Hacked by Tracy Alexander Read Free Book Online

versus exams and favourite sandwich. (Me – bacon and cheese on white. Her – cheese, jam and lettuce. Yuck!)
    Ruby was a good name for her because her hair was red, not post-box red obviously, but the colour they call red which is actually copper or maple or marmalade.
    ‘I heard about the phone thing,’ she said.
    I blushed. Not because
I
cared, but because she obviously did.
    ‘I did it to be kind,’ I said, wondering why I was justifying myself. ‘To start with, at any rate.’
    She made a disbelieving face.
    I carried on, pathetically trying to convince her that I wasn’t the gangster she thought I was. (Forget Angel’s den for now.)
    ‘If you did it to be kind, why did you take a cut?’
    ‘I had to charge for my time,’ I said. I sounded vile even to myself.
    ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter to me what you do,’ she said.
    I hoped that wasn’t true because in the hour it took to get from Llllwyngogogcanwyn services, or whatever it was called, to the Riverside Centre, I’d fallen for her. I had two days to change her mind about me.

13
    The gods were in my corner. Straight after lunch we were put into groups and yes, I was with Ruby. Even better, I had no rivals for her attention because we were with Aiden, Harry, Scarlett and Shula. Teachers are so predictable – sprinkle the idiots and terrorists in with the dull and the diligent and every group will get some sort of results and there won’t be any incidents. (Bear in mind, the teachers didn’t know about my extra-curricular talent – I scraped in as diligent.)
    Ruby and I sorted out the work between us, and to be fair, the others were willing enough helpers, happy to not have to think. Scarlett produced the neatest table of results of all the groups although if you’d asked her she couldn’t have told you what any of it meant. I tried to win Ruby over by being polite, enthusiastic, knowledgeable, funny etc. By teatime she was sick of me.
    ‘Are you trying to impress me?’ she asked as I walked with her to the girls’ block.
    ‘No,’ I said, too quickly.
    ‘Only I’d prefer it if you were normal,’ she said.
    ‘I can be that,’ I said, smiling like a bad salesman.
    ‘And not a hacker.’ I didn’t like the face she made. Like I was a cheese and onion burp.
    ‘Hacker’s just a word,’ I said, not really knowing what I meant.
    ‘See you.’ She opened the door to her building and disappeared.
    She sat at a different table from me for tea, was put in a different team for charades, and the next day all the groups had to split in two, one to experiment and the other to record observations. Some bright spark in our group decided to divide by gender. The boys got the job of wading around in the water, the girls did the timing and the distance. By lunch, Aiden, who is small and insignificant, was freezing.
    ‘I’ve got another fleece if you want it.’
    ‘Thanks, Dan,’ he said.
    I was going to go and get it but he tagged along.
    ‘Do you think the results we’re getting are all right?’ he asked.
    If I’d been with anyone else I’d have laughed.
Who cares?
But there was something about him shivering that brought out my previously unseen compassionate side.
    ‘Yes, they’re fine. The flow is bound to be faster …’ I reeled off the basics.
    He had more questions – they lasted us all the way back to the canteen so I ended up sitting on my own with him, talking geography. Yippee! Two saddos together.
    ‘I really get it now,’ he said. ‘Thanks, and for this.’He looked down at his own body, swamped by my black fleece.
    ‘It’s fine, Aiden.’ It wasn’t like people were queuing up to sit by me.
    He was like a different person in the afternoon. Not only did he actually speak and laugh, but he volunteered for all the tasks.
    ‘What did you do to him at lunch?’ said Ruby while I was packing up the equipment.
    I was going to say, ‘Gave him a legal high’ but managed to divert my tongue halfway through and say, ‘a