Oliver Twist, the book they were reading in class. He also had a pile of exercise books.
“Did you read the chapters that I set you in Oliver Twist?” he asked.
“I tried to,” Matt said. He liked the characters in the story but he found some of the language old-fashioned and difficult to follow. Why did Charles Dickens have to use so much description?
“You tried to?” Mr King sneered at him. “I think what you mean is, you didn’t.”
“I did…” Matt began.
“Don’t interrupt me, Freeman. Your essay was the worst in the class. You scored a pathetic two out of twenty. You can’t even spell Fagin correctly! F-A-Y-G-I-N! There is no Y in Fagin, Freeman. If you’d read the chapters, you’d know that.”
Gavin giggled out loud and, despite himself, Matt felt his cheeks glowing red.
“You will read the chapters again and you will do the test again and in future, I’d prefer it if you didn’t lie to me. Now sit down.” He threw Matt’s exercise book onto the desk as if it were something he had found in the gutter.
The lesson dragged on until the lunchtime bell. There would be games that afternoon. Matt should have enjoyed that, as he was fit and fast on his feet. But he was never part of the team on the sports field either. They were playing cricket this term and Matt hadn’t been surprised when he had been sent to field at deep cover, as far away from everyone else as possible.
The school ate lunch in one of the modern buildings. There was a self-service buffet with a choice of hot or cold food and fifty long tables arranged in lines beneath a huge modern chandelier. The boys were allowed to sit where they wanted, but normally each year stuck together. The clatter of knives and forks and the clamour of so many voices echoed all around. Everyone ate at the same time and the huge glass windows seemed to trap the sound and bounce it back and forth.
Matt was hungry. He had been late for the school bus and hadn’t had time to buy anything at McDonald’s. And there hadn’t been much to eat in Richard’s flat the night before. The food was the one thing at Forrest Hill that he did like and he helped himself to a healthy lunch of ham, salad, ice cream and fruit juice. Carrying his tray, he looked for somewhere to sit. After five weeks at the school, he had lost hope of anyone inviting him to join them.
He saw an empty space and made for it. With the tray in front of him, he didn’t see the foot that was stretched out in his path. The next thing he knew, he had been tripped. Helplessly, he pitched forward. The tray, two plates, a glass, his knife, fork and spoon left his hands and hit the floor with a deafening crash. Matt followed them. Unable to stop himself, he fell on top of what was meant to be his lunch. The entire room fell silent. Even before he looked up, Matt knew that everyone was staring at him.
It hadn’t been Gavin Taylor who had tripped him up. It was one of his friends. But Matt had no doubt that it had been Gavin’s idea. He could see the other boy a few tables away, standing up with a glass in one hand, a stupid smile spreading across his face. Matt got to his knees. Ice cream was dripping from his shirt. He was surrounded by pieces of salad, kneeling in a puddle of fruit juice.
And then Gavin laughed.
It was a cue for the rest of the school to join in. It seemed to Matt that just about the entire room – the entire school – was laughing at him. He saw Mr O’Shaughnessy making his way towards him. Why did the assistant headmaster have to be on lunch duty that day?
“Why do you have to be so clumsy, Freeman?” The words seemed to be coming from a long way away. They echoed in Matt’s ears. “Are you all right?”
Matt looked up. Gavin was pointing at him. He could feel the anger coursing through him – and not just anger. Something else. He couldn’t have stopped it, even if he had tried to. It was as if he had become a channel. There were flames flowing through him. He could actually smell the burning.
The chandelier exploded.
It was an ugly thing, a tangle of steel arms and light bulbs that some architect must have thought would suit the room. And it was directly over Gavin Taylor. Now, as Matt stared, the bulbs shattered, one after another, each one bursting apart with the sound of a pistol shot. Glass showered down, smashing onto the tables. Gavin looked up and cried out as a piece of glass hit him in the face. More glass rained down on him. A few wisps of smoke rose to the ceiling. Nobody was laughing any more. The entire room was silent.
Then the glass that Gavin was holding exploded too. It simply blew itself apart in his hand. He screamed. His palm had been cut open. Gavin looked at Matt, then at his hand. His mouth opened but it seemed to take him for ever to find the words.
“It was him!” he shouted. “He did it!” His whole body was trembling.
The assistant headmaster stared helplessly. He looked bewildered, unsure what to do. This sort of thing had never happened before. It was beyond his experience.
“It was him!” Gavin insisted.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mr O’Shaughnessy said. “I saw what happened. Freeman was nowhere near you.”
Gavin Taylor had gone pale. It might have been the pain, the sight of his own blood welling out of the cut in his hand. But Matt knew that it was more than that. He was terrified.
Mr O’Shaughnessy tried to take charge. “Someone get the matron,” he snapped. “And we’d better clear the room. There’s glass everywhere…”
People were already moving. They didn’t know what had happened. They just wanted to get out of the dining hall before the whole ceiling came down. They had forgotten Matt for the moment but if any of them had looked for him they would have seen that he was no longer there.
A SECOND GATE
The streets were beginning to empty by the time Matt got home. These were the summer months and tourists were arriving every day. The queues round the Viking museum and the Minster were getting longer. The medieval walls were more crowded. Soon there would be more people visiting York than actually living there, or so it would seem. From city to tourist attraction, it was a process that was repeated every year.
Matt stood in the narrow, cobbled street called The Shambles and looked up at the flat that rose on three floors over a souvenir shop. He had been happy here for a while. Living with Richard was odd – the journalist was more than ten years older than him – but after all they had been through together in Lesser Malling, it had sort of worked. They needed each other. Richard knew that Matt could provide him with the newspaper story that would make him famous; Matt had nowhere else to go. The flat was just about big enough for the two of them and anyway, they were both out all day. At weekends they went hiking, swimming, go-karting… whatever. Matt tried to think of Richard as a big brother.
But during the past weeks, he had become increasingly uncomfortable. Richard wasn’t his brother, and as the memories of their shared nightmare faded, there seemed to be less and less reason for them still to be staying together. Matt liked Richard. But there wasn’t going to be any Pulitzer-prize winning scoop and the simple truth was, he was in the way. That was why he had suggested going back to the LEAF Project. Despite what Richard had said, an ordinary family somewhere in the country couldn’t be so bad.
And there was a second reason to leave York.
Matt wondered if the school would have phoned Richard and told him what had happened. There was no reason why they should. Despite Gavin’s accusations, none of the teachers seriously believed he had been responsible for the explosion in the dining hall. But Matt knew differently. He had felt the power flowing through him. It was the same power that had stopped the knife and snapped the cords when he had been a prisoner, tied down in Omega One. But this time there had been one difference. It had been directed at someone his own age. Gavin wasn’t his enemy – he was just a stupid kid.
He couldn’t stay at Forrest Hill. Not now. Another taunt from Gavin, another bad morning with Mr King and his English class and who could say what might happen? All his life, Matt had known he was different. He had been aware of something inside him… this power… whatever it was. Sometimes, when he’d gone to films like Spider-Man or X-Men, he’d wondered what it might be like to be a superhero, saving the world. But that wasn’t him. His power was useless to him because he didn’t know how to use it. Worse than that, it was out of control. Once again he
