‘You do realise that you just shelved Lord of the Flies under Tolkien, right?’ Toby reaches around me and pulls out the thin book I’ve accidentally shelved alongside the epic fantasies, making me jump. I wonder if he realises just how close he is to me right now, because I’m hyperaware.
‘Sorry, distracted,’ I confess as Erica and her friends move away from the terrace to follow Jay down the hill and out of my line of sight.
Toby and I do lunchtime library duty every Tuesday and Thursday. We don’t get paid, but we do get a reference from Mrs Fraser and a chance to escape the dismal purgatory that is the upper-school playground for a couple of hours a week. Having a legitimate reason to be inside during the colder months or when it’s raining is pretty cool. But it does mean that we have to work, and Mrs Fraser, who let’s not forget gets free labour every day, works us hard. I’m OK because she likes me (I’ve always rocked the teacher’s pet thing). But she absolutely hates Toby for no reason that anyone has ever been able to work out, unless you count the time in Year Seven that he returned a book he had let fall in the bath. But if Mrs Fraser is still holding that against him four years later, well, that’s just weird if you ask me.
He’s become a best friend of sorts. Not in the same way as Erica, obviously, but in the way that stops me getting desperately lonely at school. It’s not that Erica ignores me, or doesn’t want me to hang around with her group, but it’s always been clear that we spin in different social circles. She has the popular girls, with their skirts hitched up and their perfect hair, and I get the nerds. Or, more precisely, I get Toby, High King of the Nerds. Besides, those girls scare me. They know how to walk and how to talk and I’m just a little mouse next to them. Being around Toby makes me feel cool, and clever, and significant in a way that Erica’s friends never do.
This little social setup suited everyone fine until precisely five weeks ago, when the new school year started and Toby returned from the summer holidays taller, without the dappling of acne under his chin and with this new smile thing that makes my tummy flutter. And I try to tell myself to stop it, that it’s the same lanky-armed Toby, and he’s just my friend, but every now and again, when he gets too close like this, I swear I forget how to form words, or how to move my hands without bashing something over.
‘What are you up to this weekend?’ he asks, after returning Lord of the Flies to ‘G’ and coming back around to my aisle.
‘Not much. Why?’ I’m thinking about the costume I have to repair, plus all that homework I have to do twice, plus a knitting pattern I’ve been dying to try out.
‘Me and the guys are going to see that new sci-fi film on Saturday. You can come if you want.’
I look up at Toby, who is making an obvious point of not looking back at me by seeming to be engrossed in the blurb of a sci-fi novel I haven’t read. I wonder briefly if he’s asking me out, and then I think he’s just feeling sorry for me and my lack of a life outside of my bedroom. Suddenly I get annoyed with myself for even thinking that Toby might be interested in me in that way, and I find that all I can reply with is a mumbled ‘Um … maybe?’
I mean, I’ll probably, definitely end up saying no. It’s not that I don’t want to hang out with him and his friends; it’s just that Toby and I have never really hung out together outside of a school context, and I’d probably turn into a squirming ball of awkwardness and just embarrass him, or worse, myself, and then I’d have to swap my library shifts, or move schools, or change planets, so that we don’t ever see each other ever again. And then what would I do?
He follows me as I move over to the reluctant-reader shelves.
‘You know the film is meant to be awesome, right? Like Back to the Future for a new generation, except with a future that doesn’t seem quite so … outdated,’ he says.
I’m about to reply with something dazzling and witty, but we’re both distracted by lots of whooping and cheering coming from the annexe, a room that sits just off the main library. The heads of all the kids studying in the main room pop up like startled meerkats, desperate to know what’s going on. Mrs Fraser stands up behind her desk and indicates for me to investigate. Then she barks at Toby to hurry up with his shelving.
Going into a room full of tall sixth-formers is not really something that I want to be doing. I wonder if there is any chance at all that they’ll listen to me if I ask them to be quiet.
Everybody is clustered around one computer terminal, a pack four people deep, all craning to get a view of whatever is on the screen. As I make my way around to see what’s happening, there’s another jubilant cheer. They’re on YouTube, watching the latest Vigil footage from the US team. From what I can see by pushing people’s arms out of the way and standing on tiptoes, some scaffolding collapsed on a part-built skyscraper in New York City.
‘Has anyone seen Zero yet?’ one guy asks. ‘He’s my favourite!’
‘Are you kidding me? Zero’s lame. He can’t even fly,’ says another.
‘Says the boy with a poster of Hayley Divine on his wall,’ a girl mocks.
Through a small gap between shoulders I can make out the clip, which has been expanded to fill the entire screen. Obviously amateur footage, I’m just in time to see the camera zoom in as Solar appears from a window, clutching onto a hard-hatted builder. Solar’s the team leader of the American East Coast Vigils, and apart from being able to fly – the most common superpower of them all – he has the ability to cast intense rays of light from his body at will. He’s dressed in his trademark bodysuit of shiny gold, emblazoned with the symbols and patches of his various sponsors, and his face is covered with a golden balaclava, the typical style of the US team. Solar hands the man over to another Vigil, who flies him down to the ground and safety, before going back into the dark web of scaffolding to look for more survivors.
‘Wow. They are so epic. And have you seen Solar’s arms? I bet he doesn’t even have to work out,’ a soft-voiced girl sighs.
I head out of the annexe just as the crowd erupts in another roar of excitement and astonishment. I watch the videos same as everybody else, but I prefer to do it at home where I can concentrate on what’s happening, and discover how to let them know about Erica. I’m sure that they have their methods, otherwise how does anyone get to become a Vigil? But it can’t hurt to be a little proactive in the matter.
‘What’s going on in there?’ Mrs Fraser demands when I reach the library desk.
‘Another Vigil video. An American one,’ I explain.
‘Really?’ And suddenly the hardness drops from Mrs Fraser’s face. ‘Oh, I must see that before it gets taken down!’ She bolts into the annexe, adjusting her reading glasses as she goes.
‘Was there a time before the Vigils?’ I moan at Toby, who’s alphabetising some books on a trolley.
‘My grandpa tells me stories about what it used to be like, and how everybody thought that it was all those nuclear bombs that started the whole thing off.’ Toby doesn’t realise that my question is rhetorical. But I don’t want to stop him talking, because he has this really specific type of smile when he talks about Vigil stuff. I’m barely listening to what he’s saying to be honest – something about the Vigils being wrapped up in conspiracy theories until the advent of cameraphones and social media – I’ve learned to zone out when he starts giving it the Toby Talk. ‘So I guess we’re stuck with them. Unless you can figure out a way to stop the internet from happening?’
‘I’d be lucky,’ I sigh. I think hanging around Erica so much has made me immune to all the excitable hype that surrounds the Vigils. Some days I wish they would all go away and I could have some time off from thinking about them.
‘Ever wondered what would happen if one of us turned out to be one of them?’ Toby asks.
‘What?’ I try not to sound too startled.
‘I mean, the chance of that happening is next to nothing of course, and even then, the odds against having a power significant enough to put you on the Vigil A-team are just ridiculo
us, but imagine … What if you woke up one day and could fly? What if you had Deep Blue or the Red Rose on speed-dial? Do you think you’d still have to come to school?’
‘Who knows …?’
‘Do you think there could be superpeople living among us? Even going to this school?’
‘Of course it’s possible, but also really unlikely.’ I’m thinking very carefully as I talk, but it’s not as if Toby would ever actually suspect anything. There’s just no way. ‘I mean, how could they hide it? Surely we’d know.’
‘Still, I think having superpowers would be momentously cool.’ He gets a boyish glint in his eye, like a five-year-old thinking about Christmas. ‘I’d totally want the X-ray vision. Can you imagine how much fun that would be?’
And there it is. A reminder like a kick to the fluttery parts that he’s just another teenage boy with normal teenage-boy thoughts. And boys aren’t interested in girls like me. Besides, I know that Toby has all these pictures of the Red Rose on his phone, and it’s not as if I’m ever going to look like her.
‘You’re so pathetic,’ I scold, saying it half to him, half to myself.
‘Oh, come on. If you could have any superpower, what would it be?’ If only he knew just how much I’ve thought about this.
‘Right now, just the power to get through this school year would be enough.’ I laugh it off, because what else can I say? That I’ve dreamed of every possible scenario under the sun? That I watch all the Vigil videos, wondering what it would be like to be one of them? ‘Let’s get on and finish the shelving. Mrs Fraser’s coming back.’
The library empties out. Kids have either gone into the annexe to watch more Vigils footage, or have gone somewhere else to watch the latest action on their phones, because Mrs Fraser has a thing about using them in here.
Out of the window I can see Erica standing just a little way down the hill, gossiping with her friends, talking about the boys they like and the teachers they hate. Jay seems to have disappeared. Erica does such a great job of pretending that she’s just like them, better than I could ever manage. It’s as if hiding her true self is just another one of her many gifts, in addition to the flying and the flame-throwing. Sometimes I wonder if we’d even be friends if it wasn’t for all of that. We were drifting apart before she discovered what she could do, and then she decided to come to me with her secret. If it hadn’t have been me, then what? I’d be just another nerd with straight As and hardly any friends. I bet she doesn’t even realise how she saved me.
Then I think about all she’s destined for, another star in one of those videos, with her own celebrity-like cult surrounding her. There’ll be posters of her on teenagers’ walls alongside Hayley Divine, and boys like Toby will moon over her instead of the Red Rose. How will our friendship survive all of that? And then I remember: if our friendship can survive secondary school, it can survive anything.
It’s dark. And it’s cold. My hands are stuffed in my duffel-coat pockets and my scarf is wrapped around my neck so tightly I can barely move my head. To complete this rocking look of human autumn bundle, I’m wearing my favourite bobble hat, one of the first I ever knitted. (And yes, I have knitted more than one. Way more than one.) Erica absolutely hates it, but she can hate all she likes – the terms and conditions of dragging me outside to watch her practise are that she doesn’t get to say a thing about what I wear. It’s not as if she could ever understand my need for chunky knitwear anyway. She never gets cold.
Erica is up in the air in complete costume, so unless she lights her hands up I can’t see her at all. As well as the black catsuit and boots, she’s wearing her mask, a black bandit’s mask on elastic, and the thick black hairband that covers her forehead as well as keeping her hair away from her face. The look may be a little DIY, but from a distance it does the job really nicely. She still has those holes at her elbows that I need to fix; at the moment they look like the kind of patches that really dorky teachers might wear. Her posture changes when she’s in costume. Instead of being Erica Elland, regular if highly popular schoolgirl, she becomes Flamegirl, blue eyes glimmering behind her makeshift mask, as if her fire is lighting them up too.
Sometimes I can hear the whoosh of her flying past me, but it’s far too dark and she’s far too high up for me to see anything. So I’m left back on the ground, waiting and watching and secretly hoping the evening will end soon so that I can get back to my homework. During the summer evenings we did all kinds of experiments, like testing how fast she could travel, with me holding the stopwatch, but now that the days are getting shorter all I can do is hang around until she gets bored and decides that she wants to go home too.
Suddenly my bobble hat is no longer on my head. It has been plucked into the October air with a familiar swoosh.
‘Hey! Erica! Give that back!’
There’s a whirling somewhere above me, and I can just about make out a shadow, like a prehistorically large moth, dashing past.
‘Erica! That’s not funny! You better not set fire to it!’
Just as suddenly as the hat vanished, it’s back on my head again, and tugged down past my eyes. When I pull it up to a more comfortable position I see Erica standing before me, hands on her well-honed hips, stomach taut under the black Lycra. Aggravatingly for me, we’ve discovered that the strength for flying seems to come from the core muscles, so the more Erica flies, the more sickeningly toned her abs become. Flying for her is like super-pilates. Which, if you ask me, is just not fair.
‘Will you not go around shouting out my real name, please?’ she huffs. ‘What if somebody heard you?’
‘There’s nobody else around, Erica.’
‘We should get into the habit though. Like, you shouldn’t ever call me Erica when I’m in costume. What’s the point of having a whole secret identity if you’re just going to call me by my real name? And that goes for you too. I’m not going to call you Louise any more when I’m in costume. Just in case somebody figures out who you are and gets to me that way.’
‘If you start calling me Lou-Lou, like my mother, I will not be happy …’
‘I was toying with “L” actually.’
OK. I like it. It makes me feel like a vaguely important character in a Bond film. ‘Fine. You can call me “L”. But what am I supposed to call you? We can’t go on with Flamegirl for ever.’
‘Why not?’
‘You know I’ve always thought it was a little corny. It was only ever meant to be temporary, until we came up with something better.’
‘Flamegirl’ makes me think of Victorian urchins selling newspapers, yelling, ‘Read all about it!’ on street corners.
‘It does what it says on the tin,’ says Erica.
We start walking towards the disused train tracks at the bottom of the field, and our favourite hangout, the old tunnel.
‘Exactly. People see that you can flame-throw, especially when your hands go all flamey. They don’t need to be told it as well. It’s too obvious.’
‘So what would you suggest, L?’
I’ve been waiting for a good time to have this conversation for ages, because I have an amazing idea. ‘I was thinking “Vega” would be an interesting option.’
‘Vega? It sounds like an alien.’
‘It’s the name of a star. One of the brightest fireballs in the sky. I thought it might be fitting.’
‘Vega … Vega …’ Erica plays with the word on her lips as we walk. ‘I’m not sure. It’s a little bit science fiction for my liking.’
‘But you have to admit that it’s pretty cool for a codename.’
‘Maybe. I’m just not convinced that it’s my codename. Can we just stick to Flamegirl for now? We’ll come up with something good sooner or later.’
I suppose it is up to Erica to choose. I can’t force a name on her. But her frank dismissal of my idea hasn’t exactly lightened my mood. As we walk (she walks with me instead of flying when she wants me to go anywhere with her) I think I hear a rustling somewhere behind u
s.
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know. A fox? Or a squirrel, maybe.’ Erica is obviously not concerned.
I make her stop and stand perfectly still so that I can listen more carefully. Nothing but the wind blowing through trees and the distant traffic from the A-road that runs past this field.
‘See? Nothing. Now come on. The sooner we get to the tunnel, the sooner we can get you home.’ She tugs me along. I’m still craning to hear whatever might be behind us.
‘Have you ever thought about what would happen if anyone followed us?’
‘Don’t be silly. Nobody comes here at night. Not even the weirdos.’
We’re walking a little faster now. I can’t shake the feeling that somebody is watching us. Maybe I’m just antsy because of the cold and Erica’s name rejection. I’ve always thought that Flamegirl was a name a four-year-old would come up with.
The tunnel is our special place. The Vigils may have their top-secret hideouts, but we have the crumbling remains of a railway viaduct. Apart from being where Erica and I started testing out her powers, it’s also the place we come to when we want to get a bit of distance from the world. Erica tends to use it for that more than I do. When she has a massive bust-up with her mum and doesn’t want to bother me, where else can she go? The tunnel is a great cavernous hole lined with bare bricks and filled with weeds, which we’ve managed to tame back over the years. Once upon a time, trains would have rumbled overhead as they headed to and from London, but the line was abandoned long before I was born.
As soon as we get there, Erica zooms over with her feet off the ground, flying fancy loops in the tunnel and moving in a way that makes me think of a shiny black dragonfly, hands glowing with flames so that the bricks light up a warm ceramic bronze. I settle down on the old bench we moved in here to make the space more comfortable for those of us that don’t fly. But I’m still feeling too cold and bored to get properly comfy. I huddle my knees up to my chest anyway.
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