SUNK Read Free

scattered along the beach for something sharp. I find a mussel shell, a biro lid and a piece of slate.
    The biro lid bends and the slate shatters but the mussel shell lets me prise the tiniest splinter of wood from the chair, and cuts me a thread of the cloth.
    ‘Ha!’ I say to the deckchair. ‘Ha! Serves you right.’
    The deckchair falls flat on the beach and the splinter and the piece of cloth whisk from my hand and vanish into the wind.
    I’d swear that the deckchair laughs.
    ‘OK then. If that’s the way you want to play it.’
    I hold up my right hand, form an O with my thumb and my forefinger and …
    Click.

 
    5
Smoothie Volcano
    The tiny deckchair is flipping about inside my pocket. I shrank it – it’s this thing I can do, but only here in Bywater-by-Sea. If I came round to your house, I wouldn’t be able to, and Eric wouldn’t be able to produce water from the end of his fingertips and Jacob wouldn’t be able to set fire to things.
    We’ve all got strange powers because of the meteorites – the ones from the sky that we caught, and the giant one under the castle. We’re not the only ones with strange powers.Grandma can shrink things too. She knows all about us, but Mum and Dad don’t and nor does Eric’s dad. It’s weird and wonderful, and sometimes gets very complicated.
    ‘Tom, enter.’ Eric’s dad stands in the doorway. He’s wearing pyjama trousers and a parrot-green Hawaiian shirt.
    ‘Hello, Mr Threepwood.’
    ‘Good,’ says Eric’s dad.
    I stand in the hall, not quite knowing what to say. I never know quite what to say with Eric’s dad. He’s not like other people. But then Eric’s not like other people. Most people are not as nice or as clever as Eric or his dad.
    ‘Um,’ I say in the end.
    Eric’s dad smiles and wanders off into the kitchen. I stand for a moment, my hand on the front door, feeling embarrassed.
    ‘Shall I go and find Eric?’ I say, but Eric’sdad’s not listening. Instead of answering me, he picks up an enormously thick book about space travel and starts eating something that looks very like straw.
     
    Upstairs Eric is playing Scrabble online with someone in Russia. ‘That’s “keckle” – K-E-C-K-L-E – it means to wind something up with a rope,’ he bellows at a tiny picture in the corner of the screen. ‘Oh – hello, Tom.’
    ‘I shrank the deckchair and brought it here,’ I say, staring at the Scrabble board, which is dotted with words I’ve never seen before. ‘What’s a “palpi”?’
    A pained expression flickers over Eric’s face. ‘It’s not “a palpi” – palpi are the plural. They’re the sensitive bits on a crab – surely you know that, Tom?’
    ‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘Here it is.’ I place the tinydeckchair on Eric’s desk. ‘This is the deckchair, or at least I think it’s the deckchair. Albert Fogg was washing it down, and talking to it, when it was big.’
    The tiny shrunken deckchair looks like a very careful piece of model-making. It’s about the size of my little finger and harmless. In fact, I’d almost call it cute. Eric closes the laptop and peers at the chair. ‘Washing it down, you say. Unusual.’
    ‘Will you be able to analyse it? Even if I’ve shrunk it?’
    In answer, he opens a cupboard door. An avalanche of single shoes, game controllers, batteries and last year’s cracker presents cascades to the floor. He pushes them out of the way and wades into the debris. ‘There should be –’ he says, shoving aside a plastic skeleton – ‘a microscope here somewhere. I’m sure I saw it … Ah!’
    Triumphant, he turns, holding a small battered cardboard package and laying it reverently on the desk. It’s covered in what looks like Chinese writing and has a picture of a huge spider on the front.
    ‘In here –’ he lifts the lid from the box, revealing a brittle plastic insert that’s cracked and clings to the object it encloses – ‘should be Dad’s microscope.’ Eric shakes off the shards