by Tom Mitchell
We miss you, she’d written.
I looked at it for a few seconds before putting it to one side.
I left the portable charger in the bag with my underwear.
With the clothing ramparts ready to disguise the phone, I found something else Mum had packed without me knowing: a book. Although you could tell from the plain design that it was obviously a ‘classic’ written to teach us kids something – the less jazzy a front, the more serious the book – I was 7/10 pleased to see it.
Because Walden by Henry David Thoreau would provide cover. If someone approached, I would make like I was reading – a solid reason for lying on my bed without chatting. It wasn’t that strange. I knew kids in my class who chose to read. Maybe not nineteenth-century nature memoirs, but still. And it was obvious why Mum had chosen this book – its subtitle was Life in the Woods. Mind you, the internet hadn’t been invented back then.
I checked the room, left and right. Everyone was occupied in their own private spaces. Despite Faulkner’s promises, a lack of electronic devices hadn’t suddenly magicked us all into conversational animals. Go figure.
I slipped the phone (It was there! It hadn’t been found!) from the bag, lowering it gently into its nest. The screen flicked on at my touch, almost as if it were keen to show it was ready for me.
Good news: 100 per cent charge.
Less good news: no signal. Not a disaster; I had playlists downloaded.
Worse news: someone, standing right next to my bed, sneezed.
It was tiny hair-in-a-bow Alexa. And it was as if she’d been beamed down from a spaceship to my bunk.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Allergies. I was going to ask if you wanted some hand sanitiser.’
I grabbed the book, opened the book, covered the phone with the book. Looking back, I acted too panicky; I should have been extra chill. And my chipmunk voice, sounding like it had passed through one of those voice-changing apps, didn’t help.
‘I’m reading,’ I said, before even looking up. ‘I mean, I’m fine. My hands are fine. I’ve hardly touched anything. I’m clean. I’m really clean.’
Alexa smiled. It was bad to be caught, but there were worse people to get caught by. Obviously. My heart could reduce its frantic beating. Relax, bruv.
‘What are you reading?’ she asked, like she was interested. ‘Tell me if I’m being annoying. But …’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘I need to make an effort with people and start conversations and not be shy because emailing isn’t a natural form of communication.’
I couldn’t help smiling. You’d not be able to resist either. Giving in, I almost lifted the book to check the cover, because I’d forgotten the name. But that, Einstein, would have revealed the phone. My eyes scanned the opened pages for a clue as to the title. There! At the top! Success!
‘Walden.’
Boom.
I could feel a single bead of sweat make a run from my forehead. This was partly the humidity, partly the stress.
‘Sounds interesting,’ she said.
And she stood there, smiling. I swapped my smile for a frown, making like I was deep into the literature. Maybe she’d go away if she thought she was interrupting. If she really were shy, if she really had issues with proper conversations, she’d not stay there grinning. It’d be too awkward.
‘So,’ I said.
‘I can see your phone.’
‘What?’ I replied, with the worst fake laugh ever. ‘A phone?’
She stretched to touch it. As I swept it away, Walden fell to the floor. I held the phone to my chest like it was a teddy bear. Looking left and right, I was thankful that no other camper had approached. I mean, this was a camp for people addicted to tech. If anyone else found out, it’d be like throwing a handful of sweets in the air at a toddler’s birthday party: brutal and violent, mass hysteria, tears before bedtime.
‘I only want to send a single email,’ she said. ‘I’ll be, like, two minutes.’ She tapped her forehead. ‘I need to get it out. It’s kind of like therapy. I email to find out what I’m thinking. Don’t you find it easier to express yourself in an email?’
A response hissed from between my teeth. ‘There’s no signal.’
‘Have you tried anywhere else? You might be in a dead spot?’
I tightened my hug, thinking that my life was a dead spot.
‘Or …’ She cleared her throat, then whispered, ‘Do you want me to tell the rest of the group?’
There was an unexpected steel edge to her eyes that, in the moment, made me believe she’d do it. Keeping the phone close to my chest, I rolled to swing my legs on to the bunk’s ladder. I clambered down as she pointed at the empty far end of the bunkhouse.
We tried to appear as natural as possible to all the potential eyes on our backs. Alexa asked if I knew the punishment for being caught. I didn’t. I must have missed that part of the briefing.
‘The Cooler,’ she said.
It didn’t sound too bad. Not in this weather. It wasn’t like it was called ‘the Torturer’ or ‘the Schnacker’.
‘The thing is,’ I said, ‘I don’t intend on getting caught.’
‘Well,’ said Alexa, ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying, but you’ve not made a great start with that one.’
The far wall had a poster where you might expect a window. It had black letters on a white background and said:
PEOPLE WHO SMILE WHILE THEY ARE ALONE USED TO BE CALLED INSANE, UNTIL WE INVENTED SMARTPHONES AND SOCIAL MEDIA – MOKOKOMA MOKHONOANA
Hiding on the bed-side of the cabin, with Alexa at my shoulder, I lifted the phone to check for signal. Nothing. Part of me, the part that knew I’d have to hand it to Alexa if there had been reception, wasn’t disappointed. Remember: I still had those downloaded playlists.
‘Sometimes if you put it on airplane mode, then change …’ she began. ‘And maybe open Safari, try loading a page?’
And, really, it was a miracle when a 4G signal appeared. And, like I said, not necessarily a good miracle.
‘That’s sick!’ said Alexa. ‘D’you see? Reception! We’re saved!’
I returned the screen to my chest. I could feel its warmth. Like happy radioactivity.
‘And if I let you send an email, from your account—’
But she was already reaching out, nodding her head, not listening. I looked over my shoulder; the coast was clear. I let her have the phone.
‘What if someone asks what we’re doing down here alone?’
‘Tell them we’re kissing,’ she said, her face illuminated by the screen’s glow. ‘Anyway, it’s fine. We won’t get caught. Believe.’
Was she right? Was I always in trouble because I never truly believed I’d get away with anything? Believe. The power of positive thinking. She’d quickly send her email, give me my phone back, and it’d be fine. Nobody was catching us and soon I’d be listening to sweet nineties hip-hop.
The hope lasted all of thirty seconds.
‘Kids!’ called a voice.
It was Lily, with her hair in black bunches and everything.
And her voice was soon followed by Noah’s, asking, ‘What’s going on down there?’
Noah and Lily’s half Scout half military uniforms made the threat of punishment all the more real.
The fellow campers watched as I grabbed at the phone. Alexa was a rabbit in the headlights, her grip frozen. I don’t think she was someone who often got in trouble, given that her chosen form of rebellion was sending a stern email.
‘Alexa!’ I hissed. ‘Hide it!’
She didn’t react, so I yanked. And I yanked again. A big one. A huge yank. Alexa eased her grip. I fell with the phone, bouncing my backside against the floor, briefly free, briefly victorious. Until I knocked my elbow and let my phone slip, sending it spinning all the way along the floorboards towards the feet of Noah and Lily.
Lily chewed gum as Noah barked, ‘Contraband!’
‘Whose is it?’ asked Lily, approaching.
&nbs
p; ‘It’s—’ said Alexa.
‘It’s mine,’ I said. ‘The phone is mine. Put it in the safe. It’s fine. I must have forgotten about it.’
Noah marched over, took my arm, pulled me up. Lily seized the device. I was too shocked to fight. How had things gone south so quickly? Game over.
‘Take him to Faulkner,’ Lily said to Noah. And to the gawping campers: ‘This one’s in big trouble. You’ll see. The Cooler.’
‘Faulkner’s going to be so mad.’ Noah grinned as he walked me to the bunkhouse door. ‘You think you’re a bad boy, do you? He thinks he’s a bad boy, Lily.’ Lily didn’t react. ‘Lily, I said that—’
‘I heard you,’ said Lily.
I pulled my arm from Noah’s grip. The other campers stood silently at their beds and watched us pass. Would Faulkner ring home? I didn’t want to process what that could mean.
Q-Tip. New York. Robbie and his girlfriend.
At the door I looked over my shoulder. Alexa caught my eye and mouthed, ‘Sorry.’
‘I knew you’d be trouble. Tardiness – it gives the game away. But, you know what? You’re not the first camper to smuggle in an illicit electronic device and you won’t be the last. You notice how quickly you got caught? That’s due to our security measures. As smooth as a baby’s bottom. And as effective as one too. But I’ll tell you what, Bill –’ I didn’t correct him – ‘I’m not angry. That’s not the point. Oh no. You’re sick. You have an illness and we’re here to treat you. I’m the doctor and I have a needle full of medicinal punishment. That’s why you’re going to spend the first of tomorrow morning’s rewilding sessions in the Cooler and, when you’re in the Cooler, I want you to think about what you’re missing. Try not to cry, son. Do you want to know what you’ll be missing?’ He looked down at a piece of paper. He was delivering his discipline in the same way head teachers do – from the other side of a thick piece of furniture. ‘Whittling.’ I didn’t know what whittling was. ‘But that’s not your only punishment. Your main punishment, like I say, is the Cooler. That’s my verdict. And in no way does it make me happy to deliver it.’
Smiling, he pressed a button on a white piece of plastic on his desk. He spoke into the plastic. A portable fan sat in the corner behind him. It turned with a snake’s hiss and sent ripples across the paper on his desk.
‘Noah,’ he said, ‘quit making eyes at Lily and come take this miscreant back to the bunkhouse.’
Faulkner folded his arms and sat back from the desk, balancing on two chair legs, the way that drives teachers mad. He tried looking thoughtful but you could see the expression wasn’t something he was practised at. Giving up, he fixed me in a stare that I guessed he hoped I thought was meaningful. And, here, in his office, his face was the same colour as undercooked bacon.
‘Addiction is a terrible thing,’ he said finally. ‘I know. I used to be over two hundred and eighty pounds. You heard of Twinkies?’ I shook my head. ‘Couldn’t get enough of them. They cost me my military career. And the love of a beautiful woman. Twinkies. I don’t want the same thing happening to you, son.’
‘I don’t know what a Twinkie is,’ I said.
He stood from the desk. He looked out of the window to his left and at the massed ranks of trees. ‘Noah!’ he shouted suddenly, turning. ‘I’ve been beeping you or whatever you call it!’
Noah sat at a table further along the office. He was straightening out his shirt, pausing like he was finishing something really important. Why did they need an office intercom when they worked in the same room?
‘Take this boy back to his bunk.’ Faulkner turned to me. ‘Before you go, do you have anything to say for yourself?’
‘Are you going to tell my parents? About my phone?’
‘We don’t call home unless there’s an emergency. So you’ve got until the end of the week to get yourself back into my good books, Bill. Screen time is mean time.’
Faulkner nodded at Noah, now at my side. And the teenager’s hand, like a tarantula of doom, fell to my shoulder.
He returned me, in silence, to the bunkhouse. The campers stopped what they were doing and watched us enter.
‘He’s in the Cooler tomorrow morning,’ said Noah as if announcing my imminent execution by lethal injection.
Head down, I walked to my bunk. It felt like it took forever. I’m sure people tried to catch my eye, but with no phone, no music and the possibility of no New York, I was too sad to engage. Alexa said she was sorry again, but I didn’t reply because it was totally her fault that the phone had got confiscated.
I climbed my bunk’s ladder. I rolled into bed. I closed my eyes.
‘Will,’ said Alexa softly, sounding like she was five centimetres from my face.
‘Go away,’ I said, and turned to face the wall.
‘I’ll email Faulkner,’ she said, not going away. ‘When I’m back home. It’s not fair on you.’
I think it was a snap of anger that made me roll back, sit up, grab my bag, pull out the portable charger and wave it in her face.
‘I even had this,’ I said. ‘It would have kept the phone going all week! All week, Alexa!’
I hoped she understood. I hoped this emphasised not only what I’d lost but what she’d lost too, what we’d all lost. The severe tragedy in which we found ourselves.
‘Will,’ she said, ‘I don’t know what that is.’
For the first time I looked properly at what I’d borrowed from Robbie’s desk. ‘It’s …’
If the pine forest could gasp, it would surely have done so.
It wasn’t the portable charger. It was Robbie’s external hard drive.
The one with his final art project saved on to it.
The one that he had poured months of work into.
The one that he would be graded on, that would complete his course, that he absolutely must not lose.
The one that he needed to hand in by Thursday’s deadline.
Fudge.
That night I lay in bed with the dead earbuds in my ears and I didn’t sleep a single minute. Which made the next morning even more like torture than it would otherwise have been, which is saying something.
The Cooler, AKA Insect Kingdom, was a gardening shed stuck in a space between trees. The door, if left open, looked out on to a clearing or ‘activity area’, which had those wooden picnic tables you see in pub gardens. This wasn’t a place you’d choose to go for fun, though. It was where the whittling happened. For the others. There was to be no whittling for me; there was to be … Well … you’ll see.
Noah drew back the pair of bolts that secured the Cooler’s door.
‘Are you going to lock me in?’
‘I’d love to but, like most fun things, it’s against the law … supposedly.’
He pulled open the door and a fusty, mushroomy smell ghosted out.
It was difficult to see what lurked in the gloom until Noah leant in and pulled a light cord. I noticed that he made very sure not to put a single centimetre of a single foot into the shed.
I was soon to discover why.
A single light bulb blinked twice, two photographer’s flashes, before catching. My first thought? It didn’t look too bad. There were some vague shapes under sheets at the back, which would look creepy, I guess, if they weren’t obviously lawnmowers.
And then I saw that the carpet was moving and realised that it wasn’t a carpet at all.
How many woodlice are you comfortable with? One is fine: it curls into a ball and you can flick it away. Ten? A hundred? A thousand? Obviously much depends on where you are, how tightly enclosed the space is, your tolerance of creeping things with loads of legs. Here, in the Cooler, were thousands upon thousands of woodlice, disturbed by the light but finding nowhere to hide. A million black beads, fussing in slow ripples. Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit but understand this: there were loads.
‘Why,’ I said, ‘are there so many?’
‘You’ve not met the moths yet,’ said Noah.
I
t was almost as if the moths had been waiting for this introduction before making an appearance. (Do moths have ears?) The light bulb flickered as one after another idiot moth popped against it. Reader, these weren’t the tiny faint yellow ones that emerge from forgotten clothes. These were furry monsters, as big as your hand, no word of a lie. Well … okay … if you have a small hand. But there were moths and I hate moths and they probably lived in coffins and drank blood, fluttering against your neck as you slept.
I looked at Noah. He smiled a big toothy grin.
‘I don’t want to,’ I said. ‘It’s –’ I tried to express a reason but was overwhelmed by how obviously wrong it all was – ‘disgusting.’
‘They’re only bugs,’ said Noah. ‘And if you refuse, Lieutenant Faulkner will ring your parents and get them to pick you up. We keep the week’s payment. That works for us. One fewer mouth to feed. They won’t bite. I mean, that’s a lie. Rumour has it that there’s a false widow in the back.’ He pointed. ‘And I think that’s a wasps’ nest too. But there’s no reason for you to go exploring back there. Not like …’ He scratched his forehead. ‘What was her name? Kim, was it? Yeah, that wasn’t pleasant. Poor girl.’
Noah was obviously someone who’d been bullied at school, so now jumped at any opportunity to bully others. And I didn’t have a choice; refusing the Cooler meant home being phoned, which meant no New York.
I stepped forward. Trying to avoid standing on the ebb and flow of woodlice would be like trying to run across a beach without touching sand. You could hear the insects’ squish-crunch of death under my trainers. It was a woodlouse massacre. I’d go down in woodlouse history.
Noah closed the door. It trapped me – and the heat – with the bugs, crawling and fluttering with their little pincers and legs. Every millimetre of my body was on high alert. The only way you could have felt comfortable here was by wearing one of those hazmat suits. That would have meant evaporating in the heat, though. And if ever there was a time when music would have been welcome, now was that time.