Ellie raised her eyes to heaven. “How long have you two been practising that?” she said.
“About three day—”
“Shut up, Morris!” said Isla. “Anyway, I see you’re looking for video-game stuff, are you?”
“Yeah! Are you?” said Morris, who tended, when not exactly sure what to do re the whole bullying thing, just to repeat what Isla said.
“Well spotted!” said Ellie. “Thank God there’s a photo on the screen so that you could work that out. How would you have known if it was just words?”
“Very funny …” said Isla. “At least I can see it without glasses.”
“There’s nothing wrong with wearing glasses!”
“Oh, isn’t there? Shall we go and ask Rashid? If he likes girls with glasses? Or, for that matter, girls with braces and pigtails and who still dress like they’re in Year One …?”
Ellie blushed and looked away.
Rashid Khan was universally considered to be the most handsome boy in their class. More importantly, he was also universally considered to be the nicest boy in their class.
Now, Ellie wasn’t very interested in boys – she was much more interested in video games – but something about Rashid did make her feel a bit funny inside. A long time ago – back in Year Four, before Isla Fawcett had completely grown into the bully she now was – Ellie had stupidly confided this to her and now she was always worried that one day Isla was going to tell Rashid. Who, Ellie was sure, probably liked Isla, or at least girls who looked like Isla, more than Ellie anyway.
Fred, knowing that the mention of Rashid had embarrassed his sister, said: “Leave it, Isla.”
“Sorry, what was that?” said Isla, turning to him.
“Yeah, what was that?” said Morris, also turning to him.
It was true Fred hadn’t said it very loudly.
“Nothing,” said Fred.
“Oh, that’s very odd,” said Isla.
“Yeah. Odd. Very,” said Morris, improvising.
“Because I’m sure you said something. Was it maybe … something about being a boy who isn’t even as good at video games as his sister …?”
“Yeah! His sister!” said Morris.
Fred looked away, embarrassed.
Even though he didn’t mind at all that his sister was better than him at video games, he did mind people at school making fun of him for it. Which some did. Not because Ellie had told everyone, but because Eric, at Bracket Wood’s last parent-teacher evening, when asked by their form teacher, Miss Parr, what he thought Ellie’s particular talents were, had said: “Video games. You’d have thought that would’ve been the boy, but no, she’s the one with the magic fingers!!”
Unfortunately, Eric’s voice was very loud and booming, and everyone in their form room – and most of the rest of the school – had heard.
“In fact, Fred, you’re probably even worse at video games than you are at actual games!” said Isla.
“Yeah! Actual games!” said Morris.
“Like …” said Isla, turning to Morris.
There was a pause.
“What?” said Morris.
“I thought you might say this bit,” said Isla.
Morris frowned. “What bit?”
“The bit about which games he’s rubbish at …? Like, give some examples?”
Morris looked blank.
“Oh, come on, Morris!” said Isla. “Do you have any idea how hard it is to always drive the bullying? To have to come up with all the clever things to say to humiliate other children? Frankly, I’m starting to think you’re just a passenger in what we’re doing here.”
Morris frowned again. Then he frowned some more. Finally, his face cleared. “Football!” he said, clicking his fingers.
“Yes! Well done, Morris! Yeah! What are you worse at, Fred – FIFA or football? You could hardly be worse at FIFA – because I’ve never seen anyone so bad at football!”
“Yeah, so bad at football!” said Morris.
“Oh, shut up!” said Ellie, getting up to face the bullies.
“Yeah, shut up!” said Fred, getting up and facing them too. He had had enough.
Because football meant a lot to Fred. He wanted more than anything to be in the Bracket Wood First XI. He wanted to be in the Bracket Wood First XI and score the winning goal in the final of the Bracket Wood and Surrounding Area Inter-school Winter Trophy. Ever since he was old enough, he had gone to the school trials for the team. And every year he hadn’t got in. Every year something had gone wrong.
Let’s just take a moment out from the main story to look at the last time Fred went to one of the trials for the school football team.
This was last year, when Fred was in Year Five. For the trial, Fred had spent all his pocket money on a new pair of football boots. Bright yellow ones. Marauders. Fred was totally convinced that they were going to make all the difference (to the fact that he hadn’t been picked on any of the three preceding years).
Unfortunately, Eric and Janine had never taught Fred how to tie his shoelaces properly.fn1 So what normally happened was that every morning, before school, Ellie would tie Fred’s school shoes very, very tightly with a triple bow. And that would be fine; they would stay tied for the whole day.
But, before the school team trial, Fred had asked Ellie to tie his Marauders with just a single bow. Because a triple bow, he thought, would be too bulky and make it very difficult – for example – when the ball came to him on the edge of the penalty area to bend it round five defenders into the top right-hand corner (not something he had ever done, but he was sure he was going to this time).
“Really?” said Ellie, kneeling down by the touchline of the school pitch. I say school pitch. And touchline. Bracket Wood was a good school – more or less – but its school pitch was a muddy triangle in the local park and its touchline was the concrete path around it.
“Really,” said Fred. “A single knot.” And ran on. And, as his laces came untied, tripped over. Into some mud.
And then ran backwards and forwards to the touchline throughout the game so that Ellie could retie his shoelaces.
He did stop doing that eventually. Because, after the fifth time, Ellie said: “If you’re not going to let me tie a triple knot, I’m not tying them at all any more!!” and went to sit on the roundabout in the playground six metres away.
After which Fred had to ask the referee, Mr Barrington, to tie his shoelaces. Bracket Wood was a good school – more or less – but its sports teacher was Mr Barrington, who was sixty-seven and wore glasses with lenses thicker than a rhinoceros’s foot.
So after Mr Barrington had sighed very heavily and bent down on one knee in the mud to tie up Fred’s shoelaces – and after it had taken him three minutes to get up again, during which time four goals were scored that never got recorded – he made a point of running (well, staggering) away every time Fred approached him.
Fred didn’t know what to do. His boots kept on coming off. Briefly, he even wished his mum or dad was there, which was something he didn’t often wish for.
Then, eventually, Ellie came back from the playground and Fred let her tie the Marauder shoelaces into a triple bow. Two minutes later, the ball came to him on the edge of the penalty area.
“Come on, Fred!” shouted Ellie. “Hit it!”
Fred focused on the ball. He ran towards it, confident now that his shoelaces were not going to come undone. He hit the ball square in the middle of his left boot.
Square in the middle of his triple bow.
So the ball went almost nowhere near his actual foot. It went almost entirely near the big knot of his shoelace. Fred, to be fair, had been right. A bow that size was too bulky. Which wasn’t much comfort to him as the ball spun backwards over his head, hitting Mr Barrington full in the face. “Ow!!!” said Mr Barrington, as his rhino-foot-lens glasses flew off his face and into the mud.
Everyone apart from Fred laughed, loud and long. Fred himself just turned and walked off, knowing tha
t he certainly wasn’t going to get into the school team this time.
Now let’s go back to the main story.
So that’s why Isla and Morris making fun of his footballing ability did touch a nerve with Fred. And why he told them to shut up.
It felt good, saying shut up. It felt, to Fred, that the time had come to stand up and be counted, and he had stood up and been counted. He had said: This much and no more. He had drawn a line in the sand and told the bullies not to cross it.
And that feeling – that he had stood up and been counted, that he had said this much and no more, that he had drawn a line in the sand and told the bullies not to cross it – was certainly some small comfort to Fred as Morris proceeded to give him a dead leg, an elbow drill and a wedgie.
“I feel really bad,” said Ellie, trying to help Fred out of the dustbin. (Isla and Morris’s last move, a classic bit of bullying, was to plonk Fred in the computer-room bin bottom first, so that his legs stuck out like wheelbarrow handles.)
“Don’t feel really bad,” said Fred.
“What did you say?” said Ellie.
“I said …” said Fred, trying hard this time not to groan as he said it, “don’t feel really bad.”
“But I’m your sister.” She grabbed hold of his legs and pulled. “And just because I’m a girl shouldn’t mean that I can’t protect you from the bullies and …”
As she spoke, her weight finally pulled her brother – and the bin attached to his bum, looking not unlike a snail’s shell – forward. Two seconds later, the bin clattered to the floor, popping Fred out as it went. He picked himself up.
“I know that, Ellie. But you tried your best. It wasn’t your fault that Isla’s arm is quite long.”
This was a reference to the fact that, while Fred was getting his dead leg and his elbow drill and his wedgie, Isla had been holding an arm out and blocking Ellie from getting close enough to help her brother by putting her palm on Ellie’s forehead. Ellie had swung her arms a few times, but sadly got nowhere near landing any punches.
“Anyway, where’s the laptop?” Fred said.
They both looked around. It wasn’t on the shelf any more. It was on the floor next to some scrunched-up sweet wrappers that had fallen out of the bin. It had landed upside down, in the shape of a tiny tent.
“Oh my God!” said Ellie.
She lifted it up carefully, as if it was a bird whose wings had folded down across its body after an injury. But it was fine when she turned it round. More than fine actually. The screen seemed to be glowing brighter than ever.
And on the screen the browser had clicked through to a new page on which was shown this:
It was an amazing-looking controller. It was black, but with blue lines running across its body. There weren’t four buttons on the top right-hand side, as normal, but six; and they weren’t lettered, or numbered, or ordinary colours: red and green and yellow. They were jewelled: silver and gold and diamond and emerald and amber and ruby.
The control stick, which also had a jewelled top, appeared to be reaching out of the screen, as if in 3D. Its central button had no recognisable trademark, but just an image of something. It might have been a person, or an animal, or a ghost dancing.
“Wow …” said Fred.
“Yeah. Wow …” said Ellie. She clicked on the screen for a closer view.
At which point the blue lines running across the body of the controller lit up and began to pulse. The blue light washed across Ellie and Fred’s spellbound faces.
“What is this website?” said Fred.
“I don’t know.” Ellie was still staring enraptured at the screen. “But I do know that this … is my controller.”
“Really?” said Fred.
“Yes,” said Ellie. “I can feel it.”
Fred nodded. He knew there was no point in arguing with Ellie when she had set her mind on something.
“OK … but … how do we pay for it?”
Ellie frowned. “Uh …”
A link popped up that simply said:
So she did.
There was a moment of computer fuzz. And then, in a little window next to the controller, a man, bald but with long hair at the back, wearing very small square sunglasses and a head mic, appeared on screen. He looked directly at the twins.
“I am … oh blast. Wait a minute.” He flicked a switch on his head mic.
“I am …” he said again, but now his voice had a slight electronic echo, “… the Mystery Man!!”
Fred and Ellie exchanged glances.
“Right …” said Ellie. “Nice to meet you.”
The man nodded. There was a long pause. The Mystery Man seemed to be sizing them up from inside the screen. Eventually, he said, “Answer me this: are you nerds?”
“Sorry?” said Ellie.
“Are you … NERDS?!!” he said, more loudly.
Fred and Ellie looked at each other. They took in each other’s V-necks, glasses and braces. They thought for a moment about their joint liking for superheroes, comics, Japanese fantasy animation films, maths and video games. And they realised that the answer was:
“Well, yes. I suppose so,” said Ellie.
“Yes, I suppose so too,” said Fred.
“No, that’s not good enough,” said the Mystery Man from the laptop screen. “You need to say it loud and say it proud. You need to own it. So once more: are you … NERDS?!”
Fred and Ellie looked at each other again. Ellie shrugged.
“Actually,” she said, “we’ve got these other friends …”
“Sort-of friends,” said Fred.
“… yes … and they’re probably more nerdy than us …”
“The iBabies? They’re too young,” said the Mystery Man. “I’m not interested in them.”
Ellie made a face. “Rude,” she said.
“Can we get on?” said the Mystery Man. “Are you or are you not … NERDS?!”
Fred and Ellie looked at each other for a third time. They didn’t have to speak to each other to know what they were going to do.
“YES!” they said, turning back to the screen. “WE ARE NERDS!!”
The Mystery Man nodded, seeming finally satisfied. He reached down somewhere below the little window and pressed a button. A mysterious-sounding chord – like something from the soundtrack of an old horror film – played tinnily.
“Then you, Ellie and Fred Stone …” the Mystery Man continued, “… are the new owners of … the Controller!!!”
The Mystery Man reached down and played the chord again. When it was over, Ellie said: “How do you know our names?”
“Or,” said Fred, “Scarlet and Stirling’s ages?”
“Or the fact that we call them the iBabies?”
“Do not ask questions of the Mystery Man,” he intoned solemnly.
“What’s your real name?” said Fred.
“My real name is the Mystery Man. And that is a question. And I have told you not to ask questions of the Mystery Man …”
“You answered it, though,” said Ellie.
“Shut up,” said the Mystery Man crossly.
“But how do you know our names?”
The Mystery Man sighed and made a wavy, flicky gesture with his hand, like people do when they want to suggest that the things you’re asking just aren’t important. “You may as well ask how I, a face on the screen, am able to converse with you, two flesh-and-blood people.”
“Well,” said Ellie, “I assume it’s because you’re on some sort of webcam.”
The Mystery Man rolled his eyes. “Look. Do you want the Controller or not?”
“Are you saying we’ve already bought it?”
“You’re asking questions again! Goodness!”
“But did we pay for it? How did we pay for it just by clicking on the picture?” said Fred.
“Look. These are all questions. I’m not supposed to answer questions. But … consider it a free trial. OK?”
Fred frowned. He could feel without
looking at her – because they were twins – that Ellie was smiling. In fact, he could feel without looking at her that Ellie was just going to really happily say, “Yes, OK!”
But he wasn’t sure they should be accepting strange gadgets from strange men on the internet. Even if the gadget did look kind of amazing. So he was about to say, “Hold on a minute, Ellie …” when he heard a voice from the corridor outside.
“No, Morris … a bully claps sarcastically. And slowly …”
Fred turned. He could hear footsteps from around the corner.
“Ellie,” he said. “Isla and Morris are coming back …”
“Oh! What shall we do?” said Ellie.
“Just say, ‘Yes, OK!’ That’s what you were going to say anyway!!!”
“Sar-cas-tickly,” said Morris, still outside the room but much closer now. “Right. And slowly.” Then came the sound of him practising his clapping.
“Just do it!” Fred hissed to Ellie.
“All right.” Ellie turned back to the screen. The Mystery Man was whistling and looking at his watch, making it very clear that he was bored with waiting for her answer.
“Yes!” she said. “OK!”
“Yes, OK … what?” said the Mystery Man.
“Yes, OK, we’ll have the Controller. On a free trial.”
The Mystery Man shook his head slowly.
“Yes, OK, we’ll have the Controller on a free trial … what?”
“Hey. Morris.”
From just behind the door now.
“Yes, Isla?”
“Let’s go back in there. I wanna see the video-game stuff those Stone twins were looking at …”
Fred turned to Ellie. She didn’t seem to hear them.
“Do I really have to say please to a computer?” she said.
“YES, YOU DO! PLEASE!” said Fred.
She sighed and turned back towards the screen. “Yes, OK, we’ll have the Controller on a free trial … PLEASE.”
The Mystery Man nodded, as if to say, That’s right at last – clicked his fingers and vanished.
Untitled 2 Page 2