Chapter 19

[The following chapter contains strong language. Reader caution is advised.]

 

Monday 16th November 1998

 

 

As unpredictable as ever, no more monsters had appeared since the Mokwai, leaving the full tedium of school to prevail over the past week.

 

Look, okay, it’s not like school is shockingly dull. There are interesting moments, and laughs, and I was studying subjects that I’d chosen so nothing was particularly torturous.

 

But school was school. Perhaps mundane was a better choice of word than tedious. With room for the occasional surprise.

 

“We have a new student with us today,” Mr Davies told us, his half-asleep form group, on Monday morning. We could’ve guessed anyway, as a stranger was leaning against the wall next to the blackboard, looking thoroughly disinterested. Mid-length brown hair draped down dead-straight, hiding her face slightly. No idea where her gaze was focused, but she seemed to be in a world of her own, rhythmically nodding her head to a song kept to herself.

 

Once our form tutor spoke, our buzz of chatter fell to silence (save for slight murmurings), and that seemed to catch the new girl’s attention. Her eyes focused in as she looked up at us.

“Hey. I’m Kayleigh,” was her simple self-introduction, baring a Northern accent. Maybe Bolton or something. I’m not the best at pinpointing accents.

 

“You can take a seat,” Mr Davies advised her, to which she shrugged.

 

“Sure.”

I can’t say quite why she hadn’t sat herself down before that point, but she trudged over to the nearest chair, next to Will, who seemed to immediately tense up before offering her a handshake with casual airs.

 

Next to me – because of course she continued to sit next to me, like some kind of karmic punishment incarnate – Melody was practically shooting eyebeams into the back of Kayleigh’s head.

 

“Lemme guess,” I half-whispered to her, “you don’t like her?”

 

“We’ll see. Still sizing her up,” she replied. “Why, want to take a stab at another new girl? Brunettes with interesting accents, is that your type?”

 

“No!” I protested, before, for good measure, adding a baffled “What?”

 

“Since Dakota gets weak at the knees every time Ricardo talks to her, maybe you’re going to fruitlessly pine after someone else.”

 

… for the most part, Dakota hadn’t made mention of one Ricardo Alves since last Monday. However, whenever he’d pass her (with a little wave that she would return), she made sounds the likes of which I’d never heard from her before. Like the sounds Lucy sometimes makes when Backstreet Boys are on TV.

 

Difference being, it’s much more likely that Dakota will start dating Ricardo than that Lucy will… in her own words, “have a filthy six-some” with an American boyband.

 

“Y’know, sometimes I think you’re just jealous,” I grunted at Melody.

 

“Oh yes, I wish I too had so little confidence that my only course through life would be to bumble about unfulfilled,” she scoffed with a flippant wave of the hand.

 

Jeez. She’s always so ruthless…

 

“I meant that I moved on from you. Like you can’t stand me being into other girls.”

 

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” came her immediate dismissive response, as though she’d planned it in advance.

 

Nothing more was said between us. She returned to glaring at Kayleigh, and I returned to sitting there idly. To entertain myself – perhaps influenced by Kayleigh’s nodding, now that I think about it – I started composing a little tune in my head. No sooner had it formed in my mind than I scrabbled to grab a pen and my notepad, jotting down the notation as best as I could.

 

My little musical session helped pass the time until the bell rang for first period.

 

“Alex,” Mr Davies caught my attention as we began filing out of the room. “Kayleigh has Music first, could you show her the way?”

 

“Sure,” I smiled politely as I turned to face back into the room, moving aside so as not to block the continual outward flow of students. Mr Davies quickly informed Kayleigh who would be showing her to her lesson, pointing her my way. She looked at me, and I raised my hand in a light wave.

 

No change in expression as she walked over to me.

“Let’s go, maestro,” she muttered, heading straight past me – I spun back around to watch her leave the room, and scurried off after her.

 

“So, where are you from?” I asked in an attempt to make conversation and hoping it didn’t come across as nosy.

 

“Just outside Bolton,” she replied (woohoo, I guessed right!). “We moved down here last week. Business stuff with Dad, I dunno the details.”

 

“Ah, right! I’d ask where you’ve moved to but I don’t really know many road names…”

 

“Fair enough.”

Well. That was blunt. Then again, it’s not like her telling me her road name anyway made sense when I’d literally told her it would fall on deaf ears.

“Where d’you go to smoke around here?”

 

“Err… I mean, you’re not really supposed to smoke on school grounds…”

Not that everyone obeyed that rule, but I didn’t know exactly where the smokers hid themselves away anyway.

 

“Ah, you’re that type of lad,” the new girl grunted. “I’ll ask around.”

 

By the time we left the building and began our way across the school grounds, our conversation had ground to a halt. Between her bluntness and my difficulty in making small talk, this was proving to be a Herculean task…

 

“Err…”

Something… anything… jokes about the weather…

 

“What instruments do you play?” Kayleigh asked – a second wind for the conversation!

 

“Piano, mainly…”

Or solely, but I was convinced she would scoff so I watered my answer down…

“What about you?”

 

“Guitar. Was in a band with some of me mates a while back.”

 

“Cool! One of my friends plays guitar, you’ll probably meet him at some point.”

Seemed a solid assumption that she and Zahid would get on. At that moment in time, she almost seemed like the female version of him.

 

“Right,” she responded.

 

Yep, good going, me. Veer the conversation back into unsalvageable territory.

 

“Almost there…” I informed her awkwardly.

 

“Mhm,” came the reply.

 

The last stretch of the journey to the small Music block was completed in stinging silence, and we didn’t exchange any words for the entire lesson.

 

…

 

“Hey, y’know that new girl you were talking about?” Bao asked as we all made our familiar way to Dakota’s.

 

“Yeah…?” I replied, wondering where this was about to go.

 

“What if she’s a spy for Nick?”

 

“… what?”

 

“What if she’s actually an alien from the 53rd century?” Zahid remarked sarcastically.

 

“Ooh,” Kendal chimed in, “what if she’s a killer robot from a top-secret lab?”

 

“No, guys,” Bao whined, “maybe he’s hired her to, like, scope us out and grab the weapons from us, or something! It’s suspicious-”

 

“Yeah, it’s the most famous trick in the book,” Zahid smirked. “Go up north, find a teenage girl, pay her to do your job for you.”

 

“Isn’t that the plot of the next James Bond film?” I added, unable to help myself after my friend had laid the groundwork.

 

“Harrieeeet, tell them!”

 

“She’s not a spy, Bao-bear,” his girlfriend assured him.

 

“That’s what she wants you to think!” he insisted.

 

“Dude, really,” I spoke now with gentler tone, “she’s just a normal girl. I mean, normal enough.”

 

“Sounds like someone’s got a crush,” Dakota teased, immediately sending a jolt of lightning down my spine. Never mind the implication, the way she talks sometimes is like aural nerve agent.

 

“No! No way! She’s not bad-looking or anything but she’s not my type!”

 

“Ah, so you’ve got a type!”

She turned to me, playful look on her face. I ground to a halt with my bike, and everyone else stopped with me.

 

“I mean… yeah…” I gulped.

 

I prayed to every pantheon that none of my friends would make an incriminating remark.

 

“Don’t leave me hanging, Alex,” Dakota purred.

 

“I-It’s not like I have a checklist! You just know when someone’s… y’know?”

 

“Dakota’s type is Lothario Man,” Kendal blurted out – if she didn’t mean to, she at least owned it, grinning unapologetically.

 

“Hey!” Dakota seemingly protested. “He’s just… very charming. And those eyes…”

 

“So, you need to be charming and have eyes if you want to go out with Dakota,” Bao summarised.

 

“Hmm,” she remarked ambiguously, before turning to continue on her way. The rest of us carried on too.

 

Bao grabbed my arm.

“I dunno how charming you are, but you’ve got eyes,” he whispered to me, “so you’re in with a shot.”

 

“Thanks…” I replied in kind, more for the sentiment considering how little chance I had anyway.

 

A few minutes later, we were all huddled impatiently at Dakota’s front door while she fumbled for her keys with cold fingers.

 

“I really need to buy gloves…” she commented as she retrieved the keys and slotted one of them into the front door’s lock.

 

We barrelled in like a stampede. The cold weather made animals of us.

 

As we dispensed of our outermost layers, Kendal picked up a pair of unfamiliar shoes.

“Dakota, you left these out.”

 

“Those aren’t mine…” she replied cautiously. Her tone, more than her words, had us all freeze in-place.

“Hello? Who’s here?”

Immediately, business mode.

 

And no reply.

 

Dakota summoned her spear, slowly edging towards the door to the living room. My heartbeat was practically audible.

 

She spun around the corner, her face now out of view, but her body language was easy enough to read. A moment after she moved, her on-edge demeanour transformed.

“Mam!” she cried out, dropping the spear and racing into the living room.

 

“Hey sweetheart,” came what could only be the voice of Saoirse Radley.

 

The rest of us looked at one another, not quite sure what to do. Unsurprisingly, it was Kendal who tiptoed over to the door first, peering around before beckoning the rest of us over.

 

Dakota was hugging her mother tightly, both of them sniffling a little. It dawned on me only then that it’d been four and a half months since they’d last seen one another.

 

Their moment of family embrace and whispered greetings passed, and Dakota peeled away. The sheer joy on her face was shining like the sun.

“Guys, this is my mam!”

 

“You don’t say,” Zahid quipped softly.

 

“And I’ve heard all about you,” Dakota’s mum addressed us. The family resemblance was clear: though it was hardly an exact match, she did look like an older Dakota. Shorter hair, certain differences in the face (though I would’ve been hard-pressed to identify them all so soon).

 

“Nothing too bad, I hope,” I replied with a smile.

 

“I would never tell on my daughter,” Saoirse teased with a playful smile not a million miles away from Dakota’s. “It’s a pleasure to meet you all. Thank you for looking after Dakota.”

 

“I’d say she’s been looking after us, really,” Bao mentioned.

 

“When did you get here? And how’d you get in?” Dakota quizzed her mother.

 

“A couple of hours ago, and your aunt and uncle haven’t changed the locks.”

She took her large set of keys from her pocket and jangled them for emphasis.

“I’ve told you, never dispose of a key. You never know when you might need it.”

 

With that, Dakota grabbed Saoirse into another hug.

“I’ve missed you…”

 

“I’ve missed you too,” came the expected reply.

 

A moment later, Dakota broke from the hug again.

“Oh, but we’ve got to do our homework first.”

 

“Maaan, I thought you’d forgotten…” Kendal groaned.

 

“Give me a minute!” our Irish companion addressed her mum, parting us as she zoomed out of the room. The moment she did, a switch seemed to be flicked within Saoirse. She rounded on us with fire in her eyes.

 

“Any of you boys mess my daughter around, you’ll have me to deal with,” she threatened – like, literally threatened.

 

“Don’t worry about me, I’m spoken for!” Bao insisted, taking hold of Harriet’s arm for emphasis.

 

On my part, I would’ve felt safer locked in a room with Nick. And a bear.

 

…

 

After an hour or so of slogging through our homework, we all settled down and chatted with Saoirse. A few stories of Dakota’s childhood gradually lead to the subject of Neil’s team.

 

“I can’t speak for Clyde and Amelia – especially not for Amelia, never met the woman – but you have to consider how hard this all is,” she explained to us all. “We’d usually work on a few cases at once, try to spin slow-moving plates so to speak.”

 

“Neil talked about tracking someone up north when he came to visit,” Dakota recounted. “Not sure if he’s still working on them.”

 

“We tend to go for people who are hard to find,” Saoirse chuckled. “Though Nick was actually the exception.”

 

“What, did he hang around waiting for you guys to find him?” Bao asked.

 

“He’s got the ego for it,” Kendal added, pouting a little seemingly at the mere thought of the man.

 

“Actually, we didn’t even know about him until a few days before we raided his lab,” the adult remarked. “One of our team, Marilyn, brought him to our attention. Turns out, she knew him already. I can’t recall the details… he’d been in a gang before and she’d been under his spell… in any case, she’d been reeled in by him again, and she had us all rush into a trap. We’d show up and he’d test out his new weapons on us.”

 

“The Lokon weapons, right?” Harriet clarified (Bao had filled her in on as much as he could: what we knew of the weapons, how they worked, how some monster fights went unnoticed, and of course his miraculous recovery from being shot in the head).

 

“Yes. And…”

 

“They know the rest,” Dakota assured her mother, clearly not wanting to hear the details of her father’s death. Saoirse took a moment before continuing.

 

“Of course, then he pretty much vanished. And we weren’t exactly in a position to try and find him immediately, which may have been a mistake in the long run…”

 

“Basically, he’s grade A in disappearing off the face of the Earth?” I summarised, trying to raise the atmosphere a little.

 

“I don’t like this at all,” Zahid spoke up. “I’d rather he just show his face and have this out with us. He’s like a snake or something.”

 

“Right now, you’d be best off putting it to the back of your mind.”

Said sternly, but with clear consideration.

“Live your lives. Deal with the monsters. Leave Nick to Neil and his team. The worst thing you can do is let him overshadow everything else.”

 

“Yeah…” Zahid relented, not seeming entirely convinced all the same.

 

“You’re young. Enjoy yourselves,” Saoirse concluded with a fond smile.

 

…

 

In the end, we didn’t spend too much longer there. We felt it better to let Dakota spend time with her mum, without the rest of us hanging around.

 

“There you have it.”

I can only imagine Zahid decided to get this in before we parted ways on our separate paths home.

“Dakota’s mum’s gonna kill you before you ever actually get with her.”

 

“Nah, I have a plan. I’m gonna set Ricardo up so she kills him,” I joked.

 

“Cruel bastard,” he replied with a chuckle, before making a move for the opposite direction to me. “If Dakota means that much to you, you’ve got to make the effort.”

He gave a parting nod.

“Seeya.”

 

“Bye,” I nodded back as his words bounced around my brain like a pinball. Making the effort…

 

As I made my way home, I conjured up scenarios for confessing my feelings to Dakota.

 

And scratched each one because I’m terrible at this.

 

Forget Nick, and Saoirse. I’m going to wind up killed by an aneurysm trying to figure my way out of this ridiculous crush…

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