iBoy

to rotate in the opposite direction, making everything go back in time, allowing Superman to go back into the past and prevent Lois Lane from dying.

Which was all pretty ridiculous, of course.

But I couldn't help thinking that if only I could do that, if only I could go back in time ... well, then I really could change things for Lucy. I really could make every­thing all right again.

But I knew that was never going to happen. This was the real world, not a movie. And in the real world, no matter how impossible things might be, they're never quite impossible enough.

'What are you thinking about, Tom?' Lucy asked me.

'Nothing ...' I shrugged. 'You know, just stuff ...'

She smiled. 'There's a lot of stuff to think about, isn't there?'

'Yeah ...'

'And it's always ... I don't know. It's like it's never straightforward, is it? It's never just this or that. Do you know what I mean?'

'Yeah.'

'There's always two sides to everything. You feel good about something, but you still feel bad. You like some­thing about someone, but you don't want to like it.' She looked thoughtfully at me. 'Two sides, you see? Even the stuff we were talking about earlier, you know ... Tobey Maguire's cute, Kirsten Dunst's sexy ... I mean, that's OK — kissing and stuff, people looking sexy ... it's just kind of nice. But then there's the other side of it, the other side of sex — the bad side, the shit, the fucking awful things that people do ...' She shook her head. 'I just don't get it, you know?'

'Yeah ...'

She sighed again. 'And it's the same with people too ... you think you know them, you think you know exactly what they're like ...' She looked slowly at me. 'But maybe you're wrong ... maybe you've always been wrong, and maybe this person who you thought you knew ... well, maybe they've got another side to them. A side you're not sure about.'

'Right...' I said tentatively.

Lucy looked at me for a long moment, her eyes never leaving mine, and then she smiled. 'Or maybe I'm wrong about that too?'

I smiled back at her. 'Don't ask me. I haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about.'

'You never do, do you?'

'Never do what?'

She laughed, and I grinned at her, and then we just sat there in silence for a few moments, smiling at each other in the darkness ... and I knew in my heart that this was how it was supposed to be. This was everything I could ever want, everything there was to want.

This was it.

After a while, Lucy looked at her watch and said, 'I'd better get going, Tom. Mum'll be back soon.'

'OK.'

We both got to our feet then, and as we stood there at the edge of the roof, looking out into the darkness, I remembered the last time I'd been up here — all on my own, with my hood up and my iSkin glowing ... a softly glowing figure, sitting cross-legged on a cold stone roof, thirty floors up ...

Like some kind of weird hooded Buddha ...

A skinny, glow-in-the-dark iBuddha.

Or maybe an iGargoyle.

It was so much better now.

Tom?' Lucy said.

I turned to her.

'Thanks,' she said quietly, looking at me. 'This has been a really wonderful night. I'll never forget it.' She moved closer to me, put her hands to my face, and kissed me softly on the lips.

God, it felt good.

So perfect, so right...

It felt so good, I nearly fell off the roof.

'OK?' she whispered.

I couldn't speak. I couldn't even smile. It was all I could do just to breathe. Lucy moved her hand to my head and gently stroked my scar with her fingertips.

'It feels warm,' she said quietly.

'Warm ...' I muttered.

She smiled at me. 'Come on, we'd better go ... before you start drooling.'

She held my hand as we walked back across the roof to the hatchway. I helped her down the ladder, then we held hands again as we went out through the doors, down the stairs, and along the corridor to her flat.

'Thanks again, Tom,' she said. 'That was really nice.'

'Thank you,' I said.

She smiled and kissed me on the cheek. 'Are you coming round tomorrow?'

I nodded. 'If it's OK with you.'

'It's perfectly OK with me.'

'Good.'

She smiled again and opened the door. 'I'll see you tomorrow then.'

'Yeah.'

I waited for her to close the door, and then I just stood there for a while, smiling the biggest, floatiest, stupidest smile in the world ... and then, breathing in a breath of pure satisfaction, I turned round and started heading back to the roof to clear all the picnic stuff away.

Just before I got to the stairwell, I heard Lucy's door opening.

'Tom?'

I turned round and saw her leaning out through the doorway.

'Be careful,' she said.

I smiled at her. 'I'm always careful.'

She gave me a long thoughtful look, almost frowning at me, then she smiled again, nodded her head, and went back into the flat.

10101

My name is Legion; for we are many.

New Testament, Mark 5:9

After I'd cleared away the picnic stuff from the roof and lugged it all back to the flat — and after Gram had virtu­ally forced me to tell her how it had all gone with Lucy — I went to my room and lay down in the dark and tried not to think about anything. I didn't want to think at all — I just wanted to feel what I was feeling ... and nothing else. I just wanted to lie there with Lucy.

The memory of her sunset eyes.

Her lips.

Her smile.

Her face.