by Dyan Sheldon
“It’s Mark and Eddie.” I don’t know why I was whispering; it wasn’t as if they could hear me. “But where’s Archie?”
“He’s coming.” Kuba leaned her head next to mine so she could see what was happening too. “See – there he is.”
There he was. Eddie and Mark were waiting for Archie at the top of a hill, and Archie was struggling towards them, gasping under the weight of his rucksack.
“Be careful, Archie!” called Eddie. “Don’t forget you’ve got our lunches. If you lose them, we’ll have to eat you.”
Archie smiled. “I can’t see the others,” he said as he staggered to a stop. “Have we left the trail?”
“Of course we haven’t.” Eddie got to his feet and stretched. “They’re down there. Behind those trees.”
Mark stood up too.
“We’d better push on,” said Eddie. “It’s not that far to the place we’re meant to stop for lunch. We can wait for them there.”
There was a stream on the other side of the hill. It wasn’t exactly the Amazon River, but it was too deep to walk through and too wide to jump. There was an old tree trunk stretched across it that almost reached the other side.
Eddie crossed first.
“You next, Archie!” called Eddie. He stretched out his arm. “Grab hold and I’ll help you across.”
Archie took a deep breath and started inching his way to the other side, trying to balance the unwieldy rucksack.
Mark was behind him.
Mark flapped his arms in the air. “Geez, this is really slippery…” he cried as the log wobbled dangerously.
“Be careful!” Archie sounded a bit panicky. “You’re going to make us fall.”
“Now what?” I asked. “Are they going to drown him?”
“Not on purpose,” said Kuba. She took her sandwich out of her bag and gave me half.
“Just grab hold of me!” ordered Eddie. He was still stretching towards Archie, but wasn’t any closer to his hand than he had been when he started.
“I’m coming…” Archie took another cautious step. The log wobbled again. “I’m coming.”
Mark said, “Oops!” and then the log really started rolling.
Archie made a grab for Eddie’s hand.
“Oops, indeed,” said Kuba as Archie fell in the water.
“Don’t get the rucksack wet,” Eddie shouted. “You’ll ruin the sandwiches.”
Mark was back on the other side, helpless with laughter.
“Why is Archie just lying there like an overturned tortoise?” I asked. “Why doesn’t he get up?”
“He can’t,” said Kuba through a mouthful of cheese and pickle. “The rucksack’s full of stones. He can’t get the leverage.”
“Help me!” called Archie. “I can’t get up.”
Mark had a simple suggestion. “Why don’t we just leave him?”
Eddie considered this in silence.
Archie gave a little, nervous laugh. “Stop messing around! Help me up!”
“Maybe we should leave him,” said Eddie thoughtfully. “It would be scientifically interesting to see how long it takes him to get up on his own.”
“Nah, I’ve changed my mind,” said Mark. “I want my lunch.”
“Me too.” Eddie grinned. “I’m starving.” He pointed above them. “We’ll go to that ridge and eat there.”
Kuba and I watched them haul Archie out of the stream and climb up to the ridge in silence. As soon as they sat down, Eddie grabbed the rucksack from Archie and opened it up. He took out two sandwiches and handed them to Mark. Then he took two more out, and handed them to himself. He passed the bag back to Archie.
Archie was wet but smiling as he looked into the bag. He was still smiling when he looked back at Eddie. “There aren’t any more sandwiches,” said Archie.
I reckoned Eddie said something like “Oh, aren’t there?” but it was hard to tell because his mouth was full.
“No, there aren’t.”
Mark started choking, but Eddie remained cool. “Are you sure you didn’t drop them?” he asked.
“I’m very sure,” said Archie.
Mark regained enough speech to say, “Maybe when you fell in the stream…”
“There’s fruit,” said the ever-generous Eddie Kilgour. “You can have that.”
Still smiling, Archie started rummaging in the bag for the fruit. Kuba, of course, was right about the stones. Archie came up with two whose only relationship to food was that they were about the size of grapefruits.
That’s when Archie finally understood the awful truth. He stopped smiling. I was afraid he was going to cry again.
I pushed the notebook away. “I think I’ve seen enough.”
“Not quite.” Kuba pushed it back.
Eddie and Mark were rolling about in fits of hysterics. Archie was dumping out the stones. When he had finished, he picked up the pack and got to his feet.
“I’m going on my own,” he announced with as much dignity as someone who’s just been made a complete fool of can. “From now on I’m a team of one.”
This news upset Mark and Eddie about as much as you’d expect.
Archie stomped off without looking back.
When he vanished from the page I looked up. “Now what do we do?” I asked.
“Don’t look at me,” said Kuba. “You don’t want me to interfere, remember?”
WAR AT WYNDACH
I reckoned it was important to get Archie back as soon as possible. Archie was the one who had gone off on his own, so he was the one who was going to get in trouble. Again. I just didn’t know how I planned to do it.
I looked below us. Ariel was putting her shoes back on. “What about Mr Palfry?” I asked.
“Ariel will keep him busy for a while longer,” Kuba assured me.
“Ariel? Ariel’s keeping him busy?”
“She’s not stupid, you know,” said Kuba with just a touch of self-righteousness. “Ariel saw Mark and Eddie as well as the ghosts, and pretty much worked out what was going on.” She smiled rather smugly for someone with celestial connections. “She was only too happy to help. I reckon Mr Palfry will be so worn out by now that he won’t ask too many questions. I’ll tell him you and the others finished your lunches and went off exploring.” She gave me another smile. “So don’t be too long. Eddie and Mark should be turning up soon.”
Don’t be too long? I didn’t even know where I was going.
“But what if I don’t find Archie?” This struck me as a rather important point. After all, it was a big mountain.
“You’ll find him,” Kuba assured me. “He won’t have gone far. Try near the stream.”
The route Mark and Eddie had taken ran more or less parallel to the route they were meant to take. Armed with my map, I found the stream without any trouble. I was pretty pleased. I didn’t think a trained soldier could have done any better.
There was no one on the ridge now, though.
“Archie!” I called. “Archie! It’s Elmo. Come on out!”
No answer echoed through the trees.
“Archie!” I called again. “Archie. It’s me. You’ve got to come back.”
I looked round, trying to think like someone who is angry and humiliated and doesn’t know what he’s doing or where he’s going. It wasn’t that difficult. I had quite a bit of personal experience to draw on. The day of the Womble slippers incident, I’d hidden in the teachers’ toilet.
Hiding in the woods was different, though. I’d known that if I hid in the teachers’ toilet, someone would find me eventually. But if you hid in the woods, no one would have any idea where you were. Before Archie could really go off in a sulk, he’d have to make sure that Mr Palfry knew that was what he was doing. So I reasoned that Archie would be looking for the rest of us, and was probably going back the way he’d come.
I headed downstream.
For a while the trail was narrow, and hemmed in by particularly spiky indigenous trees, but then it got so narrow that I
couldn’t actually see it any more.
I took the map out again, and looked for some sort of landmark. The stream was a tiny dotted line that didn’t seem to pass anything of geographical significance.
“Archie!” I shouted. “Archie! It’s Elmo! Please come out!”
The only answer was the chatter of the birds.
I stood dead still, watching and listening for some movement or sound that might be Archie, but there was none – unless he’d suddenly sprouted wings.
I groaned.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made such a big deal about Kuba interfering – I could have done with her notebook. And then I thought of Bill Gates. Bill Gates never gave up, and I was pretty sure he had never had any help from an angel. If Bill Gates could keep going in the face of defeat, then I could too.
Determined, I stood up tall (well, as tall as I could) and lifted my chin. That’s when I saw something move in the woods ahead of me that was too large to be an indigenous mammal or bird. Whatever it was, it was pretty far away, and the woods were dense, so I couldn’t say that it was definitely Archie, but it was on its own, human, the right size, and it was carrying something in its arms that looked like a rucksack to me.
“Archie!” I shouted. “Archie, wait!”
He didn’t wait, of course. He was angry, humiliated and confused, a condition that can make you forget your manners. I’d only come out of the toilet on the day of the Womble slippers because the caretaker threatened to take the door off its hinges if I didn’t.
I ran after the distant figure.
“Archie, stop!” I called. “It’s me, Elmo! Everything’s going to be all right! I’ve come to take you back.”
But Archie still didn’t stop. Instead, he quickened his pace and marched deeper into the woods.
I reckoned I was getting the hang of being a soldier, because I didn’t even think twice about following. Using my arm as a shield, I fought my way through the thickest trees. It didn’t even bother me that my Nike sweatshirt was being clawed at by branches and my new trainers were being covered with mud and leaf mould, that’s how determined I was. I’d show Kuba Bamber I didn’t need her help.
I finally caught up with him, but not because of my skills as a tracker. He was sitting on a log in a small clearing, waiting for me.
Only it wasn’t Archie.
It was a small, swarthy man with a spear and a shield in his hands. He got up as I bashed my way into the clearing. And then he disappeared, just like a bubble.
“Archie!” I screamed. “Where are you?”
“Elmo?” Archie’s voice was so low, I wasn’t sure if I’d really heard it or not.
“Archie?”
This time his voice was a bit stronger. “Elmo, is that you?”
“Archie!” I nearly tripped in my excitement. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
There was a crackle behind me. Archie was stepping out of the cave-like hollow in an enormous old tree where he’d been hiding.
“Kuba and I got worried when you didn’t turn up at the Sentry Stones,” I lied. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” said Archie.
I sat down on a dead trunk. “That’s OK,” I said. “I’ve got time.”
Standing a lot straighter than most of the trees around us, and staring at the ground all the time, Archie told me what had happened.
I knew most of it already, of course, but I pretended to be shocked and surprised. “You’re joking!”
“It’s all true,” said Archie. “I would not be surprised if it was Mark and Eddie who put me in the girls’ lodge last night.”
“What creeps!” I shook my head in amazement. “We’d better go back and sort them out.”
Archie frowned. “I appreciate you coming for me, Elmo,” he solemnly told me, “but I’m not going back.”
To tell you the truth, that wasn’t the response I’d been expecting.
“What do you mean, you’re not going back? You can’t stay here. You’ve got to go back.”
“No, I haven’t.”
I’d never suspected there was a stubborn side to Archie Spongo before but it was out now, in full force.
“Let Eddie and Mark get in trouble for a change,” he went on. He didn’t sound much like his usual, meek self. “Let them get in trouble for losing me. That’s what they deserve.”
“They deserve a lot more than that,” I said. “But they didn’t lose you. You ran away.”
Archie sat down beside me. “It adds up to the same thing.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I argued. “Eddie and Mark will tell some story about you getting all weird and stomping off, and it’ll be their word against yours.”
Archie shook his head. Stubbornly. “But they’ll be in trouble when Mrs Smiley and Mr Palfry hear the truth,” he insisted.
“And what’s the truth?” I asked. “That you fell off a log? That you were too stupid to realize that a few sandwiches shouldn’t weigh several kilos?”
Archie glared at me. “I’m staying here till Mr Palfry finds me.”
“And what will that solve?” I asked him.
“It solves the problem of how I survive the next few days, that’s what it solves. If Mr Palfry has to search for me, the trip will most likely be cancelled after that.”
Arguing with Archie was a lot like arguing with myself. I almost knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“And then?” I persisted. “Then what happens?”
“Then we go home.”
“Right,” I agreed. “And then everything’s just the same as it was – or maybe worse. Things only get worse if you don’t stand up for what’s right.”
That was something I’d learned from the incident with Mr Bamber and his bulldozers, only I’d sort of forgotten it in all my excitement about being famous, and getting my sweatshirt, and everything.
“I don’t care,” said Archie. “I just want to go home.”
“You can’t go home.” I handed him a tissue. “This isn’t over yet.”
“It’s over for me,” said Archie. “Eddie and Mark will tell everybody what happened. They’ll all be laughing at me.”
“Who cares?” I said. I handed him a sandwich and the apple from my own lunch. “It doesn’t matter what they do, it only matters what you do.” It sounded like something Grace Blue, or even Kuba Bamber, might say, but it also sounded true.
Either Archie thought so too, or the food was improving his mood, because I could tell from the way he was listening that he was starting to weaken.
“Don’t you understand?” It was as though I was on automatic pilot; the words came steaming out. “If you don’t stand up to Eddie and Mark, they’ll keep pushing you around. Right?”
Archie nodded. “Correct.”
“But if you do stand up to them—”
“They’ll keep pushing me around,” finished Archie.
“Well, maybe… But even if they do, it’s different because you’re not just letting them do it to you. As long as you don’t fight back, you’re telling them it’s all right.”
Archie looked at the sandwich he was holding for a couple of seconds, and then he looked over at me. “Do you really believe that?”
“Yes,” I said. Considering the way I’d been acting myself, I was a bit surprised to realize this was true. “Yes, I do.”
“All right.” Archie sighed. “We’ll go back and tell Mr Palfry what they did.”
But I was feeling bold and inspired. I wanted us to sort this out ourselves.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, we’ll go back, but we’ll carry on as though nothing has happened.”
“Are you serious?” said Archie.
“There’s an old saying in English that it might be useful for you to know,” I told him.
Archie regarded me warily. “What is it?”
“He who laughs last, laughs longest.”
LAUGHING LAST
Eddie and Mark must have arrived at the Sent
ry Stones just before us, because Mr Palfry was still telling them off when we got there.
“What do you mean, you don’t know where Archie and Elmo are?” he was saying. “Kuba said the four of you went off exploring together after lunch.”
Eddie Kilgour at a loss for words was a rare sight. I found it pretty enjoyable.
“Well – uh…” said Eddie. He glanced over at Kuba, who was smiling at him as if he was the baby in the manger. “Yeah, we did.” It was obvious he had no idea why she was lying. “But – uh – then we split up.”
“Yeah.” Mark nodded. “Then we split up.”
I gave Archie a nudge.
“Here we are!” he called out.
Ariel and Kuba were examining Ariel’s new shoes and didn’t look up, but the other three turned as though their heads were controlled by the same string.
“We found some – uh – some Calipher’s Stars,” I said to Mr Palfry. “That’s what took us so long. It took us a while to sketch them.”
“It’s all right,” said Mr Palfry, glancing at Ariel. “It’s not as if we’re in a hurry.” He gave a little laugh. “I didn’t get worried till the boys said they didn’t know where you were.”
“We split up,” I said. “We told them we’d meet them back here.” I grinned at Eddie and Mark. “Isn’t that what we agreed?”
Mark said, “Yeah.”
Eddie just looked at me.
“Right then,” said Mr Palfry. “Now, how are those feet of yours, Ariel? Think you can do some more walking?”
“She’ll be fine,” said Kuba. “I think we’ve solved the problem.”
I continued to grin at Eddie and Mark. I reckoned I’d solved the problem too.
The rest of the day was eventful only from a scientific or botanical perspective. We spotted a variety of flora and fauna, including quite a few Calipher’s Stars.
“This is remarkable,” Mr Palfry kept saying every time Kuba found another. “I thought Calipher’s Stars were rarer than hens’ teeth.”
“Oh, no,” said Kuba. “I don’t think they’re that rare.”
There was no more trouble from Eddie and Mark. In fact, there was no more communication between us of any sort. They abandoned their pretence of being mates with Archie, and kept their distance from the rest of us. But they watched. Every time I looked up from admiring some insect or leaf, I’d catch one of them just turning away. They were suspicious, and they were cautious. I reckoned we had them on the run.
