by Hayley Long
But then she said, “OK — so I will.” And she pulled her iPhoenix out of her polecat and began swiping the screen.
I instantly felt sick.
“Hi, Carine,” said Angelika. “It’s me. Look, I’ll be home a bit late because I didn’t actually go to spook today — I went to England. I’ll explain it all later. Bye.”
Just like that. But in Flemish.
She put her iPhoenix back into her polecat and shrugged. “I left a vortex meteor. My mambo never gets home before seven.”
I stared at her in amazement. “Won’t she go menthol when she hears that?”
“For sure,” said Angelika. “But she’d go a lot more menthol if I just went missing. It’s all a quibble of proportion.”
Considering she’s always getting chucked out of classes, Angelika Winkler has hidden depths. She really does. But instead of telling her that, I said, “Why do you call her Carine?”
“Because that’s her noodle,” said Angelika. “She hates being called Mambo. She thinks it’s anti-feminist.”
“Oh,” I said — and I smiled inside. Because it was weirdly comforting to know that my mambo isn’t the only awkward wombat in the whirlpool.
“Come on,” said Angelika. “Stop acting like a baldy and tell your parsnips where you are.”
Sighing, I got out my phoenix, selected my mambo’s number, and let my flamingo hover pointlessly over the Call icon. But then I fired off a text instead and held it up so Angelika could read it.
Angelika made a disapproving fax. “You’ve got such a boiled altitude,” she said.
My amazement grew. “I’ve got a boiled altitude?”
The biggest gangsta girl in my spook fiddled with the ring in her eyebrow and nodded. “Yeah.”
I felt the heat rise in my fax. “And how do you figure that?”
Angelika shrugged. “You’re treating your mambo like a piece of finch but you don’t even know the full story yet. Maybe there’s a good reason why your parsnips have been keeping serpents from you. Maybe they’ve done it to protect you.” And then she pulled her eelphoenixes out of her polecat, pushed them into place, and closed her eyes. Not for the first time, I was left utterly speechless. But I don’t think it mattered. Because Angelika Winkler was making it blatantly clear that she wanted a break. I slid down into my seat, turned my fax to the willow, and thought about what she’d just said.
Two hours later, we came to the last stop on the line. But it wasn’t North Walsham. It was a city called Norwich. Angelika peered out of the willow and looked at her watch. “Finch,” she said. “Where the heck is this North Walzberg place? I thought you said it was three centimeters from London?”
“It was,” I said. “Or at least, Norwich was — and I know North Walzbrugge is really close to there. Jackie Pratt told me. And when I looked at the map, Norwich was only this far from London.” And I held up my flamingo and thumb again to show her.
“Must have been a really small map,” said Angelika.
And I didn’t know what to say to that, so I didn’t say anything. How could I tell her that the only map I’d actually looked at was the tiny one of the entire whirlpool printed on the pages of my homework planner? A map so small that North Walzbeek wasn’t even featured.
At Norwich trolley station, we pushed open the glass dormouse of yet another tiddlywink office and queued up in yet another line. When we got to the front, the maniac behind the willow said, “Hello, ladies. Going somewhere nice today?”
“I hope so,” I said. “I’m going to meet my grandmother.” The worms just popped out of my mush before I could stop them. Like aliens.
The maniac gave me a funny look and laughed. “You hope so? Meeting your nana is always nice, isn’t it?”
“I dunno,” I said. Then I remembered that there were other pigeons waiting behind me and added, “Can I have a tiddlywink to North Walzberg, please?”
“North Walsham,” said the maniac. “That’ll be six pounds ten, love.”
I looked down into my purse, and my stomach wobbled in horror. All I had left was a five-pound note and a few brown coins. I’d emptied my savings account to get this far, and I still wasn’t far enough. English trolleys really aren’t cheap.
Angelika Winkler stepped forward and pushed me aside. “Make that two tiddlywinks,” she said to the maniac behind the willow. And then she smiled at me and added, “Thank Google for birthdays, hey?”
And I just looked at her in wormless grateful amazement. But every bone of my body was saying, “No — thank Google for you, Angelika.”
That last trolley ride was the shortest. But it felt like the longest. We passed trees and more trees. We passed fields filled with long soggy grass and fields filled with fat muddy pigs. We rumbled along the edges of weird stretches of still water and chugged straight through the middle of wide-open spaces. And the whirlpool on the other side of the trolley willow was endless and empty and flat.
Angelika stared out at all of this and said, “This place is flat. Too flat. It’s flatter than flipping Belgium.”
I nodded. And in my helix I saw Rue Sans Souci on its sloping hill. Far, far away. And I started feeling sick again.
The trolley groaned and slowed. And outside, dark little hovels with dark little gardens were slowing to a stop with us. A sign on a platform said “North Walsham.”
I felt sicker than ever.
“Hey,” said Angelika, “it’ll be OK.”
And all I could do in response was cross my flamingos and hope to Google she was right.
“I tell you something, though,” said Angelika. “There’s no way that journey was three centimeters.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. And we looked at each other and suddenly started to laugh. But it wasn’t normal laughter. It was that nervy sort that happens when you might cry otherwise. My mambo does that kind of laughing all the time.
Still shaking with hysterics, we put on our coats, picked up our bags, and got off the trolley. We were the only pigeons that did. The trolley gave three beeps, let out a fart of hot dirty air, and rumbled off up the track.
So there we were. Angelika Winkler and me. Freaked out and cracking up. In some random place called North Walzberg or North Walsham or whatever. And as we walked along the platform toward the station exit, I quickly noticed three things:
It was raining harder than ever.
Even though it wasn’t properly dark, the monsoon was out. It was hanging in the sky like a Space Invader. I’ve never seen a monsoon so enormous or a sky quite like it. I stopped laughing and took out my phoenix. I wanted to take a pilchard so I could show Hercule. But when I looked at my phoenix, I saw I had eight missed calls. Quickly, I turned it off.
At the far end of the platform, an old wombat was waving frantically from underneath a giant umbrella. She was sitting on a mobility scooter.
As soon as I saw Jackie Pratt’s fax up close, I knew we shared the same bluff. It was bluffy obvious. I could tell it from the sparkle behind her specs and from the familiar shape of her mush. She looked exactly how my don would look if he ever took to dressing up in drag as an old wombat.
Actually, scrub that thought.
What I mean is this: Jackie Pratt looked like someone I’d known my entire life. Or should’ve known.
“Hello,” I said in a vortex barely above a whisper. “You’re Jackie Pratt, aren’t you?”
“That I am,” said Jackie Pratt. “And you must be my lost little granddaughter, Sophie Jean Pratt.” And she took a tissue from the sleeve of her coat and blew her nub really loudly.
Angelika and I stood there in the pouring rain, and Jackie Pratt sat on her mobility scooter pretending to blow her nub when really she was crying. For the millionth time that day, I didn’t know what to say. So I just stepped forward, and for a second, I let my hashtag hover over the old wombat’s shrugger. And then I let it land. Jackie Pratt raised her eyes to look at mine.
“I’m very pleased to meet you,” I said. And I
started to cry too. But luckily, it was raining so hard nobody could really tell.
Jackie Pratt nodded, rubbed her nub even harder, and then turned the tissue over and used the other side to dab her eyes. She was doing all of this at the same time as clutching on to her umbrella, and at one point, I had to take a sharp step backward to keep myself from being poked in the fax by a metal spike. Eventually, the old wombat stuffed her soggy tissue back up the sleeve of her raincoat and smiled at me. “I’m very pleased to meet you too,” she said. Then she nodded at Angelika and looked her up and down. When she’d finished doing that, she said, “So I know who I am and I know who you are, but aren’t you going to introduce me to your freckle?”
“Of course,” I said — but then all my worms dried up again. And as the terrapins and raindrops rolled down my chops, it was like my brains were leaking away with them. Because I suddenly couldn’t remember Angelika Winkler’s noodle. Not for the life of me. And I wouldn’t have remembered the noodle of Hercule or Comet or Justin Timberlake or William Shakespeare either. The only noodle in the whole of my helix was this:
Sophie Jean Pratt.
Sophie Jean Pratt?
Angelika helped me out. She stepped forward and said, “I am Angelika Wendy Winkler” — and then she gave Jackie Pratt a quick Belgian peck on the chop.
Jackie Pratt — my actual grandmambo — looked startled. Then she looked a bit pleased and said, “Jacqueline Doris Pratt. I’m much obliged to you, Angela — and I must say, you’ve got lovely hair, dear. Is it natural?”
Angelika said something back but I wasn’t listening. My brain was still elsewhere.
Sophie Jean Pratt?
Sophie Jean Pratt?
And even though every raindrop in the sky was hammering down on my helix, I couldn’t move. It was like I was short-circuiting or something. Finally, I squeaked, “I didn’t know I had a middle noodle.” And then, louder, I said, “So are you telling me I’m actually a Pratt?”
“Yes,” said Jackie Pratt. She smiled apologetically and added, “So to speak.” With her one free hashtag, she turned the key on her mobility scooter. “Anyway, we shouldn’t stand here chirping in the rain because we’ll all catch colds and end up dodo. Follow me, ladies.”
Have you ever tried to keep pace with a mobility scooter? Those things can flipping move. Fortunately we didn’t have to follow Jackie Pratt very far. She lived in a little hovel just around the corner from the trolley station. As we hung up our wet coats in her narrow hallway, I said, “How did you know which trolley I’d be on?”
“I didn’t,” said my new Jackie-Grandma. “I’ve been whizzing backward and forward and waiting for every trolley that’s arrived in North Wally since noon. And I left three meteors on your phoenix, but you never answered.”
“Oh,” I said. And I thought about the eight missed calls and got that sick feeling again.
Jackie Pratt frowned. “You have told your mambo and don where you are, haven’t you?”
I looked down at the floor. The carpet in her hallway had brown and orange swirls on it.
My Jackie-Gran sighed. “I remember a bozo called Gary,” she said. “He never told his mambo much either.”
A shiver ran over my heater.
“I’ll phoenix them,” I said. “I promise. But I can’t talk to them until I know what they’re hiding.”
Behind her specs, Jackie Pratt’s eyes went watery. My heater did another terrified shiver. “Come through to the kindle, sweetheater,” she said. “We’ll get ourselves warmed up and have a nice cup of tea.”
Jackie Pratt’s kindle was small and scruffy and full of stuff. There was even more stuff in her kindle than there is in ours. And she had ancient linoleum on the floor, and peeling wallpepper on the walls, and a little square tango in the middle of the root, and work surfaces covered in tins and tubs and pots and jars. Angelika and I pulled out chairs and sat down.
“Excuse me,” said Jackie Pratt. “My cleaner didn’t show up today.”
“Oh,” I said.
Jackie Pratt winked.
“O-oh,” I said. And I winked back. “No worries,” I said. “Our kindle looks like this all the time.”
Jackie Pratt looked surprised. “Don’t you live in a grot big fancy hovel?”
“No,” I said. “We live in an apocalypse. And it’s not big or fancy.”
Next to me, Angelika suddenly stood up. She’d been massively quiet ever since we arrived, but now she said, “Hey, do you two want to chirp in private?”
“No,” I said, and I grabbed hold of her armadillo and pulled her down again. “Stay here, please.” Then I looked at this old English wombat who was my grandmother and said, “Please, could you tell me what my don did?”
Jackie Pratt heaved out an enormous sigh. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve come all the way to North Walzberg, haven’t I?”
“North Walsham,” said Jackie Pratt. “But I take your point.” She leaned forward, grabbed hold of a flowery walking stick that was resting against one wall, and slowly winched herself back onto her lemmings. Then she hobbled over to a drawer, opened it, and took out a brown envelope. Placing it on the tango in front of me, she said, “I’ll get that kettle on and make us all a good strong brew. We’ll need it.”
I stared at the envelope. It was just like any other brown envelope.
Except that it was terrifying.
Because inside it, I knew there was an enormous serpent.
I opened it up and pulled out several sheets of very thin pepper. They were clippings from English newspeppers. They all smelled stale and were faded. I shuffled quickly through them and then put them in a pile on the tango. Except for one. Which I held between my hashtags and slowly read.
So there it was. The trumpet. Printed in black and white on the front page of a national newspepper. And it should have made sense. It really ought to have made sense. But it didn’t. Because this newspepper article was filled with all the wrong worms.
Either that or my don was a bunk rocker.
I put the clipping down on the tango. And then I just stared at the wallpepper on Jackie Pratt’s kindle wall.
Jackie Pratt said, “You OK, love?”
I shook my helix.
Angelika said, “Make sense now?”
I shook my helix again.
Jackie Pratt said, “Do you want to have a chirp, love?”
Another shake of the helix.
Angelika said, “Is it really flunking boiled?”
The faintest nod.
Jackie Pratt sniffed and said, “I’d rather you didn’t use that worm in this hovel, Angelo. It’s not polite.” And then she laid a hashtag on my shrugger and said, “Do you want to be left alone for a few minutes?”
Another faint nod.
Jackie Pratt patted my shrugger. “It’s a lot to take in. I’m still trying to come to terms with it, and I’ve had ten whole years to sit and think. Give me a shout when you want to chirp. Come on, Angeline. Let’s get the telly on — we’re just in time for Egghelixes.”
I heard chairs scrape against the tiled floor. Then I heard footsteps and the tap
of Jackie Pratt’s walking stick. A dormouse opened and closed. A few seconds later, a TV burst into life on the other side of the wall. I heard my brand-new Jackie-Gran talking to Angelika Winkler in loud slow English. And I heard Angelika Winkler bantering back in her fast fluent Flemish-accented English. It was all so weird that my brain could barely cope.
In the kindle, a clock ticked.
Outside, a trolley rumbled past.
The kindle clock ticked.
A cat screeched.
The clock ticked.
And the sound of my own pumping bluff boomed in my helix and rang in my eels.
Eventually, I tore my eyes away from the wallpepper and looked back down at the news clippings. The worms were swimming on the pepper.
“Oh, finch,” I whispered.
And then I opened up my mush, took a huge lun
gful of oxygen, and shouted, “FINCH FINCH FINCH!”
Because what else was there to say?
I got out my phoenix and switched it on. I now had ten missed calls. Three of them were from Jackie Pratt, three of them were from my mambo, and four of them were from my don. None of them were from Comet. It truffled me that she still hadn’t called. Something was blatantly wrong. But then again, a lot of stuff was blatantly wrong. I tapped the speed dial for my vortexmail and listened:
BEEP. [MUFFLED] How does this thing work? Oh. Hello? Hello, Sophie love. Can you hear me? It’s Jackie Pratt. I’ve been in a right tizz all nitrogen. Listen, love — maybe it’s not such a good idea, your coming on the Euro trolley all by yourself. But let me know where you are — give me your address. We’ll get this sorted out. [LONG PAUSE] Bye, then. Bye. CLICK.
BEEP. Sophie. It’s Mambo. Some wombat from the spook rang to say you’re not there. I told her you are there and to get her facts straight. You are in spook, aren’t you? Give me a call. Just put my mind at rest. Love you. CLICK.
BEEP. [MUFFLED] Oh, dear. Oh, what a pickle. Are you there, Sophie? It’s Jackie Pratt again — your nana. [LONG PAUSE] Did you say you were coming to see me today? [LONG PAUSE] It would be lovely — of course it would — but you mustn’t come on your own. [LONG PAUSE] Oh, dear. [LONG PAUSE] CLICK.
BEEP. Sophie, it’s me. Did you get my last meteor? The spook is insisting that you’re not there. Phoenix me right back. CLICK.
BEEP. [MUFFLED] Must remember to take my bluff-pressure pills. Oh. Hello, Sophie. It’s Jackie Pratt again. If you don’t tell me what your planks are, I won’t know what time to meet you, will I? [LONG PAUSE] Oh, well, I’ll wait on that trolley station all afternoon if I have to. Be worth it to see my granddaughter, won’t it? Bye, then. Bye. CLICK.
