how they actually were. Or perhaps it wasn’t how I viewed them, but how I thought and felt about them, and hoped they would behave. Hall should have included fear on his list, because the actions of Tommy and Lena could only fit that category. The logical part of my mind knew their behaviour would never be quite so extreme, but those thoughts must have come from somewhere. Was I secretly scared of them?
That business with Natalie was nothing more than fantasy, but it was certainly within the realms of my imagination. And the way she knew how I felt? I expected that was just magic pulling something together that I was sure to believe. I remembered the feel of her hands, but again that was nothing I hadn’t experienced already. About a year earlier, we’d played a game where we had all held hands in a circle. I’d been next to Natalie. As for the kiss, well, it couldn’t have taken place because I had no idea what it was going to feel like. That was probably why we’d been interrupted.
The business with Tommy? I’d never seen him behave like that, though I expected he could probably do so (apart from multiplying himself), so of course the box was able to make it happen. That was another thing holding me back with Natalie: If Nicole was okay with it, then that should have been the green light, because she was the one who would have made it most difficult for me if she disapproved, being Natalie’s best friend. But I could remember her telling Stella that she knew who Natalie liked, and I now knew that had been me, so she must have been okay with it.
Or was she? She had never made moves to get us together, never showed any encouragement to the idea, and never tried to get Natalie in my good books, not that she would have needed to. Perhaps she already suspected me. Maybe Peter or James had let something slip…
There was nothing unusual about the classroom scenario. Certainly everyone in there had acted as I would expect them to in that unusual situation. Well, everyone except Serena. I remembered that she had taken my hand too, and it took me a moment to think when it had happened before. Then I remembered a sunny day a few weeks earlier, when Serena and I were wrestling together in the Jade River. But I had never imagined her hitting Wilwog. I tried to remember anything that might have given me that view of her, and the only thing I could think of was when we were fighting Moran; she’d taken some pretty furious swipes at him that day.
There was nothing particularly unusual about what had happened in the last room, either. Marc had acted exactly as I would have expected him to, as had Moran and his spook gang. I’d never seen that ghost woman attack anybody, like she did Lena, but my mind was certainly capable of imagining it. As for Moran telling us who she was, well he couldn’t have done, because that information wasn’t inside my head.
And Lena? Her behaviour was similar to what she had shown late the previous week, though it was far more exaggerated. If we had been swimming together, I could imagine her trying to drag me in if I didn’t want to swim with her, although I doubted she would strip me in the process. That had definitely been based on fantasy, rather than reality. I tried to remember where I had seen her in a bikini; I must have got a clear view of her somewhere, or I wouldn’t have been allowed such a view of her in the box. I’d never seen her naked either, of that I was certain. In fact, while I thought about it, I couldn’t remember what she’d looked like when she’d been naked in the box. Was that because I’d been too preoccupied to take in the details, or was it because I wasn’t supposed to know?
I thought very hard, and most of it started to added up. I’d never seen her naked, but I had felt rather a lot of her body during one of the obstacles guarding the Sien-Leoard Crystal. She was unconscious at the time, and I hadn’t been up to anything dodgy, but I’d been forced to feel a bit of her body to help bring her around. There were also several instances where she had pressed herself against me, which probably came into effect as well. I also knew that she was pretty strong, given that she had lifted me off my feet; only a foot or so, but that was still something. In reality, there was no way she could be strong enough to tackle a dozen Tommys at once, or throw me that high into the air. The box must have taken my thought that she was strong and exaggerated it.
As for the bikini, I could only assume that I must have caught a glimpse of her swimming, but I honestly couldn’t remember it. She had probably been a good distance away. But then an image came to the fore of my mind that I had completely forgotten about: I had seen her before. Before she got in the pool during that afternoon activity the previous week, I had caught a glimpse of her standing with Amelia, also in a bikini, and even then I had admitted to myself that she was pretty damn hot! I’d completely forgotten about that in the wake of far more vivid memories of Lena.
So everything inside that box had been taken from my mind; that made sense, except for one thing. If all that was true, why was I able to use that stunning device? I was fairly sure it was the sort of thing the Hammersons would use, but I’d never seen it before. Why had I been allowed to use it? Why had I even been allowed to even see it?
This preoccupation lasted all the way home, and by then, the only conclusion I’d reached was that perhaps the last person to use the box had dropped the stunning device in there, and it just wanted to present it as another temptation.
* * *
The first people I saw when I got in the house were William and Carl. They were watching television in the Playman lounge room and commenting on how much it had changed since the ‘70s. It was good to have my grandfather and James’s grandfather back in the family; I had always wondered about them and had imagined them to be like Dad and Charlie. Dad and Charlie had changed a bit too; they just seemed so much happier than usual, as though the rest of the world’s troubles could go to buggery as far as they were concerned. I was happy for them, but I was finding the experience rather awkward.
Mum and Marge seemed to feel the same way, because they kept insisting that the pair of them do something constructive with themselves now that they’d been given a second chance at life. The rest of us considered it pointless to attempt to persuade the authorities to accept that two people who had been dead for thirty years were suddenly back among the living. So far, they had spent all their time hanging around the house, just trying to adapt to the twenty-first century, although I had overheard them talking about making contact with the Woodwards. Clearly they hadn’t forgotten what it was like in the Woodward Army, and thought it would be good to get back to something they knew and were comfortable with. That was probably the best they could do since we no longer lived on a farm.
“Hello there, John,” said William when he saw me heading for the stairs.
“Hi—er—grandpa,” I said uneasily. Never having known a grandfather before, I wasn’t exactly sure what I ought to call him. I was tempted to just say William, but figured that would be disrespectful.
The two of them chuckled, and I had a feeling they knew what I was thinking about. “You got it, mate,” said Carl. “Had a good day?”
“Yeah, not bad,” I said. “Bit boring, but that’s school for you.”
“Yeah, but you have to go all the same,” said Carl, looking back at the television.
“I’ll see you at dinner,” I said, continuing for the stairs. “Loads of homework.”
“Yes indeed,” said William pompously. “Study hard, and then you can play hard.”
I smiled in spite of myself and went upstairs, enjoying the idea of having the place to myself for once. Peter was still in detention—his was three hours today. James was probably with Erica again—no hesitation in spending loads of time with her now that he had cleared the initial barrier of his hesitation. I guessed the girls were next door, because Nicole’s room was silent as I went past. I would have liked to use this time to look up stuff about the Light Crystal, but my mountain of homework was weighing heavily on my mind as I settled in front of the computer. I struggled with myself before opening my bag and pulling Mrs. Parker’s horrible exercises from it. This was going to take an eternity … or at least it would have, if I didn’t have the Light Crystal.
Before I set to work on the Maths, I did what I always did when starting up the computer: check emails, check Facebook, and check the girls’ rooms for activity. What the