Darren lived in a city called Wolverhampton. He was 10 years old and had a collection of Mcdonald's happy meals toys, badges and marbles, that he would count and sort every Friday. At the weekend he would go on adventures around the city to places no one else knew existed. These places were hidden in derelict buildings or under the ground down secret tunnels or through disguised doors. Darren had drawn his own map of all the wonderful, exciting places in the city that no one else knew of. When he would go out into the city with his mom he would sometimes go to say what really lay behind the facades of certain streets but then he'd remember, once people found out they'd never be the same again. 

To Darren it felt like a new city had been built on a very old one and the people had forgotten or tried to forget the other existed. At school he'd learnt about cities under the sea and it felt like the history of Wolverhampton was under an invisible ocean. And he'd read in a story book about The lost City of Atlantis that lay under the sea filled with sunken treasure.  Sometimes when he went there, there would be ancient people in the rooms that would tell him stories about life back then, in the old city. In the old city people weren't so obsessed with money and they made music and did Art. People weren't homeless and hungry there, so they told him. 

One of his favourite rooms was full of objects made in different places over the world. He loved this one because when he went to sleep all he dreamed of was places anywhere but the grey Wolverhampton where he had lived his whole life and felt like he would never leave. Darren had never left the country. But he'd read books and seen tv programmes about the most beautiful lands that existed. One day he hoped to go there, when he grew up and was no longer imprisoned at school. 

When he got home his mom would ask where he had been and he'd say  'just playing computer games with my friends'. Even as he would be rubbing his feet because they'd covered so many miles of the cities hidden, lost spaces. Time seemed to tad still there. He loved how the places looked so much beautiful than the normal Wolverhampton. Instead of normal curtain fabric it looked like they were made out of water. Waterfalls falling down the side of the room, so the view from the window looked like a magical vision appearing in the water. There was little distinction between indoor and outdoors in the the old city. The ceiling's painted blue so you were sure that if you stood on a chair you'd be able to reach the sky and even fly. 

Darren was very interested in History. All around the city of Wolverhampton were these huge old houses that he couldn't stop starting at. They looked a completely different proportion to the other houses, like the one he lived in. They were just so big, as though giants had made them or even lived in them. One day he discovered a derelict one and couldn't prevent his curiosity from taking control of his feet and walking them inside. The door was so old and huge it creaked as it swallowed him. 

Once inside he entered a room that seemed to want to crush him with its contents. He stood there glued to the spot as his head swivelled on its axis taking in the overwhelming clutter. There was no surface that was no decorated and detailed. He felt like the person who had decorated it had caused themselves a heart attack covering every inch of their world with so much stuff. His eyes felt strained at one point and he had to look away because he was not used to seeing so much gold and ornamentation. The thought that people could be so rich as to not allow one single thing to be flat or plain astounded him. 

There were big doors behind a heavy, velvet curtain that led to the outside world. In the garden there were statues and objects creating just as much of a clutter as was bursting out of the inside of the house. He remembered from school that the Victorians were obsessive about decoration. He thought to himself how this home owner had probably gone mad with all the visual chaos and was probably a skeleton under the floor boards. After a while he left with a headache and feeling like he'd been trapped inside a kaleidoscope and ran home reaching the door just in time for tea. That night he had psychic dreams where strange colours all blended into each other and dripped and swirled. When he awoke the next day it felt like he'd been on an roller coaster through a rainbow of diamonds. 

Darren found Science boring at school because it was so dull just sitting copying out of text books. But when he went to all the amazing places around the city he would do his own Science that he read about in books from the library. He loved digging things out of the ground and because of books he read, knew how to analyse the surface of the ground to see if there were things buried underneath it. 

Darren loved a kind of Science called Geology that was all about the earth and its materials. The stone, with all of its different layer within. The trees, hills, rivers and lakes. He loved the way wherever you went in the city there would be such an amazing variety of materials to observe. Stone, water, mud etc. He loved to see how they behaved in different temperature, for example when the weather would change. 

To Darren the way the weather changed was a huge Science experiment going on, on the surface of the earth. He loved to see the canal freeze over and then thaw again, or a giant rainbow extend across the whole city using the raindrops as prisms to separate the rays of the sun. He loved it when it rained for hours and hours, even though he couldn't go out so that made him a bit sad he would occupy himself by collecting the rain water and doing experiments with it. 

Often Darren would collect a little piece of rock and take it home for his sister Lisa to do experiments on. First of all she would make a record of where the rock had come from, then she would clean all the dirt off it and try to analyse what kind of stone it was. Igneous, Sedimentary or Metamorphic. Then sometimes she would burn it or smash it into a million pieces with a hammer and try to make a paste with it. 

Darren had a fascination with the structure of the city. To him it was a strange, amazing world and from a very young age he had pointed things out and asked his nan and mom what they were. He was so interested in the way it had deep parts and hills, and nooks and crannies. The way the land would rise high, then fall, then develop a sudden hole or a tunnel. The sunken islands in the centre of the ring roads was amazing to him. He felt like Robinson Crusoe walking through them, beneath the level of the cars, clutching onto safety from the metal sharks circling him. What he found intriguing was that the tops of the trees only just poked out the top of the hole. So even though they were so tall the ole was so deep they could barely reach out of it. To him they looked like wooden fingers reaching out to clutch onto something. 

Allotments fascinated him too. He would be walking through the tight, concrete jungle, where sometimes there felt no room to breath and then suddenly he would come across contained, imprisoned little squares of greenery. He was wowed by how suddenly in the middle of the grey, a luscious oasis would spring up offering fruit and vegetable. Not like you could just hop in and take it though, but he wanted to just taste the fruit so bad. He was sure that because it grew in that little square of paradise it would taste better than what his mom bought from the supermarket. 

He loved to go to the park because he felt that it was at the centre of the city. That if you got a map of the city and drew a line through the centre, then turned it around and drew another line, the point in the centre would be the park. To him it was the epicentre of the centre. The calm at the centre of the chaos.  It seemed like another world. The metal fence hugging it tight so it didn't tumble out onto the roads. In the centre of the park was a lake with an island on. It was so beautiful, one day he wanted to swim across to it, even though his clothes would get so wet and dirty He was certain there was strange, rare wildlife on there that hid away from view because it didn't want to be discovered by the evil humans. Because they'd capture it and put it in a zoo. He was sure once, when he was feeding the ducks that he'd spotted a huge golden bird nesting in there. He'd told his sister but she said he was hallucinating from his McDonalds, but he didn't even now what that meant. 

Darren was certain that inside the little hills that poked up in the city were treasures. He was sure that centuries ago ancient humans had buried all their goods there for safe keeping. He asked his mom if she'd buy him a metal detector so he could make them rich and she said she would when she could get enough money. He also loved that when you stood on the top of hills the sun felt so much hotter and you could see the planets better at night, even seeing aliens on them. Sometimes he'd stand on the hills and jump as high as he could to try and reach the sky. One day, once he grew up and got taller, he was sure he'd be able to. 

Darren loved to escape to the hidden, magical parts of the city because he found the normal city that was visible to everyone as they walked down the street, so boring. When he stepped out of the house and would look around, he'd wonder what kind of people designed such a contraption. It didn't make any sense to him that the city was made up of such dull colours and shapes. Darren's sister Lisa was really good at Art and Design and at school she'd built her own city  and it hadn't looked anything like Wolverhampton. It had been bright and crazy. Like some fantasy wonderland that a wizard would live in. So bright that it wouldn't matter what colour the sky was, you'd still feel happy being there. Lisa was really funny, she got so bored at school in the other lessons, apart from Art and Design Technology, that she would draw black biro tattoos all over her hands and fingers. She'd always come home looking like an artwork. The other kids would sometimes say she would die of ink poising, but Lisa said she didn't mind. As well as seeking out his wonderful places Darren would also dress in bright, beautifully co ordinated clothes. He looked like a walking art gallery.  His trainers would always have to match what he wore, so he had several different pairs. 

Darren's mom didn't know but one day when it was raining and he couldn't go out, he had constructed a pair of wings from plastic that he sometimes used to fly away from Wolverhampton just for an hour or two. Wolverhampton was at the centre of an Island called the UK and around the UK in the sea were islands of beautiful, mystical lands. He'd once flown over the whole island and seen all the wondrous paradise islands that sat in the sea around it. Poking their heads out of the water. On one visit he landed on an island full of rainforest, where mystical stone monoliths grew out of the forest floor. It blew his mind to wonder who created them and put them there. 

Darren ran his hands all over the surface of the smooth statue, wondering how someone could make something so amazing. Lisa, his sister loved making things from clay and had bought some home before but nothing as amazing as this. Accidentally he was a bit heavy handed and pressed some of the jewels that were set into the stone statue. Suddenly it had made a strange noise and shifted to the side to reveal a big hole in the earth. Darren peered in and was sure he could see something magical down there. After lowering himself into the ground so scared but so excited, he had discovered a cavern full of brilliant gold. He was too scared to take a lot as he didn't know who's it was but he took a gold chain and a crown and got money for them at the pawn shop and put it in his mom's purse, so she could pay the rent for the whole year. He felt so proud and he was sure those people on the island wouldn't have minded as he was not greedy as to take it all. 

One day on his travels around the mysterious hidden city of Wolverhampton that no one else could see, Darren came across an open gate, leading into the garden of one of the huge, collosal Victorian houses that he passed by regularly. There was a spade leaning up against the fence and after some exploring of the garden and it's strange grassy bumps that protruded from the soft cusiony lawn he decided to start digging.   

Once home Darren told his sister Lisa about the discovery he had made that day and as soon as he uttered the words she was jumping around saying she wanted to go with him. So the next day after boring school they snook off and dug together. After hours and hours they discovered that what was buried in the garden of the big, massive house was a castle. Not just any castle but one with a moat. It was magnificent. After standing summoning the courage for a while they decided to go inside. Once through the door they found a big huge hall with a throne at the centre and a king seated upon it.

As soon as he dug even just a little hole he could see some stone poking through, like it was trying to reach for air. He didn't want to be rude so he kept digging to set it free. Even though people said stone was not alive, it was to him. Darren was sure he could feel the buildings telling them their stories as soon as he entered them. Even if no one told him what had happened there. He kept digging and digging but realised he needed to get home and was not sure if he could undertake the project alone anyway. It was becoming so overwhelming. 

Darren and Lisa had made their own room in their house. Lisa had painted it mustard yellow because she said she wanted it to feel like being in the desert or a sandy place. And she'd put all of her ceramics around. Darren felt like if Lisa didn't have her ceramics close by to her she'd probably cease to exist. Sometimes she'd take them out when they went on trips with family, as though they were another person which he thought was weird. The room was a fascinating space. Darren felt that you could feel the other surrounding rooms through the wall of it. Like they weren't all completely separate boxes but all merging into one and another. The Science of space awed him. Not space meaning the stars but volume space, down here on earth. The invisible thing that was all around us. Sometimes Darren would catch space in little jars and do experiments on it.  Like try and turn it a different colour then release it back into the room. He hadn't perfected that yet but was working on it. Sometimes Lisa and Darren would be sitting in the room, with no one else in the house and they'd hear footsteps above their heads, like the feet of the people who lived there before were still there in the room somewhere hiding and they came out when no one was looking. The room felt so much different to the other rooms in the house. The colour seemed to wrap you up. It felt like being in a grain of sand, or a sand storm. They both loved colour so much, their mom had let them paint every room in the house a different colour. Another amazing room was the dining room which was painted orange just like an orange that you eat. 

Darren and Lisa couldn't believe their eyes, they wondered how he was existing under the ground away from civilization. He proceeded to show them all around his castle. There were amazing, fantastical, wondrous objects in every room. Strange inventions that could not be dreamed up by the human mind. When they had finished their tour they sat down and he told them stories about people who once lived in Wolverhampton but had been destroyed and imprisoned. He said he had escaped down into the earth to hide from the maurauding murderers who had wanted to wipe out or enslave anyone who was not like them. 

In the dilapidated house where Lisa and Darren lived that so sometimes felt like a tent in the winter when the cold air whipped through the paper thin windows there was a cupboard full of pipes. it was a little cupboard with half a door to enter it, too small for adults. Lisa loved to go in there, it was a magical place for her. She loved so many things about it. She loved how the walls felt like they were hugging you they were so close to her skin. Sometimes she would shut her eyes and try to push the wall, imagining it was moving beneath her hands an would eventually open out into a new other world that she had never been to before. Lisa always took her wooden box into the room with her. To other people it was just a box, just an object but to her it was a little animal with a huge mouth that had eaten some of her favourite things. If she knocked on the top of the box then it would wake up and let her in. Lisa loved collecting things and so did Darren. They both had collections of badges and happy meal toys. She also had medals with animals on there. She loved to stuff the box full of tiny objects you could hold in your hand. She also had a little book in there where she'd write thoughts and stories, not a diary because she didn't write in it every single day but nearly. Sometimes she would write a letter to the others and leave it on the the kitchen table. It might say things like what he wanted to do when she got older or about the dreams she'd been having at night. Lisa often had vivid dreams. It was amazing, they were like films. She went some wonderful places in them.

The tiny cupboard was the best because she could go completely into her own mind. Sometimes outside if the tv was on she could barely think. The door of the tiny cupboard must have been made of steel she thought because the way it shut out of all the noise from the air was quite amazing. To Lia the air felt much heavier in there because it was all squashed into such a tiny space. Once she measured the whole cupboard with a ruler and wrote it down and then she multiplied all the measurements and discovered how much air was in the space. It was so interesting. Once she got her duvet and loads of cushions and filled the whole space so there was barely even any room for her. She still loved the cupboard even being squashed up the wall with hardly any room to breathe. She wrote in her book that she hoped that in the future no one filled up the cupboard with concrete, so that it could last forever. 

One day Lisa and Darren decided to make a boat and take it to the West Park in the middle of the city of Wolverhampton and sail to the island in the centre of the lake. So at home to begin the proceedings, they got a big piece of paper and began to design the boat. Lisa said she wanted it to be purple and orange with green spots, Darren really wanted it to look a lot more professional, for it to be grey and black with white stripes but Lisa screamed so loud until she had her own way that he just found it easier to give in. They had found some old wood in the garden of the rented house that they lived in. Most of it was all rotten but some was dry. The house was quite old and dilapidated but their mom said they couldn't afford to live anywhere else so they just put up with all of the decay around them. They had a landlord, who was a very rich man but they never saw him, Apart from one time when the ceiling fell in, nearly on their heads. They found a saw and used all their strength to cut the wood up to make a beautiful container, that would contain them and stop them getting wet. Lisa loved science but really couldn't get her head around how a big chunk of wood could float in the water. Same as when they went on  a plane once and she kept looking out of the window asking how they could get off the ground. To her Science basically seemed like magic. For the sail Lisa found an old skirt that she really loved but was happy to sacrifice in the name of adventure. Once the boat was finished they carried it to the park over their heads. After 10 minutes they were there and scanned the park and realised that it was quite quiet so it would be easy to get onto the mysterious island that probably had creepy things within. They weren't scared though, they were addicted to exploring. Creepy things or not, bring it on, plus they were together. So they set the boat on the lapping water and jumped inside. Once they had sailed a bit and were near the island they jumped off and tied the boat to a tree. Already they could both feel their skin tingling with excitement at what lay at the centre of the tangle of trees and screamed and whooped a little. As they battled their way through the wall of trees and bushes that they had for years started into from the mainland they began to see a cave filled with glass objects, inside the glass objects were golden treasures, like rings and jewels. The glass balls hung from the roof of the cave and lay scattered on the floor like apples. It was one of the most beautiful sights they had ever seen because the sun was bouncing off the glass creating fantastical patterns. From inside the cave they could hear a strange song emanating out, that made the whole experience so magical. 

Lisa would sometimes look at her body and be very amazed. She loved anatomy at school. It felt like the body was a machine made of flesh. There were so many strange and interesting parts to it. Like eyes. Oh wow they blew her mind. She couldn't conceive of how they worked they were so amazing. Little windows and the head to her was a room with a little controller in there, called the brain. One day Lisa was looking at the palm of her hand and realised that the lines on her hands were much darker than some of the white children in her class. She wondered why. Then she asked her mom and she told her that the lines on her hand were a map of her life. Oh wow how wonderful she thought that wherever she went in the world she'd know where she was going because she had her very own inbuilt map. Sometimes when she was at the park ad lost because she'd gone down the wrong path she'd look at her hand and always be able to find her way back to the entrance. Once she shut her eyes and drew and cross on her hand in a black biro. Where ever the cross was she decided she would go and dig in that place on the ground and see what treasure she could find. She loved looking for treasure to put in her wooden box. So she opened her eyes and decided that the x marks the spot was in the front garden next to the little fence that separated the garden from next doors. So she armed herself with her little spade and began to dig. After about three hours you could no longer see the top of Lisa's head as she was submerged in the ground. It was like the ground had swallowed her up.  Amazingly at the bottom of the hole was a door with a knocker on. She knocked on the door and a loud voice told her to 'come in'. She was scared but Lisa was so nosey she couldn't wait to look behind it. Once opened she found herself standing starting into a tiny room. Pretty much like her pipe cupboard in the house. In there was a woman who looked like a teacher, holding a book and a pen in her hand. 'Hello Lisa' she said 'Errm hello miss' she replied. The lady then took a jar from off a shelf with about 10 jars on and said she'd like Lisa to choose three words out of it. So she did. They said ' heart your follow' The lady then said 'bye bye Lisa' so Lisa said thank you put them in her pocket and climbed back out of the hole. She was a bit scared of strangers sometimes and got shy so she ran into the house to tell Darren. He looked at the words but didn't believe that a woman in a big hole in the garden had given them to her. So she dragged him my his arm out to show him. Miraculously there was nothing there though. Just smooth grass. Lisa went to her little cupboard and lay the words out and kept rearranging them in different orders until they made sense. 'Follow your heart' they said. So she put them in her wooden box and vowed that she'd go and get more words from the kind lady one day. 

One day Lisa woke up and looked out of the window as she usually did to so that she could see what the weather was like. It was the six weeks holidays so the weather was really important to see whether they could play out or not. On this particular day there was a huge rain cloud sitting in the sky all fat and looking like it was ready to explode. Lisa sighed so loudly she nearly shattered the window and ran to tell Darren what a terrible sight she'd seen. Yesterday they'd planned to go to the park and play bumper cars on their bikes, now that seemed a distant dream. Darren told her not to worry he was sure they could do something with the raincloud. So they asked their mom and she said that they could go to the park but be sure to come home if it rained. Once at the park they sat on the swings and contemplated what to do. They were like scientists assessing how to carry out their tests. Looking around Darren had an idea. There was an empty pool at the park that only had water put in it when it was really hot. Well the summer had been so bad that the council had decided to put no water in. 'Lisa!' he leapt up and exclaimed suddenly 'Eureka!'. Darren said that if they got a rope they could throw it really high up into the sky, lasso the cloud with it and pull it over the pond. Then throw little stones at the raincloud and make it rain directly over the pool and fill it with water. Then they could pull the cloud away so the sun came out from behind it and they could play all day in the pool. He said he was sure this would work as at School in Science they had learnt how mountains made it rain sometimes because the cloud had to move up and over the mountain. They couldn't make a mountain but they could throw some little stones into the cloud to jiggle the raindrops up so that eventually they'd fall out. Lisa was so excited she could hardly contain herself and ran over to the scary woods in the park where loads of people dumped rubbish. In there she found some rope and set about catching that cloud. She knew she'd be able to because at school she was really good at throwing in netball and sometimes the other girls would cry out in pain at how hard she threw the ball at them. Which secretly made her laugh inside because they were so weak. They both got to working and made a huge loop to catch the cloud with. Once Lisa threw it she missed first of all but on the second go it worked. She shrieked full of the glory of success. They then held the end of the rope together and dragged the cloud into position. It was so heavy. Because it was full of raindrops that's why. Billions they estimated. Once it was over the pool Darren held it still while Lisa threw the little stones. First nothing at all was happening and her arm was getting tired then suddenly the cloud began to tremble and rumbling sound echoed all around and millions and billions and trillions of tiny little droplets started to fall. It was amazing. As they hit the bottom of the pool they sounded like when you play the triangle at school. Lisa and Darren were so happy. After about 5 minutes the pool was full to the brim and Darren dragged it away. Because the cloud had emptied all of its heavy raindrops into the pool the cloud was now as light as air. It felt like a balloon you get from the fair. So Darren let the end go and it floated off into the sky as high as a bird. As he did the most almighty ray of sun poked him in the eye. By this time Lisa was already in the pool splashing about like she was in the sea on a tropical island. Darren closed his eyes and listened as the sea gulls squawked. They were no longer in the grey, miserable city anymore they were in paradise. 

Darren lived in a city called Wolverhampton. He was 10 years old and had a collection of Mcdonald's happy meals toys, badges and marbles, that he would count and sort every Friday. At the weekend he would go on adventures around the city to places no one else knew existed. These places were hidden in derelict buildings or under the ground down secret tunnels or through disguised doors. Darren had drawn his own map of all the wonderful, exciting places in the city that no one else knew of. When he would go out into the city with his mom he would sometimes go to say what really lay behind the facades of certain streets but then he'd remember, once people found out they'd never be the same again. 

In the raggedy garden, that had old things buried and submerged around it like it was a green ocean, Lisa discovered an old shed. This shed was only small and from the outside looked dilapidated but she thought it was great. It was more than a shed, actually it was her very own Science Laboratory. Many amazing things went on in there, ground breaking things. What she would do is go out on her explorations and find various interesting objects and bring them back to the shed. Then she would perform tests and explorations on them to try to discover what they were. She had an obsessive habit of digging little shards of ceramic and interesting stone out of the ground. He hands would get filthy but she didn't care, she loved it. Then she'd stuff them in her pockets, sometimes they would be overflowing. She felt like a human squirrel with pockets full of nuts sometimes, taking them back to her little hideaway. Once home in her shed house she would then take everything out of her pockets and lay them in the floor so she could see exactly what she'd collected. Sometimes in the excitement of it all she'd forget, so it was always a lovely surprise to see her treasure all laid out before her. She'd then wash it and once dry start to analyse it. Some of the pieces had little pictures on them, as though they were shards of teacups or plates. So she'd try to imagine what the rest of the picture would be taking a piece of paper and drawing around the fractured piece. Sometimes they didn't have pictures on at all and were just chunks of interesting rock. With these she would often use a hammer and chisel and just try to chisel a piece of to see what their substance was. Lisa had learnt all about the different rocks in Science and her favourite was Sedimentary rock because it was created from layers. And she loved seeing all the different layers lying on top of each other like they'd fallen asleep. Sometimes Lisa would do fascinating experiments where she'd get two completely different kinds of rocks and heat them up and try to melt them together. It was so fascinating to see. One day she decided that she was going to travel over the whole entire world and pick up a little rock from every single country and then come home and put them all in a huge bowl and melt them together so she could make her own little earth. Then she'd find some insects out of the garden and start a colony of beings. But nobody would fight or make wars they'd all just live as happy as can be. 

Darren lived in a city called Wolverhampton. He was 10 years old and had a collection of Mcdonald's happy meals toys, badges and marbles, that he would count and sort every Friday. At the weekend he would go on adventures around the city to places no one else knew existed. These places were hidden in derelict buildings or under the ground down secret tunnels or through disguised doors. Darren had drawn his own map of all the wonderful, exciting places in the city that no one else knew of. When he would go out into the city with his mom he would sometimes go to say what really lay behind the facades of certain streets but then he'd remember, once people found out they'd never be the same again.