Many Worlds of Albie Bright (7 page)

I stare back at him in disbelief. No way. I’ve not travelled to a parallel universe just to go back to school. I glance back at the cardboard box, trying to work out if I can dive past my evil twin to make my escape. There’s no way I’d even have time to get the lid shut.

“I can’t,” I tell him. “I can’t go to school for you.” I babble out the words as my brain whirrs, trying to think up excuses. “It’s like you said, I don’t
know anything. How am I supposed to convince everyone that I’m you?”

“You’re a
clone
,” Bad Albie tells me with a hint of menace in his voice. “That’s what clones do – pretend to be something they’re not. If my dad wants a perfect son, then you can be the one who’s top of the class. Meanwhile, I get to stay here and take it easy.”

He picks the compass up off the desk and waggles it in my direction.

“Anyway, you’re already dressed for the part – once you take that stupid back-to-front mask and body armour off. I thought Dad had thrown that away last year when he swapped my BMX bike for a hover-scooter.”

I open my mouth to protest but then quickly close it again as Bad Albie prods the point of the compass against the front of my BMX vest.

“Let’s see how you like being me, Clone Boy.”

I stomp towards Clackthorpe Primary School, making sure that I step on every crack in the pavement. On my back is Bad Albie’s rucksack, which he’d shoved in my hands as he forced me out of the house at compass point. In my mind there’s a whirl of bad words, all of which would get me suspended from school if they bubbled out of my mouth.

As I look around, I try to work out how I’ve ended up trapped in this nightmare. The streets all look the same. The houses all look the same. Every car is parked in exactly the same place as
I see them every day on the short walk to school. I turn left at the end of Sharman Street, carry on down Appleton Drive before turning right on to Priestley Avenue where the gates of Clackthorpe Primary School are waiting for me on the other side of the road.

Everything is the same. Every single thing. And in this stupid universe my mum is still dead.

It’s only when I start to cross the road that I notice the first big difference. A screech of brakes and the sudden blare of a car horn make me nearly jump out of my skin.

“Stupid kid! What do you think you’re doing?”

As my heart hammers in my mouth, I look to my left to see an angry-looking man leaning out of the window of his white van.

“Don’t they teach how to cross the road in that school of yours? I could’ve run right over you.”

I’m totally confused. I’d looked right then left then right again, but this van had come out of nowhere and was driving on completely the wrong side of the road.

“But – but—”

But before I can even start to protest I see another car pull up behind the man in the van, then a scooter
whizzes past on the other side of the street. Left to right, right to left – they’re all driving on the wrong side of the road.

I shake my head in confusion, trying to work out why everyone in Clackthorpe has suddenly forgotten how to drive. Then I remember what my dad’s book said.
One tiny change
…

Of course! In this parallel universe people must drive on the opposite side. That’s why I never saw the van until it nearly knocked me down.

As the car behind beeps its horn, I lift my hand in apology then make sure I look both ways before I cross to the safety of the school gates.

“Keep your head out of the clouds next time you’re crossing the road,” White Van Man shouts after me as he steps on the accelerator. “Remember you’re on planet Earth with the rest of us.”

As I race across the empty playground I only wish I knew which one.

When I open the door to Class 6, I can see that I’m late – again. The rest of the class are already sitting at their tables as Miss Benjamin takes the register.

“Kiran?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Olivia?”

“Here, miss.”

I nervously scan the classroom – searching for any tiny changes in the faces of Class 6. Everybody looks exactly the same. I try to catch Kiran’s eye as he sits in our usual place near the front of the class, but he just stares right through me.

“Albie?” Miss Benjamin calls out.

“Here, miss,” I reply automatically, and it’s when she turns in her chair to face me that I get my next surprise.

She’s old. I mean, seriously ancient. In my universe Miss Benjamin is already knocking on a bit – I think she must be at least twenty-five or twenty-six. But in this parallel universe she’s got wrinkles all around her eyes and I can see a nest of grey hairs poking out beneath her dyed blonde hair. She looks more like an OAP than an NQT.

“You’re late, Albie,” she says, tapping her watch impatiently. “Again.”

I stare back at Miss Benjamin in disbelief. How come the rest of my class look exactly the same but my teacher looks like she’s been run over by a time machine?

“Don’t just stand there, Albie,” she sighs. “What
on earth is the matter with you?”

The words jump out of my mouth before my brain has a chance to call them back.

“Miss, you’re so old.”

This is so not the right thing to say. As a wave of laughter runs around the classroom, Miss Benjamin’s left eye begins to twitch beneath her crow’s feet.

“Sit down, Albie,” she snaps. “Or else you’ll find yourself working in the headteacher’s office while the rest of Class 6 come with me on our trip to the museum.”

My heart sinks even as my face turns red. My teacher might have become geriatric, there might be a brand-new planet between Jupiter and Mars, but somehow it still seems like the only school trip that Class 6 ever takes is to the Clackthorpe Museum of Natural History and Mechanical Wonders.

Keeping my head down as Miss Benjamin calls out the next name in the register, I head for my usual place, sitting right next to Kiran. But when I sit down Kiran stares at me like I’ve got two heads or something.

“What are you doing?” he hisses.

“What do you mean?” I whisper back, keeping my voice low to avoid another rocket from Miss
Benjamin. “It’s me – Albie.”

“You know you’re not allowed to sit next to me,” Kiran replies, frowning so hard it looks like his forehead could give Miss Benjamin’s wrinkles a run for their money. “It’s in your behaviour contract.”

At the start of each term Miss Benjamin gives everyone in Class 6 a behaviour contract. This tells you the rules she wants you to follow in school – things like no calling out, no chatting when the teacher is talking, no making any sudden loud noises in the classroom. Most people just get two or three rules to follow, although Wesley MacNamara’s behaviour contract covers four sides of A4 paper. But I don’t know why Bad Albie’s says I’m not allowed to sit next to my best friend in school.

All my frustration at everything that’s gone wrong since I climbed out of the cardboard box in this stupid universe suddenly rises to the surface.

“That’s ridiculous,” I tell Kiran while Miss Benjamin continues to call out the register. “Why does she want to stop us from sitting next to each other?”

“Because I asked her to,” my best friend snaps in reply. “It’s your fault I got the blame when you let
Mr Sniffles out of his cage. When he jumped out of the classroom window and got eaten by that mad cat that just appeared out of nowhere, I was the one who got put in detention.”

Wait a minute! This isn’t right. It was Wesley MacNamara who let Mr Sniffles out of his cage – not me – and Miss Benjamin stopped him before he escaped out of the window. Except in this parallel universe it must have been Bad Albie…

“And if it wasn’t for you I’d have won first prize at the Science Fair,” Kiran says with a scowl, “but you thought it’d be a laugh to pop my balloons before I even had the chance to launch my mission into space.”

I shake my head. I wouldn’t do that – not to my best friend.

“And now you want to get me involved in this crazy scheme, just so you’ve got someone to pin the blame on when it all goes wrong.”

“I don’t know what you mean.” I’m getting more confused with every new thing that Kiran says. “What crazy scheme?”

Kiran gives me a look like I’ve just farted in the airlock of the International Space Station.

“Just leave me alone, Albie,” he hisses. “I don’t
want to be your friend any more.”

Kiran is my best friend in Class 6. He’s my only friend in Class 6. Or at least he used to be, in another universe. Just when I think things can’t get any worse, this parallel world proves me wrong again.

When I was little, Mum and Dad took me to the funfair in Geneva. We had a great time going on the bumper cars, the pirate ships and even the ghost train, but everything went wrong when I got lost in the hall of mirrors. One minute Mum and me were together, laughing at our funny reflections, then I raced ahead to see what was round the corner and when I looked back she was gone. All I could see was endless copies of myself.

Everything was twisted. Nothing looked right. My own face distorted into something terrifying I couldn’t even recognise. It must’ve been less than a minute until Mum found me again, but I’ll never forget how scared I was.

That’s how I feel now. Everything is twisted and wrong. I don’t recognise the Albie Bright in this universe. What’s happened to turn him into such an idiot?

Then I remember he’s lost his mum. Just like me,
but for Bad Albie it happened when he was just a baby. Is this what’s made him twisted inside? And if it is, does that mean I’m going to turn into an idiot too?

All I want to do is crawl back inside the cardboard box in my bedroom and hope that the Quantum Banana Theory can get me out of this place. But there’s no chance of that now as Miss Benjamin snaps the register shut, pulling my attention back to a more immediate problem.

“Right, Class 6, we’re heading off to the museum and I want you all to be on your very best behaviour.” Her left eye twitches as she scans the class, her surprising wrinkles creasing into a frown as her gaze settles on me. “And that includes you, Albie Bright. Now, line up outside sensibly and then we’ll be on our way.”

Whenever Miss Benjamin takes us on a class trip, she always makes us walk in a crocodile. This doesn’t mean she uses her shape-shifting extraterrestrial powers to turn us all into green scaly amphibious reptiles with extra-large teeth – although Wesley MacNamara would probably be pretty impressed if she did. When we walk in a crocodile, Miss Benjamin leads the way and we all have to follow
behind in a line, walking in pairs with our crocodile buddy.

Kiran is usually my crocodile buddy so I’m feeling more than a little bit lost as I watch him line up in the playground with Timothy Chase. As Miss Benjamin goes down the line checking the crocodile, it seems like everyone in Class 6 is already paired up. I’m starting to panic that I’m going to end up holding hands with my antique teacher when from out of nowhere Victoria Barnes slips her arm through mine.

“Looking for a new crocodile buddy?” she asks, tossing her long blonde hair back over her shoulder like an apprentice supermodel. “Or is my boyfriend too cool to walk me to his dad’s museum?”

My jaw drops to the floor but no words come out. This is because my brain has just been put on a spin cycle and all my thoughts are sloshing about inside my head at triple speed. Victoria Barnes is holding my hand. The most popular girl in school has just told me that I’m her boyfriend. What fresh weirdness is this?

My malfunctioning brain sends a message to my mouth and I find myself repeating Victoria’s words at random like a printer with a system error.

“Boyfriend – walk – museum.”

My face quickly turns red as I realise how stupid this sounds, but Victoria just laughs as though she’s in on the joke.

“Me boyfriend. Me walk,” she says, putting on a cartoon caveman voice. “You’re so funny, Albie.” Then she gives my hand a little squeeze.

This just makes my face turn even redder. I think I preferred it when she was calling me Lame Brain.

At the front of the line Miss Benjamin signals the crocodile into motion.

“Right, Class 6 – follow me and don’t forget your Green Cross Code.”

Miss Benjamin turns right as she leads us out of the playground, the crocodile following in line behind. Other schools get to go to London to visit the Natural History Museum or take a trip to Manchester to explore the Museum of Science and Industry, but Class 6 just gets to walk halfway down the street to see the Clackthorpe Museum of Natural History and Mechanical Wonders.

But I don’t have any time now to grumble about the quality of our extracurricular activities because Victoria hits me with another question.

“So, are you ready for my birthday party tomorrow?” she says, her blue eyes glittering with excitement. “It’s going to be
so
amazing. Don’t forget it starts at seven in the village hall. There’s going to be a DJ, a photo booth and you won’t guess what else.”

This is all sounding strangely familiar to me.

“A dance competition?”

“Yes!” Victoria replies, a look of triumph on her face. “We’re
so
going to win that!”

“But I can’t dance,” I protest, forgetting in my panic that there’s no chance of me hanging around for Victoria’s party.

“Don’t worry, I came third in the regional heats of the ‘Search for a Junior Dance Star’ competition,” she tells me, fluttering her eyelids in false modesty. “My tango got top marks. And wait until you see the gorgeous new dress Mum has bought me – that old red thing with sequins just made me look like a tomato.”

The only time I’ve ever danced is round the kitchen with my mum. When Dad was away, Mum would play her favourite tunes from when they first met and together we’d work out crazy dance steps while we were eating our pizzas. There
was one song I remember where Mum busted out what she called her “old-school hip-hop moves”, putting her Higgs boson baseball cap on backwards as she rapped along with the intergalactic tune. I ended up laughing so hard that pizza came out of my nose.

“What’s the matter?” Victoria asks, noticing before me that my eyes have started to leak.

“It’s just hay fever,” I tell her quickly, reaching into my pocket for a tissue to wipe the memories away.

The crocodile comes to a halt at the front of the museum, and it’s when I finish wiping my eyes that I get my next big surprise.