There are so many I don’t write down their details any more. I can’t. I only record how many I’ve seen that time. I still keep proper records on people who are different, or if I know their names. And it makes me feel better, well, a bit better. At least it used to. But the longer I stay in London, the more I know we’ve made a mistake. We should never have come here. It’s dangerous. A lot of people are going to die.
So I tell myself that for the time being I’ll go through the motions, keep my head down and keep Nan happy, but only ’til I’ve figured out how to get out of here and where to go. I need to find a place where there are no twenty-sevens. If no one else there is going to die in January 2027, then it stands to reason I’ll have a better chance of surviving, because I don’t know my own number, see. I just don’t know. The only way I’ll find out is if there’s someone else who can see the numbers – and I’m pretty sure I’m the only one.
There’s a bottleneck by the door into Reception. I don’t like crowds, never have – too many people, too many deaths – but I make myself walk through the gates and join the queue. In no time there’s people crowding in behind me, penning me in, and I start to panic. The sweat breaks out under my arms and on my top lip. I look around for a way out. There’s number after number ending in 2027 and suddenly my head is full of it – the noise, the chaos, trapped limbs, broken bones, darkness, despair.
I’ve got to get a grip. My mum taught me what to do.
‘Breathe slowly,’ she’d say. ‘Make yourself do it. In through your nose and out through your mouth. Don’t look at anyone else. Look at the ground. In through your nose – two, three, four – and out through your mouth – two, three, four.’
I make myself look down at the forest of legs and feet and bags. If I don’t see their numbers then this feeling will go away. I’ll be okay. My breath’s uneven and shallow, there’s not enough air getting in my lungs.
In through your nose, and out through your mouth. Come on, I can do this.
It isn’t working. I’m getting worse. I’m going to be sick … I’m going to faint …
Someone behind me shoves into my back. I dig my heels in and stand my ground.
Breathe slowly. Why isn’t it working?
More pressure. The boy behind me is in my space, trying to push me around. He’ll have me over in a minute. I’ll go down and be trampled, kicked to bits. Perhaps that’s what’s meant to happen, but it’s not how I want to go and I’m not going down without a fight.
That’s it!
I swing round and catch him with my elbow, right in the ribs.
‘Fuck! Watch it!’ He spits the words out, a boy a bit smaller than me, with ratty teeth and a crew cut. I’ve hurt him, and now the look in his eyes says he’s going to hurt me back. I know that look – I’ve seen it too many times before. I ought to be on my toes, alert, ready for the first punch, but his number’s burning into me. It’s different, see, odd. He only has three months to go. 6122026. I’m getting the flash of a blade, the hot metallic smell of blood and I feel sicker than ever. I can’t move – his number, his death, has me in its grip. I shut my eyes to try and get it out of my head, break the spell. I open them again the split second before his knuckles hit my face.
Someone must have jostled him, because he only catches my ear, and not very hard, but it’s hard enough to snap me back to reality. I bunch up both my fists and get him in the stomach. I hurt him, but I can’t have knocked the wind out of him because he comes at me again, one, two, into my ribs. People around us are screaming and cheering, but that don’t matter. It’s me and him that matters.
I hit him back. I want to hurt him now. I want to make him go away. I want to make all of it go away – this boy, these kids, this school, Nan, London.
‘All right, lads, break it up!’
It’s a security guard, the size of a small mountain. He’s come wading through the crowd and grabbed both of us by the scruff of the neck.
Rat-teeth tries to protest.
‘I didn’t do nothing! He just started laying into me! What was I s’posed to do?’
But all he gets is an extra neck-shaking and a ‘Shut it’.
The crowd parts as we’re hauled to the front. We’re sent through the metal detector one at a time and searched on the other side. Then we’re marched down the corridor to an office, where the Deputy Head is waiting.
‘Based on today’s performance we shouldn’t even be letting you into this school.’ He’s a shirt-and-tie kind of guy, the sort that can’t talk to you without talking down to you. He’s reading us the Riot Act now, but I’m not listening. I’m looking at the dandruff on his shoulders, the way the cuff of his jacket is frayed. ‘It’s a disgrace to be fighting on your first day, a disgrace. What have you got to say for yourselves?’
I guess Rat-teeth, who turns out to be called Junior, has been in offices like this before. He knows the code. We both stand in silence, and after ten seconds or so we mutter, ‘Nothing, sir, sorry, sir’.
‘Whatever it was between you, I want you to leave it in this room. Shake hands, boys.’
We look at each other, and again his number blots out everything else and I’m there with him as the knife goes in. I can feel his surprise, his disbelief, the searing pain.
‘Take my hand, you moron,’ Junior hisses at me.
I come back to myself, back to the room, the teacher and him. He’s holding his hand out towards me. I take it and we shake. He squeezes so hard my knuckle bones crunch against each other. I don’t show a thing, just squeeze back.
‘Take them back to registration. I don’t want to see either of you boys in here again. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir.’
We’re marched back down the corridor and join the end of the line. I’m in front of Junior. He leans in behind me and mutters close to my ear, ‘You just made the biggest mistake of your life, Shit-brain.’
I move forwards a bit to get further away from him and nudge the girl in front.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
She half turns round, a girl about fifteen centimetres shorter than me with streaky blonde hair. She starts shooting me a dirty look out of the corner of her eye, but then she stops in her tracks and her eyes go wide as two dinner plates.
‘Oh my God,’ she whispers.
I know people think I’m weird, the way I look at them and sometimes keep looking. I try not to stare, I do, but sometimes I get kind of locked in, frozen by their numbers, the way they make me feel, like I did with Junior. But I haven’t been staring at this girl. I’ve only just joined the queue.
‘What?’ I say. ‘What is it?’
She’s turned round properly now, and she hasn’t taken her eyes off me. They’re blue, the bluest blue I’ve ever seen, but there are dark circles underneath, and her cheeks are pale and pinched.
‘You,’ she says, faintly. ‘It’s you.’ She goes even whiter and starts stumbling away from me, out of the queue, keeping her eyes fixed on mine as she walks slowly backwards, and suddenly it’s as if the rest of the world has melted away.
Her number, her death, it totally blows my mind.
More than fifty years in the future, and there she is, slipping out of this life easily, bathed in love and light. I can feel it, all over me, and inside me, in my head. And she’s not alone. I’m there with her – she’s me and I’m her. How??
She turns away suddenly and starts running down the corridor. One of the guards spots her and shouts out, but she don’t stop.
‘Whoah! A runner!’ Junior says behind me. ‘She won’t get far, not without registering,’ and he’s right. None of the doors will open. I watch her rattling one handle after another, desperate. The bugs in the ceiling track her movements. She’s getting into a real state, banging her fist on the glass, kicking out. And then two guards grab her under the arms, one each side, and carry her back towards us, and into a side room, next to the reception desk. She’s struggling and screaming, her face screwed up in a fury, but when
she opens her eyes for a second and sees me again, there’s something else, as clear as her number.
She’s terrified.
Terrified of me.
Chapter 4: Sarah
They want to know what’s wrong with me, why I was trying to run away. What can I say? What can I tell them without sounding mad? That I’ve just met the boy I see in my nightmares? That night after night we’re trapped together in some sort of inferno, and he grabs the baby, my baby, and takes her into the flames?
And suddenly here he is, at my new school. This devil. This person who only exists in my head – he’s here.
And now I know it’s not a nightmare. It’s something else, something real.
Yeah, that’ll go down really well. Dad’s told them all about me, my record of suspensions, expulsions, exclusions. Now they’ll think I’m mad as well as bad. So I say nothing. No explanation. No apology. I get the standard bollocking. They know all about my history, which schools have kicked me out, the sorts of things they’ve kicked me out for. I’m privileged, apparently, to be given a place here. I should treat it as a chance to start again, turn over a new leaf.
I stand there and I think, You don’t know jack shit about me, and I feel the skin of my belly pressing against the stiff material of my skirt. Nobody knows. Nobody knows the whole truth.
Then they take me back to register, pair me up with some earnest-looking kid who’s there to make sure I get to my tutor room and don’t go AWOL again. I scan the corridors for that boy, the nightmare boy. I stand in the doorway of my tutor room checking out the kids before I go in. If he’s there, in my tutor group, I’m not going to stay. But he isn’t. I’m okay for a while. So I find a desk, and I sit there, eyes front, while my tutor drones on. I don’t hear a word he says. All I’m thinking is, Is he real, this boy? Who is he? Why’s he here? And after a while, I’m half-sure that I made him up, that I really am mad and my mind’s starting to mess up my days as well as my nights.
Then at break-time, I see him again.
He’s sitting on his own on a little wall by the science block. Where I’m standing, I can watch him without him knowing I’m there. I try to empty the madness from my mind and look at him like a normal human being would. I study him.
He’s one of those people who can’t sit still to save his life. All the time on that wall his leg is jiggling. Every now and again, he nods his head as if he’s listening to music, but I can’t see any earphones.
I’m not surprised he’s on his own. There’s something odd about him, something different, the way he moves, the way he is. What am I scared of? He’s just an oddball, a freak, a nobody.
After a bit he pulls a notebook out of his pocket and starts writing in it, bending forward with his arm curved round. Whatever he’s writing, he doesn’t want anyone else to see. So, he has secrets, this boy – I kind of like that. And I like that he’s got a book, he’s writing on paper, because I like drawing on paper, the feeling of holding a pencil in my hand, and hardly anyone does any more – it’s all touch screens and voice recognition. He’s different. Different’s okay. And I really want to know what he keeps in that book.
He twists round as he writes and the left side of his face catches the light. He’s actually good-looking, no, more than that, beautiful: the shape of his face, his deep-set eyes, the firmness of his jaw-line, the curve of his lips. And his skin. It’s a warm brown, almost honey-coloured, and so smooth and clear … that’s not right. The boy in my nightmare, the one I’m scared of, is scarred, his face so marked you can feel the rawness.
It’s not him.
It can’t be.
I snort and shake my head. I’ve made a fool of myself and I’ve got into trouble for no reason on my first day. Nice work, Sarah.
He must have seen my movement out of the corner of his eye, because he looks round and sees me. He slams his notebook shut and shoves it back in his pocket, keeping his eyes on me all the time. He looks as guilty as I feel, caught looking. And yet I don’t look away, and as we hold each other’s eyes my stomach flips over. There’s a connection between us.
I’m not mad.
I know him and he knows me.
Oh God, what’s happening?
Chapter 5: Adam
‘Get on all right?’
Nan’s on her stool in the kitchen when I get home, where I expect her to be. Wherever she is – here, Weston – she finds somewhere to perch, somewhere that’s hers, and sticks to it, drinking tea and chain-smoking her way through the day.
I shrug. ‘S’pose.’
Even though she never seems to move, she don’t miss a bloody thing, Nan, but I’m not ready to tell her everything about school. Not yet. She don’t need to know I’ve made an enemy and met a girl.
Junior don’t bother me, not his threats anyway. I’ve had knuckle-heads like him saying things like that to me my whole life. If he wants me to give him another pasting I will. I’m not scared of him. His number, though, that’s something else. I wrote it down at break-time, but I still can’t get it out of my head. It’s a nasty death, and soon. And the feelings are so strong; they make me think things I don’t want to. Like maybe I’m there when it happens. Maybe I’m the one holding the knife …
Even now, standing in the kitchen, leaning up against the bench, the sweat’s breaking out on my skin, and I think I’m going to pass out. What if my number’s the same as his? What if it wasn’t his death I was feeling, it was mine? Not knowing my own number bothers me, more than anything. I’ve tried to see it. Done all the obvious things; looking in mirrors, reflections in windows, even in water. But nothing works. It has to be eye to eye and the only person in the world I can’t look at … is me.
S’pose that’s what really worries me about the twenty-sevens. There are so many of them, the chances are pretty high I’m one of them too. There are hundreds at school. There are thirteen in my tutor group.
‘Wake up, Adam, I asked you a question.’
Nan’s voice breaks through my thoughts and my mouth goes into action before my brain has time to stop it.
‘Thirteen.’
Shit! Have I really said it out loud?
‘Thirteen what, love?’ Nan asks.
‘Nothing. I was just thinking about something … from Maths.’
She narrows her eyes, and blows a plume of smoke up towards the ceiling. I’ve got to distract her, so I ferret in my bag and whip out the palm-net they gave me when I finally registered. I’ve been trying to use it in lessons, but I’ve never had my own computer before, Mum wouldn’t let them in the house, so I’m way slower than everyone else. I could see people watching me, sniggering – a hick from the sticks.
Nan glances at it, but she don’t seem interested. She’s locked in on me and it’ll take more than some freebie IT to knock her off target.
‘You like Maths, do you?’ she says. ‘Like numbers?’
Do I like numbers? Like them? She’s watching me now, and all of a sudden, I’m not sure what she’s asking me. I’ve never told anyone about the numbers except Mum, and one teacher at school when I was little, before I knew what they were. Mum always said they were our secret, something special between me and her. And I kept it like that. I didn’t tell. When she died, I thought that left just me knowing. I was on my own. Now I’m not so sure.
‘I don’t think I like numbers,’ I say, carefully. ‘I think they’re important.’
‘Yeah,’ Nan says. ‘Yeah, they are important.’
We look at each other for a minute and neither of us speaks. The radio’s on – some news report about the government coming clean over the Kyoto targets being missed by miles – and next-door’s dog is yapping away as usual, but the silence between us is electric.
‘I know you’re special, Adam,’ she says, finally, and a shiver runs down my spine. ‘I seen it in you, the day you were born.’
‘What?’
‘I saw, I see, a beautiful boy. They’re there in you, your mum and your dad. Oh God, there’s
so much of my Terry in you. Sometimes, I swear I think he’s here again … it’s like he never …’ She tails off. There’s an extra shine to her eyes, and the rims are pink.
‘What else, Nan?’ I know there’s something. She swallows hard, and looks deep into my eyes.
‘Your aura, I’ve never seen nothing like it. Red and gold. My God, you’re special. You’re a leader. A survivor. There’s courage, right through you. You’re strong, you have spiritual strength. You’ve been put here for a reason, I swear it.’
I take a risk. I have to know.
‘What about my number?’
She frowns.
‘I don’t see numbers, son. I’m not like you and your mum.’
So she does know.
‘How do you know about them?’
‘Your mum told me. I knew about her years ago, and then when she found out about you, she rang me up.’
Suddenly, I’ve got to tell her, tell her the thing I’ve been bottling up all summer.
‘Nan – half the people in London are going to die next year. I’m not making it up. I’ve seen their numbers.’
She nods.
‘I know.’
‘You know?’
‘Yeah, Jem told me about 2027. Warned me.’
My hands go up to the sides of my head. Nan knew! Mum knew! I’m shaking, but I’m not scared, I’m angry. How dare they keep this from me? Why leave me on my own with it?
‘Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t she?’
The anger’s fizzing through me now, in my arms and legs. I kick at the board under the kitchen cupboards.
‘Don’t do that!’
I want to smash something. I kick out again, and this time the board thunks down onto the floor.
‘Adam! Stop it!’
Nan’s on her feet now, coming towards me. She makes a grab for my arms. I try to shrug her off, but she’s strong, much stronger than you’d think to look at her. We stand wrestling with each other for a few seconds. Then, quick as a flash, she lets go one of my arms and slaps me across the face.
‘Not here!’ she shouts. ‘Not in my house! I won’t have it!’