objects, but I could fly between trees like the best of them. I hadn’t managed to lift anything more substantial than a twig, but my canine master said it would take time. He seemed to be enjoying it almost as much as I was.

‘Do you have any homework?’ asked my mother, bringing me back to Earth with a thud that shook my entire being.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Did you have a good day out?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did you have a nice day yesterday?’

‘Yeah.’

She nodded. ‘OK. Well . . . are you hungry?’

‘Not really, thanks.’

My father looked up from his newspaper. ‘What were you doing out there?’

‘Nothing,’ I said.

‘You were doing nothing for a pretty long time.’

‘It’s tiring,’ I said.

‘Doing nothing?’

‘Yeah.’

My father shrugged and went back to his paper, and as I headed upstairs I distinctly heard him mutter, ‘There’s something wrong with him.’

‘There is nothing wrong with him. He’s just different.’

‘He’s weird. And it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘Oh just wash your bloody hands of him then, why don’t you?’

‘Don’t swear at me!’

‘I’ll swear at you if I bloody want to, you can be such a bastard sometimes!’

‘What?’

‘You heard me!’

I stomped up to my room and closed the door without touching it. I switched on the lights without raising my hand, and hurled the one and only photograph of my parents that I had against the wall and the glass broke. I stood there, boiling over like too much magma, and flexed my mind, feeling energy crackle in the room.

Daryl, who was sitting on the bed, nodded sagely. ‘Looks like I was right.’

I raised my middle finger and a magazine rack fell over.

In the morning the atmosphere was flammable. My mother was tetchy and my father was still in bed, and I ate my toast in silence while not really watching the news. The headline was something about more missing children in London.

The buses that took most of the kids to the local secondary school left from a garage at the end of my road, so I was always the first on and had my pick of the seats. I tended to sit in the corner at the back because then there was no-one to sit behind you and kick your seat and stick stuff in your hair and generally be a pain, and you could zone out and pretend that nobody else existed. This morning I waited on the bus for about five minutes before it set off, staring out of the window, listening to some random download on my MP3 player. A band with one singer, two guitar players and about fifteen drummers, playing the music of teenage rebellion. The music you get in the elevators in Hell. I made a mental note to delete it from the player and put the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ One Hot Minute on, and imagined myself wearing a long black coat and fighting zombie versions of people from school.

Kids got on and as I watched them take their seats I felt something. It was like I was seeing them differently. On Friday they’d been . . . I don’t know. Equals, I suppose. Ish. I was on the same level as them, anyway. We were all human. I was still human, obviously, but now I was . . . different. Genuinely different; more than just feeling that way. It was strange. And then something scary occurred to me: if one of them attacked me, I could theoretically kill them without moving a muscle.

Why was I thinking like that? I didn’t want to kill anyone.

Good job, really. A psychic person would be like the best murderer ever. Thoughts don’t leave fingerprints, after all.

When we got to school I was last off the bus as usual, and wandered to my form room, looking at people, enjoying having a secret. Our form gathered in an English classroom and I always sat at the desk at the back and read or wrote or drew or whatever, but today I just sat and watched everybody coming in, talking, laughing, arguing. A few of them acknowledged me with nods and waves, but nobody spoke. I nodded back at them.

Then Zach and George came in. Zach looked like a furless rat that had been stuck in a hydraulic press. Pinched, pale face, bleached blonde hair in gelled spikes, nasty thin blue eyes, mouth stuck in a constant grin. And his ears stuck out. He was always shooting witless barbs my way, or shoving me as I passed him in the corridor, or throwing things just to get a reaction, and while I’d never give him the satisfaction of showing it, I hated his stupid twattish guts. He’d never pick a proper fight because he was a wimp, but he had friends who were taller, and that was how things worked in school. George was a good example of this. He was tall and built like a brick shithouse and always looked slightly confused, and he had a pierced eyebrow and liked rugby and tractors. That was the extent of him as a person. In some ways, he was almost an existential tragedy.

Zach was walking with his usual swagger. His John Wayne walk, although he probably wouldn’t have a clue who that was. He tried to intimidate people, and almost everybody thought he was a wanker but they would never say so because of his tall mates. People were friends with him even though he was a wanker. Because he was, in a way. Everybody was grey. I definitely didn’t believe the world was black and white but I had very definite morals when it came to school, and if I didn’t like someone I didn’t smile at them. I didn’t laugh at their stupid jokes. I didn’t give them the benefit of the doubt.

I was finding Zach’s swagger particularly annoying today, and clenched my fists in my lap. My eyes darted upwards so I wouldn’t have to look at him and my fists dropped down by the sides of my chair, and a pile of books on a shelf above Zach’s head overbalanced and landed on him in an avalanche of infinitely satisfying thumps. He fell down and his face hit the cold uncarpeted floor with a noise like a pig’s corpse being smacked with a paddle. People laughed. Even George laughed. Outwardly I was dispassionate but inside I was hysterical. Perhaps school wasn’t going to be so bad from now on.

I quickly realised that I hadn’t been transplanted to a comic book or a superhero movie. The world didn’t stop for me because I had some new abilities, no mysterious bearded mentors came out of the woodwork, no supervillains came knocking at my door. I still had to do essays and prepare for my exams, and the ability to levitate and move things with my mind wasn’t going to help with that. I was still bound by the laws of my world, and my world was one of coursework and structure.

That night, having studiously ignored my parents (who were studiously ignoring each other) I told Daryl everything I did that day. The books on Zach’s head. Opening and closing windows to annoy teachers I didn’t like. Tripping people I didn’t like when they seemed about to hassle me, or when they seemed about to hassle someone else, or just generally whenever I saw them. It was all petty. It was childish. It didn’t befit someone as mature as I liked to think I was. But it was fun.

‘So,’ said Daryl. ‘This is it from now on? You use your powers to irritate people you don’t like?’

‘No!’ I protested. ‘Well . . . a bit, maybe. What do you suggest I do?’

‘You could try using them for good,’ said Daryl. ‘Help the helpless. That kind of thing. With great power comes great –’

‘Please don’t finish that sentence,’ I said.

‘Sorry.’

‘And helping the helpless?’ I lay down on my bed and stared at the zombies on the ceiling. ‘Easier said than done. I live in a small Welsh town where sod all to the power of nothing happens. There are no murders. No robberies. No muggings. No cars get jacked. No houses get broken into. Last week’s headline in the County Times? “Strimmer Stolen”. There’s not much scope for superheroics and the situation doesn’t exactly scream “higher purpose”.’

‘You could leave,’ said Daryl.

I didn’t say anything. The thought had occurred to me but I’d buried it. It was a page I hadn’t coloured in, which I’d shoved to the back of my ring binder so I could forget about it. ‘And go where?’

‘Dunno. Cardiff?’

I raised an eyebrow. ‘Cardiff. The Welsh equivalent of Gotham City, as literally no-one said ever.’

‘Maybe not,’ said Daryl. ‘London?’

‘How would I get there?’

‘Get a train, you plank,’ said Daryl. ‘Or drive.’

‘I can only drive in first gear.’

‘Get some lessons off your dad,’ said Daryl. ‘Two birds? One stone? Bond with your distant father and get an escape route.’

The phone rang and I picked it up to avoid the subject. ‘Hello?’

‘Hello? Stanly?’

‘Yes. Who’s that?’

‘It’s Eddie.’

Eddie. My cousin in London. So much for avoiding the subject. ‘Oh!’ I sat up. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi. Happy birthday.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

‘Having a good day?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Today?’

‘It was Saturday.’

‘Sorry. Shit. Did you have a good day?’

‘Yeah, thanks.’

‘Sorry I didn’t send you anything.’

‘That’s all right. It’s nice of you to call.’

‘Get some . . . good presents?’

I inhaled sharply. For a second I thought . . . no, I didn’t. ‘Um . . . yeah. Got an electric guitar.’

‘Ah,’ said Eddie, after a pause that suggested he’d been expecting me to say something else. ‘Cool.’ Does he know?

‘What did you get for your sixteenth birthday?’ I asked.

‘Mine? Man. That’s a long time ago.’ There was something in his voice. A definite something.

‘You can remember though, surely?’

‘Well . . .’ And now I could hear in his voice that he could hear something in my voice and I was itching to say something, but I didn’t want to, just in case. ‘Well?’ I prompted.

‘Can’t really remember. And I asked you first.’

‘And I told you.’

‘Did you?’

My heart stopped. My brain turned to pure electricity and jagged forks of it wrapped up my room and mailed it to a black hole in deep space. After a pause that lasted centuries I said, ‘You know.’

‘So you do have them.’

Daryl was watching me. ‘He knows?’

I nodded. Nobody spoke for lots of seconds. Eddie broke the silence. ‘How are you dealing with it?’

‘How do you know?’

‘I . . . just . . . long story. Probably not for a phone conversation.’ I could hear him moving uncomfortably. ‘I . . . I just called to make you an offer.’

‘An offer?’

‘If you need a place to go . . . someone who knows what you can do. Someone to help . . . you know where I live. Any time.’

He was inviting me to London. I looked at Daryl. His expression was doglike. ‘Are you psychically linked to my dog?’ I said.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’ I looked out of the window. A line of red burned across the horizon like a strip of Christmas paper soaked in petrol. ‘Any time?’

‘Any time.’

‘Thanks. Cool. I appreciate that.’

‘Keep me posted on any developments.’

‘I will.’ I closed the blinds. ‘Thanks for calling.’

‘That’s OK. Take it easy.’ He hung up and I looked at Daryl again. The confused silence lasted until supper time.

The next day I had two lessons of Drama, and our teacher Miss Stevenson asked us all to sit in a circle because she wanted to talk to us.

I liked Miss Stevenson. She was thirtyish and had blonde hair with purple streaks in it. I didn’t imagine that the headmaster liked her having her hair like that, but she still kept it, and she wore trendy glasses, long skirts and T-shirts, and was very pretty. Today she was wearing a long denim skirt and a Dawn of the Dead T-shirt. I didn’t have a crush on her at all.

‘OK, everyone,’ she said. ‘I know you’re all anxious to get on with your devising.’

Devising was a part of the drama course where we got into groups and wrote and performed our own script. I was in a group with two girls called Tamsin and Dani, who were OK. As I sat in the circle my eyes kept drifting to a boy called Ben King. I’ll elaborate on him later.

‘But,’ said Miss Stevenson, ‘I wanted you all to be the first to know that the school play this year will be Romeo and Juliet.’

There was a general silence.

‘Don’t all cheer at once,’ said Miss Stevenson. ‘I’m planning to do a slightly abbreviated version in modern dress, with modern props. Kind of like the Baz Luhrmann one. Has anyone seen that?’

Everyone looked at each other. Then Andrea put up her hand and said, ‘Baz who?’

This was the kind of media-unconscious world that I lived in. God bless teachers like Miss Stevenson.

‘The one with Leonardo diCaprio,’ said Miss Stevenson. I could hear the weariness creeping into her voice.

There was a general chorus of ‘oh’ and ‘he’s so fit’ and ‘nah, he’s gone well fat now’. There were twenty girls and four boys in our Drama group.

‘Anyway,’ said Miss Stevenson, ‘that’s what I’m planning to do. There’ll be auditions at lunchtime on Wednesday, so anybody who’s interested please turn up. There’ll be a notice about it in assembly tomorrow. Now. Everyone has work to do? Go do it.’

Everyone moved off into their groups. I was about to go and join Tamsin and Dani when Miss Stevenson said, ‘Stanly? Could I have a quick word with you, please?’

I walked over to her desk. We had Drama in a big hall that was also used for parents’ evenings and exams, and there was an adjoining room where Miss Stevenson kept all her things, and a big desk covered in props and scripts and stuff. She was looking at something in a red binder. ‘You weren’t in the last school play, were you?’ she said, without looking up.

I shook my head. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I . . . I forgot to audition.’

‘That’s a shame.’ She closed the binder and looked at me. ‘Because, let’s be brutally honest, it sank without trace.’

‘Wasn’t Ben the lead?’ I said, entirely innocently. Oh yeah, entirely.

‘Yes.’ I could hear the unspoken ‘unfortunately’.

‘So . . . what did you –’

She looked at me. ‘Would you like to try out for Romeo?’

I blinked. ‘Um . . . I . . . why me?’

‘Your work over the last year has been fantastic,’ she said. ‘You’re a natural performer. The fact that you’re so quiet is what makes it great. You’re very shy and insular, but when you’re out there you pull a rabbit out of a hat, for want of a better cliché. I really think you’d be good.’

‘I thought . . . you said there’d be auditions . . .’

‘I know, but I just wanted . . . were you thinking about coming?’

I looked at the floor. ‘Um . . . well . . .’

‘You don’t put yourself forward,’ said Miss Stevenson. ‘That’s both a strength and a weakness. Also . . . I must admit I did maybe see you as a darker character like Tybalt. You’re familiar with the play?’

‘Yes. I’ve seen the Baz Luhrmann one.’

‘You know who Baz Luhrmann is?’

‘Strictly Ballroom. Romeo + Juliet. Moulin Rouge. Australia. That terrible Chanel advert.’ Stop showing off.

She smiled and breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Thank God. All you teenagers treat us teachers with barely-disguised contempt, like you’re the bleeding edge of cool, but when a roomful of sixteen-year-olds in the twenty-first century can’t tell me who Baz Luhrmann is, it’s worrying to say the least.’

I smiled. ‘I . . . I’m a bit of a geek, I suppose.’

‘Well,’ said Miss Stevenson. ‘The geeks will inherit the earth. In fact, they already kind of have. So you’re on the right track.’ She put her binder down. ‘What was I saying?’

‘About Tybalt . . .’

‘Oh yes. I’m not trying to make any statements about the aura you project, but I did think maybe you’d be better suited to a darker character. But that’s just me and besides I can’t think of many others who could do it. Not from the top years, anyway. So you’ll audition?’

‘Sure.’

‘Great. You’d better get back to your group.’

I nodded and went over to Tamsin and Dani. They were both really nice, I didn’t give them enough credit when I said that they were merely OK.

As I sat on a bench in the playground half-watching the football and eating my Toffee Crisp, I thought about how strange it was. I’d adapted so quickly to the idea of having powers. One minute I was normal, the next I could float and move things with my mind. Who knew what else? And here I was. Just taking it in my stride. Going with the flow. Like a little Fonzie. And what’s Fonzie like?

Oh, back to the subject of Ben King. Well, actually Benedict. He insisted on calling himself that. I suppose there’s nothing really wrong with that seeing as it was his name, but it added an extra dimension of pretentiousness that he really didn’t need because he was stuck-up enough without it. Plus it’s a name you can only really pull off if your surname is Cumberbatch. He was about my height (five feet eight inches, if you’re interested) with a spotless complexion and blonde hair that was always shiny, and he was always overly nice to everybody, especially girls, but there was always an ulterior motive. It was a sort of ‘oh look at how nice I’m being’ niceness rather than a ‘it’s nice to be nice’ niceness. He was fake. A phony. And if sitting reading The Catcher In the Rye and feeling incredibly, unjustifiably superior to everyone else had taught me anything, it was that phonies were the enemy.

He also thought that he was a really intense actor, which he most definitely wasn’t. He’d starred in Bugsy Malone, the last school play, and he’d obviously convinced himself that he was in Goodfellas, and it had been terrible. His American accent had alternated between Bronx, Deep South and somewhere in rural Australia, for a start. But still, he was popular. They loved him. He’s a sinner, candy-coated, etceteras. He’d never liked me either, not since primary school, but he pretended to, which was another thing about him that got up my nose. He used to go out with a girl named Angelina, who everybody thought I fancied, and I sort of did, not that that made a difference, and he’d once said to me, ‘You hate me because I’m with Angelina, don’t you?’

My surprise was genuine. ‘No! Of course not!’

‘Really?’

‘Really. I don’t hate you because of Angelina.’

‘You don’t?’

‘No. I hate you because you’re a massive bell-end.’ I remember thinking that was really childish and then replying who cares?

I do, I’d insisted. And although I was ashamed, the look on his face made it worth it.

And now I’d nabbed the role of Romeo from under his nose. How’s that for a slice of the fried stuff?

Was I a vindictive person? Was I the worst kind of petty? Possibly. Probably. But I couldn’t deny that it was satisfying.

That evening I got home to find my parents sitting at the kitchen table having a Serious Discussion about Their Relationship and The Future. It was one of those talks that I found simultaneously depressing and irritating because they were so insipidly nice to each other, and the fact that the conversations usually came after a blazing row just reinforced my annoyance. One minute they’d be screaming curses at one another, the next minute they’d be drinking tea and eating chocolate Hobnobs and talking about their Feelings. I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and headed upstairs, followed by Daryl.

‘So,’ I said, lying on my bed and trying to decide which DVD to watch. ‘What did you do today?’

‘I read the new SFX that came in the post,’ said Daryl.

‘Ah, give it here?’

‘It’s downstairs. I’ll get it when the Aged Parents have stopped emoting.’

‘Cool. Anything else?’

‘I watched some Buffy.’

‘Any good?’

‘Always good.’

‘Naturally.’

Daryl flopped down at the end of the bed. ‘What about you?’

‘I got offered the role of Romeo on a plate.’

‘I didn’t mean that! I meant . . . you know. Power-related?’

I sat up. ‘Um . . . important news? I was basically given the lead role in the school play?’

‘I’m happy for you,’ said Daryl. ‘Applause, applause. But it has nothing to do with your powers.’

‘Sod off.’ I grabbed a DVD and put it in the player.

‘What is wrong with you?’ asked Daryl. ‘For God’s sake, Stanly! You were blessed with supernatural powers when you turned sixteen and now you’re watching . . . you’re watching frigging Finding Nemo! Why aren’t you out honing your skills? The least you can do is operate the DVD player psychically!’

‘I stopped a girl from dropping her lunch tray,’ I said. ‘And did a couple of backflips to impress some first years.’

‘You can do backflips now?’

‘I kind of . . . channel the floating into it,’ I said. ‘Nearly broke my neck the first time I tried it. Getting pretty good now, though.’

‘That’s awesome.’ Daryl turned his head away.

‘Oh don’t sulk,’ I said.

‘I’m not sulking,’ he sulked, sulkily.

‘Whatever.’ I patted him too hard and turned on the TV and the DVD player without moving my hands. ‘There!’

‘Great.’

For a few moments I contained myself, but the urge to rib the stroppy beagle overcame me and I started singing, in my best Eric Cartman voice. ‘Na-na-na-na-na-na, I’ve got super powers, na-na-na-na-na-na.’

‘Shut up!’ he retorted, but he was already laughing and I clipped him gently round the ear and we watched the film in companionable silence.

‘That was good,’ said Daryl, afterwards. ‘Not powers good, but —’

‘Fermez la bouche, silver plate,’ I said. ‘And go and fetch me my SFX, will you? I can’t be arsed to do coursework and I want a good read.’

‘You got a 700-page horror masterwork for your birthday,’ said Daryl. ‘That’s probably a good read.’

‘Just go and fetch it, will you?’ I said. ‘There’s geek news this geek needs to be a-knowin’.’

Daryl reluctantly got off the bed and padded over to the door. ‘What did your last slave die of?’ he muttered, as he left the room.

‘Insubordination,’ I said.

‘LOL.’

‘LOL it up, fuzzball.’

He’d got me thinking, though.

There was definitely more to be done with these powers.

Chapter Four

IKNOCKED ON MR Jones The Careers Adviser’s door and waited. He was one of three Mr Joneses we had at school, so whenever anybody referred to him it was usually as Mr Jones The Careers Adviser, or sometimes Mr Jones Careers. ‘Come in,’ he said.

The office was a tiny musty box, its walls covered with inspirational ‘you can do anything if you set your mind to it’-type posters, and Mr Jones was sitting behind a comically small desk, reading the paper. His brow scrunched. ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Do we have an appointment?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Sorry. I actually . . . I’ve only just started Year 11, I don’t think we can book appointments with you yet.’

‘No, I don’t think you can,’ he said. ‘So . . .’

‘I just wanted . . .’ I knew I remembered seeing him reading SFX at one point, and a quick scan of the room confirmed it – the new issue was poking out from under a pile of papers. ‘I’m writing a story. And I’m doing a bit of research. For the story. And I thought maybe if you had five minutes . . .’

‘I do, but –’

‘Basically, it’s about a boy my age,’ I said, ‘who finds he can fly and move things with his mind. And I was wondering what sort of jobs that might qualify him for.’

Mr Jones The Careers Adviser still looked confused, but he was also intrigued now, I could see it. He smiled slightly. ‘All right, five minutes. Sit down.’