Ctrl-Z by Andrew Norriss Page A

dog?’
    Mr Kowalski nodded. ‘I try to keep him indoors. I close all windows and lock doors, but one day he escape to garden. Catch
     Mrs Penrose dog and eat it. So I put up fence and barbed wire. Try to keep animals away. And children. I not want him to eat
     children. So I feed him. Feed him lot of food so he is not hungry. But lot of food make him grow more big. I put up curtains
     at window, so no one see him. I make it dark so he move less, but… I don’t know… is always
something
can go wrong.’
    Mr Kowalski looked across at Alex. ‘My sister she say give him to zoo, but how? If I call zoo, maybe they call police. Maybe
     I go to prison, I don’t know. If I
know,
maybe I do it, but I think –’
    Alex never heard what Mr Kowalski thought because at that moment the old man disappeared, along with his house and sitting
     room, and Alex
was standing in front of the desk in his bedroom, with Callum beside him.
    ‘I keep my eyes on Mr Kowalski,’ Callum was saying. ‘If I see him coming back to the house, I press Ctrl‐Z.’
    Alex took a moment to remember when he was.
    ‘So why didn’t you?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Why didn’t you press Ctrl‐Z?’ demanded Alex. ‘Mr Kowalski came back to the house, but you didn’t do anything!’
    Callum thought for a moment. ‘Is this one of those “you’ve already done it and come back again” moments?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes,’ said Alex, ‘only I nearly didn’t come back at all. What happened?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ said Callum. ‘I haven’t done anything yet, remember?’ He frowned. ‘But I
must
have pressed Ctrl‐Z, mustn’t I? Otherwise you wouldn’t have come back from wherever you’ve been.’
    Alex realized this had to be true. ‘All right, maybe you
did
press it, but not until it was nearly too late,’ said Alex.
    ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Callum, ‘but if I didn’t press it, it must have been because I was struck by lightning or something.
     You know I wouldn’t have left you there without a reason.’

    ‘No, no, I know that…’ Alex was beginning to recover. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just a bit… You see, that snake nearly killed me.’
    ‘A snake?’ Callum’s eyes widened. ‘You were nearly killed by a snake?’
    Alex took a deep breath and began telling Callum about the snake, about not being able to move, and about Mr Kowalski coming
     in from the garden, when his mother appeared at the door.
    ‘I need someone to hold the exhaust in place while I screw in a bracket,’ she said, looking at Alex. ‘D’you mind?’
    ‘Can I do it later?’ asked Alex. ‘Only I need to talk to Callum about –’
    ‘Come on!’ His mother briskly closed the lid of his computer with one hand and swept up Alex with the other. ‘You can both
     come. It won’t take long. Five minutes. Ten at the most.’
    ‘I think I know why you didn’t press the button now,’ said Alex quietly as he and Callum followed his mother down to the garage.
    Much later, as Alex was lying in bed that night going over the events of the day in his head before falling asleep, he wondered
     what he was going to do about Mr Kowalski. Twice now, at times of great danger, the old man had come to his rescue. He had
     saved Lilly from being burnt alive and
now he had saved Alex from being crushed by a snake. Again, Alex faced the problem of how to thank him for doing something
     he didn’t even know had happened.
    It would be nice this time, Alex thought, to do something more than bake him a cake, and there was one thing he
could
do for his neighbour. The last thing Mr Kowalski had said, sitting on the floor of his living room, was that he wanted to
     know whether, if anyone found out about him having the snake, it meant he would go to prison.
    And it couldn’t be too difficult to get a piece of information like that…

C HAPTER T WELVE

    A lex rang the police straight after breakfast the following morning. He used the number you were supposed to use if it wasn’t
     an