Jelly Cooper: Alien (7 page)

As my classmates trudge towards the shower block, I see
Trishia with a couple of other mean girls.  They have their heads together.  Just before they go through the door, she turns and glares at me and I know that trouble’s heading my way.

“Here, tomorrow, twelve thirty, Cooper,” Mr Davies bellows, jogging on the spot.  He nods his head in my direction and takes off around the track for his usual post-lesson run.

What just happened?

Chapter
Six

OK, I’m running.

Why am I running?

“Run, Jelly, run.”

“I can’t.”

Tears stream down my cheeks, which is odd. I
never
cry.  I spin, trying to pinpoint where the voice is coming from.

“You can.  Now RUN.”

I don’t react well to people giving me orders.

“I WON’T,”
I scream.

“Run, Jelly, run.”
  The voice is quiet, but insistent.

I slump to the ground in a sulk, my hair hanging around my face
, shielding me from whatever is out there.  I close my eyes and, in the absence of ruby slippers, whisper, ‘wake up now, wake up now, wake up now.’

I peek from behind
a curtain of copper hair and jump.  There is a pair of sandal-clad feet on the ground right in front of me.  I look up, squinting against the yellow sky.

The sandals, and feet, belong to a man. 
A man wearing a white blanket.  It looks suspiciously like a toga and is tied around the waist with a yellow and purple sash.  His eyes are green and they’re locked onto my face.

Julius Caesar smiles
and I click my fingers.

“You’re the voice
in my dream telling me to run.  My other dream, I mean.”

He nods, once.
  “Crin.”

Something else
pops into my head.  “OK, Crin.  How do you know my name?”

“Which one?”
  The man’s smile turns sad.  The corner of his mouth twitches.  “I know many things about you, Camille.”

I let the whole name thing slide (the guy’s crazy – arguing about my name isn’t going to change that) and take the opportunity to get a good look at him.  When I explain this dream to Humphrey and Agatha, I’m not go
ing to miss out a single thing. I’m going to be like Columbo or maybe Poirot, but without the funny little moustache. 

He’s
just a bit taller than Agatha’s brother James, who is a total hotty by the way, so he must be around six-two.  His skin is tanned and brown, which makes his green eyes zing.  His hair is brown but I see grey poking out here and there.  My mother would call it salt and pepper.  I call it getting on a bit.  I try to guess, but I can’t put an age on him. 

He se
es me staring and stares back; how annoying.

“
Come on then, spit it out.  Tell me what you’ve come here to tell me and we can all go home, wake up, whatever, and get some sleep.” 

Sleep
!  I remember that.

“We don’t have very long,” he says, sounding tired himself.  “
They are stronger.  I had to use a collective to shut him out so that I could reach you safely.”

“W
hoa, back up there a minute.  Who’s ‘he’ and where are you shutting him out of?”

I know who the ‘he’ is, but I want him to s
ay it.  I want another person, even an imaginary one, to say that the psycho alien bounty hunter exists.

He looks up at the sky and blows out his cheeks. 
“The Hunter, Camille, as you know.  I had to use a collective to shut the Hunter out of your head while we spoke.”

I laugh.  I know that I shouldn’t but I can’t help myself.  It’s a teeny bit much, even for me. 

“My head?” 

I chuckle some more.

He doesn’t smile back.  “Yes.  Unless we shut him out of your mind while I talk to you, he’ll know who you are and where you are.”

“Sure he will.”
  This guy’s an absolute scream.  He should work the comedy circuits; he’d make a killing.  The toga would have to go though.

He sighs.
  “The Hunter can reach you through your subconscious, when you sleep or dream.  Any time your mind is relaxed, he can get in.  That’s how he’ll track you, pinpoint your location and kill you.”

“
Sure, yeah, of course.”

Without warning
, he grabs my shoulders and something passes between us.  I see yellow skies and green clouds.  I see a city at the edge of a meadow of purple corn and strangely dressed people walking around.  I see a park full of children and I see an empty, black future full of fire and persecution and death for these people. 

My eyes
go wide and I stumble away. 

“It’s real, Camille.  This is going to be hard for you to accept at first, but please try; we
have little time.  You are not human.”

I shake my head.
 
No, I’m not.

“
You are Javorian.”

I nod, once.
 
Yes, I am.

“Go on.”

“Your name is Camille Sakiiri and you are from Javoria.  There are two sentient species on Javoria: us and the
bashrak. 
Forty seven years ago, under a new ruler, the
bashrak
decided that
they wanted the planet.  The whole planet.  We fought them off for decades but they grew
too strong.  Everyone was dying,
everything
was dying.  We dispatched the graclings, the um, babies, to far away planets to save them.  You came here, to Earth.  Unfortunately, so did one of the
bashrack’s
best Hunters.  His mission was,
is
, to find you and kill you. It’s the only purpose in his life.  He won’t stop until it’s done.”

He touches
the back of my hand with his finger and I see it all.  Images of the planet appear in my mind; the battles, the victories, the defeats, thousands and thousands of infants being evacuated, being left with strangers.  I see parents crying over lost children and the
bashrak
pressing forward, hunting and slaughtering. 

Oh my God.

They don’t hesitate; they just murder and destroy.

“I can’t fight him
.”

When he touched me, sandal man exchanged more than pretty pictures.

He pulls a face.  “You were not meant to feel that.”

To hell with that.
  What about the not being able to fight thing?  How do I combat
that
?

“You flee,” he says. 

Whoa horsy.

“How did you do that?” I whisper.  “You read my mind.  How did you do it?”

He shrugs.  “We are telepaths.  Javorians, I mean.”

“Of course.
  Silly me.”  Amidst the total insanity of this conversation, I have a thought.  “Why haven’t I been reading people’s thoughts already if I’m Delorian?”

“
Javorian,” he corrects with a frown. I hide a smirk. 
Gotcha.

My lovely smug glow
at pushing his buttons suddenly evaporates as I realise that my question has made him incredibly sad.  I can
feel
it. 

“It’s a skill you have to develop
,” he says.  “If you had grown up on your home planet, you would be accomplished by now.”

I almost blur
t out “Earth is my home planet.”  I don’t know why I stop myself. 

“So,” I say instead, “how do I manage this mind boggling feat?”

“You focus.”

Silence.

“I focus? 
I focus
.  Of course, why didn’t I think of it before – it’s all so simple. HA!  I focus when I’m in class every day.  I focus when I talk to my friends.  I
focus
when I pour milk on my cereal.  I never know what the English teacher is about to say next, or what’s going on in Agatha’s head, or Humphrey’s.”

His voice is patient, but the impatience in his eyes is hard to miss. 
His green eyes.  Hmmm.

“
Focus is the key to every one of your gifts.  They haven’t developed because you were unaware.  Your powers will reveal themselves despite your lack of experience; it’s your birthright.”

I screw up my face, forgetting that it makes me look like a field mouse.  “I’m not really following this.”

“Had you been on Javoria, you would be fully developed and your skills would be perfected.  You have had no stimulus on Earth and as a result, your powers have been…um…asleep.”

“You can say that again.”

He ignores me.  “Now you have come of age and your powers are waking.”

“You’re telling me that my fourteenth birthday was the trigger for all of this?”

He nods.

“Oh man.  That’s harsh.  I thought sixteen was the big one.”

He allows himself a half smile.  “How soon after your birth date did you start getting the dreams?”

He knows about the dreams.  I’m
at once relieved beyond belief and terrified, because bit by bit this nightmare is becoming real to me.  I weigh up my options – they don’t amount to much - so I go back to the beginning and tell sandal man about the guy in the yellow raincoat.  I dreamed of him
before
my birthday. 

He dismisses it with a wave of hi
s weathered hand and mumbles,

“T
hat’s nothing, it’s not connected.  What about the Hunter?  How soon after did you start dreaming of him?”

Not connected? 
Not connected?
I’ve been dreaming of a guy in a yellow raincoat for
months
and it’s not connected?  Oh, well, that makes it all OK then! 

Breathe, Jelly, breathe.

I shrug my shoulders (just to emphasize that if he doesn’t care, I don’t care).

“The night of my birthday I dreamed of yellow raincoat guy
, as usual, and the night after I had a new, less pleasant, visitor.”

Wow!  Sandal man actually swears in front of me
and I’m not talking about a minor, ruffle some old lady’s feathers kind of curse; this is a full blown, out and out, gutter curse.  I’m impressed.

I can’t seem to wipe the silly smile from my face, but it disappears soon enough when I catch his eyes. 

“This is what we feared the most.  Many graclings were sent from Javoria fourteen years ago, but your signal was stronger than the others.”

“Signal?
  I have a signal?”

He nods.
  “All living beings have a signal, Camile.  Each one is a little different and unique.  Some can tune in to other people’s signals.  It’s a skill the
bashrak
have.  They knew that you had left the planet when your signal faded.  They assigned a Hunter to track you down.  He’s been looking for a long time, waiting all of these years, attuning himself to you, trying to pinpoint you.  When you turned fourteen and unlocked your birthright, it would have been like a telepathic beacon.  He would have picked up on it immediately.”

His eyes slide away from mine. 

“Come on,” I say, arms crossed.  He’s hiding something.  I
know
it.  “Finish.”

He won’t look at me. 

“Your signal must be stronger than we thought for the Hunter to pick it up so quickly.  It will help him find you and he is
desperate
to find you.”

That’s just fabulous.

“Let me get this straight.  The day I turned fourteen, I opened up a telepathic link between me and this Hunter psycho bloke which makes it that much easier for him to track me down and kill me?  That’s fantastic, just fantastic.”

I
kick the dusty ground between us.  Whichever way I look at it, the outcome’s the same: I’m screwed.  I round on him with a speed that surprises us both. 

“How long have I got before he reaches me?”

The corners of his mouth turn down.  “Not long.  He will have narrowed in on the area.  He hasn’t worked out who you are yet, but he’ll be watching for any signs.”

“Like?”
 

“Your powers will
reveal you.  Don’t use them in front of anyone.” 

I grunt.  “
There’s no chance of that happening.  For a start, I can’t read thoughts,” I tick them off my fingers one by one, “I have no other special powers and I run like a person standing in quick...drying.......cement.”

Oh bugger.

He looks confused.  “I don’t understand.”

Tendrils of fear uncurl in my stomach. 
PE, the race, the freaky running skills. 

I can’t let sandal man know
.  I have to distract him.