Copyright
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN: 9781473530645
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BBC Books, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA
BBC Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © James Goss 2016
Cover photographs © Shutterstock
Cover: www.headdesign.co.uk
James Goss has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This book is published to accompany the television series entitled Class first broadcast on BBC Three in 2016. Class is a BBC Wales production.
Executive producers: Patrick Ness, Steven Moffat and Brian Minchin
First published by BBC Books in 2016
www.penguin.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9781785941887
To My Cat #InternetReasons
Are you coming to get me?
Please tell me you’re coming to get me.
’Cos I really thought I was doing the right thing. Okay, some of my friends said I went too far. Actually, fine, I lost a few friends because of what I did. But it was all jokes and bants. That was all it was.
Well, that was all it was when it started. There’s a site – truthordare.com. They wanted us to post stuff to it. And really, if I’ve got to spell that out then really eyeroll.gif. You get the picture – stuff about yourself you don’t want people to know; stuff about your friends they’d hate the world finding out, or, you know, risky things – taking a hoverboard in traffic, playing Pokemon Go underwater, or what I did – that old thing of putting your hand on a table and stabbing a knife between the fingers up and down, down and up, faster and faster.
Guess what? Good news, I can still play the recorder. Turns out, I’m really good at it. I’m also really good at betraying my friends – given a choice between my secrets and theirs? No contest. Phone peeping out of your bag, Gmail left unattended? Give it to me, I shall be the master of it. And the world shall laugh at you.
But, right, I was doing it for a good cause. We were trying to stop the spread of Skandis – they said it was a disease. I guess, you know, strictly speaking, yeah, fine that’s sort of right. But now I know what Skandis really is. And it’s worse than a disease. And I’m doing all I can to stop it. Because I’ve got to. We all have to. Or the Earth will be destroyed.
I’ll tell you what happened to me, okay? I played the game, only I didn’t realise it was just a training level for something else. I didn’t know what I was heading for as I climbed up the leader board. I just thought – I dunno, maybe a free holiday or a T-shirt of something. Not … not that I’d vanish. Kidnapped right out of this world. Wake up somewhere else.
And then I’d find out what Skandis really is.
Now I know? I’m doing all I can to stop Skandis.
But what I really want? When I’m not screaming, when I’m not so scared? When I’m not doing the most daring stuff I’ve ever done?
Okay then, here’s a truth about me, the terrible truth that I don’t dare tell anyone: what I really want is for someone to come and get me and take me home. I want my mum.
So.
Can I come home now?
Question: What will YOU do to stop Skandis?
Hi,
I’m not a doctor.
Well, obviously. What doctor wears board shorts and bunny ears?
But I’m taking some time out from my busy schedule of being youtube famous to tell you all about Skandis. Skandis is spreading. And we need to get together and stop it.
I know you’re probably like ‘yeah right’ but Skandis is real. And it’s not like Brexit or Donald Trump or Nicki Minaj. Skandis can be stopped.
Together, we can cure Skandis. Now, come on, lean closer, and I’m going to tell you how …
It started with the ice and Ram was fine with the ice. It struck him as a lot of effort. It wasn’t that he didn’t like effort. Whatever his dad would have told you, Ram wasn’t lazy. He liked doing things, he was simply selective about what he actually did.
Learning how to make his new leg work? Worth it.
Tipping a bucket of ice over your head? He’d get back to you.
That morning he was running and thinking about the ice. It helped take his mind off how very slightly wrong his leg was. It just wouldn’t do leg correctly. He’d been assured that the artificial limb contained lots of smart technology. Intuitive gimbals. Actuated flesh. Nano-level balancing. Simulated hair. But, for all that, Ram and his leg still didn’t quite trust each other.
You’re asking a lot of a leg. You’re asking it to be there for you. It’s constantly helping out with really amazing things like keeping you standing upright, letting you walk, and stairs; stairs really are such a leap of faith that it’s amazing we didn’t invent the lift before the wheel. Ram’s old leg did all that he asked of it without getting in the way, without even reminding him that it was there. Now it was gone, he really, really missed it. Because he and his new leg were constantly second-guessing each other. It was like having a butler for a limb. Ram would make that little bit of extra effort when stepping with his false leg, just to make sure he landed really firmly, and his artificial limb would push back, just the tiniest twitch, as if clearing its throat and saying ‘Forgive me, I’m not sure you quite meant me to do that.’ It did it, every single time. His leg kept reminding him that it was there. Little pulses racing up his thigh. ‘Just got you to the pavement’, ‘Just stepped around that dog turd’, ‘Avoided stumbling over that rut on the pitch, no, don’t thank me’.
Ram had never really understood what the phrase ‘passive aggressive’ had meant before. Everyone used it, about teachers, mean kids, or crisps, but Ram knew, absolutely knew that he had a passive aggressive leg. It was so judgmental too. It made it quite clear that it was a precision instrument and that kicking a ball in a certain direction just seemed to be inflicting unnecessary damage on it for no apparent purpose. Every time he tried to kick a ball his foot flinched, which isn’t really the body language that makes for a successful career in football.
Hence the morning runs. When he’d suggested taking up jogging, his dad had been keen. Overkeen. Really ‘waiting for him in the hall in sweatpants and with him 100 per cent of the way’ keen. Luckily that had passed, and now Ram got to go running on his own – down the road, over the footbridge, round the scrubby park and back, all the time hoping that instinct would kick in. It didn’t. His leg kept telling him ‘down and safe’ every step of the way. So he distracted himself with thinking about the ice.
The videos had started cropping up online a week ago. People tipping a bucket of ice over their heads for charity. It was all a bit 2014. But the practicalities of it all kept Ram occupied while his leg kept telling him it was there, and it was fine.
It was the ice that troubled him. There were a couple of trays in the freezer – maybe about two dozen ice cubes. So that wasn’t going to fill a bucket. You’d need to go to the supermarket, buy a bag. Only supermarkets only ever seemed to keep a couple of bags in stock – not enough to cope with a barbeque, let alone a charity craze. And EVERYONE was doing it. Even the third years. Where did they get the ice? From a pub? Did they stockpile it?
Today Ram was working on the Stockpiling Theory with a dedication that would have startled his maths teacher. If he could make three batches of ice a day, and got an extra tray, he could maybe knock up a hundred cubes a day. How many ice cubes would it take to make a bucket of water ice cold? Perhaps three days of planning and he’d have enough.
Three days. Making it Wednesday.
Ram stopped considering it for a moment, as his ankle had just proudly informed him that it had failed to twist over some gravel.
Could he hold out till Wednesday?
The problem with tipping a bucket of ice over his head was that Ram didn’t want to do it. Pretty much the rest of the football team had, one by one, posting videos of themselves shrieking, ‘I’m doing the ice bucket for Skandis!’ and then dousing themselves. Recently someone had finished by crying, ‘And now it’s your turn Ram.’
Which had seemed a bit provocative. He’d kind of considered doing it, just to get it out of the way, but then April had said, completely casually, ‘You’d only be doing it to get the attention from posting a topless video of yourself.’
That had stopped him. For one thing, she was wrong. Completely wrong. Totally wrong. Colchester wrong. Yes, some of the guys had got A LOT of attention from their videos but that really, absolutely wasn’t his motive. For one thing he’d wear a T-shirt. A tight one with the sleeves hacked off.
Anyway, April. Recently stuff she’d said carried a bit more weight. Like it was in a slightly different font. Odd. But he definitely wasn’t not doing it just because April was against it.
Ram paused at the park gate and told his leg to shut up for a moment. Why had sentences suddenly got so complicated?
The answer was actually pretty simple. Aliens. Aliens had invaded his school. Before they’d gone, there’d been consequences. ‘Consequences’ wasn’t the right word. The nearest thing to the right word was just one long, howling scream in a very dark room. But fine, let’s go with aliens had invaded the school and there’d been consequences. They’d killed his girlfriend. They’d cut off his leg. They’d massacred a load of people (which no one was talking about). That weird kid in class? An alien prince. His football coach? Bit alien. The teacher who hated him? An alien. And, for complicated reasons, April’s heart was now alien.
About the only person Ram knew who could describe it clearly would be Tanya. He didn’t like Tanya, not as such, but he understood the point of her. Tanya looked at the world through slightly narrowed eyes and called it as she saw it. Also, she never handed in homework late, so the world seemed to be forever on her side. Even if she was, like, twelve or something.
Ram had been watching one of the ice bucket videos yesterday. Tanya had appeared over his shoulder. She somehow did this, despite being smaller than him. She was asking him a question. Frowning with annoyance, he made an elaborate pantomime of pausing the video and pulling out his headphones and then looked at her.
‘What?’ he’d said, annoyed.
She’d carried on looking at the ice frozen over the screaming footballer.
‘Don’t you think that’s odd?’ she said.
‘Wouldn’t know. Not done it.’ He wondered why he sounded so defensive.
‘Didn’t say you had.’ She was just staring at him, not blinking. ‘But it’s interesting. I mean, statistically, I can understand why one person would tip ice over their head. But two, I’m not so sure. Especially when everyone’s been there, done that before.’
‘Well, it’s for Skandis,’ muttered Ram. ‘Some kind of charity. An American one, I guess.’
‘Right.’ Tanya chewed the word. ‘Nearly the whole football team’s done it now. You haven’t. Has there been any peer pressure? You know, people asking you why you haven’t?’
‘Apart from you?’ Ram asked. ‘Not really.’ He put his headphones back in and watched the end of the video. ‘You’re next Ram! You’re next!’
He looked up. Tanya had gone.
Ram finished his run and went to training. His school clothes were in his backpack. He would shower afterwards then go to class and that would all be fine.
He pulled off his hoodie, stuffed it in a locker, changed into his football boots and tried not to notice how silent the changing room was.
The rest of his team were there. But they weren’t talking. They weren’t talking at him. He just knew it. It was all very subtle. It wasn’t like someone had come up to him and said anything. There was just that vague sense that he was in the room but he didn’t belong to it anymore. He knew better than to ask. There was nothing worse than asking. Confronting the problem. No.
To be fair, it wasn’t anything new. When he’d been the team’s star player, that distance had already been there in the air. Even while they hugged him and cheered him on, there was still that slight whiff of ‘why him?’. They all knew how good he was. How naturally talented. How it was only a matter of time before he got the dream life that definitely included sports cars.
That weird atmosphere had only increased ever since he’d lost his leg. He’d not been able to tell anyone. Not say, ‘Look, my leg got chopped off and this is the best they could do. Pretty neat, but don’t worry, I’ll get the hang of it’. He couldn’t say anything. Couldn’t do the wounded hero act. Couldn’t scream about how unfair it was. He got lots of sympathy for the death of Rachel, but as far as they were concerned, he’d suddenly gone from star player to someone who really shouldn’t be on the team anymore for no good reason.
Now, the fact that he wasn’t throwing cold water over himself gave them the perfect opportunity to vent their frustrations. He was no longer the star player, he was no longer the ex-star player having a bad patch, he was no longer one of them.
He hung back, letting the rest of the team filter out towards the pitch. Neil, the only other guy who’d not done the challenge, was still tying his shoes and making a meal out of it. Ram suspected he really didn’t fancy being there either.
Ram sat down on the bench next to him as casually as really awkward could be.
‘You doing it today?’ he said.
Neil said nothing.
‘You got the ice?’ Ram said.
Neil looked up, like it was the least important thing in the world.
‘Thought you didn’t care,’ he said, vaguely, tugging strands of hair in the mirror.
‘No,’ insisted Ram. ‘I do.’ That sounded a bit like a bleat. ‘It’s just, if you’re going to do it … I mean, isn’t the ice thing a bit, you know, old? Can’t you do something else? Something better?’
Neil didn’t look away from the mirror.
‘Got anything in mind?’
‘No,’ Ram heard himself trying to laugh. ‘Just you know. Ice, bucket, gasp. It’s not …’
Neil tugged at his jersey, neatening it even more.
‘So that’s it?’ he said quietly. ‘You’re not joining in because it’s boring.’
‘Just don’t see the point.’ Ram faked a big smile. ‘If I do something, it’ll be really amazing.’
‘I’ll wait,’ Neil said.
‘Also, not sure what Skandis is. That’s all.’
Neil shrugged. ‘Google it,’ he said and walked out.
Ram got his phone out of his locker. He tapped ‘Skandis’ in, then stopped. He closed the locker and went outside. He’d sort it out later.
Afterwards, he felt like an idiot.
‘I’m doing that ice challenge,’ he announced to April. Very much in passing. Very much conversational.
‘Right,’ she said. She was leaning against a pillar, sketching away in a notebook. Somehow she made the simple act of doodling look utterly dismissing. Around them, people ran from one classroom to the next. April seemed completely uncaring, her eyes barely focused on the world around them. Charlie had said that it was because April was connected to a distant planet, could maybe even glimpse it, but Ram got the feeling that April had always been a little bit this way. Some people just aren’t quite in focus.
Tanya rocked up. Now, there was someone who was completely in focus.
‘So, I’m doing the ice thing,’ he repeated, hoping that she’d say something.
Tanya frowned, and when she did so it was a thing of moment.
‘You quite sure about that?’ she said. Her words swung like dumb-bells. ‘For Skandis?’
‘Yeah,’ said Ram. ‘It’s a disease. I saw a video about a girl who had it. You know. Brave in a shaven-headed way.’
‘You sure?’ repeated Tanya. She looked doubtful.
April focused on Tanya in a way that she never did on Ram.
‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ she said.
‘Oh yeah.’
That was when Ram heard the ambulance sirens.
VIDEO TITLE: The Cup-A-Soup Challenge
The football pitch.
Neil sat in a chair.
A crowd of friends.
An extension cable.
A mug.
A kettle.
‘Hi, my name’s Neil and this is my Cup-A-Soup challenge! Oh yeah.
Today I’m doing something different. That’s right. Ice is yesterday.
I’ve picked my favourite flavour of Cup-A-Soup.
It’s chicken. Yeah. Go chicken!
And now I’m going to wear it.
My friend Paul here has boiled the kettle.
I’m passing him the mug. That’s right. Stir out the floaters. Nice one!
Talking of chicken, I’d like to thank Ram for suggesting I do something different. Hey Ram, I’m doing this for Skandis. Isn’t it about time you did something too?
Now, Paul, let’s make soup! Tip it! Tip it! Tip it!’
And then the screaming started.
‘Well,’ observed Miss Quill, ‘that’ll be a short-lived craze.’
The ambulance was pulling out of the car park, leaving behind a mournful crowd taking shocked selfies.
Miss Quill’s fingers pulled away from the Venetian blind, letting the metal slats snap back into place. Almost back into place. One slat was crooked. Earth children were such careless eavesdroppers. She reached out with an expert finger and thumb, pinching the metal until it bent back, just a bit off perfect. Finished, she rubbed the dust from between her fingers and turned around.
Charlie sat on a desk, watching her, carefully. They were many things to each other.
If you’d asked Miss Quill, she would have told you that Charlie was the following:
Her owner
Her jailor
Her next victim
Annoying
If you’d asked Charlie, he would have told you that Miss Quill was:
His very reluctant bodyguard
A moral snake
Likely to betray him
Annoying
They shared a house. It was quite a nice house. There were many practical reasons for them to share a house. It made the whole business of the last of the Quill guarding the last Rhodian Prince fairly easy. But on every other level it was a complete nightmare.
Sometimes Charlie would open his bedroom door at night to find Miss Quill standing outside.
‘What … What are you doing?’
‘Same as ever,’ she’d sigh wearily. ‘Watching over you. You going to use the bathroom or should I put the kettle on?’
This had become even more awkward since Charlie’s boyfriend had moved in.
If anyone could cope with a boyfriend who’d just arrived from another planet, it was Matteusz. He was easygoing and terribly calm. When he discovered that Charlie had no idea how to cross a road, he had simply ignored the horns, carried him onto the grassy bank of a roundabout, sat him down, and explained how roads worked. ‘Oh. Back home, traffic just stopped for me,’ Charlie had muttered, looking vaguely hurt that such a rule did not apply here.
But even Matteusz, easy-going, calm, thoughtful Matteusz found Miss Quill hard to deal with.
‘She does not like me,’ Matteusz had said in his measured Polish accent to Charlie one night. Charlie had shrugged. ‘She does not like anyone.’
‘Yes, but she really doesn’t like me. She follows me around the kitchen. I just go there to make some tea but she follows my every move. Even when I pick a mug, she is judging me and she is judging the mug.’
‘She’s probably wondering if you’re trying to kill me. How is your tea?’
‘Fine. Here is yours. Quill drank from it.’
‘She would. As I said, she’s probably wondering if you’re trying to kill me.’
They sat on the end of Charlie’s bed, drinking tea.
One main difference between Quill and Charlie was that each thought they understood human beings better. They both found things to admire in them but for entirely different reasons. Quill saw them as angry, selfish and violent. Charlie found them impulsive, confusing and strange.
Sometimes, when they had nothing better to do, Charlie and his bodyguard would stand in her classroom, watching the people go by. It wasn’t that they liked spending time with each other. Sometimes it just happened and it felt sort of right.
Today they had watched the boy being stretchered into the ambulance, his face wrapped in bandages.
‘He’ll live,’ remarked Quill. ‘Unlike a lot of the pupils here. They really are fodder, aren’t they? Still, as I said, at least it will be a short-lived craze.’
Charlie stared at her, considering. ‘The boy is called Neil. He is my age. He has severe burns to his scalp and face. He is in terrible pain. He will require plastic surgery and will probably be disfigured for life.’
Quill shrugged. She’d never shrugged before coming to the Earth and now she found it easier than breathing. ‘He tipped boiling water over his face. He deserves what he gets.’
‘But why would you do that?’ Charlie said.
Quill didn’t turn around from the window. ‘Ask one of your pets.’
As Charlie approached, Ram slunk away.
Charlie had noticed how little Ram wanted to be around him. There were probably lots of reasons. He noticed that Ram’s artificial leg was still overcompensating and wondered if he should offer to look at the default settings, but also knew enough about social interaction to realise that it would probably not be an easy conversation. ‘Please drop your trousers, I wish to look at your legs’ was all very well with Matteusz, but he doubted it was in common usage. A shame, as he felt responsible for Ram losing his leg and wanted to somehow make it better. Human life appeared to be a series of guilty interactions where people told each other how sorry they were for things that either were their fault or they were pretending were their fault in order to make things better, or they were apologising for things that had happened because of weather, microbes, or gravity. It was all marvellously confusing and Charlie was determined to find out how saying sorry worked. But maybe he wouldn’t start on Ram’s leg today.
Charlie casually pretended he hadn’t noticed Ram slinking away. ‘I did not see Ram leave just now,’ he told April. ‘I did not hear the slight creak of his leg.’
‘I see,’ April looked up at him. She really was very pretty. Charlie came from a world of rigid rules and structure, where everyone was swept into straight lines. April was a glorious tangle. Her long dark hair should have been rigid as a plumb-bob but instead it cascaded and jumped and let itself be pushed about. She was always pushing it from one side to the other and then sweeping it back. When he was growing up, Charlie had been taught the art of sitting still, of maintaining a calm and regal and reserved posture, whereas April gloried in constant movement. If she wasn’t fingering her hair, she was tugging at her clothes or moving her legs or tapping a pen against a book. It was all so unnecessary and he found it glorious to watch.
‘Why did Ram go?’ he asked. April liked how direct Charlie was. No hesitation, no caution, no tact. ‘Is it because he doesn’t like me?’
‘No,’ said April. ‘The boy who burnt himself – he was on the football team with Ram. He’s upset.’
‘I see,’ said Charlie. ‘I do not understand. Why did he do that to himself? He has disfigured himself. On my world the plume priests did something similar as an act of political protest. Is that the case here?’
April considered.
‘Nooooooo,’ she said.
They needed a laptop, and they needed Tanya. Normally both were to be found together.
‘I can’t believe no one’s taken it down,’ she said, chewing on a strawberry lace as the video played again on truthordare.com. ‘Look at the number of views it has got.’ She tapped at the bottom of the screen. ‘See the little plus sign at the end – that means it’s only an approximation. That means the number of views are growing faster than you can count. People love watching other people do stupid things.’ She clicked to refresh the video.
It reloaded, paused, and then showed a short video about a famous footballer discussing car insurance with a horse. ‘Ahha!’ Tanya laughed. ‘That proves it’s popular – they’ve slapped adverts on it. They’ll be making a mint off this.’
‘But this is a video of human suffering,’ Charlie spoke slowly. It was the tone he used when he was finding out something about human beings he was not entirely pleased by. ‘Who would want to make money off that? Would it be this Skandis charity?’
‘Oh no.’ Tanya bit off another strawberry lace. She offered Charlie the remaining half. He declined. ‘No, it’s the site that serves the video. They make the cash. Neil gets the money from people who said they’d pay a couple of quid for the ice bucket challenge. That goes to Skandis. If, that is, anyone pays up – right now they probably really don’t feel like it.’
Charlie fell silent, watching Neil fall screaming out of his chair, writhing on the grass as the camera whipped up, thought better of it, then closed in on his scalded face.
‘So Neil did this for nothing?’