Shadow Breakers Read online

  “There’s nothing wrong with leading a normal life,” I say.

  “Oh, no. Nothing wrong with it.”

  He is annoying me now. “Get lost, Josh,” I mutter, and start to walk away from him.

  “Okay,” he says. “I will, if you want. We will. We’ll get lost. We’ll leave you alone. If it’s what you want.”

  I stop, turn to face him, and push the hair out of my eyes. I feel an odd sensation in my stomach. An aching, as if I am about to lose something important. It’s weird — like nostalgia, only nostalgia for the present. That doesn’t make sense.

  “Yes,” he says. “Me, Ollie, Cal, and Lyssa — we’ll just be faces in the corridor, people you pass from time to time and think you ought to know.”

  I pop seaweed under my boot, pretending not to listen.

  “And Miss Bellini?” he goes on. “She’ll just be a science teacher who drives a beaten-up camper van. And from time to time, you’ll hear strange things on the local news, things that make you wonder if you should know more about them maybe, and if you ought to somehow understand them. But you won’t belong. You won’t know, Miranda. Not ever.”

  I look out to sea, where the waves are swelling and crashing in a constant rhythm behind our conversation. On the distant horizon, a boat cuts through the water, a line of white in the gray-blue. I almost want to be out there right now.

  “And now and then,” he goes on, “you’ll get that sense. The one you already feel. Like there’s a realm beyond this one, a secret place behind the curtain of the world. And every so often, you’ll be thinking that you know things you ought not to. You’ll get a feeling, just like you did back there, when you saw that truck coming without even seeing it, and leapt out of the way in time.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I snap back at him, too quickly. “I heard it coming.”

  “Oh, if you insist. But you know what? I think you knew it was coming. Something you got from the test, maybe . . . something latent that was activated.”

  I’m confused now. Everything is coming at once. I just want things to be simple.

  “Somewhere,” Josh goes on urgently, “in some other universe that just splintered off from this one, you’re dead. You were hit by that truck and killed. In that other universe, you were never given this chance. If you walk away from us right now, you’re saying no to the best thing that’s ever happened to you. You’re running away from life.”

  He pauses for a second.

  “You know, Miranda,” he says, “something terrible might be going to happen.” He makes it sound like a throwaway remark, but I can’t help shivering.

  “What?” I ask him. “What’s going to happen?”

  “Well, that’s just it. We don’t necessarily know. But you might. And without you, well . . . I suppose we’ll just have to figure it out on our own.”

  I try to let his words sink in. Why am I so important? I’m just Miranda May from London. A few weeks ago, these people didn’t know I existed.

  “So — bye, then,” says Josh. “Have fun.”

  And he starts to walk away across the beach.

  I open my mouth to shout after him. And close it again, shake my head.

  Then I shout, “Wait!”

  Josh stops, turns, with a smile. He’s about fifty feet away by now.

  “I . . . I do want to know more,” I say. “And . . . I want to help. I’m sorry.”

  Josh strolls back toward me. “Thought you might,” he says.

  “I don’t believe everything you said. But . . . I’m willing to go along with you. For now.”

  He shrugs. “Your choice,” he says, but he’s smiling now.

  I know it’s my choice.

  My choice to find out more about why this darkness is haunting me.

  COMPUTER LAB: FRIDAY 11:20

  We’re all being taught how to use a graphics package called Image-Ination. It’s pretty cool, despite the geeky name. You can upload scanned photos of yourself and someone else (we took some last lesson on the digital camera) and it’ll morph them into each other. Or it can overlay you into someone else’s background and vice versa. You can’t see the join — it looks totally real and it gets all the shadows and texture right and everything.

  I upload a pic of the JumpJets from their website and flip me and Jade into the pic so that we’re onstage with them at the Arena. I look around for Jade to show her what I’ve done.

  “Oh, yeah!” she exclaims.

  “Looks so real, doesn’t it?” I say. “Amazing!”

  And that’s when the weird thing happens.

  The color of the screen starts to change. The blues and browns and greens, the dull colors, drain away, and the yellows and oranges and reds, all the fiery colors, grow more intense. And it’s not just our computer.

  “Sir,” says Robert Fenwick, the boy sitting next to me, “is it supposed to do that?”

  Mr. Heppelwhite leans down and looks at Robert’s computer screen. It’s gone bright red all over, and a weird whining noise is coming from the speakers.

  Mr. Heppelwhite slaps his forehead. “Oh fiddlesticks,” he says. “Not another virus.”

  My screen is doing it, too. Turning crimson. New screensaver? Could be, but I doubt it. I look up and down the rows of screens and I see they’re all the same. Mine, Robert Fenwick’s, Ahmad Hassan’s, Jade’s, Lyssa’s, Ollie’s, everyone’s.

  Mr. Heppelwhite is on the phone to the technician. “Bill, can you come down? I think we’ve got a virus. . . . Well, I don’t know what sort! It’s making all the computers go insane. The screens are turning red!”

  “Orange now, sir,” I offer helpfully. My screen is the color of a sunset now, and I swear it’s sort of . . . pulsing.

  “Orange!” says Mr. Heppelwhite into the phone.

  “And hot,” Jade adds, wincing and drawing her hand away from the screen. “Burning hot!”

  It’s true — the bright orange screen is burning like a five-alarm fire. The whining noise from the speakers is so loud it’s hurting my eardrums.

  At the same time I’m getting this odd feeling. Kind of like this isn’t really happening. Like I did on the bus. There’s a thudding in my head. I can smell burning, too. Only it’s not burning plastic like you’d expect, but . . . wood. Like a blazing fire. My eyelids grow heavy and the room seems to shrink around me so there is just me and my computer in the darkness, the screen glowing, the heat blasting out. And the smell changes to . . . something pungent . . . a chemical. It’s making me think about chemistry . . . Sulfur? Why can I smell burning sulfur?

  “Is it me,” I say to Jade, “or are these tables vibrating?”

  Jade puts her hands flat on the table and her dark eyes widen. “Sir,” she calls out, “Miranda’s right!”

  All the computer screens have now turned a yellowish-white.

  Everyone shades their eyes against the brightness.

  On the other side of the room, Oliver has jumped to his feet, pushing his chair away from the desk. “Everybody!” he shouts. “Get down! They’re going to explode!”

  Mr. Heppelwhite rounds on the boy in irritation. “Don’t be ridiculous, Ollie.”

  “But they are!” Ollie yells. “Get on the floor! All of you! Take cover under the tables!”

  “Leave it out, Ollie,” says Ahmad Hassan, but he cowers under his chair just in case, and several other people duck under the tables and scurry for cover like frightened mice.

  Just at that moment, a screen on the far side of the room starts to spark and fizz, and smoke pours out of the sides. Evil-smelling smoke, sharp and sulfurous . . .

  Now we all drop to the carpet. And just seconds later, the screen nearest to me explodes in a shower of molten glass. With a whoomph and a noise like sizzling sausages. Then the rest of the computers go
off like Roman candles. Everyone’s screaming.

  It’s like someone lit a match in a fireworks factory here.

  The weird thing is, this all seems sort of familiar. Not déjà vu, no — not like I’ve experienced it all before. But like . . . this was meant to happen. That it was expected, somehow.

  I shake my head. Get rid of the feeling.

  I see Lyssa under the desk next to me. I wonder if she’s scared — paranormal-hunting genius or not, she’s only a little kid — and I’m about to hold her hand. But then I realize she doesn’t look scared at all. Of course she’s not scared. Her face is flushed, her eyes are dancing, and she has her phone out. She’s talking in a low, urgent voice over the chaos. To one of the others, no doubt.

  It’s total madness. Computers are still popping and fizzing all over the room. Glass sizzles as it hits surfaces in molten droplets, leaving a streaming, half-solid mess over the windows, the walls, and the posters. Finally, the noise settles down and it’s quiet, apart from a few people sobbing and whimpering.

  The room’s filled with smoke, but slowly we get the sense that it’s safe to put our heads back above the desks again. One by one, we emerge, coughing and looking nervously around.

  On the other side of the table from me, Jade picks a piece of keyboard out of her tangled hair. She says something in Italian that I don’t understand.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  “Epic fail,” she says with a grin.

  Mr. Heppelwhite stands up and clears his throat. “Everyone all right?” he asks nervously. “Nobody hurt?”

  It seems nobody is. Although it’s pretty clear that nobody’s going to be using the lab again for a while. Some of the computers are gaping open, gashed and blackened, the circuitry inside melted into fantastic shapes. Others look black and charred. Only a few have survived intact. Lyssa is up close to one of the charred computers, and, with her handkerchief over her mouth, she’s shining a little pen flashlight inside it, looking at the damage.

  “Lyssa!” Mr. Heppelwhite snaps. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. Come on! Everyone out, please!”

  He takes off one of his shoes and smashes the fire alarm where it says “BREAK GLASS HERE,” and then the alarms start echoing through the school.

  Bedlam.

  Well, cool. This is better than class.

  FRIDAY 15:20

  The bell jangles. It’s a riot, as always on a Friday afternoon.

  At the lockers, hordes of kids stream past, gossiping about what happened in the computer lab. I listen to odd snatches.

  “I heard it was a bomb.”

  “Don’t talk stupid. If it was a bomb, the whole school would have gone up.”

  “I heard they got attacked by the computers! Fireworks coming out of the screens!”

  “Someone said it was a weird kind of virus. They’ve sealed off the whole section, have you seen?”

  Last class of the day — French — has just been a non-starter. I feel sorry for Miss Lowery, because she got nothing much done with us. And at the sound of the bell, everyone pretty much packed up and left before she’d even told us to. We’ve slammed our lockers shut, and we’re stuffing books into our bags for the weekend.

  Jade’s next to me. She says, “Come round on Saturday afternoon? I’ve downloaded that bootleg if you wanna listen to it. JumpJets at the London Astoria.”

  I smile, then glance over her shoulder.

  Josh and Cal are standing there, in the corridor, watching me carefully. I meet their gaze and then look back at Jade, who’s frowning at me.

  “Erm, I dunno,” I say. “I’d like to, but . . . I’ve got a lot going on.”

  She looks disappointed. “I thought we was mates, Miranda,” she says. “I thought you liked me.”

  I feel bad. I mean, who else was there when I came to Firecroft Bay? Without her, I’d have had nobody else at first. Apart from them.

  “We are, we are . . . it’s just . . .” I’m biting my lip, and now I’ve given myself away by looking over her shoulder once too often at Josh and Cal.

  “Oh, I see. I get it. You’re hanging out with the Weirdos now.”

  “They’re not weirdos,” I say.

  “God, you are so lame. I can’t believe you’ve fallen for them. Fancy that Josh Barnes, do you?”

  I feel myself turning bright red. “Shut up!” I mutter.

  She gives me a cynical, sideways smile. “I thought you was different. Thought you could see through all that.” She folds her arms. “They’re fake, y’know. They’re losers.”

  She does the L thing with her thumb and forefinger. But there’s something edgy in her expression that tells me she doesn’t altogether believe it. Something more than contempt for Josh and the others. Something close to fear.

  “This doesn’t mean I don’t want to be friends with you,” I say. “Why do I have to choose?”

  Jade’s hoisted her bag onto her shoulder. “What-ever, Miranda. See you Monday. Maybe.”

  And before I’ve had a chance to respond properly, she’s headed off, giving Josh and Cal a wide berth. She’s out of the door and halfway down the steps, joining the hordes streaming toward the gate.

  Josh strolls over.

  “She’s just a Mundane, Miranda,” he says. “Don’t lose any sleep over it.”

  I push him away. “Leave it, Josh.”

  He backs off, holding his hands up. “Whoah. Sorr-ee. Didn’t know you and little Belladonna were such good mates.”

  I watch Jade going, and then it hits me. Oh, no. She was inviting me to her place for the first time. Where does she live? I don’t even know that yet. Maybe it’s a big thing to ask people over. She’d told me her mum and dad work from home, running some accounting business. Maybe they’re picky about her friends.

  And what have I done? I’ve rejected her.

  She’s right, isn’t she? I’d rather hang out with the Weirdos than go back to a friend’s house. How sad is that?

  “I mean it,” murmurs Josh. “Not worth the effort.”

  “Enough.” I glower at him.

  And yes, Jade could be right. They could be a bunch of nut jobs for all I know. Chasing after stuff that doesn’t exist. Like the people who appeared on my dad’s old talk show, claiming they’d been abducted by aliens or they’d spotted Elvis working in a burger bar, or they’d seen the Virgin Mary’s face in a doughnut. (Sometimes all three, actually. That was a good episode.)

  But there is an answer in this, somewhere. An answer I need to find. And something tells me it lies with this shadowy crew. So I am keeping close to them for my reasons — not theirs.

  “Tomorrow,” says Cal as I walk past her. “Two o’clock. Meet at Craghollow Park. Got a little job for us to do.”

  And she smiles.

  Because she knows I’m going to be there.

  CRAGHOLLOW PARK: SATURDAY 14:06

  Mum’s taking Truffle to see our auntie Grace, her older sister, who lives about thirty miles along the coast. It’s a bright, sunny Saturday and the sea mist, for now, seems to have been banished.

  Mum’s happy to drop me off at Craghollow Park because I’ve said I’m meeting some people from school. I told her their names, but of course they mean nothing to her.

  “I’m pleased you’ve got some friends,” she says as we drive along. “I thought it might be difficult. With the move. And . . . everything.”

  “Yes. It’s fine.”

  “Are they nice? Your friends? Would you like to have one of them round for tea?”

  “Round for tea?”

  “Sorry, sorry.” She sighs as the car rounds the corner onto the Esplanade. “Well, you know. Any time you want someone . . . round. To . . . hang out or do whatever. It’ll be fine.”

  I roll my eyes.


  Beyond the marina, the ring road curves around, heading inland, and there is the metal latticework arch announcing the entrance to the park.

  Bit of a spooky name, Craghollow. There’s a board beside the entrance — I remember looking at it before — all about its history. It’s built on a site where witches were burned in medieval times. Nice.

  “Just drop me here, Mum. I’ll find my own way.”

  Though the sun’s bright today, it’s still chilly, so I’m in my favorite leather jacket and jeans with a woolen scarf. There are a few families out with small kids. Some boys are playing soccer on the grass, and the café’s doing good business.

  I hurry past the families and the soccer-playing boys. I spot Cal and Lyssa, sitting on the carousel in the play area, slowly spinning round.

  Cal’s wearing a long white scarf, shades, and a purple velvet coat. She grins when she sees me, and nudges Lyssa. “Told you she’d come,” she says, and jumps to her feet. “Right, we’re having a girls’ day out. And, of course — a little investigation.”

  For a moment I’m disappointed that Josh isn’t here. And surprised at myself. But I don’t let it show. I imagine the boys are busy with stuff. Other parts of the investigation, if that’s what they want to call it.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  Cal doesn’t answer. “Miss Bellini’s left me in charge,” she says to us both. “So you do as I say, whatever happens, right?”

  Lyssa nods eagerly. “Fine by me.”

  I shrug. “Okay.”

  We head off toward the edge of the park, passing the fountains and the kids’ playground.

  “So, do you ever get a day off from this?” I ask, trying to sound more nonchalant than I feel.

  “Where’s your spirit of adventure, Miranda?” asks Lyssa. I glance over at her and notice she is playing chess on her phone as we walk along.

  “Oh, I’ve got one, believe me,” I answer. “But, you know, girls, Saturdays? Aren’t Saturdays for chilling? Relaxing? Can’t we get the bus to the shopping center, and hang round on the benches, drinking lattes and making fun of other people’s ugly shoes?”