by Jeff Povey
I continue. ‘That’s why we’re here right?’
More paper aeroplanes are aimed my way. They’re hastily made and not very aerodynamic so most miss me, veering off at impossible angles. But one hits the back of my neck. It stings. I grab it after it lands on the floor and hurl it back as hard as I can.
I should’ve known what would happen when I did that.
The paper plane arrows straight for Carrie and hits her in the eye.
‘Agh!’ she squeals and immediately clutches her eye. ‘You cow!’
Lucas tenses; he doesn’t like what I’ve just done to his friend, never mind that I’m being attacked from all angles. Now everyone else has started ripping out pages from their school jotters. They’ve gone from docile, sloth-like creatures to animated and angry in half a heartbeat.
‘I’m blind! I’m blind!’ Carrie howls, one hand plastered to her wounded eye while her good eye lasers me with unbridled hatred.
I’m expecting Mr Connors to rise from his slough of disinterest but he doesn’t say a word.
Then the rest of the class take the opportunity to start a fully-fledged attack. Not only have I been goading our teacher, but now I’ve injured Carrie and that apparently is too much.
More paper planes are launched my way, white pieces of paper filling the classroom, quickly. Notebooks are torn apart as paper plane after paper plane is hastily constructed and flung through the air.
Mr Connors watches them piling up on the floor and desks.
‘Sir.’ Never mind the aeroplanes, I want an answer, a reply, a riposte, anything. I want him to speak, to at least tell me something.
Paper planes zip over and around me. It’s like the Battle of Britain in the classroom. Some hit my skin with their pointy noses so I shield my head and face and try to crouch lower in my seat. Carrie is still wailing about being blind and Lucas is consoling her.
Everywhere I turn there are a stack of paper planes, and it reminds me of the snowstorm I nearly died in. I’m getting sick of everything and everyone attacking me.
I look back at the rest of the class and all of them are staring at me. There’s a silent aggression there and most of it is emanating from Carrie who raises her index finger at me.
I guess she isn’t blind after all.
I look away and am about to sweep some crashed paper planes from my desk when I see that one of them has writing on its wing.
I pick up the plane and read words that are designed to mock me: You’ll learn
Which is hysterical considering I haven’t learned one single thing today.
The plane with the writing is immaculately made and perfectly aerodynamic which leads me to guess it must be a message from Lucas. Everything he does is perfect and brilliant. If he threw a paper aeroplane, then it would land exactly where he wanted it to.
It’s not like the Lucas I know to use irony and I wonder if there’s more to the message than I realise.
You’ll learn
THE POWER OF SUGGESTION
‘I really thought Billie had cut him open,’ Johnson tells me. ‘Bought it hook, line and sinker.’
We are heading as quickly as we can towards what’s left of a hotel that Non-Ape punched to death while he was busy trying to avenge the tragic death of his version of Carrie.
‘You were meant to,’ I say. ‘But what’s worse is that we all thought she could do that. We all thought Billie could be that evil. Which says more about us, I think.’
‘She did just try and drown us,’ he reminds me.
While we’ve been walking, Johnson and I have decided on a definite plan of action. We’re going to find and collect everyone we can, alive or dead, scoop them up and somehow find Another-Billie and hope she can heal all of them. She’s back in our hometown some thirty or so miles north of London, making sure my dad is safe. He’s the key to our escape and with Billie distracted thinking she’s won Johnson, it’s time to get out of this increasingly disastrous world. So we round everyone up, make them all better and then my dad sends us all home.
‘What about Lucas?’ Johnson asks,
‘We’ll get everyone,’ I assure him. ‘We are not leaving without them. Another-Billie can heal them all.’ I hope that’s true but have no real way of knowing.
‘And Billie?’
I haven’t got an answer to that. I never imagined leaving Billie here, but it feels like she’s made her choice.
The Thames is still settling down, more or less moving through the city on its own terms, rather than being bullied by a giant tidal wave.
‘How am I going to explain these when I get back?’ Johnson says revealing the talons in his fingertips.
‘That’s all part of the plan. It’s not just us that we need to rescue, it’s the others as well.’
‘The bad versions of us?’ Johnson asks.
‘I made a promise to Rev Two’s mum. I swore I’d send her daughter back home. And if I can work out how to do that then I’m going to trade it for finding our friends and theirs and then getting Another-Billie to heal them as well.’
‘That’ll go well. I mean, we all get along so amazingly,’ he adds wryly. ‘But getting everyone home?’ Johnson adds. ‘You need proof you can do that before you open negotiations.’
‘Which is why we’re going back to the hotel. My dad’s papers are buried there somewhere. All we need to do is find them, take them to my dad and he’ll make everything be as it should be.’ That was really the Moth’s plan, but I’m picking up the baton and running with it now.
Johnson falls silent; he knows that’s a long shot at best. The plans are buried under tons of rubble.
‘Wait a sec, their Moth is—’ he starts.
‘Don’t say it,’ I quickly cut in, remembering that their Moth got run over by a train and his head sort of got separated from the rest of him. It was my fault and I’m still trying to come to terms with it. ‘Every plan has a weak spot,’ I tell Johnson.
‘But the idea is sound,’ he reassures me. ‘We help them, they help us. Perfect.’
I know he doesn’t believe it will be anything like perfect.
‘If we can just find everyone, good and evil, or at least as many as we can, then we’ve got a chance. I know where their Lucas is, in a motorway tunnel, so surely he’ll be grateful when we make him live again.’
‘Yeah. Deliriously happy.’ Johnson decides against saying more in case the plan falls down around our ears, and we walk in silence for a moment.
‘Rev,’ Johnson starts again after a long pause. ‘I’m just going to put something else out there.’
‘I was lying,’ I quickly tell him. I know what he’s thinking, that I was prepared to let him go with Billie. ‘You know that, right?’
‘Course.’ He nods. ‘I wanted you to save the Ape.’
‘I wanted to save you both,’ I tell Johnson. ‘I just didn’t know how to.’
‘Main thing is, it all worked out,’ smiles Johnson. He doesn’t bother to mention Other-Johnson, but I can’t forget what he did. And even if I could, Johnson’s metal-toothed smile is a reminder of their switched minds and bodies. I make a mental note: Johnson’s teeth will have to be painted white when we do get back.
Another building gets headbutted by Non-Ape.
The Ape immediately touches his forehead.
‘Healed!’
‘Sealed!’
I wonder what Non-Ape will do without the Ape and vice versa. He’s bound to get very distressed when he realises they can’t be together and when he loses it he is unstoppable. It’ll take what’s left of his doppelganger friends to try and make him see sense. Assuming that after we’ve brought them back from the dead and reunited them that they don’t then turn on us and try and wipe us out all over again.
Evil-Carrie is beyond reanimation, flattened by a motorised wheelchair into a puddle of nothing. I think we could find Moth Two, but I can’t see how offering his headless corpse for reanimation to Another-Billie will cement our fragile alliance.
/>
‘We’re going to need a bigger shopper trolley,’ I tell Johnson as we wheel Carrie’s broken body along. ‘By the time we’ve finished we’re not only going to have Carrie, we’re also going to have an Evil-GG, the real GG and two Lucases to wheel back to town.’
The front of a London bus caves in under Non-Ape’s headbutt. A moment later the Ape touches his forehead.
‘Healed!’
‘Sealed!’
‘Cut that out!’ I yell. It comes as much of a surprise to me as it does to Johnson and the Apes. ‘Can we just do what we’ve got to do, and then get out of London?’ The last few days have taken their toll and I’m unravelling. Our plan is desperate and mad and stupid, but without it we have nothing. So I’ll take the mad and the desperate.
If the Moth is right about how time behaves differently in every conceivable alternate earth, then it may just be that we all arrive back in the classroom without anyone ever knowing. So it’s possible we can Narnia it. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll wardrobe it.
‘I’m going to quit school,’ he jokes. ‘Never going back to detention ever again.’
‘What, you didn’t like the bright light that swept us away?’
‘Not as much as you’d imagine.’ He rises to my heavy irony. ‘Though I did get to spend time with you.’ His black eyes glint and for a moment I wonder . . .
Did Other-Johnson really swap? Or is this another of his daring deceits? My eyes narrow as I take Johnson in.
‘What?’ he asks.
‘Just looking,’ I tell him. But then transmit a thought. ‘If you’re playing games again I will never forgive you. Not in any world or dimension.’
Johnson stares back at me and there isn’t the slightest sign that he heard my telepathic challenge.
I try sending another thought. ‘I mean it. If you didn’t swap then I’ll . . . I’ll kill you.’
His eyes don’t flicker, but he does frown. ‘Why are you staring at me like that?’ he asks.
I let the thought go. This has to be the real Johnson. It just has to be.
‘After this ends I might join a nunnery,’ I tell him. ‘Just do good things that no one can punish me for.’
‘A nunnery? You can’t do that, Rev.’ His black eyes find mine and bore deep.
‘No? I’m not sure that’s up to you,’ I play along.
‘Well, I’d only come along and break you out of there. I’d blow a hole in the wall and drive through it on my motor bike.’ Other-Johnson rescued me on his Harley and, I have to admit, I still swoon a little at the thought of that. He dragged me from a snowstorm and pulled me into the dying heat of summer. From freezing to boiling in two seconds flat. In more ways than one.
‘Then what?’ I ask.
Johnson squeezes my hand. ‘I’d tell you to climb aboard.’
‘Even while I was wearing a habit?’
His hand tightens around mine, he’s forgotten that he’s much stronger again.
‘I’d break that habit,’ he tells me with a wink.
‘That’s possibly the worst joke ever,’ I say to him, quickening our pace, as the destruction and chaos loom angrily around us.
We really have made a mess of this city.
OK, LESSON OVER
I’m five minutes into the last lesson before lunch. Music. The teacher is called Mrs Crow and she is a large, wide woman with huge thick glasses that magnify her eyes.
At home, everyone does impressions of Mrs Crow’s shrill, shrieking voice. But not, it seems, people in this classroom. Where again they sit in silence, watching as Mrs Crow plays a piece by Beethoven. Well, she attempts to play, but actually she chops down on the piano keys with no rhythm or grace. The wrong notes jar and clang and set my teeth on edge, but on she plays, trapped in a world of her own.
This world’s version of GG is in this class too, sitting in the same row as Billie. I beamed at both of them as soon as I saw them, an instinctive reaction, but when they looked back with a total lack of recognition I quickly sat in the only empty seat. Again at the front of the classroom. And the clanging music is especially loud because I am only a few metres away from the piano.
On she plays, murdering Beethoven with her stubby little fingers, and pretty quickly I come to realise that this is it, this is the lesson, listening to a woman who has her big magnified eyes clamped tightly shut as she loses herself to the rickety rhapsody she is creating.
I glance back at Billie and GG, but like the rest of the class they have come prepared and have slipped earphones into their ears.
This is like no school I’ve ever known. No one teaches anything and the pupils barely say a word. They just sit waiting for the day to end.
GG is now gyrating to whatever music he is listening to, probably something from a musical, an uptempo, sing-a-long sort of a beat. Billie’s earphones are plugged into her phone and she is clearly texting someone. The texts she receives in return make her smile, but in one of those mischievous ways that means whoever is texting is writing naughty things. Her lithe and long fingers dance over her phone keyboard.
My parents told me to go and make some friends so while Mrs Crow has her eyes tightly shut I get out of my chair and head to the back of the classroom. I watch people fidget uneasily as I pass them and I can feel their worry accompanying me all the way to Billie’s desk. She hasn’t noticed because whoever is texting her is making her snigger. It’s only when my shadow falls over her that she looks up.
This Billie is identical to the best friend I’ll never, ever see again. But she is surlier and less forthcoming. She clearly doesn’t like that I’ve come over to her.
‘I’m Rev,’ I tell her. The hideous clunk of Beethoven coupled with New-Billie wearing earphones mean she can’t make out a word I’m saying. I try again, louder. ‘I’m Rev.’
New-Billie’s eyes meet mine and I feel GG stop gyrating in his seat next to her. I glance his way and offer another smile. ‘Reva Marsalis,’ I tell him. ‘Hi.’
My theory is that there has never been a Rev here – well, for at least twelve years. She never went to this school; she never met Billie or any of the others. She can’t have done considering my dad – the liar – spent all that time looking for me. But I need to start making friends quickly and I gravitate naturally to the copies of the people I once knew.
New-GG slips his pink headphones from his tiny but perfect ears. His straight-up quiff bounces back to its full height and I still enjoy that any GG you care to mention would never ever wear a school uniform. He has on bright yellow jeans and a faux-fur-lined combat jacket that has the word WAR(M) stitched on to the back of it. My GG wore the exact same jacket and, although it’s a small insignificant thing, it could also be a way to build a bridge between me and them. If they are the same as my friends, then surely they’ll like me in the same way. His fingernails are painted yellow and eyeshadow highlights his glittering eyes. Yes. He is definitely very similar.
‘I love that jacket,’ I tell him, thinking I can appeal to his vanity. ‘It’s so you.’
New GG takes a moment to digest this then bats the thought away. ‘You don’t know what’s so me, sweetie. You have no idea in that pink fuzzy brain of yours. So back to your seat,’ he purrs.
‘I’m Rev,’ I try again.
‘Get lost.’ New-Billie’s words hit like a punch.
‘Wait—’
‘No standing room here, just sitting.’ New-GG points a long one inch painted nail towards my desk. Mrs Crow continues to blindly plunge her stubby fingers into the black and white keys.
‘You don’t understand,’ I tell Billie. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Sit down,’ a boy hisses behind me.
‘Yeah, sit down.’ A girl’s voice echoes the boy’s, the same tautness in her tone.
‘Read my lips. Get. Lost.’ New-Billie eyes me boldly.
‘Fly away.’ New-GG flutters his fingers at me. ‘Fly, fly, fly.’
‘Please, give me one minute to explain,’ I tell them. �
��Talk to me, Billie.’ I’m almost begging her when I feel a hand grip my wrist and suddenly I’m being tugged away. The hand is strong and when I turn I realise it’s Ella, a tall thug of a girl who bullied me in my previous world.
‘Sit!’ Ella urges. I allow myself to be bundled back into my seat as she lowers her face towards mine and breathes smoke-stained breath all over me. ‘It is what it is,’ she hisses before sitting back down at her desk where she grabs her huge earphones and slips them back on her head.
Mrs Crow hasn’t noticed a thing and continues to destroy Beethoven until the bell rings.
I’ve spent two weeks in this world. The first thirteen of those days I stayed at home as New-Mum and Dad’s excitement spilled uncontrollably out of them. I was in shock, mourning the loss of my friends, barely able to put one coherent thought together. I cried most nights into my pillow and, as clichés go, it’s pretty much spot on. I buried my face in the pillow because I didn’t want my dad and New-Mum to hear me. I cried for all of them, all of the people who never made it. I cried for the doppelgangers. I cried for Rev Two’s mum because I broke my promise to her and I can picture her sitting alone in her flat as the loneliness and the longing erode her life. She’ll be the most hated person in that doppelganger town because of how she stopped them from killing me, GG and the Ape. No one will talk to her again, and she’ll spend her days more alone than ever. The only positive thought I consistently hold on to is that maybe time won’t have moved on from the moment we fled the violent doppelganger world. That Rev Two’s mum will be frozen in the moment along with the rest of the town. But the truth is, I have no earthly idea.
I cried like a baby while Dad and New-Mum laughed their way through the days. Loss is the worst of the worst. But certainty of loss follows it a close second. I know I’ll never see any of my friends again.
The Ape, Johnson and the Moth.
Their names and faces swirl in my head alongside Billie’s and GG’s. Lucas and Carrie are right beside them, beaming into my thoughts.
Friends.
Lost forever.
And, just to rub salt as deep as it can go into a wound, here I am in a school with people who look exactly like the ones I’ve lost. It’s like leafing through a photograph album after a mass funeral. It makes me want to cry all over again.
