I shrugged. “Chocolate muffins?” I said hopefully.
“They’re way too expensive!” said William as he sat down next to us. He made sure Mrs Bell wasn’t looking, then licked the jam on his toast with the tip of his tongue, just like a lizard.
“Those things are like a pound for each one,” William carried on. “She can’t afford that! Dad says teachers get paid bupkis. I don’t know what a bupkis is, but I know it’s not a lot, so Mrs Bell definitely can’t afford chocolate muffins for all of us!”
No one said anything else. We all ate our breakfasts and watched as more members of the club came into the hall.
“Hey, you guys, did you hear that there’s something wrong with the food bank?”
We all looked up at Kerry as she slammed down her tray and flicked back her long brown hair. Kerry was always late and loved talking loudly. She was in Ms Potter’s class two doors down from mine, and we could still always hear her.
“No,” I said. “Why? What’s wrong with the food bank?”
“I dunno. But Mum and Dad went last night, and Kwan’s gran went the night before that, and it looks like they don’t have as much food there as usual.”
Kerry sat down and added, “Kwan’s gran said the bankers think someone’s stealing stuff, but they don’t know who!”
“Whoah!” said William as he started to lick at his cereal with his lizard tongue. “Why would anyone steal stuff from a food bank?”
“Yeah,” said Leon, gulping down his apple. “Especially when there’s a real bank with actual money in it right next door!”
Kerry gave a shrug. “Cos they must be really thick, I guess. Mum says it’s not right – it’s not fair.”
William shook his head. “We’re lucky it’s not happening at Breakfast Club too, then. Isn’t it?”
We all stopped chewing and turned our heads to where Maureen, the dinner lady, was standing and looked at the big table of fruit and cereals next to her. It didn’t look as if anyone would dare to steal stuff from her.
“It better not happen here,” said Leon, chewing his apple extra fast.
“Yeah. Well, just in case, you better all eat as much as you can at lunch-time – because who knows?” Kerry warned as Mrs Bell gave a loud clap to tell us that we only had a few minutes left.
Right away everyone stopped talking and the noisy hall fell quiet. All you could hear was loud slurps and spoons banging on the bottom of bowls.
I ate my toast as quickly as I could. What if the Bank didn’t have enough food for Mum and me and Ashley tonight? I put my arms over my tummy again as it gave an extra-loud and worried growl …
CHAPTER 4
Games & Empty Bags
I was still worrying about the food bank when the bell rang for the end of school.
“Your mum’s here!” shouted Krish, waving at my mum like she had come to pick him up instead.
“Awesome,” I said with a grin as I saw Ashley speed towards the school gates. She was still hugging Freddy as if it was a teddy bear.
Krish and Harriet joined me as I headed towards the gates too.
“What game will you play with your mum today?” asked Harriet, giving me a nudge on my elbow with her elbow.
I looked over at her and grinned. “Mum’s always coming up with new ones, so I don’t know.”
“Wish my mum would come up with fun games to play,” said Krish. “But she thinks I-Spy is hilarious, so that’s the only game we ever get to play with her.”
“Nelson’s mum’s the coolest,” nodded Harriet as she sucked in her lips and made an opening and closing fish mouth. It was her favourite thing to do, and she did it so much I don’t think she even knew she was doing it most of the time.
“Yeah, guess,” I said, doing my best not to grin. Mum really was the coolest.
“Hi, Krish, hi, Harriet,” said Mum as she smiled at us.
Krish’s light brown cheeks suddenly flushed so bright red it was like watching a traffic light change colour.
Harriet covered a snigger with her hand before saying, “Hi, Ms James.”
“Hi,” blurted out Krish.
“Nice to see you both looking so well,” said Mum. “Krish, you must have grown … let’s see, at least three millimetres since last week!”
“You really think so?” asked Krish, trying to stand as straight and as tall as he could.
“Why don’t you both come over on Sunday?” asked Mum. “It’ll be nice for Nelson to have you at ours for once, instead of me dropping him and Ashley over at your houses all the time.”
“Yeah! And can you bring lots of snacks too?” asked Ashley. “And then leave them? I like prawn cocktail crisps the best! And chocolate Penguins – even though they’re not really penguins.”
Now it was Mum’s and my turn to turn into traffic lights, because I knew both our faces went red at the exact same time.
“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” said Mum. “I’ll sort out some snacks!”
“Nah, Ms James, I eat TONNES!” said Krish. “I love bringing stuff to yours. Mum always gives me stuff that she only lets me have for treats when you invite us round.”
“Yeah, and we’ve got WAY too many prawn cocktail crisps at home,” added Harriet. “Nobody eats them – they’re like the worst ones!”
I looked at Harriet and didn’t know what to say, because I had seen her eat three packets of prawn cocktail crisps in one go and then lick the inside of the packets too!
“Ah – well, if you must,” smiled Mum, giving my hand a secret squeeze. She was trying to make me feel better.
“Right, then, we better be off,” said Mum. She took Ashley’s hand and waved at Harriet and Krish. “Give your parents my love!”
Krish and Harriet waved back as they turned to go home too.
“So, what game shall we play today?” asked Mum as we began the forty-minute walk to the Bank. We could have got the bus, but Mum only let us do that if it was raining, because she needed to save as much travel money as she could.
On this walk, Mum decided to play the Animal Spirit game with us, where we had to look at the people walking past and imagine what animal spirits they might be. Ashley pointed at anyone wearing something glittery and shiny and announced they were a unicorn, but I spotted someone who could easily have been a crocodile, and another person who was definitely a human bumble bee – mainly because he was wearing a yellow and black striped jumper.
When we got to the Bank and had to wait for our turn, Mum played the Guessing Game with us. That was when Ashley had to guess what food we might get to take home that day. Mostly she got it wrong because she was only six and only cared about chocolate biscuits and sweets. But it was still fun to play.
And then, when Mum was sorting out our vouchers with Mrs Patel and Mr Anthony, and Natasha was getting us our things, me and Ashley played the Keeping Time game. That was when we tried to guess what Natasha was getting for us by how long it took her to go and get each thing.
“Right, kids … Looks like there’s a bit of a problem,” said Mum as she came back from the counter with just two bags and not the four or five we got every other time.
“Do we have to wait longer?” I asked as I took a bag from Mum and looked inside. There was a loaf of brown bread that Ashley didn’t like, a packet of rolls and two tins of baked beans instead of the normal four.
“Seems the Bank is a little short this month,” said Mum, taking a deep breath. “But that’s OK. We can make do, can’t we, my little troopers?”
Ashley didn’t say anything, and I gave a silent nod. When Mum said “little troopers”, we both knew it was going to be a hard month ahead. Even harder than normal …
Then I remembered what Kerry had told us at Breakfast Club about someone stealing food from the Bank!
As I watched Mum trying to pretend that everything was fine, I promised myself that I would find out what was going on. And make it stop.
CHAPTER 5
The Real Hunger Games
I hated the months when we had to be little troopers. They were always hard because the games we played at home suddenly didn’t feel like fun any more. Nothing was ever fun when you were so hungry you felt as if you were full of gaps and holes.
Normally the games we played made everything feel ten thousand per cent better. And that was all because of Mum. She became a games inventor when Dad left us and she had to go to the food bank for the first time. She came home with some things we liked and lots we didn’t like at all. So to stop me and Ashley feeling as if we didn’t want to eat the meals she made, Mum came up with all sorts of games.
My favourite one had to be Master Chef, which was when I got to choose all the weirdest ingredients the food bank had given us and cook a meal out of them. Mum’s friend from the hospital had even given me a real chef’s hat with a real burnt hole in it to wear when I was playing it!
So far I’d come up with gherkin hot dogs, tuna and jam pie, and noodles swirled with mustard and brown sauce. But the dish I was most famous for was Pineapple Surprise, which was bread soaked in lemonade and fried, topped with large, round pineapple slices from a tin and put in the oven so that it looked like a burger. I’d never seen Mum’s face look so funny as when she was eating that one!
The game Ashley loved best was the Menu Makers Game. We played that after every visit to the Bank. We made a list of everything the food bank had given us and then invented a proper menu – just like you get in a restaurant.
Ashley loved drawing and colouring in, so her menus were always the prettiest. When she did an extra-special one, Mum stuck it on the fridge. My favourite menu Ashley made was covered with pictures of mushrooms with salad leaves as wings, and fish with lots of fingers.
But there was one game we didn’t really enjoy at all. Even Mum didn’t like it, although she pretended she did. It was called the Transformers Game. We always played that in a Little Troopers Month, and sometimes we had to play it a few times.
It was where you looked at food that you didn’t want to eat – not even a little bit! – and used your imagination to make it into something extra tasty and delicious, and then told everyone about it. Mum said she had invented it to help our imaginations grow stronger.
It was hard, but sometimes it did work. One time I transformed a horrible, lumpy, bright red sandwich filled with nothing but extra-squashy wet tomatoes into a huge roast chicken with a mountain of mashed potatoes with lots of butter melting down it like a volcano. I didn’t have those things, but imagining them made me not mind eating the sandwich so much.
But in a Little Troopers Month, playing any of those games felt like hard work.
It was hard trying to make a menu when you didn’t have much food to write out on it. And it was hard being a Master Chef when there weren’t enough ingredients, no matter how nice and burnt-looking the hole in your chef’s hat was. And it was especially hard when you had spent a whole day thinking about food – even in the middle of playing football or reading a book or trying to figure out your nine times table – and made yourself tired. At times like that your imagination sometimes didn’t want to transform something horrible into something better.
And sometimes none of the games worked at all, and everyone was just acting and pretending that they weren’t hungry when really they were so hungry that they couldn’t sleep at night and cried when they thought no one else could hear them … Even Mum … Especially Mum.
CHAPTER 6
The Last Pawn
At Breakfast Club that week, and the week after that, all anyone could talk about was the food bank and the fact that it didn’t seem to have much food any more.
Leon said the thieves had taken so many things that the Bank would need to shut down soon. But then William said that would be illegal and that the army would come to help and give us the sugar and tea and butter that we needed, just like they did in World War Two. Kerry said that it didn’t matter as long as we still had Breakfast Club and free dinners at school – except that maybe we would need to wear clothes with more pockets so we could save things to take home.
But as more weeks went by, things got worse. Mrs Bell saw that we weren’t talking or playing as much as we normally did, so she began to give out extra portions of fruit and toast. But it still wasn’t enough. Nothing was big enough to fill the giant black holes in our tummies. Even Lavinia’s red hair had started looking less electrocuted.
Krish and Harriet could see that I was feeling tired all the time, so they tried to give me food by pretending that they suddenly didn’t like their favourite things any more or had eaten too much already. I knew they were lying, so one day I told them to just stop it and to leave me alone.
“Stop what?” asked Harriet, looking shocked, while Krish stared at me with a cereal bar hanging out of his mouth.
“Just stop feeling sorry for me! I’m fine!” I shouted, feeling red-hot angry. “I don’t want your stupid biscuit!”
“I only asked if you wanted to share it with me!” said Harriet, getting angry too. I could tell because her nostrils were moving up and down.
Krish was frowning and staring at me too as the cereal bar in his mouth began to crumble. Suddenly, I felt stupid as my stomach gave a roar so loud that everyone could hear.
“Sorry …” I said. “It’s just …”
Krish slowly took a step towards me, as if I was a crocodile who might bite his head off.
“Did we do something wrong?” he asked.
I gave up. I knew I had to tell them, because if everyone at Breakfast Club was right, then me and Mum and Ashley were going to starve soon. In fact, we were already starving. This month felt harder than the last one. Last night we only had half a slice of toast each for dinner and Ashley had fallen asleep crying. Her insides were beginning to hurt again.
So I broke the Breakfast Club rule and told Harriet and Krish what everyone was saying about our Bank being robbed.
“That’s horrible!” cried Krish.
“Why would anyone steal anything from a food bank?” asked Harriet. She stopped being angry with me and got angry with the thieves instead.
I shrugged. “Don’t know. But it means everyone just feels hungry all the time.”
“Maybe the thieves are selling all the stuff they’re stealing from the food bank,” muttered Harriet. She shoved the chocolate biscuit into my hand, and I gobbled it down as she carried on talking.
“But … how are they taking everything? Are they breaking into the Bank every night?” she asked.
I shook my head. The bankers had told everyone that no one had broken into the warehouse at all.
“Wait. Where does all the food for the Bank come from again?” asked Krish.
“From people at the supermarkets,” I said. “They donate things and put them in a special trolley, and then the supermarkets take everything to the Bank. And then the bankers put the food on the shelves and give it to us.”
“Cool,” said Krish.
“Well, if it’s not being nicked straight from the Bank, then the thieves have got to be stealing things from the supermarkets,” said Harriet. “Mum and Dad always give our donations to Gladstores – the big one up the road. We buy extra stuff and put it in the food bank trolleys just like you said.”
“Gladstores is the one that gives my Bank all its food!” I said. I suddenly felt embarrassed – what if I had been eating food that Harriet and her mum and dad gave away to the food bank? Now I knew why Mum didn’t like taking things from a charity. It was embarrassing to have to eat things that your friends had donated …
“Hey, maybe we should do a stake-out at Gladstores!” said Krish, getting excited.
“You mean a stake-out when you go and spy on people?” I asked.
“Yeah,” answered Krish. “We could go under cover after school and find out how the robbers are stealing the food. If we catch them and take them to the police, maybe we could get a special medal too!”
“But how would we do a stake-out at Glad
stores?” I asked. “It’s HUGE! The thieves would be mad to steal things with loads of people about.”
“And don’t they have a million cameras and security guards and things?” asked Harriet. “They’d have caught the thieves by now, wouldn’t they?”
“Maybe,” said Krish. He scratched his head and gave us a shrug as we all thought about what else we could do.
*
We soon forgot all about Krish’s stake-out idea, but then something happened which made me so angry that I knew we had to do something.
The following weeks were good weeks because Mum got paid and could buy enough food with her own money to stop our stomachs from growling all the time. We were down to our last food bank voucher, and I knew Mum wasn’t going to use it until she had to.
But then she did have to because the greedy rent man sent a letter telling us that Mum had to pay more rent or leave. After she had paid him, Mum had to take us to the Bank again right away. But when we got there, Mrs Patel and Mr Anthony and Natasha could only give us one and a half bags of food. They all said sorry a hundred times and looked so sad that it made me start to feel scared.
And then, the next week, Mum came home with the hugest bags of shopping me and Ashley had ever seen. They were filled with treats and packets of all the delicious things we loved but hadn’t eaten in a long time.
There were chicken nuggets for Ashley, burgers for me and chips for us all, and Mum’s favourite dessert – jam swiss roll!
It was as if Christmas had come, except there wasn’t a man with a giant belly trying to come down a chimney we didn’t have!
As Ashley skipped around the kitchen singing, Mum turned on the oven and put in two burgers – one each for me and her – seven chicken nuggets for Ashley, and exactly thirty-three chips. I looked at Mum and frowned. Something was different.
The Great (Food) Bank Heist Page 2
