iBoy (25 page)

I poured a small amount into a paper cup and offered it to her to taste. She took the cup, sniffed the Coke, rolled it around in the cup for a while, then took a tiny sip.

“Mmm . . .” she said, swallowing. “Delightful, thank you.”

She held out her cup and I filled it up. I poured myself a cup, then offered her the plate of sandwiches. “There’s cheese,” I explained. “Or . . . cheese spread. Or, if you’d prefer, there’s the sandwich of the day.”

Lucy grinned. “And what might that be?”

“Cheese.”

She laughed and took a couple of sandwiches. “Did you make these yourself?”

I nodded. “Cheese is my specialty. It was also the only thing left in the fridge.”

I opened a bag of chips for her.

“Cheese and onion?” she said.

“Yep.”

“Excellent.”

For the next few minutes, we just ate. It was really nice . . . just sitting there in the growing darkness, eating and drinking, not having to say anything, both of us unable to wipe the stupid smiles off our faces. The night was getting a little colder now, with a chilly breeze drifting across the roof, but we both had our coats on, and I don’t think either of us were really bothered.

After a while, Lucy took a rest from chewing and said to me, “So . . . what have you been doing recently? I haven’t seen you for a while.”

“Yeah, I know . . . I’m sorry, I kept meaning to come round, but stuff just kept getting in the way.”

“Stuff?”

I touched my head and shrugged, kind of ambiguously . . . which I knew was a pretty crappy thing to do. But I just didn’t know what to say, and I didn’t want to lie to her . . . and, in a way, it
was
the stuff in my head that had got in the way of me going round to see her.

“Right . . .” Lucy said, nodding uncertainly at me and slowly putting a chip in her mouth. “Right . . . I see.”

She chewed quietly on the chip for a while . . . which baffled me. I mean, how can anyone chew
quietly
on a chip? And then she looked at me and said softly, “It’s really quiet up here, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” I agreed. “The whole place seems pretty quiet at the moment.”

She nodded, and for a moment or two she was silent again, concentrating on getting the last few chip crumbs out of the bag. She licked her finger and ran it round the inside of the bag, sucked the bits off her finger, then upended the bag into her mouth.

“Finished?” I asked her, smiling.

She grinned. “I don’t like wasting any.”

I watched her as she twisted the empty chip bag into a bow and placed it under the Coke bottle to stop the breeze from blowing it away. She stared at the tabletop for a few seconds, thinking about something, then she looked up at me.

“Can you keep a secret?” she said.

“Yeah . . .”

“Well . . . you know all this stuff that’s been going on round the tower blocks, all the arrests and everything?”

“Yeah.”

“And you know there’s all kinds of rumors going round that there’s some kind of vigilante out there . . . some guy in a costume?”

“Yeah.”

She looked at me. “Well . . . I think it’s that kid I told you about, the one who calls himself iBoy. Remember?”

“The one who tried to throw Eugene O’Neil out the window?”

“Yeah . . .”

“The Facebook guy?”

“Yeah. I think it’s him.”

“Who?”

“The vigilante,” she said impatiently. “The one who’s been doing all this stuff round the tower blocks. I think it’s iBoy.”

“Really?”

“Yeah . . . I mean, we talk to each other quite often on Facebook, and although he hasn’t actually
admitted
it’s him, he hasn’t denied it either.”

“So what are you trying to say? You think this iBoy kid is some kind of superhero or something?”

“No, of course not. But he definitely exists. I
saw
him, remember. I was there when he sorted out O’Neil and the others . . .” She shook her head in disbelief at the memory. “He zapped them, Tom. I mean he
really
zapped them. And he
was
wearing some kind of mask . . . honestly.”

“I believe you.” I cut a couple of slices of fruitcake, passed one to Lucy, and started eating the other one myself. “What do you think he is, then?”

“I don’t know —”

“And why do you think he’s doing it? I mean, do you think he’s doing it for you, like he’s some kind of guardian angel or something?”

She was about to bite into the fruitcake, but she paused in mid-chomp, lowering the cake and looking intensely at me. “What?”

“What?” I echoed. “What did I say?”

Her voice was quiet. “Why would you think he’d be doing anything for me?”

“Well . . . you know . . . I mean, he went after O’Neil and Firman and Craig, didn’t he?”

“So?”

I suddenly realized that I wasn’t supposed to know who’d raped Lucy, or who’d been there when it had happened. She hadn’t told me. I looked at her, trying to hide the hesitation in my mind. “I just meant, you know . . . he helped you when O’Neil and the others were outside your flat. iBoy, I mean. He was helping you, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, but —”

“Well, that’s all I meant. He was helping
you
, and he got in touch with
you
on Facebook . . . so, you know . . . maybe it’s
possible
that he’s doing
some
of these things for you.”

Lucy’s eyes were fixed steadily on mine. “Right . . . but how would he know?”

“Know what?”

“How would he know who to go after? I mean, I know the only information I’m getting about any of this is what Ben tells me, but it seems like a lot of the people who were there when it happened . . . you know, when me and Ben were . . . when I was . . . well, you know what I mean.” She swallowed hard, trying not to cry. “A lot of those kids who were there . . . well,
they’re
the ones who’ve been getting beaten up or arrested or whatever.”

“So maybe this iBoy really
is
your guardian angel?” I suggested.

“Yeah, right,” said Lucy, biting into her fruitcake.

“Have you told anyone else about this?”

She shook her head, her mouth full of cake.

“What about the police?” I asked. “Have they been to see you?”

She nodded.

“What did you tell them?”

She swallowed. “Nothing.”

“Same here.”

She raised her eyebrows. “The police have been to see
you
?”

“Yeah . . .”

“Why?”

I touched the scar on my head. “I was there, wasn’t I? I mean, when they attacked you and Ben, I was there. Well, I was
sort
of there. The police wanted to know if I saw anything.”

“How could you have seen anything? You were thirty floors below.”

“I know . . .
and
I was lying on the ground with an iPhone stuck in my skull.”

She laughed, then almost immediately she said, “Sorry, I don’t know why I’m laughing. It’s not funny.” She looked at me. “So the police just came to see you about that? They didn’t ask you anything about the vigilante?”

“Yeah, they asked me about that, too.” I shrugged. “Apparently a bunch of FGH kids were attacked last week by our friendly neighborhood Mystery Kid, and someone saw me sitting around the kids’ playground a few minutes before it happened. So, you know, the cops just wanted to know if I saw anything.”

“Did you?”

“No.”

“What were you doing at the playground?”

“Not much . . . just hanging around, you know.”

She smiled. “On your own?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you go on the swings?”

I shook my head. “They were all broken.”

Lucy grinned. “Yeah, I bet they were.”

“They
were
. . . what are you grinning about?”

“You were always scared of going on the swings.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“You
were
. When we were kids . . . you always had an excuse for not going on the swings — your gran wouldn’t let you, they didn’t look safe, you had a bad back —”

“Yeah, well, they
weren’t
safe, were they? Kids were
always
falling off and cracking their heads open.”

Lucy laughed. “
I
went on them.”

“Yeah, but you never went on the whizzy-round thing, did you?”

“The whizzy-round thing?”

“Yeah, you know — the wooden roundabout thing that whizzes round really fast?” I smiled at her. “You never went on that.”

Lucy shrugged. “It made me dizzy.”

“You were scared of it.”

“Yeah, but I was a little girl. Little girls are allowed to be scared.” She looked at me, her eyes sparkling. “What’s your excuse?”

I held my hands up. “All right, I admit it. I’m a wimp. Always have been, always will be.”

Lucy shook her head. “You’re being too hard on yourself, Tom. You’re not a wimp.”

“Thanks.”

“You’re more of a nerd than a wimp.”

I gave her a pained look. “Now you’re going
too
far. I mean, wimpiness I can accept. In fact, I kind of
like
being a wimp. But calling me a
nerd
. . . ?” I shook my head. “That hurts, Luce. Honestly . . .” I put my hand on my heart. “It gets me right here.”

“In that case,” Lucy said, “please accept my humblest apologies.”

“Apologies accepted.”

She smiled. “Actually, I kind of like wimps, too.”

“You’re just saying that to make me feel better.”

“No, really . . . I do. I’d rather be with a wimp than a non-wimp any day.”

“A
non
-wimp?”

She grinned. “You know what I mean.”

“All right,” I said. “Name one.”

“One what?”

“A wimp who you like . . . name one.”

“Apart from you?”

I shook my head. “It’s no good trying to distract me with cheap compliments.”

“It wasn’t cheap.”

“Come on,” I said. “Name that wimp.”

“OK . . . all right, let me think. Right . . . a wimp that I like . . .”

As she gazed up at the night sky, trying to think — or maybe just
pretending
to try to think — of a wimpy guy who she really liked, I did my best not to stare at her, but it was really hard. She looked so good — all muffled up in her coat and hat, with cake crumbs on her lips and chip-dust on her fingers . . . and I wondered if I could really let myself think that this game we were playing was perhaps something more than just a game. Were Lucy’s joke compliments actually
real
compliments? Was it really possible that she liked me as more than just a friend?

“Spider-Man,” she said suddenly.

“What?”

“Spider-Man . . . a wimp I really like.”

“He’s not a wimp,” I said. “Spidey’s really tough.”

“Yeah, no . . . I don’t mean
Spider
-Man, I mean the other one, the real one, what’s-his-name, you know . . .” She snapped her fingers, trying to remember the name.

“Peter Parker?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Peter Parker. He’s a wimp, isn’t he?”

“Yeah . . .”

“And I like him.”

“No, you don’t. It’s Tobey Maguire that
you
like.”

She shrugged. “Same thing.”

I laughed. “It’s not the same thing at
all
. Peter Parker, the fictional character . . . yeah,
he’s
a wimp. But Tobey Maguire is a Hollywood film star. He’s rich and famous and —”

“Very attractive.”

I made a face. “You think so? He’s kind of a bit loopy-looking, isn’t he?”

“Loopy?”

“Yeah, you know, that loopy kind of lopsided face he’s got —”

“No,” Lucy said. “He’s really cute.
And
he’s sexy. Do you remember that bit in the first film when he’s hanging upside down in the rain and he kisses what’s-her-name —”

“Mary Jane Watson. MJ.”

“Yeah . . . I mean, that’s a really sexy kiss.”

“Only because he’s still got his mask on, so you can’t see his face.”

“You don’t
have
to see it. You already know how cute and sexy he is.”