I Swapped My Brother On The Internet

by Jo Simmons

  Jonny watched the tiny figure disappear into the distance, and then he emailed the Sibling Swap office, telling them to expect Alfie on their doorstep very soon. He added that he didn’t want another swap right away. He needed time to think about it all. Soon after, a Swap op emailed back to say he was entitled to a replacement anyway, and they had already sent one. Jonny sighed and then shrugged. You know what they say? he thought. Fifth time lucky. Then he realised that, actually, nobody ever said that. Oh well …

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  BROTHER NUMBER FIVE

  Jonny was glad to go to school. His mum suggested he take the day off, after being sick, but he felt relieved to have swapped Alfie and keen to get back to something close to normal life. After an eventful weekend of brother swapping, it was good to see his friends again.

  ‘How is it going?’ George asked when the two boys were alone. ‘With your new brother?’

  ‘Brothers, more like,’ Jonny said. ‘It’s not gone quite to plan. I’ve had more than one.’

  ‘What, like four or something?’ said George.

  Jonny paused, counted on his fingers and looked at George. ‘How did you guess?’ he said. ‘Yes, I’ve had four and the fifth is coming later. I don’t know, George, it feels quite tricky. I’ve been sent a lot of funny matches and it’s quite hard work. You’re lucky not having any brothers or sisters. Much simpler!’

  George looked a little worried and patted his friend’s arm, then the two of them went into class.

  School was a busy, happy distraction from brother-related problems, but as Jonny walked home later that day his thoughts turned to Sibling Swap again. Who would the Swap ops send him this time? He crossed his fingers and hoped hard that the next brother would also be the final one.

  Jonny hadn’t been home long when the doorbell rang. There was a new brother standing there, with a bag over his shoulder. He was taller than Jonny, with dark hair. He had big brown eyes, like a beautiful Jersey cow, but their expression was sulky, cross and a tiny bit scary.

  ‘I’m Pete,’ he said. ‘From Sibling Swap.’

  ‘Great!’ said Jonny. ‘Come in.’ Then, just to be sure Pete wasn’t Alfie mark II, he added, ‘Bet you can’t throw that bag all the way to the end of the hall.’

  Pete frowned. ‘It’s OK,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry it.’

  Phew! thought Jonny, Now time to check his age. He looks a bit older than me.

  ‘I’m nine,’ said Pete.

  ‘Me too!’ said Jonny. ‘But I’m nearly ten, in about four weeks.’

  ‘My birthday is ages away,’ said Pete.

  Great! thought Jonny. We’re both nine and, even though Pete is much bigger than me, ­I am actually older than him. This is all working out well so far.

  ‘This is my mum,’ said Jonny, introducing them as she came out of the kitchen. ‘Is it OK if Pete stays the night? Maybe he could have Ted’s room?’

  ‘It’s Tuesday. Isn’t Ted back from school?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ said Jonny.

  He was desperately trying to think of another reason for Ted being absent.

  ‘No?’ said his mum.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Yes or no?’

  ‘Ted went on that trip thing, didn’t he? It started today and runs all week. The school organised it.’

  Jonny’s mum looked blank.

  ‘It’s that adventure sports and pastry-making residential thing. They all go on it in year eight. Maybe Dad got the letter about it.’

  Jonny’s mum frowned.

  ‘Really?’ she sighed. ‘I’ll check the school website later. Wish I’d seen the letter. Maybe I did, though, and just forgot. I can’t remember. Never mind.’

  While his Mum was lost in thought, Jonny began pushing Pete up the stairs, desperate to avoid any more questions from her.

  ‘Oh well, this means there’s plenty of room for your friend. You’re welcome to stay, Pete.’

  ‘This will be your room,’ Jonny said, ignoring the sign on the door and showing Pete into Ted’s bedroom.

  Pete had a quick look round and then sat silently down on the bed.

  ‘Did you see my list of likes on the Sibling Swap form?’ Jonny asked.

  Pete shook his head.

  ‘So, I like riding my bike,’ said Jonny. ‘How about you?’

  Pete shook his head quickly. ‘Nope.’

  ‘That’s OK, because I also really like swimming …’

  Pete shook his head again. ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Messing about?’ tried Jonny.

  ‘No!’ said Pete.

  ‘Doughnuts?’

  ‘Yuck!’ said Pete, pulling a face. ‘I don’t eat doughnuts.’

  Odd, thought Jonny. What kind of person doesn’t eat doughnuts?

  ‘I also put down that I like computer games,’ said Jonny.

  At this, Pete looked up at Jonny and, finally, smiled.

  ‘Do you have an Xbox?’ Pete asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Jonny. ‘Shall we play for a bit? Then maybe we could take Widget to the Common or …’

  Pete had already pushed past Jonny and was on his way downstairs. Before Jonny even made it into the living room, he could hear the Xbox loading. Pete was staring intently at the screen. He didn’t seem to notice that Widget was licking his face.

  ‘Let’s go, er, whoever you are,’ said Pete. ‘Two player!’

  ‘It’s Jonny …’ said Jonny. ‘I’m your new brother.’

  Pete said nothing. He was already shooting aliens. Jonny shrugged. Pete would learn his name soon, of course he would. In the meantime, there were aliens to take care of.

  Jonny picked up his controller and the two new brothers began to play.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  HOG IT

  An hour later Jonny put his controller down and fell backwards on the rug.

  ‘Wow, you’re really good at this,’ he said. ‘Respect, brother!’

  He held up his hand for a high five.

  Pete carried on playing.

  ‘Don’t leave me hanging!’ said Jonny.

  Pete left him hanging.

  ‘Ted never used to play the Xbox with me,’ said Jonny. ‘But then he used to moan that I hogged it and he couldn’t get a go …’

  Pete didn’t respond.

  ‘Come and lay the table, please!’ Jonny’s mum shouted from the kitchen.

  ‘Come on, we better go. Dinner’s nearly ready,’ said Jonny. ‘See that zombie you’re about to shoot? That’s what my mum will look like if she has to call us in to dinner again!’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Pete said, eyes glued to the screen.

  ‘But you must be hungry,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Not really,’ said Pete.

  He continued playing, without looking up. Jonny stood there for a moment, dithering and feeling rather abandoned by his new brother, and then ran into the kitchen. He had to fib that Pete didn’t feel well, and he and his mum had dinner together, just the two of them. Then he ate an apple. Then he read his book. Then he learned his spellings for the test tomorrow. Then he helped his mum trim Widget’s eyebrows. All the while, no sign of Pete.

  Finally, as it was a lovely summer evening, Jonny asked Pete to come for a dog walk.

  Pete didn’t seem to hear. He was still glued to the Xbox, shoulders hunched.

  ‘Come on!’ Jonny exploded. ‘Let’s go! It’s so boring you being on the Xbox all the time. Let’s go out. Let’s do something.’

  ‘I need to finish this level,’ said Pete.

  Jonny sat down heavily on the sofa and sighed. Widget, with his lead on, sat down too. They waited. Then waited some more. And some more. At first, Pete had made Jonny feel a little anxious and shut out. Now, though, Pete’s behaviour just made him angry.

  ‘I give up!’ he snapped. ‘I’ll take the dog out on my own.’

  Jonny stomped off to the Common. He walked to the copse and found the place where he and Ted liked to build dens. It was just along from
the Hanging Pants of Doom. He glanced at them, fluttering faintly in the evening breeze, and sighed.

  When he got home Pete had gone to bed. He went to say goodnight and found him lying there, staring at the ceiling, his thumbs still twitching like they were working a controller.

  ‘Night, then,’ Jonny said.

  Pete ignored him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  NIGHT FIGHT

  That night, Jonny woke to the sound of gunfire. He sat up in bed, his heart pounding.

  BOOM BOOM BOOM! went the guns. BOOM BOOM BOOM! went Jonny’s heart, perfectly in time.

  Listening intently, he realised that it wasn’t war outside, it was war inside, on the telly, in his living room. Pete! On the Xbox! At 1 a.m.?

  Jonny tiptoed downstairs. He felt oddly excited. This was properly against-the-rules stuff. Playing Xbox at night! Pete was actually doing this! Unbelievable! Forbidden! Downright naughty!

  Jonny peered into the living room. It was dark except for the screen, which illuminated Pete’s face with a ghostly light. His eyes looked slightly crazy as he worked the controller in his hands, taking out aliens. BOOM BOOM BOOM!

  ‘Holy cheese and pickle rolly,’ whispered Jonny, crouching by his side and grabbing the TV remote. ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this. Mum will go ballistic if she hears us. Just let me turn it down a bit.’

  Pete didn’t even look at him.

  ‘Can I play too?’ Jonny whispered.

  ‘I’m in the middle of a level,’ Pete grunted.

  ‘OK, but give me a go in a minute,’ said Jonny.

  Fifteen minutes later he still hadn’t had a go.

  ‘Come on!’ he said to Pete. ‘Let’s do two-player! You’re hogging it. Hogger!’

  Hogging it! Jonny remembered, with a jolt, that ‘hogging it’ was what Ted accused him of doing with the Xbox. Do I really hog it? he wondered. Hope not, because it’s pretty frustrating when you are not the hogger but the one being hogged against.

  Eventually, Pete let Jonny join in, and the boys were consumed by the game, sitting in their pyjamas in the almost dark in the wee small hours. The pair carried on gaming like time meant nothing. Suddenly, it was 3 a.m. Time did mean something, after all. It meant that Jonny was tired. He yawned.

  ‘Let’s go back up, Pete, it’s late,’ he said.

  Pete didn’t seem to hear.

  ‘You must need to sleep. You look super tired,’ said Jonny.

  Nothing from Pete, so Jonny reached over and flicked the TV off.

  Pete just sat there, in the dark, his thumbs still working the controller.

  ‘Come on,’ whispered Jonny. ‘Time for bed, let’s go.’

  ‘More!’ said Pete. ‘Play more.’

  He flicked the TV back on. Jonny flicked it off. Pete flicked it back on. Jonny turned it off. On, off, on, off, faster and faster, each boy becoming more and more determined, until Widget, sensing the tension, began hopping about between the two of them, barking.

  ‘Shush, Widge,’ hissed Jonny. ‘You’ll wake Mum!’

  Jonny shut Widget in the hallway and then went to take the controller from Pete. But Pete would not let it go.

  What the heck was wrong with this guy? Jonny liked Xbox as much as the next nine-year-old, but at three in the morning? Come on! Jonny was tired. Wasn’t Pete? And besides, Pete was the younger brother. Shouldn’t he listen to Jonny? Just like Jonny always did with Ted … Oh, yeah, that didn’t always happen, true. But how about this, then? Pete was new here. He was new to the house. That meant he should do what Jonny said. End of.

  Pete gripped the controller even tighter. Jonny held both hands up in a ‘hey, relax’ gesture. Then, remembering all those tense, stick-up situations in the adventure films he liked, where the hero used words not weapons to disarm a baddie, Jonny began to speak, clearly and calmly.

  ‘It’s my house, Pete, and I say it’s time for bed,’ said Jonny. ‘Are you going to come quietly?’

  ‘Never!’ said Pete. He clutched the controller to his chest. ‘You’ll never take me upstairs! Never!’

  ‘Drop the controller now, Pete,’ said Jonny. ‘Just put it down on the floor in front of you and everything will be fine.’

  As Jonny talked he edged nearer to Pete.

  ‘We do not have a problem here, Pete,’ said Jonny. ‘We’re cool. It’s all cool. It’s just bedtime, that’s all. But first, you need to hand me that controller, nice and easy now …’

  But instead of passing it to him, Pete grabbed something from the floor and brandished it like a club. It was Widget’s heavy rubber bone.

  Jonny froze.

  ‘Pete, I want you to drop your weapon!’ he said, urgency in his voice now. ‘Nobody needs to get hurt here.’

  Jonny took another step towards Pete, who swung the bone madly at him.

  ‘Drop your weapon. I repeat: DROP! YOUR! WEAPON!’

  Pete swiped again.

  ‘OK, this is officially a code red,’ said Jonny. ‘I’m calling for backup!’

  He yanked the door open and Widget came bounding in.

  ‘Disarm the assailant, Widge,’ said Jonny.

  Pete swung the bone at Widget in a ‘keep back’ kind of way, but all Widget saw was his favourite toy being waved in front of him and he did what any self-respecting dog would do – he grabbed it.

  With the bone clamped in his jaws, a tug of war between Widget and Pete began. The two pulled and yanked and growled. Jonny spied his chance. He grabbed the games controller in Pete’s other hand and began tugging too. Now Pete’s arms were being pulled straight out from his body. He looked like a scarecrow with a dog attached to one hand and a boy to the other. The to-and-fro tugging proved too much.

  Pete let go of the bone to concentrate on the controller. He clamped his free hand on it and with a giant, two-handed tug he ripped it from Jonny’s grasp. Jonny crashed to the floor and watched Pete’s hands jerk up and the controller fly out of them and straight through the window!

  The CRASH was humungous, like a million greenhouses being dropped from a plane.

  ‘You’ve broken the window!’ gasped Jonny.

  ‘Oh no no no NO!’ gasped Pete, his hands to his face. ‘Oh, Jonny, I’m so sorry. What have I done? I really didn’t mean to break the window, I was just –’

  ‘What on earth?’ shouted Jonny’s mum, rushing into the living room.

  ‘It was completely and utterly my fault, Mrs Jonny. I’m just so terribly sorry,’ spluttered Pete. ‘What can I do to put this right?’

  Jonny frowned. Not because of the window. Or his mum, furious in her nightie. But because of Pete, who sounded so sorry, so kind, so nice! This wasn’t the monosyllabic, gruff, rude, computer-crazed geek Jonny had become used to. What was going on?

  ‘Upstairs, both of you!’ Jonny’s mum said. ‘I need to get this window boarded up right now, and you two need to go to bed, where you can’t create any more mischief.’

  There was no point protesting. Jonny led the way, but once inside Ted’s bedroom he shut the door.

  ‘I’ve had some fights with my real brother, Ted,’ he hissed at Pete, ‘but never anything like this.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said Pete, looking like he might cry. ‘I never meant for things to go this far. I can explain everything if you just give me a tiny-weensy chance …’

  ‘Explain?’ said Jonny. ‘No need. It’s obvious: you’re too crazy about Xbox.’

  ‘I’m not really,’ said Pete. ‘That was all an act! I’m not any of those things. I’m not nine! I’m twelve. My name’s not Pete, it’s Pip, and I’m not a boy, I’m really a girl. Sorry.’

  Jonny gawped.

  ‘The only thing that Sibling Swap got right about me is that I like computers,’ said Pete-Pip. ‘More than just Xbox, though. All sorts of programming and coding. I’m a bit of a tech whiz, really.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ spluttered Jonny.

  ‘I noticed the Sibling Swap website when it first launched a few days ba
ck and it seemed like a cool idea, but I was curious about how it actually works,’ she explained. ‘I tried to find out a bit more about it, but I can’t seem to track down who’s behind it, although I think it must be local. So in the end I thought I’d trial it. I entered the wrong age and a false name and even lied about being a boy, but no one checked. Also, we don’t have much in common, but the site still matched us up. There are definitely some major issues with how it’s set up and run.’

  ‘I don’t get it. What was with all the Xbox stuff?’ Jonny asked, struggling to keep up.

  ‘It was a disguise! A false identity! I thought I’d ham up the whole Xbox addiction thing, make myself really boring and unpleasant, to force you into swapping me. Then I could follow this through and see how the site responds,’ said Pete-Pip.

  ‘But why did you have to break my window?’ Jonny huffed.

  ‘I didn’t mean to, of course! I’m really sorry about that,’ said Pete-Pip. ‘I was in character! But maybe that was taking it too far.’

  ‘You could say that,’ Jonny huffed again.

  ‘I just wanted to test Sibling Swap in the field, you know?’

  Jonny wasn’t sure he did know.

  ‘This is all so weird! Too weird! I don’t want to hear anything else,’ said Jonny. ‘Just go to bed.’

  ‘OK,’ said Pete-Pip, ‘but request a swap first.’

  ‘But I don’t know if I want another swap,’ moaned Jonny, rubbing his tired eyes.

  ‘Please, Jonny,’ said Pete-Pip. ‘Swap me back, so I can see what Sibling Swap does. I’ve come this far, I have to know how it ends!’

  Pete-Pip smiled at him with her big brown eyes and then pulled up the Sibling Swap website on a little laptop she’d kept in her backpack. She passed it to Jonny. Mutely, he filled out a swap request form.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Pete-Pip. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t straight with you, but I’m rather enjoying this spying lark. Sibling Swap is an interesting idea, isn’t it?’