then — for the next ten minutes or so — I experimented with my zapping capabilities. I started off by simply touching one of the cans and giving it an electric shock, zapping it right off the slab, and then I tried controlling the power — increasing it, decreasing it, moving away from the cans to see if I could knock them off from a distance . . .
By the time I had to stop, when I saw a car cruising slowly down the road toward me, I’d learned that I could control the power, although as yet my degree of control wasn’t too great, and that my maximum range for zapping at a distance was no more than three feet at most.
I crossed back over to the pavement just as the approaching car was pulling up at the side of the road. The front window wound down and a seedy-looking guy leaned out and said, “Hey, kid, is this Crow Lane?”
I shook my head and pointed toward the tower blocks. “It’s back there.”
He glanced at where I was pointing, then turned back to me. “Baldwin House?”
“Second tower along.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. He just wound up the window, turned the car round, and drove off.
“You’re welcome,” I muttered, watching him go.
Gram was working when I got home — tap-tap-tapping away — and after we’d said hello, and she’d pretended to be a bit annoyed with me for staying out longer than I’d promised, I left her to her writing and went into my room.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with all the information I’d got about O’Neil and Adebajo and everything else — the attack on Lucy and Ben, the gang stuff, the Elders, Howard Ellman . . . I didn’t even know why I’d gone looking for it all in the first place. But as I sat at my window, looking down at the rainy-day dullness of Crow Town below, I knew in my heart that I only had two options: I could either do nothing, just forget about everything and try to get on with my life; or I could try my best to do something.
And maybe if I’d still been my old self — the perfectly normal, non-iPhoned Tom Harvey — maybe I might have accepted that there was nothing I could do, because the only thing the normal Tom Harvey could have done was pass on the information he’d collected to the police, and it wouldn’t have mattered how carefully or cleverly he did it, the end result would have been the same: Not just the Crows, but most of Crow Town, would have turned against Lucy and her family and made their lives even more hellish than they already were.
So the alternative option, of doing nothing at all, would probably have been the only thing the normal Tom Harvey could have done.
But, like it or not, I wasn’t the normal Tom Harvey anymore. I was iBoy. I had the ability to do things that I couldn’t do before, and there was something inside me — a part of me that I wasn’t even sure I liked — that made me feel that it was my duty, my obligation, to make the most of those abilities and try to do something useful with them. And whatever this feeling inside me was, I knew that I couldn’t say no to it.
I just wished that it would be a bit more helpful. I mean, it was all well and good making me feel that I had to do something . . . but how about telling me what that something was?
No, it was no help at all for that. And neither was my iBrain. Deciding what to do was a job for my normal brain.
So I closed my eyes and just sat there — thinking, wondering, listening to the pouring rain . . .
It must have been a couple of hours later when Gram knocked on my door, waking me up, and told me that she was just nipping out to the shops. I hadn’t got much thinking done, and even the thinking I had managed to do wasn’t very useful, or even relevant. In fact, as Gram stood in the doorway, waiting for me to answer her question — which I hadn’t actually heard — I realized that I couldn’t even remember what I’d been thinking about before I’d fallen asleep.
“Tommy?” Gram said.
I
By the time I had to stop, when I saw a car cruising slowly down the road toward me, I’d learned that I could control the power, although as yet my degree of control wasn’t too great, and that my maximum range for zapping at a distance was no more than three feet at most.
I crossed back over to the pavement just as the approaching car was pulling up at the side of the road. The front window wound down and a seedy-looking guy leaned out and said, “Hey, kid, is this Crow Lane?”
I shook my head and pointed toward the tower blocks. “It’s back there.”
He glanced at where I was pointing, then turned back to me. “Baldwin House?”
“Second tower along.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything. He just wound up the window, turned the car round, and drove off.
“You’re welcome,” I muttered, watching him go.
Gram was working when I got home — tap-tap-tapping away — and after we’d said hello, and she’d pretended to be a bit annoyed with me for staying out longer than I’d promised, I left her to her writing and went into my room.
I didn’t know what I was going to do with all the information I’d got about O’Neil and Adebajo and everything else — the attack on Lucy and Ben, the gang stuff, the Elders, Howard Ellman . . . I didn’t even know why I’d gone looking for it all in the first place. But as I sat at my window, looking down at the rainy-day dullness of Crow Town below, I knew in my heart that I only had two options: I could either do nothing, just forget about everything and try to get on with my life; or I could try my best to do something.
And maybe if I’d still been my old self — the perfectly normal, non-iPhoned Tom Harvey — maybe I might have accepted that there was nothing I could do, because the only thing the normal Tom Harvey could have done was pass on the information he’d collected to the police, and it wouldn’t have mattered how carefully or cleverly he did it, the end result would have been the same: Not just the Crows, but most of Crow Town, would have turned against Lucy and her family and made their lives even more hellish than they already were.
So the alternative option, of doing nothing at all, would probably have been the only thing the normal Tom Harvey could have done.
But, like it or not, I wasn’t the normal Tom Harvey anymore. I was iBoy. I had the ability to do things that I couldn’t do before, and there was something inside me — a part of me that I wasn’t even sure I liked — that made me feel that it was my duty, my obligation, to make the most of those abilities and try to do something useful with them. And whatever this feeling inside me was, I knew that I couldn’t say no to it.
I just wished that it would be a bit more helpful. I mean, it was all well and good making me feel that I had to do something . . . but how about telling me what that something was?
No, it was no help at all for that. And neither was my iBrain. Deciding what to do was a job for my normal brain.
So I closed my eyes and just sat there — thinking, wondering, listening to the pouring rain . . .
It must have been a couple of hours later when Gram knocked on my door, waking me up, and told me that she was just nipping out to the shops. I hadn’t got much thinking done, and even the thinking I had managed to do wasn’t very useful, or even relevant. In fact, as Gram stood in the doorway, waiting for me to answer her question — which I hadn’t actually heard — I realized that I couldn’t even remember what I’d been thinking about before I’d fallen asleep.
“Tommy?” Gram said.
I
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