Kyan Green and The Infinity Racers


 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 Contents
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Acknowledgements
 eCopyright
 
 
 
 
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 First published in Great Britain in 2023 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
 Text copyright © Colm Field, 2023
 Illustrations copyright © David Wilkerson, 2023
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 To D and the kids
 Contents
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Acknowledgements
 
 1
 We found the Infinite Race on the first day of the summer holidays, when we were helping my dad plug leaks in the roof.
 Well, I say we found – my sister Celestine swears she saw it first. But all she did was point at an old box, which my grandma would say is like finding a mouldy sandwich in your room and saying you invented penicillin. And I say we were helping, but while I had the vital job of holding the second torch to make sure Dad didn’t put his foot through the ceiling, Celestine had been told to stay on the floor below us and ‘foot the ladder’, which if you ask me is one of those jobs you ask a little kid to do so they feel involved. Like drawing a smiley picture of the sun, or seeing if they can be quiet for ten whole minutes.
 Anyway, so Dad was stomping around the loft, grunting, grumbling and spraying more foam than a fire extinguisher. I was sat in the hatch, legs resting on the ladder, aiming the torch at him and thinking about how my best friend Luke was probably playing on some shiny new console while I was having to ‘earn’ half an hour on my tired old tablet. And then, suddenly, Celestine pointed up past me, and said, ‘What’s that, Ky?’
 (Just to be clear: if I say that Tines said, ‘What’s that, Ky?’ what she actually said was, ‘What’s that, Ky? Kyan, what’s that? Let me see, Kyan. Kyan? Kyan. Ky? What’s that? Ky, what’s . . . ?’)
 I looked nervously around the dark, cobwebby loft. There were at least fifty bags and boxes, all shapes and sizes, all covered in dust. Mum says everyone who rented this flat before us left things here, but our landlord Mr Stringer won’t let us throw them out. The first time I came up here, I loved the treasure I found. A globe! Trading cards that nobody’s ever heard of! But then I found this weird home-made Princess Elsa doll that gave me nightmares for weeks.
 ‘Actually, Tines,’ I said importantly, trying to ignore Elsa’s freakily human hair sticking out of a black bag by the crumbling brick wall, ‘my job is quite important you know, and . . .’
 And then I caught a glimpse of the box Celestine was pointing at, sticking out of a bag that was just behind me. On the side of it was a picture of something that makes every kid’s heart soar. It was a racetrack.
 OK, so maybe a hundred years ago it would’ve made every kid’s heart soar. Oranges were big news back then, according to school, so a racetrack would’ve been the real deal. Still, I had nothing better to do, so I shone the torch at it.
 ‘Where’s the light gone?’ Dad yelled, and there was a thud. He said a word we weren’t supposed to say, and I shone the torch back on him. There was dirt on his face and he was rubbing his head.
 ‘You sweared,’ I said.
 ‘No I didn’t,’ he replied. ‘And you weren’t shining the torch anyway.’ We looked at each other for a moment, stuck in a shotgun stand-off nobody could win. Then Dad disappeared, pfft-pfft-pffting with his expanding foam to the other end of the loft. Still sitting, I fixed the torch under my leg so that it stayed pointed at him, turned around, and hefted the racetrack over my shoulder, on to my lap.
 It was in an old box, older than the board games we get from the charity shop where the kids on the cover are dressed like Peter Rabbit. This box was brown cardboard, and somebody had drawn the racetrack on it. It wasn’t scrawled on though – not all messily, like if I’d done it. This road was a thick, black tarmac that looked solid and