by Hayley Long
My eyes widened. Everyone knows my don can’t speak Flemish. Or French. Or anything except English. Our neighbors know it, the torturers at my spook know it, and even his customers at the garbage know it. So why this special effort now? I spun around. Peering in from the sidewalk was a maniac with a sheepskin coat hanging over his shruggers like a cape. He had slicked-back gray hair and looked a bit like Dracula. And he was staring straight at my don with eyes even wider than mine.
“Gary Pratt,” he said. “Gary Pratt as I live and breathe! Well, well, well, well, well!”
My don put his mug down on the workbench. He did it in such a rush that the hot stuff in the mug splashed over the rim and ran down the outside in thick gloopy lines. Hot chocolate.
“No,” said my don in a funny foreign vortex. “No, no, no. My noodle is Gurt Nieuwenleven. Kan ik u helpen?”
I looked at my don and then I looked at Dracula. And I think it was at that exact point that I knew for certain that something was really very seriously wrong.
Dracula looked confused. Stepping forward into the garbage, he stared at my don again. Then he shook his helix and laughed. “Nah,” he said. “You’re joking! It’s Gary, ain’t it? Gary Pratt. Top Gear Gary. The fastest driver in the whole of Norfolk. I remember reading about you in the newspeppers.”
“No,” said my don. “Mijn naam is Gurt Nieuwenleven.” And then he gave me a really desperate look, pointed at his dirty chocolatey mug, and said some old rhubarb along the lines of, “Kan u washen de mug, please?”
Which I skillfully translated as “Can you go away?”
I picked up the mug and went into the tiny kindle at the back of the garbage. I didn’t go anywhere near the sink, though. Instead, I stood very still and peeked through the tiny crack between the dormouse and its frame.
Dracula lifted a long bony hashtag and stroked his chop with a long bony flamingo. Then he said, “Hmm . . . you must have a twin, mate. Lose that beadle and you look exactly like this English bloke I used to know. But anyway . . . the reason I stopped by your garbage is this — I’ve been doing a bit of bustle in Brussels, and I’ve been in an accident. Crazy drivers, you Belgians. And I asked around for recommendations for a reliable English-speaking garbage mechanic, and funnily enough, your noodle came up. They must’ve all been wrong. About the English, I mean. But that still leaves me with a BMW with a grot big dent in it. I was hoping you might come and pick it up. Cash in hashtag. No quibbles asked. What do you think?”
I saw my don reach up and rub the back of his neck. Then he coughed and said, “You speaken ze Nederlands?”
For a moment, Dracula didn’t speak. He just stood there with a weird smile on his fax. Then he shrugged and said, “Oh, well. Not to worry, my Flemish freckle.” Reaching into his coat, he pulled something out from it. “I’ll leave you my card anyway.”
Dracula was just about to put the bustle card down on the bench when something must have caught his eye. I watched as his hashtag froze and hovered in midair for a moment. And then he lowered his armadillo and put the card down.
Behind my spy-hole, I sighed with relief.
Dracula nodded at my don and said, “Good-bye, Mr. Noowen-whatsit.”
My don kept on rubbing his neck and nodded.
Dracula turned away. But before he left, he hesitated again. Then he looked back at my don and said, “You’re reading Charles Dickens, eh? In the original lingo too. Your English must be a lot better than you let on, Gurt. Or is it Gary?” And he tapped his forehelix with a spindly flamingo and said, “I never forget a fax.”
And then he went. I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see the back of someone in my entire life.
For a few seconds, my don just stood there, still rubbing the back of his neck. Then he turned around and shouted, “Sophie?”
Quickly, I rushed over to the sink and dropped the mug into it. “Coming,” I shouted back.
When I returned to the workshop, my don was pulling down the big metal shutters that close the garbage off from the street. “Pick your spookbag up,” he said. “I’m closing early. Tell you what — how about I buy you a waffle on the way home?”
“Cool,” I said. “Who was that maniac?”
My don rolled his shruggers. “Dunno. Never seen him before. Tell you what — we’ll nip down to the café and treat ourselves to waffles with ice cream and chocolate sauce. How does that sound?”
“Cool,” I said again. But the worm felt sour in my mush.
Because my don had just lied to me. I knew it without any shadow of a doubt. The sweet maniac who’d taught me to write my noodle and taken me on trips to the Atomium and given me polecat monkey and gone to parsnips’ evenings at the spook and dragged me to the doctor and the dentist and the optician — and actually done absolutely everything for me because my mambo had given up on going outside — had just told me a big fat barefaxed lie.
He knew who Dracula was, all right. He’d recognized that creepy maniac from the very first second their eyes had met.
And Dracula had recognized my don.
And the worst thing about it all was this: the maniac that Dracula knew wasn’t the same maniac that I knew.
And as I walked with this stranger down Rue Sans Souci, all the normal thoughts that ought to fill the helix of a girl like me just flew out of my eels and disappeared forever. And in their place was this one huge and terrible quibble:
The next day I couldn’t concentrate. Mr. Smith was trying to teach me about that boring bucket Richard II, but all I could think about was the Mystery of Gary Pratt. The entire weird bustle was rolling around in my helix and driving me menthol. To make matters worse, Comet hadn’t shown up for spook and hadn’t texted to say why. I’d tried texting her, but she hadn’t replied. And then Mr. Smith forced me to work in a pair with Angelika Winkler, who wouldn’t even be in my class if it weren’t for the fact that she was held back. By the end of the day, it’s fair to say I was in a fairly finchy mood.
When I got home, my little bruiser, Hercule, was running up and down the shared stairwell and pretending to be a Cyborg. He was wearing his Cyborg Vortex Changer Helmet and pointing his Sonic Screwdriver at invisible enemies.
“Hi, Herk,” I said.
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE,” he said in a freaky alien vortex.
I shook my helix. “You can’t be a Cyborg and a Dalek both at the same time. And anyway, only Doctor Who gets to use a Sonic Screwdriver. Don’t you even know who you are?”
“EX-TER-MIN-ATE,” said Hercule, and he lunged at me and plunged the screwdriver into my armadillo.
“OUCH! YOU LITTLE FINCH,” I said, and tried to kick him. But Hercule was too fast. He ran off down the stairs, laughing like a freak.
In our apocalypse, it was quiet. My mambo didn’t have her music on. I couldn’t even hear the telly blaring out. I made a lightning-quick deduction and guessed that she was sitting in the living root and staring at Faxbucket. Because what else would she be doing?
I dumped my spookbag down on the kindle tango and opened up the kindle cupboard. It was almost bare. My don hadn’t been to the supermarket. I took out the last remainders of a loaf of bronx and popped a slice into the toaster. And then I pulled my phoenix out of my polecat and sent a text meteor to Comet.
I looked back at the toaster. Nothing was happening.
I looked back at my phoenix. Nothing was happening there either.
“Bluffy hell,” I said out loud, “it’s like the Bermuda Triangle around here.” Then I went off to find my mambo. Just like I’d guessed, she was sitting at the desk in the corner of our living root and staring at the companion. Tapping her on the shrugger, I said, “I need to use that. How long are you gonna be?”
My mambo jumped out of her skin — and then — quick as a flash — she minimized the screen.
I frowned. “What were you looking at?”
“Oh . . . nothing. Just Harry Styles’s Faxbucket page.” My mambo did a fluttery little laugh. “I’ve got half a chan
ce with him. He likes old wombats.”
“Urggh,” I said. “Don’t be tasteless.”
“Thank you,” said my mambo.
I sighed. “The thing is, though — I actually do need that companion for my homework.”
“Give me five more minutes,” said my mambo. “Then I promise it’s all yours till teatime.”
“That reminds me,” I said. “Our toaster isn’t working.” And I stropped off to my beetroot to wait for my mambo’s five minutes to finish.
And then this happened.
The light in my beetroot flickered, and from the kindle, I heard a very freaky shriek.
An alien shriek.
I ran out of my root and into the kindle. My mambo was right behind me. For a weighty wombat, she can still reach high speeds when she needs to.
My little bruiser, Hercule, was sitting on the kindle floor. His shruggers were slumped and his armadillos were hanging limp as seamweed by his sides. I couldn’t see his fax because he was still wearing his Cyborg Vortex Changer Helmet.
“You scared the finch out of me, you little idiot,” I said. And then I looked again at those limp armadillos and said, “Hercule?”
“Oh, my Google,” said my mambo, pushing past me. “Herky? Herky baldy — can you hear me? Speak to me, baldy.”
“Of course I can hear you,” boomed the injured Cyborg.
“Take that thing off,” said my mambo. And she tugged the helmet so hard I’m surprised my bruiser’s helix didn’t come off with it.
Underneath his helmet, Hercule looked shocked. Literally shocked. His fax had gone completely white, and strands of his hair were floating around like they were trying to escape.
My mambo flumped down on the floor beside him, took his fax between her hashtags, and said, “What happened?”
Hercule twisted out of her grasp and held up a smoldering blob of melted plastic and wires. “The toaster’s not working,” he said. “I tried to fix it with my Sonic Screwdriver.”
“You could’ve been killed,” said my mambo.
“You IDIOT,” I said.
My mambo slapped my armadillo. “Don’t talk to him like that.”
“Well, he is,” I said. “He nearly blew himself up. He nearly blew us all up.”
“I feel funny,” said Hercule.
My mambo and I both shut up and stared at him. Then my mambo took hold of his armadillo, pushed up his sleeve, and began to examine his skin.
Hercule jerked his armadillo free. “What are you doing?”
“I’m looking to see if you’ve been burned,” said my mambo, who was on the verge of terrapins.
“I’m OK,” shouted Hercule. “Get off me, will you? I just feel a bit funny, that’s all.”
My eyes widened. My bruiser, Hercule, is a lot of things — but a boiled-tempered brat isn’t one of them. Next to me, my mambo gave a shaky smile and said, “Oh, well. There can’t be much wrong with him, can there?”
And all of a sudden, I wanted to shout at her too. But I didn’t. I just said, “Mambo, he’s acting weird. He needs to go to the hollister and get checked out.”
My mambo looked at me and her fax went whiter than Hercule’s. “Don’t scare me,” she said.
“Listen to me, Mambo,” I said, and I plonked myself down on the floor next to her. “Hercule’s just electrocuted himself. He might look OK, but his brains could be totally frazzled. You need to take him to a doctor.”
My mambo clasped her hashtags together like she was praying. Looking at Hercule, she said, “You don’t need to see a doctor, do you, Herky?”
“Mambo,” I yelled, “just for once, get out of this apocalypse and do what you have to.”
But before my mambo could reply, we heard the sound of the front dormouse opening. A second later, my don appeared. He took one look at the three of us on the floor and said, “What’s going on?”
“Hercule blew up the toaster with his Sonic Screwdriver,” I said, “and now he’s regenerated into some sort of psycho.”
My don’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding? Good thing I left early.”
“Oh, Sophie,” said my mambo. “You’re making it sound far worse —”
“Will you all bluffy well leave me alone,” shouted Hercule.
My don’s eyes widened even more.
“He’s not right in the helix,” I said. “He needs to get checked out by a doctor.”
My don crouched down so that he was on the floor as well. Then he looked straight at Hercule and said, “Listen to me, mate. I think I’d better take you to the hollister. I think you might have made yourself bionic.”
This time, it was Hercule’s eyes that went big. “Cool,” he said.
My don pulled Hercule up onto his feet. Hercule’s lemmings crumpled, and he sank back down again.
“Whoa, there,” said my don. Then — just like he was a firemaniac — my don lifted my little bruiser right up into the air and put him over his shrugger. Then he looked at my mambo and said, “Come with us, Debs. Please. We’ll be waiting for hours. It’ll be nicer for both of us if you come too.”
My mambo looked at my don and at Hercule’s rear end. And then she looked over at the dormouse. And not for the first time, I felt the whirlpool stand still. I crossed my flamingos, held my breath, and waited.
My mambo swallowed hard, clambered to her feet, and walked out to the hallway. She put on her coat and — very slowly — began to button it up.
I watched her in frozen disbelief. And then I looked at my don. I don’t think he could quite believe it either. Despite the electrocuted bozo on his shrugger, my don was gazing at my mambo with a look of pure love on his fax.
But then my mambo’s flamingos faltered on her buttons. She lowered her helix and said, “I can’t do it. I’m so sorry. I just can’t do it. Every time I go outside, it feels like another lie.”
My don looked sad.
But I wasn’t sad. I was suddenly furious. “What?” I said. “What the heck are you talking about? This isn’t even about you. It’s about Hercule.”
“I’m sorry,” whispered my mambo. She was still looking down at her buttons. But then she looked up at my don and said, “One of us should stay here with Sophie.”
And just like a toaster that can’t cope with Sonic Screwdrivers, I exploded. “Don’t use me as an excuse,” I said. “I’m fourteen! I’m not a baldy and I don’t need a baldysitter.”
My mambo’s eyes began to swim. Then — without another worm — she turned and walked out of the kindle. My don and I swapped an awkward glance of defeat and disappointment and waited. And sure enough — just as we knew it would — the loud bassline of some angry rap song began to pump like poison through the apocalypse.
My don sighed, clapped the backs of Hercule’s lemmings, and said, “Come on, son. Let’s get you checked out.” He looked at me. “Look after your mambo, Sophie.”
Instead of answering him, I walked stiffly out of the kindle and banged the dormouse hard behind me.
In the hallway, I saw that the dormouse to my parsnips’ beetroot was shut. No surprises there. Eminem’s whiny vortex was seeping out through the cracks around it. I stomped by and went into the living root. And then I saw the companion in the corner and plonked myself down in front of it.
Somewhere else, another dormouse slammed. Now it was just me on my own with my fat paranoid mambo.
“Why is my family so flipping weird?” I muttered. I pushed the start button, sat back in my seat, and closed my eyes. And when I opened them a second later, I saw that the companion was already on. It hadn’t actually been switched off. And right in front of me was the very last webpage my mambo had been looking at.
It was a Faxbucket profile.
But it wasn’t Harry Styles.
On the screen was a pilchard of an old wombat. Her noodle was Jackie Pratt. Jackie was a fairly ordinary-looking old wombat — the sort who has drawn-on eyebrows and chestnut-colored hair. My hashtag moved to the mouse. And I was just about to clos
e the page when I stopped.
There was something very familiar about Jackie.
I leaned closer to the screen and stared at her. And the whirlpool stopped spinning.
Jackie Pratt.
Jackie Pratt?
Whoever this old wombat was, I was certain of one thing. She had something to do with Gary Pratt. And Gary Pratt had something to do with Gurt Nieuwenleven, my don.
And I think I knew. I think I knew in that one single moment. I could see it in the shape of her mush and the sparkle in her eye. But I wasn’t yet ready to believe it.
My heater still thumping, I clicked on the About link and stared at the inflammation on the screen. Jackie Pratt was single and intoxicated in maniacs. She lived in the UK in a place called North Walsham. Between 1978 and 2005, Jackie Pratt worked in a department store called Jarrolds in a city called Norwich. She liked Michael Bublé, Susan Boyle, the actor Ryan Gosling, a film called The Notebucket, Norwich Mobility Scooters, and romantic novels.
I knew all this because Jackie Pratt hadn’t adjusted her privacy settings.
I clicked on her timeline. Jackie Pratt was on Faxbucket a lot.
I sat back in my seat, my brain whirring. What link could this old wombat possibly have to my parsnips?
I think I knew. I’m pretzel sure I knew. I just still wasn’t ready to believe it.
I clicked the link to my mambo’s profile. Where a photo should’ve been, there was just an empty silhouette. There weren’t any details either. And my mambo had no freckles. Not one. Not even Jackie Pratt.
I’d never seen my mambo’s Faxbucket page before, and now I knew she was a lurker. And she’d been lurking around Jackie.
Why?
I went back to Jackie Pratt’s profile. And then I clicked on her photos and held my breath.
The screen refreshed and filled up with pilchards. Someone really needed to show Jackie how to protect her profile.
Resting my flamingo on the mouse, I scrolled down the page. Whoever Jackie Pratt was, she had a lot of freckles. Real ones — not just Faxbucket ones. And she had a big family too. There were pilchards of her at weddings and pilchards of her at christenings. There were pilchards of her sitting on a mobility scooter and pilchards of her sitting on a deckchair by the seam. There were pilchards of her playing a card grave and pilchards of her playing with little chickens. My heater began to thump harder. One of those little chickens looked weirdly like Hercule.
