‘I don’t have a hair grip either, genius,’ said Jess.
‘Why not? You’re a girl. Girls have hair grips.’
‘Not all girls have hair grips to hand all of the time.’
‘Call yourself a sidekick.’ I stopped opening drawers and folded my arms in disgust.
‘I have never called myself a sidekick.’
‘I’m going to have to rethink your codename. You don’t deserve to be called the Tiny Terror.’
‘Shut up and keep looking,’ said Jess, finding a moment to shoot me the side-eye of annoyance.
I went to the head’s desk drawers, which were locked. ‘I told you we’d need a hair grip.’
‘We don’t. I’ve found them. They were cunningly hidden in an unlocked drawer labelled “Staff Files”.’
‘Well done, Tiny Terror, I never would have thought of looking in such a boring hiding place.’
As I ran to the drawer, I swear I heard a scratching noise. My heart stopped.
‘What’s up?’ Jess whispered.
‘I heard something.’
‘Like someone coming?’
‘No. Something else.’
We both listened.
‘I can’t hear anything. You must have imagined it.’
‘You can’t hear it because it’s stopped now. I’m not making it up – there was definitely something.’
‘We’ll have to worry about it later. Let’s just copy the files we need and get out of here.’
We pulled out Fortress and Smilie’s files, Jess photocopied the pages and I stuffed them in my pocket. I’m usually pretty chilled out, as you know, but for those few minutes in the office, even I started to panic. The photocopier was so slow and so noisy. And what we were doing was stuff you could get in proper trouble for. I was sure Mrs Cobb would come back and catch us, or that Smilie would suddenly appear. I had that horrible almost wetting yourself feeling, like when there’s five minutes left at the end of a test and you’re nowhere near finishing.
As soon as we were safely hidden in the girls’ toilets, we pulled out Smilie’s file.
‘There’s got to be something here,’ I said, but nothing jumped out as we looked over the pages. There was nothing about Smilie being an alien.
‘Her hobbies are listed as “theatre, yoga and ceroc”.’
‘I don’t know what ceroc is but it doesn’t sound particularly evil.’
‘We just need to look more closely.’ Jess was flicking through the pages. ‘What were you expecting? Photos of her licking her lips over a brain on a plate?’
‘Not exactly,’ I said.
‘A PhD in world domination?’
Now she was just taking the mickey. ‘No.’
‘A reference from Dr Evil?’
‘Of course not!’ I looked at the last page of Smilie’s file. There was a long letter attached to the back which had the PALS logo at the top and was signed by someone called Montgomery McMonaghan.
‘This looks interesting,’ I said.
‘Almost as interesting as finding a boy in the girls’ toilets,’ said a familiar voice that gave me the proper willies. ‘Open the door and come out now,’ she said, ‘and don’t try to hide the documents in your hand, I’ll be taking those.’
We looked at each other. There was no escape.
The toilet door swung open and Jess and I squished out of the cubicle to where Miss Smilie was waiting with an especially annoying grin on her face. She snatched the papers out of my hand, glanced down at them and then put them into the inside pocket of her jacket. There was no way we were going to see those files again.
‘So,’ she said, tilting her head slightly in a way that made her look like an evil robot. ‘Stealing confidential information from the school office: unarguably a punishable offence. You’re coming with me to the PALS suite. Right now.’
She shoved us forward in front of her, towards the door.
I tried not to panic. I tried to come up with a plan, but I didn’t see how we could argue our way out of it. How had she known we were in the office, and how did she know we were in the girls’ toilets? It couldn’t be a coincidence.
I pushed open the door and stepped into the corridor, almost bumping into Mrs Cobb and Mrs Halloway.
‘Alex, dear, we’ve been looking for you. How are you feeling, poppet?’ Mrs Halloway said.
‘Oh, er, not good. I had to run to these toilets because I felt another gush coming on and they were the nearest.’
Mrs Cobb backed away.
‘What’s this?’ Miss Smilie snapped.
‘Thank goodness you found him, Miss Smilie.’ Mrs Halloway bent down and put her hand on my forehead. ‘Poor Alex is very unwell. I need to get him back to the medical room.’
‘When I was in the toilets, I found Jess, and she’s got it too,’ I said, making the air stink and trying not to laugh at the disgusted expression on Jess’s face.
‘She does look a bit peaky,’ Mrs Halloway said. ‘Come on, you two, let’s get you sat down with a glass of water.’
Miss Smilie’s annoying, triumphant smile had changed into something quite different. She seemed to be deciding whether to argue with Mrs Halloway or not.
‘Thank you, Miss Smilie, I’ll take care of them, don’t worry.’ Mrs Halloway put her hands on our backs and started to push us gently back up the corridor.
‘Well, I’ll be sure to find you both later, to make sure you’re taken care of,’ Miss Smilie hissed.
I badly wanted to turn around and stick my tongue out at her, but sensed it would probably make things worse for us in the long run. It had been the squeakiest of close calls, but for a while, at least, we were safe.
We spent half of lunchtime in the medical room. Mrs Halloway phoned our mums, gave us some pink medicine that tasted of toothpaste and then left us on our own for some ‘peace and quiet’.
‘How did she know where we were?’ Jess whispered. ‘Everywhere we go she appears out of nowhere.’
‘Do you think she injected us with tracking implants?’
‘Don’t you think we would have noticed if she injected us with tracking implants?’
‘Maybe she put the implants in robotic bugs which crawled up our noses while we were asleep and now live under our skin.’ I ran my hands down my arms. ‘I think I can feel a lump.’
‘Don’t be so stupid!’
‘Honestly, feel it, Jess.’
‘I’m not feeling it.’
‘Well, if there are tracking implants buried under our skin, I’ll be happy to claw yours out for you.’
‘And why didn’t she tell Mrs Cobb and Mrs Halloway that she caught us with the staff files?’
‘Staff file, you mean.’
‘What?’ Jess was in an especially bad mood and wasn’t even attempting to be polite. I really don’t know why I put up with her.
‘She only took hers. I’ve still got Miss Fortress’s.’
‘That’s something, I suppose. But why didn’t she tell on us?’
‘Think about it, Jess, if she told anyone we had her file, they’d want to know why. People would start asking questions. She clearly has as much to hide as we do.’
‘So we were saved by the stink.’
‘It’s OK, you don’t have to thank me,’ I said.
‘Wasn’t going to.’ She lay down on the little bed and cuddled up to the hot-water bottle Mrs Halloway had given her. She looked different like that, kind of small and sweet, like a baby squirrel. ‘We really need to get out of here and get Bob.’
‘Copy that.’
Fifteen minutes later, we finally convinced Mrs Halloway that we’d made a miraculous recovery and she released us from the medical room. I was almost sad to leave – it was so cosy in there, and it was nice to feel safe from Smilie and Fortress and the PALS army for a little while. But we were late collecting Bob; we’d left him for much longer than we’d intended.
We walked back to my classroom, and looked for Bob where we’d left him on a shelf b
ehind a load of dusty science equipment.
‘This is where we left him, right?’ Jess called down from the table she was standing on.
‘Yes, that’s definitely the spot.’ I had a horrible feeling spreading through my chest. ‘Why?’
‘He’s not here.’
‘He must be. Let me see, you’re probably looking wrong.’
‘How do you look wrong, Double-O-Divvy?’
I climbed up beside her and shoved all the stuff about on the shelf, making clouds of dust fly around us. It was pointless. Jess was right. Bob was gone.
The bell rang for afternoon registration, so Jess went back to her classroom and I sat at my desk, trying not to panic. I looked up as the door opened, expecting Miss Fortress to walk in, but the teacher who walked in was not Miss Fortress, it was Miss Smilie.
‘For fluff’s sake,’ I said under my breath.
‘Unfortunately, Miss Fortress has fallen ill and has had to go home,’ Miss Smilie said.
‘What’s wrong with her, Miss?’ one of the girls asked.
‘Upset stomach, I believe.’ Smilie looked at me. ‘I’ve heard there’s a nasty bug going around. I’ll be taking your class this afternoon.’
I kept my head down for the rest of the day, not wanting to give her any excuse to march me off to the PALS suite. She didn’t mention what had happened at lunch, but every time I looked up, she was watching me.
‘Bob and Miss Fortress disappearing at the same time? That’s too much of a coincidence,’ Jess said as we were walking home.
‘I know, it’s weird. Something’s definitely up with that. Our primary objective tomorrow morning is to locate Agent Bob.’
We turned onto Oak Avenue, which was a long street with trees all the way down both sides.
‘I hope he’s OK,’ Jess said. ‘You know how he hates surprises.’
‘Wherever he is, he’ll know we’re coming for him. Agent Alex and She-Jerk never leave a man behind. We’ll find out where he is and stage a daring rescue mission.’
‘She-Jerk? SHE-JERK?’
‘And what is up with Miss Smilie being everywhere we are?’ I continued. ‘There’s no way she could have guessed we were hiding in the girls’ toilets. It’s the last place anyone would look for me.’
‘I don’t know,’ Jess sighed.
‘If you’d just have a feel of that lump…’
‘Alex, there is not a tracking implant in your arm!’ Jess shouted.
‘Well, she’s tracking us somehow.’
‘If only we had that file. I’m sure we would have got some answers from it.’
‘Who even has paper files, anyway?’ I said. ‘You don’t see Ironman Tony Stark saving the world with a pile of A4 in his iron hand. It’s so annoying and old personish. If it had been computer files, we could have copied them and hidden the memory stick. Smilie would never have caught us with them and we’d still have them now.’
‘That’s true,’ Jess said, ‘but Mrs Cobb looks after the staff files and she is really old.’
I sighed. ‘Operation “Who’s The Baddy?” – Current status: getting nowhere fast.’
As we reached the end of Oak Avenue, there was a rustling noise in the tree behind us, and we turned to see a pigeon taking off from one of the branches.
‘That looked like Dexter,’ Jess said.
‘How the heck can you tell? It was really high up. You’re being paranoid.’
‘But it looked like him.’
‘Jess, if it was Dexter, he would have spoken to you. It was just a random pigeon. They all look the same.’
‘Fine,’ she huffed, ‘but they don’t all look the same. That’s so offensive.’
We’d had a long, hard day and were both pretty grumpy, so we argued for the rest of the walk to my house. It was only when we were sat in the kitchen, trying to think of a good excuse to tell my mum about why Bob-slash-Miley was not in the tank that I suddenly remembered.
‘Hey, I saw a name on it,’ I said.
‘A name on what?’
‘That letter at the back of Smilie’s file, the one with the PALS logo on it.’
‘What name?’
‘Erm, it was someone to do with PALS and it was a classic super-villain name.’
‘What, exactly, is a classic super-villain name?’
‘You know, first and last names start with the same letter and really tricky to spell. Morris Mackintosh … Montessori McLachlan … wait, I’ve almost got it … Montgomery McMonaghan! That was it!’
‘Montgomery McMonaghan?’
‘Did you see that? I have a mind like a mega-pixel camera.’
‘You remembered one name.’
‘I know, I’m amazing.’ Because, you know, I am.
‘Let’s Google it.’
I put my laptop on the kitchen counter and started to type the name into Google. It felt weird to be researching without Bob looking over our shoulders, pointing out our spelling mistakes. If I was Nick Fury of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Jess was Phil Coulson (from before he got stabbed through the heart by Loki, obvs), then Bob was definitely agent Maria Hill: far less significant but sometimes quite handy to have around.
I pressed enter, and Jess and I leaned closer to the screen.
A loud ‘Boom!’ from the laptop made us jump.
‘Son of a biscuit!’ I said. ‘Are we under attack?’
‘Worse,’ said Jess, rolling her eyes. ‘That was just a sound effect on the computer. Look!’
We watched the screen as the animated flames and smoke, which had appeared at the sound of the explosion, gradually disappeared to reveal a pop-up from The Professor.
‘I guess that’s his way of telling us he’s angry,’ Jess sighed. ‘What a drama queen.’
‘It was quite cool, though,’ I smiled. ‘You were super-scared, Jessticles. You should have seen your face!’
‘I was too busy looking at you almost falling off your stool, Double-O-Chicken.’
‘Nah, that name doesn’t work. You need to stick with the alliteration.’
‘Shut up and read.’ Jess glared at me.
‘Yeah, he seems a bit peed off,’ I said.
‘He seems a bit mad, you mean. How dare he threaten us?’ Jess was furious. ‘What’s he going to do to us, anyway? Annoy us to death with his stupid pop-ups?’
‘I don’t know, Jess, he could be dangerous, with his pigeon assailants, his pop-up sorcery and his angry font.’
‘Well, he doesn’t scare me.’
‘Yeah, same, same. I was just saying…’
At that moment, Jess’s phone started ringing, and buzzing around on the counter in front of us. We both looked at it.
‘OMG, it must be him!’ I said.
‘It’s not him,’ Jess said.
‘But it says “No Caller ID”. It’s him, I tell you!’
‘Now you’re being a drama queen, Alex.’
‘Answer it then,’ I said, ‘if you’re not scared.’
We watched the phone vibrating like it was possessed by the devil. Jess’s stupid rock music ringtone was ridiculously loud in my quiet kitchen.
‘Probably just someone wanting me to claim my PPI or something,’ Jess said.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘But I’d better go home and make sure Mum doesn’t answer the house phone.’ Jess jumped up and buried her phone in the bottom of her bag.
‘I think I’ll unplug ours. You know, just in case.’
Jess ran out of the door and I ripped the phone cord out of the socket in the kitchen. I didn’t fancy being electrocuted by a raging professor.
13
Into The Lipstick Lion’s Lair
The next morning, I went to school with a lot on my mind. So much had happened over the past couple of weeks: not-so-superpowers; crazy kids; angry professors and talking goldfish, not to mention psycho Smilie and her tasting room. There was a lot to sort out, but our priority was Bob. The poor little guy was lost somewhere, alone and probably frightened. I’d told my
mum that we were keeping him at school to study in science. She wasn’t happy about it, and Lauren threw a right tantrum, but it was the best we could come up with. Whatever happened that day, we had to find him.
I tried to plan our next steps. Clearly Bob hadn’t decided to double-cross us and roll himself away in his coffee jar. Somebody must have found him.
Miss Fortress walked into the room looking like she had the serious hump.
‘I want whoever put the fish on the shelf to come and see me at break. I realise that you children have nothing better to occupy your minds than trying to exasperate me, but I refuse to be outwitted by a class of ten year olds.’
Most of the class looked confused, which was understandable really. What kind of prankster would put a fish on a shelf? Pretty lame prank. I tried to look confused too.
‘Miss Fortress, do you mean a real fish?’
‘Yes, a living, breathing goldfish, in a jar on the shelf, as one of you knows very well.’
She looked around, making eye contact with as many people as possible. She looked at me the longest. It was so unfair that I was the prime suspect. I know I did actually do it, but she had no way of knowing that. For some unknown reason, she’d recently decided to join the Anti Agent Alex Group, or as I liked to call it, ‘Aaaaaaaagh’. So Miss Fortress had Bob. I always knew there was something fishy about her. Get it – fishy? I snorted at my own joke.
‘Do you have something to say, Alex?’ Miss Fortress glared at me.
At the risk of making her hate me even more, I had to find out what she had done with Bob.
‘I like fish, Miss. Can we keep it as a class pet? We could call it Gregory.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘But why, Miss? It would be a wonderful educational opportunity for us all. We could learn about, erm, fish stuff.’
Miss Fortress looked up at me. ‘You seem very interested in this goldfish, Alex. Is there anything you’d like to tell me?’
‘No, no, just crazy into goldfish right now.’
‘How strange,’ she said, ‘I thought you’d devoted your life to superheroes.’ She was definitely suspicious.
‘Nah, Miss. Superheroes are over. It’s all about goldfish, now. Am I right, guys?’ I looked around the class, hoping for some back up, but they all just stared at me like they couldn’t believe the new depths of lameness I’d plummeted to.
Alex Sparrow and the Really Big Stink Page 7
