Zak lifted his hands in despair. ‘You don’t understand do you. I want to be a professional V-Commando player. I need to compete against the best, or I’ll never get good enough.’ He shook his head. ‘This is a disaster!’
‘Zak!’ said Mum impatiently, ‘We can’t change our plans just because of your pipe dream.’
Zak sighed again, loudly.
‘Zak only thinks of himself,’ said Skye. ‘What about me? I’ve got to leave my social life behind, to go and live in a shack in the middle of nowhere.’
Mum shrieked in frustration.
‘We didn’t take this decision lightly,’ she said sternly. ‘Originally, we weren’t going to move until you were both adults.’ She sighed. ‘But in the last year, we’ve come to despise living in England. It’s becoming a miserable place. The run-in with your school was the last resort.’
‘So this is all Zak’s fault!’ said Skye, turning menacingly towards him.
Zak stepped back. Was this all his fault?
‘Zak ignored the warning from school to improve,’ said Mum. ‘He played his game instead of doing his homework. It wasn’t hard to notice. So as expected, we received an official note yesterday to say that he has been excluded. We knew there would be no way back with that lot, so had already made our plans.’
Skye maintained her threatening glare.
Dad raised his hands as if to calm everyone down.
‘I think we’re missing the point here,’ he said sweetly, trying to break the stand-off. ‘You might love it.’
The front door of the housing unit opened, and a dark brown dog with floppy ears bounded out towards them, barking joyfully.
‘What’s Rover doing here?’ said Zak, confused.
‘He’s coming with us,’ said Dad cheerfully.
‘Great,’ said Zak, still with despair in his voice. ‘But what’s he doing here now? You haven’t strapped a Mind Mat to his head have you?’
