iBoy

by Kevin Brooks

  T was good and it was really nice to see him, he made me feel not so dead for a while, but tonite in the dark it all comes back and i can’t see any light anywhere. there’s nothing to feel. i want to hurt them, kill them. i hate them. i want them to die, to suffer. but what good would it do? they’ll always have done it and i can’t make that go away.

  I waited for a while to see if she wrote any more, but after about fifteen minutes or so, she logged off Facebook and shut down her laptop. I waited some more, thinking about what I could do, what I should do, what I wanted to do . . . and then, at 03:57:33, I closed my eyes, reentered my cyber-head, and created a Facebook page for myself. It was almost as blank as Lucy’s page — i.e., no pictures, no information, etc. — but I did include two favorite films, Spider-Man and Spider-Man 2, because me and Lucy had watched them together once, and under the Music section I put Fall Out Boy and Pennywise, because I knew that Lucy really liked them.

  When it came to choosing a name for myself, I thought about it for quite a long time, and eventually — bearing in mind the name that Lucy used on her Facebook profile (aGirl), and the fact that I was, whether I liked it or not, part iPhone and part boy — I settled on the name that one of the Crows had called me earlier that day.

  I called myself iBoy.

  Lucy’s page was on the “recommended” privacy setting, which under normal circumstances meant that you could see her posts if you were looking, but only her friends could comment (if she’d had any friends). And that meant that if I wanted her to add iBoy as a friend, I’d have to send her a request, wait until she logged on again, hope that she wanted to add me . . . and I really didn’t want to do all that. And, besides, these weren’t normal circumstances . . . and I was iBoy, after all. All I had to do was think about adding myself to her friends, think about customizing the comment connection between us, making it totally private, totally instant, and totally restricted to aGirl and iBoy, and then think about sending her a message . . . and it was done.

  hello aGirl, I wrote/thought/sent, i hope you don’t mind me sending you this message, but i saw your note and i know that you didn’t really mean anyone to read it, but i just wanted to let you know that if you ever feel like talking to someone, you could always talk to me. i know you don’t know me, and i could be anyone, but for what it’s worth i’m not anyone you shouldn’t talk to. i’m not anything really, just a 16-year-old boy who doesn’t understand what’s going on.

  anyway, if you want to talk to me that’d be great. but if not, just don’t reply or tell me to go away, and i promise you’ll never hear from me again.

  iBoy

  At 04:17:01 I learned that my video function was on all the time, filming everything that I saw, and that all I had to do to play anything back was remember it, and then play it.

  And between 04:48:22 and 06:51:16 I learned that it’s really hard to get to sleep when you know everything there is to know, and that superpowers — no matter how powerful they are — are no help at all when you’re crying on your own in the darkness.

  Few things are simple in Gangland. Your day-to-day activities, your role, your future, the people with whom you work, the people with whom you fight — all are uncertain, transient. But, paradoxically, most gang members have a clearly defined perception of how the drug market is structured. The best way to understand the way that market works is to imagine the process by which fruit is sold in a supermarket. In this case the producers operate in Jamaica and South America. The top gang members to whom they sell, the Elders and Faces, are the supermarket’s head office. Below them are the Youngers: the branch managers. And working the supermarket’s tills and on the shop floor are the Shotters.

  John Heale

  One Blood (2008)

  I slept for precisely forty-one minutes and two seconds that night (or rather that morning), and it would have been really nice to stay in bed the next day and not do anything. But I was too tired to sleep by then. And, besides, I knew that if I stayed in bed, all I’d do was carry on thinking about things, and I’d just about had enough of thinking for now.

  I needed to do something.

  I went into the bathroom, turned on the shower, and then — standing naked in front of the mirror — I switched on my iSkin and watched as my whole body began glowing and shifting. It was an amazing sensation. The outline of my body — the defining shape of it — became blurred and indistinct, merging into the background, like some kind of weird super/cyber-chameleon, and when I moved, the movements left fleeting trails in the air, making everything seem even blurrier. I stood there for a minute or two, staring at myself, and then — when I couldn’t bear the weirdness anymore — I switched it all off and got into the shower.

  Twenty minutes later, as I was rummaging around in the sitting room, looking for my shoes and my bag and stuff, Gram shuffled in, still wearing her dressing gown and slippers. From the bags under her eyes and the way that she couldn’t stop yawning, I guessed that she hadn’t slept much either.

  “Morning, Tommy,” she mumbled, stifling another yawn. “What time is it?”

  “About eight,” I told her. “Have you seen my bag anywhere?”

  “What bag?” She rubbed her eyes and looked at me. “What are you doing?”

  “My schoolbag,” I said. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

  “School?” she said, starting to wake up now. “What are you talking about? You’re not going to school.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, come on, Tommy . . . you’ve only just got back from the hospital, for God’s sake. You were in a coma for seventeen days, and you had major surgery. Or have you forgotten all that?”

  I smiled at her. “Forgotten all what?”

  She shook her head. “It’s not funny . . . you need to rest. The only reason Dr. Kirby let you come home was because I promised him that I’d make sure you got plenty of rest.” She looked at me. “You’ve got to take it easy for a while, love.”

  “Yeah . . . but I’m fine, Gram. Really —”

  “I know you are. And I mean to make sure that you stay that way.”

  “But I was only going to school to pick up some textbooks and stuff,” I said. “I wasn’t going to stay there all day or anything.”

  “Well . . . even so,” she said, hesitating slightly. “I really don’t think you should be out and about yet.”

  It was only a slight hesitation, but it was enough to let me know that I was on the right track.

  “I’ll only be about half an hour,” I told her. “I promise. Ten minutes there, ten minutes to get the books, ten minutes back.”

  Gram shook her head. “I don’t know, Tommy . . . why do you need the books anyway? I mean, how come you’re so keen on learning all of a sudden?”

  “Maybe it was the brain surgery,” I said, smiling at her. “Maybe it’s turned me into a budding genius.”

  A faint smile flickered on her face. “It’d take more than major brain surgery to turn you into a genius.”

  I pulled an idiot face.

  She laughed.

  I said, “So, can I go, then? I promise I won’t be long.”

  She shook her head again, and sighed. “You exploit my better nature, Tom Harvey. You know that, don’t you?”

  “Who me?”

  “You’re evil, you are.”

  “Thanks, Gram,” I said.

  She sighed again. “Your bag’s in the kitchen.”

  When I got out of the lift on the ground floor, the postman was just coming in through the main doors. I held the elevator doors open for him.

  “Thanks, mate,” he said, getting into the lift. He looked at me. “Harvey, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  He rummaged through his bag and passed me a couple of letters. “Here you go.”

  I looked at the envelopes. They were addressed to Gram — Ms. Connie Harvey.

  “They’re not for me,” I started to say, passing them back to the postman. “They’re for my —”
r />   But the lift doors were already closing.

  “Cheers, mate,” the postman said.

  It’s only a ten-minute walk to school, but it was cold and rainy that morning, with an icy wind blowing around the streets, so I headed for the bus stop opposite the tower and hoped that I wouldn’t have to wait too long. And I was lucky. A bus was pulling up just as I got there. I got on, showed the driver my pass, and shuffled up to the back.

  The bus moved off.

  It was 08:58:11 now, a bit late for going to school, so the bus was pretty empty, and I had the backseat all to myself.

  I looked at the two letters the postman had given me.

  If, like Gram and me, you don’t have much money, and you’re used to getting bills and final reminders, you soon get to know what they look like. And I knew straightaway that both of these letters were final demands.

  I opened them up. It was no big deal, privacy-wise. I mean, I don’t open any of Gram’s personal letters, but she’s perfectly OK with me opening anything else that’s addressed to her. As she often says, most of it’s just rubbish anyway. But these letters weren’t rubbish. And they weren’t final demands either — they were final final demands. One of them was from the council, informing Gram that she was three months behind on the rent; the other was a summons to appear at the Magistrates’ Court to explain why she hadn’t paid her council tax.

  The bus juddered to a stop. We were stuck in traffic, and we’d only moved about fifty feet from the bus stop. The traffic was jammed up all the way along Crow Lane, and I knew it would have been a lot quicker to get off and walk, but it was cold and wet out there, and warm in here . . . and it didn’t matter if I was late for school anyway. No one was expecting me.

  I looked through the window for a moment, gazing out at the industrial wasteground that stretches between Crow Lane and the High Street. It was the same as ever: acres of cracked concrete, piles of gravel, the burned-out carcasses of stolen cars and abandoned dumpsters . . .

  A dull gray desert under a dull gray sky.

  The bus got moving again, and I closed my eyes and thought about Gram’s money problems, letting my iBrain do its stuff.

  Gram didn’t have an online bank account, but that didn’t matter. My digitized neurons just hacked into her bank and accessed her account details, and I quickly found out that she was £6,432.77 overdrawn, her cash card had been canceled, and that she was no longer allowed to write checks for anything. I wondered how she’d been managing for the last few months. Credit cards, maybe? I hacked into her various credit card accounts and — yes — they were all maxed out. I checked the statements, which confirmed that all she’d been using the credit cards for was day-to-day living — cash withdrawals, food shopping, stuff like that — and when I went back to check her bank account again, I realized that the reason she was overdrawn was not that she’d been spending too much, she’d simply not been getting enough money in. She just wasn’t earning enough for us to live on.

  It was a big surprise to me. I mean, Gram had never earned tons of money or anything, and we’d always had to struggle to make ends meet, but we’d always just about managed. Now though . . . well, this looked pretty serious.

  The bus suddenly jerked and shuddered, and I opened my eyes and realized that we’d just pulled up at the school bus stop. I saved all the information about Gram’s finances, made a mental note to sort it out later, then shut myself down, grabbed my bag, and got off the bus.

  Crow Lane Secondary is a huge sprawling gray place that’s always looked as if it’s only half finished. Bits of it are forever being refurbished, or torn down, or renovated, and there are so many Portakabins piled up all over the place that it feels like you’re going to school at a building site.

  Instead of going in through the main entrance, I headed down a side street and went in through one of the workmen’s gates. This led me round the back of the main building toward the old gymnasium, which wasn’t used anymore . . . well, not for sports, anyway. It was supposed to have been demolished years ago, but for some reason they’ve never got round to it, and for as long as I can remember it’s been one of those places where the bad kids hang out, the kids who don’t want anyone to know where they are or what they’re doing, the kids who don’t want to go to school but can’t afford to be caught on the streets.

  Kids like Davey Carr.

  Davey was what they call a persistent truant, and he’d been caught so many times that his mum was in danger of facing prosecution and a possible jail sentence. And, obviously, Davey’s mum didn’t want to go to jail, which was why — a couple of months ago — she’d given him her version of a final warning, which basically consisted of beating the shit out of him. After that, Davey would go to school every morning, turn up for attendance, and spend most of the rest of the day hanging around in places he wasn’t supposed to be. Like the old gym.

  And Davey, of course, was the only reason I was going to school that morning. I had no intention of bringing home any textbooks. What did I need with textbooks? I knew everything there was to know. I could probably pass every exam in the world, at world-record speed . . . with my eyes closed. I could win University Challenge on my own. I could, if I wanted to, win every quiz show on TV — Countdown, Mastermind, Jeopardy!, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? I could win them all . . .

  But for now, all I wanted to do was find Davey Carr.

  It wasn’t difficult. My iSenses had been tracking his mobile all morning, and the signal now was telling me that he was in a little room at the back of the old gymnasium. And that’s where I found him. He was sitting on an old wooden chair, smoking a cigarette, yapping away to a couple of young Crow kids. The kids, who were hanging on his every word, clearly thought that Davey was some kind of god or something.

  “Hey, Davey,” I said, walking into the room. “How’s it going?”

  The two young kids jumped at the sound of my voice, and even Davey looked a little bit startled for a moment, but he soon relaxed when he realized that it was only me.

  “All right, Tom?” he said casually. “What are you doing here? I thought —”

  “You can go,” I said to the two kids.

  They both stared at me, and although they were only about twelve years old, their eyes were already cold and hard.

  “Go on,” I told them. “Fuck off.”

  They glanced at Davey, he nodded, and they reluctantly sauntered out. I watched them go, studying them closely, comparing them to my iMemories of the young kids in the video of Lucy’s attack, but I was pretty sure that these two kids hadn’t been there. I waited until they’d left the room . . . then waited some more. They both had their mobiles on, and I could tell from the signals that they hadn’t gone anywhere — they’d stopped outside the room and were waiting to hear what happened.

  “Listen, Tom —” Davey started to say.

  “Tell them to go,” I said.

  “What?”

  “The two kids, they’re still out there. Tell them to go.”

  Davey looked puzzled for a moment, trying to work out how I knew, then he just shrugged and called out, “Hey! You two . . . fuck off. Now!”

  I heard muffled whispers, then shuffling feet . . . then, from beyond the room, “Sorry, Davey . . . we was just . . . we was just going, OK?”

  And, with that, they were gone.

  I turned to Davey. “Fresh blood?”

  “What?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing . . . don’t worry about it.” I stared at him. “How’s your conscience, Davey?”

  “My what?”

  “Conscience.” I closed my eyes for a moment, then opened them again. “It means the consciousness of the moral quality of your own conduct or intentions, together with a feeling of obligation to refrain from doing wrong.”

  Davey frowned at me. “What the fuck —?”

  “I know you were there, Davey,” I sighed. “And I know you threw the iPhone out the window.”

  His frown deepened. “Wha
t are you talking about?”

  “I’ve seen the video.”

  “What video?”

  Sighing again, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my mobile. As I selected the video player, I retrieved the video from inside my head and sent it to my mobile, and by the time I’d opened the player, the video was already there. Without saying anything, I hit play and passed the phone to Davey. He took it, watched it for a while, and then — with his face visibly paling — he passed it back.

  “Remember it now?” I asked him, deleting the video and putting the phone back in my pocket.

  He nodded sheepishly. “Where did you get it from? The video, I mean . . .”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No . . . I suppose not.”

  I looked at him. “Christ, Davey, how could you? I mean, Jesus . . . how could you do that?”

  “I didn’t do anything,” he whined.

  “You were there! You watched them doing it . . . you were laughing, for God’s sake. You think that’s not doing anything?”

  “Yeah, I know . . . I just meant —”

  “I know what you meant.” I took a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to control my anger. Davey lit a cigarette. I sighed again. “You used to be all right, Davey. I mean, you used to have a mind of your own. What the hell happened to you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Did you think it was funny, what they were doing to Lucy? Did you think it was a really good laugh?”

  “No.”

  “So what did you think it was, then? Did you think it was cool? Tough? Did it make you feel good?”

  Davey’s eyes darkened. “You don’t know . . .”

  “What? I don’t know what?”