The Penn Friends Series Books 1-4: Penn Friends Boxset

by T H Paul

  At home it was just Penny and her mother, though Penny knew better than to take a boy home––she hadn’t had anyone over since before Abbey had moved away, back when the two girls were still friends. Penny’s mother’s drinking and the general run-down nature of the house that resulted from an alcoholic parent meant it was strictly off-limits to anyone for the foreseeable future. Penny and Geoff, therefore, most regularly hung out at the cinema or over at Geoff’s home, though they were not allowed upstairs, alone. Geoff’s parents had clear rules about that type of behaviour.

  Penny was yet to feel comfortable having a boyfriend––needing anything still felt a bit of a stretch––and they would be through with each other before she could have got comfortable enough to be seen out together.

  It was at yet another cinema visit that Penny––possessor of a gift that she had kept secret since first discovering it––was found out for the first time. Her little bit of fun and distraction she was having with Geoff––her words, never his––had had to come to an end. She would learn much from it, however.

  Still uncomfortable with being seen in public with a boy, Penny’s fun had gone like this; the two of them, Penny and Geoff, would buy a ticket for the film they wanted to watch. She would always select two seats at the end of a row––furthest from the aisle as was possible––picking their seats from only the still empty rows displayed on the cashier’s screen. She always insisted they arrive early into the hall so that this was possible more often than not––and it limited the chance that anyone she knew might see them––only occasionally was her choice of empty rows limited to just one of the front two, but Geoff didn’t seem to mind. If he’d picked up on her pattern, he apparently put it down to her unique charm. Geoff was on a date with a beautiful girl, who was so out of his league and he would often pinch himself. He was happy if they were sitting on the steps. They would then purchase some popcorn––always just one big tub, to share––and drink––one big container, two straws. Penny would be watching around her the whole time, checking she didn’t know anyone, checking that no one was watching. If he had any idea why she was doing that––something he was just about to find out, in fact––it might have been a different story.

  As soon as they were allowed to enter their screen, Penny would always lead the way, and as they made their way to the row––usually the first to arrive––she would give Geoff the gift of invisibility. She would let him enter the row first, following behind until the last seat was sat in, Penny taking the one next to him. No one would see, therefore, that she was with anybody, which suited her just fine––she could just enjoy the film and not keep checking who might be spying on her, and Geoff was none the wiser. He could hold her hand, put his arm around her neck, and no one would know. Sometimes it meant she sat a little awkwardly, sometimes she got a few strange looks, but she didn’t care. She could relax.

  That was to change on a Saturday morning, as once again the couple were first into screen five of the latest Star Wars offering. Penny knew that the hall was bound to fill up soon, but both were once again safely sitting down before anyone else had arrived. Twenty minutes later, with the lights going dark, the room three-quarters full, the film began. There was suddenly a quiet voice from behind Penny, aimed into her right ear.

  “All alone, are we?” Jack Ferguson said, unaware that Geoff was right in front of him, Jack having spotted Penny sitting in the row ahead of him alone, but choosing only the darkness of the start of the movie to make mention of that fact. She had once had to kiss Jack to gain free admission into that same cinema. Jack bent forwards fast as if to poke his head over the empty seat to Penny’s right; only to crack heads, hard, against the still invisible Geoff. Both swore, Penny going into a sudden panic, multiple things happening at the same time.

  “Don’t move,” she ordered Geoff in the first split second, adding in her head; make him soundless, no one can hear him.

  “She punched me!” Jack was then exclaiming, as a few people nearby were demanding he keep the noise down.

  “No, I didn’t!” Penny exclaimed, as Jack was holding an already bloody tissue to his lips and nose, his face looking, even in the limited light, that he had been head-butted, let alone punched.

  “What do you call this then!”

  All around there were more urgent demands for them both to shut up, and before long, a steward flashed his torch on the two arguing teenagers, and a short order shouted across to them both.

  “Out, the pair of you,” the man said, the torch flashing in both Penny’s eyes, and those of Jack’s, the latter covered in blood. Penny gathered her things––she was sure Geoff was protesting, sure he was demanding what was happening, and she could feel movement in his seat, but no one else could hear. She whispered to him.

  “Stay here, don’t move, don’t come after me and I’ll be back shortly!” She had no clue as to what he was saying in reply and had gone before it could have been very much. Those in her row allowed her to scurry out, as the steward walked the pair, still bickering, out of the hall.

  “What’s going on?” he demanded, now just the three of them, back out in the hallway that connected the five screens this cinema offered, the boy covered in blood from a split lip and still gushing nose.

  “She punched me in the face!”

  “I did not! You fell and hit your face on the back of the chair!” Penny said, coming up with the only plausible explanation she could think of at the moment. The steward looked at the pair of them––he indeed seemed to believe it unlikely that the girl could have done such damage to a boy his size.

  “Show me your hands,” he said, addressing Penny, anyway.

  “Why?” she replied, holding them up regardless.

  “If she punched you, as you claim,” he then said, now addressing Jack, who had finally got his nose to stop bleeding, “she would have got blood on her fingers. I think you, therefore, owe her an apology, young man.”

  “Apologise? For this?” he said, his words coming out a little garbled, as he pointed to his lip, which was already starting to swell.

  “You said she hit you.”

  “She bloody did, as well!”

  “Did not! You leant forward and fell onto the back of the chair!”

  “As if!” The steward apparently didn’t know what to do, and a few other people were starting to stream past them, on their way to another screen, another film about to begin. It was already making enough of a scene, and the steward didn’t want it to carry on any longer.

  “Look, you need to get that cleaned up,” he said, pointing to Jack. “There is a bathroom just over there,” he added, though Jack knew perfectly well where the toilets were. Jack eyed Penny suspiciously, fully aware that he had done no such thing as fallen off his chair, though was confused as to what had happened. His head was spinning, his face craving some form of relief, something to take the throbbing away. He reluctantly walked across to the toilet, disappearing behind the door seconds later.

  “Do you know him?” the steward asked, now just him and Penny.

  “No,” she lied, having thought that over for a second. It was easier to pretend Jack was a stranger, less likely that there would be any further questions.

  “I’ve got to ask, Miss, did he try to do anything to you?”

  “No, as I said, I didn’t do anything. First thing I knew he was hitting the back of the chair next to me, then screaming blue murder.”

  The steward took this all in, thinking it through. If the lad had passed out, hitting his face in those seconds of unconsciousness, suddenly coming to and accusing the girl––who surely couldn’t have done such damage––then she was merely an innocent customer, missing her show.

  “Look, I’m sorry about all this. You can go back in, I’ll go and see if that young man is okay,” he said, already backing slowly away from Penny, letting her turn and re-enter the hall, himself heading towards the toilets, not knowing what type of person he was about to come across.
/>   Penny watched him enter, heard him speak to Jack as he stood in the doorway, clearly cautious to go completely in without help, and she left them both to it.

  Penny apologised to those in her row, as she made her way back down to the end, the film in full flow. She sat back down, putting her hand out for Geoff’s arm, or leg, anything––but as much as she tried, he just wasn’t there. The seat was empty.

  Penny swore.

  3

  It was the first time anything like that had ever happened. I had a significant problem. I knew enough, immediately, to not undo what I’d done. Gavin wasn’t around me; in my row which I’d just walked down, in his seat which I’d just checked––there were no shrieks from anyone else present to suggest he could have climbed out and they could feel him moving past them, or that anything unusual had happened. Also, I had only just gone back in, so could hardly leave right away. I was trapped.

  I knew I couldn’t undo what I’d done to Geoff until I found him––he was invisible and soundless, so the simple truth was that I didn’t know where he might be. He couldn’t, however, just suddenly reappear in the middle of a crowded room; that would just freak everyone out.

  I was scared; for the first time, I didn’t know what to do.

  Jack did not return to the hall that day, Penny not even seeing him as she left, the film now over. There was no sign of the steward who’d pulled them both out as the film had just been starting, no sign of any commotion around the Gents toilets, not even any indication of the drops of blood that had dripped onto the carpeted floor outside of Screen Four. Nothing.

  Penny paused for a second, her brief moment of dumbstruck silence at not knowing what to do broken by a call from Geoff from behind her, who was coming out of the same door she’d just left––he’d been inside all along.

  “There you are!” he screamed, confusion all across his face. He looked like he’d been sleeping, though Penny knew that was the least likely option. He was also visible and could speak, the implications immediate to Penny as realisation dawned.

  “Geoff, thank goodness. I’ve been looking all over for you,” she said, entirely at a loss for words.

  “Bollocks. I just saw you come out from the film.” She looked a little taken aback.

  “I don’t get it. I went back to the seat, and you weren’t there.”

  “Couldn’t see me, no?”

  By now they’d walked to where the cinema sold popcorn, and thankfully there were very few people around, and no-one within earshot. Penny waited, spotting a girl from year eleven emerge around the same corner she’d just come––she twigged after raking her brains that the girl was Jack’s older sister and figured she had probably come looking for him. Penny let her pass, the girl not spotting Penny, walking past them both and back out of the building. Now it was just the two of them again.

  “What are you going on about?” Penny said, her composure coming back, as much as her control over her gift once again gave her the ability to act. Make Geoff forget everything that happened since we arrived here. Make him forget he was invisible nor could be heard by anyone.

  “The mere bloody fact that no one could see me, and nobody could bloody hear me, or so they all let on, and then seconds after you run out, despite my protests, I’m suddenly floating above the ground, powerless to control myself! I watched the whole damn film from the ceiling!”

  Floating? Penny was dumbfounded. Not only had he not just forgotten everything she’d just undone––that realisation was sinking in fast––but he’d also experienced the effects of a gift she hadn’t knowingly given him.

  “You fell asleep, Geoff, that’s all.” She sounded less convincing than ever. Geoff laughed, though a large part of him now terrified that he was going crazy.

  “You just said you’ve been looking all over for me!”

  Damn, busted. Penny went silent. Think, damn it, think.

  “Geoff, I don’t know what you think happened in there, but some stranger accused me of punching him in the face and, in case you didn’t see, I was pulled out by the steward. When I came back in, you were sound asleep!”

  “I was not sound asleep. I saw you, from the ceiling. You arrived back about ten minutes later, made it all the way back to our seats, and you were feeling around desperately for me. You knew I was invisible; you didn’t seem at all alarmed that the seat was empty.”

  “Geoff, I have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “Bollocks bollocks bollocks! And it was Jack behind us, as we both know. Why did you say he was a stranger? He whacked his face clean against the back of my head.” Geoff put his hand to his head, which still hurt. There was a lump there.

  “You hit your head? That explains it. It wasn’t Jack, Geoff. I didn’t know him.”

  “Bollocks,” but his conviction had wavered slightly, his resolve a little reduced after Penny’s latest admonition. Maybe he had been knocked unconscious by accident, had imagined it was Jack, had pictured standing up and shouting after Penny––noticing no one was paying him the slightest regard? Had he then imagined floating up into the ceiling? Imagined floating down as he saw the last but one person leave the hall, that final girl not noticing his reappearance as he stood in front of a mirror, not there for a moment, then suddenly he was, now running out to find Penny just outside the hall in the corridor? Maybe he had imagined all that?

  “Are you okay?” Penny asked, freaked out more than ever. She had never experienced her gift deciding on its own to apply something regardless of what she had thought or imagined. It had never done anything like that before, besides the echo; a voice-like reply she had received from time to time. She could never forget that.

  “I don’t know,” he said, suddenly needing air, suddenly feeling the walls pressing in on him, the room spinning around him. “Let’s go outside,” he said, taking a few unsteady steps, each foot in front of the other requiring complete focus. It must have been a mighty whack to the head.

  They walked along the high street, and the shops had already closed; those that were still open at all, that is. Half the stores now stood permanently empty.

  Penny was racing over everything that had happened, which had all been such a mess, such a rush. Jack had surprised her––she’d had feelings for him for a long time, though after the rape, something Penny knew she had caused and had then witnessed but something for which she still blamed him immensely. Penny was at a loss to explain anything that had happened since first rushing out of that film, the steward beckoning her out. Had she confused herself in those seconds, thinking the wrong thing, her gift reading something else entirely? Why had Geoff reappeared, though clearly, it had been safe to do so? No one saw him. Was that why it could undo itself? Would the other gifts reverse themselves, all on their own? Would Abbey suddenly no longer be able to run as she did––which had always been Penny’s plan anyway––but something that Penny wouldn’t be able to mastermind herself? Was Penny about to lose that moment which offered an enormous impact, the most drama, from Abbey’s downfall? And why had everything Penny had since tried on Geoff failed to work, as well? He’d remembered everything, and though she had passed it off as a massive blow to the head when it was all over, his damaged head healed, would he still remember it the way she wanted? Had the strike to his head done something to protect him from being controlled by Penny?

  The silence continued, until they neared Penny’s street, Penny herself so lost in thought that she had forgotten where they were heading. They’d walked past Geoff’s house twenty minutes before.

  “Look, I need to go. Thanks for walking me home, that was kind of you,” Penny said, not allowing Geoff for one moment to ask to come any nearer home, nor inside it, in fact. “Will you be okay, Geoff, getting home I mean? Your head still seems rather sore.” She couldn’t tell whether his head seemed sore or not, the lump buried under his blonde hair on the back of his head, but she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Yes, I guess I’ll be fine.” He’
d been hoping they might hang out a little longer at her place, for once. She hugged him goodbye and turned back and into her cul-de-sac before they said anything more. He watched her for a moment, though she wasn’t looking behind her, and it was getting a little overcast, rain threatened any moment, so he grudgingly started walking back himself. He was at a loss to understand anything, but wouldn’t talk to his parents about it. They would only worry and get him checked out at the hospital. He knew he just needed a good night’s sleep.

  Penny had called to see how Geoff was on Sunday afternoon, catching him on his phone while he was in his bedroom playing a computer game. He seemed okay, and they chatted about nothing for ten minutes before ending the call. Neither of them mentioned the previous day, besides Penny’s initial question about his head and whether Geoff had slept well. For Geoff, it all felt a bit of a blur––he wasn’t even sure about how much of the actual conversation he’d had with Penny on the way home from the cinema had happened, let alone all the bizarre, dreamlike images he had while watching the movie.

  Penny ended the call. She was still freaked out. Her gift had never before backfired in such a way as it had done with Geoff. Nothing had ever undone itself without her say so, nor had she ever done something to someone unintentionally. Mind, she reasoned, it had probably saved her skin. Had Geoff gone running down the aisle after her, invisible but very physically there, there would have been mayhem. It could have been a total disaster. So she was glad that he’d floated up high before he had the chance to brush against anyone. Invisible and silent, he was no danger to anyone up in the ceiling. The only downside was that he hadn’t forgotten all about it, as she had planned. That much confused her.

  Everything was to change come Monday morning, Penny herself running a little late, so she had no idea a storm was waiting ahead of her.

  Geoff arrived for registration ten minutes before Penny and sitting at the back of the room with a busted lip, and broken nose was none other than Jack Ferguson, the star player in the school team.