Fractured A Slated Novel

Chapter TWENTY SIX



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Jazz winks and slips an envelope in my hand when we get home after school. I race up to my room, and shut the door. He made sure to do it when Amy wasn’t looking. What could it be? My hands are shaking so hard it takes longer than it should to open, and I almost rip it.

Inside is a photograph. A runner: slightly out of focus, taken on a track from some distance. His hair, his build, the away look on his face as he runs.

It’s Ben.

Flipped over a few words are written faint in pencil: Is it him?

I open the envelope again – nothing else, no instructions, no explanations.

I bite my tongue, hard, to keep myself from a therapeutic scream. Not. Good. Enough. This can’t wait.

The last time I saw him, Aiden said he’d be at Mac’s on Friday: today. Maybe he is still there? If he isn’t, maybe Mac knows where Ben is.

Minutes later I’m cycling up the road.

I knock on Mac’s front door. No one comes, yet I could have sworn I heard someone inside as I walked up to the house. I try it, but it is locked. I scramble over the high gate down the side of the house: a white telephone van is parked on the other side. Aiden’s? Then Skye bounds over and almost knocks me off my feet to lick my face.

‘Where is everyone?’ I ask her. She wags her tail.

I bang on the back door. ‘It’s Kyla. Let me in!’ I yell. ‘I know you’re in there.’

There are footsteps inside, the turn of a lock. The door opens: Aiden.

I pull the photo of Ben out of my pocket, and hold it up. ‘Where is he?’

‘Come in.’ Aiden takes my hand, pulls me inside Mac’s kitchen. ‘Sorry I didn’t answer the door; didn’t know it was you. Mac is out and I shouldn’t be here. Skye doesn’t make much of a guard dog, does she?’

‘No.’ She leans on my legs so much she almost knocks me over again, tail thumping madly.

‘I was just about to make some tea.’ He gets an extra cup out, holds it up. I nod and he puts the kettle on, then turns and leans on the worktop. ‘So. I’m guessing by your appearance that you think that photo is Ben.’

‘Yes. It’s him.’

‘Careful, now. Are you sure? It isn’t just that you hope it to be so, so you see it? Look again.’

I take out the photograph. Study it, but it is him. Even in the way he holds himself as he runs.

‘I’m sure,’ I say. ‘Where is he? When can I see him?’

‘Not so fast. It may be…complicated.’

‘What do you mean?’

He hesitates. ‘He’s going to a boarding school. The surrounding area is infested.’

‘Infested? By what?’

‘Lorders.’

‘I don’t understand. Why?’

‘I don’t know why. But there is a high presence of Lorders in the village where the school is located. We’re looking into it.’

‘I need to see him.’

‘You need to wait.’

‘No. Tell me where he is.’

‘Kyla, until we work out what is going on there, it is far too risky. Have some patience.’

I stare back at Aiden. He is being reasonable, and cautious, but he doesn’t know the stakes.

‘If you won’t help me, I’ll find him myself.’

‘Really?’ He raises an eyebrow, sceptical.

‘Yes. You said a running track, twenty miles away. I’ve done a search. There are exactly nine possibilities. I’ve already been to three of them.’ I’m exaggerating, but I would have been the day we went cycling if Lorders hadn’t interrupted. But I can do it.

His eyes widen. ‘You’ve done what?’

‘You heard me.’

He shakes his head. ‘You’re one crazy girl,’ he says, but there, in his eyes: grudging respect. Maybe he’s impressed, even. And I start to believe I can convince him.

‘I’ll do it with or without you. So, are you going to help me, or what?’

He hesitates, thinking, and I manage to keep quiet and leave him to it. Staring steadily back at his blue eyes. Hoping and hoping, so hard. For all that I said, it is a bit needle-haystack, and he and I both know it. I could have missed a track on the maps; the track might be new and not even on a map. I could go to the right place and not know it if he isn’t there. I could get caught trying.

‘It would be better to wait,’ he says, at last. ‘Until we have more information.’

‘But...?’

‘I’m as crazy as you are.’ He grins.

I launch myself at him for a hug. ‘Thanks, Aiden! When?’

‘How about Sunday? It may be dangerous.’

‘I don’t care.’

‘I do. You have to promise to do what I say on the day, Kyla, and mean it. Or it’s off.’

I stare back at him, hesitant to make a promise I may find hard to keep. Yet he is taking risks here, too. ‘I promise.’

Aiden holds out the photo. ‘This was taken last Sunday: training at the village track. So we can hope he’ll be there same time and place again. You can at least confirm if it is him. What do you think?’

‘I’ll do it,’ I say again, and Aiden tells me where he’ll pick me up, what time, and I note the details but all the while I’m staring at Ben’s photograph in my hands.

It is him. I don’t know how or why he survived being hauled off by Lorders. But it really is my Ben.