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  But Anya’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why would someone try to kill you?’ she asked.

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Do you have any enemies?’

  Jarli half-laughed. But Anya looked dead serious.

  ‘Well, my history teacher hates me,’ Jarli said. ‘But I’m pretty sure it wasn’t him behind the wheel.’

  ‘So you actually saw the driver?’

  ‘Anya,’ her mother warned.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jarli said. ‘For a second. He was old—and he was wearing glasses.’

  He realised as he said this that it wasn’t much to go on. He could hear the ambulance siren getting louder and louder.

  ‘Glasses with black frames?’ Anya asked. ‘Was he driving a brown ute?’

  Jarli stared. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘Anya,’ her mother warned, ‘this is not the time.’

  Anya ignored her. ‘Do you have dash cam?’

  ‘No,’ Jarli said. Dad hadn’t wanted a camera in the car. He worried that it could be used to spy on him. Dad could be kind of paranoid.

  Anya looked surprised. ‘In Russia, everyone has dash cam.’

  So that was where Anya was from. ‘Nothing happens in Kelton,’ Jarli said, defensively. ‘There’d be nothing to record.’

  Anya looked at the wrecked car. ‘So I see.’

  ‘Hide it,’ Dad muttered. ‘Gotta hide it.’

  An ambulance appeared up the far end of the street, lights flashing, engine rumbling. Anya’s mother waved her arms at it. ‘Over here!’

  The ambulance switched off its siren and stopped next to the ruined car. Two paramedics leapt out—a man and a woman. The man went around the back to get a stretcher while the woman ran over to Jarli’s dad. She wore dark overalls and had a stethoscope around her neck. A radio was attached to her hip.

  ‘Who was in the car?’ she asked. Like Anya, she talked quickly but calmly.

  ‘Me and my dad,’ Jarli said. ‘He’s talking, but he’s not making sense. His name is Glen Durras.’

  ‘You’re not hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  The paramedic shone a small torch into Dad’s eyes. ‘Glen? Can you hear me?’

  Dad blinked. ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m a paramedic,’ the woman said. ‘My name is Susan. I’m here to help you, OK? Are you in pain?’

  Dad shook his head vigorously, and then pressed his hands to his temples.

  ‘We’re going to take you to hospital now, OK?’ Susan said.

  The male paramedic rolled the stretcher over and lowered it to the ground beside Dad. ‘What do we have?’ he asked.

  Susan kept her voice low, but Jarli heard what she said. ‘Possible bleeding in the brain.’

  ‘This corner is a deathtrap,’ the male paramedic said. His name badge read: TYSON. ‘That’s the third accident here this year.’

  ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ Jarli said again. ‘Is Dad going to be OK?’

  Susan helped Tyson lift Dad onto the stretcher. ‘Is there someone you can call?’ she asked Jarli. ‘Your mum, maybe?’

  Mum. What would Jarli tell Mum? She was going to freak out.

  Jarli got out his phone. It was in flight mode—he hadn’t been allowed to use it at the parent-teacher meeting. Jarli switched flight mode off, and it reconnected to the network. On the screen, the Truth app started running again. Jarli had made it himself—it was supposed to be able to tell if people were lying. But he wasn’t sure it worked properly.

  ‘What should I say?’ Jarli asked Susan.

  ‘Tell her to meet you at the hospital. You can ride with us. We’ll need to examine you as well.’ The paramedics rolled Dad’s stretcher over to the ambulance and slid it into the back.

  ‘Let us know what happens,’ Anya said. ‘OK?’

  ‘OK. Thanks.’ Jarli turned back to the paramedics. ‘Is Dad going to be alright?’ he asked again.

  ‘I’m sure he’ll be fine,’ Susan said.

  Jarli’s phone beeped and the screen flashed red. A warning message came up: Lie

  GOING VIRAL

  The inside of the ambulance was like a spaceship, or maybe a submarine—tiny, but jam-packed full of stuff. There were bottles of disinfectant, burn gel, hand sanitiser, water, juice and other liquids Jarli didn’t recognise. A bandage roll as big as a bike tyre was mounted on the wall next to a pair of defibrillator paddles. There was a bin marked HAZARDOUS WASTE. A minifridge was stocked with squeezy pouches of saline and blood for transfusions. Dad was a blood donor—Jarli wondered if he was going to get some of his own blood back.

  ‘Sit down and put on your seatbelt,’ Susan told him, pointing to a chair which folded out of the wall.

  Jarli did. The male paramedic started the engine and zoomed out towards the highway.

  ‘You’ll get examined when we get to the hospital,’ Susan said. ‘I have to look after your dad right now. But if you start to feel faint or dizzy, let me know ASAP. Got it?’

  ‘Got it.’

  Susan turned to Dad and started quizzing him. She asked when his birthday was, where he lived, the name of the prime minister and today’s date. Dad got all the questions right, but he always hesitated. Sometimes Susan had to ask him twice. And he spoke clumsily, like maybe he’d bitten his tongue or broken a tooth.

  While Susan was interrogating Dad, Jarli called Mum. Her phone rang and rang. She wasn’t good at keeping it with her. He had never wanted to hear her voice so badly.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ he muttered. ‘Pick up.’

  ‘This is not Josie Wilburn,’ his mother’s voice said cheerily. ‘This is Josie Wilburn’s answering machine. The real Josie can’t pick up, but if you leave a brief message—’

  Jarli ended the call. He tried his sister’s number instead.

  She picked up immediately. ‘Hey, bro. ’Sup?’

  ‘Kirstie,’ Jarli said. ‘I just tried to call Mum. There’s been—’

  ‘Oh, hang on, I’ll get her. Mum! Muuuuuuuum!’

  Mum came on the line. ‘Jarli! How’d the parent-teacher night go? Be warned—I will check with your father.’

  Jarli could tell from her voice that she was half-kidding—but only half.

  ‘It, um . . .’ Jarli began. The parent-teacher night already felt like years ago. ‘It was fine, I guess. I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. There’s been—’

  ‘It most certainly does matter, young man. If you keep antagonising Mr Kendrick in history class, he’s not going to give you good grades. And if you want to study coding at a good university, you need to keep that grade average up. I know it seems like a long way off, but—’

  ‘Mum,’ Jarli said. ‘There’s been an accident.’

  ‘What kind of accident?’

  ‘A car accident.’ His phone beeped: Lie He had programmed the app to monitor phone calls. ‘I mean, not an accident. Someone rammed our car. Dad is hurt.’

  There was a long, scary silence.

  ‘Mum?’ Jarli said. ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘I’m here,’ Mum said quietly. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the ambulance. We’re on our way to the hospital. Dad’s talking, but he seems confused.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘I’m fine. Can you meet us at the hospital?’

  ‘I’m on my way. What do the paramedics say?’ Her voice was shaky.

  Jarli didn’t want to lie to her, but the truth was hard to say. ‘They say he’ll be fine,’ he said eventually. ‘But come quick, OK?’

  ‘I’m getting into the car now. Kirstie! Get in the car. See you soon, Jarli.’

  As soon as Jarli hung up, his phone chimed. A text message must have come through while he was talking to Mum—

  Wrong. Ninety messages had come through.

  Jarli stared at the screen. Could word about the car crash have spread so fast? He didn’t think he even knew ninety people.

  He opened the most recent message. It was from his best friend
, Bess.

  Jarli scrolled back through the other messages from her.

  Bess often played pranks on Jarli. This might be one of them. But if so, she’d gotten a lot of other people involved. There were messages from dozens of senders. Jarli was about to open one when the phone started ringing in his hand.

  The screen said PRIVATE NUMBER, which probably meant Bess was calling him from her landline to save on credit. Bess’s mum ran a taxi service, so calls always came from a private number.

  He answered. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mr Durras!’ a voice said. ‘I’m so pleased I managed to get through to you.’

  ‘Uh, hi,’ Jarli said. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘This is Dana Reynolds from Nationwide. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today.’

  Jarli looked at his father, strapped to the stretcher. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m, uh, kind of in the middle of something.’

  ‘It’ll only take a minute,’ Reynolds said cheerily.

  Jarli’s app beeped. Lie

  ‘Uh, gotta go,’ Jarli said, and hung up.

  He opened a web browser and put his own name into the search field. In the five seconds it took him to type it in and hit ‘search’, three more messages came through. Two were from journalists and one was from his school principal.

  Jarli knew that Kelton High School needed some good press. A national newspaper had recently referred to it as having ‘a culture of bullying’ after a kid had been pushed down the stairs. But Jarli’s app wasn’t a school project. And he didn’t want to make himself a target for bullies by appearing to be a teacher’s pet in the school newsletter.

  Ignoring the principal’s message, Jarli scrolled down to the search results. Because of his unusual first name, the search engine would usually say, ‘Including results for Charlie Durras,’ who was some middle-aged guy working for an IT company in the Bahamas. Jarli himself would be way, way down the list. There would eventually be a mention of his podcast, which had only eight subscribers.

  But today there were hundreds of results, all for Jarli’s own name. Some were even in other languages.

  Search

  Jarli Durras

  >New app exposes lies

  >This amazing app will tell you when someone is lying

  >Teenager invents miracle app

  >5 free apps which will improve your relationship

  Jarli leaned against the wall of the ambulance, stunned. THIS WASN’T A PRANK. His lie-detector app had gone viral. But how? And why now? It had been two weeks since he uploaded the source code to an obscure forum.

  He tapped on one of the search results and scanned the article. Apparently someone from a tech news site had noticed his app last night and published a post about it this afternoon. A bunch of other news sites had copied the article. Now the app had—

  Two million downloads?! Jarli did a double-take. But the figures were right.

  If this had happened yesterday, he would have been thrilled. But today he was in the back of an ambulance with Dad, who might be bleeding into his brain. He didn’t have time for this.

  He typed a quick message back to Bess.

  The phone started ringing again. PRIVATE NUMBER. Maybe Dana Reynolds again. Jarli rejected the call and put the phone back on flight mode.

  The ambulance swerved, zooming up one of the hospital’s driveways. Kelton Hospital was a sprawling, two-storey building on top of a hill. It had been here since the old days, when Kelton was a coal-mining town. Apparently that was why the hospital was so big—injuries had been common down in the mines. There was a helicopter landing pad on top and a dirt car park out the front. Nothing else around but bushland.

  When the ambulance got to the front of the hospital, the two paramedics jumped out, opened the rear doors and slid Dad’s stretcher out of the back. Jarli followed as they wheeled it inside.

  ‘It’s going to be OK, Jarli,’ Dad said. His voice was muffled. At some point the paramedics had put a transparent plastic mask over his mouth.

  Jarli’s app didn’t work in flight mode, so he couldn’t be sure if Dad was lying. But he probably was—Mum and Dad always made a big deal out of small things, and a small deal about big things. Whenever they said there was nothing to worry about, Jarli knew it was time to panic.

  He squeezed Dad’s hand. ‘Mum’s coming,’ he said. ‘Kirstie, too. They’ll be here really soon.’

  Reception was a wide room with soothing blue walls and a strong smell of disinfectant. The rows of padded plastic chairs were all empty. There wasn’t even a receptionist.

  Two people in turquoise hospital scrubs ran up to the gurney, stethoscopes swinging around their necks. ‘Is this the car crash?’ one asked.

  ‘Yep,’ Susan said. ‘This is Glen Durras, that’s his son Charlie Durras—he was the other occupant of the car.’

  Before Jarli had a chance to correct her about his name, one of the newcomers rounded on him. ‘Charlie, take a seat,’ she said. ‘I’m Dr Reid. I’m just going to ask you some questions, OK?’

  ‘Uh, OK,’ Jarli said.

  Reid had sunken eyes, close-cropped hair and a clipboard. She sat down and gestured to the chair next to her.

  The two paramedics were pushing Dad’s stretcher away through a pair of double doors. Jarli got a quick glimpse of a corridor with more doors and other corridors leading off it. ‘Where are they taking him?’ Jarli asked.

  ‘To intensive care.’

  ‘I want to go with him.’

  ‘You can see him soon,’ Reid said. ‘Don’t worry, he’s in good hands.’

  Dad’s stretcher disappeared and the doors slammed shut. Jarli heard an automatic lock click. Jarli reluctantly sat next to Reid.

  ‘Were you in the front seat next to your Dad?’ she asked.

  ‘No. The back.’ Kirstie had spilled some barbecue sauce on the front passenger seat the last time they went for drive-through takeaway. If she hadn’t, Jarli would have been sitting up the front with Dad. Jarli suddenly realised that his sister might have saved his life.

  ‘Tell me everything you remember,’ Reid said.

  While Jarli explained, she got him to turn his head left and right, then tilt it forward and back. She squeezed his fingers one by one, then held his wrists and moved them, apparently checking the joints in his arms still worked. She didn’t react when Jarli told her about the old man who had tried to kill them. Maybe she had only asked him to talk to distract him.

  ‘Your legs, now,’ she said. ‘Tell me if anything hurts.’

  She lifted his left ankle, then his right. His joints worked normally.

  ‘You’ve been very lucky,’ she said.

  Jarli stared at her. ‘Someone tried to kill me.’

  ‘Maybe—but there have been two other car accidents near the motel this year. Both of the drivers died.’

  ‘Has someone called the police? I need to tell them what happened.’

  ‘I’ll check.’ Reid handed him her clipboard. ‘Fill this in while you wait.’

  She disappeared through the double doors where the paramedics had taken Dad. The lock clunked behind her.

  The admission forms had more than fifty questions. Some of them he had no idea how to answer. Did his parents have private health insurance? Who was Dad’s regular doctor? He wasn’t even sure what to write next to NAME. Was that for Jarli’s name or Dad’s?

  NEXT OF KIN. The words stank of death. Jarli was finding it hard to breathe. Where was Mum?

  Overwhelmed, he staggered outside. He took a few deep breaths. His eyes were burning. He didn’t want to be crying when Mum and Kirstie turned up—they would assume that Dad was dead.

  A cool breeze washed up the hill towards the hospital, chilling the tears on his cheeks. He wiped them away and turned to face the car park, looking for Mum’s car.

  It wasn’t there.

  But there was a brown ute with a huge chrome bull bar.

  FOLLOWED

  The fear hit Jarli like a punch. He al
most fell over backwards. It was as though he’d seen a ghost—a really scary one, like the headless horseman or the little girl who crawls out of the TV.

  The old man had followed them here. Why?

  It was definitely the same ute, parked in the shadows away from the hospital lights. The bull bar was slightly dented, and flecked with white paint from Dad’s car. The engine was ticking quietly as it cooled. The cab was empty.

  Jarli looked around. The car park was quiet and still. Moths buzzed around the dim lights. There were a few other cars, but no people. The old man with the black glasses was nowhere to be seen.

  Maybe he was inside, looking for Dad.

  Heart racing, Jarli bolted back inside. The reception area was still empty. He ran over to the double doors that all the adults had disappeared through and jiggled the handle. Locked.

  A small window was built into one of the doors. Jarli rapped loudly on the glass. ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘Let me in!’

  He couldn’t see anybody, and there was no sign that anyone had heard him.

  The lock on the double doors was electronic, but that didn’t mean Jarli could hack it. There were no buttons—just a sensor for a swipe card. His coding skills were useless here.

  Instead, he ran over to the reception desk and rang the little silver bell. Ding! The sound echoed away into nothing.

  ‘Come on,’ he muttered. He rang the bell again. His ribs still ached from the seatbelt. He rubbed the bruised flesh through his shirt.

  There was a TV behind the counter which showed grainy security footage from around the hospital. He could make out a wardsman pushing an empty stretcher down a corridor, then the feed cut to two doctors exiting a lift. Soon it switched back to show the reception desk, leaving Jarli looking at his own anxious face.

  No help was coming. Jarli needed to call the police. He dug out his phone, unlocked it and brought up the call screen. He was just about to punch in triple zero when he remembered that his phone was in flight mode. As he navigated to the settings menu and turned it off, he remembered that he could probably call emergency services even while in flight mode. In fact, the phone didn’t even need to be unlocked. HE WAS PANICKING. Making mistakes.