Other noises, at first far off and vaguely impressionistic, break through my senselessness. It’s a white noise of voices that I hear as a low murmur, almost like an echo of what must be a tumult of cacophonous noise. Surely everyone must be really concerned about me? I did faint, didn’t I? Did I lose consciousness altogether? And if so, how long have I been out?
The last thing I remember is the brilliant flash of light. Then … nothing. I just sank into complete darkness. I went far away from the horror of my attempted speech. I don’t actually know what happened, only that it must have been waaaaay worse than Amy’s forecast. Maybe I’ll be famous, after all — as the person who made the single most disastrous declaration of affection in the entire history of the universe!
I’d secretly hoped, as I walked towards Connor, Ellie and the Satellites, that, if it did all go wrong, the ground would open up beneath my feet and swallow me up and so spare me the resulting shame. I didn’t know I’d literally get my wish! On the first bit, anyway. I think eternal shame is pretty much guaranteed.
Things slowly begin to drift back into focus. But not “focus” exactly, because I can’t see anything. There’s nothing at all, just total darkness —inside and out!
As I’d walked, an echo of the familiar panic had edged into my consciousness, but I’d remembered my breathing exercises and faced down that feeling as I steeled myself to actually talk to Connor. And to do it publicly.
I know reached the group. And I opened my mouth to speak.
And —
I search for a foothold in the confusion. What had happened?
Was that brilliant, blinding flash a seizure, maybe? I try to focus, but the world’s hazy. My blurred vision is like my distant heartbeat and fuzzy hearing: everything’s muddy and indistinct. Like there’s gauze between me and reality.
I feel rather more without it than with it, if you catch my drift. When I try to talk my voice remains mute. I focus hard, trying to make these shapes, these forms understand me. “What happened? Why are you —” But they don’t respond, because although I’m trying to frame the words, I’m not actually speaking. I can hear my voice, but only inside my head.
Is this some clever trick played on me by Ellie and the Satellite Simpletons? But no, they’re called the Simpletons for good reason: they could never come up with anything as elaborate as this. They’d put chewing gum on my chair or a spider in my lunch box, or, more likely, just post something mean online. They wouldn’t give me poison or whatever to make me think I’d had a stroke.
Does this make any sense at all? It doesn’t, does it? I mean, how could it? It’s just that nothing feels right.
I hear a burst of tinny laughter. “Coo-eee, Daisy, are you still with us?”
Someone replies, but I’m fading in and out and don’t catch all of it, “—goodness’ sake, Ellie, shut up for once in your—” The voice sounds like Connor’s, but —
“Give her some space, let her breathe.” This is a deeper, more insistent voice — a teacher’s, I think. There’s a blur of voices to go with the overall blur that’s inside my head. I sense activity around me …
“Sir, she fainted, sir! Just like totally blanked on us!” Is that Ellie’s over-excited chattering? “She swooned at Connor’s feet. I think it’s love, sir.” Yep — most likely Ellie!
“Daisy?” The teacher’s voice again. I think it might be Mr Ford, a loud but not awfully effective Maths teacher. Enormously tall and broad, he compensates for a surprising lack of authority by wearing over-formal three-piece, pin-stripe suits that look like they’ve been exquisitely tailored … for someone else. His habit is to stand as ramrod straight as a parade-ground sergeant-major and shout a lot. He’s shouting again now: “Daisy, can you hear me?!” he screams into my ear. Just as well I can’t hear very well, his yelling would most likely deafen me!
Disconcertingly, I sense panic in his voice. Teachers shouldn’t panic, should they? They should be calm and collected. He doesn’t sound level-headed, though. He sounds as though he’s about to crack under the pressure of handling not just the usual crowd of not very sensible young people, but also an in-sensible girl.
I’m sure my heart must be pounding! This chaos should terrify me, but I feel … numb, just sort of distant. And there’s that buzz in my head. I’m a long way away from anything tangible; I’m like a ship, drifting rudderless, desperately in search of shore. And literally any port to get me the hell away from the storm that’s happening in my head right now would be fantastic!
But I don’t know if my heart is pounding, because now I can’t even feel the distant, pulsing beat I could a moment ago. So I can’t see or hear anything, except dim shadows and a blur of noise, and my heart seems to have stopped. My limited senses are even preventing me from seeing the light coming to meet me at the end of a tunnel that you’re supposed to see when you’re dying!
Through the murky haze of my senses, I hear someone call my name. And suddenly, a weird vibration runs through me. Look, this’ll sound weirder still, but it feels as though I’m moving; moving through thick, blanketing fog. I’m not being carried, I’m not on a stretcher or in an ambulance, but I’m sure I’m moving — and quickly, side to side, up and down.
“Come on, girl, what’s wrong with you? Just snap out of it, why don’t you!” I’m spinning again, my head whiplashing to and fro and my dizziness increasing alarmingly. I’m rocking to and fro and — oh, I think I’m going to —
“Sir!” Maybe Connor again? “Sir, I don’t think it’s a good idea to shake her.” His voice is low and careful, the point made quietly and precisely.
“I bet she throws up all over you, sir,” adds a voice that pierces the darkness with such swagger that I think it must be Ellie. And her remark, made as a joke, is probably even more helpful, as the shaking stops instantly.
“Well, I don’t know wh—” A sudden stir interrupts Mr Ford’s floundering.
“What is going on here? Stand back everyone, please.” That’s more like it! Cast iron hauteur and the first voice I’m almost sure of. It’s genuine authority at last, in the form of our head teacher, Mrs Griffin. Her confident, clipped tone and slightly mannered way of expressing herself silences the baying mob and I sense the immediate restoration of order. Identifying her calms me a little. It’s partly her sheer competence, but also the fact that a) recognising her makes it less likely I’m dead; and b) if I am, I’m in heaven, not hell, because Mrs G is very much on the side of the angels.
She assesses the situation quickly. “Okay, let’s give the poor girl some air, shall we?” Phrased as a question, it’s clearly a command. “All of you, back to your classrooms, now.”
“But Mrs Griffin, we’ve still got five min—” whines another voice (Claire I think).
“Now.” The single word is enough to silence the muttering. “Mr Ford, make yourself useful and see to it, will you?”
The weirdest thing, as someone takes charge on the outside, is that I’ve no idea what’s happening on the inside. This is difficult to explain, because although I think I’m still here and doubt if I’m actually dead — but I just don’t feel in control at all.
“Yes, Mrs Griffin.” Mr Ford sounds relieved to have something to do that does not involve trying to bring a stricken teenager back to her senses. Crowd control is more in his line. “Come on now, don’t hang about, let’s go, come on, off with you all!” He’s immediately shouting at the gawping mob, his over-fussy nature reasserting itself.
It’s good someone is in charge. And actually, I’m feeling better, too. The light is brighter. The haziness is fading. In fact, everything is fading.
There’s no pain. Everything’s going away. All fading …
I see a lo-o-o-ong tunnel; and teeny, teeny lights. Reeeeeaaalllly briiiiiiiight liiiiiiights. Everythin’ ’s distant.
far away away
i’m goin’ faaaaaarrrrr away—
Chapter 4
BUY A SPORTS C
AR!
The Daisy Jacobs’ form sighs. Breathes deeply. If it could truly sense, if it could feel, could experience sensation, it would yell and scream and jump and laugh and sing and—
But it is confused: what is “yell” and “scream” and “jump”? It doesn’t understand.
It has been so long since the last becoming but now it has found a form! The very first of this place’s forms. The first of many, many, many. And maybe, it thinks, when this body is used and it moves to the next and the next and the next — maybe that’s “laugh” and “sing” … ?
Suddenly its attention is intently focussed. The form that was Daisy Jacobs looks up at the baleful, low-hanging sky and inhales deeply. Because now it is happening: Daisy Jacobs is becoming.
It can feel the being’s life ebbing away. And this is … good? It thinks so and is surprised, not by the thought of how good it is to become — to take the life of this form — but by the very idea of “think”. “Think” is new; and in a life spanning the entire history of the universe, “new” itself is, well, novel. “Think” is clearly a complicated process. And it is not sure it needs to spend time on “think” — or with “laugh”.
Because its existence is grey. Simple and grey. It’s been grey since the beginning. It is the oldest and the smallest thing in the universe. In one sense, it is the universe. Because it is nothing but matter, condensed to a tiny single point of infinite density.
It is, in fact, Quark.
And all Quark does, all Quark ever does is drift. Oh, and Quark absorbs life wherever it goes. Absorbs as in pulverises to that same point of infinite density. It has to be said that this is rarely good for the life that is discovered.
But Quark doesn’t mind that. Because it has no mind. Quark is innocent. Resolute, but blameless. Homicidal but free of guilt … if not intent.
Everywhere Quark finds life, it pulls the life in and crushes it out of existence.
Quark means absolutely no harm to anyone or anything; so if everyone and everything happens to be squidged out of existence as it passes by, that is unfortunate — for everyone and everything, that is. But not for Quark.
And anyway, it’s unlikely that anyone will get crushed into oblivion. Because space is big. The universe is larger than we can even begin to understand. The universe is so big that when you look up into the sky at night, you can see stars that are larger than our sun and yet look like tiny pinpricks of light. Even whole galaxies look like a few little dots of white in the inky blackness.
So in all that immensity, the chances of being squished are infinitesimal.
However, space is dangerous. If we went there, we’d be dead — bang, dead. Gone. That’s why when we do go into space, we go in spacesuits or spaceships. And that’s why we’re sensible enough to protect ourselves from the dangers of deep space by living on a planet that has an almost perfect protective shield called the atmosphere.
Unfortunately, the atmosphere offers about as much protection against Quark as arming yourself with a banana would do you if you came across a Bengal Tiger as you walked through the park, and every bit as much use as a rubber ring would be if you chanced upon a Great White Shark in your local swimming pool.
In neither of those highly scientific and carefully calculated scenarios would you be likely to survive long enough to blow out the candles on your next birthday cake.
So I’m sure we can agree: the day Quark came to earth and found Daisy Jacobs was not the one when you’d take out a pension that will mature when you are 60, or to sign a lease agreement on a £250,000 sports car — no, scratch that: it’s exactly the day to take out that lease, because you can drive the supercar off the garage forecourt and know the chances of you ever having to cough up that £250,000 are about the same as discovering a life-munching space entity has just arrived on earth to snuff the life out of every life-form on the planet …
Chapter 5
FIRST PERSON BINARY
You know how it is when you’re in school and Miss What’s-her-name, your English teacher, gives you the exercise where you have to write a sentence or a paragraph in first person and then one in third person? Well, this is like that; I feel like me — Daisy Jacobs’ me, first person me — but I almost feel as though there’s another — a third person me — there too. Actually, here too. Obviously, I don’t mean literally here; I mean … well … it’s like I’m me, but I’m not really me and— Come on, this is just too weird to say out loud, or think out loud, which is all I can do at the moment.
But this is me. Yet it’s not me. I mean, I’m me, but I’m — aargh, how to explain?!
Look, at least I do I know who I am: I’m Daisy Jacobs. And I know that I’m almost fifteen. I know my parents have ordinary jobs — Mum’s a doctor, Dad does something or other in I.T. that’s considered important at a big company in the City. I have one little brother, Luke, who’s ten. And I am a teenager, so naturally I think there should be more to life than home and Scuttleford Secondary and my normal, everyday existence, but when I hoped for something exciting to happen, I was rather hoping that something would be Connor Wheeler-shaped, rather than going totally out-of-my-mind-shaped!
Because … okay, how can I say this? How can I tell you what’s going on? How can I make you believe? Because you must believe me. I’m sure it’s no exaggeration to say that everything depends on that. I need to tell you exactly how this messed up situation came about. Because, deep down I suspect it could be both dangerous and disastrous for —
No, let’s stick to what I know, or think I know. The basics.
So. Do I look different? There must be something really strange about me; genuinely, freakishly weird — yeah? I mean, you may not know me well, but you’d notice say … a third eye in the middle of my forehead? Or a whole second head maybe? I mean, there must be something because that’s the scale of weirdness I’m operating on here!
“Being a teenager is the worst time of your life.” That’s what Miss Partridge said in English one day. I didn’t believe it for a minute; but then I’m (usually) an optimistic person. Life is what you make of it, that’s what I’ve always thought. But if someone/ something makes something else entirely out of your life ...
Look, I’m teenager, okay? I’m used to nature throwing the works at me. Physically and emotionally, everything’s changing. What with the spots and the inexplicable mood swings and the boobs and the bleeding and the rampaging hormones, you’d have thought us adolescents already had all the bases covered as far as feeling freakishly bizarre and weird. But the fact is all of that stuff is normal. This is outlandishly ab-normal.
You know I asked if I looked different? The reason I asked is that I don’t know and I have no way of finding out. It’s true! If you want to check your hair or the progress of your latest zit, you can just use your legs to walk to the bathroom mirror and use your eyes to see how fine you’re looking (the zit’s okay, by the way, hardly noticeable at all — last time I could see, that is). If, for example, Connor Wheeler wanted to reassure himself of his overall gorgeous, hunky-handsomeness, he could check out his reflection.
I don’t have that luxury. Because my body’s no longer my own. I’m in some weird state of unconsciousness. And I have a horrible feeling this is just the beginning. I know I sound like some mad person standing on a street corner with a placard emblazoned with “The End is Nigh!!!” (Why do they always add extra, unnecessary exclamation marks? As if “!” is bad, but somehow “!!!” is very, very bad and we’re all likely to leap into action as a result?) But I am scared. SO scared. Because I really do think the end is coming. Actually, that’s not true, I think it’s already here. (Oh, my god, I AM that mad person!!!) And no one will believe me; I know you don’t. You think I’m bad, bonkers, barmy, off-my-trolley, a few coupons short of a toaster. I appreciate that. And I don’t (really) blame you. Much. But you have to believe me. Have to. Because the end of me is here. The end is happening to me right now, as I speak.
I know this mind/body split thing is ridiculous. The idea’s too silly to even consider. I’m sure it’s just that my head’s spinning and my brain’s fuzzy, but what if —
“It is okay, people. I am fine. I am good. All is peachy-cool-awesome.”
The voice breaks through my reverie. Lightly modulated, maybe slightly breathy. But confident. A voice I recognise. A voice I’m used to hearing … just not in this way.
“Stand back and give this girl-person … space.” The voice cackles as if at some private joke.
This is not a voice in my head, but an actual spoken-aloud voice. And since the bright, flashing light and the swooning and the dizziness and the out-of-body (in-body?) experience, this is the first voice I have recognised with absolute one hundred percent certainty. Because it’s a voice I have heard all my life, ever since I had a voice. But as I’m still out cold(ish) and because I’m barely capable of rational thought, I can’t believe I’m hearing the words. I’m not the one speaking the words. And that’s really strange.
Because it’s my voice.
Chapter 6
QUARK IS NOT HAPPY
Quark knows something’s not right. Something is ... off. It’s like being in another being’s home, or trying on someone else’s clothes, or putting someone else’s false teeth in your mouth — ugh! That’s horrible! Having someone else’s teeth in your mouth! It’s besgustin’! But why should that be? Why is it okay to have your teeth in your mouth, but not okay to have someone else’s?
Daisy Jacobs Saves the World Page 2