iBoy

... creeping into a flat in Eden. It's 03:15:44. A drunken mother is asleep in her bedroom, her two boys sleeping in the room next door. I move through the darkness, a palely glowing ghost, and I find a rucksack in the kitchen. I take Troy O'Neil's automatic pistol from my pocket, wipe it clean, and slip it into the rucksack.

Walking away from Eden House, I call the police. 'Flat 3, fourteenth floor, Eden House,' I tell them. 'Yusef Hashim. He's got a gun. It's in a rucksack in the kitchen.'

... and other flats, other nights, other sounds of sleeping. The pale ghost plants a bag of heroin here, a bag of cocaine there ...

... timeless iHours spent working on the computer in my head: sending false texts and photoshopped pictures, posting videos on YouTube, spreading malicious lies in chat rooms and blogs. Lies become rumours, rumours become facts: Nathan Craig's a grass; Big and Little Jones are terrorists; DeWayne Firman has posted a Facebook message calling Howard Ellman a queer ...

... Sunday 11 April, 19:47:51. Tom Harvey is sitting on a bench at the kids' playground, thinking about Lucy. He hasn't been to see her for nearly a week ... and he knows that it's iBoy's fault. iBoy and Lucy have got into a routine of sending each other at least a couple of MySpace messages every day, and Tom keeps forgetting that he's not iBoy, that he's not talking to Lucy all the time, but that she doesn't know that. So she'll be wonder­ing why Tom hasn't been round to see her.

Or maybe she won't...?

It's really confusing for Tom, flipping from iBoy to himself all the time, trying to remember who he is and what he's supposed to be. And when he thinks about Lucy, it almost feels as if he's cheating on her with himself ... or maybe it's the other way round? As if she's cheat­ing on him, but she doesn't know that the other boy she's seeing (or at least talking to on MySpace) isn't actually another boy at all, it's Tom.

He closes his eyes.

There's a new MySpace message from Lucy. hey iBoy, have you heard about all this stuff going on round the estate?

what stuff?

you know, all the gang kids getting arrested and beating each other up and everything. it's been in the local papers. all the dealers are getting busted and there's rumours about some kind of superman going round kicking the shit out of the crows and fgh. do you know anything about that?

me? why would i know anything?

yeah, ha ha! why would you? btw ben told me nathan craig got beaten up yesterday, it was pretty bad, appar­ently. some of the older kids found out he grassed up a deal and they beat the crap out of him.

yeah?

yeah, and the cops caught yusef hashim with a gun. and dewayne's disappeared, no one's seen him for days, funny, it seems like everyone who had anything to do with what happened to me is running into a lot of bad luck.

really? must be some kind of karma.

yeah, well... just be careful, OK?

aGirl xxx

i'm always careful, see you later.

iBoy xxx

It's just then, after iBoy has logged out of MySpace, that Tom looks up and sees a bunch of FGH kids walking along Crow Lane. He knows they're FGH because most of them are wearing Adidas gear, which is an FGH thing. There's about eight or nine of them, and they're heading south, away from the playground and down towards Fitzroy House. Most of them are around sixteen or seventeen, but there's a few younger kids too, and there's also a couple of girls.

It's the girls that draw Tom's attention. They're both about thirteen or fourteen, both dressed in short skirts and skinny little tops, and they're both trying very hard to look as if they're enjoying themselves — shouting and laughing, messing around with the boys — but there's something about them that doesn't seem right to Tom. He isn't sure what it is, but he can sense something wrong about the whole situation. The way the boys are looking at the girls, their eyes cold and empty, even when they're smiling at them. The way the girls keep looking at each other, looking for reassurance, as if to say — this is just a bit of fun, isn't it? And the way some of the boys keep looking back down the road, while the others are keeping the girls surrounded, blocking them in as they walk along ...

It just isn't right.

Tom gets up off the bench and starts following them.

He doesn't recognize any of them, and he's pretty sure that none of them know him — they're FGH, and the FGH don't usually mix with the kids from his end of the estate — so he doesn't bother turning on his iSkin for the moment, he just follows them as Tom.

Nothing much happens for a while.

The boys and girls keep walking, and as they get closer to Fitzroy House, the girls start getting a bit edgier. They try stopping and turning back once or twice, but the boys just grab them and pull them along. They're all still laughing and smiling, even the girls, and Tom starts to wonder if he's made a mistake. Maybe it is just a bit of fun? Maybe the girls are just playing hard to get, and the boys are just playing hard? Or maybe, he suddenly thinks to himself, maybe it's just you. Maybe you're just a hopeless and pathetic romantic who believes in treating people with respect. I mean, you were brought up by a single grandmother who writes old-fashioned love stories for a living, weren't you? And she did used to read you those love stories at bedtime ...

Christ, he thinks, pausing for a moment, is that what this is all about? The whole knight in shining armour! superhero thing — putting wrongs to right, saving fair maidens, slaying evil dragons — is that what I'm trying to do?

It isn't a comfortable thought. In fact, it's kind of embarrassing. And for a moment or two, Tom seriously considers turning round and going home. Why not? Just forget about the two girls, they'll be perfectly all right. Just forget about them. Forget about everything. Just turn round, go home, and spend the night with Gram watch­ing crappy TV.

And he's just about to do it, he's just about to turn round and start heading back home ...

But then he sees the van.

It's a white Transit, and it's speeding down Crow Lane from the north side. As it approaches the FGH boys, four of them suddenly grab the two girls and start drag­ging them over to the side of the road. At first, the girls just think that the boys are messing around again — just playing rough, having a laugh. So the girls screech and curse a bit, and they struggle and fight against the four boys, but they don't do it with any real sense of urgency. They still think that it's all just a game. But Tom knows that this isn't a game any more. He can tell by the sudden change in the boys' demeanour — their mouths set tight, their movements quick and furtive, their eyes darting around, looking for witnesses ...

Tom's iSkin is on now, and he's already running when the van pulls up at the side of the road. The back doors swing open and two more FGH kids jump out of the back and start helping the others as they bundle the girls