Chasing Imagination

The rest of the day was uneventful and I turned in before it was even completely dark, exhausted after a completely sleepless night last night. The following few days were equally as eventless. Rather unexpectedly, I didn’t see Amy as much as I hoped to—she seemed to be spending more time with Imogen and Kira and Linzy. I wasn’t sure what they were doing, but it meant that she had abandoned me to far too much quality time with Felix, Jay, Wolfie and Phil.

Perhaps the most annoying part of all of this was that all four of them were going off on Matt’s mission next week. That meant that conversation about raiding the Marauder base was almost permanent.

‘I really want to get that girl—d’you remember her?’ said Jay one morning, three days after Amy and my night-time drama in Kingston.

‘That girl?’ Wolfie said sceptically, putting quotation marks around the phrase. ‘Er, which girl?’

‘You remember, the one we fought up in Shepherd’s Bush that time,’ Jay said way too excitedly. Wolfie still looked blank. ‘The blonde?’

‘Well I get that redhead from Islington,’ announced Felix. ‘I bet you remember her.’

‘’Course we do,’ said Jay. ‘How could we forget?’

‘I fancy taking on that Zack guy,’ said Phil.

‘Ooh, you’re brave,’ said Wolfie, and it was unclear whether he was jeering or actually admiring Phil’s nerve. ‘He’s the most reckless Marauder I’ve ever met. Good luck with that.’

‘Well don’t you worry about luck,’ said Phil arrogantly. ‘I’ll have finished with him by the end of the night.’

Wolfie turned to look at me. Up until that point, I might as well have been invisible.

‘You alright, Casper?’

I was shocked out of a reverie. ‘Uh, yeah,’ I mumbled.

‘Why ain’t you coming?’ Phil asked.

‘Dunno,’ I said with a shrug, making it look casual.

‘It’s a chance to piss off some Marauders,’ said Phil in mock outrage, ‘what more could you ask for?’

It was true; I had considered asking Matt if I could tag along. But the stubborn side of me resisted that. I didn’t want to be a part of something he had created. I wanted to be a leader, not a follower. Well, I wouldn’t mind if anyone else was leading. I just didn’t want to follow Matt. It was stupid and selfish and immature, and I knew it, but that didn’t stop me.

‘I think there are enough people going,’ I said, again making it look so casual, as though I hadn’t spent hours at a time pondering what the best decision was.

‘Fair enough,’ said Phil with a grunt.

I knew there were going to be whispers about me soon enough. I knew there were going to be rumours. Maybe there already were. But I didn’t care.

One day I would show Matt. One day.

‘Casper?’ I glanced up to see Amy walking in.

‘Hey,’ I said, my enthusiasm growing ten times more than what it was a moment ago. Not only was she what Felix and Jay were calling my ‘unofficial girlfriend,’ (though not to her face of course) but she was also an escape route from this conversation that was leading me once again down the road of self-destruction.

‘D’you want to come and sit down?’ I asked, patting the space on the bench next to me as she hovered a little awkwardly at the side of the table. Noticing a female in his presence, Phil looked up, but the rest carried on talking about next week’s raid as though nothing was going on.

‘Markus wants to see us,’ she said, looking uncomfortable. ‘I just saw him and he told me to find you and then for us both to come to his office.’

My enthusiasm dissipated and my face fell. ‘Oh. Ok then.’

I got up, saying a brief ‘see you later’ to the others, which only Wolfie returned, and followed Amy out of the room.

‘Did he say why he wanted us?’ I asked.

‘No,’ Amy said. ‘But he didn’t seem in a great mood. Not that he ever is.’

‘He used to be, actually,’ I said. ‘But he has major favouritism. And he doesn’t like me at all anymore. It seems I’ve got to seriously redeem myself in his eyes before he’ll ever treat me decently again.’

‘But what did you do?’ Amy asked. ‘You always act like Markus hates you, but he trusted you to lead us on the little resistance mission, and he trusted you to go to London and to the Vaults, so it can’t be that bad.’

‘It was going downhill before you arrived,’ I said, ‘he used to like me, back when I joined...’ I trailed off, realising I was about to start rambling on about my past, not something I enjoyed doing. ‘But then Matt took over from my position of golden kid, and I made a couple of mistakes, like almost killing one of the main Marauders in London but missing by about half an inch, and he began to lose confidence in me. And then...’ I stopped. I shouldn’t say it.
It was too late.

‘And then what?’ Amy asked.

‘And then you followed me down here,’ I said. I bit my tongue as soon as the words were out. I hated myself.

Her face fell and her eyes grew sad.

‘That’s why he hates you? Because of me?’ she asked tentatively.

‘No!’ I protested. ‘For the same reason as you didn’t like me for a while after I brought you down here. Because I made myself too obvious, exposing myself to the general public, and did it enough for one of them to actually follow me. If you had been a police officer, Amy...’ again I trailed off. I didn’t like to think about what would have happened to the London Dreamers if a police officer had followed me underground that day.

And on a more selfish note, I didn’t like to think about what would have happened to me.

We arrived outside Markus’s door and I knocked.

‘Come in,’ said a dull grunt from the other side. I pushed the door open.

‘Hi Markus,’ I said.

‘Sit down,’ he muttered, looking at me through grey, disinterested eyes, his feet propped up on his desk in front of him so that he was reclined back in a slouching position. I just had to keep in mind that I liked Markus. I actually did. It was just that he didn’t like me.

‘So,’ he said casually, lifting his feet from where they rested, crossed over each other on the table, and placing them on the floor. Still, he looked just as relaxed and unbothered as before. ‘Three days ago, you two decided to go out for the night—very romantic, I must say—but you ended up being chased half way to London by the sound of it, by a whole load of angry policemen. Am I correct?’

‘Yes,’ I said in a small voice.

There was a long silence.

‘Well that wasn’t very clever of you, was it Casper?’ said Markus as a complete anticlimax.

‘No,’ I said, looking down, feeling the burn of disappointment. Just another chance out of many to go a little further down in Markus’s estimations.

When I looked up though, Markus didn’t seem angry. His eyes were filled with more interest than they had been for a long time.

‘How the fuck did you get out of that one?’

I smirked. ‘Luck, I guess,’ I said, not one for being pretentious. ‘I hoped I could draw them away from Amy and give her a chance to get back down here.’

‘Well that was very brave of you,’ he said, his voice thick with sarcasm. I wasn’t sure what he was trying to get at. He gave Amy a purposeful look, which looked like it was meant to be taken as humorous. ‘A real knight in shining armour, your Casper is.’

She nodded sweetly, playing with her hair.

‘But that sort of backfired,’ I continued, ‘and we ended up separated.’

‘Well I saw that much for myself when you came back alone that night,’ he said shortly. His interest turned to Amy for a moment, allowing me the slightest bit of relief.

‘How did you get back here then kid?’ he asked her.

She pulled a face. ‘I really don’t know.’ She looked at me for support, but I knew she needed to do this by herself. She had shot someone. Now she needed to own up to it. It was all part of being a Dreamer, though sadly far from the nicest part.

Markus didn’t seem to be as patient as I was though—that was nothing new.

‘I heard you shot them policemen,’ he said.

‘You...heard that?’ she asked, her voice growing even smaller. I understood. It was always disconcerting to hear that people were talking about you, regardless of what they were actually saying.

‘Yuh,’ he replied. ‘And I have to say, kid, I’m pretty impressed.’

I looked up. Markus, impressed?

Amy seemed even more shocked than I was.

‘Really?’ she asked, daring to hope.

‘Why not?’ he said, always so casual about things. ‘I didn’t see you as that kind of girl.’

I remembered saying the exact same thing to her on the night, and the reaction I had received.

‘I’m not though,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t want to be.’

Markus huffed rather unsympathetically. ‘You don’t really get a choice in that. You’re down here now.’

‘I know,’ she said, ‘and it scares me.’

I looked right at her for near enough the first time since the start of this ‘interview.’ Only now was it obvious that this talk wasn’t about me. It was about Amy. And suddenly I wanted to hear it.

‘It scares you,’ Markus repeated, but for the first time ever, I saw true compassion within him. ‘I know it does. It scared me the first time I did it as well.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Markus being considerate? I’d never seen him do such a thing in three years.

‘I’ve seen a lot of people take it a hell of a lot worse than you did,’ he said, still unprecedentedly softly. He turned to me. ‘Y’know, when you brought her down here, Casper, I thought we were all gonna end up being babysitters.’ His eyes flickered back to hers. ‘Turns out I was wrong.’

‘It was only a stun gun,’ she insisted meekly. I knew what she was trying to say; Markus’s admiration was blowing the whole situation right out of proportion. It wasn’t so scary; it wasn’t so different from hitting or punching someone.

‘I know,’ he said, ‘but it’s a start. You’ll be off on the raids in no time at all.’ I could see that he intended this to be a compliment, but she didn’t take it that way. ‘And Casper?’

I looked up. ‘Yeah?’

‘You ain’t doing so bad, y’ know.’

For the second time in barely two minutes, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing coming from Markus’s mouth. It was like another person had taken over his brain.

‘Really?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, like I say, I thought we were gonna all turn out bloody babysitters. But you’re showing her the right way down here. And you don’t seem to be a bad teacher either. And if what you told me about escaping first the police and then the Marauders is true, then you’re improving too.’

Wow. I was truly amazed. And it had been all true—everything I told him on that night was true, and not even exaggerated.

‘You can go now,’ Markus said. ‘Don’t go doing anything stupid again though.’

I allowed myself a slight smile. ‘Ok.’

We stood up and left the room in silence. Once I had shut the door, Amy gave me a very purposeful look.

‘What the hell was that about?’