Agent Ez

Chapter 1 - Who are we talking about again?

A few months earlier...

‘Oh em gee. Did you hear ? Caspian’s back.’ Courtney, head slut and generally incredibly annoying has announced this for the 100th time today. I kid you not. I’ve been counting.

And worst of all. I don’t even know who Caspian is.

Grabbing my lunch, I take a seat next to my two best friends, Poppy and Amelia – who can hopefully shed some light on this ridiculously popular dude that everyone’s been talking about all day.

‘So who’s this Caspian guy?’

‘He’s really cool, he used to board here but apparently his dad, who everyone thought was dead, turned out to be alive. So he had someone to stay with and decided to ditch this dump, but now he’s coming back. Don’t know why though.’ Amelia shrugs, shoving another forkful of spaghetti in her mouth.

Seems a bit off, him returning after this long. Why would he?  If he had a family? If I had my family back, you’d have to go through quite a bit to bring me back here again. That’s not just me, all of us would do that for family. How long has he been gone for? I figure about two and a half years, as that’s roughly how long I’ve been here for and he was long gone before I came. Who was I to question his motives, when I myself probably had the dodgiest reason for staying here anyway.

It was this or juvenile detention.

As much as Ames describes it as a dump, it’s actually quite a cool place to be. Everything is new and shiny – despite the academy being open for … well I don’t know how long. But it’s been a while. The Ministry Of Defence has to look after its spies.

…

Weirdly enough, after I had found out who Caspian was I didn’t hear about him so much, everyone got onto some other topic.  I don’t understand the hype around that guy, their fixation floats to the back of my mind as I await for my friends, it’s nearing midnight now and I’m no where near asleep.

Tonight’s the fortnightly Bullshit game with my year group – not all of us turn up for it but most of us do. We play for about two hours in which we all play in fives. One person takes the bets for each round, then whoever wins each round plays each other the next week. Like finals in shows like X Factor. Bets can be made in any form other than sexual and you can’t bet on yourself.

We host the games in Chris’s room who  lives in the older dorms where there’s less security and thus less chance of getting caught. He’s not as nice as to just let us hold games there, he charges – and whatever he wants, he gets. Sometimes it’s money, sometimes it’s the new PS3 game or sometimes it’s having his homework done for him. Nothing that anyone minds paying for a little fun.

I hear the light knock on my door and know that Ames and Poppy have arrived. As quietly as possible we make our way through passages and a few flights of stairs  until we reach a familiar door.

We’re the last people to arrive, Callum takes the bets and deals the cards. He records who wins and who loses so others can actually see a graph on who the best person to bet is on. To say he’s slightly obsessed with his iPad is an understatement.

The game begins, My five consist of Poppy, Jake, Lilly and Courtney.  I have the Ace of Spades so I start, from then we go up 2,3,4 and so on. After the King you start at Ace again and repeat as necessary. You have to say whatever the next number up is, even if you don’t have it. Nobody will know as we don’t actually see the card your placing, you put in face down in the middle.  If I think you’re lying I’ll say ‘Bullshit’, then we flip the card over if I’m right the person lying gets the whole pile. If I’m wrong I get the whole pile. First to win is the person who gets rid of all their cards.