The Girl Who Stole the World

by Laura Pearson

  She sat on her bed again.

  Isabel tried not to think about the award up there amongst all of her treasures.

  She began to work on the igloo. She glued a few containers. The igloo walls were getting higher now. They were narrowing in to make the ceiling. She should have been enjoying this bit, now that the igloo was beginning to look like an actual igloo. But Isabel’s eyes kept wandering back to the box on the shelf. Every time they did, Isabel remembered. She remembered what she had done.

  This wouldn’t do. She had got away with taking the golden globe, and now she needed to stop thinking about it. She had to get the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy out of the special hiding-place box and far, far away, where she could forget about it. She climbed up on her bed, took out the golden globe and put it back in her cardigan pocket. Feeling the weight of it there again was truly terrible. How had this ever felt exciting?

  Isabel put her wellies on and went out into the garden. Should she bury the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy in the ground?

  The trouble with that was that one of the Reds might dig it up. They loved digging holes in the garden, ever since Ava’s little brother had buried loads of keys out there. They hadn’t found all of the keys, so it was like an Easter egg hunt that never ended. Even Isabel’s mum dug a hole every now and then, looking for her lost car key.

  No, burying it in the garden would never do.

  Isabel considered the rabbit hutch. No one but Isabel ever bothered with the pet bunnies any more. She could hide it in with Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail, and only think about it when she cleaned their cage.

  But what if one of the bunnies ate it? Did rabbits eat real gold? And if they did, would real gold make them poorly? What if they got sick and it was Isabel’s fault? What if they died and it was all because Isabel had stolen something? Then she would be a thief and a bunny killer.

  Isabel went back into the house with the globe still in her pocket. She could hear the Reds watching Peppa Pig. Peppa and George were laughing and rolling in a muddy puddle, which meant that the episode was almost over. Isabel hurried back to her room. She put the bell on the door, pushed the rug under it and put two teddies on the chair. Then she went and sat in her igloo.

  Isabel was miserable. She would never be rid of the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy. She would have to carry it around in her pocket forever, and surely someone would catch her before too long. They would have to tell the mayor. The mayor was in charge of the police, so maybe Isabel would go to jail.

  Suddenly the igloo felt very small. The milk-container walls seemed to be closing in on her. Was this what jail was like? Isabel looked up towards the top of the igloo, which was still unfinished. She wanted to see the ceiling of her cosy bedroom.

  But instead she saw two brown eyes peering down at her.

  “AHHHHHHHHH!” Isabel screamed. “Lottie, how did you get in here?”

  Isabel jumped up, her head poking out of the igloo’s roof.

  “Sorry,” said Lottie. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “But … but … the alarm…” The Red alarm was set on the door. How had Lottie got into her room without Isabel hearing her?

  Isabel didn’t have the chance to ask, because Lottie was staring at something gold and shiny that was poking out of Isabel’s pocket.

  “Is that…” Lottie stared at the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award golden trophy.

  What was there to say? That Isabel had just found it? That the aliens had dropped the golden globe from the sky and it happened to land in her pocket? Only Ava would have believed that. Isabel’s heart was pounding in her chest and the wasps felt like they were in her throat.

  “Yes,” whispered Isabel. She could hardly speak.

  “Where did you get it?” asked Lottie.

  Isabel couldn’t lie to her best friend. “I … sort of … took it,” she said, her voice rising with every word. “I meant to put it back! But I can’t get it back, because YOU are always in the hallway. And now I’m going to go to JAIL. You’ll have to come play with me in JAIL!”

  Lottie took her glasses out of her pocket. She put them on and looked at Isabel closely.

  What would Lottie do? Surely she couldn’t be Isabel’s friend anymore. Stealing was such a terrible crime that Lottie would have to tell on Isabel. Maybe she really would call the police. Lottie would probably get an award of her own, for catching a real-life baddie.

  Isabel held her breath.

  “I know,” said Lottie simply. “I knew it was you.”

  “What do you mean, you knew it was me?” cried Isabel. “How could you have known? Does everyone know?”

  “No,” said Lottie, “Just me. I solved the mystery and then I came round to find out why you did it.”

  It was impossible to know whether Lottie really had solved The Case Of The Vanishing Planet, or whether she’d just got lucky. All that was important to Isabel was that someone else knew her terrible secret, and that Lottie didn’t seem to be about to tattle. Isabel told her the whole horrible story.

  When she was finished, Lottie said, “I stole something once. I stole a sweetie from the Pick and Mix at the cinema.”

  “What kind of sweetie?”

  “A pink sugar mouse.”

  That was a big sweetie to steal. “What happened?” asked Isabel.

  “Mummy made me go up and pay for it,” said Lottie. “And I said I was sorry and that I’d never do it again.”

  “Did you give it back?” asked Isabel.

  “No,” said Lottie. “Because it was in my tummy.”

  “Oh,” said Isabel. It was a shame that she couldn’t eat the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy. That would get rid of it once and for all.

  “Did you get into trouble?” she asked Lottie.

  “Yes,” said Lottie. “No sweeties for a week.”

  Isabel would have gladly traded no sweeties for a week if she thought that would make up for what she’d done. She’d have had no sweeties for a year, even.

  “This is different,” she told Lottie. “This is real gold. The mayor’s real gold. I might go to jail.”

  “Children don’t go to jail,” said Lottie. She sounded quite sure of herself.

  “I might get expelled from school then,” said Isabel. “Mrs Peabody might tell me to leave and never come back.” No girl had ever been expelled from Crabtree School. Then again, no girl had ever stolen gold from the mayor before. It seemed a real possibility.

  “We’ve got to put it back,” said Lottie.

  “But I don’t know how to do that without getting caught!” said Isabel. She began to cry.

  “I’ll help you,” said Lottie. “We can do it together.”

  “And you don’t think I’m a terrible person?” asked Isabel tearfully.

  “No,” said Lottie. “But I will have to keep a close eye on you to make sure you are good from now on.”

  Isabel looked at the Red alarm, which was still set on her bedroom door. How could Lottie keep a closer eye on her than she already did? But having your best friend watching over you is never a bad thing.

  The first thing Lottie did was to disguise the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy. Before she left Isabel’s house that evening, they covered the golden globe in papier mâché. That way Isabel could carry it round in her pocket and it would seem like a craft project she was working on. They hid the world under soggy newspapers, and it worked a treat, although now the planet was covered in goo.

  Lottie was clever about disguises, but she wasn’t quite as good at keeping secrets. Before the morning bell went the next day, Ava, Zoe and Rani all knew what Isabel had done. They gathered round the Year Three coat hooks.

  “That’s impossible,” said Rani, when Lottie told her. “Isabel is the best-behaved girl at Crabtree School.” Even Rani knew thi
s, and she was the new girl.

  Then Zoe joined their whispering. She remembered Isabel pushing in front of her in the queue. Ava remembered the daisy chains. Soon Isabel being naughty didn’t seem so impossible.

  When Isabel went to hang up her coat, her friends stared at her like they’d never seen her before. Straight away, Isabel could see that they all knew her secret, and she couldn’t stand it.

  “Stop staring! I already know that I’m the worst girl in the world!” cried Isabel. “No one has ever done anything as terrible as this in the whole history of Crabtree School!”

  “Shhhhh!” Lottie told her. “You’ll get caught!”

  “People do bad things all the time,” whispered Zoe. “Remember how mean I was to Rani when she came to Crabtree School?” They all nodded. In fact they had all done naughty things in the past; it was only Isabel who never had. Now she was just making up for lost time.

  “Are you going to keep being naughty?” asked Zoe. “Because you can’t come to my house to play if you are going to steal things.”

  “Mine either,” agreed Rani. “Besides, if you steal from my brothers, they might hit you.” Rani had four brothers, and the older ones were quite scary.

  “Of course I am not going to keep being naughty!” said Isabel. “I am going to be even better than I was before.”

  They all nodded, though Isabel noticed that Ava looked disappointed. She had liked making daisy chains with the new naughty Isabel.

  Once they were convinced that Isabel wasn’t going to become a true baddie, the friends knew they had to help her. They spent morning break in the Crabtree School tree house making a plan to return the globe and keep Isabel from being expelled or thrown in jail. (Ava, for one, was sure that Lottie was wrong. Children did go to jail.)

  “How about Rani, Ava and I distract them, and then Lottie and Isabel can put it back?” suggested Zoe.

  “We could tell everyone that the aliens are finally landing. Then they will all rush to the windows to see!” added Ava.

  Lottie frowned. “We can’t just put it back on the pedestal now,” she said. “We have to find a way of returning it without anyone knowing it was stolen. Otherwise they might still look for a suspect.”

  Everyone nodded in agreement.

  “Let’s just drop it in the playground when no one’s looking,” suggested Rani. “Then we can pretend to find it.”

  “I searched the playground yesterday and Colonel Crunch knows that,” said Lottie. “It would be weird if it suddenly turned up, wouldn’t it?”

  They all nodded again, except for Zoe, who was standing on her head. Zoe thought better when she was upside down.

  “What we need,” said upside-down Zoe, “is to put it somewhere that it might have been yesterday, but that no one would have noticed. Somewhere we might have forgotten to look.”

  Lottie and Colonel Crunch and Mrs Peabody and Mrs Biro and Mrs Potion had searched the entire school from top to bottom, so there weren’t many places they forgot to look.

  Through the tree house window Isabel could see Colonel Crunch and Mrs Peabody chatting on the edge of the playground. Were they talking about the missing Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy? Were they guessing who might have taken it? Had they remembered that Isabel had been in the hall when Lady Lovelypaws jumped down? The wasps inside Isabel were buzzing and buzzing.

  “I HATE this,” cried Isabel, shaking her pocket. “I hate it, hate it, hate it!!! I wish I could just put this horrible, stupid Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy in the bin!”

  “You know,” said Lottie. “That just might work.”

  Zoe stood in front of the brightly coloured recycling bins. Blue, green, yellow and purple.

  Blue was for plastic, she knew that. But Zoe wasn’t quite as good at recycling as Isabel. Neither was Rani, who was standing next to Zoe at that moment. What were the other colours for again?

  Zoe held the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy gingerly between two fingers. She didn’t want to touch it too much. She wanted to be rid of it NOW. But which bin was for real gold?

  “Paper,” decided Rani. “Put it in the bin for paper.” That made sense, because even though they had peeled the papier mâché off the golden globe so that it would be findable, it still had bits of newspaper stuck to it. The paper bin would work just fine.

  “That’s the purple bin,” said Zoe, and Rani didn’t argue. They dropped the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy into the purple bin and hurried back to the Year Three classroom.

  “The eagle has landed,” Zoe said to Lottie. Zoe had no idea what eagles had to do with stolen awards. Lottie had told her that “the eagle has landed” is what spies say when they’d done what they were supposed to. Zoe had done it, so she said it.

  “It’s not in here,” said Isabel without moving her lips.

  “What do you mean, it’s not in there? Of course it is. Zoe said ‘the eagle has landed’.” Lottie wasn’t moving her lips either.

  “IT REALLY ISN’T HERE!” Now Isabel was shouting without moving her lips, which is not an easy thing to do.

  Their plan was not going to plan. At that very moment, Ava was leading Mrs Peabody to the little hallway off the kitchen. Then what was supposed to happen was this: Mrs Peabody would just happen to see Isabel finding the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy in the recycling bin. The award would be returned. Mrs Peabody would be happy, and, instead of being expelled or sent to jail, Isabel would get praised for recycling.

  It would have been a perfect plan, except the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy wasn’t actually in the recycling bin for Isabel to find.

  “Try a different bin,” hissed Lottie.

  It is not very easy to dig through the rubbish in a busy hallway without being noticed. Lottie shook her head at Ava as she passed by with Mrs Peabody. They had to abandon the plan.

  “Actually, Mrs Peabody,” they heard Ava say to the headmistress, “never mind about coming to the kitchen. I just remembered that Mrs Crunch didn’t really make the world’s largest jelly in the shape of Crabtree School. It was all a dream I had!” Ava and a very confused Mrs Peabody turned back towards the lunch room.

  After a bit more digging, Isabel and Lottie gave up. They went back to their places at the Year Three lunch table.

  “Which bin did you put it in?” Isabel asked Zoe and Rani frantically.

  “Paper,” whispered Zoe. “Like I told you. Purple for paper.”

  “Purple isn’t for paper!!” said Isabel. “Purple is for food! You are meant to put the food you don’t eat in there and Colonel Crunch takes it.”

  “Ewww!” said Rani. “Does he eat it?”

  “Of course he doesn’t eat it!” screeched Isabel. “He takes it out to the compost heap in the garden. The old food turns into soil for the plants.”

  “The purple bin didn’t have food OR soil in it,” said Lottie. “The purple bin was empty.”

  They all considered this. Then Lottie began flipping through the spy reports in her purple notebook.

  “Colonel Crunch empties the purple bin all the time,” said Lottie. “I’ve watched him do it. He takes the bin out to the compost heap and tips it in.”

  “That’s what I just said!” hissed Isabel.

  “What this means,” said Lottie, ignoring her, “is that some time between Zoe and Rani putting the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy in the purple bin, and lunchtime, Colonel Crunch emptied the purple bin.”

  “Which means,” said Zoe, “that the eagle has landed out in the compost heap.”

  “Exactly,” said Lottie. In a flash they were up from the table and headed for the field behind the playground.

  Isabel had never smelled anything so terrible in her entire life.

  She was up to her knees in Mrs Crunch’s fish pi
e. They’d had it for lunch yesterday, and now the uneaten bits from one hundred and fifty plates were rotting in the compost heap. There were carrot scrapings too, all slimy and slippery, and little mounds of squishy, squidgy peas.

  Isabel would never eat fish pie again.

  Lottie was digging through a mountain of spaghetti bolognaise. She had noodles stuck to her skirt and a meatball on her head. There was stale garlic bread crunching under her feet.

  “This compost heap,” said Ava emerging from a sloppy puddle of last week’s lasagne, “is probably what is keeping the aliens away. It smells DISGUSTING!”

  “Oooo,” said Zoe, pointing at a brown mound at the back of the compost heap. “Look, chocolate cake!”

  “I think that’s mud,” said Rani. She was sifting through a pile of banana peels the size of a small house. Mrs Crunch liked to give them bananas as a snack.

  There was no trace of the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy. Isabel stopped digging and looked up at her friends. They were covered from head to toe in compost. And whilst compost is good for the environment and for making things grow, when it gets on your clothes it looks a lot like filthy muck. It smells even worse.

  Isabel and her friends were going to get into a whole heap of trouble. And it would happen very soon, because Colonel Crunch had spied them in his compost pile. He was marching across the playground with Mrs Peabody close behind.

  How would they explain why they were digging through the rubbish? Isabel’s stomach was a hive full of wasps.

  Then, out of the corner of her eye, Isabel saw a glint of shine through the muck. Could it be? Could it possibly be?

  “I’ve FOUND IT!!!” screamed Isabel. “I’ve found the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award!” Isabel pulled the golden globe out of the compost and held it high above her head. As she waved it around, mashed potato dripped off the planet and into her hair.