'Yes, but—'

'And then there was the Lost City of the Incas,' said Wobbler.

'Well, I found it, didn't I?'

'Yes, but it wasn't that lost,' said Yo-less. 'Behind Tesco's isn't exactly lost.'

Bigmac sighed.

'You're all weird,' he said.

'All right,' said Johnny. 'You all come down there after school, right?'

'Well—' Wobbler began, and shifted uneasily.

'Not scared, are you?' said Johnny. He knew that was unfair, but he was annoyed. 'You ran away before,' he said, 'when the Alderman came out.'

'I never saw no Alderman,' said Wobbler. 'Any- way, I wasn't scared. I ran away to wind you up.'

'You certainly had me fooled,' said Johnny.

'Me? Scared? I watched Night of the Killer Zom- bies three times — with freeze frame,' said Wobbler.

'All right, then. You come. All three of you come. After school.'

'After Cobbers,' said Bigmac.

'Look, this is a lot more important than—'

'Yes, but tonight Janine is going to tell Mick that Doraleen took Ron's surfboard—'

Johnny hesitated.

'All right, then,' he said. 'After Cobbers.'

'And then I promised to help my brother load up his van,' said Bigmac. 'Well, not exactly promised ... he said he'd rip my arms off if I didn't.'

'And I've got to do some Geography home- work,' said Yo-less.

'We haven't got any,' said Johnny.

'No, but I thought if I did an extra essay on rainforests I could pull up my marks average,' said Yo-less.

There was nothing odd about this, if you were used to Yo-less. Yo-less wore school uniform. Ex- cept that it wasn't really school uniform. Well, all right, technically it was school uniform, because everyone got these bits of paper at the start of every year saying what the school uniform was, but no-one ever wore it much, except for Yo-less, and