my age in the village. He’s older than me and Tam by a year or so, but is still in Year Seven because he’s missed so much school.
‘Wanna see my Death Ray?’ he whispered, casting a sidelong glance at Tammy and Nadia.
Without waiting for me to answer (I was going to say ‘yes’ anyway – I mean, who wouldn’t want to see a Death Ray, whatever it might turn out to be?), he shuffled past me to sit next to the window.
‘Promise you won’t say anything?’ he said.
I shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ I said without thinking.
Then he took off his glasses and said, ‘Wait till we stop.’
It was really warm that day: more like August than October. The sun was shining in a cloudless sky. A few minutes later, the taxi-bus stopped at the end of a farm lane, and we knew we’d be waiting because the girl who lives there is nearly always a minute or two late. The driver turned off the engine and everything was still. Iggy fumbled in his bag and brought out a small, round glass flask exactly like the one Mr Springham had used in his ‘bending light’ demo.
‘Hey, is that …?’ I began.
‘Shh. I’ve just borrowed it. Watch.’
He held the flask against the bus window, then took his glasses off with his other hand, moving them to and fro near the bottle.
The sun shone through the bottle and the thick lenses of his specs, and formed a sort of long triangle of light on the back of the seat in front of us, with a brighter circle at the top of the triangle. As Iggy angled his glasses into the light, the circle became a sharp point of brightness, which he controlled by moving his glasses about. Slowly, he moved the point of light until it cleared the seat back and rested on the neck of Nadia Kowalski.
‘It’s physics,’ whispered Iggy, like he was suddenly an expert. ‘The lens of my specs concentrates the sun’s light into a central point which will become very hot. Watch.’
We didn’t have to wait long. Only a few seconds later, Nadia squealed ‘Oww!’ and her hand shot up to her neck. She looked left at Tammy, and then back at us.
Iggy had put his glasses back on and was drinking water from the flask.
‘Did you … did you just …?’
Iggy and I looked at each other, and then back at Nadia, our faces composed in expressions of wide-eyed innocence.
‘What?’ we said together, and she turned back.
On her neck I could make out a tiny burn-mark from Iggy’s ‘Death Ray’. Also from her neck, I could tell she was blushing furiously because everyone had turned around to look when she squealed, including a boy called Damian from Year Nine who everybody knows Nadia is crazy about.
With a cruel smirk, Iggy got ready for another go, slipping off his glasses and holding them up, but at that moment, the bus’s engine started again. The vibration of the bus made it impossible to hold the point of the Death Ray steady.
But he wasn’t going to give up. Twenty minutes later, we had arrived at the school gates. The engine went off, and everybody stood up.
‘Wait!’ shouted Maureen, the driver, who always refused to open the doors until she’d completed some form she had to fill in on a clipboard.
Iggy seized his moment, whipped off his specs, and focused the Death Ray on the back of Nadia’s knee.
She wasn’t moving and the point of light was sharp and bright. She was actually talking to Damian Whatsisname and flicking her hair when, suddenly, she shrieked loudly.
‘Aaaaaaow!!’ The stack of books in her hands fell to the floor, and everyone stared as she bent down to rub her leg.
As she bent, she headbutted Damian in the chest, knocking him into the kids behind him and causing Maureen to shout, ‘Watch it, you’s lot!’
I managed to keep a straight face, but Iggy couldn’t. He was spluttering with laughter.
Eventually, we filed off the bus, and heard Damian saying to his mates, ‘What a weirdo she is!’ easily loud enough for Nadia to hear.
Tammy sidled up to me. ‘That was mean of you,’ she said, but I think she was trying not to smile.
‘Not me,’ I said. ‘It was Iggy’s Death Ray.’
Tammy shook her head and tutted. ‘She’ll get him back. Just you wait.’
He didn’t have to wait long.
At break, Iggy hangs out with some older boys, although I don’t think they like him much because I heard them mocking his accent once when he wasn’t there. Anyway, after lunch I was walking through the east playground and there was a group – mainly boys, some girls – gathered in the top corner. I recognised one or two of them as being Iggy’s so-called friends.
I heard Iggy’s voice say, ‘Ladies and gentlemen: behold the mighty power of the Death Ray!’
There was a long pause.
I heard someone say, ‘Come on, get on with it.’
Then someone else said, ‘Hey, look!’
There was a cheer, followed by a plume of smoke rising into the air, and then everybody started to run away from it. I saw Iggy putting his glasses back on and I knew what had happened. The contents of the wire-mesh litter bin were fully ablaze; heaven knows what was in it for it to go up so fast, but the hot weather must have made everything tinder-dry.
As the crowd dispersed, though, I saw the flames flickering up to a wooden noticeboard with flaking paint and that had started to catch fire as well. I thought it best to make myself scarce and had sort of melted back into the crowd as Mr Springham strode at top speed towards the litter bin, holding a fire extinguisher.
‘WHO DID THAT? WHOEVER IS RESPONSIBLE WILL HAVE HELL TO PAY!’
Nadia got her revenge by telling everyone about Iggy’s Death Ray, and how he had used it to set fire to the litter bin. It soon reached the ears of the teachers. It earned him another suspension from school, plus detentions and letters home for everyone who had watched and encouraged him. Of course, they were all furious about this and I don’t think it did Iggy’s already fragile popularity any good at all.
And Iggy? I didn’t see him much after that, even though we live in the same village. I mean, we’d never exactly been besties anyway but Mam and Dad were hardly going to encourage me to hang out with him now, were they?
Then shortly before Christmas, Tammy and I saw Iggy down by the jetty, and he had brought a chicken with him. Like, a live one.
Tammy had declared that it was the annual final of Stones in the Lake. (Best of five games, loser buys the winner a muffin from the school
