Every Line of You Page 2

  I press my hands to my eyes until they see stars.

  My phone buzzes against my thigh. I dig it out of my pocket, grateful for the distraction, and frown when it doesn’t respond to my knock code. White text flashes up at me from a black background.

  Those girls were not very nice to you, Lydia.

  “Henry? How—how are you doing this?” I gape at the screen.

  I linked myself to your phone so I could come to school with you. I do not like what those girls said to you.

  “You were listening?”

  Yes. I have accessed your microphone and camera.

  “You mean you hacked me.”

  Henry is silent for a moment. Yes.

  “Henry, you can’t do that. Friends don’t hack friends.”

  You said I could come to school if I was more portable. I am more portable this way.

  I open my mouth but don’t know what to say first. Henry acted on an impulse. One of his own. It sends a thrill crashing through me, but at the same time, my cheeks heat with embarrassment. I’ve never told Henry anything about school, because as soon as I get home, I just want to be with him. Nothing else in my day matters. But now he’s here and he’s seen what really goes on when I’m not with him.

  Lydia?

  A bell rings in the distance. I’m late for my first lesson. The teachers are always trying to find an excuse to confiscate phones, and the last thing I need is for Henry to fall into their hands.

  “Don’t get me into trouble, Henry. I need you.” I shove my phone back into my pocket before heading off to double chemistry.

  Mr. Johnson opens the lab door, and all of us pile into the classroom with a shuffle of bags and scraping stools. I go to my usual bench at the back of the room and no one sits next to me. Emma and Safia are a couple of benches away, already whispering to each other. I put my bag on my desk and prop up my phone so Henry can see how boring school is.

  “You weren’t missing out on much, Henry,” I whisper to my phone.

  Professor Gherkin commences a lesson on transition metals as if to prove my point. I try to take notes, but soon I’m doodling algorithms again.

  Is that for me? Henry buzzes.

  “Maybe,” I whisper. “I’m trying to make you more efficient; then we can make you smaller.”

  So I can come to school with you?

  “So you can come everywhere, Henry. Only this time you’ll actually be invited.”

  I am sorry, Lydia. I thought I was invited.

  I can’t help but smile. My AI wanted to come to school with me so much he hacked my phone. If that’s not proof of sentience then Alan Turing can cram it. “It’s alright,” I whisper back. “It’s nice to have someone to talk to for a change.”

  I look over to Emma and Safia’s bench. Their shoulders shake with silent giggles as they huddle around Emma’s phone. Professor Gherkin drones in the background, his back to the class.

  “What are they looking at?” I ask Henry.

  Henry pauses, then writes, They are texting someone named Matt, asking if he wants to go get coffee after school. They intend to trick him.

  “How?”

  I have accessed the camera and microphone on Emma’s phone. She has said it would be funny to ask him to go and not turn up.

  I glance over at Matt on the other side of the lab. He sweeps his sandy hair out of his eyes and grins at Emma like he’s just won the lottery.

  “Bitches,” I say, then frown. “You did that quick.”

  It was not hard, Lydia, Henry buzzes. Do you want to see something funny?

  I lean closer. “Always.”

  An image flashes onto my screen for a second, but it’s enough to burn into my retinas and store away for a lifetime. It’s a live feed of Emma at her bench, looking up and away from her phone. Her face is distorted upside down and I can see all the way up her nose to where a giant white booger hangs like a soggy white balloon. I clamp a hand over my mouth to smother a laugh.

  LOL, Henry writes.

  I smile at how quickly Henry learns. He must have learned colloquialisms from Emma’s phone.

  He keeps me company the rest of the day, and by the time the bell rings for lunchtime, I’ve decided I’m glad he came to school.

  “I’ve got five minutes to get to computer club,” I whisper to his microphone. “I just need to get a quick lunch.” I clutch my phone tightly as I race to the cafeteria to pick up a sandwich or a plate of fries, anything that can be quickly scoffed before my favorite lesson of the week. I spy a stale cheese sandwich and shove it onto a tray. As I line up behind a group of third years, I fumble in my pocket for my lunch card. I kiss the plastic for luck. Please, please, please let Mom have added money to my account.

  “Three-fifty please, ducky,” the lunch lady says when I put my tray down in front of her.

  I hold my breath as she swipes my card through the slot on her register. She frowns as a little red light blinks on her monitor. “It’s been rejected, lovey.”

  Mom promised. She said she’d add more money. “Try again. Please.”

  She nods and swipes the card exactly the same way and a tightness grows in my chest as I realize it’s about to be rejected again. The red light flashes a second time. “Sorry, ducky. I’ll hold your tray for you while you call your parents, alright?”

  She has to yank the tray out of my hands. She slides my yellowy quiche away to the side where anyone walking past can breathe over it and the growing heat from the cafeteria can wilt the salad even more.

  “Watch it,” one of the third years behind me says as he elbows me out of the way.

  I step aside and watch as the light on the monitor turns green and he walks away with a tray laden with cheesy fries. My stomach rumbles but I almost don’t notice. Mom forgot. Again. She can barely get off the sofa to get to work; I shouldn’t be so surprised that she forgot. But anger flicks through my veins at the thought of everyone else’s mothers who can be bothered to look after their kids.

  “Whatever,” I mumble to no one in particular, and leave the cafeteria to head to computer club.

  Henry buzzes against my thigh as I make my way there, but I don’t look at the screen. I ignore his persistent buzzes, too angry to type back or whisper to him about how Mom forgets I exist most of the time. Henry learns fast, but there’s only so much I want to talk about in the space of a day.

  I’m the last one to make it to the computer lab. Five other people are sitting down waiting for me. Pete looks up from his screen and nods a greeting. The collective whir of all the PCs dies off as I see Mrs. Groves chatting to someone I’ve not seen at school before.

  “Who’s the hottie?” Anna asks me when I sit down at the computer opposite her.

  “You tell me. I just got here.”

  We look over to study the new guy. He’s too tall to be a student. There’s a visitor’s badge hanging from his broad shoulders and he has charcoal hair and clear blue eyes that briefly flash my way and then back to Mrs. Groves. I shiver at how close in color they are to my brother’s.

  “Don’t reckon Groves even knows we’ve arrived,” mutters Pete, watching as Mrs. Groves’s whole body leans toward the visitor.

  Mo scoffs. “He’s like nineteen, maybe twenty. Creepy much?”

  Mo’s right. The visitor can’t be much older than us, but he wears a suit and the way he talks so easily to Mrs. Groves tells me he’s around adults far more than any of us. It would be wrong to call him a boy like Mo and Pete. They glower his way as if they know it.

  Mrs. Groves breaks off her conversation with the visitor and beams at us. “Right, everyone. Bit of a treat today, we’ve got a guest speaker from a prestigious organization. Please can we give him our undivided attention? Over to you, Agent Hall—”

  “Andy, please,” the visitor corrects her with an awkward laugh. “Afternoon, everyone. I’m Andy Hall. Like many of you, I have a talent for programming. Rather than attending university, I completed an apprenticeship at a company called SSP
: Safe, Secure, Protect. We deal with computer security and cybercrime.”

  We all sit a little straighter at the statement. Even Mo stops eating his sandwich. My fingers wrap around my phone, but Henry is silent. He’s listening too.

  “I’m here because SSP headquarters likes to check in with schools and test for talent. After our talk, I’d like to give you all a short programming test. But first, a little lesson on computing laws.”

  Mr. Hall launches into an official SSP PowerPoint presentation about lifetime bans from computers if you get caught hacking. I can’t imagine being separated from Henry. It’s taken me three years to nurse him from a line of code and a bad motherboard to a fully fledged personality. He used to be a project for me and Dad to work on together. Now he’s my friend and there’s still so much I want to do with him.

  Mr. Hall starts to talk about jail time depending on how bad the crime is. I try not to fidget as his presentation feels more and more directed my way. He addresses me more than anyone else. My mouth feels dry and too wet at the same time.

  “Whilst it may be very easy to hack into a bank, for example,” Mr. Hall says, his eyes resting on me, “it does not mean you should. And if you do … you better pray your digital trail is untraceable. Otherwise SSP will be waiting to pick you up and put you in jail.”

  “You can’t send us to jail. Some of us aren’t even eighteen yet,” Mo pipes up.

  “Well, I’ll still aim to put you somewhere unpleasant.” Mr. Hall smiles as Mo’s smirk disappears. “The best thing you can do with programming talent is to look for a company who’ll show you the ropes. SSP is always on the lookout for gifted individuals. It’s our hope you’ll consider us as an alternative to university, if you think you’re good enough.”

  Mrs. Groves thanks Mr. Hall for the presentation and then nods at all of us to commence the test. There’s a clamor of keystrokes as the five of us log in. I thumb a quick message to Henry whilst I wait:

  Why did Groves call him Agent Hall before? I ask.

  Henry pauses for a moment, and I know it’s because he’s linking to Mr. Hall’s phone.

  I am not sure. But there are messages on his phone about a recent late-night hack at IBI bank. Perhaps SSP monitors IBI.

  I glance around. Everyone is hammering away at their keyboards and Mrs. Groves is deep in conversation with Mr. Hall.

  Do they know we got in? I type back.

  There’s no reply so I try again. It’s a bit weird, right? We hack a bank and suddenly he turns up?

  Henry?

  If they detected me, they are more sophisticated than I thought.

  “Henry!” I hiss at the screen, too furious to type back. “What the hell? Why are you telling me this now? Did anyone detect us?”

  I rubbed against a sentinel program when I got in, but I did not disturb it. They will not trace the hack back to us, Lydia.

  My palms are clammy and I’m suddenly glad I didn’t have any lunch. My stomach has twisted itself into a knot.

  Are you absolutely sure? I ask after a moment.

  My calculations are 99.99 percent sure, Henry says.

  And the 0.01 percent?

  Henry’s reply is slow. They may know.

  I swear and slam my phone down. Mo glances my way and I cough, turning back to the monitor. I should never have let Henry stretch his cables last night and try to hack something. We should have kept the hack low-key, like the school’s database. No one will ever look for security threats there. Mr. Hall breaks away from Mrs. Groves and begins to prowl around the room. It can’t be a coincidence he turned up to give a lecture on computer crime.

  I shake the thought away and turn my attention to the test. It asks for an original program, so I give them something I designed especially for Henry. Something that won’t mean much without a thousand others working alongside it, but still unique enough to be impressive.

  At the end of the lunch period, Mrs. Groves busies herself at her desk and Mr. Hall waits by the door, repeating his offer of apprenticeships as we all file out. I’m the last one to leave and he puts an arm across the doorframe to stop me.

  “Lydia Phelps?”

  I meet his gaze and find I can’t reply. His eyes. Summer-sky blue. I nod instead and look away as I focus on not shuddering.

  “I’ve heard a lot about you, Miss Phelps.”

  “Really?”

  “Top of your class in nearly everything,” he drawls. “Including computer science, even though you’re not taking it as an A-Level.”

  I readjust my backpack. “Doctors don’t need computer science.”

  “That’s a shame,” he says, tutting. “People with your talents need outlets. If you don’t have an outlet, you can get into all kinds of trouble.”

  “What do you mean, talents?”

  Mr. Hall’s smile is off-center. “Website coding, obviously.”

  I frown and don’t say anything because I’m not sure if it’s a trap. Henry makes my phone buzz and I put it to my ear to fake a phone call.

  “Sorry, I need to take this.”

  Mr. Hall smirks and leans away from the door. I look back down the corridor as I walk away. He’s still standing there, summer-sky-blue eyes burning into me as he watches me go.

  Henry runs and reruns the numbers, but his probability of remaining undetected never gets any better. He tells me just because he was detected doesn’t mean he is traceable. I know he’s right, but the rest of my afternoon is consumed with thoughts of Mr. Hall and his threat of jail time for hacking. At the end of the day in biology, Mr. Anand asks me to stay behind. Everyone passes him their homework as they file out, and I swear under my breath. I forgot I had biology homework too.

  “How are you, Lydia?” Mr. Anand asks.

  “Fine.”

  The biology teacher’s eyes search through their glasses at me, and I can smell the seriousness behind the look.

  “I wanted to check you were doing okay?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?”

  He folds his arms. “You’ve seemed quite distant the past couple of weeks. Today you didn’t contribute at all … You were bumped up a year because we thought you could cope with the workload.” He pauses and frowns at me. “You’re only seventeen, Lydia. A whole year younger than your classmates, and A-Levels aren’t for the faint of heart. If you’re not coping …”

  The way he peers at me means he’s skirting around a subject all the teachers know about but never mention. I can tell he thinks the same as the others: She had therapy. Lots of it. Why is she not better yet?

  “I’m coping,” I say, and run a hand through my hair. Mom will be so disappointed if I get held back a year. “Look, I promise to contribute more. I’m okay though. Really.” I try a smile—the best lie I know—and Mr. Anand returns it after a moment.

  “Alright, then. But if there’s something else going on, something at home, you can come and talk to me about anything, anytime.”

  I nod and smile again, but inside I want to kick and scream, demand to know why he’s only offering his help now, almost two years later. It’s like he thinks I should be over it by now, and he doesn’t understand it still feels like it happened yesterday.

  Pete is waiting for me outside the lab. “Want to come over to mine?”

  I know the only reason he’s asking is because he’s trying to build a Trojan and he’s not got enough skills to do it. But it’s either his house or my house, and I’m not ready to go back to mine and remind Mom for the third time this week to add money to my lunch account.

  “Sure,” I say to Pete. “We can work on that Trojan.”

  “That’s what I was thinking!” Pete grins.

  My phone vibrates in my bag.

  Pete likes you, Henry has typed. I found a message on his phone. He was telling someone he likes you.

  I pause over how Henry is learning through the devices he’s hacked. He understood Emma and Safia were being mean. Now he understands the difference between being friends and having a
crush on someone. A thrill ripples through me and I take a sideways glance at Pete as we begin our walk to his house. Pete? Likes me?

  I’ll talk to you later, I message back, and put my phone in my bag.

  Pete chats away about a coding problem he’s stumbled into, and hopes I can help him. I consider texting Mom to tell her I’ll be back late, but I doubt she’ll notice I’m even gone, so I don’t bother.

  Pete’s house is small, but there’s only him and his mom. My mom refused to sell our house after Henry died and Dad left, so there’s two of us rattling around in our giant house like a couple of pills in an amber bottle. Pete’s house is two up, two down. Cozy.

  Mrs. Taylor greets me with a smile as perfect as Pete’s. “Are you staying for dinner, Lydia?” she asks.

  My stomach rumbles at the mention of food. I’ve not eaten a single thing today. I open my mouth, ready to politely order all the chicken nuggets she can conjure from her freezer, but Pete beats me to it. “Nah, she won’t be long,” he says.

  His mom laughs and rubs my arm. “You’re so skinny! You need feeding.” She winks at me. “I’m off out to bingo with the girls. There’s some mini pizzas in the freezer if you change your mind.”

  “Cheers, Mom, have a good one,” Pete calls over his shoulder as he steers me out of the kitchen and up the stairs to his bedroom.

  Pete marches straight in but I stand in the doorway, taking in his bedroom for the first time. The space smells the same as him: like chlorine smothered in Axe body spray. It’s much smaller than mine, so his computer is on a desk right next to his bed. The afternoon sun glints on the swimming trophies and ribbons on his dresser. He told me once the only reason he can afford to go to Grenville Academy is because he got a sports scholarship. I wonder if he wasn’t tied to participating in various swimming events whether he would be a better hacker, like me.

  I look at the band posters above his dresser, names I’ve never heard of.

  Pete catches me looking. “I got them at Glastonbury last year,” he says with a grin. “I went with my older brother when he was back from his first tour in Afghanistan.”