As the police dispersed, Theo stepped down from his soapbox with an overwhelming sense of relief. Various people in the crowd patted him on the back, and all agreed he had a great future ahead as a public speaker.
Then a harsh autumn wind picked up and the sky grew dimmer, threatening to rain once again. The crowd fastened the buttons on their coats, pulled up their hoods and hurried off in search of a bus or underground train to take them home.
Theo had no home to go to, however. Simon had disappeared completely and Theo considered his situation desperately. The danger hadn’t passed because the remaining police officers on patrol could be seen in the distance, their helmets bobbing along beneath the trees. In his hand, Theo clutched the business card of Lou Presquevus, the fortune-teller of Paris. It was his only hope, but how on earth was he expected to get there?
He looked up at the grim skies in a silent plea for help. He doubted there was any point in looking for the Storyteller there, but all the same he wished the old man could hear him, lend a hand somehow.
And what was it about the AOs that they didn’t carry money, he wondered angrily. Couldn’t Simon have broken the rules just this once to slip him enough cash for a train ticket to Paris? Was he supposed to sprout wings and fly there?
He would perhaps have continued this irate monologue in his head for some time had he not felt a persistent tugging at his elbow. He turned to see Bozo looking very excited. ‘I found us a ride!’ he exclaimed.
‘To where?’ Theo snapped morosely.
Bozo sighed in exasperation. ‘I thought I was the forgetful one. To Paris, of course. There’s a group of French schoolchildren over there and their bus leaves in five minutes.’
‘How do you know that?’ Theo asked, rather impressed. ‘Do you speak French?’
‘I don’t know that I speak English,’ Bozo replied thoughtfully. ‘I speak Bloon – it just comes out this way when I talk to you. I understand all you crazy Hoomans, whatever noises you make.’ He dragged Theo along by the hand. ‘Come on, or we’ll miss the bus.’
Theo glanced up at the gang of French kids being herded by a few
stressed teachers. They were about the same age as him. He suddenly felt a bit shy. ‘Bozo,’ he stammered, ‘what if they realise I’m not French?’ ‘Look,’ Bozo snorted, ‘either we go with the bus or we go with them.’ He indicated to where the police could be seen circling back towards Speaker’s Corner.
Theo didn’t need any more prompting. He entered the crowd of schoolchildren with his eyes glued to the ground and felt the excited chatter sweep over him in words he couldn’t understand. He drifted forward shyly.
He could smell crisps and chocolate being munched around him. He got the impression that he had been noticed but didn’t dare look up to check. Before anyone could ask him what he was doing, though, a teacher at the front called out something and the whole school party moved towards the bus.
Theo shuffled along in their midst and, although he couldn’t understand, he could tell they were talking about him.
‘What are they saying?’ he whispered to Bozo, who walked alongside him.
‘They’ve guessed your plan.’
‘And?’
‘And they’re going to help,’ Bozo answered gleefully.
They reached the bus and Theo raised his hood so no one would see his face. They boarded in single file. As Theo drew closer to the door, his heart beat wildly. Would they notice?
His turn came to board the bus but, as he lurched forwards, a large hand came to rest on his shoulder. He glanced up to meet the quizzical look of a French schoolteacher. The man looked down with the intuitive sense of teachers when kids are up to something. Before he could think quite what, however, a piercing scream put an end to the sticky moment. A girl had fallen over and spilled the contents of her rucksack all over the pavement.
The teacher sprang forwards to help and the children behind Theo pushed him on to the bus.
‘Quick! English boy – to the back!’ they hissed, suppressing their giggles. Theo was bundled to the back of the bus, where he sat on the floor in the corner. A barrage of coats and bags were piled on top of him, along with several urgent commands of ‘Shhhh!’ – an order he didn’t need to speak French to understand.
Moments later he heard a teacher at the front say something and another walk slowly down the aisle, presumably counting heads. The footsteps
came to an abrupt halt near Theo but departed rapidly as a girl in the middle of the bus began to howl with tears.
The bus started up and began to shunt its way through London’s traffic.
Theo could hardly breathe under the stifling layers of winter coats, but each time he tried to sit up he was pushed violently back down again. He felt like he was suffocating and it was only when he thought he was about to die that the French kids considered it safe for him to surface. He emerged from a pile of bags to a small crowd of grinning faces, their eyes burning with curiosity and mischief. Theo could tell from the happy buzz in the bus that everyone knew what was going on. Everyone except the adults – but what else was new?
‘English boy! Why do you want to go to France?’
‘I’m …I’m running away from the police,’ he admitted, a little embarrassed.
The response was electric. Excited whispers passed up and down the bus as his answer was relayed. Suddenly, the boy sitting next to Theo gasped.
‘It’s true!’ he said. ‘He’s the boy from the hospital. The one that was sleeping so long. He must have run away. Why you run, English boy?’
‘They were mean to me,’ he told them. A mass of heads nodded in understanding.
‘Do not worry,’ they said nobly. ‘We will hide you.’
As it got dark, most of the children in the bus grew drowsy and the lights were turned out. This gave Theo the liberty to sit up, and also the space to think without answering a hundred eager questions. There was a slightly tense moment when the bus entered the tunnel to France, but the customs official merely checked the list of passengers and waved them through.
Bozo dozed soundly next to Theo, who gazed out of the window into the black night. It had been a day like none other. Admittedly, he’d woken from his coma only a week ago but, even so, he reckoned it quite an adventure.
He closed his eyes and replayed the day’s events behind his eyelids: Dr Bunsen threatening him in the morning; Michelle arriving like a miracle to set him free; the fire scare and the escape to Hyde Park; and then meeting Simon, who had told him so much that Theo’s head still span with the new information. And now, before he could even begin to make sense of it, he was a stowaway on a bus to Paris – on his way to meet a fortune-teller, no less.
Why me? he asked himself for the tenth time that day. The answer rebounded in his face: Why anyone? Simon had said that, and acted as though standing on a box and preaching to the passers-by was also a grand responsibility. Maybe he had been someone important once, Theo reflected. Maybe people had hung on his every word. He never had found out how old Simon was.
And all that stuff about the AOs. The Awakened Ones. Theo couldn’t help but think it sounded a little self-important and vain. Why were only seven people able to swallow the fact that life was just one big Story? Forgetting how difficult it had been for him to accept the truth, he reached out to wake the boy sleeping in adjacent seat.
‘Pierre? Pierre, wake up,’ he whispered. ‘I have something to tell you.’ ‘Mmmm?’ he received by way of a response.
‘Pierre, did you know that the whole world isn’t like we think it is? Mobile phones have teeth and Flash-boxes – I mean, cameras – make you thin? Because really, we’re all just part of one big Story!’
‘Good. I like stories,’ Pierre murmured. His eyes opened a crack as he regarded Theo. ‘You are very funny, English boy.’ With that he fell back asleep.
Theo sighed and realised his conversion attempts wouldn’t be quite as easy as he thought. If they couldn’t even see Bozo, what chance was there of them believing in the Storyteller and Bloonland?
On the bright side, at least he was no longer alone. For thousands of years, seven AOs had been keeping the truth alive. Thousands of years? Did they never die? Simon was getting on a bit, but Michelle had seemed young enough.
There was so much more he had wanted to ask but he had met them both for only about 20 minutes. It didn’t seem fair. He wished they had been able to come with him. He felt sure they would do a better job of finding the Cure than he would alone.
The Enemy would find us . Why didn’t Simon want to tell him who the Enemy was? Theo imagined a dark sorcerer in a basement somewhere, brewing a foul-smelling potion to poison the Storyteller. He pictured him with cruel eyebrows and hateful eyes, pointed beard and pale, lifeless face. Then he remembered that he was thinking of a character from a comic he’d read the day before.
At the very least, now he knew where to go. Even if he didn’t know what to do, he had a trail to follow. He had to meet all seven of the AOs … and then come up with the Cure. It seemed like some distant exam, and the prospect troubled him a little even now. He decided to worry about it only when the time came. After all, he thought, if I worry about it now as well as when the moment arrives, I will have worried about it twice. Worrying about something once is bad enough.
Out of the window, Theo could see they were already arriving in a big city. The lights came on at the front of the bus and a teacher said something that Theo supposed to mean that they were coming into Paris. Children up and down the bus began to yawn and stir, picking up their bags and beginning quiet conversations.
Fear returned to Theo like a cold breeze sweeping down his spine. The electronic clock at the front of the bus read 11 p.m. Rain pattered against the window and he guessed it was going to be as cold and wet as England. He didn’t know much about Paris but didn’t suppose it was a very small place. He had no money for a taxi and presumed that if Lou was an AO she wouldn’t have any cash either.
‘English boy, what you do now?’ Pierre asked him as he rubbed the dust from his eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ Theo admitted, trying to stay calm even as fear gripped his stomach.
Pierre thought for a moment and then said, ‘D’accord. You come to my house. My parents are away and my grandmother, she forget everything. I tell her that you are …how you say? Exchange student.’
Pierre’s grandmother hadn’t forgotten to meet the coach where it pulled up at the school. And she seemed to think it perfectly natural to be taking two boys home instead of one. They climbed into the back of her Citro‘n and splashed their way through the wet, night-time streets of Paris. Pierre’s grandmother chatted away in French, half to herself, half to Pierre in the back. The only answer she received, however, was the occasional ‘Oui, grandmère’. He was too busy arm-wrestling with Theo to pay her much attention.
They arrived in a quiet, leafy neighbourhood and pulled up in a street that was protected by trees running down either side. As they got out of the car, Theo realised with a jolt that he hadn’t seen Bozo for the entire journey. He looked desperately left and right, but there was no escaping the fact that Bozo had not been inside the car.
Panic swept through him at the prospect of having lost his best friend. His quest was lonely enough, but without Bozo at his side how would he stand a chance? He cursed himself for his carelessness and wondered what on earth had become of the Bloon.
‘The next time you get into a car,’ came a rather shaky voice from above, ‘please do me the favour of holding the door open a little longer.’ Bozo sat on the roof where he’d clung for the duration of the 20 minute ride, drenched from head to tail with chattering , 20-and his teeth chattering with cold.
Theo was ready to collapse on the bed that Pierre’s grandmother had made for him but Pierre was excited about having a guest. He pressured Theo to tell him the story of the escape in intricate detail. The description of Dr Bunsen reminded Pierre of certain teachers he knew, and the account of the escape drew an impressed whistle.
It wasn’t easy to tell Pierre everything without mentioning Bozo, but the tale was already hard to believe. Adding a four-foot high Bloon might have stretched even Pierre’s fertile imagination. The French boy laughed uproariously at the mustard in the police officers’ eyes. As Theo spoke, he felt the adrenaline running though him again. He described climbing on to the soapbox and couldn’t help but give a full rendition of the speech that had won him such thunderous applause. By the time he finished, though, he noticed that Pierre, still nodding, had fallen asleep.
Moments later Theo joined him.