Arrival (3 page)

She was kidding, I think.

Peter grinned at her and opened his mouth to say something else, but at that moment Mr Larson walked into the room. He was wearing a shirt and tie and carrying a big plastic crate. He looked young for a teacher, but not someone you could just walk all over.

‘Morning, everyone,' he said, putting the crate down on his desk.

‘Hey, sir!' said Peter, sticking a hand into the air. ‘We've got another newbie.'

‘Oh yes, they told me about you,' said Mr Larson. ‘Luke Hunter, right?'

‘Yeah,' I said, bracing for the tell-us-a-bit-about-yourself speech.

But Mr Larson just went straight on with the lesson. ‘You have impeccable timing, Luke,' he said, reaching into his crate, ‘because today we are starting a brand-new book study.'

Everyone else groaned as Mr Larson started handing out fresh copies of some novel –
The Shape
of Things to Come.

‘I'd like you all to read this in the next two weeks,' said Mr Larson.

‘What?' shouted Tank from the back. ‘Come on, sir! Be reasonable!'

‘However,' Mr Larson smiled, ‘I realise that this is about as likely as Peter ever getting that haircut he so desperately needs.' He pushed a button on his desk and a projector screen came down from the ceiling. ‘So today we're going to begin by watching the movie adaptation.'

The class cheered.

‘Let me warn you,' Mr Larson continued, walking over to turn off the lights, ‘that this is only a starting point. You
will
need to read the book at some stage, and rest assured I will know if you haven't done so.'

The movie turned out to be pretty dodgy. It was this ancient black and white thing from the 1930s with lame special effects, but even a bad movie is better than doing a worksheet or whatever.

A couple of boys wandered in about halfway through the lesson, muttering something about a mixed-up timetable. Mr Larson just handed each of them a copy of the book and pointed to some empty chairs at the back of the room.

That was a good sign. Obviously this guy had a bit of perspective.

But as the day went on, I realised that people showing up late or wandering into the wrong room were fairly regular features of life at Phoenix High. Like Mum had predicted, I was a long way from being the only new kid in this place. Even some of the teachers didn't seem totally on top of things.

Apart from that, though, Phoenix High wasn't that different from the last three high schools I'd been at. The only other major difference was that, like the rest of the town, this place was obviously running on a gazillion-dollar budget, so everything in it was top-of-the-line.

I ended up sticking with Peter for most of the day. After whatever had happened between him and his old friends, I got the feeling he was grateful to have someone new to hang out with. When the final bell went, the two of us grabbed our identical bikes and walked them back out into the main street.

‘What's up with all the security guards?' I asked as we passed another guy in a black uniform.

‘They work for Mr Shackleton,' said Peter. ‘We have them here instead of cops.'

‘Instead of cops? Is that even legal?'

‘Must be.'

‘But doesn't the government make sure there's police everywhere?' I asked. ‘Isn't that a rule?'

‘I dunno,' said Peter. ‘But it's not as if we need both. Phoenix has, like, zero crime.'

A bit further up the road, Peter stopped at the big fountain in the town square. ‘This is my stop,' he said, thrusting a thumb over his shoulder at the tall, black building I'd noticed on my way in. ‘My dad's finishing work early today and I'm supposed to meet him here.'

I stared up at the building. ‘What is that place anyway?'

‘Shackleton building,' said Peter. ‘Just offices and meeting rooms and stuff. Like our town hall, I guess.'

‘Pretty big town hall,' I muttered. I knew I was probably starting to sound paranoid, but I couldn't shake the feeling there was more to the building than that. ‘Is that all that goes on in there? Just meetings?'

‘Uh-huh,' Peter said blankly. ‘Well, just that and the alien autopsies.'

I rolled my eyes and his face broke into a grin.

‘Mate, just because a building's big and black and shiny doesn't mean there's something suss going on inside.'

‘All right, all right,' I said, slightly frustrated but trying not to show it. ‘Sorry.'

‘It's all good,' said Peter. ‘But just try to relax, will you? I know Phoenix can seem a bit weird at first, but it's an okay town once you get used to it.'

‘Yeah. Well, see you tomorrow, okay?'

‘Yeah, see you.'

I flipped my mobile open for about the hundredth time that day. Still no reception.

How long would it take Dad to start worrying that he hadn't heard from us?

I hopped on my bike and rode the rest of the way home, my frustration building. As soon as I got inside, I went into the kitchen and tried the landline. No dial tone. The lines were still down.

Unbelievable. How much longer did they think this place could keep functioning without phones?

Get a grip,
I told myself
. They're working on it.

Maybe Peter was right. Maybe I was just stressing out over nothing. This place wasn't all bad. As far as first days at a new school went, this one had been pretty good.

By the time I got to the top of the stairs, I was almost ready to take his advice and forget about the few little things that had been bugging me about Phoenix.

But then I opened my bedroom door.

Have you ever had one of those moments where all of a sudden you just
know
that something really, really bad is coming? One of those moments where, somehow, even though there's no real sign of anything being wrong, you just feel it in your gut that there's major trouble on the way?

As I walked into my bedroom and glanced at my bed, I was punched in the face by one of those moments.

Someone had been in here.

Someone had come into my room and made my bed.

Sitting on top of the pillow was a small, unmarked yellow envelope.

And before I opened it up, before I even touched that envelope, I
knew
there was nothing but trouble inside.

Chapter 4

W
EDNESDAY
, M
AY
6
99
DAYS

Hang on,
I told myself, glancing around the room.
Calm down. Maybe this is normal. Maybe we have a
cleaning service.

But no, nothing else in the room had been touched. My pyjamas were lying on the floor in the corner. A half-empty glass of water was still sitting on my bedside table.

Whoever had been in here hadn't been invited.

I gritted my teeth and grabbed a textbook from my desk to defend myself. Because clearly their guns and meat cleavers would be no match for my
Studies
in Geography.

I walked back out into the hall and started checking through the whole house room by room, trying not to think too much about what might happen if there actually
was
someone else in here.

But the whole house was deserted. Nothing missing. Nothing even moved. And I couldn't see any sign of someone forcing their way in.

Except for the envelope sitting on my bed.

I went back into my room and picked it up, turning it over in my hands. No name, no address. There was something small and solid sliding around inside. I tore open the envelope and tipped the thing into my hand.

It was a USB memory stick. Expensive-looking. Silver stainless steel. There were two letters on the side that looked like they'd been scratched into the metal with a paperclip:
J.B.

Someone's initials, maybe? The original owner's?

But why would they go to all the trouble of breaking into my house and delivering me a secret message or whatever, if the initials on the stick were just going to lead me straight back to them?

I pulled out my new laptop and drummed my fingers on the desk as it started up. My mind was flashing back to every movie I'd ever seen about an apparently normal kid being contacted by a secret spy agency or told they had hidden superpowers.

Don't be an idiot. It's probably just
…

But I had no idea what it probably was.

The computer finally finished loading and I plugged in the USB. A folder popped up on the screen, showing the contents of the stick. There was only one file on it:

intSC1002A_lhunter.doc

L. Hunter. So this was definitely meant for me.

I opened up the file. It was a huge stream of garbled text, pages and pages of it, like someone had let their two-year-old loose on the computer and sent me the results.

I tried opening the file up in another program.

Nothing.

Maybe this was all just a prank. Some stupid mind game that the kids at school played with new arrivals. But how could they have got inside the house?

Then I remembered something: the principal, Ms Pryor, hadn't been around today. Could she have had something to do with this?

Yes, Luke, your new school principal (who you've never
even met) took the day off school to sneak into your house and
drop off a memory stick filled with gibberish.

And make your bed.

Right. That made sense.

I closed my eyes and dropped back into my chair. This was going nowhere.

But then I thought back to our computer studies lesson from that afternoon. We'd been given the whole period to turn some climate change data into a graph, but Peter had finished in about four seconds. Maybe he'd have more luck with this.

Obviously a phone call wasn't an option, but Mrs Stapleton had said that the town's intranet was still working. I found Peter's address in the town directory and emailed him about the USB, trying to sound as casual as possible, not wanting to give him another excuse to accuse me of worrying over nothing. I attached the garbled file and hit send.

While I was at it, I tried sending an email through to Dad. It bounced straight back.

I spun around in my chair and my eyes landed back on my neatly made bed. Somehow, those perfectly tucked-in sheets added a whole other layer of creepiness. I mean, why bother? Surely being a mysterious stalker was weird enough without being a neat freak as well.

I glanced over my shoulder, trying to shake the feeling of unseen eyes bearing down on me, and went back to my schoolbag. Already, I had a ton of homework to do. Four pages of trigonometry questions and a research assignment on cyclones.

I tried to make a start on it all, but with everything else buzzing around in my head, it was impossible to concentrate and I wound up lying on my bed watching TV instead.

There was nothing on. As in, literally nothing. Every channel I flipped to was just a white screen with a Shackleton Co-operative logo that said,
150
Satellite Channels
COMING SOON
!

I finally came across the one channel that
was
working, but it was just this lame ‘Welcome to Phoenix' movie playing on a loop. The camera followed a way-too-perfect-looking man and woman around the town as they smiled and waved and gushed about how amazing and wonderful and environmentally friendly everything was.

I watched the rest of the video, then waited for the next loop and watched the whole thing through again. Apart from the overly enthusiastic hosts (seriously, no-one is
that
excited about water filtration), there was no sign of anything weird going on in the town.

Of course not. The whole point of this movie was to show that Phoenix was normal. Better than normal.

There was a game console sitting on top of the TV cabinet. I thought again about doing some homework, but decided to go easy on myself. First day of school and all that. So I sat on my bed playing video games until about 7.30 p.m., when Mum finally got home.

‘Luke! Dinner!'

I went downstairs and found her walking into the lounge room with a stack of papers in one hand and a pizza box in the other.

‘Sorry I'm so late,' she said, putting them down on the coffee table and collapsing onto a couch. ‘Wall-to-wall orientation meetings all day. It was four-thirty before they even showed me to my office.'

Mum's a human resources manager. Basically, her work involves getting paid through the nose by some huge company or other to figure out how they can get the most out of their employees for the least amount of money.

‘No worries,' I said, barely hearing her. Mum's been apologising for staying back late at work for as long as I can remember.

‘I'll shop tomorrow,' Mum yawned. ‘At least enough to cook you a proper dinner.'

‘Right,' I said, knowing she wouldn't. Dad had always been in charge of the cooking at home, and there'd been a pretty disgusting drop in the amount of real food we ate since he moved out.

‘How was school?'

‘All right,' I said, grabbing a slice of pizza and sitting down on one of the other couches, still feeling like a stranger in my own house. My mind flashed to the USB sitting upstairs on my desk, but I didn't really see any point in telling Mum about it. ‘The phones are still down,' I added.

Mum nodded. ‘It's the same all over town. I spoke to my boss about it. Apparently they've been offline for almost a month now.'

‘Huh?' I looked up from my pizza. ‘Seriously?

What's taking so long?'

‘She didn't say,' Mum said with a shrug. ‘But Phoenix is a small town, and fairly isolated. And don't forget, this whole place was built from the ground up less than a year ago. There were bound to be a few hiccups along the way.'

‘A month with no phones? You call that a hiccup?'

‘What do you want me to call it? Obviously it's not ideal, but they'll sort it all out soon enough. And in the meantime, the intranet is still up and running. So, really, it's not such a huge problem.'