iBoy

111

When I went back into the sitting room, Ben was still slumped on the settee, watching TV, and I could hear his mum in the kitchen doing the washing up. I went over and sat down next to him.

"All right?" he grunted, without taking his eyes off the TV.

"No, not really," I said.

He shrugged and carried on staring at the TV screen. I sat there in silence for a while, trying to ignore the fragments of online TV listings in my head that I'm sure could have told me what he was watching, if I'd really wanted to know. But I didn't want to know.

"I'll tell you what," I said quietly to Ben. "If you tell me what you did to piss off the Crows, I won't tell anyone about the iPhone."

"What?" he snapped, suddenly tearing his eyes from the TV.

"You heard me."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yeah, you do," I said. "All I want to know is why the Crows came round here to beat the shit out of you." I stared at him. "You tell me that, and I'll keep quiet about you nicking the iPhone."

Just then, his mum called out from the kitchen. "Is everything all right in there, Ben?"

"Yeah, Mum," he called back. "I'm just talking to Tom. Everything's OK." He turned back to me, lowering his voice. "How do you know about the iPhone?"

Because there are hits of it stuck in my brain, I wanted to tell him, that's how. And somehow — in some kind of unreal, unthinkable, unbelievable way — those bits of iPhone are interacting with my brain, giving me access to everything that an iPhone has access to, and more, and that's a whole lot of stuff. And somewhere within all that stuff is a series of codes, or keys — some kind of security data — which in its raw state means absolutely nothing to me, but somehow (again) it's all been filtered/2translated into something that makes sense to me, so I know that the iPhone was never sold, never registered, barely used. I also have access to a crime report and a statement given by the manager of the Carphone Warehouse in the High Street giving details of the theft of an iPhone on 2 March. The description of the thief in the statement is a description of you, Ben. That's how I know that you stole the iPhone, OK?

But, of course, I didn't tell him any of that. Instead, I said, "It doesn't matter how I know. I just do. And if you want your mum to know too, and the police —"

"My mum?" he sneered. "You can tell her what you like. I couldn't give a shit."

"No?" I said. "So how come you're whispering?"

He glared at me for a moment, trying to look hard and scornful, but I knew it was just a show. All the gang kids round here are scared of their mums. They'll never admit to it, of course, but no matter how old they are, no matter how vicious or streetwise or emotionally dead...they're all just mummy's boys at heart. And Ben was no different.

"So," I said to him. "Are you going to tell me what happened? Or do you want me to go and have a word with your mum?"

He shook his head. "I'm not giving you any names —"

"I didn't ask for any names. I just want to know what happened."

"All right," he hissed. "Just keep your voice down, OK?"

I stared at him. "I'm still waiting ..."

"Look," he whispered, "it wasn't anything to do with the phone, all right? Well, not really ... I mean, I was with some of the FGH when I nicked it, but —"

"The FGH? What were you doing with them?"

"Nothing. Just hanging around, you know ..."

"I thought you were hanging around with the Crows?"

"Well, yeah ... but it started getting a bit heavy with them, you know ..."

"What do you mean?"

He hesitated.

I said, "What do you mean, Ben?"

He sighed. "They wanted me to stick this guy, you know, stab him ... I don't know why. He wasn't FGH or anything, he was just some kid ... I think he'd dissed one of the Crows, a guy called ..." He hesitated again. "Yeah, no ... I can't remember who it was. But anyway, they gave me a knife and told me I had to stab this guy. Not badly or anything, just give him a little dig in the leg, you know... "

"And you refused?"

"Yeah ... I mean, I didn't want to stab anyone, for Christ's sake." He looked at me, and all at once he wasn't the cold hard streetwise kid he pretended to be any more, he was just the kid he used to be. He sniffed, wiped his nose. "I told them I wouldn't do it," he said.

"Is that why they came round here?" I asked him. "Because you told them you wouldn't do it?"

He nodded.

I could see tears in his eyes now. "So they came round after school, and you opened the door ...?"

"Yeah," he mumbled, wiping his eyes. "I didn't know ... I mean, I didn't have time to think. One of them whacked me in the head as soon as I opened the door, and then they were all just beating on me, kicking the shit out of me ... there were loads of them. I couldn't do anything ... I was just lying on the floor, getting my fucking head kicked in ... I can't even remember most of it. I must have passed out. I didn't even know what they did to Lucy until later ..." He shook his head. "I didn't know, Tom ... I couldn't do anything to stop them."

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah, I know ... it's not your fault."

He snorted dismissively.

"You didn't do it, Ben," I assured him. "They did. They're the only ones to blame."

"Yeah, but if it wasn't for me ..."

"You can't think like that."

"I can't help it."

"What about the iPhone?" I asked him.

He sniffed hard again, sniffing up snot and tears. "I don't know ... I think one of them took it out of my pocket after they'd beaten me up ... I can't really remember." He shrugged. "I suppose they just chucked it out of the window for a laugh, you know ..He looked at my head wound for the first time. "I don't know who threw it, Tom."

"Would you tell me if you did?"

"Probably not. I mean, you know what it's like ..."

"Yeah."

"It won't do any good."

"What won't?"

"Trying to find out who did it. It won't make any difference."

"So I keep hearing."

"Yeah, well ... it won't."

I looked at him, my emotions torn between pity and something close to contempt. Despite his stupidity in getting involved with the Crows and the FGH in the first place, it really wasn't his fault that he'd been beaten up and his sister raped. And I could understand perfectly why he didn't want to name names, why he wouldn't even consider seeking punishment for his and Lucy's attackers, but he was wrong about it not making any difference. It might not make any difference in terms of undoing what had happened to him and Lucy, but catching and punish­ing their attackers might just mean that someone else might be saved from the same suffering.

But then, I asked myself, if you feel something close to contempt for Ben because of his refusal to name names, how can you not feel the same about Lucy?

I didn't have an answer.

I said to Ben, "Are you getting any more trouble from the Crows?"

He shook his head. "Not really ... just warnings, you know. Keep your mouth shut or else ... that kind of thing."

"What about the FGH?"

"What about them?"

"Are you still hanging around with them?"

"No." He looked at me. "You're not going to do anything, are you?"

"No," I said. "No, I'm not going to do anything."

I was really angry when I left Lucy's flat. I wasn't sure what I was angry about — Ben's feebleness, the Crows' brutality, the whole stupid thing about not being able to do anything about anything ... or maybe it was just a mixed-up mixture of everything. Like I said, I wasn't sure what it was, but as I left the flat and walked down the corridor towards the lift, I could feel this pent-up anger seething away inside me, and I could feel my wound throbbing, my skin glowing, my head tingling ... and then, inside my head, I heard voices ...

Voices talking on mobiles.

There was a moment, an instant before the voices became clear to me, when they seemed to be part of a vast cloud of other voices, millions and millions of people, all talking at the same time, and then, somehow, two of those voices became detached from the huge swirl­ing cloud, like two single birds detaching themselves from a million-strong flock, and not only could I hear those two separate voices with absolute clarity, I knew who they were, and where they were coming from too.

Yeah, the Harvey kid, the first voice was saying. I think he knows her. He went up about an hour ago.

It was Jayden Carroll, the kid I'd seen in the lift earlier on. He was calling from the ground floor downstairs.

So? the second voice answered. She ain't gonna tell him nothing, is she?

And that was Eugene O'Neil. He was in a third-floor flat in Disraeli.

I was just letting you know, that's all, Jayden said. I thought you'd wanna —

Yeah, all right. Is he still in there?

Dunno —

Well, get up there and find out. If he's gone, get the brother ... what's his name?

Ben.

Yeah, right. Find out from him what Harvey wanted, and remind him again about keeping his mouth shut.

Who? Harvey?

No, fuck's sake, the brother. Just tell him what we told him before. OK?

Yeah.

Go on then. Right.

The call ended.

As I stood by the lift doors, waiting for Jayden Carroll to come up, I could feel the throbbing/tingling/shimmer­ing in my head beginning to spread. My face, my neck, my arms, my chest ... everywhere was starting to feel weird — kind of glowy, warm, buzzy.

Without thinking, I pulled up the hood of my jacket.

The lift was coming up now. I didn't know what I was going to do when it got here, but I knew I was going to do something.

As the floor numbers above the lift doors lit up — 20, 21,22 — I gazed at my reflection in the shiny steel of the doors. The steel was scratched, graffitied, dirty, so my reflection wasn't all that clear, but it was clear enough to see that the hooded figure I was looking at didn't look anything like me. It didn't look anything like anything. The face — my face — was pulsating, floating, radiating with colours, shapes, words, symbols ... my skin was alive. My face was a million different things all at once. It was still me — my face, my features, my skin — but everything was unrecognizable in the shimmering blur.

Before I had a chance to look any closer, the lift went ting, the doors opened, and Jayden started to come out. When he saw me standing there — a hooded figure with a nightmare face — he froze, shocked, scared to death. I reached out to push him back into the lift. I only intended to give him a shove, but when my hand touched his chest, my fingers flashed and I felt something jolt through my arm, and Jayden was suddenly flying backwards into the lift as if he'd been hit with a sledgehammer. As he slammed back against the lift wall and slumped to the floor with a weird kind of grunting sound, I stepped in after him and closed the doors.

There was a faint smell of electricity in the lift as I hit the button for the ground floor — a hot, crackly kind of smell — and for the first time I realized that the skin of my hands was shimmering too, just like my face. And the ends of my fingertips were glowing red.

The lift started to descend.

I looked down at Jayden. He was very pale, his face white and rigid, his hands shaking.

"You all right?" I asked him.

"Uh?"

"Are you all right?" I repeated.

He stared at me for a moment, then wiped his mouth and spat on the floor. "What the fuck are you?"

I guessed that meant that he wasn't too badly hurt.

"I'm your worst nightmare," I told him, moving closer.

"You what?"

I stood over him. "If you go anywhere near Lucy or Ben Walker again, I'm going to make you wish you'd never been born."

He tried to grin at me, to let me know that he wasn't scared, but his lips were too shaky for grinning. He spat again. "I don't know who the fuck you are," he said, "or what the fuck you think you're doing —"

I wasn't in the mood for all this tough-guy talk, so I just reached down and touched him on the forehead with my finger. I felt the jolt in my arm again, only this time it was a little bit stronger, and Jayden let out a screech as his head jerked back and slammed against the wall.

"Fuck, man!" he screamed. "What the —?"

"Do you want me to do it again?" I said, leaning down, reaching out for his head.

"No!" he yelled, cowering away from me. "No ... don't ..."

The lift was approaching the ground floor now.

I leaned down again and whispered in Jayden's ear. "This is nothing, all right? Compared to what I could do to you, this is nothing. Do you understand?"

He nodded. "Yeah, yeah ... I understand."

"You're going to stay away from Lucy and Ben, yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Because if you don't, the next time I see you, you won't be getting up off the floor. All right?"

"Yeah, yeah ..."

The lift tinged for the ground floor. The doors opened, I gave Jayden a final look, then stepped out. There was no one around. I quickly crossed over to the stairwell and started heading up the stairs.

I didn't want to think about what I'd just done. Was it right? Was it wrong? How the hell had I done it? No ... I couldn't let myself think about it. Not yet, anyway. I just had to concentrate on climbing the stairs, getting my skin back to normal, and getting back home.

I didn't consciously know how to get my skin back to normal, but by the time I'd reached the third floor, I could already feel it cooling down, and although there were no mirrors around to check my face, I could see that my hands looked like my hands again.

I thought about taking the lift the rest of the way, but I didn't know if Jayden would still be in there or not, and I didn't really want to see him again, so I just carried on up the stairs.

In the stairwell on the twentieth floor, three guys were slumped against the wall, puffing away on crack pipes. They were all about nineteen or twenty, and they were all totally wasted.

I had to step over them to get past. "Excuse me," I said. "I just need to —"

"Hey, fuck," one of them slurred at me, reaching out a grimy hand. "Gimme your —"

I flicked at his hand, my head turning on the electric, and I gave him just enough of a shock to surprise him, maybe just sting him a little. He jerked his hand away, cursing sharply, and at the same time he dropped his pipe from the other hand. While he scrabbled around on the ground, desperately looking for his pipe — and simultaneously waggling his shocked fingers in the air — I stepped past him and climbed the last three flights to the twenty-third floor.

No matter how weird and scary this iPhone-in-the-brain stuff was — and, believe me, it was incredibly weird and scary — there was no doubt that it had its advantages. I just had to hope that the more I thought about it, the more I tried to rationalize it, the less weird and scary it would become.

Fat chance.