City of the Falling Sky (20 page)

“
I don’t know, gimmypug
meat? I don’t ask and I don’t eat.”

“
Well, stand back,” said
Tippian. He picked the sandwich up with his gloved hand.

“
I’ve installed a button
inside the thumb to activate and deactivate the power. Here
goes.”

With a loud crack, the sandwich disappeared.
A few moments later there were a few wet slaps as bits of the
sandwich hit the floor. A chunk of something landed on Tippian’s
forehead and started dribbling down his grinning face.

“
Dear Gedin, Tipps,” said
Seckry.

“
You tried to shake my hand
with that thing!” shouted Tenk.

“
Cool, eh?”

Other students were looking in their
direction.

“
What was that noise?”
someone shouted. Tippian quickly slid the glove into his
pocket.

“
You better hope that thing
doesn’t go off in there,” Tenk said.

The following few weeks passed and Seckry and
Eiya were so snowed under with homework that they had almost
forgotten about Sanfarrow’s coded message to Kevan Kayne, until one
afternoon, in a particularly taxing astronomy lesson, when their
teacher, Mr Nebrio began explaining about constellations.

“
Here we have Caprima,
Kelomos, and right over here we’ve got this very distant
constellation which most people disregard, but some like to call
Silversong.”

Seckry and Eiya nearly jumped out of their
seats.

“
Silversong?
” Seckry
blurted out.

“
Yes, mister Sevenstars.
Silversong. The furthest of our constellations, and as I say, often
forgotten or simply disregarded by many due to its distance from
the earth. Its shape is like a musical note. Have you heard of this
constellation?”

“
Yeah . . . somewhere,”
Seckry said.

“
Really?” Nebrio said
curiously. “I’m surprised, Mr Sevenstars. Pleasantly surprised,
don’t get me wrong, but surprised nonetheless. I daresay you’ve
been reading my selection of recommended texts?”

“
Uh . . . yeah, I’ve had a
glance through,” Seckry lied. “Uh, sir, is the sign of Silversong
ever visible in the sky?”

Nebrio raised his eyebrows. “Of course. Like
all of the constellations I’ve mentioned today, Silversong is, at
some point, visible to us here on earth.”

“
At some point? Do you know
when it will be visible next?”

“
Oh . . . I’d say in about
two to three hundred years time.”

“
Oh,” Seckry said miserably,
and he and Eiya exchanged sullen expressions.

After that, Seckry and Eiya still had no idea
what the letter meant when it said, ‘refuge under the sign of
Silversong,’ and they were getting so much homework it was being
pushed to the back of their minds.

Early one morning during a double dose of
electronics in the following week, Cutson stopped giving her usual
bitter rant and narrowed her eyes. As she made her way through the
tables, everyone turned to see what she was looking at.

She stopped at Peanut’s cage and pulled open
the door. There were a few gasps as everyone realised that Peanut
was no longer inside. The only things that were in the cage were a
few half chewed bits of lettuce and a square bit of paper. Cutson
snatched the paper and stared at it before turning to the
class.

Seckry had never seen her look so utterly
disgusted and livid, and neither had the rest of the class.

“
Whoever. Did this. Is
going. To pay
.”

After the lesson, which had been even more
excruciating due to Cutson’s anger, a crowd began gathering in the
corridor.

“
What’s
happening?”

“
Jemmy picked up Peanut’s
note. Look what it says.”

Seckry squeezed in to have a peak.

In pink, fluffy handwriting, it read:

GONE ON HOLIDAY!

I’LL SEND A POSTCARD!

A week and a half later it was Tenk’s
birthday, and he had decided to have a sleepover, inviting Seckry
and Eiya and the rest of the Eastern Eidolons Friction team apart
from Lessana, which nobody objected to in the slightest.

“
Does she really think I
need another pair of socks?” Tenk complained as he, Seckry and Eiya
waited for the others by the rusty fountain in the square. “Why
couldn’t my mum have got me a Friction gift card like you got on
your birthday?”

Seckry handed Tenk the present he had bought
him, which was a new poster of Serra Simmony, Tenk’s favourite
actress, and Tenk swooned as though he was going to faint from the
beauty of her.

“
You know me well,” Tenk
said, and took a deep breath to regain his composure.

When the others arrived, Tenk led them into
his place. Waving a quick ‘hey’ to his mum and dad, who were
watching Skyfall’s most popular soap, Steelplank Street, Tenk led
them all into his bedroom.

Tenk’s room was full of clothes and all
manner of junk, strewn across the floor and piled high in
disorganised heaps. The most striking thing about the place,
though, was that it was covered from wall to wall with posters of
Serra Simmony, and Seckry even noticed a couple sticky tacked to
the ceiling. If it hadn’t been so messy, it could have been
mistaken for some kind of shrine.

“
Tenk, seriously . . .” Loca
said, eyeing his room with a frown. “Do you really think you’re
gonna get a girlfriend with all these posters up? You’ve really
gotta take these down. It’s creepy.”

“
Just stay away from my
posters of Serra, Loca. Anyone touches my Serra and there’ll be
trouble.” Tenk turned to Seckry. “
This is why I’ve never invited
her over before
!” he whispered.

“
And Seckry!” Loca said in
disbelief. “I can’t believe you bought him another one. I mean,
where’s it gonna go? There’s no room.”

“
There’s always room for one
more,” said Tenk defiantly. “There’s a bit of space behind the TV,
I think.”

“
I mean, seriously though,
look at her,” Loca continued. “She’s so . . . unreal. You know they
airbrush all these photos, don’t you? I bet in real life she’s full
of spots and wrinkles and all sorts.”

“
You’re just
jealous.”

Loca spat a crude laugh. “Jealous! Of that
false–”

She was cut off as Tenk’s older brother,
Longo, came running into the room and dived on Tenk, wrestling him
to the ground.

Loca screamed in shock and Tenk yelled,
“Aaaaaargh! Get off me!”

“
I haven’t given you your
birthday beating!” Longo said.

“
Birthday beating? Since
when has there ever been birthday beatings?”

“
Since I invented them this
morning,” said Longo, digging Tenk with his elbows and
knees.

They rolled around on the floor in a flurry
of fists and everyone had to dodge out of their way.

“
Boys!” shouted Mrs Binko
from the living area. “What have I told you about
fighting?”

Longo got up to walk out, saying, ‘Nice to
meet you all,’ to everyone, but Tenk grabbed his foot and pulled
him back to the ground, shouting, “Is that all you’ve got?”

After fifteen more minutes of fighting, they
both finally looked exhausted and Longo disappeared into his own
bedroom, leaving Tenk’s room looking even more like a scrap
yard.

Loca shook her head.

“
For Gedin’s sake, Tenk, is
that all you do around here, fight?”

“
Pretty much,” said Tenk,
peeling a pair of underpants off his t-shirt and shaking a couple
of crisps out of his hair.

After a few bouts on a new beat ‘em up game
that Tenk had been given by his brother for his birthday, they were
invited into the kitchen, where Tenk’s mum had made a platter of
nibbles. Seckry helped himself to a couple of hog and heather
twirls, which were crunchy and meaty, and a few dinglepaste
dollops, which was some kind of gooey mixture blobbed onto salty
crackers. He had quite fancied dipping one into the mullsquash dip
but it got splattered over the floor when Tenk and his brother
broke into their third fit of scrapping.

Later that night, after Tenk’s parents had
gone to bed, they watched a film called Attack of the Shrunken
Heads in the living area, which was possibly the creepiest horror
film Seckry had ever seen, and they stuffed their faces with crisps
and pop until they all felt queasy and Kimmy had to run to the
bathroom to be sick.

It was around one in the morning, and
everyone was wide awake from all the caffeine, when Tenk said, “I
know! We should play the truth game.”

Loca rolled her eyes. “Tenk, you’re fifteen,
not five.”

“
Hey, there’s nothing wrong
with the truth game,” Tenk said defensively. “It’s a timeless
classic. It’s gotta be played on sleepovers.”

“
What’s the truth game?”
Seckry asked, who’d never heard of it.

“
I don’t think I’ve ever
played it, either,” Eiya added.

“
Well, someone picks either
odd or even and then rolls a dice. If their number matches what
they chose then they get to ask someone a personal question, if
their number doesn’t match then they’ve got to pick someone to ask
them a question.”

“
Sounds simple enough,”
Seckry said.

Tenk looked positively at Loca. “You ready to
play?”

“
Sure, but be prepared for
some serious probing, Binko,” Loca said, narrowing her
eyes.

Seckry, Eiya, Loca and Kimmy all huddled
their blankets closer while Tippian made himself a little feast of
crisps and sugar coated mice and Tenk disappeared to find a
dice.

“
I think, being the oldest
and all, Kimmy should go first,” said Tenk, sitting down and
wrapping his puffy sleeping bag around his shoulders.

Tentatively, Kimmy said, “Okay, I guess . . .
even,” and rolled the dice. It landed on a two.

Loca gave him a little clap. “Well done,
Kim.”

Kimmy looked around the group. “I really
don’t want to ask anything too personal–”

“
Kim,” Tenk cut in. “Come
on, we’re all playing the same game. You can ask anyone anything
you want. That’s the fun of it.”

“
Okay,” Kimmy said. “I’ve
got a question for Tippian. What’s your idea of a perfect date with
a girl?”

Tippian pondered for a moment. “We’d both get
into a Friction pod and load up a level that was in the sunset or
something, then we’d have a one on one duel. If she beat me, that’d
be it, it’s over. I don’t want some macho tough woman. If I beat
her, then who knows? Maybe the second date we could have in the
real world.”

Loca shook her head at Eiya as if to say,
‘
Boys, eh?
’ and Eiya giggled slightly.

After that they all rolled a few times each,
and it was revealed that Loca sometimes stored packets of gum under
her many hats while she was wearing them, Tippian still slept with
a teddy bear in his bed, Kimmy once ate a spider by accident, and
Tenk sometimes kissed a particular poster of Serra Simmony before
going to sleep. Seckry was asked what his most embarrassing moment
was, to which he told them about the time when he accidentally
pulled off his maths teacher’s wig with a ruler back in Marne.

The only person that hadn’t been asked
anything up until now was Eiya, so when Tenk rolled an even number,
he said, “Okay . . . Eiya,” and looked at her expectantly. “The
newest girl in the school. Has anyone caught your eye? If you know
what I mean.”

Eiya said nothing for a moment and Seckry saw
her cheeks blush gently.

“
Yes, I . . . think they
have,” she said nervously.

Seckry felt a strange sensation course
through his body then. He’d never experienced it before and he
wasn’t sure what it was. Eiya fancied someone at school?

“
Can we have a clue as to
who it is?” Tenk asked.

“
I’m sorry, I can’t say any
more,” Eiya said embarrassedly. “That’s all you’re getting on that
subject.”

At about two o’clock in the morning, only
Seckry and Tenk still had their eyes open. The rest were scattered
around the room in various positions, wrapped cosily in their
sleeping bags.

“
Hey, Seck,” Tenk whispered.
“You wanna know something?”

“
Sure,” Seckry said. He
didn’t even feel tired.

“
You know I say that Serra
Simmony would be my perfect girl? Well . . . there is someone else.
Someone in the real world that I think I was destined to be
with.”

“
You’re not gonna start
rambling on about the Chip and Milk Girl, are you?” said Tippian
from across the room, his eyes still closed.

“
I thought you were asleep,”
said Tenk.

“
I am,” said
Tippian.

“
Who’s the Chip and Milk
Girl?” Seckry asked.

“
Well, it was at last year’s
Friction Meltdown. We had lost to the Northern Nightmare, and I was
feeling really angry, so I stormed off and went to get a milkshake
without congratulating anyone. Whenever I need a quick fix,
something to cheer me up, I get myself a bag of hot chips and a
multiberry milkshake, and I dip the chips in it.”

Seckry screwed up his face a bit.

“
Really?”

The thought of salty chips soaked in sweet
milk made his stomach churn a little.

“
Disgusting, ain’t it,”
Tippian interjected.