My name is Jay McWalter. I have something very important to tell you but I don’t have much time. Why I don’t have much time isn’t important. Everything will become clear, in the end, if I manage to finish explaining before…well, before I have to go.
If your parents bought you this book, or your teacher, or any other adult for that matter, then the first part of my plan has worked. It means that this document is in your hands, and hopefully in other people’s hands your age too. It is important that my message reaches the public, important that people know about what I’m about to tell you. We’ve got to stick together, fight for the right cause, battle against the evil that always somehow manages to worm its way into the adult world. It lurks everywhere, and mostly where you least expect it. Remember that.
We have a chance, an opportunity to end it all, but only if we’re careful, if we don’t get found out. The cause I fight for must go on long after I’m not able to help anymore, which is soon. Otherwise things will get very messy.
I’m not important in the grand scheme of things. But the organization I work for, and the things they do, are very, very important indeed. I hope you’ll understand more clearly when you turn over to the next page.

So long for now, and probably forever. I wish you good luck.

Signed,
Jay McWalter,
C.I.D (Children’s Investigation Department)

***

So, like I said, I have to be quick. But to explain properly I’ll have to start at the beginning, five years ago. It feels weird to say that. Five years ago. Picture yourself five years ago. What were you doing? Doesn’t it seem so long ago? Nowadays I hardly know any of the friends I had before all of this started. The way I am has completely changed. I’m different now. Five years changes you a lot. Especially the five years I’ve had.
Back then I was just a normal kid. I’d always been “just normal” Jay. I was your average run of the mill kid. Except that I’d never been to a mill, or run around one. Back then I always seemed to be in the middle of everything. But it wasn’t in the middle in a good way, like being in the mix of all the exciting stuff, at the centre of attention. That would’ve been amazing! It was more like being squashed in the middle by everything else that was happening around me. There was always a little part of me (I’m not sure which part) that wanted to be one of those kids who everyone looked up to. But that was never going to happen, I’m too short. I was always pretty jealous of kids would come in to school and talk about how amazing their weekend was. Like how their Dad’s had flown them to Paris for the weekend and they’d circled the Eiffel Tower in a private helicopter. Or how they’d been to the latest England game and sat in a luxury box sipping orange juice watching all the big players strut their stuff on the neatly mown grass of Wembley Stadium. I never got to do any of that stuff. My family didn’t really have the money. I mean, don’t get me wrong, we weren’t poor by any stretch of the imagination. Its just that my school is in quite a posh area of London and my family are nowhere near posh. The closest they get to the Queen is seeing her on the copper coins we save in a big glass jar in the lounge.
It was just a series of lucky circumstances that I managed to get into Balham House, the private school I go to in Chelsea. Mostly it’s full of rich kids who don’t really care too much about school and education because they know that for the rest of their lives they can sponge bucket loads of dosh from “Mummy and Daddy.” Sometimes I think it really isn’t fair. In Clapham, where I live, there are loads of schools with normal kids who have normal lives who never get the opportunity to get flown to Paris and prance around in designer labels like Gucci and Ralph Lauren. And trust me, the kids who live near me are way smarter than most of the Toffs at Balham House. How unfair is that?
You might be thinking I sound ungrateful that I go to such a nice school. Honestly, I’m not. The facilities are amazing (heated swimming pool and a Wii fitness centre) and so are a lot of the teachers. But my Dad, who literally came to this country with just the shirt on his back (I think he must’ve had some trousers as well) really wanted me to have the opportunity he never had to get a good start in life. As it turns out, the start I got from Balham House was rocket propelled. I don’t think he bargained for who I’d meet there. At least I’ve been clever enough for him never to guess what I’ve really been doing all these years when I should’ve been in school.
So I’ve explained a bit about my Dad. Maybe I should fill you in a bit more. He’s not from Great Britain. He’s from a long, long way away. By birth he’s Nigerian, which is a country smack bam in the middle of Africa. He came here thirty years ago to go to University to study law. Then he met my Mum and never went back. Back then my Mum was a fashion model, so I can kind of guess the reason why Dad didn’t want to go home. Mum was modelling at a little boutique store on the King’s Road, this posh bit of London when my Dad walked past the shop. Apparently my Mum saw him and ran out of the store (she can be a bit ditzy) to talk to him because she thought he was so handsome. Yuck. They both say it was love at first sight. They say it a lot because they know it makes me cringe.
My parents had three children. I’m the middle of the three. Onjay my brother is grown up; he’s ten years older. Vanessa, my sister is eight years younger. I guess that’s another area of my life where I’m pretty much in the middle, and not just between my brother and sister in age. My Dad is Nigerian and my Mum’s Welsh so I’m a big mix of the two. I’ve got milky coffee coloured skin (the posh kids in school would call it latte because they think they’re more grown up than they actually are), big brown eyes and tangly, curly hair that I have to keep short otherwise it turns into a big seventies disco afro. The weird thing is, in lots of ways I look like my dad, but I’m small like my Mum and everybody says that even though I’ve got different features, I’ve got “the look” of my Mum. Whatever that means.
When I started at Balham some of the kids gave me weird looks, as if they’d never seen anyone like me before even though they obviously had. It’s pathetic really, but I just flat out ignored them and soon enough I found a group of friends who I really liked. I would go into detail about them because they were all really nice guys but to be honest, there’s not much point because I need to stop waffling and get to the important stuff. Like I said, I don’t have much time.