CHERUB: People's Republic (2 page)

It was gloomy inside because the frosted window was boarded following an encounter with a football. There was nobody home, but the coaches’ smell lingered in tracksuits and musty all-weather gear on wall hooks.

A clipboard on the window ledge bulged with crumpled forms. You could flip back and read through four months of minor crimes paid off with punishment laps.

A bead of sweat pelted the A4 page as Ryan grabbed the Biro-on-a-string and started filling boxes on the first blank page:
Time, date, name, agent number, laps run, reason for punishment
.

This last box irritated Ryan and he was tempted to write
No good reason
.

He had no problem accepting the tough discipline faced by agents who broke CHERUB rules, but having to run five kilometres because he’d got a fit of the giggles was ridiculous. Especially when other kids doing the same had got off.

‘You holding on to that all night?’ someone asked irritably.

Ryan’s heavy breathing meant he hadn’t heard the girl in the red CHERUB shirt and pink Nikes step up behind. He reluctantly scrawled
Laughing in class
, signed his name and passed the board over.

‘All yours,’ he said sourly.

Ryan jogged along a gravel path towards campus’ eight-storey main building. Campus was dead because loads of kids were holidaying at the CHERUB summer hostel. A lift took him up to the seventh floor, but he broke off before reaching his bedroom to get a drink from a small kitchen.

‘Ryan, you reek!’ Grace complained, wafting in front of her nose as he squeezed by.

Grace was Ryan’s age, but a full head shorter. Her best friend Chloe sat bare-legged on the worktop between a microwave and three dessert glasses, which were halfway to becoming trifles.

The vibe was awkward because Grace was the closest Ryan had ever come to having a girlfriend and their weekend of holding hands and awkward silences had ended with Grace lobbing macaroni cheese at his head.

‘Can’t help stinking,’ Ryan explained, as he grabbed a pint glass from a cupboard and quarter filled it with ice chips from the dispenser in the fridge door. ‘Punishment laps. In this
bloody
heat.’

The girls seemed curious as Ryan took a bottle of Diet Pepsi from inside the fridge door and poured it over the ice. As he gulped fizz, Grace bashed up pink wafer biscuits before sprinkling the crumbs over custard in the dessert glasses.

‘It’s not like you, Ryan,’ Chloe said, with a slight tease in her voice. ‘You’re usually a good boy.’

‘Blame Max Black,’ Ryan said, before ripping off a vast Pepsi-fuelled belch.

‘Dirty pig!’ Chloe protested, before Ryan began his story.

‘We were in Mr Bartlett’s maths class. Bartlett goes out of the room to fetch something. Max and Kaitlyn had been rowing all through morning break. Kaitlyn calls Max a
mongoloid
. And you know how oranges shrivel up when they’re really old?’

The girls looked mystified by this turn in the story, but nodded anyway.

‘Max has got untold crap in his backpack,’ Ryan said. ‘I mean, he’s had the same school bag for years and I don’t think he’s cleaned out once: snotty tissues, socks, leaky pens. It’s basically a biohazard. So he reaches down his bag and comes up with this shrunken old orange, about the size of a ping-pong ball. He throws it really hard at Kaitlyn.

‘She dives out of the way, tilts off her chair and bops her head on the desk behind her. The orange whizzes on. It hits the handle of the cup on Mr Bartlett’s desk. Max’s throw was so hard the dried-out orange explodes and the mug does this little pirouette before toppling over.

‘Earl Grey tea, almost a full cup. It goes
everywhere
. All over Bartlett’s paperwork, and the desk drawer’s open, so it’s running in there: hole punch, staple gun, calculators, whole pack of squared paper and exercise books. Bartlett comes back inside. Kaitlyn’s bawling and waving her arms around and totally milking it. Bartlett starts screaming at Max.’

Chloe and Grace were both into the story, and Ryan felt more relaxed. It was the first time he’d spoken to either of them since the macaroni incident six weeks earlier.

‘So Bartlett was venting steam, going ape,’ Ryan said. ‘He gives Max a hundred punishment laps and sends Kaitlyn off to first aid. Then he gets everyone to calm down, but I can’t stop. Like, I’m swallowing and trying to keep a straight face, but me and Alfie are wetting ourselves laughing. So Bartlett kicks us both into the corridor and gives us five kilometres of laps.’

‘Harsh,’ Grace said, as she topped each trifle off with aerosol cream and Maltesers. ‘Bartlett’s usually mellow. I can’t even remember him raising his voice.’

Ryan tipped more Pepsi on to the ice. Chloe put on a serious voice. ‘Well
I
don’t think it’s funny. Kaitlyn needed three stitches in her head.’

Ryan looked shocked. ‘Seriously? Max’s an idiot. He never knows when to stop.’

Chloe raised one eyebrow and burst out laughing. ‘Had you going there, Rybo.’

Ryan shook his head, then smiled with relief. ‘I was gonna
say
. Her head barely glanced the table. Gimme some Maltesers. Who’s the third trifle for?’

‘Not you, that’s for sure,’ Grace said, tipping brown balls into Ryan’s outstretched palm.

Ryan dropped six Maltesers in his gob and crunched as he grabbed his half-drunk Pepsi glass off the worktop and headed out.

‘Oi,’ Chloe shouted. ‘Where do you think you’re going?’

Ryan backed up to the kitchen doorway and saw Grace pointing at the Pepsi bottle.

‘What did your last servant die of?’ she asked. ‘Put it back in the fridge.’

Ryan stepped back grumpily. He was knackered and the girls had loads of stuff out on the worktop already.

‘Putting one bottle back’s hardly gonna kill you,’ Ryan said.

‘We might kill
you
if you don’t,’ Chloe said, as she jumped down off the cabinet. She was barefoot and Ryan’s eyes fixed on her painted toenails as he opened the fridge door and bent forwards to slot the Pepsi back inside the door.

If he’d looked the other way he might have seen Grace before she yanked the elastic of his shorts and fired a long blast of cream towards his butt crack.

‘Yuk, it’s all sweaty down there,’ Grace yelled, shielding her eyes as the aerosol whooshed.

Ryan tried backing out, but Chloe was pushing on the fridge door, wedging him in place until the can gave its last gasp.

‘Cameraphone, cameraphone!’ Grace said.

Chloe let go of the fridge as the empty can clanked against the floor tiles. As Ryan straightened up Grace smacked his bum, making the whipped cream explode out of his shorts. Then an iPhone camera flashed.

‘Psychos,’ Ryan shouted. ‘What was
that
for?’

‘The hell of it,’ Grace said.

The second photo was the best shot, showing Ryan’s face halfway between laughter and fury, with cream streaking out the bottom of his running shorts and dribbling down his thighs. The third showed Ryan lunging towards the iPhone, while Grace leaned into the frame with a mad grin and a double thumbs-up.

‘You wait,’ Ryan yelled, as he waddled towards his room like he’d crapped himself. ‘You’d both better watch your backs.’

‘We’re really scared, Rybo,’ Grace shouted, between howls of laughter.

They both knew he hated being called Rybo.

‘Rybo, Rybo, Ryboooooo!’ Chloe said, making it sound like a football chant.

Ryan slammed the door of his room and turned the key so the girls couldn’t get in.

If tough training and punishments were the downside of being a CHERUB agent, the bedrooms were the biggest perk. Ryan had a comfortable space, with a leather sofa and TV one side of the door and a mini fridge and microwave on the other. His bed was a double and a large desk with a laptop and schoolbooks on it stood by the window.

Not wanting the cream streaking down his legs to end up on his carpet, Ryan took three long strides and cut into his bathroom. Rather than mess up the floor, he stepped into his bath fully clothed: any gunk left in the tub would wash away when he turned the taps on.

Once his trainers were off, Ryan turned on the shower head. As the water got warm he stripped off, letting sweaty, cream-soaked clothes rinse in the swirling pool around the plughole.

His T-shirt was clingy and stuck halfway over his head when a phone started ringing.

‘Tits!’

There was a handset mounted on the wall beside his toilet. Ryan was in two minds about answering. It was probably Grace and Chloe on a wind-up, but could also be something important. He almost slipped as he reached over and stretched the curly-corded handset across the room.

‘Ryan, it’s Zara.’

Ryan jolted. The chairwoman only called individual agents for serious business, like an important mission, or the kind of trouble that earned punishments far graver than laps. It was hard to hear so he used a soggy-socked foot to turn off the shower.

‘What do you want?’ Ryan asked nervously, as his brain flipped through possibilities.

‘Just yourself,’ Zara said. ‘I’ve got two people down here who’d like to meet you.’

2. CLAN

Ryan wasn’t particularly messy, but there always seemed like better ways of spending free time than on cleaning up his room. He left his running gear festering in the bathtub as he squirted deodorant, combed hair and swished mouthwash. Then he hunted through the mounds around his bed until he’d found clean underwear, a clean grey CHERUB T-shirt and cargo pants.

Before heading out Ryan toyed with the idea of taking the stud out of his ear. He’d had it pierced the previous weekend, hoping it would make him look cooler and more rebellious. But every time he went out he got all self-conscious and imagined that everyone was staring at it thinking he looked like a dick.

In the end Ryan left it in, because Zara was waiting and the ear got really sore when you fiddled with it.

When he reached the double doors of the chairwoman’s office Ryan took a deep breath and realised that his arms were shaking. It might be trouble, or it might be the proper mission he’d been craving since he’d finished basic training eight months earlier.

‘A-ha, the man of the hour!’ Zara said, getting off her sofa.

The office had a high ceiling, with a large angular desk and filing cabinets at one end, and leather sofas in front of a fireplace at the other. Ryan appreciated the chill of the air-con as he stepped in.

Zara stood up and introduced Ryan to a stunning-looking woman in her early twenties. ‘I don’t think you’ve ever met Amy Collins?’

Ryan was awed as Amy shook his hand. She had blonde shoulder-length hair, a perfect face, perky tits and a heavenly, tanned bod with a thong showing above the waistband of cut-off denim shorts.

‘Hi,’ Ryan said.

‘Cute earring,’ Amy said. ‘I’ve read your file and it’s good to finally meet you.’

‘Hi,’ Ryan repeated, as his brain turned to mush. He jolted when Zara put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Ryan, you look so nervous,’ Zara said. ‘We don’t bite, I promise.’

Ryan was mortified that his state of mind was so obvious.

‘Amy is a former CHERUB agent,’ Zara explained. ‘She retired back in 2005 and she’s recently taken a job in Dallas working for TFU – a new international taskforce, which is being led by Dr Denise Huggan.’

The caped woman stood up, but even in high-heeled boots she only reached Ryan’s eyebrows.

‘Nice to meet you, Dr Huggan,’ Ryan said politely as he shook a gnarly hand, covered with antique silver rings.

‘You gotta call me Dr D,’ she replied, with her shrill New York accent. ‘That’s the only handle I answer to.’

‘Take a seat, Ryan,’ Zara said, as Dr D let out a loud false laugh. ‘Amy and Dr D have full security clearance, so you can talk freely about your training or experience as a CHERUB agent.’

As Ryan sat on a leather sofa next to Amy, he glanced at the files and documents spread across the coffee table. In particular he noticed one of the distinctive red folders in which CHERUB agents receive mission briefing documents.

‘So am I finally getting a proper mission?’ he blurted.

Zara laughed. ‘Yes,
finally
. You’ve been a little bit anxious about that, haven’t you?’

Ryan felt embarrassed as Amy and Dr D joined the laughter.

‘I know exactly how Ryan feels,’ Amy said sympathetically. ‘You finish basic training and you think you’re hot shit, but then you’ve got to go out in the world and do it for real.’

‘Exactly,’ Ryan said. ‘And some of the guys I did basic training with have already done big missions, while I’ve been twiddling my thumbs on campus for
eight
months wondering if the mission control staff have forgotten I exist.’

‘I waited eight months for my first big mission,’ Amy said, smiling at the coincidence.