Vicky Isaac The Architect

The Architect

chapter 1

“Oi! Stop thief! Ladrón!”

Oops! Javi thought as he tore through the narrow, over-crowded streets of Barcelona. He dodged ambling shoppers, who were staring at the street performers throwing batons in the air and sidestepped tourists, who were deciphering their maps, trying to find the Gothic Quarter and not realising they were stood in it. Javi rolled his eyes. A thin layer of sweat built up, soaking his thick, brown hair and trickling down his face. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and kept running.

He should have been more careful, sneakier, smarter. He thought he had been, but the shopkeeper had clearly been watching. It was only a few bags of sweets. Well, it had been more like 3 bags of sweets, 2 chocolate bars and a packet of biscuits but Pa had forgotten to make him a packed lunch that morning, he’d been distracted again, and school was serving cold lentil soup. He knew he should have headed straight home from school, like his Pa had told him to, but he was starving and bored.

The shopkeeper was still chasing him. Javi grinned, he was secretly enjoying the thrill of it all. He thought the shopkeeper, an older man with a rather large belly, would have given up by now. It had only been some sweets; it wasn’t like the 18 karat gold watches that some of the older kids tried to steal.

Javi skidded into the park. He paused for a brief moment and leant against a tall tree, its many leaves bunched together, creating the perfect shady spot. His lungs burned as he gulped in the hot, afternoon air. His eyes paused for a second on a leaflet, strewn on the ground.

Sagrada Familiar Drawing Competition

“Ladrón!”

The shopkeeper was getting closer. Javi grabbed the paper and stuffed it into his satchel. Why had he not given up yet? Javi looked around, quickly planning his route. He decided to go left of the lake and out the other side. He had to keep going.

Javi sprinted forward, his thighs screamed as he pushed on. He followed the gravel path, dodged a mother pushing a pram and jumped over a tiny fluffy dog who had run into his path after its ball.

Javi kept running until something stopped him. La Basilica de la Sagrada Familia: the most glorious unfinished sight in all of Spain. Normally, Javi would have time to stop and gaze at its beauty and stature, but the shopkeeper was only a few paces behind him. Despite the urgency, Javi looked up. Something had caught his eye. Something was moving in one of the windows.

The shop keeper was almost within touching distance. Javi zigzagged his way through the mesmerised tourists who stood taking the same pictures that thousands had taken before them. When he reached the front of the Basilica, he realised that he didn’t have a ticket to get in. But then, neither did the shopkeeper. When the person checking tickets (a tall man with broad, muscly shoulders) wasn’t looking, Javi slipped under the rope and pretended to be with the large tourist group that had just walked into the church. He looked back to check he was safe. He could see the shopkeeper wrestling with the same muscly ticket person, trying to get in. He wasn’t as small as Javi or as quick. Finally, the shopkeeper gave up. His shoulders sagged and his head lowered. As he turned around to head back, Javi made eye contact with him. He winked, and continued walking, feigning interest in a statue.

Once he was far enough into the Basilica, he found a quiet nook behind an altar to sit and scoff the sweets he had stolen. He sat and watched as gaggles of visitors walked by, amazed by the high ceiling that seemed to go on for

ever; the stained-glass windows that were letting in a rainbow of colours; the spiral staircase that wound up like a gigantic crocodile’s tail and the layered balconies that jutted out from every corner and spare wall. He had walked past the building every day on the way to school, but he had never been in.

“It’s too busy,” his Pa would say. Pa hated art or anything to do with it, being busy was just an excuse he used. Javi loved art. He liked to draw animals and flowers and buildings, making sure his lines were precise to capture every miniscule detail. Pa disapproved of it though. The thought of his Pa made his stomach flip. If he knew what Javi had done, he would not be happy. Javi knew that he shouldn’t have done it, he didn’t need to. It wasn’t like he was poor; his Pa was just distracted at the moment and it was thrilling, being chased like that. It made life more interesting and exciting. Nothing was ever exciting anymore, not since Mama left for England and Pa’s attention was taken up with Sofia and her one hundred and twenty different moods.

Javi decided to wander around the basilica. Besides, he was already late. His Pa let him walk home from school on one condition: that he walk straight home. He was going to be so mad. This little detour wasn’t meant to happen but seeing as he was already so late, another twenty minutes wasn’t going to make the slightest difference. Pa was still going to be angry either way. That’s if he’d noticed.

The church was still busy, despite it being late in the afternoon. Tourists didn’t seem to care about time, they just walked around with their heads in guidebooks or looking up at the kaleidoscopic architecture. Javi walked past the groups of tourists and climbed one of the spiral staircases, trailing his hand along the crocodile tail shaped side as he ascended.

“And here is where the famous Antoni Gaudi lived whilst overseeing the building of his design,” Javi heard a tour guide say. The tourists nodded along enthusiastically, drinking in the knowledge. Javi had learnt about Gaudi at school during his art lessons. He couldn’t wait to move to high school so he could do it every week. Javi felt for his satchel. Inside was his sketchpad and pencil, he never left home without them.

Javi continued climbing upwards, one very slow step at a time, passing the diminishing crowds of tourists as the day began drawing closer to the end.

“Watch out!”

“Lo siento,” Javi replied. He hadn’t been concentrating and had bumped into a man. The man looked familiar. Something about the wiry grey hair on the top of his head that matched his long scraggly beard, his deep set eyes and the kind smile.

The corners of the man’s mouth turned up. “It’s okay,” he said. “You’d better run along now, or your parents will worry.” The man carried on walking down the spiral staircase.

Javi’s shoulders sunk. He knew he should go back home. He turned on his heels to head back down the stairs when something strange caught his eye. At first, he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Something about the stone wall didn’t seem quite right. It was moving. No not moving he thought, the wall was rippling? Shimmering!

“That’s odd,” Javi thought out loud. “Walls don’t shimmer, they don’t even shine.”

He blinked hard just to make sure he was really seeing it. He turned away and then turned back. It was still there. Slowly, he walked towards it, hand outstretched, but something stopped him from touching it. On closer inspection, he could make out the shape of it. It looked like a stained-glass window. He looked behind him, searching for a window, one that could create that shadow. There was one. Facing the wall. He shook his head. This is loco, Javi thought. But, if it had been the afternoon light shining through the window, then surely the wall would have been lit with the same deep sapphire blues, dark emerald greens and glistening jaded yellows.

Javi did the only thing he knew what to do. He grabbed his sketchbook and pencil out of his satchel and drew the shadow. His tongue stuck out like it always did when he was concentrating. He sketched the outline, then shaded it in, trying to recreate the undulating waves of the image

that was projected in front of him. When he had finished, he looked up. The shadow had gone.

Feeling defeated, he decided to head home.

chapter 2

Javi stepped through the front door and slowly placed his coat and satchel on the mottled brown tiles in the hallway. Gently, he pushed the door shut. He took a deep breath through his nose. Pa was cooking dinner. Well, he’d put a pizza and some chips in the oven. Javi sniffed. Pepperoni. Javi’s favourite.

“And where on EARTH have you been!” Pa said marching down the hallway, his face red hot and angry.

Ratas! Javi thought he had been quiet, but Pa had ears like a hawk.

“It’s been 3 hours! I’ve been going out of my mind with worry.” Pa squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. He breathed in deeply. Javi hated when he did this. He knew he had messed up.

“Lo Siento, Pa,” Javi said breaking the silence.

“You were meant to come straight home from school.”

“I know,” Javi replied, looking at his feet. He couldn’t bear to look at Pa. He hadn’t thought Pa would notice him being late, he was normally too busy with work or dealing with Sofia’s mood changes, but Javi was sorry now.

“I trusted you, I even sent Sofia to look for you” Pa said, his face now a much pinker shade of disappointment.

‘Oh, so you sent Sofia out but didn’t bother to look yourself,’ he wanted to shout but instead “I’m really sorry Pa. It won’t happen again,” came out. He never wanted to make Pa upset but since Mama left, he hadn’t actually seen his father smile.

“No, it won’t happen again. Sofia will be waiting outside the gates tomorrow and you will walk home with her.”

“Not Sofia,” Javi whined. “She’s so bossy.” He didn’t want to walk home with Sofia, his annoying older sister. He would have pictured her smug face but there was no need as she was right there, leering in the kitchen doorway. She was two years older than Javi and she had always been Pa’s favourite. Always doing well at school, always getting her own way and never getting into any trouble of any kind. At least, that’s what Pa believed.

“You’ve left me with no choice,” Pa said walking to the kitchen.

“She’ll love that she gets to lord it over me,” Javi said, following.

Sofia was always trying to tell him what to do as if she was Mama. Javi hated that. It didn’t matter how alike they looked; she would never be Mama. And he wasn’t a baby. He was almost 12.

“Can’t you get me from school?” Javi asked.

He knew the answer before he asked the question, but he asked it anyway just in case Pa changed his mind.

“I’m sorry júnior, I can’t. I have to-” Pa’s attention had shifted to the pizza in the oven. The burning smell stung Javi’s nose. Pa had a stack of papers on the counter and was attempting to read them whilst sticking his hand into the hot oven minus an oven glove or tea towel.

“Yeah, yeah you have to work. I get it,” Javi sighed.

“Ow,” Pa said sucking at his thumb. “Sorry mi’ijo.”

To begin with, dinner was silent. Only the sound of knives and forks clattering against plates could be heard. Sofia had joined for dinner. Pa liked it when we all ate together, even if it was in silence. They had always eaten together when Mama was around. Javi picked up his hard piece of pizza and dreamed of the delicious paellas that Mama used to make filled with the rich flavour of saffron, paprika, tangy lemon and stuffed full of soft peppers, and salty prawns. Pa cleared his throat, snapping Javi out of his food daydream.

“Your school reports came today,” he said.

Javi’s head shot up. This was not going to be good.

Ellen Long-Common (she/her)

Ellen grew up in North Wales, studied Creative Writing in Bath, lived in Lancashire for a while and has now settled near Glastonbury. She channels all the (totally real) ghosts, fairies, witches and vampires she’s met along the way into her writing.

As a bit of a nomad who has lived in a caravan, a yurt and a haunted seventeenth-century Welsh farmhouse, home is a theme that seeps into her stories. Her characters often come from difficult, deprived or disrupted homes, but she likes to balance the serious stuff with magic and humour.

By day Ellen is a website wrangler at Bath Spa University. She is powered by sustainable coffee beans and rain.

When she’s not dreaming up sarcastic teens and deadly female antagonists, Ellen can be found roaming the Somerset countryside with her fairy dog, Aine.

hi@nellcommon.com / @nellcommon / @nellcommonwrites

About Remember Me

14-year-old Violet Dale has always been on the good side of sensible. She has to be – Mum needs her. But when Violet releases a centuries-old creature into modern-day Whity, she discovers a hidden world of curses, ghosts and monsters that places her nice, ‘normal’ future in jeopardy. She and her new friends, Freddie ‘Baby Goth’ Fisk and his cousin Bea, not to mention Violet’s runaway bestie from back home, Milla, must defeat Eleanor before the end of Halloween night – or Violet will take her place in hell.