Free Just in Case by Meg Rosoff

meaning.
    JST IN CASE WHAT.
    He looked at Charlie, then down again at the words.
    Just in case what?
    Just in case something irreversible occurs. Just in case he was maimed, injured, died. Just in case something so horrible happened to him, or to someone he knew, that he would never, ever recover.
    Was it possible that the child understood the meaningof his own question? Could he have arranged the letters as a premeditated act? Or was it like monkeys at typewriters and eventually, if left here with an infinite supply of blocks, Charlie would fill the room with Hamlet?
    The sheer cosmic strangeness of his brother’s feat and the unlikely question in the cryptogram made Justin tremble. I must ask him, he thought, I must find a way to communicate with him. He fumbled for more blocks but it was too late. The child was fast asleep, fat pink fingers wrapped around the leg of his sock monkey.
    Justin replaced him carefully in his cot, tucked a blanket under him and slowly returned to his own bed. There he lay, spooked, a spinning pin in a celestial bowling alley.
    Perhaps I could offer fate a truce, he thought. A deal. You live your life, I’ll live mine. No surprises, no one gets hurt.
    He fell asleep at dawn.

20
    I don’t make deals, Justin. I deal.
    And here’s how your cards are falling: a couple of negligible hearts. A joker. A sad little club.
    Will you draw?
    Oh look! The ace of spades.
    I am sorry.

21
    Justin awoke at noon with a start. He knew instantly and with utter certainty that he had to leave home. Fate was closing in, sending ominous messages in strange guises.
    Just in case what? Oh ha ha. Why don’t you talk to me instead of channelling evil questions through Charlie as if he were some sort of human Ouija board.
    Just in case what?
    Even in the bright light of day, the only response he could think of involved a thousand hellish possibilities. But it didn’t matter. He knew what he had to do. Packing a bag with a change of clothes and a toothbrush, he cracked open the door to his room and stepped out, ready to begin his journey.
    Hello, said Charlie from the floor at his feet. One fat hand gripped his toy monkey, the other guided a large wooden spoon through the air like an aeroplane. Justin lowered himself to the floor and looked his brother in the eye. ‘What was that business in the night?’ he asked gently. ‘Since when have you learned to spell?’
    Charlie held his brother’s gaze for a moment before answering.
    It was an important question I asked you in the night, he said, and you need to answer it or you’ll never get over that time I tried to fly.
    ‘Blocks!’ he said emphatically, hitting the floor with his spoon.
    Having expected no further explanation, Justin kissed the child, tucked his passport into his pocket, called his dog, told his mother his school trip had been moved forward a week, and set out for Luton Airport.
    As he stepped on to the local bus, Justin felt the gravitational tug of his past loosening. It was a good feeling. The open road beckoned. The closer he came to the airport, the freer he felt, like a comet streaming off into a weightless infinity of possible encounters.
    Main terminal, his stop. The whoosh of automatic doors and the sweep of steel and glass excited him. There were no curtains, no occasional tables, no kitchen utensils. No heaps of dirty laundry or drawers filled with tartan pyjamas. There was no letter box. No milk on the doorstep. Nothing domestic, cosy or familiar; nothing with his scent or his name or his NHS number on it.
    Why hadn’t he realized it before? The problem was all around him. The stuffy little room. The conventional parents, the dismal house. The street. The school. Here, all the little threads that connected him to earth could be broken. He was in transit, on the lam. He wasGulliver, Neil Armstrong, Bonnie and Clyde, all rolled into one.
    Making his way to the information desk, Justin obtained an application allowing an unaccompanied