Riverton was never a town that made the news. It had one bakery, two roundabouts and a war memorial the pigeons treated like a hotel. Until the Tuesday morning when every single phone in town disappeared.
Millie Ashworth woke at seven, reached for her phone on the bedside table and found nothing but a faint ring of dust where it had been. She checked under the pillow, then under the bed. Gone. At first she thought she had simply misplaced it, since Millie was famous for losing things. But the moment she reached the kitchen, she knew something was wrong.
Mum was searching every cupboard. Dad was turning his jacket pockets inside out. “My phone’s missing,” Mum said. “So is mine,” Dad replied. Millie froze.
Outside, the entire street had the same problem. Neighbours stood on their doorsteps, patting their pockets and checking their cars. Mrs Okafor from number twelve called across the fence, asking if anyone had seen hers. Nobody had. A strange quiet had settled over Riverton, the kind of silence that made the hairs on Millie’s arms stand up, as if the town was holding its breath.
By the time Millie reached school, rumours were spreading faster than any text message ever could. Some said a solar flare had wiped out every phone. Others believed it was a giant prank. A few whispered that something much stranger was happening. Without phones, the school felt different. At lunchtime, nobody sat in corners staring at screens. The playground was full of noise and movement, with games invented from tennis balls, skipping ropes and chalk. A group of Year 8s built an obstacle course, while another organised a football match that somehow included half the school.
Even the teachers noticed it. Students talked more and listened more. The library, usually quiet except for the occasional sneeze, became the busiest place in the school. That afternoon, Millie walked home with Theo instead of checking her phone, talking about everything and nothing.
Millie looked around Riverton. People were chatting over garden fences. Children were playing outside. Families sat together at dinner tables instead of looking down at glowing screens. Maybe, she thought, losing every phone wasn’t the disaster everyone had first believed.
For two weeks, Riverton carried on without them. People wrote letters, read books and visited friends instead of sending messages. The town that was once always rushing suddenly seemed to slow down.
Then, on the fifteenth morning, every phone returned, appearing exactly where people expected them to be. Across Riverton, phones buzzed, beeped and lit up all at once, and people cheered.
Millie picked up hers and noticed something strange. There was one new message, with no name and no number, just a blank space where the sender should have been. It read: Thank you for the experiment. You remembered how to look up instead of down. We hope you don’t forget.
Millie stared at the screen. “What experiment?” she whispered. She ran outside and looked around. Her neighbours were standing in their gardens, staring at their own phones with worried expressions. Everyone had received the same message. Experts investigated but could find nothing. The message had never existed. The experiment had never happened. It was impossible. But Millie wasn’t convinced.
That evening, as she walked home, she looked up at the sky. For a moment, she saw something high above Riverton, a tiny silver flash. It wasn’t a plane. It wasn’t a bird. It was something she couldn’t explain. Then it vanished. Millie smiled and slipped her phone back into her pocket. Whoever had borrowed the world’s phones had left behind something more important: a reminder that the best moments had never needed a screen in the first place.
Tasks:
1. Find two words or phrases the author used to create a sense of mystery or unease.
2. In two sentences, describe what life in Riverton felt like the morning the phones vanished
3. Write a paragraph about: Should phones be banned? Argue your position using the PEEL structure.
SMART Prep | Quick Question 
