‘Rubby?’
‘Yes, Thing?’ I answered, gently stroking its quivery, squirrelly ears.
‘Why you have small furs up your nose?’
(OK, so it had been studying my nose just now.)
‘It’s not fur, it’s hair,’ I told it, as I got up off the bed and went to grab a book I’d just spotted on one of my shelves. ‘You’ve probably got them too.’
I wriggled the book free from a pile of other dusty-looking books and walked back to the bed. I was just in time to spot Thing pressing its own wet, black snout, piggy style.
‘No, thank you. All my fur on outside. What is book, Rubby?’
I flopped down next to Thing, and opened the first page of My First Day at School!
A picture book called My First Day at School! probably isn’t something you should still have when you are nine years old like me. The trouble is, I find it very hard to chuck useless things away. (Maybe that’s why I’m friends with Jackson – ha!)
This book was a good example. I might not have opened a page of it since I was three, but now it was going to come in handy as a way of teaching Thing all about school, without it ever having to step inside a classroom.
With our little and large heads touching, I began.
‘Right. Today I am going to give you a lesson ab—’
THUNK
Squeak!!
THUNK
‘Here we go, Ruby! I’ve made you some honey tea and a bit of toast,’ Mum chattered, juggling a tray as she wrestled with my door handle and breezed into my bedroom.
EEK!!
I sat bolt upright and wondered if I really was going to be sick.
Help – Mum was going to take one look at the slightly alien-looking woodland creature on my bed and freak!
It was bound to happen any second now …
‘I only put margarine on the toast because I thought peanut butter might be too rich for your funny tummy,’ Mum chattered on, putting the tray down on my bedside cabinet.
Any second now …
‘Phew! Something tells me that bag will need a good wash!’ Mum muttered, turning her attention to the holdall at the bottom of the bed. ‘How did you manage to be sick inside it, Ruby?!’
‘Uh, yes … no … I don’t know,’ I fumbled, only really hearing the thumpa-dumping of my heart and some insanely loud purring coming from Christine cat.
OK, any second now …
‘What? Oh, never mind. Ruby, try to drink some of your tea while it’s still nice and warm – oh!’
See? She’d finally spotted Thing, hadn’t she?!
Hadn’t she?
‘You know something? You’re really very pale, Ruby!’ Mum said with a frown that Thing would find most impressive.
Not that I was about to turn around and see if it was looking, of course.
I didn’t dare move, or think or hope – all I could do was stay statue-still, while Mum put a hand on my forehead and felt for a fever.
Phew; she thought I was ill, not just jellified with panic, right?
But that wouldn’t last.
Mum was so close to me, so close to the bed, that there was just no way she could miss Thing!
‘Hmm. You don’t feel that hot,’ Mum yakked away. ‘Tell you what, I’ll go and get the thermometer, just to be on the safe side. I think it’s in the First Aid box in the kitchen. Just you sip your tea while I go and look.’
And with that she wandered out of my room, taking my whiffy holdall with her.
Thud! Thud! Thud! went Mum’s feet on the stairs.
Huh? What? Where?! went my head as I spun around – and saw absolutely nothing on the bed except Christine cat!
‘Thing?’ I whispered, glancing around for it.
‘Mrrrr … yew!’
That noise; it sounded a bit like a faraway kitten in distress. It certainly hadn’t anything to do with Christine, ’cause she was all curled up in a purry circle, doing what she does best (sleeping).
‘Thing!’ I whispered again, even though I could hear Mum safely clattering cupboard doors in the kitchen down below. ‘Where are you?’
‘Help!’ came a voice so tiny it could have come from a visiting bed-bug.
‘Is that you?’ I said stupidly, trying to figure out the direction the voice was coming from.
‘Rubby, help!’ the tiny, muffled voice called out again. ‘Not – not breathe!’
It was then that I spotted a pair of triangular, fluffy red wings on Christine’s back.
Wait a minute; they weren’t wings … they were squirrelly ears, attached to something underneath her.
And those ears were twirling and twitching in a most peculiar way.
In class a while back, we learned about Morse code, where you wave in different ways and it means stuff. If I could read what those ears were trying to say now, I was pretty certain it would be, ‘SOS! I AM BEING ACCIDENTALLY SMOTHERED BY AN ELDERLY CAT!’
‘Thing – hold on!’ I gasped, scooping a startled Christine up from her comfy sleeping spot and plopping her further down the bed.
‘Peh!’ sneezed Thing, brushing cat hairs from its snout.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked it, helping it upright.
‘Yes, please,’ it spluttered. ‘I not know cat words so good. I say “too heavy, please”, but Chriss-cat not understanding …’
‘Mainly because she was too busy snoozing!’ I muttered, while tsk-ing at Christine.
‘Don’t be ARRGHH!, Rubby. Cat nice cat. Hide me good!’
‘Yeah, nearly hid you to death,’ I sighed. ‘But listen, I think we’d better get you out of here, ’cause Mum’ll be back in a second. Are you OK to climb down to the garden now?’
‘Yes, please,’ said Thing slightly woozily, as I carried it over to the window. ‘But Rubby, I still swish I got to be at school today! I sad. You sad, Rubby?’
‘Yes,’ I lied to be kind.
Nope, I’m glad, I said silently to myself, opening the window so Thing could scamper off down the whispery-ahh …
Listening as it plumpf-ed and ploomf-ed its way downwards, I thought of a swish of my own.
I swished I was sitting next to Jackson Miller right now.
’Cause after faking illness and having my head melt with stress, doing a lovely, boring geography test sounded much more fun …
It was a normal Wednesday lunchtime. Almost.
Here’s what was normal about it:
‘Could I just have the sweetcorn and cucumber, and no lettuce, please?’
(That was me. I’m not a big fan of lettuce.)
‘Absolutely not! Salad comes WITH lettuce! I expect you to eat it!!’
(That was Mrs Sweeney the dinner lady, who is not a big fan of children.)
Now I suppose I should tell you what wasn’t normal about this Wednesday lunchtime. There were two reasons it was odd:
‘Thank you,’ I mumbled quickly, taking my jacket potato and unwanted lettuce and hurrying away from Mrs Sweeney’s gaze before she spotted the weirdness going on in the region of my chest.
‘Oi!’
Uh-oh – that was Mrs Sweeney, and she seemed to be ‘oi’ing at me.
‘Yes?’ I said, turning back around, and holding my tray up to hide the faint rummaging I could feel going on.
‘No coats and jackets in the dinner hall! It’s against the rules! Get it off!! NOW!!’ she barked, waving salad tongs at me menacingly.
‘Oh, it’s not a coat or a jacket! It’s a fleece!’ I gabbled, hurrying away from Mrs Sweeney and her growls and glares.
My teacher Miss Wilson had been a bit confused by my fleece this morning.
But when I explained that I was still feeling a little shivery after my ‘illness’ the day before she’d said, ‘Well, OK, then, fine,’ in that way teachers do when they don’t quite believe you but can’t prove you’re fibbing.
‘Ruby!’
Ah, there was Jackson – he’d grabbed the small table that no one ever likes to sit at, because it’s right n
ext to the boys’ toilet. Perfect.
‘The cook and the other dinner ladies are all right,’ Jackson said, nodding back towards the serving counter as I sat down next to him. ‘But Mrs Sweeney is such a total grouch, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, please,’ agreed my chest.
OK, it was Thing, who was nestled in the deep, inside left pocket of my overly cosy fleece.
It was lucky that me and Jackson (and Thing) were at a table on our own, and that I’d chosen the seat facing the wall. ’Cause if we’d been sharing one of the normal, bigger, busier tables, other kids might have heard Thing’s purry voice or seen that my zip was on its way down again, as if by magic.
‘Thing!’ I hissed. ‘What are you doing? Do you want to get caught?!’
‘I just very, very hot in here, Rubby,’ it whispered back. ‘Very, very, very, very, very hot!’
‘Tell me about it!’ I whinged, pulling at the zip a bit myself and fanning a serviette in the direction of Thing.
‘Don’t get grumpy just ’cause of meanie Sweeney!’ Jackson joked, pulling a stupid face that I think was meant to look like the dinner lady.
I’d have laughed, only I was grumpy with him too.
‘I shouldn’t have let you two persuade me to do this!’ I said in a snippy voice, at the same time slipping my glass of water inside my fleece.
Thing gazed up at me as it scrabbled for the straw.
‘But I been good, Rubby! So quiet! Just listeninging!’
‘Shush!’ I told it.
It didn’t matter that this morning had gone well.
It didn’t matter that Thing had huddled patiently in the depths of the hideaway pocket all through literacy and numeracy and break time and history.
What mattered was that I’d taken an awful risk bringing Thing here, and all because of a homemade sickbag.
‘Aww! Look what it made!’ Jackson had cooed this morning, pointing to Thing and the fabric conditioner bottle top it was clutching.
‘Maybe I hold this on way to school, so I not make a mess again, Rubby?’ it had purred hopefully.
Big softie that I am, I instantly melted. I even came up with the idea of Thing travelling inside my fleece, which I figured wouldn’t be so bouncy and spinny-spinny as my holdall.
So maybe the person I should be most grumpy with was me …
‘Hey, what’s been your favourite thing about school so far?’ I heard Jackson saying, and immediately got extra grumpy with him.
‘Jackson! What will people think?! It looks like you’re talking to my polo shirt!!’ I told him off, feeling my cheeks go pink.
‘OK! OK!’ sighed Jackson. ‘Chill out! I’m just asking Thing a simple question!’
‘I like flushy-flush box,’ came a mutter from deep inside my fleece.
I knew Thing was talking about our visit to the girls’ toilets at break time.
But as far as I was concerned, it wasn’t the time or place to chat about the wonders of weeing, even if the cubicle and the flushing toilet in it was as exciting for Thing as fireworks night and a rollercoaster rolled into one.
‘Well, save your questions for home-time!’ I told Jackson, knowing that I sounded like Miss Wilson again. ‘’Cause we can’t take any chances! We can’t let anyone find out about Thing!’
‘Honestly, Rubby! You worry too much!’ Jackson grinned at me annoyingly. ‘Hiding Thing has worked fine. What could go wrong?’
Well, we might have got away with Project Stowaway so far, but I worried that Jackson saying ‘What could go wrong?’ would put an instant jinx on us.
And sure enough, at just after three o’clock that afternoon, something went very, very, very, very, very wrong indeed.
Jinx!
The time: 2.59 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon (i.e. one minute till all the wrong-ness started).
‘Dear me, Ruby!’ Miss Wilson gasped. ‘Your cheeks are like two tomatoes, they’re so red!’
My cheeks actually felt like two tomatoes that were on fire.
In fact, my whole body felt like a radiator that had been turned up full blast.
I remember a newsreader once talking about holidaymakers in Spain or Greece or somewhere collapsing ’cause of a heatwave. I felt like I was about to pass out through heat exhaustion in the third row of the ICT room.
‘Ruby, you’ve had that fleece on all day,’ said Miss Wilson. ‘But you can’t possibly need it on now – not with the hot air these computers generate! Please take it off …’
‘Yes, Miss Wilson,’ I muttered weakly, glad to finally escape from what was beginning to feel like a zip-up duvet.
There was only about quarter of an hour to go before the end-of-day bell, and Thing would be safe enough dangling from the back of my chair for a few (deliciously cool) minutes.
Like Jackson said, what could possibly go wrong …?
Miss Wilson watched, puzzled, as I wriggled out of my sleeves in slow motion, and hung the fleecy evvvvvver-sooooo-gennnnntly on the back of my chair.
‘You can have a drink, if you’d like,’ she said, pointing to the bulge on the drooping left-hand side of the fleece.
She’d noticed the Thing-shaped lump for the first time after lunch (I’d forgotten to keep my arms across my chest to cover it up). When she asked me what was in there, Jackson had a brainwave and shouted ‘A WATER BOTTLE!’, which was pretty quick thinking, even if it was a bit loud.
‘In a little while,’ I replied, hoping Miss Wilson didn’t insist.
I know Thing could be mistaken for a comfy cat cushion, but I didn’t suppose anyone would believe it was a novelty water bottle. They don’t often come with fur. Or eyes. Or twitchy, squirrelly ears.
‘It’ll be OK,’ Jackson leant over and muttered to me now, which made me want to punch the big baboon in the arm.
That’s ’cause he was pointing at the Thing-shaped lump as he spoke.How much of a giveaway was that?!?
‘Quiet, everyone!’ Miss Wilson said to, well, everyone, even though she was particularly looking at Jackson. ‘I want your projects finished by the end of the lesson. So let’s have ABSOLUTE silence and your best concentration, please!’
Doing as I was told, I stared at my computer screen and carried on with the coastal erosion diagrams we were all supposed to be designing for our geography project.
Actually, I got quite into it. All that coastal erosion was very soothing. For the first time all day, it was as if I’d finally forgotten to be nervous or scared or stressed about the stowaway in my fleece.
That feeling lasted for … oooh, about three whole minutes, till the funny snoring started.
Somebody somewhere in the ICT room sniggered. Which was followed by a few titters, and a smattering of giggles.
I flipped my head round to face Jackson, and Jackson flipped his head around to face me.
Then we both dropped our gaze down towards the gently vibrating fleece on the back of my chair.
‘Who is making that silly noise?’ Miss Wilson suddenly announced.
EEK!!
What were we going to do?
Luckily, Jackson had a plan.
Unluckily, it was going to make our teacher pretty angry with him.
‘It was me, Miss Wilson!’ my dumb but brave friend announced, shooting his hand straight up.
‘Well, Jackson, I know you like to play the clown, but—’
Straightaway, I saw that this was my chance to smuggle the real snorer out.
‘Er, Miss Wilson!’ I interrupted, jumping up from my seat and grabbing my heavy fleece. ‘I feel like I might be sick again … can I be excused, please?’
Miss Wilson waved me away, before turning back to Jackson with a face as grumpy as a wasp in a jar.
‘Peh! Oof! Eeep!’ came several tiny muffled noises as I bundled the fleece in my arms and bolted for the girls’ loos.
Once I was safely locked in a cubicle and sitting on the closed lid of the toilet seat, I loosened my grip, and unrolled a fuzzily crumpled Thing out on to my lap.
‘Rubby!?’ it squeaked. ‘We in flushy-flush box! Why is here?’
‘You fell asleep in the last lesson, and started snoring,’ I told it. ‘I had to get you out of class quick!’
Thing’s humongous eyes widened.
‘Peh! I hear teacher yak-yakking at you, Rubby,’ Thing bumbled. ‘But then room very, very hot. I very, very, very, very, very tired and—’
‘Look, I understand why you fell asleep, Thing. But you’ve got Jackson into a lot of trouble! He took the blame when you started snoring, and Miss Wilson has probably sent him to the Head’s office!!’
Thing sat hunched apologetically on my knees, blinking madly.
‘Is that a kind of wood, Rubby?’
‘No! The Head’s office is not a kind of wood, Thing!’ I snapped. ‘The Head Teacher is the most important person in the school. And I bet he’s shouting at poor Jackson right now!’
Thing’s eyes grew even wider, even though I didn’t think that was physically possible.
‘But Rubby … boy my friend!’ Thing purred, anxiously rocking from side to side. ‘I bad thing. I very, very bad thing. I very, very, very, very, very bad thing!’
It was on the fourth or fifth ‘very’ that I felt a familiar tremble.
Uh-oh.
A tremble happened whenever Thing was feeling angry or upset or generally ARRGHH!
And once Thing felt ARRGHH! strange stuff always happened.
Strange magical stuff.
(Magical stuff that is a bit strange, actually.)
‘Hey, you know something? Now I think about it, I’m sure Jackson will be fine!’ I said hurriedly, wishing I hadn’t made it all sound so terrible and important.
But Thing kept right on trembling. I crossed my fingers and made a quick swish that it would stop.
‘Honestly! I mean, I bet you he hasn’t been sent to the Head after all!’ I babbled on. ‘I bet Miss Wilson thought the snoring was really cute and funny, and the whole class is laughing about it!’
The Dreaded Noodle-Doodles Page 2
