Bitter Sixteen Read online

  He knew all about me.

  He knew where I worked.

  Presumably he knew where I was living.

  And he knows where I’m from.

  I jumped up onto the wall and sat with my legs dangling over the river, staring into the implacable water. I hadn’t exactly liked Freeman. The whole ‘you’re not ready to know’ thing grated. But I couldn’t pretend not to be glad that he’d appeared on the scene. It meant that there was something going on. Something beyond. Something I could be a part of, that might well suit my new abilities. I jumped off the wall and dropped straight down, stopping myself less than a second before I plunged into the river, and kept myself there. To all intents and purposes, it looked as though I was standing on the water. I grinned and walked out a little way, positioning myself so precisely that my footsteps actually fell on the surface, causing the water to ripple outward.

  Cool. Not much use, but cool.

  I was half-considering going off on a hunt for Smiley Joe, and telling myself that that ranked among the stupider stupid ideas I’d had in my time, when the sky suddenly filled with a white so bright it was no longer white. It was a hole torn in reality, revealing the colour of nothingness below, and it shocked me so much that I lost control and sank up to my knees. ‘Bollocks,’ I said, rising back up, my shoes, socks and jeans sodden. It didn’t exactly matter, though, because seconds later there was a rumble of thunder, and it started to rain. It didn’t mess around. Within seconds it was pouring, wonderful cool rain that soaked into my skin and my hair and my eyes, trickling, caressing. It hit the ground like bombs, and the surface of the river became a maelstrom. I rose back up and flew home, trying not to think about lightning. Would your powers work on lightning?

  Bows and arrows.

  Then another thought came, one I’d been entertaining for a while now.

  How high can I go?

  I was floating outside my open window. My door was still closed. I hadn’t expected Connor or Sharon to come and look in on me before, and they definitely wouldn’t now that the storm was upon us. People don’t want to get up if it’s pissing down with rain in the middle of the night; they like to snuggle in bed and listen to the wet bullets hitting the roof.

  I looked towards the sky. Another sheet of lightning, and shortly afterwards another kettle drum boom of thunder trying vainly to keep up. You’ll get struck by lightning.

  No, I won’t.

  I flew straight up, my clothes clinging to me like desperate children, rain pounding my face and wind stinging my bare arms as I headed for the dark blanket of clouds. Breathing was difficult but not impossible, and as I picked up speed I sneaked a look down, and almost fell. I could see the entire city, a diagram of towers and estates and neon and orange, the waves on the river bucking like wild horses, the streets awash. I could see the face of Big Ben, the dome of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, the Eye, the churches, the shining, anonymous skyscrapers. I could see the river snaking its way through it all, see cars shrunk to pinpricks of light, and I could feel the storm valiantly trying to drive me from its domain. Stay away, I heard the rain whisper. This is where we live.

  Not any more, I replied. This defiance of nature gave me a burst of power and speed, and now I was inside the clouds, choking on moisture, unable to breathe, my body numb from the cold and tingling with electricity, but I didn’t care, I belonged here now. I could see lightning and feel the vibration as the thunder erupted all around, and I pulled against the current of air, summoned every last shred of energy and strength and channelled them into my body . . . and broke through the clouds.

  ‘Scuse me while I kiss the sky . . .

  Here, all was peaceful. A carpet of white hiding the world, and star-spangled black above, tinted midnight blue by the moon’s ethereal ghost. For a full ten seconds I basked in it, the tranquillity, the awe-inspiring spectacle. I left Mr Freeman behind. I left London behind. I left Smiley Joe behind. I was free.

  And then I tried to breathe, and I couldn’t.

  Panic.

  Don’t panic.

  Oh, OK then, thanks, I won’t panic.

  I was drowning. I was six years old again, running around in the back garden of my grandparents’ house, the country limp in winter’s clenched fist, the trees and roofs brushed with powdered sugar. I was skipping, I was laughing, I was running to the frozen pond . . . and I was breaking the ice, plunging into the water, unable to breathe, unable to think, dying . . .

  No.

  Not again.

  Dad’s not here to pull you out this time.

  I closed my eyes and let myself drop. I fell back through the clouds, crashing through this upside-down ocean in the sky, my lungs screaming. My body felt dead. I dropped like a rock, broke the clouds again and was back in the storm, and now it was almost as though I had been struck by lightning. One last burst of energy lit me up, and I forced myself to turn and face the world as it rushed back towards me, and I flew again, back down, back towards the city and safety. With every metre my will threatened to give out, my energy swearing it would burn away and leave me plummeting towards the tarmac. I could just imagine Eddie and the others reading my obituary.

  Stanly Bird, Blossoming Superhero, Dead at 16

  Or maybe there’d be something tasteless on the Internet.

  Superpowered Slacker With Ideas Above

  His Station Ends Life Looking Like a

  Chicagotown Pizza

  No thanks, I thought. Not going out like that. I summoned Kloe’s face, letting her smile urge me on. Come on, she whispered, her voice cutting through the rage of the storm. Come on, not much further.

  I was nearly there. A hundred metres. Eighty. Sixty. Forty. Twenty. Ten. Five. One.

  I landed clumsily in next door’s back garden and collapsed, a crumpled heap on a bed of drowning grass and liquid mud. I lay there for several minutes, breathing, shaking, watching the storm, and eventually managed to get to my feet and float up and across to the house. I hung outside for a minute, letting the rain wash the mud from my clothes, then hovered back through the window and stood in my bedroom, rain dripping from my body and hitting the floor. I shook myself like Daryl did on the rare occasions he allowed himself to get wet, peeled off my soaking wet clothes and hung them over a chair, hoping they’d be dry by the morning. Unlikely. Then I dried myself off and got into bed. Let’s not do that again, I thought. For a while.

  Agreed.

  As I lay there, totally drained, my thoughts turned to Mr Freeman again. Government spook? Nazi? A member of some ancient cult? A talent scout for a superpowered football team? And how could he know all that stuff about me? It wasn’t possible.

  When the shit hits the proverbial fan . . .

  Not if.

  When.

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  I stuck to my decision not to tell the others about my encounter with Mr Freeman, or about my little jaunt above the clouds. What was I going to say, after all?

  Me: Sorry. I sneaked out in my lunch break to smash things with my brain and met a mysterious well-manicured cigarette-smoking man who knows more about me than I do and who may well understand my destiny. And also I sneaked out in the middle of the night for a wander around a city I don’t know very well, kind of hoping for another chance meeting with said mysterious man or maybe with the child-eating monster that Connor swears doesn’t exist, and then there was a storm and I decided to just fly straight up into it ’cos hey, what the hell, what else would I have done under the circumstances?

  Eddie: (unable to speak due to his head spontaneously exploding)

  So although I felt guilty for keeping it from them, I pretended that nothing had happened. I kept the business card hidden in my wallet and I went about my new life, eating, watching DVDs, playing my guitar, working, talking, exercising with my powers. I was getting good. I didn’t attempt any more sky
diving, but I knew I was in control. The powers were working for me. It was a good feeling, but there was always that nagging voice at the back of my mind telling me to be careful. There were things at work, things I didn’t understand. Things that could hurt.

  So, what else is new, I thought, and beat the other voice into submission.

  A week or so after my first meeting with Mr Freeman, I was sitting at my window, watching the city. I wondered what was going on out there and why I was in here. I looked at my watch. Just after midnight. London would be awake for hours yet. Connor and Sharon had gone to bed almost an hour before and they were both sound sleepers. Daryl was on the sofa downstairs. I was in no danger of being discovered.

  I put on my shoes and socks and my baggy black hoody, pulled the hood up and floated silently out of the window, across the garden and over the back fence, touching down in an alleyway lined with rusty bins and old newspaper. An imperious-looking tabby eyed me suspiciously then slunk off into the shadows. Somewhere a dog whined. I put my hands in my pockets and walked. The pavements glistened, reflecting the glow from the lampposts.

  As I walked I thought about Connor, Sharon and Eddie. How come they never went out? Why were they never walking around in back-alleys in the middle of the night, looking to do some good? They’d had their powers for years. I gathered from what they’d said that Eddie and Connor were virtually indestructible, plus Connor had that neat gravity-shifting thing. Sharon’s telekinesis was better than mine. And yet here I was, alone, looking for a fight in the city.

  I felt the darkness absorb me, like a drop of oil vanishing into a pool, becoming one. My senses were charged and ready: I could smell the wet tarmac and the rubbish and the scents of life and death, hear cars and muffled voices and those ever-present sirens, taste dirt and water. I was an indistinct shape passing over elaborate graffiti and chewing-gum stains and empty boxes, part of the claustrophobia. London’s shadow.

  ‘Leave me alone!’

  Jackpot.

  I stopped immediately, working out where the voice had come from. I was at a crossroads where three different alleys met. One held darkness, one led to the road – and one hid two figures. A small one and a large one. I crept forward and ducked behind a yellow skip to get a better look. A girl about my age, skimpily dressed, shivering and crying, and a man standing over her, looming, dressed in black. He had his hands on her arms and was trying to get close to her. She kept on trying to push him away, but now he hissed: ‘Don’t make another sound or you’ll regret it.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, stepping out from behind the skip. ‘That’s not very nice.’

  The man turned his head, took me in. Started to walk towards me. His hand went to his pocket. ‘I’ma give you five seconds to get out of here,’ he said, ‘else you’re gonna regret ever layin’ eyes on me.’

  ‘Already there, mate.’

  Now he moved, very fast. For a second I saw his face – an ugly, contorted mess with sunken eyes and a twisted mouth – and then his hand came out of his pocket with a knife and he thrust it forwards.

  Only I wasn’t there. I’d flown into the air, spun and landed behind him, and his lunge sent him totally off-balance and he crashed into the skip. He rapidly regained his balance, roared and ran at me. I realised that the girl had run away.

  Then something occurred to me. I threw a punch in the man’s direction, although there were still about four feet between us, and let a thought fly with it. My fist passed harmlessly through the air and I felt nothing, but the man’s nose was crushed and blood started geysering down his face and into his mouth. Sick. I grinned.

  The man was shouting incomprehensibly. He lunged at me and I used my mind to hurl him straight over my head. He hit the wall, slid down and landed in an undignified tangle of limbs and rubbish. A cat fought to escape from this peculiar mess of living and dead trash, hissing and spitting, and the man got to his feet, took one last frightened, impotent look at me and ran. He took a right, and I saw that he was heading for the main road.

  My blood burned. You’re going down.

  I turned and ran back the way I’d come, taking a left instead of a right and ending up on the pavement. The man saw me and headed across the road. The lights were green. He was going to get away.

  No, he’s not.

  I picked up a car and hurled it with my mind, and it slammed the man into a wall, splintering and bursting his body, suddenly frail and pathetic. The vehicle’s windows shattered and it rolled onto the pavement, leaving a bloody stain on the wall, and I rose up into the air, chuckling. People were screaming, cars were honking, the sirens were coming. I could feel power and electricity, a surge of something that lit me from the inside. My veins bulged and glowed, my muscles rippled, my brain flexed. I felt like I was casting off chains, snapping them link by link, free.

  I was a god now.

  I picked up another car and sent it flying down the road. It landed on its roof and skidded along, scattering broken glass, and when it exploded I felt it. Fire was my gift. The street ignited, plumes of twirling colour, every possible hue of red and gold and orange blossoming as my power reduced the place to ruins.

  ‘Stanly.’

  I turned to my right. Mr Freeman was standing there, his pale face illuminated by the glow of the flames, the screaming of the burning street. He seemed worried. Our eyes met, and I didn’t like what I saw in his. ‘I was hoping you would go the other way,’ he said.

  I shrugged. ‘I like this way.’ I flexed my mind, deciding what to do to him, what was best, to show him. ‘Phenomenal cosmic power, motherf —’

  My eyes opened and I raised my head from my arms. I was sitting at my window, facing the city. It was just after midnight, and I could hear sirens.

  Dream. Just a dream.

  I hope so.

  Sweat-drenched and dizzy from the throbbing in my head, I stripped to my boxers and lay down. The duvet would be cool for a minute, maybe a minute and a half, and then I would boil myself to sleep.

  I don’t want to sleep.

  Agreed.

  No more of those dreams.

  Definitely.

  Godhood is not in this season.

  Chapter Twenty

  SKANK DIDN’T WANT us to work the following Saturday so I breakfasted early and headed out into London on my own. Connor seemed uncertain, but he had no real grounds for stopping me – I think he believed me when I said that I could take care of myself, and I doubted his reluctance stretched to serving as my unpaid bodyguard for the day. Sharon was working and Daryl had set himself up in the garden with a multi-pack of crisps and a stack of magazines, and I had a suspicion that Connor wanted to sit and play guitar all day without the benefit of an audience. As for me, I just needed to get out and have some time on my own, to think things over and probably not come to any conclusions.

  The weather was perfect and I took a bus to Waterloo and wandered out into the city. Eyes followed me wherever I went: supermodels advertising perfume, film stars standing proud and Photoshopped in front of explosions and weddings and exploding weddings, lurid caricatures leering from rainbow forests of graffiti, bored shop window dummies sleepwalking through sterile fashion shows, cheerful and cheerless people criss-crossing and intersecting, ignoring one another, going about their business. London felt both familiar and alien today. I passed a clarinet player doing his best to squeeze out ‘The Long and Winding Road’, an upside-down trilby in front of him, and took pity because it held only fifty pence and a bent cigarette. I gave him a pound and he nodded, distracted by the discordant farting noise coming from his poorly-kept instrument.

  ‘Big Issue,’ said a tall man in brown. ‘Big Issue. Best way to start your day, with the best magazine . . .’

  Snatches of conversations entered one ear and emerged a second later from the other, leaving me with to be continued a million times.

  — tol
d her it was over, but will she listen —

  — hated that album, he was never the same after —

  — dropping by uninvited —

  — even think —

  — and don’t come back —

  — need flour —

  I drifted enjoyably and eventually found myself outside a little bakery that was pumping out wonderfully fresh smells. French loaves, Danish pastries, colourful frosted cakes, gingerbread, sausage rolls, Cornish pasties. I bought a sausage roll and a coffee and resumed my wandering, thoughts bouncing around my head like multicoloured balls trying to escape their pit.

  My mother’s voice. Edward was always a bad apple…

  Eight years was a long time, and people change, but I still found it strange that there was so little correlation between my parents’ picture of Eddie and the kind, funny, dependable guy on whom I’d dumped all my troubles two months ago. I only vaguely remembered what he’d been like before he’d moved, but even then I’d been sure he was kosher. I remembered my uncle Nathan well, a short bald man with a good sense of humour and a taste for cigars, but all I could really remember of Eddie was a quiet, brooding guy with that indefinable distractedness – and a smile. I was sure I could remember a smile.

  People change.

  And where were he and Connor always going? Maybe I was wrong, perhaps they were going out and fighting crime? Superpowered vigilantes on the prowl for wrong-doers in the big bad city. It sounded awesome, but somehow I doubted that was it. I was sure there was something else going on.

  Superpowered cage fighting? Probably be good money in that.

  Don’t be stupid.

  Crime? They were certainly powerful enough. Power corrupts.

  Absolute power corrupts quite a lot.

  Godhood is not in this season.

  Then there was Mr Freeman, his unsettling whiff of government conspiracy, the faintest odour of prophecy. I wouldn’t trust the guy as far as I —