Wild E-Book

Ele Fountain

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Children's Books
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

A moving, page-turning novel about a family's grief and the crisis afflicting the rainforest, from the prize-winning author of Boy 87 and Fake Jack craves adventure, even if it means getting into trouble at school. He thinks he can get away with it as his mum is too busy to notice. But then she suggests that he comes along with her on a work trip – and doesn't tell them where they're going. As Jack spins further out of control, his mum eventually becomes concerned - and shocks him by suggesting a trip together. But this will be no relaxing holiday. Soon Jack finds himself on an expedition deep into the rainforest, far from anything he's ever known. He wanted an adventure - but has he plunged into real danger?

Leseprobe

Contents

Title PageDedicationEpigraphBrokenSparkBurnFreezePastaPressureFreeTestTakeMessageCrewCrew 2FireAshPancakesPackSpark 2Burn 2MariaConfessionFire 2JeepMudBrunoBlueBlue 2RiverDisconnectGreenCampInvadersPainPurposePakoyaiPuzzleLostFallFollowFearCourageConnectHouseboundHealFixChancePeaceAbout the AuthorAlso by Ele FountainCopyright

For Helena,

and for everyone trying to make a difference

It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.

antoine de saint-exupéryThe Little Prince

Broken

An explosion of glass splinters the night air. My ears ring in the silence that follows.

Shiv opens his mouth but the words are swallowed by another shattering sound-burst.

A heavy object presses into my glove. A hand pats me hard on the shoulder. Too hard.

‘Get the big one!’

‘C’mon! Finish it!’

Shiv laughs a cackling laugh which the others copy.

My back is sweating. Beneath my gloves, my palms are sweating. I don’t feel scared though.

‘Whoah! He’s bottled it!’

‘I told you. He’s worried what Mummy will think.’

More laughter.

But I’ve already raised my hand. The brick is flying through the air. The noise that follows has a longer, lower pitch, ending in a few tinkling notes. A jagged hole appears where before, glass reflected the moonlit clouds. I’ve destroyed a piece of sky.

‘Nice!’

‘Bullseye!’

There are more pats on my shoulder but this time they feel like a prize. A reward.

Nearby a dog barks. The barking grows closer.

A fat white torch beam slices through the dark, flickering over our clothes.

‘Hey!’ a voice shouts angrily.

The torchlight wobbles as its bearer runs towards us, followed by a second beam. Two men.

Wordlessly, Shiv and the others grab the handlebars of their bikes and climb on. I have no bike to grab.

Wheels whir as they pedal into the darkness, away from the wobbling torches.

Shiv hangs back. ‘Get on!’ he growls. ‘Do you want to get caught?’

I jump into the saddle and cling to the back of Shiv’s hoodie as he pumps the pedals, chasing the others.

A few streets away is an alley. We cut through, to a small car park behind a row of shops.

The shops are all shut. The car park is deserted, except for five figures, panting clouds of vapour into the night air.

‘Get a bike,’ says the shortest figure, between gasps. ‘No one gets caught. You’re not going to change that.’

‘Jay, leave him. He did all right,’ says Shiv.

There are murmurs of approval from the other two.

‘Breaking windows is one thing. Is he going to help with the racking?’ says Jay. ‘We need a load of paint if we’re gonna dress that shack.’

I don’t know what Jay means. I have literally no idea what he’s talking about. I should be panicking. They’ll decide I don’t belong. They don’t need me. But I’m not panicking. I am calm.

Jay seems to notice. So does Shiv.

‘Don’t be a jerk,’ he says casually to Jay. ‘He’ll help us get the paint. He’s in our crew now.’

Jay tuts. ‘He’s a complete toy. He’s just gonna tag everywhere. Then we’ll all look like toys. We’ll be the “joke” crew.’

‘Have you seen his art? Did you look at that stuff in his sketchpad? Each one was a piece.’

The words slot into place.

If we’re going to spray inside the old youth club, we’ll need a lot of paint. We’re going to steal it. If Jay gets his way, I’m going to steal it for them.

Far away, I hear a voice screaming no no. But it’s too far away to matter.

‘I’m in,’ I hear myself say.

‘In for what?’ replies Shiv, head tilted to one side.

‘In for whatever you want.’

Shiv nods. The others nod too. Except Jay.

‘How do we know he’s not just going to rat on us? He knows stuff now. Who we are.’

‘We go to the same school, Jay,’ snorts Shiv, ‘of course he knows who we are.’

‘Why is he acting so calm? I mean, we nearly got caught. Maybe that’s his plan.’

‘C’mon!’ the other three groan together. I realize that for some reason they are on my side.

‘Maybe you’re just jealous, Jay. Jealous Jay. That could be your new name,’ Shiv adds quietly.

‘No, I—’

‘We need another rook. Five is better than four. More power. Jake is cool—cool as ice.’

Shiv smiles at the way he sounds.

Slowly, Jay begins to nod too. ‘OK.’ He stares at me, his face pale orange under the glow of the streetlight. ‘We’re good. But next week we get the paints. Tuesday.’ He raises his eyebrows as if Tuesday is not merely the day before Wednesday, but some kind of threat.

I nod.

I’m in. For anything. Seriously. But if they think I’m brave, they’re wrong. To be brave, you need to overcome your fear. But I don’t feel fear. I don’t feel anything at all.

Spark

I slip my key into the lock. It’s way past curfew. The door creaks open. A faint smell of pizza hangs in the air, even though dinner was hours ago. The house has been sleeping since I left. I stand motionless in the hall, listening for signs of life. Silence pushes back.

I pad towards the kitchen, socks slipping on the wooden floor, and pour myself a glass of water. I’m hungry, but I can’t be bothered to look for something to eat, so I turn off the light and let my eyes adjust to the gloom. I’m about to head upstairs when I pause. A pale-yellow strip glows beneath Mum’s study door. She’s not asleep. She’s working.

A spark of anger flares in my chest. I should be relieved that she hasn’t realized I’m back. That I’m late. That I’ve been gone for hours. Instead, I’m annoyed. The glow in my chest burns hotter. Today’s happiness, sadness, fear, have finally arrived, repackaged as rage. I feel my heart pumping. I take a step towards the door, then stop. I don’t want to talk to her. That’s what she wants. She wants me to open up. To share my feelings. If I go in, she’ll think she’s won. Or that she’s making ‘progress’. Because it’s all about ‘tiny steps’. I breathe deeply, then turn and walk away.

The rage ebbs but doesn’t disappear. It turns into something bland yet dangerous. Like concrete setting in my veins, it makes me feel tough. Invincible.

Reckless.

Burn

‘Jack!’

My eyes flick open.

Mum’s silhouette is framed by the doorway, hands on hips.

She’s going to give me hell. She knows I missed the curfew.

‘I have a meeting at nine. I can’t be late. Get yourself ready for school. I’ll see you later.’

She steps closer and I realize that she’s wearing her blue coat, leather satchel clutched to her chest.

This has nothing to do with the curfew—or with me. Of course. It’s about work.

She’s giving me a ‘look of concern’. I pull the covers over my face.

‘We’ll do something at the weekend,’ she adds, ‘maybe watch a movie.’

I cringe at the word ‘movie’. She calls them films. Normally. Also, she has no idea what I like. We haven’t watched a film together since I was seven. My insides convulse at the thought of sitting on the sofa with her, making small talk about the plot.

The front door clicks shut. I push the covers down to my chin. A flowery scent drifts from the doorway. The only sign that Mum was in the house at all. That I didn’t imagine the three seconds of conversation. Can you call it a conversation when one person does all the talking?

I reach for my phone. It’s almost eight o’ clock. I need to get up.

Last night’s rage seems to have made me heavier, well something has. I don’t have the energy to lift myself out of bed. Perhaps I really am slowly turning to stone.

I picture arriving at school. Saying hi to my friends. Talking to people. Being nice. Until someone asks about it. Because someone always does. Then my day will be over and I’ll watch the minutes tick past on the classroom clock until it’s time to go home. Back to the flowery scent. If I stay in bed, the flowery scent will receive a call from school that interrupts her meeting, resulting in a chat. I have a choice between bad option one, or bad option two.

I get dressed and grab a packet of crisps from the kitchen. My stomach twists with hunger, so I grab another packet—a different flavour. It’s important to have a balanced diet.

In the morning, I have a double period, which means less moving around, less chat.

At breaktime, I kick a ball around with the others, then I see Jay over by the fence, talking to Shiv.

The ball thuds against my thigh.

‘You’re supposed to use your feet,’ shouts Dan. He follows my eyes but says nothing.

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘Sure,’ he replies.

Shiv looks up as I approach. He doesn’t smile, but jerks his chin up, like he’s trying to tip something tiny from the back of his head. Jay does the same.

‘All right,’ says Shiv.

I don’t think it’s a question.

‘Got your bike yet?’ asks Jay.

‘No. I thought about going to the bike shop on my way home last night, but they were shut. This morning too.’

Shiv snorts. Jay glares at me. Although his expression doesn’t really change much from when I first arrived.

‘We’re going in five,’ says Shiv. ‘Wanna join? It is Friday after all.’

‘Err yeah,’ I say.

‘He has no clue,’ snaps Jay.

‘Sure he does. You knew I meant going… elsewhere, leaving school, didn’t you, Jack?’

‘Sure. Where are we going?’

‘Maybe scope some Skylon.’

‘Paint,’ sighs Jay.

‘OK.’ I want to look over to Dan, to the others. See if they’re waiting for me. Watching. But I don’t turn round. I won’t give Jay the satisfaction.

‘See you round the back of the gym. We’ll duck under the fence. Best if we don’t go together,’ says Shiv.

I nod. I’ve never skived off school before. There are lots of things I’ve never done before.

I’m wondering why.

Freeze

Some days, it seems strange that the world keeps on turning, when mine stopped three months ago.

I didn’t feel anything. Just shock. Now I don’t feel shocked, but there aren’t any better words to describe what’s happening inside my head. Near the kitchen window lives our tattered blue dictionary. Heavy as a bag of flour. I searched for the right word in there, the thin pages rustling beneath my impatient fingers. There is one which comes close. Nothing obscure; the simplest of all.

Change: to make (someone or something) different

I don’t remember a moment when I changed. It wasn’t on the actual day. Not the week after either. It wasn’t sudden. But I am different.

My feet crunch softly across frosty grass. The frozen blades yield beneath my trainers, pressed flat in the frozen mud. Cold nips at my nose. Breath puffs round my head like a vaporous scarf. I pull the hood of my sweater down to block the icy wind. Mum hates me doing this. She says only kids in gangs wear their hoods up. I pull it lower.

Ahead, beyond the path, a group of kids kicks a ball around. I don’t need to see their faces to know it’s Ben and Johannes, Dan and the others. No one moves round the pitch the way Ben does—fast and nimble like a cat, hunting. Although Dan calls him the seal because he also dives whenever anyone tackles him.

I did think about staying in bed. Again. But Dan messaged this morning. Dan’s mum knows my mum. They talk. After yesterday—walking off in the playground, missing school in the after-noon—I thought I should come out. Otherwise Dan might mention it to his mum. If Dan mentions it to his mum, she will mention it to mine. It’s not a chain of communication I want to activate. Also, it’s Saturday.

Johannes sticks his arm up and waves. My legs feel heavier than moments before. I know the only way to make them lighter is to turn and run back the way I came, to keep running and running until I can’t go on. I wonder how far that would be. I wave back.

‘Are you going to kick it or are you medicating or something?’ Johannes is halfway down the pitch, hands on his hips.

‘It’s meditating, potato-brain,’ shouts Ben, even though he’s only two metres from Johannes.

Before the Change, I would have laughed. ‘Different’ me feels nothing. I’m watching myself. I’m a creepy puppet master. I can move my body around, but I can’t make it laugh, or smile. Or cry.

The ball rolls slowly towards my feet. I chip it over Dan’s head, towards Johannes.

‘Nice!’ he shouts.

I pull the strings which make a ‘thumbs up’, because I know that before the Change, I would have felt pleased.

Dan walks beside me. ‘I didn’t think you were coming today.’

‘Why not?’ There is a buzz in my stomach, as I wonder whether the strings are beginning to show on ‘puppet’ me.

‘Because you were late!’ Dan gives me a sideways smile and shakes his head.

Of course.

‘Are you around over the holidays?’

The heavy feeling is almost unbearable. I haven’t thought about the holidays. I can’t think about the holidays.

‘Yeah, I’m around.’

‘Let’s do something. Maybe we could watch a game on Boxing Day?’

I stop walking. For a split second I stall, as if my brain can’t focus on this final sentence and keep me moving too.

‘Oh, yeah.’ Dan puts his hand to his head. ‘Maybe you don’t want to because of—’

‘No, sounds good,’ I say quickly. My legs come back to life and I start jogging towards the centre of the pitch where the others are waiting. If I can’t run away, then this is the next best thing—to keep moving. To stay one step ahead of the heaviness.

Pasta

I walk home along empty streets. Dusk is falling. A single star shines in the red-orange sky. Already I feel the temperature dropping. Everyone else seems to be at home, together. Family scenes play out, bathed in yellowish light, framed by curtains and shutters. Little kids watch TV. Someone eats their dinner. A dog jumps up for attention. I wonder what it would be like to live in one of these houses. To live in one of these families. The rooms seem filled with life.

My house is filled with artefacts. With clay pots and carved objects, with maps and papers and thick books, which have crumbling spines and musty pages. The first time Dan came round, he christened our house The Museum. I didn’t mind. I thought there were probably worse names he could have come up with. For a brief period back in Year Seven, I was famous. Other kids in my class wanted to visit The Museum, and I would give tours of the house before we watched TV. I had to figure out what the carved objects and pots were used for. My descriptions grew wilder. The jar for storing oil became a receptacle for severed hands. The sundial, a portal to outer space. Mum didn’t mind. But then, it’s easy to feel relaxed about stuff when you’re somewhere else. Especially when ‘somewhere else’ is thousands of miles away. She would disappear for weeks at a time, to places I’d never heard of. In the beginning, I would search for them on the maps that cluttered her office wall. Maps showing huge islands labelled in strange curly writing, etched on ancient paper, turned golden with age. Sea monsters patrolled the oceans beyond, searching for cracks in the picture-frame glass. They bore no resemblance to the maps I’d seen at school, but I liked looking at them. Behind her desk was a more modern chart of the world, two metres square. Laminated. Round-headed pins punctured the places she’d been to or wanted to visit.

Well, she can’t visit them now. I’m the flaw in that particular plan.

I look up and realize I’m almost home. The lifeless feeling drifts around me like a poisonous mist.

I search for the key in my pocket, but my fingers seem to have frozen on the walk back. I didn’t notice. As I fumble the key into the lock, the door swings open.

‘Hi, darling.’

I retreat in surprise.

A shadow of something flickers across Mum’s face, replaced by a smile as she adds, ‘Remember me?’

I roll my eyes. I want to push past her and go upstairs, but I know that will make things worse in the long run. She’ll give me space for an hour or so, then come to my room and sit on my bed so that we can talk things through. I will even watch a film with her to avoid talking things through.

Which is just as well because seconds later she says, ‘Have you chosen a movie? I’ve bought some popcorn, or at least I think I have. The bags were tiny, so I got six. Do you even like popcorn?’

‘Not yet,’ I say, answering the movie question, although I realize it sounds as if I expect to like popcorn soon, instead.

‘OK, maybe we should have dinner, and you can think about it while you’re eating.’

I feel as if I could be in one of Mum’s meetings. She has a reputation for ‘making things happen’.