Jelly Cooper: Alien (11 page)

I wish he wouldn’t interrupt like that with his pearls of wisdom.  “Someone was coming and, and…she was in a state and I…I couldn’t draw attention to myself.” I stop, aware that I’m babbling, which I hate.  “She had to come.”

Humphrey’s eyes widen.
  “
Against her will?”

“Oh
,” I look away.  “Oh, erm, no…that’s all sorted now.”

He isn’t listening.

“Do you have any idea of the mess we’re in now?  Do you?”

“Yes, but –

“How could you put Agatha in that kind of position?  She’s supposed to be your friend.  Do you realise how much trouble you have gotten her into?  What were you thinking?”

That’s it.  I’ve had a gut full of this. 
Time for shock tactics.

“Humphrey, you took the whole alien thing like a true champ, so I’m hoping that you’ll get this just as quick.
There is an inter-galactic, psychotic killing machine looking for me.  He is here, in Seabrook, and isn’t going to waste much more time figuring out who I am.  I have a very slight chance of getting away from this guy and the truth of it is that I might be dead come this Friday.  I need help and I need it now; preferably from you.  You’re here to be a friend, or you’re not here at all.”

The hurt on Humphreys face is gut-wrenching.  It makes me want to break things. I notice that Agatha is
trying not to cry.

“Agatha
,” I sigh.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Agatha sweeps a tear from her cheek.  “I’m coming with you
,” she says gruffly, “but don’t speak like that again.  I don’t want to hear you talk about dying.  OK?”

I nod and give her
shoulder a quick squeeze.  I turn my attention to Humphrey.  He stares into the distance.

“Humphrey?”

“I’m thinking,” he chews his bottom lip.  I tap my foot, impatient to be off.  I can’t help it.  Something inside is screaming that I don’t have much time.

“Well?” 

He looks at me.  “I’m not coming.”

I couldn’t be more surprised if someone walked up to me on the street and offered me a million pounds.

“What do you mean, you’re not coming?  Why not? What are you going to do – go back to school?”

“I guess.”

“Humphrey!”

He rams his hands deep into his pockets and looks at the ground. 

“Things have gone too far, Jay.  This morning you were my best friend.  The one that hated school and cheerleaders and being at a school that had cheerleaders –

“Hey!”
  Rhiannon exclaims.

-
and
her
. And now, everything’s changed.”

“Humphrey, nothing’s c
hanged!  I’m still that person.”

Humphrey shakes his head.
  “No, Jay, you’re not.  You’ve never been the same as everyone else; I’ve always known it.  You seemed to be kind of happy, in your own way, so I left it alone, but I’ve been waiting for something like this to happen.”

“Humphrey,
I
didn’t know that this was coming.”

“Then you’ve been lying to yourself for a long time.  Jay, I saw flames in your eyes
weeks
ago.  You’ve been silently freaking out for months and you haven’t said a word to us, so don’t talk to me about friendship and what it means.”

I feel like I’ve
had my insides ripped out, but Humphrey’s not done tearing my world apart.

“Now it’s too late.  That
thing
is here, coming to kill you.  If you’d faced up to things, you could have had a chance!  You said earlier that you haven’t changed and you were right.  In one way, you’re still the girl that got out of bed this morning and that’s the problem.  I don’t see how that person can beat something that’s spent its entire life training to kill.  You haven’t changed enough to beat him and I don’t know how to help you.  I can’t be around to watch you die, Jay.”  He looks me full in the face.  “I won’t.”

Humphrey turns on his heel and walks off. 
Without looking back.

He just walks away.

***
              ***              ***

What do I do now?  I’ve never had to face anything without Humphrey at my side.  I’m not sure I even know how to start.

I must look a fool, standing in the middle of the street, hands on hips, jaw on the floor.  Nothing I can do about it.  For the first time in my life, I’m
properly dumbstruck.

I close my mouth to find that, to my disgust, my chin is wobbling like a jelly.  Jelly chinned Jelly Cooper.  Now I know I’m going to cry.

What Humphrey said was true, every word of it, and no amount of denial is going to work its magic anymore.  I’ve
really
screwed things up.

Something brushes past my shoulder
.  I close my eyes, feeling sick.  This is the part where Agatha runs after Humphrey and begs him not to go.  I can’t bear to watch.

I tu
rn my back on the horrid scene, only Agatha is there, in front of me, looking more surprised than I feel.  Humphrey walking away may have struck me dumb, but that’s nothing compared to the effect it’s had on poor Agatha; she looks like her best friend in the whole wide world just up and walked out on her in a time of dire need.  Funny that.

I have a very unpleasant thought.  If that’s not Agatha
laying into Humphrey, then... 

Feeling that my day can’t possibly get any worse, I turn.

Rhiannon.

I don’t know what she’s saying to Humphrey, but
he has no colour in his face.  In typical Queen Bitch style, she pushes her nose to within an inch of his while she shouts him down. One thing’s for sure: the pompom head is not best pleased about something. 

I’m not even going to try and guess what
’s happening here.  My brain stopped working minutes ago.

Humphrey shrugs his shoulders and she jabs a manicured finger into his chest. 
And again…and again.  With one last jab, and a toss of the head that sends her hair slashing across Humphrey’s face, she spins away from him and walks back towards us.

“Come on.  We’re going.”

I look at Agatha. 

“Going where?”

Rhiannon snorts.  “Anywhere, you tell me.  Look, you’re obviously pathetic at getting boys to do what you want, so I’m handling it for you, now walk!”

With a quick glance to check on Humphrey’s whereabouts – right where she left him – I grab Agatha’s arm and scurry after Rhiannon.

“Trust me,” she says over her shoulder with a snort, “he’ll be back.  Now, where are we going?”

I peer across at Agatha.  She mouths “what’s going on?”

Your guess is as good as mine, Ag.

Agatha stops dead.

“Oh my God.  Ohmygod! I just heard you, Jelly!  Inside my head!  I heard what you were thinking!”

Rhiannon pauses, mid stride
. 
Sigh.
A promise is a promise, even one made to a pompom head, so I’d better be honest with her.

“Agatha probably did hear what I was thinking, I still haven’t got the hang of things, but I have to
try
to read someone’s mind.  I’m not trying to read yours, OK.  My promise is good.  Anyhow, why are you suddenly helping me?”

“I’m not.  Helping you, that is.  I’m helping myself.  Do you really think that I want to
stand around, in broad daylight, with you losers? I don’t.  I just want to speed things up a bit so that we can get wherever it is that we’re going and get out of sight.  It’s the getting out of sight bit that I’m most looking forward to.”

“What about Humphrey?” Agatha asks, looking back over her shoulder.

Rhiannon smirks.  “Don’t worry about fat boy, speccy.  He’ll come back when he’s had a chance to think on it.”

I shelve the urge to smack her about the head.

“He doesn’t know where we’re going.”

“That makes two of us.  Wherever it is, can we hurry up and get there?
This is becoming embarrassing.”

I will not be rushed by anyone, least of all
her.

“How will Humphrey know where to find us?  I should go and tell him that we’re going to the Bay’s Head.”

Rhiannon starts walking again.  Towards Bay’s Head.

Damn it.

“He knows you, doesn’t he?  He’ll know where to find you,” she throws over her shoulder.

As much as
I hate to admit it, the pompom-head has a point.

Chapter
Nine

The Bay’s Head is an island off the coast of Seabrook.  It’s unreachable on foot except for when the tide gets really low and a narrow path emerges, joining it to the beach.  On these days, you can walk along the puddle-filled stretch from one to the other.

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  There’s a catch, as always.

The path is only there for a couple of hours when the tide is at its lowest. Seabrook Bay has one of the highest tides in the world and when the tide turns, the sea comes rushing back at frightening speed to reclaim the land.  Anyone careless enough to forget the time is in real trouble.  The only thing on the island is sand, rocks, a scattering of trees and more sand.  No phone boxes and no signal.

Anyone careless enough to forget the time and try to
swim
back to the mainland is dead.

I don’t get
wiggy about this like most people.  I never have.  Freak of nature that I am, I kind of like it. I find the solitude of the island soothing and I’m in dire need of some soothing. 

***              ***              ***

Something is off.  I’m getting so used to having my world turned on its head that I don’t for one second question my gut feeling that something isn’t right.  I slow down, feeling sick.  My stomach clenches, then relaxes, then clenches again.  Saliva squirts into the back of my mouth.  “Um, guys,” I mumble. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

My voice sounds faint, which it must be as no one looks around.  I try to speak again, louder, but my tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth. 

The key here is not to panic.

Blinking against the harsh sunlight, I fight dizziness and start to panic.  Raising my hand to my eyes, I try to shield them from the bright white light. Agatha turns and runs towards me. Her mouth is forming words, but I can’t
make them out over the loud buzzing noise in my ears. Yep, she’s definitely trying to say something. 

Camille.

She isn’t trying to say that, though.

Twirling, I rake the empty horizon.  Everything’s so white.

Camille.  I am close, Camille.

Impossible.

Sweat breaks out along my upper lip.  This can’t be happening.  I’m awake, for one, and it’s broad daylight; there’s no way that it can be him.  I only found out about being ET’s long lost cousin this morning, it can’t possibly be him.

Except that it is.

The Hunter has arrived.

Remember when I mentioned just a moment ago that I was starting to panic?  I was so wrong it’s not true.  Real panic is when you go for a dip in the sea and look up to find that you’re too far out.  You start to swim back towards the beach, but the sea has you and has no intention of letting go.  You paddle fast
er, but you don’t get anywhere; you’re swimming on the spot against the rip of the current.  Your arms and legs burn with effort for a while and then, when you think you can’t stand it anymore, they turn into useless dead-weights and you pray for the burning to come back.  No matter how hard you try, you can’t get back to shore.  You take in mouthfuls of water, your lungs ache and your head goes under.  Your heart races so hard that you think it’s going to explode in your chest; if your lungs don’t burst first.  Your hearing is fuzzy, your vision blurs and your mind bombards you with snapshots of important, significant things in your life; your family, your friends, scenes from the odd happy occasion.  And to make your last moments on Earth no different than life itself – completely bewildering – you see flashes of useless, unimportant things.  Like the green coat hanging, unworn, in your wardrobe at home; the one you insisted your parents buy for your thirteenth birthday.  Then comes the blackness and you feel terror crawl across your scalp like a razor blade cutting through skin.

That
is what real panic feels like.

I
PANIC and try to fight the dizziness.  The day becomes brighter as my grip on consciousness slips.  The beach is being bleached right in front of me.  Agatha and Rhiannon are stark, stretched, silhouettes.  I fall to my knees and pitch forward onto the warm sand, jaw clenched, teeth gritted.

I mustn’t faint.  Somehow I know that to
black out will mean death for us all.  The Hunter will pin down where I am and come for me and after he’s got me, he’ll kill them. I
really
don’t want Rhiannon’s death on my conscience.