In order to dream, of course, you have to be asleep. Instead of falling asleep, though, I find my head churning around with the events of the last few hours.

The Dreaminator glows faintly above me.

Kez Becker … the empty backyard … that poor dog and his broken claw … the old lady … the flags … the girl, what was her name again?

It’s gone.

And then I’m gone.

Chapter 13

It’s the next day. First day of term. I’m in school, in my form room, and Seb is there as well for some reason that I can’t work out.

Next-door’s Fit Billy is standing in front of the class because he’s our teacher, although he keeps talking in a foreign language that sounds like Chinese and everyone is laughing at him as he takes off his shirt and flexes his muscles.

I look round at my classmates: there’s Mason, and Callum, and the two Darcys, and Kobi, and …

Hang on. Kobi? The cave boy from the book. He’s not even real: he looks like a three-dimensional drawing, and …

We’re not in my classroom, we’re in the cave, from the first big picture in the book. The cave walls are orangey-red from a fire in the middle of the classroom floor, and …

Everyone is gathered at the mouth of the cave and pointing. A huge black-and-ginger dog is walking past on the school rugby pitch outside. When I say huge, it’s about the size of an elephant. Is it a dog? Or … or … a mammoth? A prehistoric woolly mammoth, with a long trunk and huge curved tusks, and …

And from somewhere a memory kind of swims into my head. A memory of something I need to do. Did I hear it? Did I read it? I turn to Seb – Why is Seb in my class, again? – and I find myself saying, ‘Hey, Seb. Am … am I dreaming?’

And Seb says, ‘Yes. Of course you are!’ and I grin with slowly dawning relief. I knew it!

That was one of the instructions, wasn’t it? Written down on the sheet that came with the Dreaminator: ask someone if you’re dreaming and they’ll tell you!

Of course, it makes sense now why Fit Billy’s our teacher, and why Kobi the Cave Boy is in my class, and why there’s a mammoth outside the cave mouth. That is if ‘sense’ is the right word for nonsense.

Another thought crosses my mind, only it’s not the mind that is here: it is like another mind that is observing what is going on. It is this mind that tells me to look at the classroom clock, there on the cave wall, and when I do its hands are moving quickly, but spinning backwards. I know then for sure that I am in a dream. A waking dream!