The Kid Who Came From Space

My job had been to wrap the presents.

Tammy came downstairs with the oblong boxes wrapped in red paper and ribbon in a carrier bag. That’s when we had our row. It started with Tammy holding one of the presents up and saying ‘Nice job!’ sarcastically.

‘I did my best,’ I said.

The paper was scrunched up, the sticky tape all over the place, and the ribbons badly tied. When she held it up, one of the labels fell off. Wrapping presents is hard.

‘“I did my best, Tammy,”’ she mimicked in a baby voice. ‘You always say that! But you never do, do you? You do what looks like your best. You do what people will think is your best. You do just enough so that when you say, “But I did my best”, people will believe you and go: “Aw, poor Ethan – he did his best.” But you know what, Ethan? I know what your best is. I’m your twin, remember? I’m the other half of you. How could I not know? And you haven’t done your best – nothing like it, so don’t lie.’ She waved one of the badly wrapped gifts as evidence, and another label flew off.

‘Where’s your costume?’ I said, to change the subject. We had agreed: we would dress up as elves for the evening. It would be fun.

Tammy rolled her eyes and tutted.

‘You’re so childish, Ethan.’ When she said that, I looked down at my costume from last year’s school parade: striped tights, green buckled jacket and the pointy hat I was holding. I hate it when Tammy says stuff like that: it’s as if being ten minutes older than me gives her some sort of age advantage.

‘But we agreed!’ I said, trying (and failing) not to sound as though I was whining.

Tammy was in her usual clothes: jeans, trainers, thick fleecey top. She’s not big on fashion, is our Tam. She was pulling on her new red puffer jacket, an early Christmas present from Gran, who was staying with us.

‘Well, we can disagree. There. Just done it! I disagree to dress up and prance around Boring-ville like some six-year-old. As for you – go ahead. You look great.’

‘Well, I’m not going to be the only one. I’m going to get changed,’ I snarled, and began to stomp up the stairs.

‘See you at Scottish Sheila’s. I’m going.’

‘You’re not going to wait for me?’

‘No. We’re late as it is. Bye.’ She opened the front door and stepped out into the cold, and that’s when I yelled it.

‘I hate you!’

(I sometimes hope that she didn’t hear me, but she must have done. I yelled it loudly, and she hadn’t even shut the front door.)

Five minutes later, I had taken off the stupid elf costume and had calmed down. Maybe she was right anyway, I thought. I compromised, and put on a sweater with a flashing red reindeer nose instead. (I wasn’t going to give in completely, you understand?) I pulled the front door closed behind me and set off on my bike to catch her up.

Shortly afterwards, I saw Tammy’s bike lying in the ditch at the side of the road, its front and rear lights shining white and red, illuminating the frosty verge, and no sign of Tammy.

I haven’t seen her since.

When people find out that Tammy and I are twins, they sometimes go, ‘Ooh, are you psychic?’, which is so daft that we developed this routine. I would go, ‘Yes, of course we are. Tammy: what number am I thinking of?’ And whatever number Tammy said, I would then say, ‘Dead right! Wow!’

Well, we thought it was funny, anyway. It actually fooled Tammy’s new friend Nadia, but she’ll believe anything.

So no: we’re not psychic. But that evening, when I saw Tammy’s bike at the side of the road with its lights still on, I knew something was wrong. I felt a lurch in my stomach, and I stopped my bike next to hers. A cold feeling spread from my neck and down my back exactly as though someone had dropped ice inside my collar.

‘Tammy!’ I shouted, not so loud to begin with, as, although I knew, I couldn’t be certain something was wrong, if that makes sense. ‘Tam?’

The moon was still low and obscured by thick cloud, and when the sky is like that, Kielder is darker than you can possibly imagine, the only light coming from our bicycle lights.

‘TAMMY!’ I yelled, and cocked my head to hear, but there was nothing. The wind was so light that it made no sound at all as it passed through the bare trees.

Tammy’s bike had stopped near to an overgrown path that leads down to the reservoir and the little jetty where Tammy and I play the throwing-stones-as-far-as-we-can game. I grabbed the light from the front of my bike and started down the path.

It makes no sense, I told myself. Why on earth would she go down here?

‘Tammy! Tam!’ I kept calling.

The path is quite steep down to the lakeshore, and I kept stumbling in the dark until I got to the little beach of shingle and rocks. I stared out over the inky blackness of Kielder Water, and that’s when I heard the noise: a low drone, getting higher in pitch.

OOOOOOMMMMMMMM ooooooooommmmmmmm.

The noise was sort of like an aeroplane, but definitely not an aeroplane. It was sort of like a motorboat, but definitely not a motorboat either; and there was nothing to see. Here, right next to the water, the sky appeared a little clearer and the cloudy moon gave off a little bit of grey light. I narrowed my eyes and stared out over the lake, where a column of mist had appeared, stretching high into the sky, hanging for a few seconds before it dispersed on the breeze.

There was a smell too. A bad smell: very faint, like bad body odour and blocked drains, but that was soon taken by the air as well.

Perhaps she had come down to the lake to do some stone-throwing practice? Was that why she always beat me, because she practised in secret? I knew that was a daft idea, but I think I had already started to panic.

My heart was pounding with fear as I scrambled back up the path to where Tammy’s bike still lay with its lights on.

I yelled her name again, desperately hoping she would come out of the woods that line the road. She would say, ‘Eth-aaaan, for heaven’s sake, what are you shouting for? I just went into the woods for a pee’ or something like that.

But she didn’t, and I knew I had to get help. I took out my phone but there was no signal. There hardly ever is around here. Step out of the village and you might as well be in 1990.

I climbed back on my bike and started to pedal as fast as I could to Scottish Sheila’s house, shouting ‘Tammy!’ all the way until I was nearly hoarse.

If the events leading up to my discovery of Tammy’s bicycle are clear in my mind, then what came next is all a bit of a blur.

As I pedalled along the pot-holed forestry road towards the village, I kept thinking of reasons for Tammy’s bike to be abandoned.

She had left it there and decided to walk. Not likely. In fact, so unlikely as to be impossible.

She had accepted a lift in someone’s car. Again, not likely. Why would she? And besides – who from? Hardly anyone comes along that road, and why would they offer her a lift, and why would she leave her bike? And … the whole thing was silly.

By the time I crossed the bridge over the burn, I was convinced something horrible had happened to Tammy.

The south side of the village is pretty much a single street of old terraced farm cottages. I pulled up next to Scottish Sheila’s house and allowed my bike to clatter to the ground as I leapt off and hammered on the old lady’s door.

‘All right, all right!’ came a voice from inside.

I had started talking almost before the door was open.

‘Is Tammy here?’ I jabbered. ‘She was supposed to come here – have you seen her?’

‘Hello, young fella,’ said Sheila with a smile, as though she hadn’t heard me.

‘Well, have you?’ I barked, and she looked taken aback.

‘Have I wha …’

‘Have you seen Tammy?’ I shouted. I was panicking and my manners were shot.

‘Well, no. No’ today. I thought—’

‘Bye!’ I said and ran back to my bike. I turned it around and cycled as fast as I could back to our end of the village.

The Stargazer was lit up, and there were lights on the big tree outside that I had helped to put up last week with Tammy. As I cycled up the driveway, I could hear singing already. The carols had started early, and I saw through the window that Cora Fox-Templeton, Iggy’s mum, was accompanying them on the pub’s jangly old piano. Iggy was standing next to her and Suzy was sitting on top of the piano like she was about to lay an egg. The singing came through the windows:

‘Hark the herald angels sing, Glory to the newborn king!’

I jumped off my bike and burst through the doors into the entrance lobby and went straight into the bar, where the noise and the heat and the music hit me.

‘Peace on Earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled …’

A cheer went up over by the bar and Dad called out, ‘Right, you lot! Who’s for a Goblet of Fire?’ It’s one of his barman’s stunts which I’ve seen loads of times: a tray of cocktails is lined up then they all burst into flames as he sets fire to the alcohol. I love watching it normally.

Mam had picked up the tray, and I pushed my way through the groups of people till I got to her.

‘Mam! Mam!’

She turned to me crossly, shaking her head as she carried on singing.

‘Mam! You’ve got to listen!’

‘Watch out! I’m holding a fire hazard here!’ she said. ‘Right – who wants one? Not now, Ethan!’

‘Yes, now!’ I shouted.

People had noticed, and one or two nudged one another and stopped singing. I had no choice. I grabbed the lid of the piano and slammed it down on the keys while Iggy’s mum yelped and pulled her hands out just in time. There was a loud bang as the lid shut, a rattling of Cora’s bangles, and Suzy ruffled her feathers in disapproval. A few seconds later, the singing wound down.

‘Ethan! What on earth …’ began Mam, pushing her way towards me, but I wasn’t listening.

Instead I turned to everyone in the bar and said, ‘Tammy’s gone missing! Her bike’s by the side of the road but I can’t find her anywhere.’

A murmur went around the bar. Someone at the back who hadn’t heard me said, ‘Oi! What’s happened to the music?’ and someone else said, ‘Shhh!’

Then Dad, who was dressed as a toy soldier, came from behind the bar and held his hands up. ‘All right, all right,’ he said calmly. ‘What’s going on? Ethan?’

And so I told him again what had happened, and how I’d called for Tammy and how her bike lights were still on, and how Scottish Sheila hadn’t seen her. It was all spilling out of me so fast that twice Dad had to say, ‘Steady on, son. Slow down.’

Then I looked at Mam, and as our eyes met, I had never seen a person look so fearful. The colour had drained from her face: she was a ghostly grey.

Two minutes later, the bar was emptying as people ran to the car park and got in their cars.

‘You take the forestry trail, Jack!’

‘I’ll go up the north road – come with me, Jen.’

‘Did she have a phone with her?’

‘Has anyone called the police?’

‘Meet back here in half an hour, yeah?’

‘Have you got my number? Call me if you find her!’

… and so on. It seemed as though the whole village leapt into action, with cars going in different directions.

Dad seemed to be coordinating things, or at least trying to, but it was all pretty hectic. I was sort of caught in the middle of it without having anything to do. Gran was pulling on her running shoes and a head torch: she said she would run her regular forest path that a car couldn’t go up. And through the chaos I looked across the bar to see Iggy sitting on the piano stool, his eyebrows practically knitted together with worry, his hands twisting his cap in front of him. His mum, Cora, stood next to him, looking forlorn in a red-and-white Santa hat.

‘Mel,’ said Dad to Mam, ‘why don’t you stay at home?’

‘No!’ protested Mam. ‘I’m coming to look for my daughter!’

Dad looked at me next. ‘You OK to stay, Ethan? In case she comes back here?’ He glanced over at Cora Fox-Templeton and they exchanged a look that somehow left Cora in charge as the ‘responsible adult’.

She nodded and the bell on her hat jingled.

‘Keep your phones on. Don’t leave the pub,’ said Dad, pulling on a coat over his soldier outfit. ‘We’ll let you know when we have found her.’

When. I liked that.

And so it was that Iggy, his mum, his chicken and I went into the pub lounge to wait for Tammy while the search got under way.

There was an uncomfortable silence. It’s not as if I knew either of them all that well.

Eventually, Iggy said, ‘They found my father.’

I looked at him quizzically.

‘He went missing when I was little. He was found two weeks later, living rough in London. So, you know …’

‘Is … is he OK?’ I said.

His mum was looking out of the window, not seeming to listen.

Iggy nodded. ‘Yes. He’s got another family now. But he’s coming to see me after Christmas, isn’t he, Cora?’

Cora turned to him. ‘He said he’d try, Iggy. It’s a long way, and you know what he’s like.’

Iggy looked downcast, and I was embarrassed, so I took out my phone and tried to call Tammy for the umpteenth time.

‘Hi, this is Tammy. I’m not here so please leave me a message!’

The worst thoughts were going through my head. She’s been kidnapped. She’s been killed …

But I still could not think of who would do that, or how.

So I told them both the story again. I left out no details this time. I told them about going down the path, and hearing a humming noise and seeing a column of mist …

They listened, and nodded thoughtfully. Then my phone went and I saw that it was Mam calling. I tried to tell myself not to hope for good news. But just as I had imagined Tammy would come out of the woods fastening her jeans, I could not help wishing it would be Mam saying, ‘We’ve found her’.

Instead it was: ‘No news. We’re coming back. The police are coming and will want to speak to you, Ethan.’

I was looking at Iggy – when he heard the word ‘police’, he kind of flinched. I knew already it was bad. But that was when I was certain.

Iggy Fox-Templeton. He’s about to be a big part of this story. I ended up getting much closer to him than I ever thought I would – or even should.

He is ‘the kid who set fire to the school’. Except I was there and he didn’t. It’s just that ‘the kid who set fire to a litter bin’ doesn’t sound as good.

According to Mam and Dad, he is ‘a bad influence’, because of that thing with him stealing crisps from the pub storage shed. Dad told his mum, who didn’t seem very concerned. Dad didn’t do anything more about it because we were new to the village and he says a new pub landlord can’t go around making enemies. ‘And he calls his mum Cora, for heaven’s sake,’ said Dad with a sneer. ‘Mad old hippy would be closer’ – and Mam tutted at him and told him not to be so mean.

I’ve only been at the school since September, but Iggy has either truanted or been suspended from school so many times already that he’s pretty much never there.

And most recently he set fire to the bin in the east playground.

It wasn’t serious. No one was hurt, although I suppose they could have been, and he’d have got away with it if Nadia Kowalski hadn’t split on him. He had already made an enemy of her, though, so she was out for revenge.

It all started in a physics lesson with Mr Springham. He was going on about the refraction of light. Or reflection. Or both – I can’t remember. All I do remember is that Iggy had moved himself to the front and was watching, fascinated, as Mr Springham used a glass flask of water to bend a beam of light into a single point. He even wrote something in his notebook, which I had never seen him do before.

The next day he was sitting behind me on the school taxi-bus.

Tammy was in the seat in front of me, next to Nadia Kowalski. There’s about six other regulars on the bus and I don’t actually know them much: they’re in different years and they were either chatting to one another or playing music or on their phones.

‘Greetings, Tait,’ Iggy said, leaning over my seat. This was in October, a few months after we had moved to Kielder and I kind of knew him a bit. Apart from Tammy, he’s the only other kid near my age in the village. He’s older than me and Tam by a year or so, but is still in Year Seven because he’s missed so much school.

‘Wanna see my Death Ray?’ he whispered, casting a sidelong glance at Tammy and Nadia.

Without waiting for me to answer (I was going to say ‘yes’ anyway – I mean, who wouldn’t want to see a Death Ray, whatever it might turn out to be?), he shuffled past me to sit next to the window.

‘Promise you won’t say anything?’ he said.

I shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ I said without thinking.

Then he took off his glasses and said, ‘Wait till we stop.’

It was really warm that day: more like August than October. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky. A few minutes later, the taxi-bus stopped at the end of a farm lane, and we knew we’d be waiting because the girl who lives there is nearly always a minute or two late. The driver turned off the engine and everything was still. Iggy fumbled in his bag and brought out a small, round glass flask exactly like the one Mr Springham had used in his ‘bending light’ demo.

‘Hey, is that …?’ I began.

‘Shh. I’ve just borrowed it. Watch.’

He held the flask against the bus window, then took his glasses off with his other hand, moving them to and fro near the bottle.

The sun shone through the bottle and the thick lenses of his specs, and formed a sort of long triangle of light on the back of the seat in front of us, with a brighter circle at the top of the triangle. As Iggy angled his glasses into the light, the circle became a sharp point of brightness, which he controlled by moving his glasses about. Slowly, he moved the point of light until it cleared the seat back and rested on the neck of Nadia Kowalski.

‘It’s physics,’ whispered Iggy, like he was suddenly an expert. ‘The lens of my specs concentrates the sun’s light into a central point which will become very hot. Watch.’

We didn’t have to wait long. Only a few seconds later, Nadia squealed ‘Oww!’ and her hand shot up to her neck. She looked left at Tammy, and then back at us.

Iggy had put his glasses back on and was drinking water from the flask.

‘Did you … did you just …?’

Iggy and I looked at each other, and then back at Nadia, our faces composed in expressions of wide-eyed innocence.

‘What?’ we said together, and she turned back.

On her neck I could make out a tiny burn-mark from Iggy’s ‘Death Ray’. Also from her neck, I could tell she was blushing furiously because everyone had turned around to look when she squealed, including a boy called Damian from Year Nine who everybody knows Nadia is crazy about.

With a cruel smirk, Iggy got ready for another go, slipping off his glasses and holding them up, but at that moment, the bus’s engine started again. The vibration of the bus made it impossible to hold the point of the Death Ray steady.

But he wasn’t going to give up. Twenty minutes later, we had arrived at the school gates. The engine went off, and everybody stood up.

‘Wait!’ shouted Maureen, the driver, who always refused to open the doors until she’d completed some form she had to fill in on a clipboard.

Iggy seized his moment, whipped off his specs, and focused the Death Ray on the back of Nadia’s knee.

She wasn’t moving and the point of light was sharp and bright. She was actually talking to Damian Whatsisname and flicking her hair when, suddenly, she shrieked loudly.

‘Aaaaaaow!!’ The stack of books in her hands fell to the floor, and everyone stared as she bent down to rub her leg.

As she bent, she headbutted Damian in the chest, knocking him into the kids behind him and causing Maureen to shout, ‘Watch it, you’s lot!’

I managed to keep a straight face, but Iggy couldn’t. He was spluttering with laughter.

Eventually, we filed off the bus, and heard Damian saying to his mates, ‘What a weirdo she is!’ easily loud enough for Nadia to hear.

Tammy sidled up to me. ‘That was mean of you,’ she said, but I think she was trying not to smile.

‘Not me,’ I said. ‘It was Iggy’s Death Ray.’

Tammy shook her head and tutted. ‘She’ll get him back. Just you wait.’

He didn’t have to wait long.

At break, Iggy hangs out with some older boys, although I don’t think they like him much because I heard them mocking his accent once when he wasn’t there. Anyway, after lunch I was walking through the east playground and there was a group – mainly boys, some girls – gathered in the top corner. I recognised one or two of them as being Iggy’s so-called friends.

I heard Iggy’s voice say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen: behold the mighty power of the Death Ray!’

There was a long pause.

I heard someone say, ‘Come on, get on with it.’

Then someone else said, ‘Hey, look!’

There was a cheer, followed by a plume of smoke rising into the air, and then everybody started to run away from it. I saw Iggy putting his glasses back on and I knew what had happened. The contents of the wire-mesh litter bin were fully ablaze; heaven knows what was in it for it to go up so fast, but the hot weather must have made everything tinder-dry.

As the crowd dispersed, though, I saw the flames flickering up to a wooden noticeboard with flaking paint and that had started to catch fire as well. I thought it best to make myself scarce and had sort of melted back into the crowd as Mr Springham strode at top speed towards the litter bin, holding a fire extinguisher.

‘WHO DID THAT? WHOEVER IS RESPONSIBLE WILL HAVE HELL TO PAY!’

Nadia got her revenge by telling everyone about Iggy’s Death Ray, and how he had used it to set fire to the litter bin. It soon reached the ears of the teachers. It earned him another suspension from school, plus detentions and letters home for everyone who had watched and encouraged him. Of course, they were all furious about this and I don’t think it did Iggy’s already fragile popularity any good at all.

And Iggy? I didn’t see him much after that, even though we live in the same village. I mean, we’d never exactly been besties anyway but Mam and Dad were hardly going to encourage me to hang out with him now, were they?

Then shortly before Christmas, Tammy and I saw Iggy down by the jetty, and he had brought a chicken with him. Like, a live one.

Tammy had declared that it was the annual final of Stones in the Lake. (Best of five games, loser buys the winner a muffin from the school tuck-shop.) It was two games each, and it was all down to my last throw. I drew my arm back, determined to win this one, and as I threw with all my strength I heard the shout, ‘SUZY!’ and it put me right off. I knew before my stone hit the water that I had lost and I swung round angrily to see who had shouted. Tammy was giggling like mad.