This is still my forest after all! Well, it is … and it isn’t. A breeze trembles through the leaves, the softest whisper. The hairs on my neck prickle.

Suddenly an idea strikes me … What if … what if … I’ve entered another version of my world? Gone through a portal or something into another dimension – like in Doctor Who! Then I stop myself.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Charlie,’ I mutter, and I almost smile, because without even meaning to, I’m doing an impression of grumpy Mr Pasco, our science teacher. Mr Pasco’s about ninety-five and he doesn’t like me one bit. ‘Charlie is somewhat prone to flights of fancy,’ he said to Dad on parents’ evening, only last week. I took it as a compliment.

Parents’ evening! Dad! Mum! I twist and turn my head, frantically searching for something familiar as panic rises all fluttery in my chest: Mum and Dad are going to absolutely kill me. I squint my eyes towards where the hospital should be … but it’s not there, of course it’s not there – no hospital, no town, just endless endless forever forest. And on the horizon purply-grey clouds are bubbling: ominous, like a storm is on its way.

I stand on the Pinnacle and try to think. What would Lamont do? He’s ‘got common sense’ as Mum always says.

I make a list in my head, adding up the facts like Lamont would:

1.Right now, for whatever crazy reason, I’m lost: everything is different … and I don’t know how to make it normal again.

2.The only other person I’ve seen since everything changed is that boy.

3.But the boy is injured. He needs help …

4.But I need help! I need to get back home again.

The facts don’t even sound like facts! And they certainly don’t add up. They just spiral about the place like a big old mess. What am I going to do?

HELP YOU

I slip down off the Pinnacle and cross back over to the boy on the beach.

I crouch next to him, listening. His breath bubbles like his lungs are still half-full of water. The cut on his forehead is dark and oozy and I flick away a fly. A thin cloud passes across the sun and suddenly the boy’s black-hole eyes shoot open. I draw back.

‘Cold,’ he whispers. His voice is thin, his lips purple. It’s like all the fight has drained out of him and he doesn’t look vicious any more; he just looks really sick.

I realise I have no choice. ‘Don’t worry. I’m going to help you.’

‘Help you?’ he echoes, and for a second his eyes meet mine. ‘Help you,’ he says again weakly.

He reaches fast, grabs my hand, stares at me hard; his eyes are glazed and fearful. ‘Mothga,’ he says, and even though his voice trembles I hear him clearly. ‘Mothga. Make. Safe.’ His eyelids flicker and his eyes roll so that I can only see the whites, then they close again.