Page 42 of Jinxed

‘Stop right now!’ I yell at him, even though I know he’s not going to listen.

I follow him deeper into the city, into the labyrinth of high rise buildings. He finally seems to leave the tight alleyways, and I breathe a sigh of relief as I see him sitting, staring at a small patch of green space – an inner city park. I catch up with him, scooping him up into my arms.

Then I see what he was runningtowards. The park is filled with cats. Real ones. Crawling all over the benches, rolling around in the fallen leaves, scrapping over food. I’ve heard of these places, where some of the city’s former pets have been turned loose – and now they congregate here, together. Jinx is transfixed. ‘Come on, Jinx, let’s go,’ I say, keeping my voice gentle. As I slowly turn around to walk back, his headswivels, following the cats.

>>But what do they do all day?he asks.

‘I suppose they just get to be real cats.’

>>Just real cats.

‘That’s right.’

>>And what do real cats do?

I shrug, attempting to trace back my steps through the narrow alleys. ‘They eat. Hunt. Explore. Play. Sleep. Lots of sleep.’

>>It’s quicker if you turn left here,he says. I follow his instructions, and they bring meback out to the main road.

>>Sleep, huh? What... all day?

I chuckle. ‘Sometimes. Depends if they’ve had a big meal or not.’

>>Sounds...

I wait for him to finish, but he doesn’t say any more. I hug him close.

>>We’re here, he says.

Sure enough, I look up and we’re outside the BakuBeats hall. ‘Is everything okay? Are you going to run away again?’

>>I just had to see. But... no. I won’t run away again.

‘Okay then.’ I gingerly set him down on the floor. Then I grin. ‘Let’s go move to some beats.’

‘YOU MADE IT!’ SAYS ASHLEY, AS I WALK up the stairs and into the giant converted warehouse that houses Moncha Corp’s BakuBeats. Heavy bass thumps in my ears, and it takes my eyes some time to adjustto the brightly coloured flashing lights.

Yet I can’t wipe the grin off my face. The reception area is on a mezzanine level high above the main BakuBeats floor. I gaze down at the myriad of soundproof bubbles, most of them filled with other teenage groups like ours. I spot some of my old classmates from St Agnes singing their hearts out in one of the pods. Even though I can’t hear what they’resaying, they look like they’re having a blast, their arms wrapped around each other’s shoulders, swaying in time to some music.

‘Good call on us not walking in together,’ says Tobias quietly to me – even though that wasn’t why I’d bolted from the car. ‘Would have looked a bit weird to our teammates.’

‘Oh right, no problem,’ I say.

He’s rolled his shirt sleeves up now too, showing off his tightlymuscled forearms. He has a constellation of marks on his right arm, slightly darker than his naturally dark skin tone, almost like a tattoo. It takes a lot of self-control for me to not want to lean in to look closer.

‘Tobias Washington.’ He gives his name to the attendant with the retriever baku.

The baku lights up and the attendant’s eyes seem to light up with it. ‘My baku tells me that you’reall students at Profectus?’ We all nod. ‘Well, because of that I can give you some extra perks and upgrade you to the premium bubble. It’s the full package: unlimited song choices, whatever food you want, and you get to be in our best bubble: the suspended one.’

‘Seriously?’ Ashley squeaks. ‘It’s always been fully booked when I’ve been here before,’ she says to me.

‘I’ve never been here,’ Ireply.

‘You’re going toloveit.’

The suspended bubble hangs in mid-air in the centre of the space – and from the promotional videos I’ve watched, it’s normally reserved for visiting celebrities... or, apparently, Profectus students. I look down through the clear plastic see-through floor of the bubble and see my old St Agnes classmates pointing at us and wondering who is being led up intothere.

It’s even better than we could have imagined. The bubble is divided into a ‘stage’ area, filled with instruments, and an ‘audience’ section, with oversized beanbag chairs and low-lying tables (which soon fill up with the pizza, nachos and drinks that we order). Ashley picks up an electric guitar and syncs it to Jupiter, and immediately the transparent plastic of the bubble transforms intoa screen depicting a roaring crowd, as if she’s a proper rock star performing a concert.

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