21/10/2011 Cathy Cassidy

[WP Central]

Kazia Moon is the coolest girl in Year Nine. She has honey-blonde hair and creamy skin and a way of tweaking her school uniform so it looks like something off the Paris catwalk. The teachers think she’s smart and sweet; the boys think she’s hot; the girls... well, most of them just wish they could be like her.

Kazia Moon is high school royalty, the kind of kid who can have anything she wants. I didn’t even think she knew I existed, but was I wrong about that.

She cornered me in the school canteen, her hand closing around my wrist, nails digging into my skin.

‘Listen,’ she whispered, her eyes wide and anxious. ‘I’m in trouble. I need your help...’

 

[WP Central]

"Whaaat? my help?? what do you mean??" what could she possible need from me, I'm just the resident year 9 geek, and I have the glasses and acne to prove it.

"Paul ....it is Paul isn't it?" I nodded weakly "you know all about computers and stuff don't you - you're like really clever aren't you?"

"well" I tried to smile modestly "yeah I guess you could say that. You see the way that computers work is really fascinating........"

"Yeah yeah I'm sure but I haven't got time for you to bore ....I mean tell me about that now. Are you any good at hacking into sites and peoples emails and stuff?"

Oh rats now what do I do? as it happens I am good at hacking , very good in fact but how can I admit that to Kazia - it could get me into so much trouble if she doesn't keep her mouth shut. But she's still holding on to my wrist and her big blue eyes are staring at me beseechingly and no one has ever looked right into my eyes like this so....

"Yep I'm brilliant at hacking , so what do you want me to do?"

 

Bev Humphrey

Write Path Founder

 

Bev Humphrey

Write Path Founds

[Anne-Lise Robin]

"Well, it's delicate you see."

Oh no no no! She is going to get me in such trouble! Girls like Kazia Moon always get you in impossibly intricate plots without you even realising it.

"Erm ok, well... I'll be discrete."

"Ok! So you see... I have this boyfriend in another school. We were going to go out tonight but he failed his last science test. Do you think you could hack into the school' system and change his grades?" She delivered her lines, as if she had learned them by heart. Kazia was a true actress, fluttering her eyelashes in a way that could only force you to accept whatever she demanded.

I thought hard, this could get me in serious trouble but I had done worse before. After all, those viruses and hacking codes did not write themselves. Kazia asking a nerd like me... I had to say yes. I had to do this for all us spotty, spectacled, awkward nerds out there!

"Yep no problem" I said in a confident voice.

"Ok, so you're serious about this?"

"Erm well yes" What was she playing at?!

"I suppose I can trust you then" She whispered. "I am not really a student, I don't really have a boyfriend in trouble and I need your help to change my identity. Can you do that?"

[Sorrel Anderson]

I made a kind of simpering, snorting noise and she gave me a look with those eyes of hers. I could feel myself getting red.

'What's so funny?'

'Er, nothing,' I said, 'nothing at all, I just...'

She raised an eyebrow.

'It's just that it sounds like something from out of a book or a film or something, and...and...'

'Look,' hissed Kazia, 'I haven't got time for this. I'm not making it up - I wish I was. I need you to help me. Is it yes, or no?'

'No!' I blurted out, 'I mean YES! YES! I will, yes.' 

[Caroline Roche]

As I sat at the computer, Kazia tapping her feet impatiently beside me, I got to thinking.  My fingers whizzed over the keys as I attempted to crack the code, it was mechanical and I didn't have to think about what I was doing.  So, was Kazia really a student at the school and just winding me up to get me into trouble?  Was she even our age?  It was difficult to tell with some girls, they looked adult from about 13, and Kazia was one of those girls. She could be anything up to about 20 - they get actresses to play young girls in films, I know, who are much older than they look.  So, what was the real gameplan here?  Were we really on an episode of 'You've been framed?'  Were there hidden cameras around the room, and I would be revealed as both a criminal and an idiot?  I sneaked a glance around the room, but couldn't see the cameras - but they would be hidden anyway.  I started to really doubt what I was doing, and started to make deliberate mistakes so that the hack wouldn't work.  Unfortunately, one of the mistakes turned out to be the real password and I was into the programme.  No chance of hiding this from Kazia, sitting right next to me.  What should I do?

[Adrian Thompson Laisterdyke UK]

I looked at Kazia. "I'm in.", I said. She smiled, and turned to face me. "Paul," she said "I've got to admit something to you. I wasn't being strictly truthful earlier on..." My heart sank. I knew it. She was going to turn me in, or something...

"That isn't a school database" were her next words. I turned back to look at the screen. WSDC was the logo at the top of the page. She'd said it was West Side District College, but it didn't really look like a school site... "WSDC are a defence contractor". I looked at her as though she'd sprouted another head. This was Kazia. She was cool, smart, sweet and hot - but what was she talking about?

"They're building a prison for the government. It'll be special. It'll hold anyone. Even special people..."

This made no sense at all - what did she mean?

"special people?". Yes, she said, "special people - like me..." and with that, she stood up, moved away from me, and rose into the air - just like that. She somersaulted and dived through the air as though she was in the water. "Wow,!" was all I could think of to say. "Oh, there's more... Kazia purred - and burst into flames in front of me. There was no heat, but she burned like a candle, with tiny balls of fire orbiting her. Then it stopped, and she settled back on the ground.

"What? I mean How?!" I said (I'm not much of a talker), and she settled down in the chair next to me. "It's like this, " she began...

[Evelyn Westwood]

"...I know this will be difficult for you to take in, but my people come from another planet."

I blinked nervously.  If it weren't for the very convincing levitation and spontaneous combustion act she had just performed I would have backed away, laughing nervously.

"Okay," I managed to say, waiting for her explanation.

"We've been secretly living on earth for hundreds of years.  Angels?  That's us.  Witches?  That's us.  Faery folk?  That's us..."

"Okay, I get that bit.  Are you - you know - dangerous?"

A flash of anger appeared in her eyes.  "You are the dangerous ones," she said, "you humans.  You destroy what you don't understand."

I was only slightly reassured.  After all, she had revealed her secret to me, and I knew what happened to people who were trusted with secrets.  When they were no longer of any use, they were... silenced.

[Tamsyn Murray]

"So how many of you are there?" I ventured, once I'd had time to calm the whirl of thoughts in my head. "On Earth, I mean."

Kazia pursed her rosebud lips. "Now? Around three hundred, scattered across the planet. As you can imagine, we spend a lot of time trying not to draw attention to ourselves. Obviously, we're not always successful, which is why I need your help."

My gaze flickered back to the screen in front of me and I shifted uneasily in my seat. "Yeah, about that. What exactly is it that you want me to do?"

She fixed me with a serious look. "The blue-prints for the prison are somewhere on this website. I need you to find them and make a tiny alteration. Put in a cat flap, if you like."

"You can turn into a cat as well?" I asked, blinking in confusion at the thought of a fiery moggy back-flipping through the air.

Kazia allowed herself a brief smile. "I mean, you'll put in an escape route."

"Oh. Right," I said, feeling a hot wave of embarrassment sweep over me. I thought back to her firework display. "And then what?"

"That's it," she said, with an elegant shrug. "You can go back to being a high school kid and forget any of this ever happened. I can even help you to forget, if you like."

My hands hovered over the keyboard, now even more worried. What did that mean, help me to forget? Did she have a Men In Black flashlight in her tiny bag, ready to wipe my memory? And what would she do if I refused to help?

[Lynne Coppendale]

 “Why?” I surprised her with my unexpected act of defiance?

“Why what?”, her eyebrows knitted in confusion.  I wondered if they were real or if she was a facsimile of how her people felt she should look.  Come to think of it, was she a Faery, Angel, Witch???  What else was there, she’d only mentioned those most recently seen as pretty hot and therefore enticing to the likes of hormonal, puberty-ridden, me,

“Why should I?  Why do you assume that you are the ‘good’ and we, humans, are the ‘bad’?  It’s the popular standpoint I know but… what if we are destined to destroy things and that’s actually the plans of fate?”

“Do you really think we have time for this?  Do you want this philosophical argument now, and then it will be too late?” Kazia was getting angry now.  I quite liked that, I did not like what that may say about me…

“Think Guantanemo Bay…” she added”… think of the anomolies of being an asylum seeker –vilified for not entering any Country legally, but being unable to do so legally due to the very reasons you seek asylum… think of the Birmingham Six… do you want us to suffer as they?”

Put like that how could I argue?  I looked back at the plans and there, right in from of me, was the perfect place for a ‘cat flap’.  I pointed at her, she smiled, and we got to work….

 

Lynne Coppendale.

Danum Academy Librarian

[Carol Williams]

A bit of html, a lot of luck, and I seemed to be doing pretty well. The “cat flap” was taking shape. But then I noticed, some of the plans looked different. No, I must be imagining it, too much time in front of the computer, and the pressure of being next to Kazia…. No, that wall was definitely bending, I could see it actually move. I looked at Kazia to see if she had noticed. There was a bit of a falming effect around her head, so I guessed she had.

“Paul,” she said, “you are about to meet the enemy.”

“You mean, the people who planned the prison, whoever they are”

“No, worse. The Dark Ones”. Now this was starting to get ridiculous – not only did I have to accept this girl was some sort of fairy, with super powers, there now had tpo be a whole race of evil creatures as well? How come I’d never realised this before?

Kezia explained that these Dark Ones were always there as much as her kind, and had obviously got someone digitally talented like me to work for them. The question was, should I carry on helping her, or should I just run for it. I mean, I could take sides and end up as collateral damage. What sort of mug would that make me?

On the other hand, I was intrigued to find out what would happen next. And I wouldn’t mind finding out how they did that bendy line thing with the blue-prints, almost like duelling one to one across cyberspace. And Kazia really was so attractive when she got angry…. I decided I was in the fight for the duration.

 

Carol Williams

Nottingham

[Allison Painich]

As quickly as she burst into flames, the Dark Ones appeared, inching towards us.  She grabbed me by the collar and we flew through the air.  Dodging each Dark One as objects were being thrown in our direction.  We made is safely outside, but I remembered my laptop was open with blueprints in