Num8ers - By Rachel Ward Page 0,105

sheets are drenched. There’s a date in my head, neon-bright, dazzling my eyes from the inside. The first of January 2027. I’ve never dreamt that before. It’s new. He’s brought it to me. The boy.

The boy at school is the boy in my nightmare. It’s him. I know it is. He’s found his way out of my head and into my life. How? How has he done that? It’s bullshit. It’s not real. Stuff like that doesn’t happen.

I reach out next to me and switch on the light. I squint until my eyes adjust and then I see the chair wedged up against the door handle.

Of course stuff happens, I think dully. Stuff happens all the time.

ADAM

They were famous! My mum and dad. I never knew they were famous. For a couple of weeks in 2010, everyone in the country knew about them, was looking for them. “Most Wanted.” For something they didn’t do — just wrong place, wrong time. And all because Mum could see the numbers, like me.

Nan’s kept some of the clippings from the papers — gives me chills looking at them. My mum and dad, so young, as young as I am now, staring out from the front page. They were only kids when they had me. Well, Dad never even knew about me. He died before Mum knew she was pregnant.

If only I’d known about all this. I could’ve asked Mum, we could’ve talked about it…. All she ever said to me about the numbers was that they were secret. I could never tell anyone their number. And the only person I ever did tell was her. I wrote her number down on a picture of her when I was five, before I knew what it meant.

What the hell did that do to her? What must her last few years have been like, knowing? I’ve got part of the answer now. Next to my notebook, there’s an envelope folded in half. When she’s finished telling me Mum and Dad’s story, Nan gives it me.

“She wanted you to have this. When the time was right. I reckon that’s now.”

My name’s written on the front in Mum’s writing — I’d know it anywhere. I swear my heart stops for a second when I see it. I can’t believe it’s real. Something from Mum. Something for me.

And Nan’s been holding on to it. What right did she have…? It’s not hers, it’s mine. The anger sparks up again.

“How long have you had this?” I say.

“She gave it to me a few weeks before she…went.”

“Why didn’t you give it to me? It’s mine. It’s got my name on it.”

“I told you,” she says slowly, like she’s explaining something to an idiot, “she asked me to keep it for you. For when you was ready.”

“And you’d know, would you? You’d know what was best?” She looks me straight in the eye. She can feel the tension as much as I can and she’s not backing down.

“Yeah, at least your mum thought so. She trusted me.”

I snort.

“I’m fifteen. I don’t need you making decisions for me. You don’t know nothing about me.”

“I know more than you think, son. Now, why don’t you calm down for a minute and open that envelope?”

The envelope. I’ve almost forgotten that’s what we’re arguing about.

“I’m gonna read it on my own,” I say, and I hold it up to my chest. Mine, not hers. She’s disappointed, I can see that — she wants to know what’s in it, nosy old cow. Then she sniffs loudly and reaches for another cigarette.

“’Course,” she says. “’Course you do. Come and talk to me when you’ve done. I’ll be right here.”

I take it up to my room and sit on the bed. My private space, a room of my own, except that it’s not mine. I’ve only got a handful of my things with me. Everything else here is my dad’s: a boy about the same age as me, a boy I never knew and who never knew about me. I’m inside a shrine, surrounded by his stuff. Nan never moved a thing when he died, and you could tell it hurt her to put me in here, but there was nowhere else I could go.

I put the envelope on my lap and stare at it. Mum’s writing. Her hand held this envelope. Is there any of her left on it? I smooth my fingers across it. I want to read whatever’s inside, but I also know that once I’ve