Ok, so being fourteen is tough, believe me, I know; but the day mysterious Eli turned up, my eyes were opened to a whole new world of tough. One minute I’m advising my friends about pushy boyfriends and the next I’m helping a girl escape her violent dad and trying to stop a four-year-old from being kidnapped.
Seriously.
Turns out, Eli works for this agency in the future who spot teens in trouble and send other teens to help, even transporting us through time, if necessary. Don’t ask me how, Eli’s tried to explain but my brain almost explodes whenever I try to get my head around it, so I mostly don’t.
Anyway, why not have a read? Maybe, we can help you too.
Suitable for 11+
Extract
As their voices faded, I pushed myself painfully to my knees. I wasn’t quite ready to try standing up yet. At least, despite it being mid-March, it hadn’t rained for a few days and I was dusty but not covered in mud.
Closing my eyes, I tried to figure out whether any of the pain meant serious damage.
After a brief self-diagnostic, I figured big bruises and stiff muscles were gonna be the only after effects. I opened my eyes and clocked a pair of not-so-white trainers, straight in front of me. My eyes travelled upwards past jeans, and a grey hoodie to the gorgeous face of Mr Hot.
He held out his hand. I ignored it and scrambled to my feet, grimacing as pain shot through my ribs, like a hot poker.
“Are you okay?” His voice was sooo sexy but it wasn’t going to get him off the hook.
“Like you care!”
He frowned and looked down at his feet.
“I do care.”
“Oh yeah? Sure. That’s why you just stood up there and watched?” I nodded towards his old position by the fence. “Is that how you get your kicks, watching girls being beaten up? I guess it’s a pretty rare sight, must have been entertaining for you.”
“No, it wasn’t but I couldn’t interfere.”
I snorted. “Yeah, right, Mr Brave. Well, see ya!”
Turning to march away, my brain screamed but he’s so hot! Then answered, Yeah, and yellow too.
“Wait!” He caught my arm and spun me around.
“Get off me! Who do you think you are? Watching me get creamed then thinking you can order me around? Well, think again!”
I shook off his hand and marched towards the hedge.
“Jess! Wait! I’m sorry. I couldn’t interfere; it had to happen. There’s a reason, a real good reason …”
I kept on walking.
Hang on, he’s using my name again. How does he know who I am?
“… somebody needs you!”
It was like a lasso had looped over my head and wrapped around my body. I stopped, mid-stride, my brain crying keep going but my heart asking, who needs me?
I turned back.
“All right, you’ve got thirty seconds. Talk fast and, while you’re at it, tell me how you know my name.”
“Okay, I work for some people who help others. I can’t tell you much about them right now but if you decide to work with us, I can tell you more.”
“Work with you? I’m at school. The uniform?” I pointed down at the black cardigan, white shirt, black, white and orange striped tie and extremely dusty black trousers.
Hoodie shook his head.
“That doesn’t matter, your school attendance shouldn’t be affected but you could help a lot of people.”
“Like who? Do you work for a charity? Do you want me to collect for the Third World or something?” I’ve done that before, I love helping people, not to mention acting as agony aunt to all my friends.
Hoodie shook his head again and smiled, his brown eyes sparkling with enthusiasm.
“No, nothing like that. Sometimes people make decisions that affect their whole lives, even whether they live or die. The people I work for try to help people make the right choices to make their lives better or even to save them.”
A gust of wind rustled the leaves in the trees behind me and a blackbird whistled a warning to some kids scrambling down the path while my heart tripped faster. To be able to save someone, to actually do it this time might make up for … but he wasn’t making any sense and my head ached from the battering.
“How can they do that? How can they know what somebody’s thinking? And who are ‘they’, anyway?” I winced as another pain shot through my ribs.
“I can’t tell you how, yet, just that they can. Well, they don’t know what people are thinking but they know a whole lot of stuff; enough to help people, and you can be part of that.” His eyes latched onto mine and caught them like magnets. “Look. There’s a girl, your age. Her dad beats her up. She needs to report him. If she doesn’t, in four weeks time, he’s going to beat her so bad she’ll die.”
My heart tightened but my aching head filled with questions.
“And you know this, how? Are you psychic or something? Because I don’t believe in that stuff.”
“No. Like I said, the people I work for know. I promise I’ll explain how they do it if you decide to work with us.”
I looked at him trying to figure out whether he’d just escaped from a secure facility or was actually serious. I mean, the men with the cosy white jackets might be just around the corner. Half of me wanted to walk away from this weirdo and never look back but the other half burned with curiosity. I mean, what if he was telling the truth? How exciting was that? But how could this be for real? Mystery boy looked normal enough, in fact, he looked better than normal but it all sounded a bit too weird to me.
“What’s your name?”
“Eli.”
“Short for Elijah?”
“No, just Eli.”
“Oh.” I studied him for a minute. “So, if I help you with this girl, you’ll tell me all about the people you work for?”
“As much as I can.”
I must be off my head for even listening to this guy.
But I was too intrigued to leave. If this girl needed help, I couldn’t just walk away. Anyway, there was no harm in hearing more.
“I’m not getting in a car with you,” I said, arms folded.
“We’ll catch the bus.”
Well, that was easy, if he was planning to molest me, or something, I figured he’d try harder on the car thing. And if he wanted to get me alone then he was out of luck ‘cause that was sooo not going to happen!
“I’ll meet you after school tomorrow,” Eli said.
“Why tomorrow?”
He grinned. “You’ll see.”
He strode past, leaving me to watch his well-shaped rear disappear up the slope.
That was one really weird guy, mysterious, annoying and probably insane but I was drawn to him and not just physically. There was something about him that felt like it was meant to be. I already knew I’d be going with him tomorrow; my curiosity and need to help others was like this great big itch that just had to be scratched. The fact that he was totally hot might have had a bit to do with it as well but, one thing was certain, I wasn’t going to let down my guard around him until he’d proved himself, one way or the other. And yes, I noticed, he never did explain how he knew my name.