Ctrl-Z (6 page)

The only person who saw him was Mr Kowalski, who was out in his front garden planting some geraniums. He was wearing the grey
cardigan with the holes in the elbows that he always wore, and there was a stubble of unshaven hairs on his chin.

‘Hey, Alex!’ he called. ‘Why you not in school?’, but Alex didn’t answer. He simply smiled and waved, and let himself indoors.

The house was empty. His mother and father
were both at work and Alex helped himself to a can of drink and a chocolate bar from the tin in the kitchen. Normally he was
only allowed a chocolate bar if he asked his parents first, but today there was no need to ask anybody about anything because
very soon this, like everything else, would never have happened.

He watched some television while he finished his drink and ate the chocolate bar, then made his way upstairs to his room.
Sitting at his desk, he opened his laptop, set the time for twenty‐five past eight in the morning and pressed Ctrl‐Z.

An instant later, he was walking along the pavement with Callum.

‘Twenty‐seven?’ Callum was saying. ‘Twenty‐seven ways to make money?’

‘At
least
twenty‐seven,’ said Alex, ‘and before you ask what any of them are, I have to go back and get my lunch box, and then I’m going
to warn you about the Roller Putty…’

The second time around, the morning was much more pleasant. On the walk to school, Alex went over the questions he could remember
from Miss Simpson’s general knowledge test and both boys did rather well. Sophie Reynolds tried not to show it, but you could
see she was distinctly put out at coming third.

It was, from everyone else’s point of view, a very ordinary day, but Alex found himself thinking at odd moments how different
it had been the first time around. He thought about pouring the bucket of paste over Sophie Reynolds’s head and how calm he
had felt as he offered to report himself to the head teacher. He thought about what it had been like to walk out of school
in the middle of the morning and to leave all his cares, like his school sweatshirt, hanging on some railings behind him.

He was finally beginning to realize that, with Ctrl‐Z, you could do anything. Anything at all. Whatever you wanted, however
strange or dangerous or wicked – however much trouble it would cause – you could just go ahead and do it.

And
that
was an idea with some interesting possibilities.

‘Y
ou’re going to what?’ asked Callum. ‘I’m going to borrow Mum’s car and take it for a drive,’ Alex repeated.

He and Callum were standing in the garage to one side of Mrs Howard’s precious TR4. It was Tuesday, they had just got back
from school and Alex had everything worked out. He had collected the keys from the hook by the back door in the kitchen, his
mother would not be cycling home from her work at the garage for another half‐hour and he was ready to go.

‘But you can’t!’ There was a look of panic on Callum’s face. ‘Your mum’s spent years doing that thing up; if you damage it…
’

‘You still don’t get it, do you?’ said Alex. ‘It doesn’t
matter
if I damage it. Because when you
press Ctrl‐Z, none of this is ever going to have happened.’

‘Me?’ Callum’s look of panic deepened. ‘
I’m
going to press Ctrl‐Z?’

‘Well, I can’t do it, can I!’ Alex passed him the computer. ‘I’m going to have both hands busy with the steering.’ He pulled
open the car door. ‘I’ve set the time. All you have to do is press Ctrl‐Z when I tell you.’

Sitting in the car, he adjusted the seat, put the key into the ignition and turned it. There was a throaty roar from the engine
and Alex smiled happily to himself. All he had to do now was depress the clutch and put the gear stick into reverse. He had
seen his mother do it a thousand times…

‘Please, Alex!’ Callum’s anxious face appeared alongside him. ‘Don’t do this! If something happens –’

‘Nothing’s going to happen,’ Alex waved him away. ‘And don’t press Ctrl‐Z till I say!’

There was a grinding noise as he put the car into gear then, as he took his foot off the clutch, the car leapt backwards rather
faster than he’d expected. The side of the car scraped along the edge of the garage and the wing mirror
pinged
off on to the floor. Alex hurtled down the drive, pulled hard on the steering wheel, swung the car round and ran straight
along the pavement into a lamp post.

The car stalled, and when he turned the ignition again, nothing happened.

‘OK!’ He called back to the open‐mouthed Callum. ‘You can press it now!’

Alex had six more goes with the car and by the last attempt felt he was really getting the hang of it. He could reverse out
of the drive without hitting the side of the garage or crashing into the lamp post. He could change into a forward gear without
stalling, and got all the way to the end of the road, turned round, came back and into his own drive before stopping in front
of a white‐faced Callum and telling him to press Ctrl‐Z.

An instant later, he was no longer in the car, but standing to one side of it in the garage.

‘You’re going to
what
?’ demanded Callum.
‘I said I’m going to borrow Mum’s car and take it for a drive,’ said Alex, but then decided he had done enough driving for
one day. ‘No, on second thoughts, let’s go and have some tea.’

‘Thank goodness for that.’ Callum gave a sigh of relief. ‘Your mum’s spent years doing up the car and if anything happened
to it…’

‘Come on.’ Alex took his friend by the arm and led him towards the road. ‘Let’s get to your house and I’ll tell you what just
happened.’

The next day, when he got home from school, Alex took the 120‐piece dinner service his parents had been given when they got
married – the one they only used when they had special visitors – and carried it out to the garden. Standing by the back door,
he picked up one of the dinner plates and hurled it like a discus as far as he could. It landed with a deeply satisfying crash
on the paving stones down by the shed.

Ten plates later, Callum was finally persuaded to join in, and he threw a soup plate, which unfortunately went over the fence
into the garden next door, breaking not only the plate but a pane of glass in Mr Kowalski’s greenhouse. That made an even
better noise, Alex decided, and he began throwing more china over the fence directly at the greenhouse.

Five minutes later, when every single piece of china had been shattered – and most of the greenhouse – Alex gazed happily
at the wreckage and not even the sudden appearance of Mr Kowalski’s unshaven face above the fence could disturb his feeling
of deep content.

‘Alex?’ bellowed Mr Kowalski. ‘What you done? What you done to my greenhouse!’ His finger pointed accusingly. ‘You are wicked
boy! I tell your father! You are very wicked boy!’

While Callum backed nervously towards the
house, Alex did not bat an eyelid. ‘Don’t worry, Mr K,’ he said calmly. ‘It’s cool.’

And it
was
cool. Everything was always cool when you had Ctrl‐Z, that was the point. You never had to worry about what might go wrong
and, in a way, that feeling was even better than the fun of taking your mother’s car for a drive or smashing a greenhouse
with Royal Doulton china.

Throughout his entire life Alex had been told what he could do, what he couldn’t, and how important it was to follow certain
rules. Now, suddenly, for a part of the day at least, there were no rules. He could do anything. He could do whatever he wanted.
He had to go back afterwards and
not
do it, of course, but for a while he was completely free. It was one of the best feelings he had ever had.

In the days that followed, Alex did a good many of the things that would, under normal circumstances, have got him into a
great deal of trouble. He pulled out the bottom cans from the pyramid displays of baked beans at the supermarket, he dropped
a television from the top of a multi‐storey car park, and he even managed, on a brief train journey to Oxford, to pull the
lever that told the driver to make an emergency stop.

To be honest, not all the things he did were
quite as much fun as he had hoped, and one of them – setting off a fire extinguisher in a shopping mall, turned out to be
no fun at all.

It should have been. The idea was simple enough. It was the weekend, and Mrs Bannister had taken the boys into town and left
them at the cafe in the middle of the mall with a bun and a Coca‐Cola, while she went off to pick up some medicine for Lilly
from the chemist.

The fire extinguisher was sitting invitingly in a corner with the instructions on how to work it written clearly on its side.
Alex had his laptop with him in his backpack and setting it off seemed like a fun thing to do.

Callum had the job of standing with his fingers poised, ready to press Ctrl‐Z as soon as anyone in authority appeared, and
it was only when Alex had actually picked up the extinguisher that he saw, walking towards them, Sophie Reynolds.

‘You should aim the nozzle at her,’ said Callum. ‘It’d be much funnier than just splashing the stuff on the floor.’

Spraying someone you didn’t like very much with chemical foam seemed a brilliant idea. Alex pulled the handle on the extinguisher
and a wonderful white spray poured out of the nozzle. In seconds Sophie was covered from head to toe, but she didn’t scream
this time as she had done with the wallpaper
paste. Instead, she simply stood there, and then her face crumpled and she began to cry.

That was when the idea didn’t seem quite so funny.

A moment later, a woman in a wheelchair appeared beside Sophie. Oddly, she was the only one of the people passing by who seemed
to take any notice of what had happened and she held Sophie’s hand and looked rather upset.

‘Sophie?’ she said anxiously. ‘Sophie, darling, are you all right? What’s happened?’ She turned in her wheelchair towards
Alex and her voice was more puzzled than anything else. ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why did you do that?’

That was when the idea didn’t seem funny at all, and the two seconds before Callum remembered to stop staring and press Ctrl‐Z,
felt like a lifetime.

‘You should aim the nozzle at her,’ said Callum. ‘It’d be much funnier than just splashing the stuff on the floor.’

‘No,’ said Alex slowly, ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

‘Why not?’ Callum insisted. ‘We don’t like her! She’s always showing off in class and –’ He stopped. Sophie was standing directly
in front of them.

‘Hi,’ she said.

‘Hi,’ said Alex.
‘Look… um…’ Sophie was blushing slightly. ‘I need some help. With my mum.’ She pointed over her shoulder to a woman in a
wheelchair approaching them. ‘We’ve got a problem with the wheelchair.’

‘What sort of problem?’ asked Alex.
‘We can’t get it up the ramp,’ said Sophie. ‘With all the shopping, it’s too heavy. I’m not strong enough.’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Alex. He was already moving towards Sophie’s mother. ‘We’re experts at moving wheelchairs. Callum’s
sister is in one at the moment.’

‘Is she?’ Sophie looked at Callum in surprise. ‘I didn’t know that. Why?’

On their way to the ramps that led up to the car park, Callum explained about his sister and her osteomyelitis, and Sophie’s
mother explained about the accident that had left her unable to move below the waist. Apparently it meant that Sophie had
to do a lot of the housework and Mrs Reynolds said she wished sometimes that her daughter didn’t have to work so hard and
could spend more of her time playing and enjoying herself, like other children.

When they got to the car park, the boys helped unload the shopping into the car and then watched
as a rather clever lift arrangement hoisted Sophie’s mother, still in her wheelchair, into the driver’s seat.

‘You were right,’ Callum said as they made their way back to the cafe.

‘About what?’

‘When you said it wouldn’t be a good idea to spray Sophie with the fire extinguisher.’ Callum gave an embarrassed grin.

‘Ah,’ said Alex.
‘Because if you
had
done it, and then we’d realized she was coming to ask us to help with her mum and… well, we’d have felt terrible, wouldn’t
we? That would have been a
real
mistake!’

‘Yes,’ Alex agreed. ‘Yes, it would.’

It was always much harder for Callum to get his head round the idea of Ctrl‐Z than for Alex. The problem for Callum was that,
although Alex had explained to him several times how the laptop could take you back in time to before you had done anything
bad, Callum had no memory of any occasion when this had actually happened. He had never actually
seen
Alex drive his mother’s car out of the garage or upset a thousand cans of beans at the supermarket – or at least he had no
memory of seeing these things.

Alex had been using Ctrl‐Z every day since the
parcel from Godfather John first arrived, and could remember everything – but Callum did not. When Alex carried the china
out to the garden and began throwing it at the rockery, Callum couldn’t
know –
in the way that Alex did – that it was going to be all right. He had to trust each time that Ctrl‐Z really did exist and that
his friend had not gone quietly mad.

But although it was difficult, Callum
did
believe in Ctrl‐Z. He believed in it partly because Alex was not the sort of person who made things up, and partly because
his friend had shown an uncanny ability to know what was about to happen – but mostly because he had stopped having accidents.

In the week since the morning of Lilly’s party, when Alex had come round with his laptop, Callum had not had a single accident.
Not one. Alex told him that he had – that in the last two days alone, he had had accidents with a stapler, an electric carving
knife and a nasty incident when his hair got caught in a light socket – but Callum didn’t remember any of them. As far as
he was concerned, he had had no accidents at all and, for someone who’d been coping with them for most of his life, this was
truly remarkable.