We disembarked from the SUV like grateful pilgrims stepping from the Mayflower.
I set the Pekingese down, facing him toward the forest. Then, spreading my arms wide, I declared in a loud, clear voice, “Be free, Milo. Return to the wilderness from whence you came.” I wiped a mock tear from my eye as he toddled off.
Yet instead of joining the other animals for an exhilarating life jam-packed with wild adventure, Milo huffed and puffed his way back to the SUV and cocked a leg, relieving himself on a rear wheel.
Mum rolled her eyes, knocked on the lodge’s front door, and opened it. “Dad?”
If I’d thought the outside was amazing, nothing had prepared me for the interior.
The sitting room was bigger than our entire three-bedroom apartment back in sunny England. It had high ceilings with natural wood beams, and several squashy-looking sofas and chairs covered in blankets. A fireplace dominated the far wall, flames crackling in the hearth.
I inhaled the scents of pine and old leather.
Heaven.
A side door creaked open, and a stocky man with flyaway hair and a salt-and-pepper beard stepped through. Deep lines weathered his forehead, and he wore a flannel shirt, dark jeans, and hiking boots. When he spotted us, a crooked, welcoming smile spread across his face, wrinkling the corners of his eyes.
“Dad.” Mum rushed over and they embraced.
“Glad you arrived safely,” he said in a gravelly voice.
Mum grinned at him. “You look well.”
He nodded.
My father strode over, thrust out a hand, and they shook, exchanging pleasantries.
Then it was my turn.
“Hi, Granddad.” I beamed and offered a hand too, but the old guy drew me into a bear hug and thumped my back.
“Good to meet ya again, kid,” he said. “Call me Grandpa John.”
My smile spread so wide my cheeks hurt. Our family had just expanded by an extra thirty percent—not including Milo—and I couldn’t wait to get to know my grandfather.
Speaking of Milo, he huffed, puffed, and snorted his way through the open door. I guessed he was too institutionalised to make a break for freedom.
Grandpa John cocked a bushy eyebrow at the odd-looking, snuffling purebred. “Looks like the coyotes have a new snack.” He pronounced the word ky-oats.
I chuckled.
Yeah, I was going to like Grandpa John.
I was going to like Grandpa John a lot.
Dad and I brought in our belongings while Mum and Grandpa prepared dinner, chatting about the past, with my mother asking if so-and-so was still alive and saying how overcrowded Silverthorne looked these days.
Overcrowded? Was she insane? The woman had just moved from London, the absolute definition of the word.
Grandpa John showed us to our rooms.
My bedroom was at the far end of a long corridor, behind a whitewashed wooden door with a grandfather clock next to it.
The room itself was many times larger than my shoebox back in London. It had a king-sized bed, a walk-in closet, en suite bathroom, and French doors leading to a veranda with a view of more forest and mountains.
A classic movie poster hung above a desk—The Seven Year Itch, starring Marilyn Monroe, Tom Ewell, and Evelyn Keyes.
I sighed as I set my cases on the floor.
“What’s the verdict?” Grandpa John asked.
I shrugged. “Yeah, guess it’ll do.” And beamed at him.
My gaze drifted to a silver-framed photo on the desk, an image of a young woman holding a baby. Grandma Alice.
I stared at her.
She had beautiful long dark hair, and a tall, slender physique. I could see my mother’s likeness in the shape of her jawline, the way her ears stuck out slightly, and her pinched nose.
Mum rarely talked about her mother. Grandma Alice died way before I was born, and my grandfather had lived alone ever since.
Grandpa John plucked the frame from the desk, clutched it to his chest, and gave me a crooked smile. “Best get you fed.”
Back in the kitchen, we ate a dinner of steak, chips—sorry, I mean fries—and peas, followed by shovelfuls of pecan pie. As we sat by the fire afterward, bellies full, laughing and telling stories, I decided this would officially be the best place to live in the entire universe.
Happy days.
* * *
GAME SPACE
TWO
Ugh.
Two weeks in and I was going out of my damn mind.
B.O.R.E.D.
Although I was happy to move from the endless bustle of a city to calm wilderness and the lodge, I missed my friends.
We received a letter explaining I wasn’t able to start school for another six months. An eternity. My grandfather had filled out the school form incorrectly. He’d gotten my age wrong, along with the date I was supposed to start. He apologised for his mistake every time I bumped into him, which was rarely.
I’m not sure where Grandpa John wandered off to. The only time I saw him was at breakfast, then he’d vanish. Like, literally vanish. I’d even thought of following him a few times, but the old guy was like a ninja—here one second and nothing but a memory the next.
At first, I thought he was off hunting somewhere, but he never left with a gun or returned with a bleeding carcass. The only way I knew my grandfather had been around was by finding a coffee mug on the side or the odd item or book in the sitting room moved out of place, but that was it.
To make matters a billion times worse, my parents were at work during the day, sometimes not coming home until the small hours of the morning, if at all. On the rare occasions I did see Mum and Dad, they looked exhausted, so my vigorous and heartfelt complaints had no effect.
“Please come home more,” I said one evening as they both sat at the kitchen table, slowly munching on a reheated lasagne with the enthusiasm of cows chewing their cud.
“Leo,” Dad said in a worn-out voice. “We both have important jobs. You knew this would happen.”
I frowned at him. “No, I didn’t. You said it would be amazing moving here. That we’d have plenty of extra time together, not less. That I’d make loads more friends than I had in London, not zero.”
“You will make friends,” Mum said in an equally low drone. “When you start school.”
“That’s months away. What am I supposed to do until then?” I shook my head. “Look, Mum, can’t you get a job at a hospital nearer the lodge?”
She shrugged.
And from that moment on, each moan and rant passed through my parents as though they were mindless ghosts, only getting the odd grunt or “mmmhmm” in reply.
Infuriating.
So much for being a new, extended family.
I wanted Mum and Dad home so we could do things together—chat, play games and visit places with Grandpa John. No matter what I tried, or how much I pleaded—even threatening to join a biker gang—they were too tired and irritable to see sense.
Not what I’d imagined.
Also, I had no internet, no phone, and no television.
Seriously? How does someone not have the three cornerstones of human survival?
I had to admit the first few days in Colorado were amazing; I’d explored the wilderness and marvelled at the varied landscape, with its mountains, forests, and lakes.
Milo came with me a few times too, huffing along the trails, sniffing every rock and pinecone, peeing on every tree trunk and root.
Once, we spotted a bear. At least, I thought it was a bear. It was hard to gauge size and distance through the dense woodland, so it could have been an overweight raccoon. Either way, pretty cool.
Now when I snatched up Milo’s leash and waved it at him with an encouraging smile, he looked at me with his boss-eyed, flat face as if to say, “Pppfffttt. Not a bleedin’ chance, mate,” and he’d go back to sleep.
I’d brought three books in my luggage: The Martian by Andy Weir—a science fiction masterpiece, in my humble opinion; an old-s
chool classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke; and last but not least, an incredible non-fiction book called Ancient Egyptian Magic by Bob Brier.
I had already read them a thousand times each, but I read them again for good measure, in case I’d missed a minuscule detail here or there.
I hadn’t.
Then I attempted drawing to pass the time, but everything resembled a jumbled mess. So, probably worth millions.
I played music on my laptop over and over until I was sick of it; there are only a finite amount of Danny Boys you can bear before insanity takes hold.
I tried out the one pre-installed game I had, Skylark, where you play as a plucky, pixelated bird, flying across the screen, steering over rooftops, through windows, and avoiding objects while deftly popping balloons.
Yeah. I couldn’t get past the first ten seconds.
Pretty sure the keys weren’t working properly.
Maddening beyond belief.
I watched the four movies I owned too: The Goonies, treasure-hunting classic; Avatar, all-time, blue cat-monkey greatness; Avengers Assemble, pew, pew, whoosh; and Gnomeo and Juliet . . . don’t ask.
Desperate for any other form of entertainment, I searched the house, but apart from a Mason jar filled with marbles, a biography on William Thomson, a novel about King Arthur, and a well-thumbed copy of Alice in Wonderland on a shelf by the front door, I was out of luck.
If I had known about the lodge’s lack of basic amenities before I’d left the UK, I would’ve stolen my father’s credit card and downloaded everything.
But on my sixteenth birthday, a rare thing happened.
All three guardians showed up at once.
How about that?
Redemption.
Mum and Dad pulled up in matching cars—silver with electric windows and stereo systems from this decade.
Unbe-freaking-lievable.
As they strode toward the lodge, I bounced on the balls of my feet and held out a hand, eager for either set of keys.
Back home, the legal driving age was seventeen, but I was sure it was sixteen in Colorado.
For one giddy moment I imagined freedom—driving on Route 66 across the grand old US-of-A, windows down, Milo in the passenger seat with the wind in his fur, heading to the promised land of internet, modern entertainment, and corrective eye surgery for pets.
Mum and Dad chuckled at my outstretched hand, shaking their heads as they walked into the house.
I raced after them. “Can I at least have a moped?”
Another pair of hearty chortles.
What is their problem?
I got the feeling my parents were deliberately keeping me housebound so they knew exactly where I was at any given moment. Because Mum and Dad were so busy with their jobs, perhaps they were using the lodge’s remote location as parenting by proxy, which was kind of smart but extremely irritating.
Either that or they knew I was one hundred percent guaranteed to crash whatever vehicle they gave me. I couldn’t ride a bicycle without having a near-fatal accident within the first ten seconds.
However, I felt a little more forgiving when my parents produced a cake topped with sixteen candles, sang Happy Birthday in surprising harmony—Grandpa John providing the bass—and then brought out the presents.
I got hiking boots, a parka, several pairs of wool socks, gloves, and a knitted hat from my ever-sensible mother.
God bless her.
Dad bought me a smartphone.
Yay.
But I couldn’t help showing my disappointment when I discovered it didn’t have a signal, and therefore no internet.
My father noticed my crestfallen expression. “I spoke to the shop owner,” he said. “Told me a new cell tower is going up in a month or so.” He winked. “Dragging us poor hill-folk from the dark ages.”
“Great,” I muttered.
I had that to look forward to.
Dad also handed over a book about the Ancestral Pueblo culture. I looked forward to learning all I could about my new country’s past and yearned to visit the nearest Native American museum.
Grandpa John gave me a—well, I wasn’t sure what the object was for, but it was unusual. My best guess at the time was that it was an ornament—a crystal, cold to the touch, cylindrical, four inches long and one in diameter, transparent for the most part, and filled with overlapping streaks of blue.
“Thanks, Grandpa,” I said, and meant it.
I decided to put the sculpture on my window ledge, where it would catch the morning light.
Milo received new bowls, chew toys, and a collar, all of which totally unimpressed him.
It was a Cooper family tradition to celebrate the scatter-brained Pekingese’s birthday the same day as mine because he was adopted, like yours truly, and no one knew his real age. Judging by his almost constant need to sleep and greying muzzle, I guessed he was somewhere around one hundred and seventy in dog years.
I surveyed my presents.
Overall, a good birthday.
Minus friends, but Mum was right—I’d make an effort getting some of those when I started school.
If I ever did.
And then the next day came. My parents returned to work—Dad risking his life, Mum saving others—Grandpa John vanished in a puff of smoke, and everything returned to being as boring as ever.
I decided I had no choice; I would have to walk to town. I was certain they had electricity and everything. How utterly twenty-first century of them.
But I wouldn’t go right at that moment.
I glanced at my watch. It was fast approaching ten o’clock at night, and there were no signs of a parent or guardian returning.
I’d already finished off the evening by dozing in one of the lounge chairs by the fire as Milo snored at my feet, his legs twitching, no doubt dreaming about peeing on car wheels.
I took that as my cue to give up on another wasted day. I stretched, yawned, and trudged halfway across the sitting room, then a strange buzzing sound stopped me dead in my tracks.
What was that?
My smartphone was in my pocket, not on vibrate, and still had no signal . . .
Brrrrttttttt. Brrrrttttttt.
The noise came from the kitchen.
Milo opened one eye and lifted his head a fraction of an inch off the floor, but that was the extent of his investigation.
I guess it’s up to me.
“Thanks for your help, buddy,” I called as I headed into the kitchen.
Brrrrttttttt. Brrrrttttttt.
I turned around.
An old-fashioned phone sat by the door, yellowed plastic, big dial on the front.
Brrrrttttttt. Brrrrttttttt.
I answered. “Hello?”
“Leo?”
“Yeah?”
“Grandpa John.”
I relaxed. “Hey. Where are you?” Until that moment, I didn’t know he even possessed a landline.
“Hard to describe.”
“It’s a pub, isn’t it?” My lips twitched.
That would explain his prolonged absences.
“No,” came the curt reply. “I need you to come to me.”
“O-kay,” I said. “Where are you?”
“Look outside.”
I stretched the phone’s cord as far as it would go and peered out of the kitchen window into blackness. I squinted. “Am I looking in the right direction?”
As if in answer, thousands of blue and white fairy lights sprang to life, illuminating a faint path I hadn’t spotted before, winding from the lodge through the forest, then disappearing up a hill into the distance.
I gaped.
“See you soon,” Grandpa John said, followed by a click as he hung up the phone.
* * *
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ArcadiA: A Game Space FastRead Page 9
