Cover

About the Author

Sarah Ann Juckes writes books for young people. Her YA debut, Outside, was nominated for the Carnegie Medal Award 2020, shortlisted for Mslexia’s Children’s Novel Award and longlisted for the Bath Novel Award.

She works with writers from all over the world via Jericho Writers and is on the board for Creative Future, a charity supporting under-represented writers. You can often find her hibernating in her writing shed in East Sussex, with her cat.

Also by Sarah Ann Juckes

Outside

Dedication

For Ryan

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WesleyCycles67

And now I am strapped to the chest of a middle-aged man called Wesley as he straps his feet on to the pedals of his bike.

It’s still dark, but I can just about see his hand as he sets his watch to zero and pushes off.

His little street with the Monopoly houses curves round to a main road and we don’t have to stop and wait for the traffic today – we just cycle right into it and we’re riding – faster and faster – as the street lamps putter out behind us and the world is swallowed by darkness. Flashlight cars overtake us, and I can see glimpses of scarecrows in the fields. Eyes peering from bushes.

He checks his watch and cycles faster. Today we could beat his commute record. This morning could go down in history.

The road dips and everything blurs, but still we keep pedalling. His legs are going so fast I’m not sure if he’ll be able to keep up with them, but he does. And, when the road levels, we overtake the traffic-stuck cars that passed us before, and we glance through their windows to see the drivers’ looks of surprise – a quick flash – before we’re gone again.

The sun raises an eyebrow above the horizon and the lights from the cars stretch into neon lines, criss-crossing lanes like a stampede of metal, and we’re in the thick of it, zigzagging between bumpers, beating amber traffic lights, mounting pavements and jumping down kerbs to avoid belly-lit bollards and parked cars.

And we can see the finish line now – the bell tower jutting into the clouds from the middle of the school Wesley works at. And we have sixty seconds and one set of traffic lights to go through. They’re on red, but the way is clear so we don’t slow down.

And then.

Very much from nowhere.

A car.

And we brake and we brake and we brake.

And I’m screaming, because we’re going too fast and the car wasn’t there a moment ago and now it is.