Just In Case Part 1

MEG ROSOFF.

Just in Case.

For Paul.

1.

The view is fine up here. I can look out across the world and see everything.

For instance I can see a fifteen-year-old boy and his brother.

2.

David Case's baby brother had recently learned to walk but he wasn't what you'd call an expert. He toddled past his brother to the large open window of the older boy's room. There, with a great deal of effort, he pulled himself on to the window sill, scrunched up like a caterpillar, pushed into a crouch and stood, teetering precariously, his gaze fixed solemnly on the church tower a quarter-mile away.

He tipped forward slightly towards the void, just as a large black bird swooped past. It paused and turned an intelligent red eye to meet the child's.

'Why not fly?' suggested the bird, and the boy's eyes widened in delight.

Below them on the street, a greyhound stood motionless, his elegant pale head turned in the direction of the incipient catastrophe. Calmly the dog s.h.i.+fted the angle of his muzzle, creating an invisible guy line that eased the child back an inch or two towards equilibrium. Safer now, but seduced by the fact that a bird had spoken to him, the boy threw out his arms and thought, Yes! Fly!

David did not hear his brother think 'fly'. Something else made him look up. A voice. A finger on his shoulder. The brush of lips against his ear.

So that's where we start: one boy on the verge of death. Another on the verge of something rather more complicated.

In the instant of looking up, David took the measure of the situation, shouted 'Charlie!' and lunged across the room. He grabbed the child by the cape of his Batman pyjamas, wrapped his arms around him with enough force to flatten his ribs, and sank to the floor, squas.h.i.+ng the boy's face into the safe hollow beneath his chin.

Charlie squeaked with outrage, but David barely heard. Panting, he unpinned him, gripping the child at arm's length.

'What were you doing?' He was shouting. 'What on earth do you think you were doing?'

Well, said Charlie, I was bored just playing with my toys and you weren't paying attention to me so I thought I would get a better look at the world. I climbed up on the window which wasn't easy and once I managed to do that I felt strange and happy with nothing but sky all around me and all of a sudden a bird flew past and looked at me and said I could fly and a bird hasn't ever talked to me before and I figured a bird would know what he was talking about when it came to flying so I thought he must be right. Oh and there was also a pretty grey dog on the pavement who looked up and pointed at me with his nose so I didn't fall and just when I was about to leap out and soar through the air you grabbed me and hurt me a lot which made me very cross and I didn't get a chance to fly even though I'm sure I could have.

The little boy explained all this slowly and carefully, so as not to be misunderstood.

'Bir-dee fly,' were the words that came out of his mouth.

David turned away, heart pounding. It was useless trying to communicate with a one-year-old. Even if his brother had possessed the vocabulary, he couldn't have answered David's question. Charlie did what he did because he was a dumb kid, too dumb to realize that birds don't talk and kids can't fly.

My G.o.d, David thought. If I'd been two seconds slower he'd be dead. My brother would be dead but I'd be the one shattered, crushed, destroyed by guilt and blame and everyone everywhere for the rest of my life whispering, He's that kid who killed his brother.

Two seconds. Just two seconds were all that stood between normal, everyday life and utter, total catastrophe.

He sat down hard, mind spinning. Why had this never occurred to him? He could fall down a manhole, collapse from a stroke. A car crash could sever his spinal cord. He could catch bird flu. A tree could fall on him. There were comets. Killer bees. Foreign armies. Floods. Serial killers. There was buried nuclear waste. Ethnic cleansing. Alien invasion.

A plane crash.

Suddenly, everywhere he looked he saw catastrophe, bloodshed, the demise of the planet, the ruin of the human race, not to mention (to pinpoint the exact source of his anxiety) possible pain and suffering to himself.

Who could have thought up a scenario this bleak?

Whoever (whatever) it was, he could feel the dark malevolence of it settling in, making itself at home like some vicious bird of prey, its sharp claws sunk deep into the quivering grey jelly of his terrified brain. He pulled his brother close, tucking him in against his body, pressed his lips to the child's face.

What if...?

He became enmired in what if. The weight of it wrapped itself around his ankles and dragged him under.

3.

A year earlier, David's father had woken him with a shout.

'David, your mother's home! Aren't you interested in seeing the baby?'

Not really, David thought, burying his head in his pillow. I know what a baby looks like.

But then they were in his room, grinning and making inane noises in the direction of a small, serene-looking creature with jet-black eyes. David sat up with a groan and peered at his new brother. OK, seen him, he thought.

'Of course he can't see you yet.' His father, superior as ever. 'Babies can't focus properly for weeks.'

David was about to go back to sleep when he noticed the new baby gazing at him with a peculiar expression of calm authority.

I'm Charlie, said the new baby's eyes, as clearly as if he had spoken the words out loud. Who are you?

David stared.

His brother repeated the question slowly, politely, as if to a person of limited intelligence. Who, exactly, are you?

David frowned.

The baby inclined his head, his face registering something that might have been pity. Such a simple question, he thought. But if his brother knew the answer, he gave no sign.

This disturbed Charlie. Over the next few months, he tried approaching his parents for answers, but his father was always at work and his mother seemed strangely ill-informed on the subject of her older son. 'He's usually on time,' she would comment brightly, or, 'I wish he'd tidy his room more.' But nothing about who he was. And when she caught Charlie staring intently at David, she merely thought, How sweet. They're bonding.

But they weren't bonding. Charlie was comparing the David he knew with the Davids he saw displayed around the house in family pictures. The younger Davids looked cheerful and serene; they held books or bikes or ice creams and gazed at the camera with expressions of trust. The younger Davids kicked b.a.l.l.s, swung from trees, blew out the candles on birthday cakes. They had clear edges and cloudless eyes.

But the David that Charlie knew now was wavery and fizzy with nerves. The new David reminded Charlie of a birthday card he'd seen where the picture of a clown s.h.i.+fted gradually into the picture of a tightrope walker, depending on how you tilted it. Exactly when this transformation had begun, the child couldn't say. According to the photos, his brother's outline had begun to blur sometime between playing football at thirteen and losing his status as only child the following year.

Charlie had spent a good deal of his short life worrying about his older brother. Now he paused in the middle of playing Monkey Rides in a Car with Donkey to gather his thoughts. He saw that his recent attempt to fly had been a mistake. It seemed to have nudged his brother past some invisible tipping point, and this filled him with remorse. Charlie wanted to make amends, to offer advice on how David could regain his footing. But he couldn't get his brother to listen.

Or perhaps he was listening, but somehow lacked the capacity to understand. This worried Charlie most of all.

4.

Someone other than David Case might have experienced the near-catastrophe of that summer day and imagined he'd had a lucky escape.

Someone else in the dull suburban town of Luton might have thought that such things happen; might have taken it as a warning that all humans are fallible, that a certain degree of vigilance is required to avoid life's many potential tragedies. Someone else might even have congratulated himself on saving his brother's life.

But David Case was not someone else. Months of half-formed worries and loosely framed paranoid fantasies clicked into place that afternoon with the finality of a proclamation. In a single instant, the vague confusion of images resolved into certainty.

He was doomed.

He lay in bed the following morning, replaying the scene in his head. He'd avoided tragedy this time, yes, but next time the arrow (the bullet, the boulder, the bomb) would find its mark. He could see the horrible scenario spooling out with the deceptive simplicity of a cartoon: Fate wandering idly past, checking his watch, feigning indifference and then WHAMMO!

Pulling on his clothes, he felt eyes watching him. Pouring breakfast cereal into a bowl, he saw his life cras.h.i.+ng down in smoking ruins.

Oh G.o.d, he thought, brus.h.i.+ng his teeth. I have to hide. No, not hide. Mutate. Become unrecognizable.

He sat on his bed, bit his nails, took inventory. Fifteen years old, five foot nine inches tall, sloping shoulders, shuffling gait, reasonably polite, medium-brown English hair, crooked teeth, medium-fair English complexion.

None of these qualities would protect him from disaster. His only chance was to remake his life one step at a time, starting with his name. And if he managed to be different enough, well, perhaps fate would forget about David Case and pa.s.s on to the next pathetic victim. Hound him to death.

He stepped out his front door and off the kerb (causing a cyclist to swerve in front of a delivery van) and changed his name to Justin. Justin sounded suave, coolly ironic, hardbodied, rigorously intelligent. More competent than David. Less vulnerable. Justin Case was the sort of character who could cope with danger.

The screech and the sound of the impact stopped him momentarily and he watched with interest as the cyclist flew off his bike and into the air. No matter what happened, Justin would be fluid, clever and responsive. He would duck and dive, beat the odds. The cyclist crashed on to the roof of the van, bounced once off the windscreen, slid to the ground, and lay still.

Justin Case would not be listed in the social service records, on the county birth lists, in the plans for the future of mankind. David's heart soared. He could hear the approaching sound of ambulance and police sirens and continued on his way, not wanting to be the sort of person who stops to stare at other people's misfortunes.

As he rounded the corner he felt triumphant. Nothing bad could happen to Justin Case because he didn't exist.

5.

Justin (formerly David) had work to do. He had to change how he looked, exchange David's baggy jeans and sweats.h.i.+rts, his trainers and T-s.h.i.+rts, his unexceptional socks and mediocre anorak for the sort of clothes Justin Case might wear. In four months he would turn sixteen. He had always imagined everything would change when he turned sixteen, so why not start now?

He headed for the front door and found Charlie in the hall, balancing a small plastic hippo on the edge of a porcelain umbrella stand. Charlie looked up at his brother, startled, and dropped the animal into the abyss.

'Never mind.' Justin reached into the deep cylinder and felt around for the toy, bringing it up with a handful of others. 'There's your hippo,' he said, placing it in his brother's outstretched hand. 'And a zebra, lion, goat, giraffe, cow. Why don't you play somewhere else? There's a whole lost animal kingdom down there.'

I'm not playing, Charlie said, dropping the animals back down the umbrella stand one by one. I'm thinking about falling.

Justin shook his head. Young children seemed unable to grasp the simplest principles. 'Suit yourself,' he said, ruffling the child's hair. And opening the door, he set off down the road.

For the practicalities of his transformation he had chosen a nearby charity shop. Inside were thousands of cast-offs from other lives; surely one of them would fit.

He walked the short distance to the shop feeling guilty and somewhat suspect, like a spy. The feeling was good. He had a mission.

Inside he hesitated, running his eyes over the racks of dowdy blouses, last decade's dresses and scuffed shoes. The woman at the till, pinch-faced and scowling, glared at him but said nothing. In her eyes, he was obviously a s.h.i.+ftless, thieving young person with nothing better to do with the last days of his summer holiday than defraud charity shops of their chipped and valueless merchandise.

He stared back at her, eyes hard and emptied of emotion. The name was Case. Justin Case. If he wanted to try on a s.h.i.+rt, he would try on a s.h.i.+rt.

In the far corner, he spied a rack of men's clothing, crossed the floor to it and pulled out a s.h.i.+rt. He held it up under his chin. It smelled of something, something not entirely pleasant: stale cigarettes, burnt potatoes, coconut soap. The thought of adopting another person's smell hadn't occurred to him, made him faintly queasy. He closed his eyes, trying to expel the image from his brain.

A voice at his elbow nearly caused him to jump out of his skin. 'Try this,' the voice said. Its arm held out a dark brown and lavender paisley s.h.i.+rt.

Justin turned slowly. The voice belonged to a girl of perhaps nineteen, who peered at him through a heavy, clipped pink fringe. Her eyes were thickly rimmed with kohl; her mouth neatly outlined in a vivid shade of orange that clashed perfectly with her hair. She wore four-inch platform boots in pale green snakeskin, wildly patterned tights, a very short skirt, and a tight see-through s.h.i.+rt printed with j.a.panese cartoons over which was squeezed a 1950s-style long-line beige elastic bra. A camera bag hung from her shoulder.

Even Justin recognized that her dress sense was unusual. 'Wow,' he said.

'Thank you,' she replied demurely. And then, 'I've never seen you before.' She tilted her head to one side, taking in his pale skin, lank hair and good cheekbones. The dark circles under his eyes.

Doomed youth, she thought. Interesting.

Justin looked alarmed. 'What?'

'I was just thinking. You could find some excellent things here if you knew what to look for.'

'I know what I need.'

She waited.

'Everything,' he said at last. 'Everything different in every way from this.' He indicated himself.

'Everything?'