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her.
    Crap . Now I was here, the whole thing seemed ridiculous. I was ridiculous. Taking all these risks and for what?
    I’d escaped from school again – over the tree in the courtyard like before, but earlier on in the afternoon, to give myself time to change clothes and find my way across London to Rachel. I knew I’d be in massive trouble later – I was missing school and skipping the detention I’d been given for going over the wall the first time.
    Plus I was running away from Roy. Again.
    But I had to find the girl and talk to her face to face. I couldn’t see what else to do. I’d hardly slept last night thinking about it all.
    And now, here she was. Rachel Smith. I glanced at her. My heart sank. I’d hoped that she’d be a tomboy kind of person. Easy to talk to. Straightforward. Confident. Though maybe not too confident.
    But Rachel wasn’t like that at all. She was all hunched over and awkward. Man , she couldn’t even look me in the eye.
    We walked for a couple of minutes, along a leafy road, to a roundabout in the middle of a fairly quiet intersection. There was a wooden bench underneath this big oak tree in the middle of the roundabout. Rachel sat down near one end. I sat at the other and looked at the sky. It was heavy with grey clouds, like it might rain any minute.
    ‘Your friends were kind of embarrassing there.’
    ‘Nahm af enz,’ Rachel mumbled.
    I stared at her. Her head was still bent over, staring down at the grass. I suddenly wondered if she was mentally retarded or something.
    ‘What’s that?’ I said.
    She looked up a little, not meeting my eyes.
    ‘They’re not my friends,’ she said.
    ‘Oh.’ Of course they weren’t. They’d been ripping the piss out of her. Get a grip, Theo . ‘I . . . I’m really sorry to just show up like this. I didn’t know what else to do.’
    Rachel nodded at the ground.
    Somehow I managed to explain how I’d found her dad’s name through my internet search. She didn’t know about the explosion at the clinic, so I told her what the newspaper report had said.
    ‘I think our dads must have worked together, at that clinic, before . . . before mine died,’ I said.
    Rachel looked up. Right up, at last, right into my eyes. I smiled. She was actually okay-looking. A bit shy and nervy maybe, but her eyes were bright and clear. As sane as I was, at least.
    ‘So why did you come to see me?’ She blushed. ‘How did you even know where I was?’
    I was ready for this. I knew I couldn’t explain about Max hacking into the school records without landing both of us in trouble, so I’d made up a cover story.
    ‘My dad mentioned you in these notebooks he kept,’ I said. ‘Mostly they were records of scientific conversations and stuff. But he also put in . . . things from when you were born, just after me. Like how your dad had everything planned out for you. Where you were going to school even.’
    I ran my hand through my hair. Saying it out loud it kind of sounded ridiculous.
    But Rachel was nodding. ‘Sounds like my dad.’ She shot me an embarrassed smile. ‘He’s a bit of a control freak. So’s my mum. But . . . um . . . I still don’t see why you’re here . . .’
    ‘I . . . er, I thought if I could find you, then . . .’
    ‘. . . You’d find my dad?’ Rachel looked at me hesitantly. ‘You want to meet my dad, then? You want to talk to him about your dad?’
    Yes. Yes. That’s exactly what I want.
    I shrugged. ‘If you don’t mind me coming home with you.’
    She started. ‘What. Now?’
    I wrinkled my nose. ‘It’s just I ran away from school to come here. And my mum’ll go mental when she knows what I’ve done. I’ll be grounded for weeks.’
    Rachel frowned. ‘Why . . .? I mean . . . I don’t understand. Why didn’t you just ask your mum about it all? I mean, if our dads were friends then . . . maybe they all knew each other.’
    I stared at her, my head whirling. What the hell did I say to that? I blushed. Think, Theo.