Not As We Know It Read online

  Also by Tom Avery

  My Brother’s Shadow

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Tom Avery

  Cover art copyright © 2016 by Kenard Pak

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Schwartz & Wade Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. Originally published in paperback in different form by Andersen Press Limited, London, in 2015.

  Schwartz & Wade Books and the colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhousekids.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Avery, Tom (Children’s story writer)

  Not as we know it / Tom Avery. — First American edition.

  pages cm

  “Originally published in paperback in different form by Andersen Press Limited, London, in 2015”—Copyright page.

  Summary: Can a mysterious sea creature save eleven-year-old Jamie’s very sick twin brother?

  ISBN 978-0-553-53509-9 (hc) — ISBN 978-0-553-53510-5 (glb) ISBN 978-0-553-53511-2 (ebk)

  [1. Brothers—Fiction. 2. Twins—Fiction. 3. Imaginary creatures—Fiction. 4. Cystic fibrosis—Fiction. 5. Beaches—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.A9527No 2016

  [Fic]—dc23

  2015010810

  ebook ISBN 9780553535112

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Tom Avery

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Treasure

  Home

  Story

  Leonard

  Song

  Appointment

  Superstition

  Fear

  Risk

  Injury

  Hope

  Operation

  Favorites

  Plan

  Sorrow

  Melody

  Fomalhaut

  Time

  Pause

  Chase

  Water

  Hospital

  Words

  Understanding

  Empty

  Storm

  Swallowed

  Message

  Doubt

  Goodbye

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  To my mum for giving me a love of books and my dad for giving me a love of Star Trek

  It’s life, Captain, but not as we know it.

  —Commander Spock, Star Trek: The Motion Picture

  A storm came to Portland. In the night it threw itself against our windows. The thunder called to us. Black clouds gathered across the island. The days were dark.

  When storms are finished, Chesil Beach—the stony bank that connects our tiny island in the English Channel to the mainland—is always littered. Driftwood, tangled balls of fishermen’s nets, glass bottles and plastic packets, all lie like God’s rubbish, spilt from a heavenly bin bag.

  There’s treasure too. Ned and I go searching amongst the junk. We claim the choicest gems, make them our prize and take them home to our trove.

  Dad’s low garage has never been big enough for his van. It’s a low brick building that doesn’t hold a car either. Instead, it’s bursting with the salvage of a dozen storms.

  We have collected shoes in all sizes—from a baby’s leather bootie to a yellow rubber wader. There’s a box of bones that sits on a high shelf, topped with a cow’s skull. In an old paint tin stands a rusted and broken knife as long as my forearm. Three forks rattle in the tin when we fetch it down; we are always on the lookout for spoons.

  Hats and a leather bag with a golden clasp. A little whale carved from bone. Unopened cans of food, all label-less. A hairbrush. Children’s toys, and books swollen and cracked by the sea’s waves and the sun’s rays. All kinds of fishermen’s tackle hangs about a life-ring that probably saved no one’s life.

  Some things took both of us to drag back along the beach: a bicycle frame; a chair with a missing leg; a long, thick oar; a metal tub, like a small bath, that sat in the very middle of the garage.

  Once we found the rotted carcass of a seal. Ned said we should take it home as part of our “mission to seek out new life.” The light was failing by the time we got it off the beach and up, up the coast path to our stone cottage and brick garage. Mum made us bury it.

  As ever, with this latest storm, we’d waited, watched the lightning, whooped at the crack of thunder. The storm passed and Dad left early for work. One fence panel was down. Mum said to fix it before I thought about doing anything else. I pushed it into place and nailed it to the post. I could hear Ned, inside on the sofa, coughing his lungs up as Mum beat on his chest. I hammered harder and hummed the Star Trek theme tune.

  Tony, one of our neighbors, Dad’s mate, beeped his horn as he drove past. I waved. He winked and nodded, his policeman’s helmet bobbing up and down.

  From next door, Mrs. Clarke called over the fence, “Will you keep it down!”

  “Sorry. I’m nearly finished.”

  She huffed, closed the door and returned to her kitchen, glaring from the window.

  I hammered the last nail in place as Ned, his treatment over, flew through the front door. Free! We mounted our bikes and coasted down the long hill before leaving them where the beach began.

  “Come on,” my brother called, crunching along the top of the bank.

  The sky is always deepest blue after nights of wind and rain. I could see only blue and blue and Ned’s scrawny body, scrabbling away from me.

  My brother began the usual introduction to our hunt, borrowed from our favorite program: “These are the adventures of Ned and Jamie.”

  I joined in, laughing and putting on my best Star Trek voice. “Their continuing mission to explore strange new places, to seek out new life and junk on the beach. To boldly go—”

  “Where no man has gone before,” Ned finished, and we chuckled as we kept on trekking.

  Our sack was empty. Our eyes scanned the shoreline. Ned’s thin plimsolls kicked through the flotsam.

  “Get off,” he said to a strand of brown seaweed that clung to his leg. He shook it till a coughing fit took over.

  The gulls crawked above us. Maybe if I’d listened carefully, I’d have heard them call a warning. Beware.

  When Ned was done, I knelt and peeled the weed from his bony ankle. “Home? We could try again later,” I said. I didn’t want to go home, but some things are more important than what I want.

  Ned pulled the face that said he was fine: eyebrows up, big smile drawn from ear to ear. “We haven’t got anything yet,” he said.

  I eyed my brother, scratched my chin, then nodded.

  We climbed back to the top of the bank. We stood a while, breathed the salty air and watched the cars, ferrying people on and off the island along the road parallel to the shore. Then our searching gazes followed the long curve of the beach to where the frothy sea met pebbles.

  A fisherman, his long pole spiking up and out to the sea, stood within shouting distance. A couple, hand in hand, trudged towards us from the island. Apart from those few, the beach was ours.

  We stared at a murky patch of browns and greens, beyond the fisherman. A tangled web of seaweed like that could hold tr
easure. Or it could be ten minutes wasted, picking through slime.

  “Let’s do it,” Ned said.

  We kept to the crest of the gravel wave, taking slow steps. The beach moved beneath our feet, stones running away down each side, toward the English Channel on our left and Weymouth Harbour on our right.

  “Mornin’,” the fisherman called as we passed above him.

  “Morning,” I said in my voice.

  “Mornin’,” Ned said in the fisherman’s voice, deep and gravelly.

  The fisherman turned away and shook his head as Ned giggled.

  When we got to the patch, we saw the weeds were deep. They swamped our shoes as we used our feet to search, pushing the plants aside, uncovering the beach beneath. There were the usual nets and scraps of rubbish, plastic and glass and string.

  I waded deeper, squelching through the murky brown till my left foot fell on something that was neither rock nor weed.

  “Maybe something here,” I called, taking a step back.

  Ned coughed toward me. I prodded with a rubber toe. It was soft, fleshy. I pushed the weeds aside. Beneath was dark brown, smooth and shimmering.

  “What is it?” Ned said at my elbow.

  I crouched and put a finger to our find. Smooth to the eye but some roughness to the touch, like skin. I pushed harder and felt movement beneath.

  “It’s alive,” I hissed at my brother. “Maybe another seal.”

  Ned lowered himself beside me and we gently plucked away the layers of seaweed. The brown skin became scaled with green and red in one direction and a deeper brown—almost black—the other.

  “Some sort of fish?” Ned whispered.

  We pulled at the weeds, uncovering a rectangle of flesh, smooth at one end, scaled the other. It’s the creature’s back, I thought. This gave way to limbs and joints not like a fish’s. They were tiny, no longer than a baby’s. They looked shrunken, connected to long hands and feet—as long as Granddad’s, longer than most men’s. But where Granddad’s hands were wide fillets, these were slim and the bones beneath stick-thin.

  Ned and I were silent. The sea fell silent. Above, the seagulls no longer spoke. Maybe they stared down too. A few strands of green and brown weed remained, where a head should be, could be.

  “Wait,” I hissed as my brother reached forwards. “What is it?”

  Ned grinned. “Let’s find out.”

  My heart hammered. I wanted to pile the seaweed back over our find, turn and crunch away to discover old shoes and maybe that missing spoon. I wanted things to stay as they were.

  But my brother wanted adventure. He always did. He pulled back the last thin fronds.

  My stomach rose and stopped my breath. I was filled with terrible fear and thunderous excitement.

  I’d never seen a head like this. The creature was on its side. Its eyes were human in shape, but bigger, bulbous beneath the closed lids. The nose was the small button nose of a child. There the human ended and the fish began. Its mouth was wide, stretching round from one side of the face to the other. Below this and the long narrow jaw were closed gills. On the top, where hair should have been, was a row of three pronged fins. No ears.

  We crouched and stared as the tiny back rose and fell and the creature breathed long, silent breaths.

  With my eyes wide and my heart pounding against my chest, like one of the massive drills Dad used at the quarry, I glanced at my brother. Ned’s face was alight with excitement.

  I looked back to the creature. Neither of us spoke.

  We stared as an eye cracked open, an eye as black as the deepest sea, and one of those long, thin hands shot out and grabbed Ned’s wrist. Our creature pulled itself toward him with the faintest croak and perhaps a flickering of recognition.

  We both screamed. Ned wrenched away and we fell back into the mess of slimy weeds. The creature fell back too. And the eye closed.

  Our granddad is a seaman. He’s lived his whole life on or near the deep blue. He’s hauled cargo back and forth across the oceans, on a ship longer than our street. He captained a trawler, heaving tons of mackerel and herring and sprat ashore. Later he dived for scallops, bringing those crusty shells up from the deep. He isn’t retired. Just on an extended break.

  I think Dad’s job as a quarryman is a disappointment to Granddad. He always says, “I am married to the sea. Your father’s married to the rock and stone.”

  Granddad brings us great slabs of fish: a choice plaice, a dover sole, the largest pollock you’ve ever seen. A forty-pounder he reckoned. Granddad taught us to gut and debone, fillet, butterfly. Once he tried to teach me and Ned to suck the eye from a fish’s socket.

  Ned had tapped his chest and said, “Sorry, Granddad, just feeling a bit congested today.” Then he laughed.

  I managed a grin; Ned’s chest wasn’t something to laugh about.

  Granddad asked me what my excuse was. He didn’t make me suck out any eyeballs, though.

  So, growing up with all that fish around, all that squelchy flesh, it wasn’t squeamishness that made us hesitate before bundling our find into the sack. It was fear. There was fear pulsing through both of us.

  We gulped air as we pulled ourselves up from the weeds.

  “I’ll get…I’ll get…Granddad,” I said.

  Ned stared at the thing, at the being. He didn’t answer for a long moment. The sea’s crash rose in our ears again, a wild call.

  “No,” my brother said at last. “This is our find. It’s our find. We’ll take him home first.”

  That word, first. I heard, First we’ll take him home, then we’ll tell someone. But Ned meant, First we’ll take him home, then we’ll see what we’ll see.

  So we bundled the creature into the sack. Ned rolled him gently as I held the bag open.

  “Watch the mouth. It might bite,” I said.

  Its cold, wet skin brushed against my fingers. No hair. Scales and skin and skeleton beneath.

  I shuddered at the cold, at the wild.

  —

  “Find anything good?” the fisherman called as we stepped lightly back along the ridge.

  “Erm,” I said with an urge to shout, We’ve found a living thing. Something awesome and terrible.

  Ned coughed, not his usual wet rattle. “Just shoes and stuff,” he said.

  The fisherman sniffed, nodded and returned to his rod.

  I pulled and turned the sack. The creature wasn’t heavy. It was terrifyingly light, like its bones were hollow. Its pointed elbow dug into my back.

  The couple smiled at us as we passed. I didn’t smile back. Ned did, brightly beaming.

  Usually we tied the sack to my handlebars and it clattered along against my front wheel as we ground our way up the hill. I did not think our little creature would thank us for the bruises, though.

  “You wheel the bikes,” my brother said. “I’ll carry Leonard.”

  “Leonard?”

  Ned’s pet crab had also been called Leonard, after his favorite member of the starship Enterprise crew, Leonard “Bones” McCoy. We’d kept it in the tub in the garage until the water turned green and we found Leonard still and unmoving. We’d buried the crab alongside the seal.

  If Ned wanted to call the creature Leonard, we’d call it Leonard. Ned usually had his way.

  I wheeled the bikes, one in each hand. Ned carried Leonard.

  There’s a spot, halfway up, where a second path leaves ours, going quickly down, scrabbling and hopping from rock to rock to a platform, thrusting into the sea. A spot where we always stop. On that clear day we stared back down along the beach, the sea on both sides of it. We could see far beyond Weymouth.

  We’d walked the whole beach once, eighteen long miles. Just me and Ned. On a day he’d wanted to escape. We’d had to get the bus back. Not because Ned moaned—Ned never moaned—but I could see when he winced that his knees were bad and his coughing had got worse with every mile. I told him I was too tired for the walk back, otherwise he would have insisted he was fine and stumbled
and coughed all the way home, or fallen somewhere along the lonely bank. When we got back, Dad was angrier than I’d ever seen him. Mum just cried. We haven’t walked it again. Now we just gazed back along it.

  The fisherman was still there. Two more had joined him, dots along the shoreline.

  “Come on,” I said, stooping to attack the last five hundred meters.

  Ned coughed and wheezed behind me. We turned onto our tiny road with its handful of cottages, their backs to the English Channel.

  I was glad Mrs. Clarke wasn’t by her garden gate; she always quizzed us on what we were up to.

  Mum saw us from the kitchen. I watched her turn down the radio and open the window.

  “Is he all right?” she called to me.

  “I’m fine,” Ned replied.

  “Come in soon,” she said.

  We nodded and waved.

  We knew where we would put the creature. Without talking, I dumped our bikes by the front gate and Ned opened the side door of the garage. The old hinges squeaked.

  “In the tub,” Ned said.

  Once I’d removed it from the sack, we stared again. We stared a long time, Ned wheezing.

  There’s only two other kids on our road: Lucy, my friend, who was in our class when we went to school and her little brother Peter. Peter’s tiny, even for a three-year-old. Lucy calls him Peewee.

  Laid out in the little tub, Leonard was no taller than Peewee. So slender. Skinnier than Ned. His colors startled me again, from darkest brown to bright red, purple, and green.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Not it. Leonard,” Ned replied.

  “What is Leonard?”

  We didn’t know. We knew he was a sea creature. That was it. For the first time the word merman swam into my mind. I did not let it dive out of my mouth, though.