10.

Justin survived his first week at school.

With Boy at his side, he managed to act out his role as an average member of teenage society, albeit an increasingly isolated one. Friends gave up trying to engage him in conversation: his clothes were weird, for one thing, and he no longer answered to his name, a fact they found exceptionally irritating. A decreasing number of people bothered talking to him before school, sitting with him at the library, or asking when he was going to lunch. He hadn't realized his new ident.i.ty would be so lonely.

Peter Prince, however, chose the shower next to his after PE. 'Hey,' he said cheerfully.

Justin looked up, grateful to be acknowledged. 'Hey.'

'Where's your dog?' Peter's voice came from within the gushing stream of water.

Justin thought he must have misheard. 'Pardon?'

'Your dog.'

'Yes?'

'Isn't he with you today?'

Justin looked at Peter. 'Ha b.l.o.o.d.y ha.'

Peter stuck his head out of the stream of water, his features dripping. He smiled shyly. 'I love greyhounds.'

Justin stared. 'My dog is imaginary.'

'Oh.' Peter looked interested. 'That's unusual.'

Justin put his head under the water. When he emerged, Peter was still looking at him. 'Less work,' he offered cheerily. 'If the dog's imaginary, I mean. Not so much grooming, feeding, etc'

Justin continued to stare as Peter turned the ma.s.sive, old-fashioned tap to OFF, wrapped himself in a damp greyish towel the size of a dishcloth, and dripped across the uneven tiled floor to his locker.

The following day, Peter greeted Justin with a smile and fell into step with him as he walked home from school. Looking down to the approximate area of Justin's left heel, Peter added, 'Hiya, boy.'

Boy trotted over and leant against him briefly as Justin watched in wonder. The boundary between reality and fantasy wobbled dangerously.

Peter pulled a tennis ball out of his bag, and threw it hard across the ground. The dog sprang forward and shot off, moving so fast he blurred. 'Wow,' Peter said happily, 'what a beauty. Very ancient breed, you know. Kept by kings. Pharaohs used them for hunting lions.'

Justin looked at him.

'Second only to cheetahs in speed. Huge hearts in relation to their weight; same size as ours.'

Justin thought about this. Big hearts, long legs. All they needed was a slightly bigger brain and they'd rule the world. He kept walking, with his greyhound and Peter Prince lolloping at his side. 'How do you know so much about greyhounds?'

Peter looked embarra.s.sed. 'I read a lot.'

They walked in silence for a while, Peter contemplating greyhounds and Justin contemplating Peter. They didn't seem to have much in common. Did Peter imagine they might be friends? He'd had friends in the past, mainly based on mutual need another person to kick a ball with, someone who had better games at home. Peter appeared to be without motive in attaching himself to Justin and Boy. He seemed content just to keep them company.

At Justin's house, Peter waved and walked on. Justin stared after him but the other boy didn't look back.

Oh well, he thought. At least Boy likes him. The two might have been old friends, the way they fell in together.

But Boy's my dog!

Maybe it's a plot, he thought. Maybe they're working together. Maybe Peter is Boy's human spy contact, brought in as back-up.

He looked at Boy. The dog had managed to wedge his narrow back under the kitchen radiator for warmth and was snoring contentedly.

I can't even trust my own imaginary dog, Justin thought. How much lower can a person get?

11.

Slowly, and in the absence of any compet.i.tion, Justin began thinking of Peter as a friend. Peter wasn't exactly a social a.s.set, but he was sympathetic, intelligent, and his dogged constancy appealed to Justin.

At school, their friendship attracted attention, as pretty much everything at a secondary school did.

'Hey, look! It's Stephen Hawking and Head Case.' A pasty-faced group of younger boys sat on a wall outside the school gate at all hours, stabbing limp, fatty chips with wooden forks and jeering at anything that moved.

Peter stopped and looked at them with clinical detachment.

'Sometimes I wonder how their brains work,' he said, resuming his walk alongside Justin, 'whether there's a mechanism by which serotonin is released in the process of attempting to demean others. It would explain a lot about the endemic nature of bullying.'

'Maybe they're just cretins. Maybe they've been subjected to foetal dumb-a.r.s.e syndrome in the womb.'

Peter smiled. 'Just as likely. Still, it makes you wonder.'

'It makes you wonder.'

As they pa.s.sed another set of jeering boys, Peter stumbled, deftly knocking one of the ringleaders off the wall with his elbow. The boy fell backwards with a satisfying thump, unleashing a volley of abuse. Justin and Peter ran.

They slowed a few blocks later, laughing.

'Nice move,' Justin said.

'Won't make him friendlier next time.'

'You want to go back and rehabilitate him?'

Peter pulled the tennis ball out of his bag. As they stepped on to Luton Common, he threw it along the ground for Boy. 'I meant to ask you,' he began, without turning to face Justin.

Boy brought the ball back and Peter threw it again, in a long high arc. 'What made you... I mean... why'd you change your name?'

Justin stopped. 'It's a long story.'

Boy caught the ball in mid-air halfway across the common, placed it carefully on the ground where he stood and returned without it to the boys. Justin reached down to stroke his head. 'Have you ever felt like fate has it in for you?'

'No,' said Peter, frowning. 'Have you?'

'Yes.'

'That's strange.' Peter thought for a moment, then looked at Justin. 'What does that have to do with changing your name?'

'It's part of my disguise.'

'Your disguise?'

'My disguise from fate. I'm hiding.'

'Hiding?'

'Yes.'

'From fate?'

He nodded.

'Wow.' Peter blinked at him. 'You're serious?'

'Yes.'

The silence lasted three-quarters of the way across the large expanse of withered gra.s.s.

'Interesting,' Peter said slowly. 'Of course, I have thought rather a lot about predetermination, though perhaps not in exactly the way you mean. I sometimes get a feeling that something I remember hasn't actually happened yet, but I'm not sure whether it really has happened and I've just forgotten that it has.'

He screwed up his face.

'I mean, if we accept that the universe is cylindrical and energy eventually joins up with itself, perhaps thought runs along the outside of the cylinder as well, repeating ad infinitum.' He looked animated at the possibility. 'That could mean that a thought actually has happened in the sense of having taken place somewhere in the universe along the outside of the cylinder, but can't exactly be attributed to me as an individual. Or not yet, anyway.'

Justin stared.

'Let's say, for instance, that you have the same dream over and over, only each time you're not sure whether you actually had the same dream before or just dreamt that you did.' He looked at Justin expectantly. 'It could relate to the thinning boundaries between reality, that is to say active expenditure of energy, and thought, or pa.s.sive energy. Either way, the existence of the act, or in this case, the dream, is not in doubt. The question you have to ask is how does it exist, and how do we define the energy of thought versus the energy of action. You've posed a very interesting question here.'

He paused.

'Take Boy. Does he exist or doesn't he? You see him, I see him. Is that enough to vouch for his existence? I would say it is. Surely there's a point at which an idea conjured by more than one brain has existence, not merely in the philosophical sense, but in the sense of being the object of expended energy. I'm quite interested in thought as energy, as valid an expression of energy as ' he paused, watching Boy race a squirrel to a tree 'as a running dog.'

Boy granted the squirrel freedom and it spiralled, panicked, up to safety.

'It's not exactly what you'd call fate. But possibly relevant in its way.' Peter smiled apologetically.

Justin felt dazed by Peter's string of connections. His own brain soared and crashed, groped endlessly for elusive footholds in reality. There were dark corners he didn't dare enter, creaking catacombs lined with the corpses of doubt, incomprehension and paranoia. His brain didn't grapple with theories, it grappled with fear.

They walked on in silence. A few hundred metres later where the road split, Justin stopped, wondering whether there was one last comment to be made. He couldn't think of one.

'Goodbye,' he said.

Peter watched him go.

'Justin!'

Justin turned.

'I... I think you should meet my sister. She'd like you. I mean, you might like her too.' The embarra.s.sed smile. 'Anyway, you should meet.'

Justin only nodded, but Peter looked pleased, as if something important had been settled.

Each boy headed home, deep in thought.

12.

Life continued to pursue Justin. In his second week of school, as he made his way towards the changing rooms after PE, the athletics coach pulled him aside.

'Case!' Coach barked. 'Ever thought about cross-country?'

Boy's ears flicked forward. He liked a good run.

Justin looked behind him.

'You, Case! Did you hear what I said?'

Justin nodded.

'Well? We need more runners this year.'

'But I can't run.'