The Dreaded Noodle-Doodles

by Karen McCombie

  For Lettice,

  because she’s lovely!

  Title Page

  Dedication

  1 A very secret Thing

  2 A dangerous swish …

  3 Really, truly, seriously

  4 Jellified with panic

  5 Project stowaway

  6 Sssnnnuuuzzz! Mneeeee …

  7 Another VBI

  8 Spot the donut

  9 Tramplings and boings

  10 Very good sad news

  Copyright

  Want to know a secret?

  There is something very, very strange living in the trees behind my house.

  If you tiptoe slowwwwly and quietly (shh!) to the bottom of my garden, you might hear it rustling and rootling and ‘peh!’ing in the dark undergrowth, on the other side of the low stone wall.

  And if you peek over the wall – holding your breath – there’s a chance you could spot two saucer-round eyes blinking out of a strangely square opening in the tree roots …

  Oops – hope I haven’t scared you.

  ’Cause I’m not.

  Scared, I mean.

  And here’s why: the something at the bottom of my garden is a friendly little thing called, er, Thing.

  So what is Thing?

  Good question.

  I’m not sure. Neither is my friend (and neighbour) Jackson.

  It’s as if someone put a troll, a fairy and a squirrel in a blender and Thing was what tumbled out once all the whirring stopped.

  ‘So, Ruby, why don’t you and Jackson take, er, Thing to a vet, to find out what it is exactly?’ you might well ask.

  Ah, but there’s a problem …

  If we took Thing to a vet, the vet might panic and immediately phone the newspapers or important government scientists or someone.

  And then Thing wouldn’t be our special secret any more; it would get snatched away from me and Jackson and its hideaway home in the tree roots, which would be completely terrible and frightening and awful for Thing. (And us.)

  Or the vet might just faint with shock when it started talking.

  Oh, yes. Thing can talk.

  It can chatter away in human, rabbit, starling and slug, and the language of every other type of creature that happened to stroll, hop, flap or ooze around the deep, dark forest where it used to live.

  (By the way, the deep, dark forest was called Muir Woods. It’s now a big, blocky housing estate called Forest View Homes.)

  Speaking tricky languages is an amazing talent to have, I know, but Thing isn’t exactly fluent in them. Not in human, at least.

  I mean, when I asked it about the weird stubby wings on its back a few days ago, it answered, in its funny, purry voice, ‘Wingles not ever work, Rubby.’

  See what I mean?

  And its being able to talk hasn’t helped me and Jackson learn very much about Thing. We’ve tried asking it questions like ‘Are you a boy or a girl thing?’ and ‘How old are you?’, and all it answers is ‘Not know, thank you’.

  Now you might think Thing sounds quite cute, and it is. (Even if it can’t ever pronounce my name properly.)

  But we do have one tiny little problem with it.

  In fact, we nearly had a tiny little problem the other day, when I was asking Thing about its wingles. It nearly happened because Jackson was making these dopey flapping actions with his hands behind Thing’s back.

  Luckily, Thing didn’t spot him, or it might have thought Jackson was taking the mickey (he was).

  And if it thought Jackson was taking the mickey, it would’ve got upset.

  And when Thing gets upset, it feels a bit ARRGHH!

  And when Thing feels a bit ARRGHH! that’s when you’ve got to worry.

  Just like last week when …

  Oh, it’s a long story.

  Let’s just say Thing got us into some very noodly, doodly and totally dreadful trouble …

  This story might end with noodles, doodles and total dreadfulness, but it begins with a swish.

  Yes, a swish.

  (Don’t worry; I’ll explain as we go along.)

  Let’s go back, back, back in time. All the way to last Monday, straight after school.

  As usual, me and Jackson had told our parents that we were going to hang out together. But then quicketty-quick, we scuttled off to the straggle of trees – all that’s left of Muir Woods – at the bottom of both our gardens.

  ‘Hello, Thing!’ I called out softly, as I jumped over the low stone wall, only slightly squashing the mushrooms I’d smuggled out of the fridge and hidden in my pocket.

  ‘Hi, Thing!’ said Jackson, vaulting over the higher fence of his garden.

  Thing lifted a paw and flapped a hello at us.

  It was hunkered down in the entrance to its rabbit-hole-sized cave, rocking from side to side and singing some odd little song that sounded a lot like ‘Swish-swish! Swishyswishy-swish!’

  Me and Jackson, we didn’t so much hunker as jiggle, trying to find ourselves a piece of ground that didn’t have any bottom-bothering tree-root knobbles.

  ‘Check this out: Miss Wilson marked me really badly,’ Jackson sighed, as he finally found a comfy-ish spot, and flung open a work-book.

  He looked as crumpled as the scrunched-up rucksack by his side.

  He also seemed truly shocked that our teacher had given his geography homework just two out of ten.

  I wasn’t. In fact, I thought he’d been pretty lucky to get two out of ten!

  ‘Jackson, I spent an hour and a half on my homework, and it was 200 words long by the time I’d finished,’ I told him, while passing dented mushrooms to Thing. ‘You told me it took you five minutes to do, and the heating instructions on a tin of soup are longer than what you’ve written!’

  ‘Swish-swish-swish-swish-swish!’ Thing carried on sing-songing to itself, between nibbles of its favourite food (not counting jelly babies, of course).

  ‘But Ruby, I’m just no good at writing!’ Jackson whined uselessly.

  ‘Jackson, what you’re not very good at is trying,’ I told him sternly, realising that I suddenly sounded exactly like Miss Wilson.

  It was only a few weeks ago that Jackson had started at our school, and our teacher had spent a lot of time saying the same few words over and over again to him, like ‘concentrate’, ‘pay’ and ‘attention’.

  ‘I do try, Ruby!’ Jackson whined some more, looking hurt. ‘And I am good at some stuff!’

  Oh, yeah. Jackson is good at …

  ‘And I bet tomorrow’s test is going to be way too hard!’ he carried on moaning, rustling his hand in the packet of jelly babies by his side.

  (Oh, yeah … that’s something else Jackson is good at – throwing jelly babies in the air and catching them in his mouth. Slurp.)

  ‘Well, that’s all right – you’ve got tonight to study for the test!’ I reminded him.

  Jackson pulled a face at me, as if I’d just suggested something crazy like painting his face bright blue.

  ‘Rubby?’ interrupted Thing. It had stopped singing its swishy song and was pointing a mushroom at Jackson.

  ‘Yes?’ I said to our small, ginger-furred buddy.

  ‘What is wrong with boy’s head, please?’

  We both stared at Thing and Thing stared at Jackson.

  I wasn’t sure what the problem was, exactly. Glancing at Jackson, all I saw was floppy blond hair, a dumb expression, and a smattering of freckles across his nose. Wait a minute; was that what Thing meant?

  ‘Oh, those are freckles,’ I began to explain, helping myself to a jellybaby from Jackson’s open packet. ‘They’re just darker skin markings. They don’t—’

  ‘Peh. No, not spotties,’ sighed Thing, stepping down
from the strangely square entrance to his cave and pitter-pattering across to Jackson.

  (By the way, Thing’s home isn’t actually a cave. It’s an old Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine toy van that once belonged to Jackson. Of course we’ve camouflaged it with moss and twigs and woodlice and stuff.)

  ‘See? Big line on head here,’ Thing purred, tapping a half-nibbled mushroom on Jackson’s forehead.

  ‘Oh, that! That’s a frown,’ I told it.

  ‘But what it’s for, Rubby?’ asked Thing, as Jackson relaxed and the frown did a vanishing act.

  Thing jumped in surprise, as if it had just seen an amazing conjuring trick.

  ‘Well, frowns happen when humans are worried,’ I carried on, ‘and Jackson is a bit worried about a geography test we’re having at school tomorrow.’

  ‘School …’ muttered Thing thoughtfully, as it dropped the mushroom and made a grab for the tight skin on Jackson’s forehead, squishing it together with its fingers to make a DIY frown.

  ( Jackson ‘oww!’ed and winced.)

  ‘Yes, school,’ I repeated, leaning over and unclipping Thing’s grip, then offering it the bag of jelly babies to distract it. ‘That’s where children go to learn lots of stuff, remember. Is there something else you want to know about school?’

  ‘Yes, please, Rubby.’ Thing nodded, choosing a red jellybaby and delicately biting its head off. ‘Is it like big, big wood?’

  Ah.

  Until they got chopped down, Thing had spent the whole of its life surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of trees. Which made trying to describe anything in the outside world very tricky. A couple of days before, I’d had a go at describing a library, but in the end I still think Thing imagined it as some kind of forest with books balancing along branches, like some fluttery, rectangular fruit.

  ‘No, school is not a wood,’ I replied. ‘It’s like a house, only much, much bigger.’

  ‘A buildinging?’ Thing checked.

  It was probably frowning without realising under its fur. Thing didn’t like modern building(ing)s – after all, they were the reason its home and Muir Woods didn’t exist any more.

  ‘Yes, but an old building, like mine,’ I said quickly, waving in the direction of our cottage, which had sat happily on the edge of Muir Woods for ever such a long time, or even longer.

  For a few seconds, Thing seemed thoughtful and started rocking from side to side, muttering its swishy-swishy song.

  ‘Hey, Thing; what’s with the swish-swish stuff?’ Jackson asked.

  ‘I like sound of swish word,’ it said with what might have been a hairy shrug. ‘But what is swish?’

  Thing blinked at us both with its bushbaby eyes, waiting for our answer.

  Me and Jackson blinked back, our minds a matching blank.

  ‘Boy say, “I swish I not go school tomorrow!”’Thing tried to explain.

  Ah, now I got it. We’d been chatting over the fence as we walked down our gardens to see Thing.

  ‘What Jackson was talking about was a wish, not a swish. A wish is when you really, really want something. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, please!’ said Thing, clapping its hands together excitedly. ‘I has a swish!’

  ‘Do you? What is it?’ asked Jackson.

  ‘I swish I go to school! I like to learn!’

  Thing looked hopefully up into my face.

  Jackson turned and grinned at me.

  ‘No!!’ I yelped. ‘It would be way too dangerous! What if someone saw you, Thing?’

  ‘But Ruby, we could smuggle Thing into school in my rucksack!’ Jackson blurted. ‘It’s got a sort of mesh panel in it. So Thing could stay hidden, but be able to peek through the mesh to see what was going on!!’

  ‘Oh yes, please, Rubby?’ Thing begged, holding its paws up in front of it. ‘Just a once only? I be good! And quiet as a snail!’

  Jackson took one look at Thing and immediately copied what it was doing, opening his eyes cartoon-wide and holding his hands up like a pleading puppy.

  ‘Pretty please with jelly babies on top, Ruby?’ said Jackson, tilting his head to the side.

  My brain was yelling no, no, NO! very loudly, but I heard my mouth say something completely different.

  ‘Er … uh … OK, then.’

  Oops.

  At that point, my brain rolled its eyes and mumbled darkly, ‘Don’t say I didn’t warn you …’

  Boys just can’t help thwacking things, can they?

  If a girl sees something strange on the ground, like a funny-shaped stone, she’ll stop and look at it.

  The first thing a boy will do is hit it with a stick, or kick it really hard, just to see how far it’ll go.

  ‘Jackson, honey, it’s better not to do that,’ Mum said, as the three of us hurried along the windy country lane towards school. ‘You see, birds nest in there and you could disturb or hurt them.’

  She was saying that stuff because Jackson had just started idly thwacking the hedgerows with his rucksack.

  Luckily for Thing, it was in my bag, and not Jackson’s.

  (My cerise-pink holdall was shiny and clean, and only had a pencil case in it. Jackson’s rucksack was probably stuffed with smelly PE socks and a disintegrating sausage roll from last Tuesday.)

  ‘Oh! Sorry, Mrs Morgan,’ Jackson mumbled apologetically to my mum, going as red as the berries that appear on the thwacked hedgerows in the autumn.

  Jackson may be a boy, and a big baboon too, but he’s not mean. It’s just that until recently, he’d lived in a big, busy city, and still wasn’t used to freaky stuff like fresh air and nature.

  ‘No harm done!’ Mum said brightly. ‘So how are you two feeling about today?’

  EEK!!

  I was so stunned by Mum’s question that I nearly stopped putting one foot in front of the other.

  Jackson was spooked by what she’d said too – his face had switched from berry-red to huh?-grey in a nano-second.

  How could Mum know about Thing and our plan to smuggle it into school today?

  ‘The geography test?’ she said, spotting our panicked, puzzled faces. ‘Come on – it’s surely not going to be that bad, guys!’

  ‘Uh, um, uh, no! Yes, I mean!’ I bumbled, while Jackson let out a huge sigh.

  With my holdall up on my shoulder, I knew that Thing could only see forward, out of a five-centimetre gap where I hadn’t done the zip right up.

  But if it had been able to look left, it would have seen another frown on another forehead – Mum’s this time.

  ‘Should we hurry? Let’s hurry!’ I said quickly, before Mum started asking tricky questions, like why me and Jackson were acting so totally weird.

  Thankfully, we were coming up to the edge of town, and the school was directly across the road. Spotting the traffic pause at the zebra crossing, I hoicked my bag up higher and ran.

  ‘Wait up, Ruby!’ I heard Mum laugh, somewhere behind me. ‘It’s only ten to – the bell doesn’t go for another five minutes!’

  Urgh … five more minutes of hiding my secret from Mum.

  It was making me feel a bit ill, actually.

  Having Thing hidden at the bottom of the garden was risky enough. But knowing Mum and Thing were so close – only separated by a thin bit of dark pink vinyl – well, it was a hundred times riskier.

  ‘Are you all right, darling?’ said Mum, catching me up, just as we got to the school gate. ‘You’ve been acting a bit strange this morn— Oh! Ruby!! You’re not well!’

  What?

  Mum wasn’t looking at my face when she spoke, and neither was Jackson.

  They were both staring at the little trail of sick dribbling down the side of my bag, the side with the slightly open zip.

  Yuck!

  But oh dear …

  It wasn’t me who wasn’t well, but I knew I’d better start acting like it was.

  ’Cause if I told Mum that it was actually my pet troll/fairy/squirrel/thing that had been sick, she’d be sure as sure could be tha
t I was really, truly, seriously ill …

  I knew it was possible to get travel-sick in a car or a bus or a boat.

  I just didn’t realise you could get travelsick inside a cerise-pink holdall.

  ‘It very, very bumpy, Rubby,’ Thing said sorrowfully. ‘Very, very, very, very, very bumpy …’

  ‘Poor you!’ I murmured, dipping a tissue into the glass of water next to my bed and dabbing it on Thing’s face. ‘There … is that nice and cool?’

  Thing was flopped on top of my duvet like a half-filled hot-water bottle, its head resting on the pillow.

  My cat Christine was licking Thing’s tummy fur comfortingly.

  My holdall was dumped at the end of my bed, whiffing a bit.

  ‘Yes, nice and cool, please …’ Thing purred, all limp and feeble.

  ‘Well, once you feel better, I’ll open the window and you can escape down the wisteria.’

  Thing blinked at me for a second or two.

  Hadn’t it understood what I’d just said?

  Or was it just studying my nose?

  ‘What is meaning of whispery-ahh …, Rubby?’ it asked.

  (OK, so it hadn’t understood me.)

  ‘No, it’s not whispery-ahh … it’s wis-teri-a. It’s the big plant growing up the side of the house,’ I explained. ‘You called it tangle-vine once before.’

  ‘Ah, yes, please,’ Thing said with small nod. ‘So when my tummy not feeling spinny-spinny, I go climb down wistery-ahh …’

  ‘Um, yes. But just rest for now.’ I nodded too, quite proud of my Florence Nightingale skills.

  Not to mention my acting skills. Back at the school gates, I’d managed to convince Mum that I had come over all woozy.

  She’d taken one look at me, turned me right around, and marched me straight back home, which felt …