‘It’s no big deal. It’s just typing,’ I said, still flat on the floor, which is a bad position if you’re trying to defend yourself.
‘Tell me you didn’t hack a drone, Dan!’
‘Can you lay off the high and mighty, Joe? And get your foot off.’ I pushed him off and sat up.
‘You need to get rid of it, the code or whatever it is.’
‘OK!’ I said, keen for him to calm down. ‘Can we carry on now?’
He didn’t answer so I lay back down and carried on shooting but with eagle eyes staring at me with no intention of playing, it was no fun. It took him a few minutes but when he finally spoke he’d thought of some tricky questions.
‘Whose bet was it?’
‘Someone I know.’
‘What have you done with it?’
‘What?’ Pretend innocence.
‘The code. Did you give it to someone?’
If I’d used the tactic I employ with Dad I’d have carried on denying any guilt, and waited for him to get over himself, but he wasn’t my dad. He was meant to be my friend. And I didn’t like the way he was looking at me.
‘What if I did?’
Ballistic – that’s the word. He got up and pulled the plug out of the wall. Turned on the light. Shut the door. And stood in front of it, arms folded. The climbing had changed the shape of him – he looked strong, dark brown biceps bulging out of the sleeves of his white T-shirt.
He shouted, ‘You gave someone you don’t know —’
‘I know Angel —’
‘You gave someone you couldn’t recognise in the street the controls of a US drone. A lethal weapon that could strike anyone … anywhere …’
‘You can make it sound that way if you want, but it was just an initiation. A test. And no one’s going to bomb anything, because it was a sur-veill-ance drone.’
‘You’ve been played, Dan.’
17
Ten minutes after Joe gave his verdict on my spectacular hack, I was on my way home. There was no telling how long it would take him to calm down.
I let myself in. The rest of them were back from the pub, but I shot straight upstairs and went online to try and find Angel. There was no sign of him. It didn’t mean anything. He was allowed another life away from the keyboard.
I tried on and off all through the rest of the day. There’d been whole days, and longer, between meets before. It didn’t mean anything. But in the back of my head (and quite often right in the front) there was doubt. Doubt wasn’t something I’d had a lot of experience of – and I didn’t like it. Apart from anything else, it made me have conversations with myself, which was pointless – and mad.
Dan: It was a random decision to ask me to hack a drone, because we were talking about spying.
Dan: I agree, it was a challenge based on the fact that I’d already hacked the spy satellite.
Dan: Unless Angel saw an opportunity in between the chat to slide it in?
Dan: Or did Angel get the idea there and then?
Dan: Is Angel a kid, or an adult?
Dan: He talked like a kid, no punctuation.
Dan: Surely this whole thing can’t hang on full stops.
Dan: Obviously not.
Dan: Stop stressing about it.
Dan: I will, as soon as Angel’s back online.
Dan: Joe could have a point – I have no idea who Angel really is, he could be a psycho.
Dan: If you want to fly a drone it’s a bit random to roam around the internet, stumbling upon people that you hope might help.
Dan: Angel could do it himself – he’s elite in his own right.
Dan: Exactly.
That shut all the Dans up for a bit.
But no matter how much I wanted to dismiss Joe’s fears, I was spooked. So spooked I didn’t even go and meet Ruby off the bus which I intended to do. If she saw my face, I was sure she’d know I’d lied. I wanted to eat Victoria sponge with her and not be a hacker. That was the first time I ever felt a second of guilt, regret, conscience. Seriously, it was the first time.
18
Angel had disappeared. There were various Angels bobbing about in the cloud but not the Angel I knew.
Life tick-tocked on. All our lessons were about preparing for GCSEs. Every night I went somewhere with Ruby after school and pretended to be normal (and occasionally forgot I wasn’t) and then went home and searched for Angel. The IRC channel where his cronies hung out was vacant, hollow, abandoned. There had to be a reason – one that wasn’t to do with my few little lines of passably clever (but possibly utterly irresponsible) code.
The explanations I came up with for his vanishing act were:
– his parents had caught him and banned him from using the computer
– he was dead.
Other less likely scenarios were:
– he’d got a paralysing disease (a variation on dead)
– he’d won the Lottery and gone to that hotel in Dubai with the huge water park
– he’d respawned under another handle … like Devil or Phoenix or (please no) Predator.
* * *
‘You all right?’ said Ruby, after school in the café.
‘Fine,’ I answered, taking a glug of hot chocolate before it was cool enough and grimacing. ‘Burned my tongue.’
‘I might have a cure for that,’ she said, leaning over and kissing me.
It was exactly a month since we’d first gone there for me to confess about my evil past and convince her it was all behind me. And five days since I’d last heard from Angel. And five days since Joe had spoken to me. (At least he hadn’t told Ty.) (Or maybe he had and Ty’d forgotten – sick joke.)
‘Are you worried about the exams?’ she asked me.
‘No, I’m worried about the party. I don’t know what to wear.’
She laughed. I banished Angel from my mind and concentrated on being a witty and interesting boyfriend.
‘You don’t have to come,’ she said.
Amelia’s sixteenth. At her house in Cotham.
‘I want to. We can smoke weed and do shots.’ I was winding her up. The aftermath of Pay As You Go was the only glitch in our relationship. Ruby’s friends disapproved of me. Full stop.
‘I don’t care what everyone else thinks,’ she said, soft voice, beautiful eyes, a little clump of spots that just made her more real.
‘So what shall I wear?’ I asked. Earnest face. Frowny forehead.
‘Are you serious?’
I hesitated long enough for her to be completely taken in, then flashed her a (hopefully) brilliant smile.
‘Stop teasing,’ she said, giving me a pretend thump.
There was no more teasing. Instead I walked her home – it took a long time.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she said, round the corner from her house.
I was looking forward to it, mostly because it was a big chunk of time to be with Ruby. Shame it didn’t work out that well.
19
Parties are overrated.
This is what happens at a typical Year Eleven gathering at someone’s home:
– parents do not provide alcohol
– people bring alcohol
– people bring weed
– people may bring other drugs
– parents stay upstairs
– people get drunk
– people get stoned
– people are sick
– people snog
– people who are drunk become obnoxious. And pick on people they don’t like that they’re too scared to pick on normally.
‘You shouldn’t hang around with him, Ruby,’ said a little twit in our year, weaving from side to side, his eyes lagging behind like bad dubbing.
‘Who asked you?’ said Ruby.
‘He’s bad news,’ he said, meaning me.
Other little twits gathered behind the weaving twit.
‘We could report you to the police,’ said a voice at the back.
‘Go away,’ I said. ‘And
pick on someone your own size.’
It helped that I was taller, and not drunk, and not stoned, and not an idiot.
‘Think you’re something, don’t you?’ said the weaving twit.
‘Come on, Dan,’ said Ruby, tugging my sleeve, ‘let’s go inside.’
We were out on the steps at the front, where we’d spent most of the party. Ruby was obviously thinking that inside we might find friends, or maybe parents. Don’t know. Because I wasn’t about to walk away from a few shrimps. And I didn’t have to, because first little twit, pumped up by vodka and Red Bull or some other make-me-a-maniac-with-zero-judgement drink, took a swipe at me. Now, I’m not a kick-your-head-in type, as I’ve already explained, but he’d wound me up, and he was such a pathetic sight in his skinny trousers and red Converse, that I decked him. No other word for it.
Just his mates to go, I thought. Seriously, I did. Looking back it was a weird moment – like I was Jason Statham, destined to be able to single-handedly crush a dozen would-be attackers. But, next thing I knew, real life took over and I had a bloody nose, Ruby was shouting, a load of bystanders had joined in and, for the first time in my life, I was in a brawl. A proper no-one-knows-who’s-hitting-who brawl. The outcome of which was that Amelia’s parents overreacted and called the police, and everyone else either called their parents (the goodies) or scarpered (this group included me, Ruby and Joe). (Ty doesn’t do parties.)
‘Got a death wish?’ said Joe.
‘It wasn’t his fault,’ said Ruby.
‘Nothing ever is,’ said Joe.
I glared at him, terrified that he was about to tell Ruby about the drone.
‘That’s not nice,’ said Ruby. ‘You’re meant to be his friend, Joe.’
Joe made a noise reminiscent of a horse. As we tramped along the streets in the rain towards Ruby’s, Joe gradually gave up the angry-man stuff because he wanted to hear all about the fight.
‘Wish I’d been there at the start,’ he said.
‘Don’t be a jerk,’ said Ruby.
We stopped round the corner from her house, as always. She pecked me on the cheek and we watched her go, waiting a few minutes till she texted to say she was safe inside.
‘We might be talking again,’ said Joe, ‘but you’re still way out of line.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ I said. ‘Maybe Angel played me. But it’s over. I’m not doing anything like that again. OK?’
‘You’d better mean it, Dan.’ He looked pretty menacing under the streetlight.
‘I do.’ And I did.
‘OK. Look, you’d better come back to mine,’ he said. ‘If your mum sees you she’ll flip.’
‘That bad?’
He nodded, a small grin slipping onto his face.
Back at his, he got some antiseptic wipes from a medicine cupboard (in our house the drugs mingle with the groceries, waiting to be overdosed on) and cleaned up my face. It was sore one side of my mouth and under one eye.
‘You’ll do,’ he said eventually. ‘But I think you’d better stay here. Mum and Dad won’t even know – Saturday night’s vodka night.’
‘No, I’m good,’ I said, still, despite everything, keen to go and check online for Angel. Totally feasible that he’d been to a grandparent’s funeral on a Scottish isle with zero internet and just got back …
‘Stay here, Dan. You might have concussion … or something.’
I caved and texted Mum, knowing she’d be asleep but would get it in the morning. I was dropping off, tired and looking forward to oblivion when Joe said, ‘Is it really over? The illegal stuff?’
‘Yes,’ I said, loud and clear.
20
Joe came home with me in the morning. It was a stroke of genius. With my steady and responsible friend by my side declaring my innocence, any possible blame was kiboshed.
‘I think you need stitches,’ said El.
‘You wish,’ I said.
‘Actually a steri-strip might be an idea,’ said Mum, rifling between the pasta and the self-raising flour.
‘I’ll be off,’ said Joe.
‘Going climbing?’ I asked.
He nodded. ‘Got to keep in training if I’m going to get anywhere in the competition.’
Mum and Dad asked him a few questions, clearly impressed.
I finally made it out of the kitchen, intending to go online as normal, but Ty Skyped me to see how I was and remind me that I hadn’t handed in the last chemistry homework, so I chatted to him for a bit. He wanted all the news from the party. I was in the spotlight again, like it or not.
I spent the rest of the afternoon lying on my bed, half dozing, half going over the chats I’d had with Angel, trying to remember anything that might help me find him. I wished I’d gone volunteering but it was too late by the time Joe and I’d got up. Ruby’d texted me anyway and said she’d come round afterwards.
I replayed the conversation that had led to Angel issuing the challenge. Was it a whim, like I thought, or part of a grand and complicated plan? I remembered explaining how I’d mapped the controls for a satellite camera so I could move it about, and being surprised when Angel was impressed because everyone knows that’s easy. So maybe I was wrong about him being an elite … Maybe he was just a script kiddie … He’d never shared code with me …
The more I thought about it, the more sense it made. He was probably twelve years old, and just using other people’s exploits to make a name for himself. Ha! Like I said, there are different types of clever, and chances were Angel was clever at using people. I concluded, once and for all, that Angel never expected me to hack a drone, was surprised when I did, hell, maybe even scared, and definitely wasn’t going to do it himself, just wanted to blag about it.
By the time Ruby came round I was more cheerful than I had been for a week. I’d even done the chemistry homework.
And then she dumped me.
21
Ruby’s mum had found blood on her shirt. My blood, or maybe one of the twits’. Ruby’s mum had called Amelia’s mum and got a high-frame-rate version including the fight, the police, the damage, the weed, the booze, the vomit. Marvellous. I was firmly on the guard dog’s blacklist.
Ruby said she didn’t want to sneak around behind her mum’s back and it was an important time with exams coming up and, although she really liked me, she didn’t like the Dan that sold stolen credit, and somewhere inside I was that Dan too. She said she was sorry. She looked sorry. She looked gorgeous as well. The red hair behind her ears as always, a bright green woolly scarf, rosy cheeks.
I wasn’t cross. Because I decided as soon as I heard the words that I wasn’t going along with it. It wasn’t like when Soraya did it. The thing with Soraya was about being with a ‘girl’ and all I felt when I saw her with the X-Factor boy was miffed. Ruby was like a friend that I wanted to spend all my time with (and do the other stuff), and if Ruby arrived the next day arm in arm with someone else I’d hate it. HATE it. So, somehow or other, I was getting her back.
‘Just going round to Ty’s,’ I shouted.
‘I thought Ruby was here,’ said Dad from the armchair.
‘She had to go. See you.’
I ran, but stopped after about a hundred metres because I was out of breath. A sixteen-year-old boy should probably be able to run without chest pain. Never mind.
Ty’s house is like the council tip. His dad collects everything – tyres, pallets, metal anything, plastic plant pots in their thousands (stored in leaning towers), trolleys, barbecues …
Ty’s dad’s head appeared from behind a pile.
‘Hello, Dan, just sorting out a few things.’ He knows everyone jokes about his hoarding. ‘In you go. And try not to walk into any more doors.’ That was a joke about my face.
I pushed open the front door, shouted, ‘Hello,’ in case anyone was downstairs but went up anyway. Ty had his head in a chemistry book.
‘You don’t look that bad considering.’
‘I can’t smile,’ I said, demonstr
ating the lack of movement one side of my mouth.
He laughed.
‘You look like a ventriloquist’s dummy.’
‘Cheers.’
‘Hope she’s worth it.’
‘She chucked me actually, that’s why I’m here.’
‘I’m not going out with you,’ he said, backing away.
‘Neither, but you’re Einstein and I’m starting again and I’ve only got a few weeks to get better results than you.’
‘What are you talking about, Dan?’
‘I’m reinventing myself. Ruby doesn’t want a scumbag boyfriend, so he’s history and I’m going to work and get good results. But I’m behind so you’re my tutor.’
‘Are you serious?’
‘Absolutely.’
He budged up and we got on with it. He had a system going – read all about the topic, answer the questions in the book, sift through the past papers (all printed off ready), answer all the questions on that topic, check the mark scheme. He knew way more than me but I could see that a few days (or weeks) with Ty and some serious effort and I’d be clutching a fistful of As like him.
When we’d done valences, limestone and mole calculations, he allowed us a break.
‘Do you feel OK?’ I asked. I was on his bed. He was on the desk chair. It had occurred to me that the rigorous revision system was to make up for his brain being shaken.
‘You mean my head?’
I nodded.
‘Mostly. Get a few headaches.’
‘Do you remember anything about it?’
He shook his head. The scar was only just visible above his eyebrow now.
‘Did you really track the van that hit me?’ he asked.
‘Yes, but it parked in between hundreds of other white vans at a rental place.’
‘Thanks anyway.’
I paused. Not like Ty to condone illegal activities.
‘You wouldn’t be thanking a member of “the criminal underclass”?’
‘That was the old you,’ he said.
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