Chapter 1

Advanced Science is probably my favourite subject at school, but the last lesson on Friday afternoon was not a time I would have chosen for Mr Bostwick to give us a pop quiz. And then it overran, Mr Bostwick not letting us out until well after the final bell. The bell was for his benefit, he told us, not for ours. The only good thing was that two thirds of my close friends were in the same lesson, so I was confident the other third would wait for us.

My name is Kevin Randell and, of the four of us, I’m the only one with any claim to sporting prowess. I’m a runner. I have excellent stamina but I don’t have a quick burst. Coach Budd says that my best distance will be 10,000 metres or marathon but I’m not allowed to run either at my age so I have to be content with cross-country. I run for the school team; I never threaten the top places but I usually finish towards the front of the pack and contribute solid scores towards the team event. But running is disdained by the footballers and basketballers so I’m not eligible to hang out with the jocks.

Dimitri Antonov is our computer and video game expert. He’s well on his way to being obese but doesn’t seem to care. But give him a new video game and he won’t rest until he’s mastered it, and master it he will. He’s also an accomplished hacker but that’s something he doesn’t like to advertise.

Michael Winneker is a human beanpole. While I’m interested in science, he’s fanatical about it. It would be a major shock if he didn’t get the top score in the science pop quiz. The basketball team have tried continuously to get him interested in the game so they can exploit his height, but he’s so uncoordinated that his instinctive reaction is to bat the ball away in self-defence rather than catch it.

Our fourth member, and the one missing from our Advanced Science course, is Dennis Sousa. He’s not really into science like the rest of us, but he plays the trombone in the school band and he looks like an archetypal nerd, right down to the thick-framed glasses, so he sort of ended up in our nerd clique by default.

We’re all in the same year at John Chapman High School, the only high school in our small home town of Mountview.

After Mr Bostwick finally released us, we found Dennis waiting for us at the school gates.

“Want to hang out at the mall for a while and watch the talent?” asked Dimitri.

“I guess,” said Dennis.

Michael and I didn’t have a better suggestion so we tagged along.

“What are you guys up to this weekend?” asked Dimitri.

“We’re going to visit my granny,” said Dennis. “She lives all alone. We’re going to spend the weekend blitzing her place, cleaning, mending, mowing, weeding, that sort of stuff.”

“One of my cousins is getting married and I’ve been conscripted as an usher,” said Michael. “They’re even making me wear a monkey suit.”