Shift
Authors: Jeff Povey
First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Simon and Schuster UK Ltd
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © 2014 Jeff Povey
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
All rights reserved.
The right of Jeff Povey to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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London
WC1X 8HB
Simon & Schuster Australia, Sydney
Simon & Schuster India, New Delhi
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
PB ISBN: 978-1-4711-1868-5
EBook ISBN: 978-1-4711-1869-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
www.simonandschuster.co.uk
www.simonandschuster.com.au
This book is for my amazing mum and dad, Brian and Beryl Povey. A brief escape in uncertain times. And how we could do with that.
It’s also dedicated to my lovely Jules; love still comes in at the eye, and that’s a fact. And to Rachel, Alexa, Naomi and Milo for telling me exactly where I went
wrong and exactly how to make it right.
THE TRAIL YOU SHOULDN’T FOLLOW
HANGING AROUND AND AROUND AND AROUND
WHEN I SAY ALIENS, WHAT’S THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF?
A SHORT DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHTMARES
There’s an ape staring at me.
It’s sitting in the stale musty classroom and it keeps looking at me.
I’m trying to ignore it. But it won’t stop staring.
‘What?’ I ask it, but it doesn’t reply.
I’m supposed to be meeting my boyfriend Kyle and could have done without getting an after-school detention. I won’t even have time to get home and get changed out of my school
uniform now.
‘What?’ I hiss at the Ape again. ‘Like, seriously, what?’
The Ape doesn’t even blink – just carries on gazing at me from halfway across the classroom.
‘What d’you want?’ Billie, my all-time best friend, asks the Ape. She is sitting at the school desk nearest to mine. Because of her supermodel height, her long slender legs are
bent awkwardly under the desk.
The Ape doesn’t reply but the teacher, Mr Allwell, clears his throat – his way of telling us to stop talking without actually bothering to speak himself.
Which acts as a cue for the Ape to
start
talking.
‘What you in for?’ It’s only taken five minutes for the words to travel from his empty brain to his mouth.
‘What are we
in
for?’ Billie screws up her face. ‘This isn’t a prison.’
The Ape’s eyes drop down to my chest. Many a boy has done this, but never so blatantly.
‘What you in for?’ I think he’s expecting my boobs to speak.
‘If we tell you, will you stop staring?’ Billie asks the Ape.
‘What?’ he says transfixed.
Billie sighs hard enough to make her point. ‘I got thrown out of rehearsals for
Hamlet
.’
‘What’s Hamlet?’
‘Seriously?’ Billie rolls her eyes.
‘I dyed my hair pink. Didn’t know it wasn’t allowed.’
The Ape’s eyes wrench themselves from my chest and wander up to my hair, which is dyed a hot pink. Kyle’s going to either love it or hate it.
‘That not real then?’
Allwell clears his throat again, only louder this time. Good, I think. Excruciating conversation over.
‘Ask me what I’m in for,’ the Ape says, continuing to ignore Allwell.
The Ape is bigger and wider and hairier than anyone at the school – hence the nickname – and I swear all of the staff are praying that he finally leaves this year. Holding him back
to retake Year Eleven for the third time wasn’t the best idea they ever had.
‘Sykes caught me stealing petrol from his car.’ The Ape points to a petrol stain on his red T-shirt that depicts a bikini-clad woman from the Fifties posing amongst faded playing
cards. I don’t think he’s ever worn a uniform. The Ape is wearing the stain like a badge of honour.
‘That’s amazing, really – awesome,’ Billie tells him with a straight face.
We look away from the Ape and hope he gets the message that we seriously don’t want to talk to him. But as soon as we do, Carrie sticks her brittle-boned middle finger up at me.
‘What are you looking at?’ she snipes at me, her icy blue eyes staring right through me, and I wish she didn’t hate me so much. She is a size minus, as in her weight is
somewhere in the negative, and which ever way you look at her, her bony body always comes to a point.
Being in detention is bad enough without having a gorilla and a human knitting needle for company. The only bright spot is the eternally sunny GG, who is sitting at the desk between me and
Carrie, painting his fingernails canary yellow.
‘What’s your problem?’ I hiss at Carrie.
‘You know what!’ She looks at me with complete hatred. ‘You
so
know what.’
‘Ooh. Girl war. Handbags are locked and loaded.’ GG talks without taking his eyes off his nails.
‘Who asked you?’ Carrie gives GG a sneer, which bounces straight off him. Getting his nails right is all that matters.
Still seated, the Ape grabs his desk in one meaty paw and then kangaroos it and his chair across the classroom, straight towards Billie and me. We look up at Allwell, expecting him to tell him
to stop, but like most of the staff here, he prefers to avoid direct confrontation with the Ape.
He edges loudly across the floor, in his weird chair and table caravan, and it’s like the Ape’s decided we’re in his circle now, or he’s in ours, because he’s
grinning hopefully at us. ‘I got a question.’
Billie gives me a wary look and I know she’s thinking the same thing I am. The Ape is trying to make friends with us, but that is most definitely not going to happen. He’s barely the
same species as us.
He drags the chair and table right up to mine.
‘What you doing after?’
‘Oh, good God,’ Billie mutters. Thankfully the door opens and distracts the Ape.
Lucas stands in the doorway waiting for the Moth, who motors in in his wheelchair. Lucas is a straight-A student and doesn’t do anything wrong
ever
, so coming to after-school
detention is the equivalent of getting twenty years for armed robbery for him, and his anxious face shows that’s exactly how he feels. Lucas is clever, athletic, and talented at everything he
tries – at our school he’s like the boy who would be King, a beautiful, caramel-skinned god.
The Moth is Lucas’s best friend. A paraplegic with glasses, acne and a flat boneless nose that means his glasses keep sliding down it. No one could be physically further from Lucas than
the Moth, but on other levels they are closer than brothers. Whenever you find one of them, the other isn’t far away.
Lucas doesn’t know where to sit at first. He looks at the permanently scowling Carrie and then gets a delicate little wave from GG.
‘There’s a lap going free here,’ he suggests to Lucas with a smile.
Not that GG really knows Lucas. None of us here apart from the Moth have ever reached that rarefied height.
Lucas turns to Allwell, hesitant in case he does anything else wrong. Allwell points to a vacant chair at the front. Lucas nods, sits down and the Moth parks his wheelchair beside him.
The Ape immediately scrapes his desk and chair in Lucas’s direction, manoeuvring himself as close to him as he can manage. He can’t believe Lucas is in detention either.
‘What you in for?’
‘Oh, I was—’ the Moth begins.
‘Wasn’t talking to you, Hawkings.’
The Moth sometimes gets called Hawkings because everyone thinks he must have a brilliant space-brain to balance out his broken, twisted body. He is cleverer than most so it’s not
completely inaccurate. Usually though, he goes by the Moth, which is short for his real name, Timothy.
‘How many times do I have to say this? It’s Hawking,’ says the Moth. ‘Haw-king, not Haw-kings.’
‘What you in for?’ The Ape grins eagerly at Lucas.
‘Nothing,’ says Lucas quietly. It’s hard to tell if he’s blushing because his Caribbean skin gives little away.
‘Tell me.’
In truth we all want to know what happened to bring the school god to this room, even Allwell, so he lets the Ape grill Lucas some more.
‘Be a pal. What you in for?’
The Moth nods to Lucas as if to say it’s OK. He also knows that everyone is now looking at Lucas, who will hate the scrutiny. Lucas may be the boy that everyone wants to be, but he’s
also painfully keen to do the right thing. He puts constant pressure on himself and one slip, or in this case, one detention, and Lucas is approaching total meltdown.
‘I kicked a football at my games teacher.’
‘It hit him in the nuts,’ adds the Moth.
Lucas gets a big hefty slap on the back from the Ape. ‘Yowza!’
But Lucas just folds in on himself, looking like his whole, entire life is ruined now.