Read The Remarkables (The Remarkable Owen Johnson, part 1) for Free Online Page A

grin.
    “ Don’t be too long. We’re heading down to see my granddad first thing tomorrow remember, so my sister’s set a curfew for this evening”. She rolled her eyes, although Owen knew that she would never really think or say anything bad about her sister Fiona. Owen had never met their grandfather, but from Katie’s accounts he was quite mad and lived in an old shack on the coast. They made a yearly pilgrimage to see him and each time he had an odd request for something that Katie had to bring along (this year it was glass bottles).
    “I won’t be long,” said Owen.
    “Cool. See you in a bit.” She turned away and took a few steps, but then stopped abruptly. She looked at him with a frown and skipped back, planting a kiss on his left cheek. She smiled again and trotted off down the corridor.
    Despite climbing up seemingly invisible rock faces, and being rescued from serious injury by freak weather, Owen felt more dumbfounded than he had been all day. Had she used her hairspray today, Owen knew he would have collapsed into an unconscious heap on the corridor floor.

Frozen
     
     
     
    Owen walked back to his house, feeling a mixture of happiness and confusion. Katie’s kiss, whilst hardly passionate, was the first sign of physical affection that she had ever shown him. He had always hoped that she thought of him in the same way that he did of her, but was terrified that their friendship would be broken if he acted upon such feelings.
    He decided to revisit the scene of the earlier peculiarities by walking back through the park, which by now was busy with young families and joggers going about their morning routines. He looked toward the leisure centre and thought back on this morning’s adventures.
    The top of the building that he had scaled looked even higher from afar. How on earth had he climbed up? The use of invisible bricks now seemed like the ravings of a madman. Mind you, prior to this morning so did the likelihood of Katie kissing him, so anything was possible.
    He crossed the park without incident, and was about to take the exit towards his home, when he noticed the man in the narrow-brimmed hat was back under his tree on the opposite side to Owen. He wondered why someone would hang around a park all day and hoped that he didn’t have any sinister intentions. The man seemed to be following Owen’s movements, so he hastened his pace.
    Leaving the park, Owen turned left and crossed over to the entrance to his road , then continued towards his house. As he passed her house he noticed that Mrs Argyle was not to be seen behind any of her windows.
    Unusually his father’s car was still on the drive. Owen thought back to the morning and couldn’t remember him saying he was working from home, which he occasionally did. As he neared the house Owen noticed that the front door was wide open as well. “Dad must be running late,” Owen thought. He stepped through the front door.
    “D ad?!” he called out. No answer. The hairs on the back of his neck were tingling, as were his hands as if there was a static charge in the air. Venturing into the kitchen he saw that the breakfast plates had not been cleared away. That definitely was not like his father, who was fastidious in his tidiness.
    He went to the hallway and peered up the stairs. “You there, Dad?”
    He was starting to become concerned. He ran up the stairs and quickly scanned each of the upstairs rooms, bathrooms included. No sign of his father.
    Deciding he would call the power plant, he went downstairs to the living room where the telephone lived by the front window. On the notepad beside it his father had started to write a note addressed to Celia, presumably referring to Mrs Argyle as Owen didn’t think he knew any other Celias. The note consisted of a large letter ‘p’ with a circle drawn around it, and written below a single word: ‘RUN’.
    Owen tore the note off the pad, deciding to quiz his neighbour about it urgently. As he turned