The Icarus Show Page 2

  “My pendant, you mean!”

  I’d asked her what it was made of and reached out to touch it but she’d drawn back.

  “Rats’ teeth and razor blades! Not for the likes of you.”

  I had no reason not to believe her, though what she had said was so strange. The metal bits could have been anything and the white things could have been grains of rice, but I did believe her, unquestioningly. I still do.

  I knew I had sounded childish when I’d said Bogsy wasn’t my friend. “Well, anyway,” I said. I felt caught out and I snatched the note back. “Well, anyway, it can’t be an advert. It doesn’t say what you need to know. How can you ‘be there’ if there’s no address?”

  “Haven’t you heard of a teaser campaign?” said Maisie.

  I hadn’t. “Yes, but … It’s all stupid!” I blustered.

  “This is to get you interested,” she went on. “To get you wondering, whet your appetite. Then there’ll be something else, to whet it some more, before … all is revealed! How exciting!”

  I needed to bring her back to the problem. “So, is this boy going to fly, or isn’t he?”

  “Course not!” she snorted. “Boys don’t fly any more than pigs. Not in the normal run, anyway. But something is going to happen, and soon. That’s all we can say at this stage.”

  “Oh!” I broke in. “I forgot! There was something else in the envelope. A feather.” I hadn’t brought it with me, but the news stopped Maisie in her tracks.

  “A feather? Now that is interesting. You know, in the First World War, they used to send feathers to the conshies. White ones. Conscientious objectors, you know, the ones who didn’t want to fight because they thought it was wrong. People sent them feathers to taunt them, to say they were cowards, just pretending.” She paused. “I daresay some of them were.”

  “Was Don a conshie? A real one?” I asked.

  “Don?”

  “I just thought maybe he didn’t go along with the war … ” I said that because it seemed to me he’d always stood for peace. Maisie liked to express opinions and I don’t mean that he never did, but he’d always prefer to agree than to fight.

  “You want to think a bit straighter, you do. Don wasn’t even born then! ’Nother cookie?”

  “No, thanks,” I said. I glanced at the clock on the wall. “I’ve got to go.”

  As I put my coat back on, she softened and asked about the garden.

  “Tell him not to pick the tomatoes,” she said, and I knew who she meant. “He always wants to pick them too soon, then it’s chutney, chutney, chutney. There’s not a hint of frost in the air—still plenty of ripening time. Tell him.”

  It was funny; in one way she certainly was what Dad called “confused.” Confused about Don. But she wasn’t one bit confused on the subject of green tomato chutney.

  “I’ll tell him,” I promised—and felt that I would, and even heard Don’s reply, in my head: “Right you are! She’s the boss!”

  Perhaps I was no less confused than her.

  As I sat on the B17 bus going home, I thought how weird the world was—not just Maisie’s, but this so-called normal world, too—in so many ways. Maybe pigs might fly, after all.

  Maybe even a boy.

  I didn’t think Maisie was right about the feather. The one in the envelope had been gray, not white. Besides, as the message had been about flying, it was far more likely to be connected with that than with me not doing something, me being a coward.

  But she did have a point about who else had gotten an envelope. That was important to find out. If a load of the others had gotten one, too, that would make the whole thing into some sort of advertising campaign, like she’d said. If I was the only recipient, that would be personal.

  Of course, I really hoped it would turn out to be the loads-of-other-people option. The problem was how to find out.

  Then on Monday morning, at the bus stop, I had a piece of luck. There was me, standing at one end of the shelter; there was Bogsy, at the other. The shelter smelled of wee, but because of the things people said at school, I had begun to believe it was him. I really had.

  Anyway, suddenly, drifting about between us, was a feather.

  It was just like the one in my envelope, so—although I’d left mine in Don’s shed—for a moment I had this urge to go and pick it up. Then I remembered, Don’t React—and a split second later, Don’t worry, it’s not even mine. But Bogsy was moving forward to get it. It was his.

  Bogsy had gotten one, too! It wasn’t just me, then! It couldn’t be personal. I was so relieved, for a moment I didn’t think any further than that. Bogsy stretched out his hand to grab the feather, and when it skittered away, he jumped on it heavily, with both feet. Then he shoved it in his bag.

  So much for not reacting, I thought. I felt deeply contemptuous of him. So much for keeping things safe in the first place. He was useless. I was superior. Wait till I told them on the bus!

  And that’s when the horrible doubt crept in. What if I got on the bus and went straight to the back, where Alan Tydman sat, and said, “Hey, Al, you know these feathers? Bogsy just dropped his! He nearly lost it! I saw! He can’t even handle a little thing like that!”

  And what if Alan Tydman said, “What feathers?”

  The thing was, it could still be personal. It could be personal to me and Bogsy, which would be worse. Somebody could be singling us out—saying, You’re two of a kind.

  Birds of a feather!

  Whoever it was could be making the point, You both smell.

  So when I got on the bus, I said nothing. I went to the back, but had to sit down before I reached Alan. The closest I could get was a seat next to Jack, a good mate of his. Jack Tweedy, who helped with his business and was—not counting Rob Bone, who was closest of all—his second in command.

  “Hey,” I said briefly.

  And Jack said, “All right.”

  Then we both looked away. I wouldn’t have expected more, that was normal.

  Only something was wrong. It wasn’t just Jack and me who weren’t talking: nobody was.

  Had they all fallen silent when Bogsy and I got on, or had they been silent before? Usually the bus was so noisy, you had to shout to make yourself heard. Were they all in this together? Watching, waiting to see what we’d do? I looked cautiously sideways at Jack—and caught him looking sideways at me! In a panic, I looked across the aisle, to where Tom Flynn and Damien Crawley were sitting. Tom was absorbed in picking his nose, but Damien, like Jack Tweedy, was watching—secretly, out of the corner of his eye. Not me, though: Tom!

  Was everyone watching each other? Weird! What for? And why the feathers? Was it just Bogsy and me who’d received them? If so, we were caught in a trap, for sure. Everyone else was watching for the secret sign to pounce.

  It seemed unfair. I’d worked so hard to avoid this kind of thing. There was nothing I could do now, though, but watch and wait. It’s odd how you end up acting the same, no matter if you’re a spider or a fly.

  Alan’s little white bags were going much more slowly than usual today. The first coin to come up the aisle wasn’t till we’d reached the start of the bypass. I took it from Hannah Dunbar, who said, “Andy P,” and I passed it on. I hardly had to repeat the name—since the bus was so quiet, everyone would have heard it first off. But I knew how important it was for Alan to have the details of each of the orders correct. Sometimes he made adjustments to the contents of a bag, according to who his customer was and how he was feeling toward them that day. When Andy P’s bag came back down the aisle, it was floppy: almost empty. Poor Andy P.

  Alan bought sweets wholesale at the cash-and-carry and bagged them up and sold them. Some days he sold so much on the bus, there was nothing left by break. But today there’d be plenty. I’d only had to pass two little bags back to Hannah by the time we reached school.

  In our homeroom, waiting for Miss McGowan, things were slightly better. Not because Alan’s gang were being any different from how they’d
been on the bus—but because Lydia and Candy and their lot were in the mix now, and they were the opposite. Lydia and Candy never stopped chatting—and they didn’t today. They didn’t seem to notice the tension, they just went on and on and on—as usual, about boys. Nobody normally listened to them, but now, because no one else was talking, they were harder to ignore. Tee hee, giggle giggle. It got on your nerves. Will he or won’t he? Do you or don’t you? They seemed to be on about one boy in particular all the time; I didn’t catch who. Even though it was good that the silence was over, it still wasn’t great with them going on. Candy’s voice was especially annoying, high-pitched and shrill, rising now and then to a screech. “Well, I don’t!” she piped up now, over Lydia. “I don’t believe in fairies or Father Christmas—and nobody’s going to fly!”

  Well!

  When she said that, it was like someone dropping a match in a can of gasoline.

  WHUMP! The room exploded. People were shouting, jumping up, racing round, grabbing bags, getting things out of them, upsetting chairs. Slips of paper came out—and feathers! Loads of feathers.

  Alan was shouting, “Shut up!” and everyone else was on about flying. Was someone going to, and when, where, and why? I wanted to laugh. I did laugh! Alan had a feather—same as mine, same as Bogsy’s. He held it up, scanning the room for the culprit, for the one who had dared to insult him like this. “Who’s the joker?” he roared. “Who’s been messing about?” Although there was still lots of noise in the room, he was slowly but surely regaining control.

  I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t held his feather up before. Someone in my position had to be careful—trust no one—but Alan? Alan Tydman, who had a gang? People even called it Alan’s Battalion because he was going to join the army when he left school. Someone like that wouldn’t need to be careful, would they? So why hadn’t he said something on the bus?

  Anyway, now he was looking around to see who the joker was. Candy said, “Yeah, come on!” and there was more shouting.

  Alan started picking on anyone he suspected of hanging back. He asked Peter Horn, who had a stammer, if he’d got anything to say. Peter said, “N-n-n-n-n—” and Alan moved on.

  “Meadows!” he barked at me. “You get a note?”

  “Yeah!” I said. “In my bag. Friday.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I—er—somewhere … At home.” Of course, I had hidden it in Don’s shed, but I wasn’t going to say that. My hesitation looked bad and I wondered if Alan was going to notice. He didn’t. He was looking round again.

  “Bogsy! Oi, Stinking Bog! What about you?”

  Bogsy looked Alan straight in the eye and he only went and did it again! Like the time Alan tripped him up and he came back to face him. This time, instead of answering, he said—nothing. I ask you, how stupid. He wasn’t so much an objector as a conscientious idiot.

  Alan looked angry and I saw my chance.

  “Yes, Al. He’s got one. A feather. I saw it this morning. He dropped it. He can’t even handle … ”

  Alan Tydman was someone who made you do things you knew you shouldn’t. I don’t mean like Phil, when he dared me to wee on the floor. With Alan, you didn’t do things for fun; you did them because he had leadership qualities. He was an organizer and it’s good to be organized. But I wouldn’t have wanted Maisie to know I’d ratted on someone, even Bogsy. Even over a feather. I could guess what she’d say. I wouldn’t have been proud of myself if I’d taken the time to think it through.

  But that was the Alan Tydman effect. You didn’t think. If Alan had told me to kick Peter Horn because of his stammer … Well, luckily, he didn’t.

  And luckily, almost at once Miss McGowan came in and called for quiet and the boring stuff of the day began.

  When I walked in through the front door that evening, I thought I’d made a mistake with Alan. I could have showed him the feather after all. It had been in my bag all along. Funny, I thought I’d put it under a flowerpot in Don’s shed. But here it was, slipped down between my books: My fingers felt it. They closed on it. Pulled it out.

  And then I saw that I hadn’t made a mistake. This feather was different. Gray, like the first, if perhaps slightly darker, but with something taped onto the quill. A bit of paper—a tag. And on it was writing, computer writing. The writing said, “ICARUS.”

  Mr. Smith was a joker. He was our English teacher. The first day we had him, he got us to practice pronunciation by making us all sing this ridiculous song about eating apples and bananas. “I like to eat—eat, eat, eat—apples and bananas” and “I like to oot—oot, oot, oot—ooples and banoonoos.” It was completely stupid, they wouldn’t even sing it in Timmy’s class, I doubt, but by the time we’d gotten through all the different sounds—with Mr. Smith deliberately getting them wrong half the time—we were in stitches.

  Now we were on Greek myths, which Mr. Smith really seemed to like. When he told us about Odysseus escaping from the Cyclops by clinging on under a sheep, he lay on his back underneath a table and hooked his arms and legs round the edges so he could actually hoist himself up off the floor for a few seconds. When he couldn’t hang on any longer, he plopped back down and went, “BAA!” really loudly. We fell about laughing.

  Already in English, nothing would have surprised us. We wouldn’t have put anything past Mr. Smith. I exchanged Don’t React for Blend In because when everyone else was reacting to jokes all the time, it was best to react along with them. I allowed myself to relax in English like in no other lesson—even though Alan Tydman sat right behind me. I would hear him snorting and whooping and knew that the best way of protecting my back was to do the same. Peter Horn sat next to me and I’m sure in those lessons his stammer improved.

  Yes, we were pretty much ready for anything from Mr. Smith, but still we were stunned into silence when he announced on Tuesday afternoon, “Today I’d like to introduce you to an old friend of mine: Icarus!”

  We’d all received Icarus feathers. No one had been backward in coming forward second time round. But still we were none the wiser. Who was this Icarus? Why was he playing silly games?

  When Mr. Smith made his announcement, I think we all went through the same thought process: Whoever was planting the Icarus stuff was someone who knew that this lesson was coming. Coming soon. Someone who’d read ahead in Greek Myths for Today. And which of us would do that? There was only one person who had any reason to. The person who knew that Icarus was coming was the person who’d planned for him to come, precisely then. On Tuesday, at five minutes past two.

  “Ha-ha, sir. Is he going to fly?” said Alan. “With feathers?”

  “He is, Mr. Tydman!” said Mr. Smith, acting shocked and amazed. “May we deduce from your questions that you have actually read a chapter of Greek Myths voluntarily? Voluntarily, by the way, means without being asked. If so, we must celebrate! I shall … ”

  “No, sir, I haven’t read ahead in the book. But I got your note, sir, thank you, sir. Nice joke.” All those sirs were meant to be funny, just like Mr. Smith saying “Mr. Tydman.”

  “Don’t interrupt, Mr. Tydman,” he said now, but he seemed momentarily confused. Perhaps he hadn’t expected his joke would be exposed so soon.

  “We shall celebrate anyway!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Let’s have a round of Just A Minute!”

  This was a first. Not that we hadn’t played Just A Minute before; we had. We loved it. But before we had always played at the end of a lesson. Just A Minute was our reward when Mr. Smith was especially pleased with how we’d done. And that was another odd thing: He clearly wasn’t pleased today. Alan hadn’t read ahead in the book; there was no cause for celebration.

  The puzzle was solved when he went on to say that the subject he’d chosen was the Icarus myth; the first contestant, Alan Tydman.

  “Mr. Tydman knows Icarus is going to fly: That much he’s told us. And to fly, as he put it so eloquently, ‘with feathers.’ But what else does he know? Enough to fill a minute? Let’s see!�
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  If you’ve never played Just A Minute, I’d better break off at this point, to explain the rules. Somebody has to speak on a subject for just a minute (which, if it’s you, seems more like a year) without hesitation, deviation, or repetition. Deviation is changing the subject, or straying away from it by degrees. If you do deviate—or hesitate or repeat a word—you can be challenged. And if the challenge is correct, then the challenger takes the subject from you for what’s left of the time. Whoever is speaking when the minute’s up is the winner of the round.

  Even Peter Horn loved Just A Minute. I mean, a game where you’re out if you hesitate should have been torture for him, but it wasn’t. If he stammered, Mr. Smith held up a hand to show it didn’t count—and once he deliberately stammered near the end, to stretch out his turn and win. We couldn’t be sure if it was deliberate, but Mr. Smith shouted, “All’s fair in love and war!” which seemed to mean it was. (He apologized later, for using a cliché. He said he’d done it in the heat of the moment. He apologized for that one, too.)

  The other surprise, when we played Just A Minute, was Bogsy: He often won. He did it by slowing down his speech, which sounded weird, like a voice recorder gone wrong, but was clever because it gave him more time to think—and fewer words to say. Once he spoke on the subject of “Peace” for a whole minute without being challenged. Only he didn’t: He spoke about peas. (Bonus point for inventiveness.) Any of us could have gotten him for deviation, but no one did, because it was funny. After the lesson, he was gotten, though: by Alan. Jostled so hard that he nearly fell over. But that was outside, in the corridor. Somehow, in Mr. Smith’s room, things were different. We all felt safe.

  Till the day Mr. Smith asked Alan to speak for just a minute about Icarus.

  “Beware deviation, Mr. Tydman, and good luck!” Glancing up at the classroom clock, Mr. Smith rubbed his hands. Then, as the clock’s thin red finger swept past twelve, he shouted, “Go!”