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Back The Lightning Catcher Save as PDF
Chapters (45)
  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26
  27. 27
  28. 28
  29. 29
  30. 30
  31. 31
  32. 32
  33. 33
  34. 34
  35. 35
  36. 36
  37. 37
  38. 38
  39. 39
  40. 40
  41. 41
  42. 42
  43. 43
  44. 44
  45. Acknowledgements

I couldn’t even move for a few seconds – it felt like my whole brain had crashed. Lily was on my side! Totally and completely and awesomely!

Mum came in while I was still standing in a daze, and she looked pretty stunned too.

‘Lily’s just told me she’s going to meet a friend from school,’ she said, blinking again and again. ‘She hasn’t done that for the best part of two years!’

I opened my mouth, but no words came out.

15th August

Woke up feeling sick and awful from a nightmare – Whizzy died right in front of me. Her ripples turned into struggling movements in the dream, as if she was swimming in air as thick as honey.

Her eyes never left mine, but the light of her body dulled to silver, then to grey. She sank to the ground, quiet and still. Her eyes were like circles of grey glass in the end, and every nerve in my body was sobbing.

29

Beep

19th August, 11.45 a.m.

It all happened at five thirty this morning. I was dreaming about Sam’s grandad – a half-awake, half-asleep nightmare – when a light flashed and woke me properly. All confused, I thought Sam and his grandad were in my bedroom, then the dream faded and something glowed on the ceiling – just for a second. I sat up and looked at the alarm clock, but it said 99:99 again.

Then the beam of white light was back, like a laser, and it came from my dead phone. Still tangled in the duvet, I picked it up and there was the home screen, all normal and working again, but with Whizzy diving through the internet icon like a rocket, twisting, fast and frenzied.

‘Waaay, you’ve fixed it!’

Looking straight out at me from the screen with brilliant silver eyes, she pulsed importantly and showed me a kind of firework display in a picture of some trees. The phone beeped, then the whole screen turned into thick, dark churning smoke and I couldn’t even see her.

I shrugged, still groggy. ‘I don’t get it, Whizzy. Is that a fire?’ My stomach twisted into a knot. A fire she’d started?

The smoke picture faded. The internet closed down. Whizzy hovered for a few seconds, then zipped out of the phone and whizzed around my room manically.

‘What’s wrong? Don’t wake anyone else, will you.’

She seemed gentle again, but it was hard not to think of how she’d been at the rec. That new power could really twist things up, rip stuff apart. I started shivering.