The Misfits Club

  For my parents, Mary and Dan

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘You’re dead.’

  The thing nobody had ever told Brian about being chased was that it was fun. It was terrifying too, but that was part of the fun. Of course, the fact that he was on a bicycle, his trusty old Stringer White 5000, meant that he had an advantage over the two idiots who were after him; they were on foot. He flipped the pedals backwards, using the rear brakes to send the bike into a curving skid that spat up gravel chips from the churchyard.

  It was almost one o’clock, eighteen days to the end of the school summer holidays and fifteen days to the end of the Misfits Club. A large grey-white cloud was beginning to hide the early afternoon sun as Brian straightened up the bike. On one side of him was the town of Newpark, on the other a road that bisected the town’s largest housing estate. Beyond that lay the countryside and his escape.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ the bigger of his two pursuers shouted.

  ‘I wasn’t really listening. Was it something about being dead?’

  His mother had said that he had a smart mouth, just like his dad – the only thing they had in common, Brian hoped – and that smart mouths got you into trouble. She was right about that; he was often in trouble.

  Of course, he’d be in more trouble if these two hairy gorillas caught up with him. Gorilla number one was flabby and out of shape and not that much of a threat. Gorilla number two was a different prospect, though. He was younger and fitter and he wasn’t issuing threats. In fact, he wasn’t saying anything at all. That freaked Brian out a little bit. His father had always warned him that the quiet ones were the ones you had to watch out for.

  The gap between them was about fifty metres. Unless one of them was an Olympic sprinter, there was no way he was going to be caught.

  ‘You’re so dead they’ll have to bury you twice,’ the heavier of the two men roared.

  Brian faked a yawn, really exaggerated it too. ‘Sorry, did you say something? You’re so far away it’s hard to hear you.’

  He thought gorilla number one was going to explode with rage. His cheeks puffed out and his face began to turn crimson, from the tip of his forehead to the bottom of his chin – dazzlingly red – like it was the world’s worst superhero power. It made Brian smile until he realized that he’d lost sight of the second guy. There was no sign of him. Had he just given up?

  VRRRROOOM.

  Uh-oh, Brian thought. That’s not the sound of someone giving up. It was actually the sound of a car, a cobalt-blue 2004 Subaru Impreza, to be completely accurate. A souped-up car if the roaring, guttural engine sounds that sent great rumbling tremors across the ground were anything to go by. It emerged from the hidden parking space on the side of Colbert Street like a predator emerging from the undergrowth.

  ‘Oh, crud,’ Brian said as his stomach lurched.

  He was quick on the bike, but he didn’t think he was quicker than an Impreza. He was about to find out for certain. The car revved, took off, then stopped briefly to let the bigger guy climb in as Brian spun the bike round by the handlebars, stood up and began pedalling faster than he ever had before.

  There was a left turn thirty metres ahead that led into a cul-de-sac. If he could get to the end of the cul-de-sac, he could make it over the Hennigans’ back wall and disappear into the maze of alleys behind their house. They’d never find him there.

  The left turn was only ten metres away now. Another plan was beginning to form in Brian’s brain.

  Form faster, form faster, he thought.

  The car closed the distance between them quickly and the nose of the Impreza was just behind him as he turned into the cul-de-sac at speed, leaning low, his shoulder almost grazing the ground as the bike struggled to stay on two wheels.

  Brian was almost parallel to the tarmac, but he was in the flow – completely focused, nothing existing outside of him and this moment. Time slowed. He could see everything all at once, hear the noise of children playing, smell the fumes from the car’s giant exhaust, then the whine as the car struggled to follow him into the turn.

  The back end of the car swung wide, dragging the rest of the vehicle with it, followed by the look of sheer panic on the bigger man’s face as he briefly thought they were going to smack into a garden wall. The younger man corrected the spin with two sharp movements of the steering wheel. The car righted itself with a judder.

  Brian launched himself on to the small green, and circled round, digging a tyre furrow in the soft grass, before heading back in the goons’ direction. He knew he wouldn’t make it to the Hennigans’ house before they caught him. It was time for Plan B.

  As they watched open-mouthed, he briefly considered making a rude gesture, but instead he just waved. It was hard to tell because he was travelling at speed, but they appeared to be getting even angrier.

  He didn’t want to head back towards town – they’d catch him too easily – so there was only a single possibility left. It was one he didn’t want to take as whether it would work or not depended upon how lazy a neighbour had been over the last few days, but he decided that he had no other choice. The other possibilities, ones that involved him begging for mercy or shouting for someone to call the gardaí, never occurred to him.

  The turn-off was on the opposite side of the road, past the housing estate. He was nearly there when he heard the car’s tyres squeal as it joined him on the main road.

  He veered the bike right again, down a narrow path with grass growing in the middle. The last of the housing estate was on one side, nothing but fields on the other. Brian hoped that the farmer who owned the fields hadn’t got around to fixing the broken fence yet. It sagged down next to the iron gate at the end of the path, leaving an opening of about a metre, enough of a gap for Brian and the bike to make it through if he was careful, but not enough space for a car to follow. Brian pedalled furiously. The adrenalin that had kept him going was running out now – his lungs were on fire and his legs felt like concrete, but he kept pedalling. He was only metres away when the car loomed up behind him.

  He was going to make it.

  As he slipped between the tumbledown barbed-wire fence and the concrete post of the iron gate, he saw that it was padlocked. He heard the screech of brakes as the car tried to avoid slamming into the gate. He’d done it. Even if they tried to break the lock, he’d be miles away from them by the time they managed it. The only way they could chase him now was by running after him and he knew they wouldn’t do that. They’d never catch him on foot.

  He glanced behind and saw both of them standing by the car. The bigger guy was shaking his fist and sh
outing something at him. Something rude, no doubt, but Brian couldn’t hear it. They’d given up. He was free. Or at least he would have been if he’d been paying attention.

  The grassy field wasn’t the smoothest of surfaces and as he bounced along the rutted path he hit something, a rock maybe, nothing he could clearly see. It jolted the bike and sent him flying over the handlebars. He hit the ground hard, scudded along the surface for a couple of seconds before he came to a stop, twisted on his side.

  ‘Ow,’ he said.

  Ow was a little bit of an understatement. It hurt a lot more than an ow’s worth. He heard one of the men laugh, a hollow mocking laugh that really annoyed him, nearly as much as the severe pain he was in annoyed him.

  Brian clambered to his feet. The men had taken a few steps into the field. He was in no shape to outrun them. He wasn’t even sure he could reach his bike in time.

  ‘We’ve got him now,’ one of them said.

  ❀ Amelia’s Journal ❀

  6pm – Everything is sort of normal. If you think a screaming baby and a house being in a complete mess is normal. It’s been like that for the last six weeks since Susanna, Her Royal Highness, first arrived. Six weeks old and my new baby sister is already the centre of the universe and now it’s like I don’t exist at all. Twelve years of being an only child and suddenly they’ve forgotten about me. It’s not fair. It really isn’t. I get that she’s small and, when her face isn’t all red and scrunched up cos she’s crying (which is never), she is kind of cute, but why does she have to get all the attention?

  7.15pm – Everything is HORRIBLE. More horrible than being forgotten. I hate my dad and I hate my stepmother. During dinner they tricked me into thinking everything was OK by acting all nice to me and stuff. They said having a new baby around was tough on me, but it was also tough on everybody else. They said they were glad I was helping out (I wasn’t doing that much) and then they gave me a clothes voucher as a present. For one complete second I was actually happy. Then after dessert they sat down and put on sad voices and I’m-sorry faces and said there was something we needed to talk about. Except that there wasn’t anything to talk about because they’d already decided everything. All because of a little joke!

  And now here I am, writing in this stupid journal with its stupid flowers on the stupid cover for the first time in four years. I don’t even like writing, but I have to do something right now or else I’ll just EXPLODE! I can’t even talk to any of my friends because my dad took away my phone and tablet for the night when I got cross and woke the baby up. I still can’t believe what’s happening. They’re making me move out of my own home! Where I’ve lived all my life while my stepmother gets to stay here even though she’s only lived here for three years. HOW IS THAT FAIR? I don’t want to move. I like my friends. I like my room. I like my life, or I did until Susanna arrived. They say it’s only for the holidays until things calm down with Her Royal Highness, but how can I trust them? My dad is kicking his own daughter out of her own home!

  When Vivienne and my dad got married she was nice to me. Always taking me to fun places. On Saturday nights, we’d get a takeaway and she’d make hot chocolate and we’d sit on the couch watching The X Factor.

  ‘I’m not just your stepmother – I’m your friend.’ she used to say. But what she’s doing now isn’t very friendly, is it?

  I have to live with my GRANDMOTHER! I don’t want to live with my grandmother. Don’t get me wrong, Gran’s nice to me, but she’s not exactly what you’d call normal – unless you think things like shouting at crows or singing so loudly the neighbours can hear are normal. I don’t. She lives over thirty miles away and I won’t see my friends all summer. I’ve never been left on my own with Gran before, so that’s going to be completely strange, and my bedroom in her farmhouse smells old and musty. Gran likes reading all these books I’ve never heard of and she doesn’t even own a computer. What if she makes me milk a cow or something? I don’t like cows. They stare at you the whole time, like they’re plotting something sinister. And the town she lives near is nothing like my home town. It’s a really odd place. I’m not a snob, but the people there are different, kind of weird and some of them smell. Everything’s going to be AWFUL.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Brian did the first thing that popped into his head. He pretended he’d become faint and flopped to the ground. It was a bit overdramatic and he wouldn’t have won an Oscar for it – in fact, his performance would have been booed on many stages – but it was all that came to mind. After falling off his bike, he wasn’t in any condition to outrun the gorillas who were following him.

  He hoped that they’d just turn round and drive away, but of course they didn’t do that. He hadn’t heard them walking through the soft grass, so he was lucky he didn’t jump when he heard their voices close by.

  ‘Is he dead?’ one of them asked.

  Brian kept his eyes tightly shut. He tried to keep his breathing as shallow as possible.

  ‘He’d better not be. I don’t want to end up in prison. Not again.’

  ‘He fell off his bike. We didn’t do anything. We’re innocent.’

  ‘You know how them lawyers twist things around. They’ll make out that it was all our fault. They’ll say we were trying to rob that shop when all we did was forget our wallets and they’ll say we were putting this stupid kid in danger when we were just messing around. He was the one who started the chase.’

  ‘I hate lawyers.’

  ‘Maybe we should check if he’s dead.’

  The bigger guy, gorilla number one, poked at Brian’s back with the toe of his trainers. Brian groaned a little.

  ‘He’s alive,’ the smaller one said, sounding relieved.

  ‘Should we give him CPR?’

  ‘What? Are you mad? We’re not touching him. Fingerprints and all that. No, we’re getting out of here. The sooner we’re on the road, the better.’ He leaned over and spoke into Brian’s ear. ‘If anyone asks you questions about today, you say nothing, right? You never saw us.’

  Brian groaned again.

  The guy took the groan as a sign of agreement. He stood up.

  ‘Let’s get out of here before we get in trouble,’ the big guy said, stomping his way back to the car and bellowing in despair when one of his fancy trainers landed in a present a cow with a nervous stomach had left behind in the field.

  Brian kept his eyes shut until he heard the car racing off into the distance, then he opened them and sat up.

  ‘Morons,’ he said.

  He rubbed the back of his neck then got to his feet. He was OK. A few aches and pains, which were going to feel a lot worse tomorrow, and some ringing in his ears, but nothing he couldn’t handle. He picked up his bike and examined it closely. There was surprisingly little damage. One of the forks looked like it was out of alignment, but Chris would fix that up – his friend was really good with mechanical stuff. Better not to ride the bike until he’d had a look at it, though.

  He wheeled it through the field, back along the narrow path and down the main road where the cars whizzed past far too quickly, until he was back in the town. As he reached Doherty’s Shop, old Mrs Doherty came running out to meet him. Running was pushing it a bit – it was more like she was speed-shuffling.

  ‘Brian, Brian,’ she cried.

  ‘Hi, Mrs Doherty.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Me? I’m fine. What about you?’

  ‘I wasn’t the one who was chased by a couple of baloobas.’

  Brian wasn’t sure what a balooba was, but he was fairly certain she wasn’t using the term as a compliment. ‘Ah, that was nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? Nothing? You were a brave young man taking them on. And for my sake too. You’re a hero in my eyes. Now, come in here and tell me all about it.’

  Despite his protests, she brought him into her shop and made him sit on a little wooden stool while she peered over her large-framed glasses and attended to the cuts and scratches on his hands and face
. As usual, the shop was empty. Brian couldn’t understand why she even bothered opening most of the time. Newpark had three large supermarkets – and two smaller ones – where everyone went to do their shopping. Most of what Mrs Doherty sold wasn’t exactly what people bought any more either, boiled sweets, newspapers and some homegrown vegetables. Brian had no idea how old she was, but his dad had once told him she was an old woman when he was Brian’s age, so he reckoned she must be pretty ancient.

  ‘That was very brave of you,’ she said again. ‘Brave, but foolish.’

  ‘I like being foolish,’ Brian said.

  He had been passing by earlier when he’d seen gorillas one and two inside the shop, hassling Mrs Doherty. They were getting cigarettes and drinks and chocolate and told her they had no cash on them, but that they’d come back and pay tomorrow. Brian knew that they had no intention of coming back and paying. And he didn’t like the look of fear on Mrs Doherty’s face either. So he’d grabbed a two-litre bottle of cola, shaken it up and emptied it all over the bigger guy. He couldn’t have much of a sense of humour because he’d taken it badly, which is why Brian ended up being chased by them. He might have ended up crashing his bike, but at least he’d got them off Mrs Doherty’s back.

  ‘Next time you see someone causing trouble in my shop, let me handle it. I don’t want you getting hurt. After all, you have your whole life ahead of you. The majority of my life is made up of yesterdays.’

  ‘You’re not that old,’ Brian said.

  Mrs Doherty smiled at that.

  ‘Why didn’t you ring someone for help?’ Brian asked.

  ‘If I did, there’d be a fuss and my son would find out. He doesn’t like me working here – he’d prefer me to be sitting safe at home staring at the walls. I keep the shop open so I don’t have to do that. I know you might think it’s quiet, but people often drop in for a chat. I like it that way.’

  She wouldn’t let him leave without giving him some free groceries. Since his father never went shopping, he was glad to get them.