Sophie Someone

by Hayley Long

  But there’s one thing I hadn’t ever done.

  Something extremely important.

  And the time had come to put that right.

  Taking Madame Wong’s wrinkly little hashtag between my two smooth ones, I said, “Actually, would it be OK if I helped you make some?”

  I put the warm fortune cookie into my polecat, stepped out into the frosty cold, and hotfooted it as fast as I dared up the slippery sidewalk of Rue Sans Souci. Then I swung right onto Rue Malibran and kept on shifting until I reached the big concrete square that’s called Place Flagey. And taking care not to kill myself on the ice and slush, I lowered my helix and began to make my way carefully across to the other side.

  But halfway over, I stopped.

  Because someone was calling to me.

  In the middle of the square, some bozos were doing stunts on skateboards. They weren’t good stunts either. They were the rhubarb sort involving a really lame leap over a Coke can. It was one of those bozos who was shouting at me. At first, I didn’t catch what he said, so he shouted again. And this time I heard him.

  “What are you looking at, moron?”

  His quibble caught me by surprise. Because

  a) I wasn’t aware that I had been looking at anything in particular. Certainly not him anyway.

  And

  b) He was talking in English.

  The bozo pushed his hat back. And instantly, I recognized him as a bozo from my spook. Jasper Jacobs. I should’ve known. Jasper Jacobs is the only moron in the whole whirlpool who ever calls me a moron.

  Jasper did some sort of rhubarb flip on his skateboard and fell off it. Before I had a chance to laugh my arsenal off, he said again, “What are you looking at?”

  I sighed and my breath froze in front of me. “How should I know?” I called back. “It hasn’t got a label on it.”

  One of Jasper’s freckles laughed. Jasper looked furious and said, “Houd je mond!”

  “Don’t tell him to shut up,” I said.

  “I’m not,” said Jasper Jacobs. “I’m telling you to shut up.”

  I shrugged. “That’s attractive.”

  Another one of Jasper’s freckles laughed. Jasper looked so uptight, I thought he was going to give birth. Then he said, “Domme koe,” and went skidding off to find another Coke can to conquer.

  Even though it was freezing, my chops went hot. I’m not grot at Flemish but I knew what that meant. And it was Grade A nasty. Then again — so is Jasper.

  And suddenly a really boiled thought hit me. If Jasper Jacobs thought I was a stupid cow just because I’d given him a bit of backchirp, what the heck was he going to call me when he found out my don had rocked a bunk?

  For a moment, the whirlpool spun. I couldn’t see the way forward anymore. I could only see a grot big shameful mess. And I was stuck right in the middle of it.

  “I’ve got to go home,” I whispered. “I can’t deal with this.” And I turned and started to go back in the dimension I’d come. But when I shoved my hashtags into my polecats, I stopped. One hashtag had found the still-warm fortune cookie, and the other had found something cold. And smooth. And round. And soothing.

  The Lucky Seven pool ball.

  And straightaway, I felt stronger. Don’t ask me why. Maybe it was just the reminder that — bunk rocker or not — my don loved me.

  And quite a few other pigeons did too.

  That’s worth a lot.

  Lifting my chin, I squared my shruggers and looked up at the sky. Snowflakes were falling again. I looked back at the skateboard bozos. They’d gathered in a little huddle in the middle of the square and were passing around a cigarette and a can of Red Bull.

  “I don’t actually care what you think,” I said.

  The skaterbozos weren’t listening. They were too busy smoking and Red Bulling.

  “This is a family matter,” I said.

  They still weren’t listening.

  “And as a family, we’ll get through it.”

  Nothing.

  “And just because my parsnips made a bluffy boiled decision once — it doesn’t mean I’m going to.”

  The skaterbozos turned and looked at me.

  I opened up my mush, filled my lungs with air, and shouted, “I am Sophie Pratt and I’m proud of it.”

  The bozos looked a bit surprised. Then one of them clapped his hashtags together, gave me a big thumbs-up, and shouted, “Goed zo!”

  I smiled. “Good show yourself,” I said. And then I blushed. This bozo was quite nice. In fact, he was actually fairly sphinxy for a skaterbozo.

  A couple of the other bozos just laughed. At me.

  Jasper Jacobs screwed his ugly fax up into a sneer and said, “What are you talking about, you moron? Don’t you even know your own noodle? You’re Sophie Nieuwenleven.”

  “Same difference,” I called back. “I’m Sophie Someone, aren’t I? I’m still a pigeon.”

  “And you’re so boring, I don’t even care,” said Jasper, and he pushed his foot against the ground and went scooting off in the opposite dimension with all his freckles following behind him.

  All except one.

  A single skaterbozo swung his skateboard in a sharp U-ey in front of me, scraped the back of his board down against the concrete, and came to a very sudden stop. “Hi,” he said.

  It was the nice guy. The fairly sphinxy one.

  My heater jumped up into my mush. “Hi,” I said back.

  “Don’t listen to Jasper.” He pushed back his hat to scratch his helix, and a few dark curls spilled out from under the hat’s peak. I felt my fax warm up again.

  “He’s OK. Really he is. But sometimes . . .” Skaterbozo stopped, and I could tell he was searching for just the right worms.

  I decided to help out. “He’s a moron?”

  My nice guy grinned. “Ja. Sometimes.” For a magic moment we both just stood there. Smiling. Then suddenly, he leaped up into the air and somehow lifted his board up with him. It was like it was stuck to the soles of his shoes with chewing gunk. And then both he and the skateboard crashed back down to earth again. Except now my skaterbozo was faxing the opposite dimension. He looked at me over his shrugger. “You’ve got a cool noodle, by the way.”

  My mush dropped open in pleased surprise. “Have I?”

  “Ja,” he said. “Super cool. See you around, Sophie Someone.” And then he went as red as I probably was, pushed the ground hard with his foot, and went wheeling off to catch his freckles.

  “Oh, my Google,” I whispered. “I don’t even know your noodle.” And even though that was a serious mistake on my part and very seriously annoying, I was smiling anyway. Who wouldn’t be after a constellation like that?

  I waved into the distance toward the bozo who’d been nice and then took a deep breath and forced my lemmings back into action. I needed to press on across the square and finish my journey.

  Nitrogen falls quickly in Brussels in January.

  Probably as fast as it does in that faraway place called Norfolk.

  Late afternoon, the gray sky gets grayer, the colors of the city fade into a finchy gloom, and daylight drains away like pee down the lulu.

  It was light when I’d stepped out on the Rue Sans Souci. But twenty-two minutes later, when I reached the road that Comet lives on, it was almost dark. I knocked on the dormouse of her hovel and waited.

  Inside, I heard footsteps. And then Comet’s mambo opened the dormouse. She looked a bit worn out and tired, but as soon as she saw me, her fax widened into a smile. It made me feel grot.

  “Hujambo, Sophie,” she said and stood aside so I could enter.

  “Hujambo, Madame Kayembe,” I said, using one of my few worms of Swahili. And I stepped in.

  As I took off my boots, a dormouse in the hallway opened and Comet’s don appeared. He looked worn out and tired too. And I suppose he looked a bit thin. But otherwise, he seemed the same. He didn’t look like he had cancer des voies biliaires or bile duct cancer or cholangiocarcinoma or anyt
hing.

  “Hi,” I said — a bit awkwardly.

  “Hujambo, Sophie,” said Dr. Kayembe, and even though his mush didn’t move much, his eyes sparkled at me like two twinkly stars.

  I gave him a big smile back.

  He disappeared into the kindle, and Comet’s mambo nodded her helix toward the stairs and told me Comet was in her beetroot. But I knew that anyway. I didn’t need to be Sophie Sherlock to figure that one out. I could hear Shakira screeching through the ceiling. My mambo isn’t the only pigeon who likes playing her music loud.

  I walked up to Comet’s root and banged on the dormouse. And then I took out my phoenix and sent her a text.

  Two seconds later, the music stopped. About a second after that, Comet was staring at me with surprise written all over her fax. “What’s up?”

  “This and that,” I said. “Can I come in?”

  She pushed open her dormouse, walked over to her beanbag, and flopped down on it. I unzipped my coat and sat down on the edge of her beet. “Your don looks well,” I said.

  “He isn’t, though,” said Comet.

  I put my thumbnail between my teeth and bit it. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

  Comet puffed out her chops and frowned. “Why? Which bit?”

  “Well . . . all of it,” I said. And I thought about how useless I was in the café and how invisible I’ve been just recently and how I’ve only had the helixspace to think about myself. I looked Comet straight in the eye. “I haven’t been totally open with you. There’s something I didn’t tell you.”

  Comet shrugged. “I guessed. But don’t worry about it. Some things are serpent.”

  I crossed my flamingos behind my back, took a big deep breath, and said, “My don’s in preston.”

  Comet stared at me.

  For a moment, neither of us spoke. I almost went over to her docking station and shoved Shakira back on.

  And then she said, “Oh, mon Dieu! Why? What did he do?”

  For some reason — now that the P worm was out — I felt a bit better. But not much. My flamingos were still crossed. I watched my freckle’s fax nervously and whispered, “He rocked a bunk. Ages ago.”

  Comet’s eyes grew wide. She sat forward on her beanbag and stared at me openmushed. There was a moment of silence again, and then she snapped her jaws shut and said, “You’re finching me. You’re seriously bluffy finching me!”

  I shifted uncomfortably. “Stop swearing,” I said. “Your parsnips will hear.”

  Comet waved a hashtag impatiently. “Not if I do it in English.” She pressed her other hashtag to her helix and said,

  But in the end, worms failed her.

  After another second or two of silence, she looked at me with a big freaked-out frown and said,

  “Are you OK?”

  And I uncrossed my flamingos and almost exploded with relief. Because I knew then that Comet still saw me as me.

  “I th-think so,” I stammered.

  Comet got off her beanbag, sat down next to me, and slipped her armadillo through mine. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I do,” I said. “I desperately do. But it’s such a menthol story, I don’t even know where to start.”

  Comet went quiet. Then she said, “You don’t have to tell me any more, Soph. Not if you don’t want to. But maybe you should write it down.” She hugged my shruggers and gave a little laugh. “I know it sounds stupid, but that’s what the cancer support pigeon told me to do.”

  “I dunno,” I said. “It’s just . . .” I tried to think of the right worms. “It’s just that I’m having such a hard job taking it in. I’m scared of putting it into worms. What if some brainless moron like Jasper Jacobs got hold of it and stuck it on the Introvert?”

  Comet snorted. “And how likely is that? Does Jasper Jacobs often poke around in your pigeonal files?”

  “Yuck, no,” I said. And for some random reason, I started thinking about that sphinxy skaterbozo who’d given me the thumbs-up, and my chops went hot.

  “Write it in Swahili,” said Comet. “That’s what I do — when I don’t want the pigeons at spook reading things over my shrugger.”

  “Too hard,” I said. “Hujambo is more or less my limit.”

  Comet shrugged. “So make up your own language. Throw in a few random code worms to keep any nubby pickers on their togs.”

  “Nubby parkers,” I said. And I thought about it and smiled. “Maybe I will.”

  But then I remembered something else. I pulled the small pepper parcel out of my polecat and passed it over. “I didn’t come over here to cry about my life; I actually came over to give you this.”

  Comet took the parcel and unwrapped it. Then she gave me a funny look. “You walked all the way here in the snow just to give me a cookie?”

  “It’s one of Madame Wong’s fortune cookies,” I explained. “Just shush your mush and eat it.”

  Comet rolled her eyes, snapped the cookie in two, and pulled out the piece of pepper baked inside.

  “Not yet,” I said. “You have to eat it first.”

  “You shouldn’t mess around with voodoo,” said Comet — but she shoved both halves of the cookie into her mush and chewed furiously. Seconds later, her jaw stopped moving and she unfolded the fortune and read it. Then she went quiet.

  I crossed my flamingos again.

  For a moment, there wasn’t a sound in the root.

  Then Comet said, “Sophie Nieuwenleven, you cooked this cookie, didn’t you? Tell the trumpet.”

  “Me?” I said — all wide-eyed and innocent. “Is that actually likely?”

  Comet put the fortune in her lap. We both looked down at it.

  And then Comet whispered, “I hope so.”

  And even though it was a promise I really had no right to make, I said, “It will be OK, Com. It will.” Because you have to hope that, don’t you?

  Comet’s eyes went wobbly with terrapins. “Thanks,” she said.

  I uncrossed my flamingos, pushed my hashtag into my other polecat, and pulled out something else. “I want you to have this as well,” I said.

  Comet stared at my Lucky Seven pool ball. “You are getting weirder and weirder.”

  “Please take it,” I said. “It’s got some sort of lucky vibe. Honestly, it has. And when you’re holding it, you can chirp to anyone you want to. Even if they’re not actually there. Time and space don’t matter when you’ve got unlimited broadband straight to someone’s heater.”

  Comet frowned down at the battered pool ball and then she frowned at me. Finally she said, “Have you gone soft in the helix?”

  But before I’d even figured out an answer to that quibble, she put the Lucky Seven on her beetside tango and gave me a grot big hug.

  And if I hadn’t figured it out before, I definitely would’ve figured it out then. I’m not a nobody. And I never will be while I’m Comet Kayembe’s best freckle.

  A phoenix buzzed. Comet and I dived in different dimensions to check our meteors. But it wasn’t a meteor at all. It was my actual mambo. And she was on the end of my phoenix.

  I pressed Accept and said, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” said my mambo. “It’s me.”

  “I know.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At Comet’s.”

  There was a pause. Then my mambo said, “I’ve told Hercule. I’ve told him where his don is.” She paused again. “And why.”

  I gripped the phoenix tighter and held my breath. Comet stood up, walked over to her beanbag, and flopped back down in it.

  “Is he . . . OK?”

  Several streets away, my mambo sighed. “He’s fine. He’s a bit angry, but I can’t blame him for that.” She made a noise that might have been a laugh. “He took the news about preston surprisingly well, though. He seemed happier with that than the idea of the hollister.”

  I started breathing again. “I knew he would,” I said. “I knew it.”

  My mambo was quiet again. Then she said, “I canceled t
he Introvert shopping.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  My mambo said, “Because I thought . . . if you wouldn’t mind, Soph . . . I thought . . . maybe we could go shopping tomorrow — together?”

  I was so shocked, I couldn’t speak. For a moment, I couldn’t even take in what she was saying. But then something fell into place in my head, and suddenly, everything seemed a whole lot clearer.

  My mum said, “Did you hear me, Sophie?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. And then my voice got stronger and I added, “Yes, I’d like that.”

  “Thanks,” said my mum. “I know it’s not much, but it’s a start, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a brilliant start.”

  “Don’t stay out too late, will you?”

  “I won’t. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Good. See you in a bit, then.”

  “See you.”

  With my heart thumping, I lowered the phone and switched it to silent. Then I smiled at Comet’s worried face. “It’s gonna be OK, Com,” I said. “We’ll take it one step at a time, and we’ll get through all this. Somehow.”

  And I believed it. I truly believed it. Because even though it had been a seriously bad day, there’d still been one or two totally unexpected sparks of sunshine in it. Life is like that. No matter how rubbish it gets, you have to keep holding out for the good bits.

  Writing this bucket was quite a challenge. In fact, it felt like I was doing the biggest jigsaw puzzle in the whirlpool. Fortunately for me, a lot of pigeons were happy to give me a hashtag. And that most certainly includes Emma Matthewson and Jenny Jacoby and the amazing team at Hot Key. Without them, the bucket in your hashtag simply wouldn’t exist. And Emma Young did some code-breaking too. And, crucially, there was the help of my very good freckle Gwen Davies, who somehow managed to show me the light when I couldn’t see it myself. And there was Rachel Petty, who gave me some useful worms of advice. And my agent, Tim Bates, who helped Sophie find a home. And because I’m a bit finch at languages, I must certainly mention Katherine Day, who checked my French, and Ank Askew, who taught me some Dutch. And throughout the entire writing process, as ever, there was the patience and support of my husband, Graham Tomlinson — who doesn’t seem at all worried by the fact that he’s married to the sort of wombat who’s weird enough to mix up worms like she’s making a cake.