Out of This World

by Chris Wooding

  “What? That can’t be right,” Thomas told him. “Even government agents get ill. Maybe you’re just forgetting.” He took a suck on his inhaler.

  “The other day, my mom was in the bathroom for ages. There’s only one thing she can be doing in there, right? But I went in right after, and it didn’t even smell!”

  “That’s just a parent thing. My mom doesn’t poop, either.”

  “What, at all?”

  Thomas shook his head.

  “Well, it’s still weird,” Jack said. “And yesterday, my dad wanted me to do this new route through the assault course, so I pretended not to get it and I asked him to show me. He ran the course, and I said, ‘Can you do it one more time, so I remember?’ So he did it again. At the end of it, he wasn’t even breathing fast. He wasn’t even sweating, and it was, like, ninety-six degrees and the kind of humidity where you dry off by taking a bath.”

  “So he’s a super-fit government agent,” said Thomas. “We already know that. You’re not focusing on the important stuff. We need to get back in that attic!”

  Jack threw up his hands. “I’ve tried! They’re always around!”

  “Why don’t you sneak up at night?”

  “Too risky. Their bedroom is next to mine and they hear better than bats. The moment I open the door, one of them pops their head out.”

  Thomas frowned, tapping his heels against the wall. “You said you’ve only seen them wearing tracksuits, right? Nothing else?”

  “That’s right. Those stupid black tracksuits and sneakers. They must have a dozen pairs each. They think choosing different clothes every day is a waste of brainpower.”

  “So when they poke their heads out of their bedroom at night, they’re wearing their tracksuits?”

  Jack shrugged. He’d never thought about it before. “I guess,” he said.

  Thomas waited for Jack to catch on. He didn’t.

  “So, uh … do your parents sleep in their tracksuits or something?”

  That night, before he went to bed, Jack drank three big glasses of water. He wasn’t allowed a phone, and his alarm clock was too loud, so this was the best way he could think of to make sure he woke up in the night. It worked, if anything, a little too well. When he woke up at 2:05 a.m., he was on the verge of wetting himself.

  He got out of bed and waddled gingerly through the dark to the door of his bedroom, afraid to take large steps in case he burst. He listened and heard silence beyond.

  He turned the doorknob as quietly as he could and opened the door. Half a second later, the door to his parents’ room opened, and Dad was standing there in the gap.

  How did he get out of bed so fast? Jack wondered in amazement. Hard on the heels of that thought came another, which put a chill down his back. Was he just standing behind the door the whole time?

  “Can’t sleep?” Dad asked. “You should get some rest. You need to be sharp for training tomorrow.”

  “I need to pee!” Jack squeaked, jigging on the spot.

  “Go on, then,” said Dad.

  Jack sprinted down the corridor and slammed the door of the bathroom behind him. There was a loud groan of relief from within. When he came back out, Dad was still standing there, watching.

  “Good night,” Dad said.

  “Good night,” said Jack, and he went back into his bedroom. A moment later, he heard the door to his parents’ bedroom close.

  He stood there in the dark, wide-awake now. There was no chance he was going back to sleep after this.

  Two o’clock in the morning. His dad had still been wearing his tracksuit and sneakers. And despite the fact that he was supposed to have been lying on a pillow all night, there was not a hair out of place on his head.

  There was no sign of Thomas at school the next day. Probably out sick, Jack thought. There was always something wrong with that kid.

  Jack was half-relieved and half-disappointed. He was desperate to tell somebody about last night, but every day he spent with Thomas made it less likely he’d ever have any normal friends with non-runny noses and basic social skills. And though it was actually kind of nice to have someone to chew over the mystery with, he didn’t want to spend the rest of the school year with only Thomas for company. He’d go insane within a month.

  With no one to talk to, he kept his head down in class and drew in his sketchbook. This time, it wasn’t the landscape of a different planet, or one of the many alien races he’d invented. Today he was inspired to draw something different. A huge flaming bird, flying through space, burning like a star. When it was done, it seemed somehow menacing. He imagined it searching the galaxy, looking for something, like a bird of prey seeking out a mouse. After a moment, it started to make him feel uneasy, so he closed his sketchbook.

  Jodie Ellis was looking at him from across the classroom. He caught her eye, and she looked away.

  When he got home, he stole a small wrench from his dad’s tool kit and hid it in his sock. Mom tested him on calculus—he didn’t do well—and then they had dinner. While they were eating, he excused himself to go to the bathroom.

  “You’ve been going to the bathroom a lot lately,” Dad observed.

  He held up a glass of water and drained it. “It’s important to stay hydrated, Dad!” he said.

  “Very sensible, in this heat,” Mom said approvingly.

  Jack went upstairs, past the toilet, and into his parents’ bedroom. Everything in there was as neat as a museum. There were no ornaments and no pictures, and the bed was perfectly made. Even a furniture showroom had more life in it.

  He slid the wrench under the blanket. Then he hurried to the bathroom, flushed the toilet, washed his hands, and went downstairs again.

  He was so tense when he returned to the table that he didn’t want to eat any more. He forced himself, anyway, so as not to seem suspicious. He felt like he was wearing his guilt all over his face, but if his parents noticed anything, they didn’t show it.

  They finished their dinner, and then Dad took Jack out for some wilderness survival training. By the time they got home, it was dark and Jack was exhausted, so he went to bed. There he lay awake, listening, as his parents made their way upstairs to their bedroom. At any moment he expected the door to fly open, and Mom and Dad to be standing there, demanding to know how a wrench had gotten into their bed. It was impossible to miss it, after all. Even if they didn’t see it at first, one of them would certainly feel it when they got in.

  He waited and waited. Nothing happened. At some point, sleep overtook him, and he never even noticed.

  He jerked awake when his alarm went off for school, panicked briefly at the noise, and finally managed to swat the clock hard enough to shut it up. In the quiet that followed, he heard Mom clattering about downstairs, making breakfast. Dad was hammering in the backyard, building new tortures on the assault course. Morning sounds. It was a normal day, just like any other.

  Jack got up. He pushed open the door and listened again. Once he was sure that the coast was clear, he slipped into his parents’ room. It was neat as always, the bed perfectly made, with hardly a wrinkle in it.

  With a mounting sense of dread, he pulled back the covers.

  The wrench was there, just where he’d left it. His parents had spent the whole night in this room, but they’d never noticed it.

  They hadn’t found the wrench, because they hadn’t gone to bed.

  “I’m scared of them,” he told Thomas at recess. “I’m scared of my parents.”

  Thomas nodded thoughtfully, chewing a bar of peanut brittle. Jack had guessed right: He’d been out sick yesterday. He’d stepped barefoot on a slug while coming down the stairs in the morning, and the cold, squishy shock of it gave him an asthma attack. Thomas’s life was full of little misfortunes like that.

  “It’s as if they’re different people now,” Jack continued. “When they smile at me it feels fake. All this … normalness, it’s just an act. Underneath, they’re something else. I just don’t know what.”
r />   “Government agents,” Thomas said wisely.

  “Will you drop it with the government agents?” Jack cried. “They don’t go to bed! Even government agents have to sleep!”

  “Depends which government,” Thomas said with a cryptic waggle of his eyebrows.

  Jack gave up on persuading him. “I don’t want to go home,” he said. “I’m not sure I can face them.”

  Thomas’s face lit up. “Well, it’s Friday, isn’t it? Come and stay at my house for the weekend!”

  Jack looked into Thomas’s big, hopeful eyes, magnified to vast saucers by his glasses, and his heart sank.

  We’re not going to be buddies, he thought. Sorry, but we’re not. Just because you’re the only person I can talk to about this doesn’t make us BFFs.

  It made him feel bad, but there it was. To choose Thomas would be to choose only Thomas. His aura of profound dorkiness repelled other humans. He didn’t seem to have any other friends, which meant that even other dorks wouldn’t go near him. That was definitely a bad sign. If it wasn’t for the secret they shared, Jack would be avoiding him like the plague.

  “So? You wanna?” Thomas was jigging up and down with excitement. “My mom won’t mind. In fact, she won’t even notice.” The excitement dimmed on his face, like the sun going behind a cloud. “She doesn’t notice much that I do. Or anything, really. As long as the TV’s on …” His voice trailed away and he stared off into the distance.

  “My parents would never let me go,” Jack said with mock regret in his voice. Even if they would have, he didn’t want to accept. Going to Thomas’s for a sleepover would make it impossible to extract himself when the time came.

  Thomas focused again and clutched Jack’s arm, an earnest look on his face. “We have to get you out of that house!” He wiped a glistening trail of goo from his upper lip, studied it for a moment, then rubbed it into his skin like it was moisturizer. “What if they do experiments on you?”

  “I don’t think they’re going to do experiments on m—”

  The bell rang before Jack could protest further, and Thomas sprang to his feet, scooping up his Hulk backpack. “I’ll see you after school!” he yelled as he ran off toward his class. “We’ll work it out! Sleepover!”

  Jack sagged. Suddenly, facing his parents didn’t seem so terrible, after all.

  Going home was all he could think about for the rest of the day. What would he say when he saw Mom and Dad? Would they see through him? He had been acting weird at breakfast; he couldn’t help it. Did they already suspect he knew about them? Would he come home to find a black van waiting to take him away? Or did they have something worse in store?

  What if they do experiments on you?

  What if they drank his blood? Or killed him and put him in a box? Or did something weird to him with those strange machines, like deleting his memory or controlling his mind?

  It was hard to imagine them as enemies. As much as he’d struggled to connect with them, they’d always looked after him. Even his endless training was some sort of misplaced parental attempt to protect him, by teaching him survival skills that he’d never need. He’d never felt love for his mom and dad, but they’d always provided him with safety. He hadn’t realized how much he valued that till it was gone.

  What might they do if they found out he’d seen what was in the attic? Who were they, really?

  When the bell rang at the end of the day, he was slow to get up from his desk. The other kids hurried off, but he dragged his feet and was the last one out.

  “You took your time,” said Jodie Ellis when he finally emerged.

  He stared at her, dumbfounded. Jodie Ellis had been waiting outside his class. Waiting for him.

  “Uh … hey!” he managed.

  “Your name’s Jack, right?”

  “Right,” he said, still somewhat dazed. “You weren’t in class.”

  “Skipped it. English is boring.”

  “I thought you liked it? You’re always taking notes.”

  She looked confused for a moment, then a spasm of irritation crossed her face. Jack worried that he’d said something wrong, but she shrugged off the question. “Whatever. You want to hang out?”

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, now. Come on, let’s take a walk. I want to get to know you.”

  “You do?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Do I have to spell it out? I like you. Or at least, I like what I’ve seen so far.” She swatted him on the arm with the backs of her fingers. “Don’t screw it up, okay?”

  Jack broke out in a goofy grin. He couldn’t help it. It was almost too good to be true. Jodie Ellis was the prettiest girl in the school as far as he was concerned, and definitely the coolest. Jodie Ellis wanted to hang with him? Jodie Ellis liked him? It was as if all those missed Christmases and birthdays had come at once.

  “Hey, Jack!” Thomas called.

  His grin trembled at the edges. No, please, not again!

  Thomas hurried up to them, panting. He looked from Jack to Jodie and back again. “Ready to go?” he asked.

  Jodie gave Jack a dry stare. “He’s with you?”

  Jack was fighting to stop himself from strangling Thomas right there. “I wouldn’t say with me …”

  “Sure I am!” Thomas said. “Come on, Jack! We gotta make plans!” He turned to Jodie. “Jack’s parents are government agents who don’t ever sleep!” he explained eagerly. “We’ve got to get him away from there till he can find out about the secret machines in their attic!”

  Jack was still smiling to disguise the screaming inside. Jodie turned slowly to Jack and gave him a long look. “Government agents, huh?”

  “It’s not like it sounds,” Jack said feebly.

  “Yes, it is,” Thomas said, bewildered.

  “No,” said Jack through gritted teeth. “It isn’t.”

  “Yes,” said Thomas, as if talking to an idiot. “It is.”

  “NO IT ISN’T!” Jack yelled, unable to contain himself anymore.

  “YES IT IS!” Thomas yelled back, waving his hands around like an electrocuted monkey.

  Jodie looked bored. “Hey, Thomas. You need to take a hike, okay? Jack and I are going for a walk, and you’re not invited.”

  Thomas smirked at that. “Don’t be silly. He’s my best friend! We’re gonna—”

  “Fat boy!” she snapped, her voice sharp as a whip. “Go!”

  Thomas’s smirk faded. He looked at Jack with the wounded air of a recently kicked puppy. “Jack?” he said, his chin beginning to tremble.

  Jack shrugged awkwardly. “I’ll see you around, I guess,” he said. Then Jodie pulled on his arm and guided him away, leaving Thomas stunned and staring in the corridor.

  “Why do you hang out with that loser, anyway?” Jodie asked as they left, loud enough for Thomas to hear.

  Jack didn’t reply. He hated to admit it, but he felt terrible for blowing off Thomas like that. The kid was a pain in the butt, but he didn’t deserve to be treated meanly. It was just that it had come down to a choice between the coolest girl in the school and the uncoolest boy.

  No contest, really.

  Around the back of the school was a little path that ran off through the woods. It followed a small stream for a while and eventually came out among the condos near the swimming pool on Clark Street. The kids who lived over that way used it as a shortcut, but Jack had never explored it until now.

  Insects rattled and cheeped in the sweltering heat. Even under the shade of the branches it was too hot to think. Jack and Jodie walked side by side, the stream splashing past to their left, neither of them speaking. Jack racked his brain trying to think of something to break the awkward silence, but his brain was not cooperating.

  “You’ve been watching me in class, haven’t you?” Jodie said suddenly, casting him a sly sideways look.

  That sounded a bit stalkery to Jack. “I would say observing with interest.”

  “I’ve been watching you, too.” She handed him her cell phone.
“Wanna see?”

  “Uh … sure,” said Jack uncertainly. The cell phone was a brand he’d never seen before, sleek and black and expensive looking.

  A video popped up on the screen, showing grainy footage from a camera. He felt a chill as he recognized himself, hanging out uneasily by Jodie’s locker. Thomas came running up, and while Jack was trying to get rid of him, Jodie opened her locker, ignoring them both.

  It was from that day when he’d tried to say hello to her, and Thomas had ruined it. The whole scene, caught by a security camera in the hallway.

  “That’s …” He fought to find something positive to say but couldn’t. “That’s just really creepy. How did you get it?”

  “They keep the computer mainframe in the control room of the lab. All the camera records are there.”

  “It’s a locked control room, though.”

  “Whatever. The point is, I’ve been watching you watching me. That’s how I knew you liked me.”

  She gave him a mischievous smile. Jack tried to smile back but couldn’t quite manage it. This girl he’d admired from afar was not so entrancing close up. She was beautiful all right, and cool, but it was the cruel kind of cool, and that made her less beautiful. Plus there was this whole spying thing. It was impressive that she’d managed it, but it was weird all the same.

  By now they had come to a small clearing by the stream, where several paths met, some heading deeper into the woods. There was an old mossy log lying on its side, and birds were twittering in the trees.

  “We’re here,” she said.

  “Where’s here?”

  She turned to him and laid a finger on his lips. “Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.

  Jack suddenly forgot all that stuff about her being cruel or weird. His face glowed and his heart began to thump hard. He nodded mutely. She smiled at his nervousness, stood on her tiptoes, and leaned toward him. He closed his eyes and—

  “Jack!”

  His dad cannoned into him with a scream like a kamikaze owl, tearing him out of Jodie’s grip and sending them both tumbling to the dirt. They rolled over and over until they finally came to a stop some distance away, with Jack lying on his front, pinned beneath Dad’s weight. Mom was also there now, aiming a toy ray gun at Jodie that looked like a reject from a Star Trek cosplay.