The Time Driver E-Book

G.A. Franks

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Have you ever noticed how time flies when you’re having fun, but slows to a crawl when you’re doing something boring?

That can’t be just a coincidence…can it?

When thirteen-year-old Chase Connors is expelled for accidentally blowing up his school’s science lab (again), he is sent to a strange new academy run by an imperious headmaster, where time itself appears to be broken! Before long, Chase is hurled into a time-twisting, swashbuckling adventure that changes everything he thinks he knows about himself.

And Incas.

And pirates.

And owls.

And the whole of time and space!

‘The Time Driver’ is the second book set in Bisby By The Sea, a truly curious town where strange things have a habit of happening just a little too often!

Leseprobe

THE TIME DRIVER

G. A. FRANKS

CONTENTS

Chase

Bisby by the Sea

Part I

Prologue

1. The Academy

2. Well, That’s Not Right

3. Delyth

4. I Wasn’t Lurking

5. The Headmaster

6. Detention

7. The Study

8. And Now I’m Here

9. Grounded

10. Meridian

Part II

11. The Watch

12. Meanwhile

13. The Chase Chase

14. I Knew It!

15. The Library

16. Page Intentionally Left Blank

17. A Long Time Ago

18. The Forever People

19. The Search

20. Convergence

21. What Once Was Lost

22. Everything Is Stupid

23. There’s No Such Thing As

24. The Jump

25. Look What You’ve Done To My Ship

26. Run!

Epilogue

Epi-Epilogue

A Quick Thank-You

About the Author

Copyright (C) 2022 G.A. Franks

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2022 by Next Chapter

Published 2022 by Next Chapter

Edited by Terry Hughes

Cover art by Lordan June Pinote

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

For all the children I have worked with, who have taught me so much.

CHASE

Chase Connors is 13 years old and is a funny, caring, and smart sort of boy, who is lucky enough to be blessed with the kind of cherubic looks that little old grannies can’t help but stop and fawn over in the street. He doesn’t like going to school, and isn’t keen on most subjects, except for science, which he loves, and technology, which he also loves, but not quite as much as science. Chase’s hobby ishorology, which means that he is interested in anything to do with time, especially finding and fixing old wristwatches, of which he has a large collection that he enjoys very much.

But…

For all his many good qualities, Chase is also the type of person who makes what teachers like to call “poor choices”. In fact, he regularly makes the kind of choices that some people might call “a bit silly” or “a tad thoughtless” …or maybe even “outright terrible”.

Chase is particularly lucky, because he lives in a lovely little town called Bisby by the Sea. He lives there with his dad, Jon (who is a musician) and his dad’s partner, Max (who is a car fanatic and a sort of doctor that helps people talk about their feelings).

BISBY BY THE SEA

Bisby by the Sea is a very interesting and beautiful place to live. All the houses are painted in wild and wonderful colours and the harbour is always full of fishing boats with names like “Evergreen” that come and go all day and bob up and down all night. Everywhere in Bisby smells of seaside and waffles and fish and chips, and the narrow, cobbled streets are like a maze, only with lots of hills and tunnels and hidden places to explore.

Bisby by the Sea is also an interesting place to live in the winter, when the tourists have all gone home. That’s when ice-cold waves smash into the rocks and mysterious fog rolls in from the sea, blanketing the whole of Bisby Bay in a thick, soupy mist. A small island called Clod sits off Bisby’s coast and you can take a boat trip there if the sea is calm. Clod has many secrets of its own, including a ruined castle and some old smugglers’ caves. Bisby by the Sea really is the perfect place to live.

But…

It is also a very strange place indeed. A very strange place filled with some very interesting people, where all sorts of unusual things happen.

As you will soon see.

PARTI

PROLOGUE

“I’m afraid you’ve left me no choice but to exclude you from the school permanently.”

The headmistress’ words felt like a hammer blow slamming straight into Chase’s stomach. He could tell from her sour expression, and the fact that his father had been called in and was sitting beside him with a face like thunder, that she really meant business this time.

“I’m sorry, Chase, I truly am.” Harriet Hatchett rested her pointy elbows on her vast oak desk and sighed. “But sadly, this is the end for you here at Bisby Secondary School. There are only so many times I can stick my neck out to save you, no matter how much you may excel in certain subjects. I’ve had numerous parents complain about the appalling way you’ve treated their children; some have even withdrawn them from the school because of you, and quite frankly, a fifth explosion in the science lab is five times too many. Poor Mr White lost a substantial amount of hair and both eyebrows this time.”

Chase gulped. Surely this wasn’t happening – he’d been in trouble loads of times, and usually just ended up writing an apology and maybe missing lunchtime for a few days. But excluded… for ever? This was bad, extremely bad. “But… but Mr White is almost bald anyway,” he blurted out without thinking.

His father slapped a hand down on the desk and a loud crack echoed around the room. “That’s enough, young man!” Chase was stunned; he had never seen his father so cross. “I happen to know that Mr White is only bald because of your last unauthorised so-called ‘science experiment’. Poor old Neville, I’ve known him for years, long before he was a teacher. He’s a changed man, you know, he gave up playing the drums because he was so afraid of bangs. Imagine that – a drummer scared of bangs! And all because of my son! Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is for me? You’ve put me in a right spot here.”

“It wasn’t even that big of an explosion this time!” protested Chase.

“Exactly!” barked Mrs Hatchett. “What if next time I’m phoning parents to let them know that their child has been seriously hurt because a pupil decided to try and create nitro-glycerine instead of a saline solution… again? Imagine the consequences!”

Chase had no answer. Thinking about consequences was something that his brain didn’t do. He was only curious to find out if he could do things, not if he should do things.

Then the worst part happened.

Worse than the explosion.

Or the previous four explosions… and that melting thing that one time.

Even worse than the moment when Mr White had discovered his eyebrows were missing. And even worse than the imminent expulsion.

A single tear ran down his father’s cheek.

He had never known his father to cry, not once. His dad would always talk through his emotions, or he’d find ways to express them, (mainly by playing his guitar very loud). But crying was new, and it left Chase with a deeply unpleasant hollow sensation in his stomach.

“Luckily,” said Mrs Hatchett, sounding somewhat calmer, “I’ve managed to pull some strings for you. A new headmaster has recently taken over that other secondary school on the edge of town, the one they finished building last year, the ‘Academy for Raising Standards in Exceptionalism’. He’s one of these…” She paused and her nose wrinkled up, as if she had smelt something unpleasant. “Fancy, modern headmasters. He’s supposed to be the bee’s knees. Has friends in high places apparently, he went straight in at the top, never taught a day in his life, the lucky so and so. It’s some new government strategy – now they’re saying if you’ve run a business then you can run a school, even if you can’t teach. ‘A new breed of super-heads’, they call them and there’s some competition to find the best one. It’s an insult if you ask me. Anyway, new academy pupils are supposed to pass an entry exam, all terribly strict and whatnot. They only want the crème de la crème at the Academy for Raising Standards in Exceptionalism apparently. Nothing at all to do with a million-pound competition prize, I’m sure,” she huffed.

Chase’s father looked blank. “I see, but what does this have to do with Chase, may I ask?”

“Well, luckily for you, it so happens that Barbera, the school admissions lady for the county, and I go way back. She owes me a favour or two, so I managed to persuade her to slip Chase on to the academy’s entry list for me as a special case. Consider it my parting gift to you both. This is a rare opportunity, Chase. A real chance at a fresh start, in a school many students would give their right arm to attend. Don’t waste it, my boy, don’t… waste… it… Chase? Are you listening to me?”

Chase wasn’t listening. His eyes had glazed over, and he was utterly distracted by a decidedly scruffy-looking owl sitting in a tree outside the head’s window that seemed for all the world as if it was staring right back at him. “Sorry, right, thanks yes,” he muttered. “New school.”

1

THE ACADEMY

“Brand-new school, same old boring assembly.”

Chase’s eyes wandered around his new school hall while the deputy head banged on about something boring. The hall was much fancier than the one at Bisby secondary, but at the end of the day, was still an extremely dull place to be. ‘Yup,’ he thought. ‘No question about it – assembly equals boring, every time.’ Thankfully, he considered himself somewhat of an expert at assembly-survival techniques, which was mostly a matter of looking around and trying to work out who would get squashed if one of the light fittings were to fall. It was good for a few minutes of entertainment and was marginally more interesting than counting ceiling tiles.

Once the assembly had finally finished, Chase was shuffled off to a very beige room, for a very beige welcome meeting with an older student, who was wearing a badge that proudly proclaimed: ‘Richard Pritchard, student representative – here to help.’ It didn’t take long for Chase to discover that in actuality, ‘Richard Pritchard, student representative’, was profoundly dull and not-at-all happy to help as he banged on endlessly about how important the student reps were and how essential they were for the smooth day-to-day running of the school.

“What happened to the old headmaster?” asked Chase finally, managing to seize upon a brief gap between some boring rule about something-or-other and some other boring rule about some other something-or-other.

The question caught Pritchard off guard and his eyebrows shot up like a pair of furry caterpillars making a bid for freedom from the world’s most boring face. “What? Why would you ask that? Who cares what happened to him?”

“Well,” Chase adopted his well-practised “innocent” face, “this school is super-new and, if it’s so great, why would the first headmaster leave so soon after it opened?”

Pritchard puffed out his chest, clearly proud of his terribly important ‘insider knowledge’, and lowered his voice to a grating adenoidal whisper: “You remember the incident last summer?”

Chase certainly did remember – who could forget? The previous summer there had been a bonkers couple of days when the whole town’s old plumbing had gone crazy, and the vintage Ferris wheel on the seafront had broken loose and wiped out half the high street. Strangely, though, the events of that night were rarely mentioned among the citizens of Bisby, who had a curious tendency to quickly shrug off such unusual occurrences, what with them being so common in the little town.

Pritchard continued: “Well, they say that the next morning, the old headmaster turned up in the staff room here ranting and raving about a monster in his bathroom. Pretty soon after that, he recommended Mr Thorne for the job and handed in his notice – luckily for us. Headmaster Thorne is an incredible leader, and we are all blessed to have him. Anyway Connors, let’s get you to your first lesson, maths with Mr Mould.”

2

WELL, THAT’S NOT RIGHT

Mr Mould the maths teacher turned out to be a towering, humourless brute of a man. As he slid into his seat and unpacked his pencil case, Chase couldn’t help but stare up at the human tank as he flopped a crisp, fresh new maths book on to the desk. He was built like a bodybuilder, with rippling muscles that sought to burst out of the bland shirt constraining them. A huge, bushy moustache squatted above Mould’s top lip, extending for several inches out from either side of his face, before curling down to the ground, giving him the appearance of having a perpetual frown.Chase’s mind was already working overtime coming up with mean names for him. Mocking the teachers was fair game for the pupils in any school and a brutal roasting of the maths teacher would be a sure-fire way to make a few friends at break time. Speaking of which… He raised a hand: “Excuse me, Sir, what time’s break?” The soft scribbling of pencils all around Chase stopped as though someone had flicked a switch.

Mould paused mid-step, his gigantic shoe hovering just above the ground for what seemed like an eternity. “I don’t know how you did things at that second-rate hole you call Bisby Secondary, Mr Connors,” he growled. “But here at the Academy for Raising Standards in Exceptionalism, pupils do not speak unless spoken to.”

“But I put my hand up, Sir!” Chase protested.

“AND I DID NOT INVITE YOU TO SPEAK! A RAISED HAND ALONE DOES NOT WARRANT PERMISSION TO SPEAK DURING A LESSON.” With remarkable speed, Mould brought his massive head down to Chase’s eye level, shoving it so close that he could spot the tiny crumbs of digestive biscuit trapped in the man-mountain’s mighty moustache. “I can see you’re going to be one to watch, Mr Connors,” he snarled. “Special case or not. You’re not special in my room, boy, not by a long shot. In fact, I see nothing special about you at all! Consider your card marked, lad, well and truly marked. Pansy, write him up.” He gesticulated to a gold-badge-wearing student with a huge shock of bright red hair, who duly produced a small notebook from her blazer pocket and frantically scribbled in it without breaking her sneering gaze.

Mould slowly and deliberately unfolded himself back to his full height, his massive arms folded across his chest. “And as for your question – it’s time when it’s time, boy.” With that, he turned on his heels, returned to the front of the class and lowered himself into a chair that gave a timid creak in protest. “Pages 25 to 100, calculus and algebra, begin.”