Drone Boy

Cathy Watt
 Cover photo by The Lazy Artist Gallery from Pexels

© 2019 Cathy Watt

All rights reserved

Dedicated to Ella Hodge and her bright future… of course.

Contents

Chapter 1: Meet Tim

Chapter 2: A Stupendous Discovery

Chapter 3: Hanging Around

Chapter 4: Over the Wall

Chapter 5: Melanie

Chapter 6: Where is Ollie?

Chapter 7: Disaster

Chapter 8: Problems

Chapter 9: Triumph

Connect with Cathy Watt

 1

Chapter 1: Meet Tim

You know how it feels to be bored, right? It’s like being sat on by a large, grey elephant who
refuses to move. Or being locked in an empty grey room for hours. Or …

Well. You get the idea, I’m sure.

Now imagine if every day of your life felt like that.

That’s how Timothy Green’s life felt. Every day he got up, got dressed, and went to
school. Then he came back home, flopped onto his bed, and stared at the ceiling.

No, he didn’t play the piano, or cricket, or even the fool. He wasn’t really interested in
those things. The only activity that he was excited by was playing video games. But his mum
thought they were bad for young boys, so she would only let him play between five o’clock
and six o’clock on Saturday evenings.

Poor Tim. That means he had fun exactly one hour a week.

Well – I’m exaggerating a little bit. I’m stretching the truth. I’m making it seem slightly
worse than it was.

Because Tim did have a friend. His name was Ollie, short for Oliver, and he was neither
bored nor boring. (Unlike you-know-who.) Ollie’s hair was always messy. He liked
adventures. His parents farmed goats, pigs, fruit and vegetables. He liked adventures, stories
and jokes.

In short, he was an interesting guy. So why was Oliver Clark friends with Timothy Green
– whose nickname, by the way, was “Totally Tedious”? Perhaps it had something to do with
the fact that Ollie lived very close to Tim’s house. And Ollie had five much older brothers
and sisters. Quite often, the peace and quiet of the Greens’ place seemed like heaven to Ollie.
To him, Tim Green and his quiet house were restful, not tedious.

So that explains that.

This story, though, is about how Tim’s life changed drastically. Hugely. Dramatically. His
nickname changed from “Totally Tedious Tim” to “Drone Boy” – a name that became
famous all over the country. It all happened one fascinating summer holiday, with a little help
from Ollie.

Let’s begin at the beginning.

 2

On the first day of the holidays, Tim opened his eyes and yawned up at the ceiling of his
grey room. He didn’t expect anything exciting to happen. He wasn’t even particularly pleased
that the summer break had begun.

But as he was sitting in the kitchen, finishing his breakfast of a bowl of oatmeal and a
glass of orange juice, there was a knock on the back door. Since the back door was also the
kitchen door, Tim got up to open it. It was Ollie.

“Hi, Ollie,” said Tim.

“Why, hello Ollie!” said Mrs Green from her position at the sink, where she was rinsing
the coffee pot. She sounded surprised, which was strange, because Ollie was the only person
who came to visit that early, and who knocked on the back door, instead of the front.

“Hello Mrs Green. Hi, Tim,” said Ollie. He didn’t greet Mr Green, because Mr Green had
left to go to work many hours before. Mrs Green was a teacher at the local high school, so
she didn’t have to go to work that day. She taught Geography, and was always asking Ollie
questions about things she believed he ought to know.

“Hi Ollie,” said Tim with mild surprise.

“I just thought I’d come and tell you that my Aunt Pamela is visiting for a few days,” said
Ollie. “Remember I told you about her?”

“She’s the electronics expert, right?” Tim asked.

Ollie nodded. “Come and meet her!”

At the back of Tim’s mind, a tiny spark of something unfamiliar lit up. That spark was
excitement. He felt it so seldom, he honestly didn’t recognise it.

The reason he felt excitement, or something like it, was that Aunt Pamela sounded fun
when Ollie described her to him. He wasn’t sure what “electronics” was, exactly, but he was
pretty sure it wasn’t a million miles away from the computer and video games he loved so
much.

Apart from that, Ollie was hopping on one leg. He looked as though he needed the toilet.
But Timothy knew that Ollie did that when he was very excited, and dying to show
something or share something.

Timothy gulped the last of his orange juice and said, “Can I go to Ollie’s house, Mum?”
 3

“All right,” said Mrs Green. “First tell me the capital of Peru.”

“Lima,” said Ollie tiredly.

“That’s where Aunt Lucy went to live,” Ollie commented.

“Another aunt?” Mrs Green enquired.

“Oh – Aunt Lucy isn’t my aunt. She’s Paddington Bear’s aunt.”

Both Ollie and Mrs Green stared at Ollie blankly.

“At the very beginning of Paddington Bear’s story,” Ollie explained, “Paddington travels
from Peru to live with the Browns because his Aunt Lucy went to live at the Home of Retired
Bears in Lima.”

“Oh,” said Mrs Green.

“Yes, anyway! Let’s go, Tim!”

“Okay.” Tim didn’t know why Ollie was going on about Paddington Bear. Stories weren’t
really interesting to the Greens. “Bye, Mum! Hey, wait for me, Ollie.”

Ollie was almost galloping down the path that led to the Greens’ garden gate. “Sorry. I just
want you to meet Aunt P. She has the coolest job in the world, you know.”

“Lucky!” was all Tim could think of to say. He couldn’t imagine what the coolest job in
the world might be like.

They jogged a little way up the road, then into Ollie’s garden. It wasn’t a real garden.
Ollie’s parents said they didn’t believe in gardens. They instead used their land to farm the
goats and pigs, along with small crops of vegetables and an orchard. Tim’s favourite part of
Ollie’s house was the conservatory, a glassed in room where Mrs Clark grew flowers, which
she sold to the florist shop in a nearby village. That was more like a garden, he thought.
Besides, the flowers smelt so much nicer than the goats or pigs.

There were some large patches of grass near the house, though, and this is where Ollie led
Tim.

At this stage, Timothy was puffing. He wasn’t very fit. “Where – is – your – Aunt?” he
gasped.

“She’s right over… here!” said Ollie. “Tim, meet Aunt Pamela!”
 4

Standing in a clearing next to a small orchard was a tall, slender woman with long, blonde
hair. At her feet was a strange-looking machine.

“Hello, boys!” she called.

After introductions, Aunt Pamela said, “I thought you might like to see one of the drones
that my company makes.” She indicated the odd little machine on the ground. “Do you know
what drones are, Tim?”

Tim nearly said, “They’re bees, aren’t they?” But since the machine clearly had very little
to do with bees, he shook his head and said, “No.”

“It’s basically a small aircraft,” Aunt Pamela explained, picking it up and passing it to
Tim.

“Aircraft? Ohhh, okay…” said Tim as he remembered where he’d heard of them before.

Now Ollie really was jumping up and down. “You must’ve seen them on TV! They send
cameras up on drones at sports matches and things!”

“Yes, I have heard of them.” Tim held the funny device this way and that. “It’s like an
alien craft, isn’t it?”

He found he didn’t want to let it go. If anyone had asked him what he felt at that moment,
he wouldn’t have known what word to use for the very, very fierce interest that rose up inside
him. But the word was fascinated. He was completely fascinated by this oddly shaped
machine.

“Yes, it looks like a UFO,” Oliver agreed. “Or like a few helicopters have somehow
melted together.”

That was a good description, Tim thought. This drone had four propellers on it, so it did
look a bit like four helicopters stuck together.

“Want to see what it can do?” asked Aunt Pamela.

“Yes!” shouted Oliver, while Timothy nodded his head up and down so fast it made him a
little dizzy.

“Okay, then. Ollie, if you hold it in the air to begin with, it will use less power than if we
have to get it off the ground. Now, I’ll just turn on the remote control and… here we go…”
Aunt Pamela expertly twiddled with the joystick on the remote control she was holding. To
 5

Tim it looked as though she was about to start playing a video game. But what happened was
far more interesting.

“Wow!” said Ollie.

“Gosh,” said Tim.

They found it hard to tear their gaze away from the little machine. In total obedience to
Aunt Pamela, it rose straight up into the air, then whizzed merrily towards the orchard,
navigated through a few trees, then turned around and came back.

Next, it hovered in the air for a few seconds. Aunt Pamela was clearly thinking about what
to do next.

The boys watched as the drone rose again, and flew towards the house. An upstairs
window was open. The drone flew smoothly through the opening and inside the house.

“That’s the bathroom!” said Oliver, sounding delighted and horrified all at once.

The audience of three heard an enraged bellow from inside.

“Oops,” said Aunt Pamela, and moved the joystick so that the drone flew just as smoothly
back outside.

“Aargh! Hey! Get that thing out of here!” Mr Clark suddenly appeared at the window,
waving a newspaper in front of him as if trying to get rid of a large wasp.

“Sorry!” Aunt P called to him. “Just experimenting!”

Mr Clark glared down at the three people looking up at him, and pointedly closed the
window.

“Oh dear,” said Aunt Pamela, “I think he must’ve been on the toilet. Imagine if that was a
camera drone!”

She chuckled and landed the drone on the grass in front of them, while the boys tried to
smother their guffaws of laughter.

“Want a go?” Aunt P held out the remote control.

“Yes, please!” said Ollie.

Almost at the same time, Timothy said, “Ooh, yes,” but he was a little slower than Ollie.
He wasn’t used to feeling such eagerness about anything.
 6

An hour flew by while the boys, with some instruction from Aunt Pamela, got used to the
remote control and the way the drone reacted to it.

“You’re both pretty good at this,” Aunt P commented. Then she frowned down at her
pocket. “Oh, help – is that my phone?”

She pulled a small phone from her pocket. “Oh dear,” she said, biting her lip. “Looks like
I’ve missed two calls from the office. We’d better finish up here, guys, so I can return the call
from upstairs.”

“There’s better cell phone reception upstairs,” Ollie explained to Tim. Reluctantly, they
brought the drone down to land and began packing it away in the cardboard box that Aunt P
had placed on a nearby table.

Aunt P was gone for quite a while. After a bit, Timothy said goodbye to Ollie. He thought
he should return home. His mother might need him to dust some bookshelves.

“That’s a thing she does,” he explained to Ollie gloomily. “She gives me a household task
to do every day.”

He knew Ollie wouldn’t laugh at him, and he was right.

“Well, I need to help out with milking the goats sometimes,” Ollie said. “I suppose our
parents want to keep us busy! But if you’re not busy cleaning the house tomorrow, why don’t
you come back here? I bet Aunt P can show us some more cool things.”

“Yes please,” said Timothy fervently.

He noticed Ollie looking at him as if he’d said something odd as he trotted back home. He
wasn’t surprised. He felt odd. Was it his heart? It was pounding quite hard, that’s for sure.
Had he caught flu? He patted his own cheeks. They felt a little warm, but nothing to be
worried about.

Timothy didn’t realise it, but those strange, fizzy feelings bubbling around inside him were
delight and eagerness.

And that was just the beginning of the most exciting summer holidays of his life.
 7

Chapter 2: A Stupendous Discovery

The following morning, after his oatmeal, Tim asked his mother if he could return to the
Clarks’ house.

“You need to clean the upstairs bathroom first,” she said with a frown. “And tell me the
name of the longest river in Africa.”

“The Nile, and okay,” said Tim. He didn’t mind about the bathroom. It was small, after all.
Cleaning it never took longer than fifteen minutes.

When he was done, he walked to the Clarks’ house again. He was quite disappointed to
find no-one about. He’d imagined that Aunt Pamela would be standing exactly where she had
been the previous day, with a drone on the ground in front of her and Ollie standing next to
her.

But all was quiet.

So he took himself to the goat-shed. There Ollie was, along with one of the labourers,
milking goats.

“I’ll be finished in five minutes!” he shouted, so Tim stood outside and waited.

When Ollie emerged, he grinned at his friend. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” he
said, leading the way to the house.

“What’s the good news?” Tim asked at once. He always chose to hear good news first, and
hoped that whoever was talking would forget to tell him whatever the bad news was.

“The good news is that Aunt Pamela said we could play with the drone today.”

“Awesome!”

“But the bad news is that she had to go home and return to work. There was some
emergency or other. I don’t think they can manage without her.”

Tim nodded. Something about Aunt Pamela’s clever, snapping gaze made him quite sure
that she did enormously intelligent things that not many other people could do. He felt quite
envious. How wonderful to have a relative who was so very good at her interesting job.

“She said she’d leave the drone on the bed and we could take it whenever we wanted to, as
long as we were careful with it,” Oliver explained, opening the door of the spare room.
 8

Sure enough, the box containing the drone and the remote control was sitting on the bed.

“Wonderful,” Timothy breathed.

Ollie looked at him. “You really love this drone!” he observed.

“Of course! Don’t you?”

“Yes, but I think you love it more!”

Timothy grinned – which he wasn’t used to. Stretching his lips across and up was a
strange feeling.

Once outside again, they unpacked the box carefully, and set up the drone. They took it in
turns to work with the control. At first it was a struggle, and they made the drone wobble and
dive. But as the morning wore on, they became better and better.

After one of his turns, Tim picked up the drone and looked at it carefully.

“What are you doing?” Ollie wanted to know.

“I’m thinking it would be cool if we could put a camera on it. I know this model wasn’t
designed for that, but…”

“I’ve got a webcam in my room,” Ollie offered immediately. “It was a Christmas present,
but I never use it. Should we…?”

“Yeah, let’s do it!” said Tim. “I Googled ‘drones’ last night and learned a lot. Some
countries are doing amazing things with them already.”

“Like what?”

“Like using them to transport things like medical supplies. And snacks and things.”

“Really?” Ollie asked eagerly. “Oh man, imagine having pizza delivered by drone
whenever you wanted one!”

“I know, right?”

They hurried up to Ollie’s room, taking the drone with them.

“Oh, it’s really small,” said Timothy when he spotted the webcam.

“It’s just so I can Skype my grandparents,” said Ollie, sounding a little embarrassed.

“Small is good!” Tim assured him. “The drone isn’t very big, after all.”
 9

He examined the camera carefully. “I wonder if we could use Blu Tack to stick the
webcam to the drone?”

Ollie found some Blu Tack. In the garden, they tried Tim’s idea. They stuck the webcam
on top of the drone’s flat middle section. Then Tim sent the drone into the air.

It quickly became clear that the plan wasn’t going to work.

“Stop, stop!” Ollie cried. “I can see the webcam wobbling!”

Smartly, Tim brought the drone down to land. He could see that the webcam had been
shaken loose from the Blu Tack. “Back to the drawing board, I think.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning we need to start again.”

Up in Ollie’s room once again, they tried this and that until Tim suggested, “Perhaps Blu
Tack in combination with something else would work. Something like a seatbelt to sort of
strap the webcam in place.”

“Like a belt?”

Tim’s face brightened. “Yes, exactly like a belt! D’you have a spare one?”

Ollie buried himself in his cupboard for a few seconds. He emerged triumphantly holding
a belt aloft. They tackled the problem together. They decided to embed the webcam deeply
into a bigger lump of Blu Tack than before. Then they wrapped Ollie’s belt around the
camera and the drone.

Ollie pulled the belt tight and fastened it. “That should secure it,” he said.

“Let’s test it and see.”

Outside once more, it was Ollie’s turn to work the remote control while Tim watched.
Both boys held their breath as the drone rose into the air.

“It can’t go as fast as it did before,” Ollie said.

“It’s weighed down by the belt and camera, I guess.”

Later, the boys agreed it was probably just as well the drone couldn’t fly particularly fast.
Its stately pace helped the webcam stay in place as the drone glided this way and that.

“Yay, we did it!” Ollie shouted, moving the controls carefully.

 10

“Ha ha ha!”

“Tim!” Ollie was shocked. “I’ve never heard you laugh before!”

Tim didn’t reply. He was too busy gazing upwards, grinning.

When Ollie landed the drone, Tim ran up to it, then knelt on the ground, examining the
drone this way and that.

“What are you looking for?” Ollie asked.

“Just checking,” came the brief reply.

After a few minutes, Tim sat back on his heels and said, “Can’t we make this better?”

“Better than what?”

“Better than it is now. Look, this belt worked, but it’s too heavy, and too long. If we could
find something lighter, something we could cut to fit, the drone could probably go faster and
further than it does now.”

“I think we can find something inside,” said Ollie. “Let’s look. But first, see what the
webcam filmed!”

The webcam had sent five minutes of recording to the Clarks’ computer using Bluetooth.

At first, the boys were fascinated with what they saw.

But then, after staring at the small image on screen of grass and trees, Ollie asked, “It’s not
such a brilliant recording, is it?”

“No,” Tim agreed. He didn’t want to say any more, because he didn’t want to hurt Ollie’s
feelings.

But Ollie guessed anyway. “It’s because the camera’s pathetic, right?”

“Umm,” said Tim.

“It is. Oh well, we could still use the webcam and drone for exploration!”

“Exploration of…?”

“Well, anywhere! The whole neighbourhood. Other neighbourhoods. Anywhere we’re not
allowed to go, but want to find out more about!” Ollie was hopping up and down again.
 11

Tim nodded, but his mind was ticking over, searching this way and that for a better way of
doing things. He felt more awake and alive than he had for… Well, he couldn’t remember
when he last felt like this. It was marvellous. He wanted it to continue.

“You said we could find a better belt?” he reminded Ollie.

“Oh, yeah. Let’s check the spare room.”

In the spare room, Ollie yanked open the left-hand side of the cupboard door. Old-
fashioned dresses and skirts hung inside. The smell of undisturbed dust and cardboard boxes
wafted gently out.

“I saw all these funny old belts hanging here,” Ollie said, speaking half to himself. “Oh,
they’re on this door.”

He yanked open the right-hand door this time, revealing a belt rack attached to the inside.
Hanging from it were five belts that looked to Tim as though they belonged to a granny’s
dresses: made out of fabric, and much thinner and lighter than Ollie’s leather belt.

“One of these should be excellent,” he observed. “Can we cut one, if we need to?”

“Course we can,” said Ollie confidently.

And then he sucked in his breath.

“What?” asked Tim.

At the same time he pointed, Tim saw what his friend was staring at. At the bottom of the
cupboard, partly hidden by the skirts of long dresses stored in there, were two large boxes.

And on the top box was a picture of a drone, looking five times bigger and much more
powerful than the one Aunt Pamela had left for them.

“Are these empty?” Ollie wondered, at the same time pulling at the top box. “No! This
one’s got something in it. Can you help?”

He didn’t need to ask. Tim helped him to heave the box from the cupboard and onto the
floor, where they could examine it more closely.

“It’s got to be full of Aunt Pamela’s books, or something,” said Tim, hardly daring to hope
that they’d discovered something thrilling.

Ollie pulled at the cardboard flaps. They both peered inside.

 12

“Those aren’t books,” said Ollie, in awe.

“That’s a gigantic drone!” said Tim. For one very strange moment, he thought he was
going to cry. He swallowed. The moment passed.

“Let’s look at it properly,” said Ollie.

Heaving the drone out of its packaging while trying to be gentle about it made both boys
grunt with effort.

Eventually, the drone sat in the middle of the bedroom floor. It was still wrapped in
plastic, but its size and power were clear.

The boys fell into an awed silence.

Clearing his throat after a minute, Timothy said, “Do you think we could…?”

He dare not even finish his sentence.

“We probably wouldn’t be allowed to,” said Ollie.

Then he looked at Timothy. “The things we could do with this,” he whispered.

“I know,” Timothy whispered back. His brain felt as though it were bursting with excellent
ideas. He could hardly put the words together. “We could… we could… Well, we could try
sending it to the village to collect pizzas for us!”

Ollie laughed.

Then he thought for a bit.

Then he said, still speaking quietly, though there was no-one else in the house, “I’ll try to
find out when Aunt Pamela is coming back. Because if she won’t be back here for a while…”

“Yes?” Tim could hardly breathe with excitement.

“Well, what would it matter if we fly this drone once or twice? We’ll be really careful.”

Tim spoke so fast he almost stumbled over his words. “And if there’s an accident, we’ll
have time to fix it up again! No-one will know!”

Ollie nodded slowly. “I’ll find out tonight.”

“And will you come and tell me tomorrow?”

 13

“Yes. If it’s good news, I’ll come super-early.” They both knew that Tim’s mother would
be more likely to let him visit Ollie if Ollie came to fetch him.

It was decided. The boys carefully pushed the drone back into its box. Then they gently
placed the box back in the cupboard. The other one, Tim guessed, probably contained the
drone’s operating system.

When the drone was back in place, Ollie pulled a belt from a rack, and closed the
cupboard doors.

Without saying a word, the boys went back outside again, armed with the belt and a pair of
scissors that Ollie took from the kitchen. After fastening the webcam onto the small drone,
Tim trimmed the belt a little and then checked the result. The drone in front of them now
looked like a toy, compared to the one they had seen upstairs. The webcam did look much
more securely fastened than before, though.

It wasn’t until the drone was in the air again that either of them spoke.

“Why do you think your aunt left the big drone behind?”

“I dunno. Could it be that she wanted us to find it and use it?”

“No way. It was stuck in the bottom of a cupboard,” Tim pointed out.

“Mm. Maybe she just didn’t have room in her car.”

“It’s truly, truly awesome,” said Tim.

They both knew he wasn’t talking about the drone they were flying.

Ollie nodded. “It’s…” He searched for the right word. “Stupendous,” he finished.
 14

Chapter 3: Hanging Around

The following morning, Timothy woke up early. He lay in his bed, impatiently waiting for
the sun to shine more brightly through his bedroom window, indicating that it was seven
o’clock and time to get up.

He sprang out of bed as never before. Then he did a few chores before breakfast without
being told, making his mother stare at him in a worried sort of way.

Then he sat down to eat his breakfast. Can you guess what it was? Why, yes, it was
oatmeal, with a glass of orange juice.

He had just taken his fourth mouthful when there was a knock on the back door.

“Ollie!” he cried, and went to let his friend in.

“Hello Tim and Mrs Green,” said Ollie. “Could Tim come and…?”

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs Green. “You boys are obviously very excited about something, and
it’s making me nervous. Off you go!”

Almost before the last word was out of her mouth, Timothy had bolted out of the house,
closely followed by Ollie. This time, it was Ollie’s turn to say, “Wait for me!”

As soon as they were out of earshot of any adults, Timothy turned to his friend and asked
urgently, “What news?”

Ollie punched him lightly on the arm, smiling. “Guess!”

“Aunt P is dealing with a huge emergency at work and can’t possibly come back to your
house for ages?”

“Yes!” shouted Ollie.

“Hurray!” shouted Timothy. That makes it sound like he was being horrible, but he
wasn’t, really. He was sure Auntie Pamela could solve any problems at work. And think of
the new feelings he was having. They were the Three Es:

1. Excitement

2. Enthusiasm

3. Enjoyment
 15

With all that going on, Timothy felt as though he’d drunk a litre or two of fizzy drink,
which was now bubbling and sparkling inside him. No wonder he was shouting and running.

“My parents are busy on the farm, as usual – thank goodness!” said Ollie, louder than
usual. He was bubbling and sparkling too, but at least he was used to it.

“Let’s GO!” roared Timothy.

They tore up the road, through the Clarks’ gate, and up to the spare room. Once there, Tim
had to throw himself on the bed, clutching his side.

“I’ve got a stitch, ow, ow!” he gasped.

While he rubbed his aching side, Ollie flung open the cupboard door and took out the
drone’s box.

“Careful!” warned Tim, stitch immediately forgotten. “Here, let me help you.”

As if the drone were made of gold and diamonds, they removed it from the box. Then
Ollie tore open its plastic covering with tiny, careful rips.

The machine sat on the floor, free from all its packaging at last.

“It’s so shiny,” said Timothy. “And so complicated.” He lowered himself onto the floor so
he could examine it close-up.

Ollie sniffed loudly. “And it smells of new plastic!”

He sniffed again, two or three times, but Tim was paying him no attention, so he stopped.

Tim wrestled the other box out of the cupboard too. Inside the cardboard was something
that looked like a cooler box. Only instead of tins of fizzy drink and wrapped up sandwiches,
it contained a large, complicated computer.

“Wow, so this is the control system. It looks really powerful…” Tim was muttering. He
found the instruction manual, exclaimed at how long it was, and began reading.

Ollie began hopping up and down. “Let’s take it outside!”

It took two of them to carry the control system outside, where they lowered it onto the
grass. While Ollie went back inside to fetch the drone, Tim carried on reading.

“This whole computer is called the ground control system, or GCS,” Tim informed Ollie
when the latter returned.
 16

Ollie’s eyes widened. “Cool!”

Tim continued reading the manual, muttering to himself, and checking details, until Ollie
said desperately, “Can we just fly this thing?”

Tim looked up, startled. “Oh! Yes, let’s do it.”

“You can take the manual home with you tonight, if you want.”

You’d think he’d offered Tim the moon. “Really? I can take it? Thanks!”

After that, they simply had to fit the battery into place and switch the drone on. Tim
passed the controls to Ollie. It felt like the right thing to do. After all, the drone belonged to
the Greens, in a way.

Zzzzzzzz!

It rose straight into the air, gleaming in the sun.

“Wow!” said Ollie. “It looks like some kind of SuperWasp!”

“It’s so powerful,” Tim agreed.

Neither of them could tear their eyes away from the machine – it was so big and sleek.
Buzzing gently, it flew this way and that under Ollie’s command.

“It’s really very powerful,” said Tim again.

“What are you thinking?” asked Ollie, who knew his friend well.

“I’m just wondering what it could carry.”

“It would be easy for this drone to carry a camera.”

Timothy shook his head. “It has a built-in camera,” he said absently. “I noticed that in the
manual. Much easier than sticking one on with Blu Tack!”

He waited until Ollie’s turn was over and the controls were passed to him. Once he’d
managed to send the drone buzzing smoothly this way and that, he said, “Ollie, try to grab it.”

“What?” Ollie looked alarmed as he stared up at the four whirring propellers, which were
now right about his head.

“Just take hold of the things that look like handles underneath,” said Tim, making it sound
like the easiest thing in the world.
 17

“Oh-kayyy,” said Ollie, reaching up to clasp the bits underneath which, now he had a good
look, did resemble handles.

“Now, keep hanging on,” Timothy instructed, and moved the controls as smoothly as he
could.

The drone rose steadily, making Ollie stretch, then stand on tiptoe.

Next – you guessed it – Ollie’s feet were off the ground. The drone was actually carrying
Oliver Clark into the air!

“Aargh, aargh, aaaaaarrgh!” he bellowed, pedalling his feet wildly.

Tim was laughing, trying to steer the drone, and shouting at Ollie all at the same time.
“Keep calm! Don’t let go!” he called.

Ollie continued bellowing as the drone bucked, leapt and dipped wildly for a few seconds
until Tim steadied it once more.

Even once the drone was flying smoothly and evenly, Ollie yelled, “Aargh!” now and
then.

“I’ll just take you round the corner and back again!” Tim called to him, thrilled with what
he and the drone were doing.

“Whaaat?”

Running after him, not sure how far the signal between the controls and the drone could
travel, Tim repeated, “I’ll just take you – UGH!” He tripped and fell. At the very last micro-
second, he managed to twist around and keep the remote control safely away from the
ground.

But that was it for poor Oliver. When Tim let go of the controls, the drone lost height and
he plummeted onto the ground, on his knees.

When Tim scrambled to his feet and rushed over to check on his friend, he found Ollie
still saying “Aargh!” softly, wild-eyed, holding the buzzing drone above his head as he knelt
in... well, in pig-pooh. I’m sorry, readers, but he had landed on both knees in the pig-pen.

You can imagine what happened next. There was much exclaiming and accusing and
apologising. Tim managed to switch off the drone and put it down carefully onto a clean
piece of grass, while Ollie scrambled to his feet.
 18

It was only quite a bit later, once Ollie had removed his dirty clothes and showered, and
both boys had generally recovered from their fright, that Ollie said, “Wow, Tim. You made
me fly!” as if he’d only just realised it.

Tim nodded, with a small smile.

“You actually – made – me – fly,” said Ollie again in tones of wonderment. He smacked
Tim on the right arm. Then he smacked him on the left.

“Ow,” said Tim, but he was grinning now.

“That was awesome,” said Ollie. “Not the bit when I was screaming, obviously…”

“And not when you were covered in half a ton of pig poop,” added Tim with a wince.

“But apart from all that – it was beyond amazing! We must do it again!”

“Yes, as long as no-one sees us. But we can tell the adults we’re just hanging around,”
said Tim. Then he stared at Ollie.

Ollie stared back.

“Hanging around,” said Tim, pretending to hang from a drone. “Geddit?”

“Ha ha haaaa!” said Ollie. “Tim! You cracked a joke.”

Tim smiled modestly. “There’s a first time for everything,” he said.

 19

Chapter 4: Over the Wall

It wasn’t long before the Clarks and the Greens were accustomed to the fact that Tim was
spending every possible minute of the summer holidays at the Clarks’ house. That was
unusual. What he usually did was sit at home, staring into space, or sometimes at his ceiling,
in between a bit of dusting and tidying. Imagine how he struggled with the usual “What I did
during my holidays” essays when it was back-to-school time!

Never mind. Those dull and dreary days were over.

Instead, he would jump up in the mornings, gulp down his oatmeal, and after doing a few
chores – such as washing the dishes – he would run up the road to Ollie’s house. Sometimes,
he’d have to help with Ollie’s chores, but he always did that cheerfully. Because once all that
was done, the adults would be busy with farming matters, the older Clark brothers and sisters
would go out to their holiday jobs, and he and Ollie could get on with the secret business of
becoming drone experts.

What if it rained, you may ask? Well, it was the summer holidays. Of course it rained. But
the boys would then simply glue themselves to the Clarks’ computer and learn all they could
about drones. Tim did that anyway, every night. Online, he found videos about drones. There
were tutorials about drones. There were diagrams, lectures and articles about drones. Why, it
was like going to school, if only school were fun.

But all that studying came a few days later. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

The day after Ollie crashed into the pig-pen, Tim was back at the Clarks’ house. In the
spare room, they carefully examined every inch of the controls and what Tim insisted on
calling “the aircraft” for damage.

“No nicks, scratches or dents?” Tim asked.

“No,” said Ollie.

“No chips or broken bits?”

“No,” said Ollie.

“No splinters or scrapes?”

“Tim. It’s fine. There is no damage.”

 20

“Thank goodness,” Tim breathed.

“My knees are okay too.”

“Great,” said Tim, not really listening.

“So we can take it outside and play with it now?”

Timothy fixed Ollie with a stern look. “We’re not playing with it, Ollie. We’re
experimenting.”

“Fine. Well, whatever you call it, I’m going to take the drone outside and do it now.”

“All right,” said Tim mildly. He could tell Ollie was getting a little huffy.

Once outside, they agreed without having to speak about it that Ollie would have the first
go at flying the drone. They admired the glossy machine as it buzzed this way and that.

After a short while, Ollie brought it back to land. “I want to turn on the camera,” he
announced.

“This is what you do,” said Tim, and showed Ollie which controls to operate. He had spent
an hour or two the night before reading one section of the manual. “What do you want to
photograph?”

“I really want to see what’s on the other side of the wall.” Ollie pointed. “You know our
neighbour, Mr Williams, lives there?”

“Er, no,” said Tim.

“Well, he does. My mother calls him a grumpy thing. He’s definitely not friendly. But he
also does some farming, and we don’t know what, because his walls are so high. So, just out
of curiosity…” Ollie shrugged.

Then he added, “You know Mr Williams is Michelle Williams’s father, right?”

“Er, no,” said Tim again. Now he was very interested.

“Tim! She’s in our class! How can you not know that Michelle lives there?”

“Well, I don’t know how I didn’t know. I just didn’t know!” How can you explain how
you don’t know something?

Tim gazed at the brown stone wall that divided the Williams’ place from the Clarks’. He
imagined Michelle somewhere beyond it, but not too far, going about her Michelle-business.
 21

Although he would’ve struggled to put it into words, he thought Michelle was ace. She was
kind of ordinary looking and beautiful at the same time. Yes, her hair was a plain, mid-
brown, but so long and shiny! And yes, she had a snub nose and a few freckles, but such a
great smile! She could light up a room. And she was clever. Occasionally, she would come
close to beating Tim at Maths. That’s how clever she was.

“So, anyway, you want to send the drone over there to see what Mr Williams is growing?”

“Uh-huh. Why not?”

“Once it goes over the wall, it’ll obviously be hard for us to see it, so we’d better
programme it to send back live footage. And it can’t go too far over the wall, because if it hits
a tree…” Tim didn’t finish his sentence. He was beginning to mutter again.

Ollie waited patiently for Tim to finish fiddling and muttering.

Eventually, he said, “Okay. It won’t go very far, but it should at least give us a clue as to
what’s going on in there.”

“You make it sound like the Williamses have some kind secret mining operation or
something!”

“No, you made it sound like the Williamses have some kind of secret mining operation!”

Ollie thought for a moment. “Yeah, I guess I did.”

That’s one of the reasons Tim liked him. Ollie would never argue simply for the sake of
arguing. Bickering, Mrs Clark called it. Instead, if he thought Tim made a good point, he’d let
go of his point, and agree.

Thinking of Mrs Clark and all the children she’d had reminded Tim of something. “Your
brothers and sisters won’t see what we’re doing here, will they?” he asked, indicating the
drone.

“Shouldn’t do. They’re all either working or away for the holidays.”

“Okay. If any of them are around at home, will you tell me?”

“Yeah,” said Ollie casually. He was a little too casual, Tim thought. Some of Ollie’s
siblings were nice, but some were intimidating. For instance, one of his older sisters,
Melanie, was seventeen and could be very fierce indeed. Timothy did not fancy the thought
 22

of trying to have fun with Aunt Pamela’s drone when Melanie was around. She was sure to
have strong opinions about everything they were doing.

After a little more fiddling, Tim said, “Okay, I think we’re ready to send it a little way
over the boundary wall now.”

“You can fly it this time,” said Ollie.

“Thanks!”

Bzzzzzzz.

Off the drone went, propellers whirring, its black body winking in the sun, which was
strong today. Obediently, it flew up and over the wall at the end of the garden, but not too
much further in. Tim sent it cruising up and down the length of the wall as much as possible.

“Don’t want to hit the trees there,” he mumbled, fingers busy. “And I need to avoid that
bush there… Okay, that should do it.”

That reading of the manual he’d done had paid off.

It wasn’t long before the drone flew back to the boys.

“Was that long enough?” Ollie asked anxiously. “Do you think the camera recorded?”

“We’ll need to check.”

After pressing buttons on the complicated control system, Tim said, “Wow, this is even
fancier than I realised. Look, Ollie.”

He showed Ollie how the drone’s system included not only a powerful camera, but also a
playback system. “So we can see straight away whether the video footage is good, before
downloading it onto another computer.”

Tim gave him a shove. “So professional! Downloading footage!”

Ollie gave a modest shrug.

“Here’s the foot- I mean, the recording.”

They peered at the screen.

“Oh,” said Ollie, his shoulders slumping. “It’s just fruit trees. Lots and lots of them.”

“Yes, but look at them.”

 23

Ollie looked.

“What do you see?” Tim asked.

“Er… fruit trees. Lots and lots of…”

“No, I mean, look at what’s on those fruit trees!” Tim pointed. “The biggest, best apples
I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“They do look good,” Ollie admitted.

“Good? They’re fantastic. I’d love to have one right now.”

Right on cue, Tim’s stomach growled. Both boys laughed.

“You see? It’s time for tea!” Ollie pointed out.

There was a pause.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Ollie asked.

“No,” said Tim at once. He was, of course. He just didn’t like it.

“You could send me over there…”

“No,” Tim repeated.

“Or I could send you over there…”

“I’m better at controlling the drone than you are,” said Tim firmly. “And I’m scared of
heights.”

“Send me, then. And I’ll come back with two big, juicy apples.”

“Definitely not. You’ll probably fall off again, and the drone will crash, and it will all be a
disaster.”

Ten minutes later, the pair stood as close to the boundary wall as possible. Ollie held the
drone above his head, ready for take-off. (You can tell he was very good at convincing people
to do things.)

“Ready?” Tim asked, his heart thumping. This was crazy, this was nuts, and yet here they
were, doing a totally crazy, nuts thing. A dangerous thing. What his father would call a
“foolhardy exploit”.
 24

With maximum care, trying to be as precise and level-headed as possible, Tim increased
the drone’s power.

“Whoo-hoo!” Ollie shouted as his feet left the ground.

“Sshh!” Tim said automatically. Constantly checking back and forth between what the
drone was doing with his friend, and what his hands were doing on the controls, he managed
to lift the drone high enough so that Tim, clutching tightly onto the handles, was taken over
the wall and into the orchard next door.

He could hear Ollie, his voice muffled now, issuing instructions, but could no longer see
him. Only the top part of the drone was visible.

“Oo-er, I do not like this,” he muttered to himself.

At the same time, he tried to listen to Ollie saying, “Okay! A bit further to the left. About a
metre more. Hold it…”

Finally, Ollie called, “You can bring me back now!”

Whooshing his breath out in relief, Tim moved the controls to bring Ollie back to his side
of the wall. For one awful moment, it seemed as though it wouldn’t work, as though the
drone didn’t have enough power.

But Tim tried again, this time sending the drone back over the wall at a gentle angle, rather
than straight up.

Ollie’s alarmed voice came floating from next door. “What are you doing?”

Seconds later, he appeared, dangling from the drone. He had to lift his legs up to clear the
wall, but Tim managed to control his landing perfectly.

Having forgotten his alarm, a grinning Ollie gave his friend a high five. “That was
excellent!” he crowed. “And look!”

He showed Tim two large, juicy apples, which he’d managed to stuff into the pockets of
his top.

Tim bit into the apple that Ollie gave him. “You’re right. This is one high-quality apple.
But your pockets will never be the same again.”

Ollie shook his head. “We spied on Mr Williams. Then I flew next door and stole two
apples from Mr Williams. I really don’t care if my pockets are a little stretched after that.”
25
 26

Chapter 5: Melanie

Ollie came over to Tim’s house as Tim was washing the dishes.

“Bad news,” he said. “Melanie came back last night.”

“Oh no!” said Tim. Then he thought perhaps he shouldn’t be so blunt. Melanie was Ollie’s
sister, after all.

But Ollie didn’t mind. “Yeah. I heard my mum say that Melanie’s boyfriend broke up with
her. So she’s back home from her holiday. And she’s in a terrible mood.”

“I guess that means we can’t use the drone?” Tim felt his heart sink towards his shoes.

“Oh, she’s not going to stop us doing that.” Ollie looked horrified. “We’ll have to be
careful, that’s all.”

Tim wondered how. If Melanie was in the house, it would be hard to miss a drone buzzing
around outside. They’d only escaped detection until now because everyone was busy.

When they arrived at the Clarks’ house, though, all was quiet.

“Perhaps she’s sleeping,” Ollie whispered, as they crept up the stairs.

But as they tiptoed downstairs again, carrying their burdens, they bumped straight into
Melanie. She must have been making herself a snack in the kitchen. She was a startling sight,
dressed in a bright red onesie, her hair sticking up like a lion’s mane (if a lion’s mane were
black), and eating a cheese-and-tomato sandwich.

“What are you two little tadpoles doing?” she barked. “What’s in those boxes?”

“Um,” said Ollie.

“Um?” she repeated. “Um what? You’re doing something you’re not supposed to, I can
tell. You…”

“Hello, Melanie,” Tim interrupted. Later, he didn’t know what came over him. All he
knew was that he needed to buy a little time so they could put Melanie off, and that if all else
failed, politeness often worked.

“Oh, hi.” She was clearly taken aback.

“I’m Tim.”
 27

“Yes, I’ve met you before. You live next door.” She glared at him as though living next
door were a crime.

“We’re just carrying Aunt Pamela’s boxes out,” Tim said.

“Oh, Pamela.”

Melanie began to shuffle off sleepily. “Dunno why my aunt always has to leave her stuff
behind. This isn’t her house.”

Without replying, the two boys made their escape. Ollie led the way to a shed near the
bottom of the garden.

“If we put the boxes down here, Melanie won’t see us,” he puffed. “Then we can figure
out a safe place to fly the drone. Wow, this box is heavy.”

“So is this one.” Tim’s arms were aching. He put his box down with a grunt of relief.

“Sorry about my sister. See what I mean about being in a bad mood? She’s not normally
that grumpy.”

“Mm,” said Tim, trying to be tactful. “I think it’s a good idea that we keep out of
Melanie’s sight for a while.”

“Definitely.” Ollie peered out of one of the shed windows. “I can see her bedroom window
from here. Her curtains are still closed. I bet she’s gone back to bed.”

“Then we can’t fly the drone around here, can we?”

Ollie shook his head, looking disappointed.

Suddenly, Tim remembered something. “My mother’s going to the dentist this morning!
We can take the drone to my place!”

“Stupendous!” said Ollie, eyes shining. “We can use two of these wheelbarrows for
transport.”

There were three wheelbarrows stacked in a corner of the shed. The Clarks were the only
people Tim knew who needed more than one.

They each manoeuvred a wheelbarrow out of the shed, then heaved boxes on top of them.
They were walking as quietly as possible past the house and towards the road when
Melanie’s voice bellowed behind them.
 28

“Faster, tadpoles, faster! And I hope you’re recycling those boxes!”

Startled, they both whipped round to see Melanie leaning out of her window, scowling at
them.

Both of them gave a sickly smile and a wave, before hurrying on.

“Man, oh man, she gave me a fright!” said Tim.

“You realise we can never let her see these boxes again? Because we’ve told her we’re
supposedly getting rid of them now. We’ll have to try to cover them up somehow.”

Tim was impressed with his friend’s inventiveness. Cover up the boxes – of course! Why
hadn’t he thought of that?

“This is turning into the best holidays ever,” Tim said suddenly.

Ollie laughed at him, even as he struggled to keep the drone from sliding off the
wheelbarrow. “You must’ve had very boring holidays before!”

“You have no idea,” said Tim.

Once in the Greens’ garden, Tim worked out that that they had only about an hour before
Mrs Green was due home.

“That’s okay. We’ll practise like mad,” said Ollie.

And so they did. Tim showed Ollie how to work the camera. They practised hovering the
drone in one place, reversing it, and landing it.

“We’re getting good at this!” said Ollie. “Don’t you want a turn hanging from the drone?”

“Nah, I told you – I’m scared of heights. It’s more fun for me to learn about the drone than
to fly on it.”

“Really?”

Tim nodded. “I’m reading that manual every night.”

“Like it’s a Harry Potter book?”

“Something like that.”

“You’re crazy!”

Tim chuckled, then concentrated on the drone’s lift-off once more.

 29

Once he’d landed the drone, Ollie said, “D’you know you have a lesser spotted
woodpecker in your garden?”

“A what?”

“A lesser spotted woodpecker. It’s a fairly rare bird. I bet it was the same one who was
nesting in our garden last year. My mum thought the noise of the weed eaters probably scared
it off.”

“Oh,” said Tim, clearly not very interested.

Ollie tried again. “They are really unusual in this part of the country. I bet lots of people
would be interested in seeing a picture of it.”

“They would?”

“Someone might even pay for a good photo.”

“In that case,” said Tim, “let’s use the drone and try to get a good photo!”

It took the remainder of the hour, but eventually they managed it. First, Tim spotted the
place the woodpecker seemed to be interested in.

“Maybe he’s built a nest in there,” he said in awed tones, pointing up at the tree trunk.

He seemed to be right. They had to wait for the parent woodpecker to fly off for a
moment, so as not to frighten it with the drone’s buzzing. Then Tim guided the drone as close
as he could to the tree, made it hover, and pressed the controls that would photograph the
hole that the bird had made.

“That’s a lot of work for one small bird,” he commented. He’d never been the slightest bit
interested in birds before – he’d never even seen a bird’s nest – but now it was different. He
could use challenging, interesting technology to photograph rare birds in his very own
garden.

“Bet the babies will be cute when they hatch,” Ollie said.

“We can’t see the nest from here, but I think we could get great footage. We could try to
put a camera inside the nest next time. We might even be able to see the birds as they break
out of their eggs,” Tim suggested with some excitement.

“That’d be very cool.”

 30

“But right now, I think I hear my mum’s car.”

The boys were becoming experts at packing and unpacking the drone and its control
system. Swiftly, they switched off the controls, wrapped machinery in plastic, and tucked
cardboard flaps together.

“And we’re done!” said Ollie triumphantly.

It was only about one minute later that Mrs Green, letting herself in through her front
door, spotted the boys.

“Hello!” she called. “What are you doing with those wheelbarrows?”

Tim ignored her question. “Mum – your face!” For her face was completely lopsided.
When she spoke, only half her mouth moved.

“Oh, yes, does it look strange? I had a filling, so the injection the dentist gave me froze
that side of my face.”

Tim, who’d never had a filling, said, “Eww!” before he could stop himself.

At the same time, Ollie said, “Do you want us to make you some tea?”

Mrs Green shot her son an annoyed look, but said to Ollie, “That’s very sweet of you,
Oliver, but I’ll be fine.”

She seemed to have forgotten her curiosity about the wheelbarrows. As the boys began to
move off, she called, “Don’t you want a jacket, Tim? It looks like rain again.”

“Yes please, get two jackets!” said Ollie to Tim, looking meaningfully at the boxes.

Tim caught on immediately. He vanished into the house, returning a minute later clutching
two jackets, calling goodbye to his mother.

“Jackets for drone coverage?” he asked, passing one jacket to Ollie.

“Jackets for camouflage,” Ollie agreed.

They both did their best to cover their boxes with the clothing. They weren’t very
successful.

“Hang on,” said Tim.

He disappeared once more into the house, this time for a few seconds. He reappeared with
a rug.
 31

“This is our picnic rug,” he explained.

“You have picnics?”

“Er – no, actually. It was my grandparents’ picnic rug.”

“Oh, okay,” said Ollie, who was used to the Greens’ strangeness.

With the drone equipment now properly covered by the rug and two jackets, they returned
to the Clarks’ house.

“You wait under this tree,” Ollie instructed. “I’ll check that Melanie isn’t around.”

“Okay.”

Waiting in the shade, Tim felt his heart thumping. He dreaded bumping into Melanie
again. She had oozed suspicion when she’d seen them earlier, he thought. He was convinced
she’d love to make trouble for the boys, and had the sinking feeling that the adults would not
approve of what they’d been doing with the drone, no matter how careful they were.

“Hey!”

Tim nearly fell over in fright. There Melanie was, looking as grumpy as she had earlier,
striding across the garden towards him.

“Are you still messing about with boxes?” she greeted him.

“Er, yeah.”

“Well, how long does it take to recycle a few boxes?”

“We – we’re going to stack them in the shed for now,” he blurted.

Striding past him, she shrugged. “That’s where all the junk lands up, I suppose. If you see
my mother, tell her I’ve gone out.”

Without so much as a please or thank-you, she stalked off towards the gate.

Tim stared after her. He found he was gripping the handles of his wheelbarrow tightly.

Ollie came running up. “She saw you! What did she say?” he gasped.

“She asked if we were still messing about with boxes. And I told her we’re going to stack
them in the shed,” Tim confessed.

“You told her we’re putting them in the shed?”

 32

“It’s all I could think of to say. And she didn’t seem at all interested.”

Ollie took a deep breath. “Oh, man, I hope she doesn’t pay any attention to us for the rest
of the holidays! If she thinks we’re doing anything even slightly interesting, she’ll start
spying on us.”

“Yeah. Sorry,” said Tim.

Ollie shrugged. “Can’t be helped. You had to tell her something. Come on; let’s put this
stuff away before someone else asks us what we’re doing!”

As they stacked the boxes and pushed the wheelbarrows back into place, Tim said, “We
could use the drone to explore the field at the bottom of the road, y’know.”

“Explore it for…?”

“Birds! There might be more woodpeckers there.”

With his back to Tim as he unfolded the rug and tried to cover the boxes, Ollie “Yeah.
And all sorts of animals, really. Squirrels…”

“Aarrgh!” Tim gave an unearthly scream.

“What? Are you scared of squirrels?”

Tim was pointing at the window with a trembling finger. Ollie whipped round, but was a
second too late to see anything.

“Melanie!” was all Tim managed to say, before Ollie’s sister herself burst into the shed.

Before the boys could do or say anything more, she strode over to the two boxes, whipped
off the rug, and had a good look at what was underneath.

“Aha!” she said triumphantly. “I knew you were up to something!”

“Melanie…” Ollie began.

But she cut him off. “Have you really been playing with Aunt Pamela’s fancy drone? Did
she say you could play with it?”

“No, but…”

“Do you know how expensive these things are?” she demanded. “You’re both in deep,
deep, doggy-do!”

“No, we’re not!” Ollie retorted. His face had turned red.
 33

In a flash, Tim saw that he’d better say something to make their drone adventures sound as
boring as possible.

“Your aunt did say we could fly the other drone, so I’m sure she won’t mind if we fly this
one,” he said mildly. “It’s not difficult, so there’s no danger of damaging it. We’re just using
it for things like bird-watching.”

“Bird-watching?” said Melanie with deep scorn.

“Yes, we saw a lesser spotted woodpecker this morning, didn’t we, Ollie?”

Ollie nodded. “We might be able to sell photographs to a birding magazine. They pay
for…”

But Melanie had stopped listening. “Oh man, you two are boring little tadpoles,” she said,
almost to herself, sweeping one hand through her mane of hair. As she did so, two cigarettes
fell out of the top pocket of her jacket.

Ollie gasped. “Are you smoking, Melanie?”

Melanie grabbed the cigarettes and stuffed them back into her jacket. “None of your
business, Tadpole!”

“You know Mum and Dad would would…”

“Yes, yes! Who cares?” Melanie snapped. “I’m going out now. You’ve made me late!”

That was such an outrageous claim the two boys didn’t say anything.

“I’ll be watching you! You’d better not damage any of that equipment or you’ll never get
pocket money again.” With that parting shot, she was gone.

“I don’t get pocket money at all,” Ollie grumbled.

Then he turned to Tim. “Well done, mate! You put her right off.”

Tim found his knees were trembling. He leaned against the wall then slid gently to the
floor. “The cigarettes helped.”

“Yeah, she didn’t want to hang around and discuss that.” Ollie picked up the rug and once
again arranged it over the boxes.

When he was done, he turned to Tim. “Well, the worst has happened. My sister knows
about the drone. But I don’t think she cares too much, which is great, isn’t it?”
 34

Still sitting on the floor, Tim smiled weakly. Spotting Melanie’s face in the shed window
had given him such a fright, he thought he might never recover.
 35

Chapter 6: Where is Ollie?

“I’ve got good news,” said Tim when they met up in the shed the next day.

“What?”

“I think I’ve worked out how to program an entire drone flight! How cool is that?”

“I dunno,” said Ollie. “Is that cool?”

“It’s unbelievably cool! It’s huge! It’s a gigantic breakthrough!”

“Okay, okay,” said Ollie, laughing. “Don’t shout. Explain to me why it’s cool.”

“Well, firstly, it was quite difficult,” said Tim. He suddenly found it hard to explain. “The
language of the program wasn’t easy, and, uh…”

Ollie interrupted him. “What can we do with the drone now that we couldn’t do before?”

“Oh! Right! Well, say I program the drone to operate at nine o’clock tonight. So you could
come in here tonight on your own, take the drone outside, and it would take you to wherever
I’d set it to go. Then it would bring you back.”

Ollie’s eyes stretched wide. “That’d be excellent. Or you could program it to take you
somewhere.”

Tim shrugged. “Yeah, if I wanted to.” His tone made it clear that he couldn’t imagine
doing such a thing.

“Let’s try it!”

“What – program it to take you somewhere tonight?”

“Yes! But…” Ideas were clearly coming to Ollie thick and fast. He began hopping up and
down. “Can you make it eight o’clock? Could it take me to the mall? I could pretend to go to
bed, but instead go and watch a movie and no-one would know!”

Tim felt deeply uneasy. “I guess I could.”

“Of course you could! You just said so! What’s wrong?”

“Ollie, it would be my first try. If something went wrong, or your parents or Melanie
found out…” Tim closed his eyes at the thought.
 36

“Nothing would go wrong. You’re excellent at this. C’mon, it’ll be huge fun!” Ollie’s face
brightened further. “We might never need to own a car – we could just use drones for the rest
of our lives.”

Tim had to laugh. “Yes, it’d be wonderful to fly to university through the rain with a bag
of books under each arm!”

“Oh. I didn’t think about the weather. But still – let’s try the movie idea tonight, go on!”

Ollie wore Tim down, of course. His enthusiasm was impossible to resist. But Tim
managed to persuade him that he, Tim, would come over that evening too. He wanted to be
able to take control of the GCS, just in case.

So while Ollie watched, hopping up and down with fizzing excitement, Tim unpacked the
GCS. Then he sat on the dusty wooden floor of the shed and programmed it to lift off at eight
o’clock that night and take Ollie to the shopping mall.

“I think that’s only about ten minutes of flight,” he muttered to himself. Then he looked
up. “Can you hang onto the drone for ten minutes, Ollie?”

“Course I can!”

“And how long is your movie?”

“Superheroes in Space? Not sure. I’d better find out.”

Tim had to wait while Ollie went inside the house.

“I had to phone the cinema,” he reported back later. “The guy there said Superheroes will
finish at five to ten.”

“That’s really late,” said Tim. “I’ll need to wait here until half-past ten or so. And if
something goes wrong…”

To his relief, Ollie saw his point. “I think I’ll see Superheroes another time. This time,
maybe I’ll just play some video games and have a lime soda float. Let’s make it nine
o’clock.”

“Okay then.” After some thinking, calculating, checking, typing, and checking once more,
Tim sat back and said, “There. I think that’s done.”

“Yeah! I’m going out tonight!”

 37

“And coming back afterwards, hopefully.”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Ollie teased Tim, who rolled his eyes.

As they closed the shed door behind them, Ollie said, “Meet you here at eight, then?”

Tim nodded. He wondered what on earth he’d tell his parents to make them let him go out
at that time.

As it turned out, it was easy. Mr Green came home upset because he hadn’t been promoted
at work.

“They’ve promoted some little twenty-five-year-old, just because he’s worked out how to
save a few million!” he complained, ripping his tie off and flinging it on a chair. “Big deal!
How about rewarding me for putting up with their rubbish for nearly twenty years.”

“Oh, that’s too awful, Wayne,” said Mrs Green, clucking around him and picking her
husband’s tie up from the chair. “Let’s go out to supper for duck and spinach. It’s your
favourite!”

That was Tim’s moment. “Actually, Ollie wants to play games tonight, so…”

“That’d be fine,” said Mrs Green, not really listening. “It’s the holidays, after all. You can
heat up a burger patty and oven chips for dinner, can’t you?”

Tim nodded eagerly. A burger and chips sounded far nicer than duck and spinach.

“Just make sure you’re home early,” his father barked. Then he sank into a chair and
buried his nose in a newspaper.

“Okay, Dad,” said Tim, wondering what “early” actually meant. Eight-thirty? Ten-thirty?
Then he tip-toed away, glad that his parents were too distracted to pay much attention to what
he had told them.

After lengthy discussion, Tim’s parents decided they would leave for the restaurant at
seven. That left plenty of time for Tim to eat on his own and do the washing up before setting
off for Ollie’s house.

Because it was now the height of summer, the sun was taking its time to set. It was strange
to walk the familiar route to Ollie’s house after supper. It had been a wonderfully warm day,
for once, and the evening was still. Only a few clouds could be seen, puffy as cartoon sheep.
 38

He could hear his own footsteps as he walked up to the Clarks’ shed. Ollie was already
there, looking thrilled.

“I’ve brought a torch,” Ollie explained quietly. “We can’t make too much noise or attract
attention in case anyone in the house hears us.”

“Oh, right,” said Tim, wishing he’d thought of bringing a torch. “By the way, the drone is
going to land in the field behind the mall parking lot.”

“The field they use for extra parking over Christmas? Okay. I’ll easily be able to hide the
drone under some bushes there.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought,” said Tim, suddenly doubting every detail. What if someone
saw Tim, and decided to steal the drone? It wouldn’t be difficult. But it was too late now.

“It’s nearly eight o’clock. Hopefully, I’ll see you back here at nine. Are you ready?”

“Yes,” said Ollie with glee.

They decided to set up the drone between the shed and the hedge, as far from the house as
they could.

Still, Tim fretted that someone would hear the whirring propellers as the drone started up.
Nobody did, though, and he watched as his friend was taken up into the night sky and into the
distance.

Once Ollie had vanished from sight, Tim felt very nervous indeed. Suddenly, it wasn’t fun
to be by himself in a shed with nothing to do except worry about Ollie.

“I really wish we hadn’t done this,” he muttered to himself, and sat down to wait. He
hoped the rustling he could hear was simply the plastic lining of the shed roof, and not a
gigantic rat.

Minutes ticked by slowly. At least he was wearing his watch. His parents wouldn’t let him
have a mobile phone yet, so he couldn’t play a game while he was waiting. He hadn’t even
thought to bring the drone’s manual with him to read: it was lying hidden under his bed at
home.

But eventually his watch showed it was five to nine. Tim imagined Ollie making his way
from the video game arcade to the field. In his mind’s eye, he saw his friend dragging the
drone out from under cover. As the second hand on his watch swept around, he checked the
 39

GCS. Yes, the program seemed to be going well. He watched anxiously as the monitor
showed that the drone was taking off. In ten minutes, Ollie should be back home.

Tim went outside to wait, and found he was hopping up and down in anticipation, just as
Ollie did.

He kept imagining that he could hear the drone whirring its way back, but of course it was
too soon.

Eventually, though, the quiet hum of the aircraft really could be heard coming closer in the
night sky.

“Yay!” he said – quietly, between clenched teeth. He did not want any of the Clark family
to hear or see him. It was still fairly light out.

Where was the drone? He strained his eyes. Was it…? Could it be…? Yes! There it was.

Then Tim’s face fell. Something was wrong. The drone buzzed efficiently, heading
straight for the Clarks’ house as it was meant to. But Ollie was nowhere to be seen.

His heart began hammering. As the drone landed (and part of his brain noted that it was a
perfect landing, so his programming had been accurate), he ran up to it. He didn’t know why.
It wasn’t as if he’d find a teeny, tiny Ollie sitting on top of the drone. But a small, nutty part
of him wondered wildly whether perhaps he’d find a note, or something, on the drone to help
him work out why Ollie hadn’t come home.

There was no clue, of course. Just the drone itself, sitting there on the grass like a good
puppy.

As quickly as he could, his heart still thumping, Tim put the drone away. He was in such a
panic he found himself running towards the Clark’s house, then stopping, then running back
towards the shed, then stopping again.

What should he do? Who should he tell? He simply had no idea what a sensible course of
action would be. He could imagine the expressions on Mr and Mrs Clark’s faces if he ran into
their house in the middle of the night and said, “Remember Ollie? Yes, well, I sent him to the
shopping mall by himself, hanging off a drone. And now the drone is back and Ollie isn’t.
Oops!”

No, it didn’t bear thinking of.

 40

“Calm down, Timothy Green,” he told himself. “Calm down and think.” He forced himself
to stop running around and to breathe normally.

He began to think logically. Ollie had to be at the shopping centre, because that was where
the drone had landed first. And the shopping mall wasn’t very far away. An idea came to him.
He, Tim, could walk to the mall. After all, Ollie had to be there, or somewhere very close.
Perhaps he’d lost track of time, or his arms were too sore to hang on for the trip home.

As he strode along, he tried to look on the bright side. This was turning out to be the most
exciting holiday of his entire life. Every day, as he’d studied the drone’s manual and found
articles on the internet about drones, he learned something new about technology. And here
he was, walking by himself to the shops at nine o’clock at night, looking for his friend.

Well, he could’ve done without the last bit. It was scary. But he felt better now he’d
decided on a course of action.

The sun was low, now, of course, and despite the clouds beginning to gather, it was still
shining in a friendly way. He was glad all over again that it wasn’t mid-winter.

Some cars passed him, but no-one stared or stopped.

He walked as fast as he could down the long, straight road. Ahead lay some open, wooded
fields. If he cut through them, he could reach the mall more quickly, but he didn’t fancy
wandering through woods at night. No, he’d stick to the road. It wound round the side of the
fields and would eventually lead him to the mall.

Tim felt himself panting a little. He was not very fit, and this long walk was winding him.
He reached the end of the road and turned left, forcing himself to walk a little slower. His
thoughts turned to his parents. He hoped they had ordered three courses and were eating all of
them slowly. Despite his dad’s vagueness about time, he knew they wouldn’t be happy if they
returned home and found their son was still out.

But wait – what was that? Straining his eyes, Tim saw a small figure that seemed to be
walking towards him. Was he imagining it? Or was it…? Tim began jogging. Could it be…?

Yes! It was Ollie!

Relief flooded Tim’s entire body. “Ollie!” he shouted, waving wildly. “Hey, OLLIE!”

The tiny figure, coming ever closer, waved back.

 41

Realising there was no point in continuing to run ahead when he would have to turn back
again shortly, Tim stopped. He rested his hands on his knees. He tried to get his breath back.

And he told himself sternly not to cry.

Within minutes, Ollie was running up to him. He was laughing. “Hey! You came to look
for me!”

“Uh, yeah!” said Tim. “What happened? Why weren’t you on the drone?”

“It all went well,” Ollie reassured him, as they strolled back the way Tim had just come.
“But there was one thing we didn’t think about.”

“What?”

“It’s the summer holidays! There were people everywhere. I’m sure several people spotted
me. Actually, when I was about to land, there was a little girl in the back of a car who
definitely did see me. Her face.”

Ollie guffawed at the memory.

“She couldn’t believe it. I think she tried to tell her family, but I don’t think anyone paid
attention to her. She was really young, so maybe they thought she was making things up, or
something. I hid as best I could once I’d landed – it was a good spot to choose for a landing,
by the way – and hoped no-one would be looking in my direction when I came out.”

“Okay, so you missed the return flight on purpose?”

Ollie nodded. “I went to put the drone in position and watched it take off safely, but
thought it would be better if I walked home. Did the drone fly back home okay?”

“Yes, it all worked out. Except for the fact you weren’t on it.”

“Yeah, I couldn’t risk it. People were in and out of the parking lot all the time. Some of
them might’ve noticed the drone, but hopefully didn’t think too much about it.”

“They definitely would’ve paid attention if they’d seen a boy hanging from it,” Tim
agreed.

“That’s for sure. But, wow, it was so much fun! And your program worked. How cool is
that?”
 42

“Pretty cool!” Cautiously, Tim let himself feel pleased about his successful attempt at
programming. But as Ollie chattered on about the games he’d played in the mall and the two
classmates he’d seen there, Tim knew he’d never forget the alarm he’d felt as the drone
appeared in the sky without his friend on it.

The walk home seemed much quicker. That was just as well, because a cold breeze was
whipping up.

“I’ve put the drone away,” Tim said as they approached his house. “And, whew, Dad’s car
isn’t in the driveway. They must still be eating.”

“Great. I’ll sneak back into my room. Hope Melanie doesn’t see me.”

“Bye!”

“Bye!”

Seconds after Tim let himself into his house, rain began to fall steadily. He looked around
the familiar surroundings and let out a sigh of relief.

For once, it felt very good indeed to be home.

 43

Chapter 7: Disaster

“It is so hot this morning!” Tim complained.

“Well, it is the middle of summer,” Ollie pointed out. “And we’ve had a lot of rain so far.
Sun makes a nice change, I think.”

The two boys were sprawled on their stomachs on the Greens’ lounge floor, playing Tim’s
favourite video game, Flying Pizzas.

Tim grunted. He much preferred cooler weather to the baking sun. “I’m just itching
everywhere.”

“Yeah, I wish we had a pool,” said Ollie, before adding, “Y’know, it won’t be long before
I have to help my parents pick fruit and we won’t be able to hang out as much.”

Tim’s face fell even further. “I’d sort of forgotten that you do that every summer,” he
admitted. No Ollie, no drone… It didn’t bear thinking about.

“You know who does have a swimming pool? The people who live behind us: the
Murgatroyds.”

“Oh,” said Tim. He was too busy guiding his on-screen pizza, while imagining how truly
terrible it would be to spend the rest of the holidays by himself, to think too much about
Ollie’s neighbours’ pool.

“I’m pretty sure they’re away for the summer.”

“Hmm.” Tim wasn’t listening. He was trying to make his pizza fly to a restaurant to
acquire more toppings. That would score him fifty points, bringing his total to two hundred
and winning him the game.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Ollie asked. He was in danger of losing control of
his pizza entirely.

“No,” said Tim. “… And with olives and feta on my pizza, I win!”

“Again. Well done,” said Ollie, clearly not caring a jot. “So you think we should do it?”

“…And that means I’m the Pizza King!” said Tim. Then he picked up on what Ollie was
saying. “What is it that I think we should do?”
 44

“Program the drone to fly us to the Murgatroyds’ place so we can swim in their pool,” said
Ollie patiently.

“WHAT?” shouted Tim, dropping his joystick onto the carpet.

Ollie was used to Tim not paying attention to the conversation when they were playing
video games. (That’s one of the reasons Tim nearly always won.)

“I was just saying that I think we should program the drone to fly us into the Murgatroyds’
garden,” he repeated. “I’m sure they’re away. They have a pool. We fly in there. No-one’s
around. We swim.”

He mimed doing doggy-paddle.

Tim stared at him. “Where do you come up with these ideas?” he demanded. “We’re
meant to be flying our pizzas around, picking up toppings here and there, and suddenly
you’re talking about real-life flying into some strangers’ garden and trespassing in their
pool!”

Ollie grinned at his friend’s amazement, and waited.

After a pause, Tim said, “It’s a brilliant idea.”

“Yessss!” Ollie punched the air.

“There’s just one problem…”

“Melanie,” Ollie nodded. “I know – she’s the reason we’re playing games instead of out
with the drone right now. I’ll just have to find out when she’ll be away from the house, and
we can get the drone out again!”

The very next morning, Tim was eating his breakfast of… Wait. He wasn’t eating
oatmeal! Daringly, he’d poured himself a helping from the packet of cornflakes, which was
his father’s favourite.

His mother had drawn in her breath sharply when she’d noticed what he was doing. But
she didn’t say anything.

“This is pretty good,” Tim murmured to himself in some surprise.

At that moment, Ollie knocked on the door.

 45

As soon as Tim saw his friend’s face, and the way he was hopping about, he knew what
the day would bring.

“I’ve got a spare swimming costume for you,” said Ollie as they raced off towards his
house.

Ollie was more interested in Melanie’s whereabouts. “Are you sure your sister’s out
today?”

“She’s gone already! She took a bus to meet a friend and then they’re going to some lame
concert or other tonight. So she’ll be gone the entire day.”

Tim felt deep relief.

They burst into the shed and unwrapped the boxes. Carrying the drone equipment out into
the garden felt like meeting up with old friends.

While Tim set everything up, Ollie fetched swimming trunks and towels for them. “Look,
I can fold them all up really small and put them into a backpack.”

“Yeah, that’ll work,” said Tim. “But listen, I’ve just thought of something. I’ll fly you
next door. But then what?”

“Well, you bring the drone back to you, then program it to take you over,” said Ollie.

“That takes some time!” Tim pointed out. “And once we’re there, how do we get back?”

“We’ll walk back, silly. Getting in is the hard part, because they’ve got a high fence and a
lockable gate. But once you’re in, it’s easy to let yourself out.”

“Okay,” said Tim slowly. “Then I guess I just have to figure out how to program the drone
to take me.”

“You’ve done it before. You can do it again,” said Ollie, and sat down to wait, as if it
would be a quick task for Tim.

After ten minutes of deep concentration and fiddling with the GCS, Tim said, “Oh. I think
I’ve done it.” He was half-annoyed that Ollie was right, and half-thrilled that he’d managed
to program the drone again, this time so quickly.

“You see?” Ollie asked. “Easy-peasy.”

 46

“It wasn’t easy-peasy, actually,” said Tim huffily, but then saw how Ollie was grinning.
“Anyway. Let’s get you over the fence. Prepare for lift-off!”

Taken by surprise, Ollie gave a yell and grabbed the drone. Feeling much more competent
than the previous time he’d sent his friend over a wall, Tim guided the drone up and over the
Murgatroyds’ wall.

“Okay, I’m in!” he heard Ollie yell. “Man, the pool looks wonderful!”

It was only when the drone buzzed back towards him that Tim remembered he was afraid
of heights.

“Too bad,” he told himself, as he heard a splash from next door. “I’m not missing out on
this.”

So for the first time in his life, he faced his fear, and went ahead with his plan. Quickly, he
double-checked that the program he’d set up looked workable. Then he pressed “Enter” and
grabbed the drone.

He was amazed to find himself shouting, “Aargh!” just like Ollie always did. It was just so
startling to be yanked off his feet and into the air by one small contraption that he was
hanging onto.

At first, he kicked his feet about in a panic, but stopped when he realised that he was
making the drone jerk and lurch. Instead, he tried to let himself be carried along. He was
grateful when he felt the drone descend – but made the mistake of looking down at the
ground.

“Aargh!” he yelled again, feeling fear jolt in his stomach.

All right, then, he decided. If looking down at the far-away ground made him feel sick
with fear, then he would simply not look down.

It turned out to be a good idea.

Within seconds, the drone lowered him to the ground in the fenced-off pool area, and then
landed itself.

“Yay! It worked!” he cried to Ollie, who came running up to him to check that all went
well.
 47

“I knew you could do it!” said Ollie, slapping him on the back. “Stupendous work, my
friend. Here – take your costume, and jump in the pool!”

With that, he dive-bombed into the water.

In seconds, Tim changed into his swimming trunks. He took a moment to make sure the
drone was safely out of the way of splashes, then gingerly lowered himself into the rocking
water, gasping as he did so.

“Ah-ah-ah, this is cold!” he told Ollie through clenched teeth.

“It’s fine once you’re used to it,” Ollie assured him.

Taking a deep breath, Tim steeled himself for the shock of submerging his whole body in
cold water, and propelled himself through the blueness.

Breaking the surface of the water, he was about to yell to Ollie that it was, actually, really
nice once you got used to it, when he saw Ollie’s expression turn from delight to dismay.

“What?” he asked. Then he heard it. The sound of voices.

“… The water should be divine, Myrtle! But let’s get the cushions out first,” a woman
said.

Whipping round, Tim caught a glimpse of a door opening from the house. He saw
someone had started emerging, but then turned back indoors to talk to someone else.

He and Ollie didn’t need to say a word or exchange a look. They simply hauled
themselves out of the pool as quickly as possible. Tim grabbed their clothes and his backpack
while Ollie snatched the drone, and they let themselves out of the gate in the fence that
surrounded the pool.

Just as they hurried down the Murgatroyds’ driveway, they heard the voices return again.

“We can put the cushions here – and do you have an umbrella?” cried the same voice.

“They haven’t noticed,” Ollie muttered to Tim as they padded gingerly along on bare feet.

“They’ll see the splashes of water, surely,” Tim puffed. The drone was heavy, and
awkward to carry.

“I really hope not.”

 48

They trotted over the hot ground, expecting to hear cries of alarm and dismay behind them
at any moment. Twice Ollie had to stop to pick up a sock or a shoe that had fallen from his
arms.

But soon they were back in the safety of the Clarks’ property.

“Thank goodness they didn’t spot us!” sighed Tim, putting the drone down on the grass to
rest his arms briefly.

“We were so lucky.”

Right then, a horribly familiar voice came from the house.

“What on earth are you doing?”

“It’s Melanie!” Ollie looked agonised. “Quick, bring the drone!” He turned and ran
towards the shed, clearly hoping to hide everything from his sister.

But no sooner had Tim bent to pick up the drone than he heard a howl. He looked up to
see Ollie sprawled on the ground.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” he cried as he ran over.

“My arm! My arm!” was all Ollie said as he struggled to sit up.

At the same time, Melanie came hurtling out of the house. “What have you done, Ollie? I
bet you’ve broken your arm – and you two are in so much trouble.”

She was right about one thing. Ollie had broken his left arm when he had tripped over a
tree root and fallen awkwardly, still carrying all their clothes and shoes.

But Tim only found that out the following day. At the time, while Melanie went to call her
parents, Tim quickly got dressed, and helped Ollie put on his jeans, at least. Then he carried
the drone into the shed, hiding it from adult eyes.

While Mrs Clark took Ollie to the hospital, Tim made his way home. Desperately, he
hoped that Melanie wouldn’t say anything about the drone to her mother. He couldn’t help
worrying about Ollie, too. Would he be all right? He had looked very pale and shaky after his
fall. What a horrible end to a day that had started so well.
 49

Chapter 8: Problems

“So my arm is broken, but I’m okay, really,” said Ollie, showing his plaster cast to Mrs
Green and Tim.

“You don’t look okay, Ollie!” Mrs Green remarked. “And all this happened because you
fell over a tree root?”

“Yes,” said Ollie sheepishly. “In my own garden.”

“It could be worse. You could just have fallen over your own feet,” Tim pointed out.

“I guess so.”

“Well, I’m off to my meeting now. You two boys take care today. I don’t want to see any
more plaster casts on either of you,” said Mrs Green, making it sound as though the boys
broke bones every week. “Before I go, what’s the capital of Bulgaria?”

“Sofia!” Tim said instantly, and waved his mother goodbye. Then he said urgently to Ollie
as they walked to the Clarks’ house, “So, what happened?”

Ollie understood exactly what he meant. “Melanie didn’t tell anyone about the drone.”

Tim breathed out with a whoosh of relief.

“But,” Ollie added grimly, “she’s being a real pain about it. She keeps telling me that she
thinks it’s the perfect time to fly it, even when other people are around. She’s going to want
to join in when we next fly it.”

“What was she doing home yesterday, anyway? She was meant to be out.”

Ollie shrugged. “Dunno. She had a fight with her friend, or something. And then the
concert was cancelled. Anyway, she came back home early and saw that we’d been flying the
drone, and worked out that we’d been swimming. Now she’s going to spoil our fun.” He
kicked a stone in his path.

“Don’t worry – we won’t let her spoil anything.” Tim tried to find something positive
about Melanie butting in. “She could help us carry the drone around. That thing is heavy.”

Ollie had to smile at that. “Yeah! We’ll ask her to carry equipment and then watch us
while we do cool things with the drone.”
 50

At the thought of fierce Melanie letting herself be bossed around by the boys she liked to
call “Tadpoles”, Tim spluttered with laughter.

“What are you laughing at?” It was Melanie, of course, lurking at the side of the house as
the boys rounded the corner.

“Uh – hello, Melanie,” said Tim politely, although he’d nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Yes, yes, hello, Tadpole Number Two. I said, what are you laughing at?”

“At a joke. What goes black-and-white, black-and-white, black-and-white, bump?”

“What?” Melanie asked, frowning suspiciously.

“A nun, falling down the stairs,” said Tim, hoping that Melanie hadn’t heard that one.

“Oh. That’s quite funny, I suppose,” said Melanie, not even cracking a smile. “Not bad for
Totally Tedious Tim.”

“Melanie, you are being so rude,” Ollie complained.

His sister ignored him.

“Now, I hope you’re going to get the drone out of its hiding place and let me have a go at
flying it.”

“Yes, okay,” said Ollie reluctantly. “You can help us get it out of the shed. It’s quite
heavy.”

Tim expected Melanie to object. But she merely grunted in agreement and did actually
help Tim heave the equipment out onto the grass.

“Now what?” she said, frowning down at the GCS. “This looks much too complicated for
you to…”

But she fell silent as Tim began to operate the system with practised ease.

“Oh,” she murmured. “That’s quite…”

She never finished that sentence, either. While Ollie stood by, unable to do much because
of his broken arm, Tim sent the drone up into the air and around the edge of the shed.

“Ha!” said Melanie when he’d made the drone land again. “Now, my turn to try.”
 51

She struggled to send the drone into the air. Tim showed her what to do, but she didn’t
seem to have a knack for it. Instead, she made the drone wobble and veer all over the grass as
the minutes ticked by.

It wasn’t long before Melanie seemed to lose interest. “This is kinda boring. But I’ll bring
my friend Alisha to try flying it one of these days. She’d be brilliant.”

“Hmm,” said Tim, hoping that Ollie wouldn’t mention that they’d managed to use the
drone to transport them around the neighbourhood.

“Okay,” said Ollie, apparently uninterested, staring into space.

“Have fun, Tadpoles,” Melanie said. “I’m off to find something more exciting to do. Don’t
crash that thing,” she said, pointing to the drone, “or you will be in serious trouble.”

With that, she drifted back into the house.

As soon as she’d vanished from sight, Ollie turned to Tim, “Thank goodness. Thank
goodness,” he breathed. “She thinks it’s boring! I was hoping you wouldn’t mention that
we’ve been using the drone to carry us around.”

“As if I’d tell her!” Tim scoffed. “I was hoping like crazy you wouldn’t tell her.”

“Never! Well done to us for making Melanie think that the most exciting thing that’s ever
happened to us is actually dull!” Ollie gave Tim a high-five.

“Let’s find somewhere else to fly the drone where we can have fun and she won’t see us.”

“We could take it to your house today. Let’s rather fly it in my garden when my sister isn’t
around,” Ollie suggested.

“Good idea. My mum will have left by now. She’ll be at her meeting all day today.”

They went into the shed to fetch the wheelbarrows before Tim realised the problem.

“Ollie, we can’t each push a wheelbarrow.”

“Why not?”

Wordlessly, Tim pointed at Olly’s plaster cast.

“Oh no, I forgot. What a pain!”

“I think we can make a plan,” Tim said thoughtfully. After boxing up the drone and its
GCS, he carefully put the drone box on top of the GCS box.
 52

“Now if you stand at the front of the wheelbarrow and hold the boxes steady with your
right hand, I should be able to steer.”

Progress was wobbly and slow, but they made it.

“You’ve gone bright red,” Ollie pointed out once they were back in the Greens’ garden.

“Yeah, two boxes on one wheelbarrow makes for hard work. We really need a kind of cart
that you could pull with one hand,” Tim puffed.

“I could try to make one with some of the bits and pieces we have in the shed.”

“Would your dad help?”

Ollie shook his head. “He’s not great with his hands. My mum would, though. She loves
drills and power tools. She’s obviously busy now with the harvest, but maybe I could ask her
to show me what to do tonight or tomorrow night.”

“That’d be brilliant. Then you could pull the GCS on the cart, and I’d push the drone on a
barrow.”

Ollie was frowning. Tim could almost see the ideas forming in clouds above his friend’s
head. “Or I could make the cart with two layers. Like a double-decker bus. That would mean
that the drone could be carried on the bottom…”

“… And the GCS would be the top! With one of us pushing the cart and another pulling!”

“Yeah, that would be much safer and more stable than using wheelbarrows,” said Ollie.
“Then, if I tripped over a tree root again…”

“You’d break your right arm, but the equipment should stay safe!” said Tim cheekily,
earning him a light punch on the shoulder from Ollie.

Excited by these plans, the boys unpacked the equipment once more.

“You want to try hanging from the drone by one arm, don’t you?” Tim asked.

“How did you know?”

“I know what you’re like!”

It didn’t take long before Ollie, laughing excitedly, was hanging onto the drone with his
right arm and being carried in the air across the garden.
 53

Tim was careful to fly the drone only a little way at a time, and only a couple of metres
above the ground.

Ollie seemed relieved. “Wow, it’s fun, but it’s hard to hang on with one arm!” he called to
Tim after his first landing. “I don’t think I can do it much longer. Well – maybe once more!”

Tim made the drone climb once more into the air, watching Ollie dangle by his right arm.
At the first sign of Ollie’s wriggling discomfort, he lowered the drone once more.

He was a little too late, though. Unable to hold on a moment longer, Ollie let go a little too
soon, and crashed down into Mrs Green’s pride and joy: her bed of petunias.

“Are you okay?” Tim called as he landed the drone and turned its power off. He ran over
to Ollie.

“Oh yeah, I’m fine.” Ollie was already standing up and dusting himself off. “Sorry about
the flowers, though.”

“Could’ve been worse,” said Tim, trying to fluff up some broken blooms and crushed
leaves.

“Yes – I might have landed in the rose bush,” Ollie agreed.

“Perhaps we should call it a day for now.” Tim tried not to feel discouraged. The morning
hadn’t been as much fun as he’d hoped.

“Yeah, okay. We’ll end up ruining your garden, otherwise.”

As they trudged back next door, Ollie said, “I can’t wait for this plaster to come off. But
I’ll try to start on the cart later today, okay? I should be able to get equipment together, at
least. Then tomorrow maybe we can work on it together. I’ll need your help.”

Brightening slightly, Tim agreed. Building a cart wasn’t as thrilling as flying a drone – but
it was something different.
 54

Chapter 9: Triumph

“I can’t believe how quickly this all came together,” Tim said, staring down at the cart in
front of them.

“Well, you helped a lot, and my mum was really into it. I think she wanted to do
something other than harvest fruit and veggies for a bit.”

“It’s excellent!”

It was a splendid cart, though it hadn’t been painted or “finished off”, as Mrs Clark put it.
Tim suspected it never would be. It was wonderful just as it was. It had a plain wooden body
made up of two boxes: one on top of the other. They were perfectly sized to take the drone
and the GCS. Mrs Clark had even made a small door for the bottom layer, with a latch, so the
drone box could slide neatly in and out from the side. Four sturdy wheels from an old pram
were fitted underneath. A handle had been fitted at the front, with another one at the back, to
make it easy to push and pull the whole thing.

“Did your mum never ask what it was for?” Tim wanted to know.

“I told her it was for ‘carrying things around’, and she didn’t ask for details.”

“What a cool mother.”

“Let’s use the cart right now,” Ollie suggested. “I’ve wanted to take the drone to the field
at the end of the road for ages.”

Tim wasn’t sure. “If anyone sees us…”

“It’s a weekday. Hardly anyone’s around. Let’s just try.”

“Okay, then.”

They soon worked out that it was easier for Ollie if he pulled the cart. Tim pushed from
the back, ready to use both hands to steady the equipment if necessary.

“This is so much easier than carrying everything,” Ollie said.

Although they had to be careful when they came across any lumps, bumps or steps, they
reached the field within minutes.

But there was a problem. “What are all these people doing here?” Ollie asked in dismay.
 55

“I think it’s a puppy training class,” said Tim, pointing to the young dogs emerging from
the cars at the end of leashes.

“Aw, that is bad timing. We can’t fly the drone with all these people around.”

“No, we can’t,” Tim agreed. He just managed to avoid saying, “Told you so!”

They watched the puppies and their owners for a few minutes, laughing at a couple of
young dogs who were more interested in eating their leashes or sitting on their owners’ feet
than obeying any instructions at all.

“I guess we’d better go back,” Ollie said after a while.

As they manoeuvred the cart back the way they’d come, they chatted about pets. Ollie had
a cat. Tim didn’t have a pet at all.

“I’d love to have a dog,” Tim admitted. “Those puppies on the field were sweet.”

“I also wish I had a dog. But my parents always say that a house full of kids is enough. I
don’t think they even know I have a cat.”

“How can they not know?” Tim asked with a laugh.

“Well, I suppose they sort of know. I keep finding tins of cat food in the kitchen
cupboards. But they turn a blind eye.”

Tim was still smiling at Ollie’s strange family when they walked through the gate and
almost bumped into Melanie and a friend.

“Where have you been?” Melanie screeched. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

“We were just up the road,” said Ollie. “Why?”

“Well, this is Alisha, the friend I was telling you about,” said Melanie in a rush, pointing
at the girl trailing behind her. “She’s brilliant with technology, but never mind that. Point is,
her parents are friendly with Michelle Williams’ parents, okay?”

At the mention of Michelle’s name, Tim’s heart bumped painfully.

“And Michelle is really upset because her kitten is stuck up a tree.”

“Oh,” said Ollie, “we were just talking about kittens and puppies, weren’t we, Tim?
They…”
 56

“YOU NEED TO RESCUE THE KITTEN!” Melanie bellowed. “With that thing! Now!”
She pointed dramatically at the drone.

“We can do that,” said Tim immediately. “Where’s the tree?”

“I can show you,” said Alisha. She seemed a thousand times nicer and calmer than
Melanie. She checked her mobile phone. “Michelle and half her family are there right now.
She’s using Twitter to ask for help.”

“That means…” Tim began, looking at Ollie. He could tell they were both thinking the
same thing. Half a dozen people would know about their drone adventures by the time this
was over.

Ollie shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Let’s go!”

Once Alisha had sent a quick message to Michelle, telling her they could help and were on
their way, they all trundled off again. This time, Alisha offered to push the cart in Ollie’s
place.

At the gate that led into the Williamses’ property, they found Mr Williams waiting for
him.

“Ah, is this the rescue team?” he greeted them. “Jolly nice of you to come by to help my
daughter.” He looked worried, despite his calm tone.

Trying not to remember the apples they had stolen from Mr Williams’s orchard, Tim
pulled the cart up the path.

“It’s in an oak tree close to the house,” Mr Williams told them as he led the way. “The
silly cat obviously climbed up there to catch a bird, and then she couldn’t climb down again.”

“Is she stuck very high up?” Ollie asked.

“Yes, I’m afraid so. About six metres. None of us can climb up there.”

They soon came to the tree where Michelle was standing with her mother. Way above
their heads, they could just make out the tiny figure of a kitten. She was mostly white, but
looked as though she’d been dipped in tea, with light, tan-coloured patches on her. She was
gazing down at them, occasionally mewing, as if to say, “This is a tragic situation and
someone needs to rescue me from it!”

Mrs Williams was frowning, but Michelle looked as though she’d been crying.
 57

“Thanks very much for coming,” she said. “I just didn’t know how we would get Skittles
down from there!”

“Don’t worry, Michelle. The boys have got it all worked out.”

Ollie and Tim gaped at Melanie. For it was she who had said these words.

Ollie obviously couldn’t resist asking, “We’re boys now? Not Tadpoles?”

While the adults concentrated on what the kitten was doing, Melanie scowled at him and
hissed, “Oh, get on with it!”

They were getting on with it. Alisha helped unpack the equipment. While the Williams
gazed at the drone and GCS with interest, Ollie said quietly to Tim, “You know you have to
go up there.”

“Yes. I’m trying not to think about it.” Tim had realised as soon as Mr Williams had said
the kitten was six metres up that sending Ollie on the drone to fetch her would simply not
work.

Michelle overheard their conversation. “What? Are you really going up there with the
drone? Will you be all right?”

“We’ve done it before,” Tim reassured her. “It’s just a matter of programming it to do
what we need it to do.”

He was quietly thrilled when Michelle looked highly impressed, and even her father said,
“Good heavens!”

Melanie stepped in. “It’s really no problem,” she said bossily. “Alisha can operate this
thing. Can’t you, Alisha? You can drive it up to Skittles while Tim hangs on to it, can’t you?”

Alisha looked horrified for a split-second, and then, in the nicest, friendliest way, burst out
laughing.

“Mel, have you seen this thing?” she asked, gesturing at the GCS. “It’s really complicated!
I’d have to study it first.”

“Oh. Didn’t know the Tadpoles could manage something that complex,” Melanie said
sulkily.

No-one was paying any attention to her.

 58

Tim was already programming the GCS, trying to recall exactly what he’d done to send
Tim to the mall and himself to the Murgatroyds’ pool.

“Are you doing okay?” Ollie asked him.

“Yes, I think so.”

Suddenly, Tim was very glad that Ollie was there to lend support. It was intimidating,
knowing that it was up to him and his knowledge of the drone to end Michelle’s misery and
bring her pet down to safety. Having her mother and father there made it worse. As for
Melanie – well, as usual, he did his best not to listen to her. At the same time, he wished she
were far, far away.

“It’s easier than sending us over a wall, right?” Ollie guessed, gazing down at what Tim
was doing.

“Should be. It’s the extra height I’m worried about. The drone hasn’t carried us this high
before. But I think this will work out.” Tim typed in the last few figures, and quickly
reviewed what he’d done.

“Okay,” he said, standing up, and trying not to let his voice quiver. “I’m going to try going
up now.”

Instantly, everyone else fell silent. He started his program, and the drone’s propellers
began whirring.

“Good luck, Tim,” said Michelle.

“Good luck,” “Good luck,” the others murmured.

Tim didn’t have time to bask in the moment. The drone was rising into the air. He grabbed
the handles, praying that he’d be able to cling on for as long as he needed to.

He felt the familiar pull of the powerful machine yanking him off the ground. Up, up, up,
he went. He daren’t look down, but he could feel the others below, staring up at him. At first,
he was well clear of the branches. Then, as he’d planned, once he was level with Skittles, he
moved in a little closer to the tree trunk.

Skittles looked amazed to see a boy in the sky attached to a machine.

“Come here, Kitty Skittles. Come on, Skitty,” he said, muddling up his words in his stress.
His heart was banging with fear.
 59

Skittles, of course, wasn’t going to move an inch.

“Skittles! Come on,” he said urgently.

The kitten looked at him with wide eyes and moved away from him a little.

Tim took a deep breath. He had programmed the drone to hover at this level for only a
couple of minutes. He couldn’t mess up. The thought of returning to the ground without
Skittles was too awful.

Although he was terrified, he had to take drastic action. As Melanie had said earlier, he
needed to get on with it.

“Don’t think about it. Just do it,” he told himself.

With that, he stretched out his right arm and clutched at a sturdy branch next to the one
Skittles was on. Once he had a good grasp of it, he forced himself to let go of the drone with
his left hand.

Now he had left the drone to hover in the air on its own. And he, Timothy Green, was
dangling from a tree, six metres above the ground.

Later, Ollie told him that those on the ground below had shouted encouragement (and
alarm, in the case of Mr and Mrs Williams). Tim wasn’t aware of it. He didn’t hear a thing.
All he could focus on was heaving himself onto a branch, hoping madly that it wouldn’t snap.
Once he was balanced, he could pick up the kitten.

“It’s all right, Skittles,” he said as cheerfully as he could. “I’m taking you down to
Michelle, okay?”

Holding Skittles was oddly comforting. All he had to do now, he told himself, was grab
the drone before it went down again. Easy peasy.

His heart was banging hard in his chest, though, as he reached for the drone with his left
arm once more. Skittles, supported by his right hand, clung to the front of his shirt. He’d
planned to tuck her into his shirt, but she wouldn’t budge from where she was.

He realised he was going to have to hang on with only one arm.

Clutching the drone as firmly as he could, he tried not to think of how Ollie had fallen off
the drone very quickly when he’d attempted a one-armed flight. He also tried not to notice
that his weight was dragging the drone down on one side.
 60

Luckily, it was only a few seconds before the drone buzzed gently towards the ground
once more. Its uneven load made it veer awkwardly towards the branches of the oak tree once
or twice. Twigs snapped off and flew through the air.

But Tim clutched the squirming kitten a little tighter until his feet touched the ground.

Everyone rushed up to him. He was flooded with their relief and admiration.

“Oh thank goodness, thank goodness!”

“Well done, mate!”

“That was scary stuff.”

The best of all was Michelle’s reaction. “Tim! You’re my hero!” she yelled, and threw her
arms around him and Skittles.

Tim could feel his face turning bright red. “Oh, no problem,” he said, as if he’d just
carried Michelle’s bags to the car instead of having dangled by one arm in the air to perform
a death-defying rescue.

“How are you, Skittles? How is my favourite kitten in the world, you naughty thing?”
Michelle crooned. She plucked the small bundle of fur from Tim’s arms.

“Have you got a picture of Skittles?” she asked Alisha. That’s when Tim noticed that
Alisha was pointing her phone at him.

“Oh yes,” Alisha assured her. “I’ve been filming the whole time. This is going to make the
local news headlines, don’t worry!” She gave Tim a dazzling grin.

He stared back at her, bemused.

“I think I need to sit down,” he said. He hoped he wouldn’t be sick.

Alisha wasn’t joking. She wanted to work as a journalist one day, and this was her big
scoop. She sent the video clips she’d taken to every news outlet she could think of.

Aunt Pamela eventually heard about it all, of course. Miraculously, she wasn’t angry at all.
“Oh, I knew I shouldn’t have left that drone behind,” she told Ollie, who reported back to
Tim. “Just take good care of it, will you? If I talk nicely to my boss, he might even let me
 61

keep it. You and Tim have given the brand very good publicity, with all these pictures of Tim
and Skittles appearing on Twitter and Facebook and television. So no harm done, eh?”

And that is how Totally Tedious Tim became the very famous Drone Boy. He was no
longer bored, or boring. Far from it. He started a club at school for boys and girls with the
same interest in drones. Together they studied drones, built them, and began exploring the
world with them. He and Ollie and the club members had fun all the time.

He even told his mother that he would like to try eating bran flakes in the morning. No
more oatmeal for him.

And if all this life-changing adventure and excitement happened to Timothy Green in the
course of one summer holiday – well, who knows what could happen to you?

THE END
 62

Connect with Cathy Watt

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 63

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