The Penn Friends Series Books 1-4: Penn Friends Boxset Page 21

  Penny was at this point leaving the supermarket during lunch breaks––Robin and his antics made staying inside not worth the hassle. She opted for a cafe nearby. Over the coming week she would work on correspondence for Jonathan––the prisoner she was a pen pal to––and had as much as possible replied to each of his letters within a day.

  My name is Jonathan (I can’t say anything more about myself, it’s the rules I’m afraid). I’ve been here three years he said in his first letter to her. His handwriting was neat, and she didn’t know why she assumed it would be messy, though she had jumped on the idea that he would be uneducated. I have a degree in engineering from a good university and worked in Dover in shipping for twenty years before all this happened. She placed him as being mid-forties, give or take. She was speaking with a man maybe thirty years her senior, though this wasn’t meant to be a relationship situation. She wouldn’t let it become that. He had outlined a few of his likes––talking about what you liked, what you wanted to become and what the future held were all safe topics that would mostly remain uncensored. She was sure someone screened the letters, somehow. Maybe even completely read them. Especially the first few. She would keep her replies within the strict guidelines, for now.

  Yes, in his first reply where she’d asked him some specific questions, I do have access to the internet. Yes, that does mean email too, but they’ll never allow you to pass me those details, as this has strictly got to remain within the limits of the Inmate PenPals system he’d confirmed. I think that’s the same reason you aren’t allowed to visit, though I can assure you, I’m not a danger to anyone. That bit annoyed her. She needed him to be just that.

  What Penny had never been able to do, was to use her power on someone unconnected, unnamed, unknown. She’d tried. She’d tried it on him, too, the moment she learnt his name. Jonathan might not even be his real name. Maybe they were given ones by the system to protect their identity?

  Do you keep my letters she had asked in another frantic reply between shifts, the television on loud for once in the cafe she was sitting in; it was the first day of the Games. Yes, every single one. She smiled. It gave her an idea. She wrote a quick reply, saying a few things without saying much at all. It didn’t matter. What mattered was the p she had written very clearly but equally small in the top right-hand corner. Over the next week, she followed it up with a 9, 1, 9 then the at sign, followed by five letters sent in the same batch, containing a g, m, a, i, and l before the final two included a dot and com. She had set up the email address specifically a week before, trying to keep the address as short as possible, but still, with twelve characters needed, there was a chance he might have read the letters out of sequence; so she had carefully dated each one so that the order was apparent. She wondered if he had even spotted the single letters in each of the top right-hand corners.

  In the very next letter, she added a comment at the bottom, which read; notice there isn’t anything in the corner this time? She had put an arrow pointing up to the corresponding zone in question, and hoped it wasn’t too complicated.

  It worked. Just three weeks after first making contact with Jonathan, Penny switched on her computer and logged into an email she’d never used before, to see one new message showing in the inbox. Her heart skipped a beat.

  Very smart he said in the subject line, Penny knowing instantly it was him. I got your clue, actually figured it out when you sent the at sign. Had to wait for the last one to know what domain, of course. So, this feels strange. I feel a freedom I haven’t had before. About what do you need to speak to me? He signed it JD. She guessed Jonathan was his real name, after all.

  There’s a man there, somewhere in your prison she replied immediately. There were over eight hundred inmates there, but she had to try. His name is Jack Jenkins. I need you to get to him, and I don’t mean to have a chat.

  Several days went by without a single reply, nor was there another letter. Had Penny been caught out, or had he got cold feet? She had no way of knowing. Penny kept up with the news on television, as well as some of the athletics events that were now also underway. It was during one of those nights, somehow, that Jenkins himself had managed to call her, leaving a message on her voicemail from a prison pay phone asking if she wanted to watch the Games together, asking Penny to come over and sit with him. Penny would need to change her number. She felt sick that he was even contacting her, as there had been no contact since his arrest. She wondered if her actions with Jonathan had somehow caused Jenkins to think of her?

  Finally, a reply came in on her email account from Jonathan; the same night Abbey was due to run in the Olympic 100-hundred metres final. Penny had been in two minds about whether she would be able to do what she’d been planning for over three years. His reply would focus her mind.

  I’m sorry to have taken so long to come back to you it had said, Penny all over the message when it had finally appeared. I assume you are one of the mum’s of the girls he abused? It doesn’t matter, I guess. I looked into him, anyway, though most who end up here are just like him. He makes me sick. I’m just not sure what I can do from where I am––they don’t let us mingle freely. He’s in a different part of the prison. They keep the sick ones locked up, anyway.

  He left me a voicemail the other night she replied immediately, frantic and desperate. She needed a way to get at Jenkins, and this was her best shot. Can you imagine what that did to me knowing he has access to a telephone? He must be stopped. His reply was equally quick back to her:

  What you’re asking me to do could get me into serious trouble. I’m three years into a ten-year sentence, but I’m up for parole in three years. With good behaviour, I walk. You have to, therefore, give me something more than just this. I have to know I'm protected. I’ll be fifty when I get out. My wife left me, and my kids don’t talk to me. You’re all I’ve got.

  Penny slammed the computer shut, angry that her plan was hitting the rocks. She couldn’t offer this man anything, and he would not be able to do something for her unless he had certain promises. Promises she wasn’t prepared to make.

  The final was just about to start on the television, the nation holding its breath, while Penny was reeling. Abbey Lawrence was suddenly all over Penny’s television screen. Here was someone on whom Penny could get payback. Jenkins would have to wait.

  6

  The day after that final I needed some fresh air. I called work and reported in sick––I was going off the place quickly, though was thankful for the money it was bringing in––and had to get away from the computer, from the news coverage, from everything.

  It felt such an anticlimax. I’d been thinking about what I would do to Abbey for so long, so much so that the morning after the night before, it felt nothing like I had thought it would. The same looked likely with Jenkins, too. Unless I could figure out another way, that monster wouldn’t get the revenge he deserved, either.

  Jack Ferguson, however, was someone I wouldn’t mess around on. He would have to pay entirely, and I knew this would inevitably feel so much better. How wrong was I about to be?

  Penny had called around to Jack’s home midmorning, though he wasn’t in. Lucy confirmed he’d left, heading for the high street about an hour before. Penny thanked her and walked away, frustrated that he wasn’t home, as she went off in search of him. She had noticed as she had stood in the doorway talking to his sister that his ghastly mack was not hanging on the coat stand like it otherwise did. That meant he was most probably up to no good.

  Penny tried calling him. He did not answer––she assumed it on silent, and if he was invisible, he wasn’t about to pick up the call. She checked the local shop, expecting at any moment for him to return her call, before sensing it was pointless searching. She knew where he was.

  Five minutes later Penny was at the other end of the high street, walking into the leisure centre. She paid the few pounds it cost to get in and walked straight into the female changing rooms. Penny didn’t have a bag or towel with he
r. She took off her shoes. There were no women in the area, and unlike her school, there were little changing cubicles for the women to use, anyway. Jack would hardly have been able to hide in one of those without first being noticed. That made the shower area the only possible option left to her.

  Penny could hear at least two of the showers were on as she neared the far end. She was fully dressed, of course, and it would look odd her just standing there, especially without a towel.

  As she got to the edge of the changing room, the showers just around the corner, Penny could see that there were indeed three women standing under the water and washing shampoo out of their hair. Penny instantly gave them all the ability to see people naked––it didn’t matter, as they already were. Penny would just appear to be a fourth, which was natural, seeing as it was a shower room. Thankfully, for Penny, the three ladies seemed to be all together, and better still, there were only three working showers. Penny was happy to stand to one side and wait. After a moment, Penny watching the area continuously, the three women switched off their showers at the same time, still deep in conversation, as each grabbed their towel and left, walking back into the changing room and past Penny, paying her no notice at all.

  Penny proceeded to take one of the shower heads then sprayed it right along the ledge above and behind each shower, until she heard a scream, and a mobile phone dropped to the floor, smashing as it landed.

  “What are you doing, Black?” a faceless voice spoke, Jack spitting angrily at the interruption.

  “You follow me out of here immediately; otherwise this will get a lot worse for you,” she said quietly, trying to keep her voice down. Thankfully no one else had come into the showers, and she could hear the three women who had just been there still deep in a loud conversation. They wouldn’t hear. Two splashes appeared, the outline of Jack’s feet visible as he jumped down from his spot that would have given him a prime vantage point to spy on anyone taking a shower. The pieces of mobile phone that had scattered around the floor started to vanish, Jack picking them up and dropping them into his pockets. A wet hand shoved into her back.

  “Move it, then,” he said, angrier than she’d seen him in a while.

  She went back to the changing rooms, thankful that the three women were not in the area where she had taken off her shoes. She undid the three women’s ability to see her naked, put on her shoes and was out of the door, holding it open for a fraction second longer than she needed, sure that Jack was following her out. She felt she could hear the squelch of wet clothes but might have been imagining it. Penny smiled at the thought, regardless. Before she was through with him, damp clothes would be the least of his worries.

  They left the leisure centre, Penny weaving her way to a spot she knew Jack would be able to reappear, which he did seconds later, getting right into her face.

  “You owe me a new telephone!” he demanded, his eyes somewhat calmer than they might have been. He appeared as much shamed as he was angry. He pulled the pieces of the broken smartphone from his pocket, but it was clear a replacement was needed. He’d lost an hour’s worth of footage.

  “You’re sick, you know!” she said, before changing her tone. She didn’t need that argument with Jack again right now. “Besides, I tried to call you, wanting to arrange a meet-up. I think we should spend the day together. Get out of town for a while, you know.” He hadn’t wanted a meet up, but he now liked the sound of getting away. Jack abandoned his broken handset, removing the sim card before dropping the rest into the bin.

  “Where were you thinking?” he said, warming all the more to the idea of spending the day with Penny. They’d not spent any serious time together for a while, Jack beginning to think she was trying to drop him.

  “We should go to the seaside. Catch a train to the coast, do something crazy like that.”

  “Yeah, why not?” he said. He liked the idea very much. “I’ll need to drop in at home, let them know,” he said. He couldn’t call them anymore, and besides, dressed in a wet mack, he looked ridiculous. It was August, and at least twenty-five degrees without any hint of rain. He was not exactly wearing beach gear.

  Penny waited on the pavement outside the driveway as Jack raced into his home just ten minutes later. She spotted Lucy looking through her bedroom window at Penny, apparently the two siblings inside discussing what he was about to do. Lucy looked away without acknowledging she’d seen Penny spot her. Five minutes later Jack came back out through the front door, shouting goodbye as he pulled it shut, and he jogged back to Penny. He was wearing shorts and a red t-shirt and had a white sports cap on, his clothing far more in keeping with the weather than half an hour earlier.

  “Luce said Margate’s worth a visit,” he said, their minds made up as to where they might be heading. “Bit of a dump, she said, but plenty of arcades if the weather turns to crap,” he added as they crossed the junction, heading towards the underground station.

  Two hours later they were approaching Margate on the train, having made the connection to London St Pancras and catching the express that would have them on the eastern coast of Kent in a journey time of ninety minutes.

  Penny and Jack had spoken openly during the trip, the flow casual––it was almost just like the old days. Penny saw the same danger she always had around Jack; he could so easily suck her in with his charm if she weren't careful.

  Abbey had come up in the course of their conversation, their classmate having broken down the night before as she was halfway through the Olympic 100-metres final, her hopes for a medal dashed. There had been no news, yet, as to what it meant for her other events. Penny could only guess what that news would eventually be.

  “Do you want to know something I’ve never told anyone before about Abbey and me?” Penny said as the announcement came that they were half an hour away from their destination. She spent the next ten minutes telling him all about the incident in the park with the dog and Abbey, about how she’d first discovered she had special talents. She said everything. There was something so powerful about having told someone, finally.

  “Did she ever know you gave her the ability?” he’d said, finally, having been listening more intensely than she had ever seen him do before.

  “She must have done,” but Penny couldn’t offer him more than that, because the truth was, she didn’t know. She had always wondered the same thing herself. Jack sat there, reading Penny’s face for a moment.

  “It was you, wasn’t it, last night I mean? You took it away from her, undid what you’d done before?” She didn’t need to answer as Jack could see the shock, the sadness and the anger in her eyes as he’d made that last connection.

  “Yes,” she quietly said, Jack swearing but with a huge grin on his face.

  “That was gangsta!” he said, Penny at a loss as to what that even meant, but he seemed impressed with her, regardless. He leaned in closer over the table, not that they’d been speaking too loudly––their conversation was as guarded as ever. “You can do other things, then, besides invisibility?” He had a glint in his eye as if he had just discovered gold.

  “Yes,” she said reluctantly, knowing that telling him anything more was full of risks and that he couldn’t be trusted, but she was confident it soon wouldn’t matter. She needed him to ask, anyway.

  He swore loudly, a few heads turning, but the other passengers within earshot soon ignored the two teenagers.

  “What can you do?” he said, excitement etched across his face, as he leaned even closer over the little table towards her.

  “Anything,” is all she said. Better let Jack's imagination go wild than fill in all the pieces for him, but she wanted to nudge him; she was gently leading Jack to the very thing she needed him to ask her.

  “Like what?” he said, as if too scared or too excited to be able to imagine anything better than he already had.

  “I don’t know,” she shrugged like she was as uncreative as he was right now, “let your imagination fly. If you can think it, I can probably m
ake it happen.” She wondered if she had been too subtle.

  “Can you make me fly?” he said, Penny jumping with excitement on the inside, her face grave and calm on the out. He’d said it.

  “Yes, I guess so. I’ve never tried it, in fact.” Jack sat there thinking for a moment, then a look of puzzlement coming across him.

  “But the day I broke my nose, in the cinema. You made Geoff fly then when he was invisible. He told me.”

  “No, that wasn’t me,” she said, everything about talking this through with Jack seeming more bizarre by the seconds, “and besides, he said he could only float.” Jack recalled that had been the word, too, that Geoff had used. He’d floated to the ceiling. Of course, Jack hadn’t believed him at the time, but now he believed it all. Jack let it drop.

  “Let’s see if you can make me fly, then,” he said, back onto the subject at hand.

  “What, here?” She looked around the carriage; there was no way she was going to allow that to happen.

  “No, of course not. When we get there.”

  “Okay,” she said, trying not to sound too triumphant, wanting to make it seem as if she wasn’t fussed, but seeing as he was asking, she would do it for him just this once.

  “And can you show me how it works?”

  “How what works?”

  “How you make people do things. How you make me fly.”

  “I’m not sure there is much to show. I just have to think something, but I guess I can speak it just as easily.”

  The train had slowed considerably as their conversation reached that point and, right enough, an announcement was then made saying they were now approaching their final destination, and reminding all passengers to ensure they had their personal belongings with them as they left the train. Neither of them said anything for the next two minutes as the train rolled into the station, the breaks applied for the final time and the train now at a complete stop, as doors began to open, passengers already stepping from the train and onto the platform.