iBoy

11

Now that I was no longer in a coma, and seemingly getting back to normal, Gram had taken the opportunity to go home for a few hours so she could change her clothes and take a shower and sort out whatever needed sorting out. As Mr Kirby had said, she'd been sitting with me almost non-stop for the last seventeen days, and now, at last, she could start to relax a little.

So, for the first time since I'd woken up, I was on my own in the hospital room. And now that I was alone, I could finally get round to thinking about things.

Of course, the main thing on my mind was what Mr Kirby had called my "accident".

I hadn't forgotten it.

Whatever else the head injury had done to me, it hadn't caused any short- or long-term memory loss. I knew who I was, I knew what had happened to me ... and I knew that it wasn't an accident.

I could remember quite clearly the distant barked shout from above — "Hey, HARVEY!" — and I could remember thinking for a moment that it was Ben, Lucy's brother, shouting down at me from their flat on the thir­tieth floor, and I could remember looking up and seeing the iPhone plummeting down towards me ...

But what I couldn't remember very clearly — and what I was trying to remember now — was the figure I'd seen briefly in the window on the thirtieth floor, the figure who'd thrown the phone ... thrown it at me.

It wasn't an accident. Hey, HARVEY!

It wasn't Ben's voice, I was pretty sure of that. Hey, HARVEY!

And it definitely wasn't an accident.

I closed my eyes and searched my memory, trying to bring the figure into focus, trying to see his face ... but I couldn't do it. I It was too far away. And I got the feel­ing that he was wearing a hood anyway, a black hooded top. Not that that meant anything. All the kids in Crow Town wear black hooded tops ... at least, all the gang kids do — black hooded tops, black track pants. It's not like it's a uniform or anything, it's just that if they all wear the same kind of clothes it makes it harder for them to be identified individually.

With my eyes still closed, and with a drifty kind of sleepiness beginning to take hold of me, I gave up trying to work out who the figure at the window was and turned my attention to the window he was leaning from. It was definitely on the thirtieth floor. Compton House has thirty floors, so the thirtieth is the top floor, and the picture in my mind clearly showed that the window was on the top floor.

The floor where Lucy lived ...

I pictured her flat, the window of her flat, and I started trying to work out the position of the window in my mind in relation to Lucy's window ... and then I started trying to remember who else lived on the thirtieth floor, and where they lived in relation to Lucy ...

But my head was getting heavier and heavier now, sleepier and sleepier ...

It was too hard to concentrate.

Too hard to see ...

Too hard to think.

I fell asleep.

It's not a dream, I know it's not a dream ... it's something real... something happening inside me. Inside my head. Tingling, racing ... reaching out in electric silence ... reaching out at the speed of light into an infinite invisibil­ity of absolutely everything... everything... everything. I see it all, I hear it all, I know it all — pictures and words and voices and numbers and digits and symbols and zeroes and ones and zeroes and ones and letters and dates and places and times and sounds and faces and music and books and films and worlds and wars and terrible terrible things and everything everything everything all at once ...

I know it.

I know it all.

I know where it is.

I am connected.

Wires, waves, networks, webs ... a billion billion humming filaments, singing inside my head.

I know it all.

I don't know how I know it, I don't know where it is, I don't know how it works. It's just there, inside me, doing what it does ... showing me answers to questions I'm not even aware of asking — your brain is made up of 100 billion nerve cells ... each cell is connected to around 10,000 others ... the total number of connections is about 1,000 trillion — and letting me hear voices I don't understand — Yeah, yeah, I know ... but Harvey didn't see nothing — and it knows what I'm thinking about, this presence inside my head ... it knows my concerns, my thoughts, my feelings, and it soaks them up and takes them to a place that shows me what I'm scared of what I unconsciously know, but don't want to face up to. It shows me the frontpage of the Southwark Gazette, dated 6 March, sixteen days ago:

TEEN IN RAPE ORDEAL

A 15-year-old girl has been raped by a gang of youths on the Crow Lane Estate. The teenager was attacked in her home on Friday afternoon between 3.45 p.m. and 4.30 p.m. The girl's 16-year-old brother was seriously injured during the assault and another 16-year-old boy suffered a severe head injury when hit by an object thrown from a high-ride window. Detectives believe at least six young men took part in the attack, and are urging anybody with information on “heinous assault” to come forward. They have described the suspects as local youths, possibly with gang connections, aged between 13 and 19 years.

I woke up suddenly, covered in sweat, with my heart pounding hard and a sleep-strangled scream in my throat.

"Lucy!"

It came out as a petrified whisper.

"It's all right, Tommy," I heard someone say. "It's all right..."

It took me a moment to recognize the voice, but then I heard it again — "It was just a dream, Tommy ... you're OK now," — and I knew it was Gram. She was sitting on the bed beside me, holding my hand.

I stared at her, breathing hard. "Lucy ..." I whispered. "Is she all right? Is she —?"

"She's fine," Gram said, wiping my brow with a tissue. "She's ... well, no, she's not fine, but she's safe. She's at home with her mum." Gram glanced over her shoulder, and I realized that she wasn't alone. There were two men in suits sitting on chairs behind her.

"Who are they?" I asked Gram.

She turned back to me. "Police ... they're investigating the attack on Lucy and Ben. I told them you didn't know anything about it —"

"Perhaps we could ask Tom himself," one of the policemen said, getting to his feet. He was tall, fair-haired, with tobacco-stained teeth and bad skin. "Hi, Tom," he said, smiling at me. "I'm DS Johnson, and this ..." He indicated the other man. "This is my colleague, DC Webster."

Webster nodded at me.

The wound on my head tingled, reminding me of the dream that wasn't a dream, the crazy stuff in my head — the electric silence ... an infinite invisibility of absolutely everything ... spoken words, words in a newspaper — A 15 -year-old girl has been raped by a gang of youths on the Crow Lane Estate ...

"Who did it?" I asked DS Johnson.

"Who did what, Tom?"

"Lucy was attacked ... Lucy Walker. She's a friend —"

"How do you know she was attacked?"

"What?"

"Did you see anything?"

"No ... no, I didn't see anything. I was knocked out ... I was lying on the ground with my head smashed open. I didn't see anything."

"So how do you know what happened?"

"I don't know what happened."

"Sorry, Tom," Johnson said,"but you just asked me who did it. You just said that Lucy was attacked ... which seems to suggest that you do know what happened."

My mind was struggling now. I was confused, not sure what to say. But I still only hesitated for a second. "I saw the report in the local paper," I said. "The Southwark Gazette."

"Right..." Johnson said doubtfully. "And when was this?"

"Today ... earlier on. I was in the toilets, down the corridor ... someone had left an old copy of the paper behind."

Johnson nodded, looking at Webster. Webster shrugged. Johnson looked back at me. "So you're saying that you don't have any first-hand information about the attack, you only know what happened because you read about it in the newspaper. Is that right?"

"Yeah ..."

And it was right, I realized. It was the truth. It might not have been the whole truth, but I wasn't going to tell him that, was I? I wasn't going to tell him that the news­paper report just appeared in my head out of nowhere.

Gram said to Johnson, "I think that's enough for now, don't you? Tommy's tired. He's still very weak."

"Yes, Mrs Harvey, I realize that, but —"

"It's Miss," Gram said coldly.

"I'm sorry?"

"Miss Harvey. Or Ms. Not Mrs."

"Right ..." Johnson muttered. "Anyway, if Tom wouldn't mind —"

"He's told you everything he knows."

"Well —"

"No," Gram said firmly. "No more. If you need to talk to him again, you'll just have to wait."

"But —"

"Do you want me to start screaming?"

Johnson frowned at her. "What?"

"One more word from you," Gram told him calmly, "and I'm going to start screaming and sobbing. And when the nurses and doctors come running in, they'll find a poor old grandmother crying her eyes out because the two nasty policemen have been virtually torturing her gravely ill grandson." She smiled at DS Johnson. "Do you understand?"

Johnson nodded. He understood.

"Good," said Gram. "Now, if you don't mind, I'd like you both to fuck off."