The Hipster Who Leapt Through Time (The Hipster Trilogy Book 2) (8 page)

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Ian Foster

THERE WAS A PERSON, NO, a child. With chocolate brown curls on his head and sweet caramel skin. With a smile that could win over the stoniest of hearts. The demeanour of polite all over his blue cotton school jumper and ashen short trousers that end above his unspoiled kneecaps.
 

He was the kind of kid who would do his homework before leaving school. The kind of child who’d ask the teacher for more work to do afterwards. When the rest of the class had their hands resting on the tops of their bags, ready for the bell to ring to make their escape, he would wait behind. He couldn’t leave without asking the teacher a few more questions. How exactly
do
plants convert light into energy? Why
does
metal expand when heated? Why
does
the Earth rotate?
 

He was a smart kid. Most teachers would consider him a blessing.

To Ian Foster, the child’s science teacher, he was a pain in the arse.
 

It wasn’t an ordinary school to begin with. It was an all-boys private school for the gifted. Only a special breed of child was allowed in this school. A child like Darpal. But Darpal was more than special. And it all became apparent in that one class. The last one of the day. The final stretch before the home-time bell.

The sun beat through the windows onto the students’ backs and into Ian’s thick lensed glasses. All around him was warm and sticky, and the floral fabric beneath his armpits was damp and translucent.
 

He’d been there, teaching that class, for five years. Forever waiting, watching. They didn’t just let any old teacher in there either. This was an IPC-funded school. When Ian took the job he was briefed on what to look for, and after monotonous class after monotonous class, it finally happened.

Ian, who admittedly looked like a bearded egg propped on top of a bag of sand, asked the class “Who can recite Pi to five decimal places?”
 

Of course Darpal’s hand shot upwards. He instantly reeled off the decimal places of Pi like he was reciting his Christmas wish-list.
 

“Three point one four one five nine,” he said, beaming.

“Okay Darpal, okay,” Ian said, waving him down.

“Two six five three,” he continued. “Five … five … five.”

The children sitting behind Darpal moaned and Ian was about to join them when Darpal’s eyes rolled backwards towards his skull and the numbers went wrong.

“One zero zero one one zero one zero one one.” As Darpal spoke he shook in his seat. The bottom of his stool vibrated against the floor. White foam fell from his mouth. The moaning children from behind him sat up and screamed as the numbers continued to fall from Darpal’s mouth.

“One zero one one zero one one one.”

“Sir, what do we do?” one of the boys shouted.

“Erm …” Ian watched for a second, unsure what was happening. “Well …”
 

“Sir!”

“Right yes, okay, well, he’s having a seizure so just … “

“One zero one one zerooo one zerooo.” Darpal stopped shaking and dropped to the floor like a lump of meat.

Ian rushed over to him and asked if he was okay?
 

Darpal replied with murmurs as he writhed on the floor. His pupils were fully dilated and his eyes never settled.

“Sir, should I call his parents?” the little shit Jason Brant said.
 

“No Jason, it’ll be all right,” Ian said, remembering that Darpal lived in a foster home. “Everyone make your way home now, I’ll get Darpal to the nurse.”
 

“Sir, honestly, I can call them now.”

“No Jason! Just leave it.”
 

Ian lifted Darpal’s head in his hand and waited for the children to scatter out through the door and into the field behind the science building, leaving Ian and the broken child alone.

Like the Tolkien tree-creature Ian was, he took an age to figure out that he should probably call someone. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the school-supplied phone. Darpal gently shivered in his hands, calming somewhat now.

“Hello,” Ian said, “I have a child here.”

“Yes,” the voice replied. It sounded like an old man. “What do you want us to do with it?”

Ian pressed his hands against the boy’s balmy feverish head.

“You know what I mean. I think he’s one of them.”

Ian hadn’t called an ambulance. There was no point: nurses and doctors couldn’t help the child now. It was up to them. The IPC.

“Well, does he have the speck?” the voice said, tired, annoyed. Probably taken fifty of the same calls that morning.
 

“The speck?”

A sigh.
 

Ian felt silly. He could tell the voice wanted to hang up.

“Okay, so let’s go through a quick checklist.”

“Okay,” Ian said as he readjusted the glasses on his face. “I can do that.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes, the other kids have all left. Just me and the boy.”

“Okay,” he said. “Does the child have a high sense of self-worth?”

Ian looked down at the boy, now quiet, asleep. He didn’t think so, but there was the boy’s assertion that he deserved an A+ on his recent biology test, even though it was really more of an A-.

“Definitely,” Ian said.
 

“Does he feel the rigid ritualistic systems are archaic?” the voice said.

“What? Like, is he an atheist?”

“Sure,” the voice said.
 

“I think so. He never mentioned being a Christian.”

“And last question. Does he have the speck?”

“Speck?”

The voice sighed again.
 

“The fucking speck. The speckled indigo pigments in his eyes, just around his pupils. If I have to explain it any more than that I will be sure to report—”

“Okay okay. Calm down.” Ian’s face reddened as he gripped the phone between his cheek and his shoulder. He leant down over the boy and lifted his head up. With the boy’s chin cupped in his one hand, he pried open an eyelid with the other. Sure enough, in the boy’s dark brown cornea, he could see the speckled indigo. It looked like amethyst dust suspended in rock. Ian smiled in wonderment as the boy’s eye sparkled.
 

“Well?” the voice said.

“Yes,” he said. “Bloody hell yes, and it’s magnificent.”
 

As he peered into the boy’s eye the pupil contracted and he began to murmur. He was waking up.

“Okay then. Get ready because I’m sending over a team. They’ll be there shortly to pick you up.”

“Me too?” Ian said.

“Yes, you’re both coming to the academy. That’s how it works. He’s never going to see his parents again. He needs someone he recognises. And you’re that someone.”

“What? I didn’t sign up for that,” Ian said, letting the boy lie back down on the floor. “Do I have a say?”

“What do you think?” the voice said.
 

A silence passed between them before the voice said “Goodbye” and hung up.

Nisha Bhatia

Nisha forced the smile. All-pearly-whites. She’d done it every single weekday morning, just like this, for the past five years, but on that day she was struggling.
 

Lifting her cheek muscles a half-inch was a quest given to her by the gods themselves. She couldn’t blame the gods though, not for that anyway. It would be like blaming the tree in your garden for breaking your arm when you fell out of it.
You
were the one climbing it.

After seeing the faces of the children in pain, she’d hardly slept. She’d finished the bottle of red, and then moved onto a tiny bottle of tequila, a gift from a wedding she went to, and then found half a bottle of Campari and guzzled that down too. She ransacked her own apartment for any secret travel bottles of spirits, any tucked-away beers or wines that she may have forgotten about.
 

She was tempted, oh so tempted, by the pocket-sized bottle of vodka. The one she’d kept with her for the past two years. Ever since the baby.

In the end, she made another trip to the shop for another bottle of rosé and the shopkeeper gave her the standard, “Are you okay miss?” as he handed her the change.
 

Of course she wasn’t okay, she thought as she pulled the cork and swigged from the bottle itself. How could she be okay with the horrors she’d seen?

With half the bottle gone she’d laid on her bed with the artificial light around her and the glistening lights of the London skyline in the gap in her curtains, closed her eyes and fallen into a dreamless comatose.

It seemed like she’d simply blinked before her alarm had zapped her awake and she had to peel herself from the bed.
 

Just as on any other weekday she got up, showered, cleaned her teeth, got dressed and headed out for work. The daily ritual was built into her operating system now. It didn’t matter if her mind had stopped working. Her body was on auto-pilot. Amazingly she arrived at work only a few minutes later than usual.
 

“Are you okay?” Tom said. He was standing to her right, on the set. “You look like shit. The makeup department told me they nearly keeled over when you zombie-walked into them this morning.”

“Water?” she said to him. A single word. Like she’d returned from a pilgrimage in the desert. “Water.”

“Errm … sure,” Tom said. He turned to one of the runners. “Seb, can you just grab a bottle of water for Neesh?”

The scared wide-eyed runner handed the bottle to Tom, who unscrewed it and handed it to Nisha. She gobbled a few mouthfuls down before handing it back to him.
 

“I’m fine,” she said. “Don’t worry.”

“I tried to get in touch with that space guy, but it’s impossible. He’s disappeared.”

“What do you mean? Like, he’s not doing TV?”

“No TV, no Facebook, Twitter, anything. The guy has completely vanished. Apparently the panel show guys were trying to get him to guest host a show. He’d agreed on paper, but when the time came, he was a no-show, literally. Since then nobody has heard from him.”

“Oh God, I hope he’s okay,” she said.
 

“I’m sure he’s fine. He’s probably camping out visiting churches, beating up priests and testing their faith. I once saw him make a ten-year-old Christian girl cry because she asked him if her mother was in heaven. So yeah, who knows?”

One of the guys behind the wall of cameras shouted something over to Tom and he replied with a nod. He turned back to Nisha. “Okay, so we’re on shortly. Just got a few headlines to start with, then we’ll cut to Dave who’s at Brighton for some festival, and then after the commercial break it’s the interview section.”

“Remind me who I’m interviewing today.”

“Janet Bridge, TV chef, bakerpreneur.”

“Don’t worry, Tom,” she said. “We’ve been doing the same old format since we started. I’ll get it right today.”

“Yes well, I just hope we don’t …” Tom let the sentence drift away.

“What?”

“No, it’s okay. It’s nothing.” He placed his hand on her shoulder, the force of which caused her to burp. The smell of wine rose up to her nostrils, but Tom didn’t seem to notice. He was already making his way back to the wall of cameras. To safety.

The lights were set. The cameras live.

Five.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

“Hello. You’re watching
The Good Morning
…” Nisha hiccupped into her hand. Coughed. Vomited a little into her mouth, swallowed it back down, and then … “Sorry, Hello. As I was trying to say before, you’re watching
The Good Morning TV Show
with me, Nisha Bhatia.”