Three Strikes

by Lucy Christopher

  I swallowed as I thought about my next words. ‘I don’t think we’re on an island,’ I said. ‘Up from the top of the hill, I saw nothing but trees.’

  ‘I’ve been thinking that too.’

  I searched his face, he was serious. ‘So … where?’

  ‘God knows.’ He hugged me close. ‘But we’ve found our road out at least.’

  The crops were taller than our heads as we weaved through. They brushed our arms, made me ticklish. I thought about the cat, maybe hiding there still, watching us. I thought again about snakes. About people waiting with guns. The cameras, watching. There was so much growth it was hard to see our way forward. It felt like the most stupid thing we’d ever done, walking through there, but also the most sensible. Either way, it would kill us or save us.

  But we got there. To a dirt path the other side. We followed that until it eventually turned to tarmac. Just like Sam had said it would.

  We followed that tarmac for ages. Until the day finally started to get dark. Until I was so thirsty and tired I thought I was hallucinating when we saw the first building.

  And then…

  And then…

  It’s hard to remember this part. I was pretty out of it. Seems Sam was too.

  But…

  Two people in that building – that house – sat beside us. They gave us some kind of tea; I remember that. And water, lots of it. There was an old lady with kind, crinkly eyes. She stared and stared at us, shaking her head. She spoke words to an old man that I didn’t understand.

  ‘Where are we?’ I said. I tried to. My voice had dried up.

  She told me to drink. The old man told me to rest. She looked at the bug bites on my legs and tutted. Then she pointed to where we’d come from, and I nodded. She spoke to the old man again. Sam talked to them more than I could right then, though I think he was babbling and I don’t think they could understand. We were both half-delirious.

  I thought about the others, wondered if they’d found a couple like this too. I hoped so. I tried to ask the old lady if she’d seen them.

  And then, sometime after that – I don’t know how long – that old couple walked with us to a town with more buildings. And there was food. And there was a phone. And there were so many other people staring and staring, too. Those people pointed to where we’d come from as well, they shook their heads.

  ‘They know,’ Sam said. ‘They know about those crops. They know they’re bad.’

  And finally the police came. Not soldiers. Or warring tribes. Not Lily and George. Not the others. I’d thought I was so sick of police after the past year. I’d thought I’d never want to speak to them again.

  But I did.

  And I called Dieter.

  He didn’t sound surprised to hear from me. He sounded glad. Pleased, even!

  ‘Kasha! I’ve been waiting for you to call! How’s the programme going? You feel any better? We miss you so much! Next year you’ve got to come with us to…’

  So, I guess he’d had no idea then, of everything that was going on. But he would’ve done soon enough, when we didn’t come back, when he never saw me again.

  Because later those two policemen sat with us in a small stone building with whitewashed walls and told us what could’ve happened to us. Gave us an idea of it, anyway.

  Seemed that other kids had also disappeared in this country, they said, kids from overseas too. Recently, kids had been documented as arriving into the country and then, after that … nothing. Disappeared. No one knew where they’d gone. They mentioned trafficking. And drug smuggling. They said they’d seen videos of children that were sent to rich men overseas to look at, to pick who they wanted.

  But I could see total confusion in their faces as they told us: helplessness. They were glad we’d turned up, but not just because we were safe – we would help them.

  ‘Who’ve you been with?’ they said. ‘Where were they going to send you? Which country? Which person?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ I said. ‘But I can tell you about Lily and George, a bit anyway.’

  One of the police officers went off to look at the crops we’d told them about, speaking on his mobile phone as he went out the door and asking for other police officers to join him from somewhere. The one officer remaining took more notes about what we said; he said there’d be English police on the phone to us soon, too.

  ‘They’ve been preying on kids who have nothing else,’ Sam said.

  ‘Ones looking for an escape,’ I added.

  And that, at last, felt true.

  ‘There’s a ring we know of,’ the policeman told Sam and me. ‘We think someone has been grooming kids for this ring, making them carry drugs eventually, brainwashing … your Lily and George …’

  It was their theory anyway. The only one they had. They wanted us to help them with it.

  And I think it made sense, what they were saying … what I could understand of it.

  I thought of the folder on the computer that Pete hadn’t managed to get into. Tribe Members. What was on it? Addresses? Of where Lily and George were hoping we’d go next? Video clips of each of us? Just what exactly was this footage they were going to send out? I shivered when I thought about where some of those cameras had been positioned in our camp, then shut my eyes and leant my head down against Sam’s shoulder.

  The police didn’t know who the three men were who had arrived in L and G’s camp in the van, though they asked us for enough descriptions of them. They showed us tonnes of pictures of people we didn’t recognise.

  ‘Just look at the footage that’s back in their camp. It’s all there,’ Sam said eventually, grumpily.

  They didn’t know whether Lily had been killed. Or even, really, who Lily or George were. Or what their exact motivations were, only that they were part of this ring.

  They didn’t know where Pete, Annie and Nyall had gone either. But they would search right away, they said, on all the major roads and towns: everywhere in the country. They’d send out alerts. They had leads now, they said. We’d have to be on TV, of course, do an interview: make our story known.

  So.

  Seems we’ll be on television, after all.

  And that was the other thing. We aren’t on an island. Not even close.

  We’re in a country. Still on the west coast of Africa, but we’ve been mainland all this time. So Lily and George had lied about that, too. Seems nothing was ever what it’d seemed. No programme. No island.

  I have to talk about these things in the police statements – I’m not even sure I’m meant to be writing this stuff here. And I’m not sure I want to write it down anymore, either – I mean, we’re safe now. At least I don’t have to keep writing this thing in the hope that someone will find it. Find me.

  But the cops haven’t told us everything yet. Sam thinks they’re worried about scaring us. But I just think they haven’t put it all together – they’re as clueless as us.

  And then there was Dieter, still waiting on the other end of the phone line. I remember the shock of feeling something – love? – when I heard him on the other end in that tiny, whitewashed town on the edge of the forest.

  He was waiting for me to tell him how his two thousand pounds had been well spent and how I was feeling so much better, and much less guilty about everything, and how I loved him after all, and how – after this successful psychological programme – I now wanted to come and live with him in his box-house with Cynthia’s nail art permanently. How I wouldn’t be a teenage dirtbag anymore who binge drinks and swears … and maybe some of that was true, and maybe some of it wasn’t. But, still…

  ‘Kash?’ he’d said down the phone, after it must’ve been an age since I’d said anything. ‘Are you OK over there, really?’

  And I’d reached out for Sam’s hand and squeezed it before I’d said, ‘No. I want to come home, Dad.’

  ‘Why, honey?’

  ‘Something bad’s happened here, but I hope it’s going to be OK now.’

&nbs
p; I told him the truth: all the stuff I’d been hiding from him about the way we’d got on the programme. I even told him how I’d been thinking of escaping, just running away into the undergrowth and never coming back.

  And, after a while of talking some more, I’d handed the phone to the policeman, and I’d said, ‘Can you tell my dad where we are? He’s going to fly out.’

  Sam had smiled. And I’d rested my head down onto his shoulder, and I’d traced paw prints across his skin as we waited for what was next.

  And that’s where we are now. Waiting.

  They’ve moved us to a bigger town, where we can wait in a hotel, and where lots of police can ask us lots of questions. And those police might even want to read this journal at some point. I’m not sure about that part yet.

  That’s partly why I’m not writing so much anymore, actually – how much do I want them to know of my story? All that stuff with Sam? With Mum? Maybe some stuff’s just for me.

  Still, they’ve let Sam and me share a room. So that’s something. It’s got a ginormous double bed in it, and air conditioning, and a mini-bar filled with coke and orange juice and tiny bottles of whisky. (Least, it was filled with that!)

  Oh, and they’ve found Annie and Nyall, on the side of one of the major roads trying to hitch out of there. So that’s something too. We haven’t seen them yet, but they’re bringing them back to this hotel. I wonder if they’ve worked out we’re on the mainland too.

  If I look out of the window, I can see cameras and reporters gathering near the hotel’s entrance below us. Waiting for us. So we’re going to be famous after all. If I gave a couple of interviews to the right sort of people, perhaps I’d even get some money – pay Dieter back that way, at least. I’ll tell Annie to do that too, when she arrives. She’d make great telly with that haunted baby bird look she’s got.

  They haven’t found Pete yet, though they say they’ve got a lead on him. Even after him being such a dick, I hope he’s not dead, or trafficked, or carrying drugs up his bum. I hope he’s not with Lily and George, either.

  One of the policemen actually told me where Pete lives, back in England – it’s not all that far from where Dieter lives in the city.

  ‘Were the two of you connected before the programme?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘You kidding?’ I laughed at him. ‘If I saw a guy like Pete on the street I’d run him over.’

  The policeman had looked at me funny then, and I’d laughed again, but … who knows, if it turns out he’s not dead or trafficked, and we ever end up back there at the same time, I might look him up. I know Sam’s said he wants to see him again anyway.

  But, until then, Sam and me just get to curl up in this bed. For hours and hours. And there’s not even one bedbug. And it’s cool, cool, COOL… Literally. The first time I haven’t sweated for weeks.

  In a day or so Sam’s mum, and my dad, will find us. And then, sometime after that, we’ll go home.

  All of us. Together.

  And that doesn’t seem so dark anymore.

  Until the therapy begins again of course. The talking. The endless telling of everything that happened. But I’ll do these things at home, in Dieter’s house in the city: no more dream solutions of escape to tropical paradise. Now it’s just hard work, I know that. And it will be hard, thinking of Mum, remembering her, trying to pick out what was true about her … what was good. I’m getting tense just thinking about it, and about all the decisions I’m going to have to make when I’m back, too – where to live, what to do next, who I’m going to be…

  SHIT!

  But until then…

  Sam’s looking at me from the side of his eyes and he’s smiling in that way that makes his cheeks go red and gorgeous. He’s just jumped onto our ginormous double bed, patted the space beside him for me. He’s raising his eyebrows.

  I’m going to join him. Course I am. Can’t resist any longer. Sam is so flipping hot when he’s acting like a dork (not that I’d ever tell him that).

  And he’s my hot.

  I like that.

  I like him.

  So fucking much.

  Did I really just write that in here? There’s NO WAY the police are seeing this book now.

  So, I’m signing off.

  Laters…

  Chapter One

  Lying on the grass next to a freshly covered grave, Margaret ‘Bo’ Peeps ignored the haunted weathervane that watched her from the school roof all the way across town. Ignoring it was for the best. Silas – whose spirit was supposed to inhabit the weathervane – was rumoured to have been an ill-tempered but harmless sort of fellow, and so his glaring presence was generally ignored.

  Bo was not surprised by the existence of things like haunted weathervanes. She wasn’t fazed by doors that would only open when they were in the right mood. Or birds that never landed, cats that seemed to read your thoughts, or the two-headed fish that occasionally washed up on the Blackfin shoreline. No, having grown up in Blackfin, Bo was used to weirdness. None of that weirdness had prepared her for the devastating reality of her best friend dying, though.

  It had been a month since Skylar Rousseau had drowned. A month since Sky had fallen from Blackfin pier on the night of her sixteenth birthday. An accident, everyone said. A terrible shame, but just one of those things. But of all the inexplicable things Bo had seen happen in this town, Sky dying was something she simply could not wrap her head around.

  Two weeks earlier Bo had stood in almost the exact same spot she now lay on as they lowered her best friend’s coffin into the ground. Stood there, dry-eyed, trying to make herself believe that Sky was inside that box. It hadn’t seemed possible. Hadn’t seemed real that Bo would never see her friend again.

  Perhaps that was why she had taken to passing through the cemetery’s iron gates each night to lie on the grass next to Sky’s mounded grave, talking to her dead friend as she would have had Sky still been alive.

  Bo reached down and pulled a squashed packet of cigarettes from her pocket. She’d only started smoking the odd one to annoy her mother. Then, somehow, it had become a habit. She knew it was vile, and her friends hated it.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Bo said to Sky’s headstone, ‘if you’re here, give me a sign and I’ll quit right now. I swear, this’ll be my last smoke. Ever.’

  She waited. Nothing happened. The cemetery was quiet … too quiet.

  ‘Fine. Give me the silent treatment. I’ll quit, okay? I just need a bit of time to … to stop feeling like utter crap.’ Bo pursed her lips to stop the quiver she could feel threatening to break loose. ‘Honestly, if you really had to go and snuff it, you could’ve waited until after Cam’s birthday.’ Cam Vega had only moved to Blackfin two years earlier, but had quickly become close friends with both Bo and Sky. With Sky gone, their trio had been blown apart, leaving Bo and Cam to figure out their new Sky-less dynamic. ‘Her birthday party was the most miserable one I’ve ever been to, and I was there when Bridget’s pet rabbit choked to death on a bit of wrapping paper, so that’s saying something.’

  Bo yawned, feeling the late hour creeping up on her.

  ‘Cam cried so much when she was blowing out the candles she made the cake taste salty. Honestly, it was disgusting. Though I suppose if we’re ranking crappy birthdays, yours will always be the winner, won’t it? Or maybe all birthdays are cursed now.’

  Bo’s cigarette smoke darkened briefly to match her mood, though only the keenest of eyes would have noticed. She ground the cigarette out until it was no more than a twisted stub, then stuffed it back into the packet. It really was vile.

  In the distance, a clock began striking the hour – or striking an hour, at least, as it never chimed the correct time. Bo had no idea where the clock actually was. The chimes sounded like a church bell more than anything, though Bo couldn’t see how that was possible when there was no church in Blackfin, nor had there ever been one as far as she knew. Whenever the unseen clock rang out across the town, its residents might exchange a gl
ance and shrug, but as its chiming caused no particular inconvenience, it was left to continue without a lot of thought. Now though, its sound caused Bo to glance at her watch.

  Midnight.

  She scrambled to her feet. As understanding as Bo’s mother had been lately when it came to her eldest child’s need to visit the cemetery, she’d become very jumpy since Sky’s death. All the parents in Blackfin had. If one beloved teenage girl could be taken from the town without warning, then why not another?

  ‘Bad things always come in threes,’ Bo’s mother often said. This was generally followed by three sneezes or some such that would allow her to narrow her eyes meaningfully in Bo’s direction.

  ‘Better shoot off,’ Bo said, patting Sky’s headstone. ‘Do you want to pick tonight’s song, or shall I?’ She fished Sky’s iPod from her pocket and wiped away the sticky fingerprints left on it by her twin younger brothers. Sky had left it at Bo’s house only a few weeks ago, though it seemed like a lifetime had passed since then.

  Bo knew she should return the iPod to Sky’s parents, and she would … just not yet. Gui and Lily Rousseau were both rather impressive people – Gui in stature, and Lily in temper – and grieving for their daughter hadn’t exactly made them more approachable. Besides, Bo liked listening to her best friend’s music. It made it easier to pretend Sky was still around, in a way.

  ‘Fine, you can choose,’ Bo said. ‘But you’d better not pick something crap.’ She put the earbuds in her ears and set it to play a random track. If Sky was there in any ghostly form, then surely she would steer the iPod to play something meaningful. Sky’s favourite song, maybe, or something with a message for Bo hidden in the lyrics?