The Great Expanding Guinea Pig & Beware of the Snowblobs!

by Karen McCombie

  ‘Oh! All right, dear!’ I heard Jackson’s nan’s voice trail after me. ‘But did you realise you had your top on back-to-front?’

  ‘Ilikeitthatway!’ I lied fast, and hurried off into my house.

  Despite my heart thud-a-dudding, I realised I knew two important facts about Jackson’s nan …

  BING-BONG! went the doorbell.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ I shouted.

  Well, Mum couldn’t go, since she was in the bath.

  And Dad was busy drying the Sunday breakfast dishes. (I’d already washed them.)

  I didn’t want to stop Dad doing his chores, since he’d promised that we’d go sledging together as soon as he was finished.

  ‘Oh, hi!’ I said, finding Jackson on my doorstep – with Frodo.

  Forgetting for a second about Jackson’s mean words (and meaner smirk), I felt pleased to see him. Frodo too.

  I leaned forward and stroked his head.

  Frodo’s, I mean, not Jackson’s.

  Even if I’d wanted to stroke Jackson’s head (ha!), I wouldn’t have been able to, since he was wearing that ‘pirate’ hat.

  I couldn’t help staring at it and grinning.

  ‘Don’t laugh,’ he groaned, yanking it off and setting free his blond, spiky hair. ‘My nan made it for me.’

  ‘I know,’ I giggled, as he stuffed the smiling skull in his jacket pocket. ‘She told me yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s why I’m here,’ said Jackson, all of a sudden serious.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, feeling a bit anxious.

  ‘How could you be so dumb, Ruby?’ he accused me. ‘Nan said she saw you with a “ginger kitten” in your room. She said it in front of Mum and Dad, who know you don’t have a kitten. Guess what I had to do? I had to tell them later that I thought Nan was getting a little loopy, and that she must’ve imagined it. That made me feel really bad. But I had to cover up for you, since you were stupid enough to play with Thing in your room where anyone could spot you!’

  Wow.

  That was a rant. A rant that was completely unfair.

  I mean, yesterday morning I’d heard Jackson say, ‘C’mon let’s go to the park!’ to his cousins. So how was I to know it would take them ages to actually leave? And that his nan would come upstairs ten minutes later, noodling around for cosy jumpers?

  Anyway, out of the two of us, who was more guilty of nearly letting Thing be discovered? Loads of times? Jackson ‘It’ll be all right!’ Miller, that’s wh—

  ‘OI! PEANUT!! MOVE IT!’ I heard a horrible cousin yell, and Jackson tugged at Frodo and sloped off without a backward glance.

  Jackson, I mean. Frodo was staring back at me, wondering why I wasn’t coming to play.

  Grrr.

  That was me growling, not Frodo.

  So Jackson thought I couldn’t look after Thing, did he?

  Well, we’d see about that!

  I slammed the door shut and stomped off indoors, fizzing with fury.

  Actually, can I tell you something?

  Making a plan when you are fizzing with fury is NOT a great idea.

  As I was about to find out, in about, ooh, twenty minutes’ time …

  ‘Where’s your husky, Ruby?’ asked Dad.

  I narrowed my eyes at him as we walked through the park gates.

  He was teasing me for sure, but I didn’t know why.

  ‘We’re only going for a sledge in Victoria Park, you know,’ said Dad with a grin. ‘Not a three-month trek to the Arctic!’

  OK, so he was joking about what I was wearing.

  I don’t mean my wellies or cosy coat or woolly hat and gloves; it was my scarf, wasn’t it?

  It was a bit big.

  It was Mum’s, actually.

  It was one of those large, thin cotton scarves grown-up ladies like to wear, looped round and round their necks. The sort that are so humungous that they’d practically be the size of bed sheets if you unscrunched them and smoothed them all the way out.

  Here’s the thing about Mum’s scarf; once I’d wound it round myself a few times, it made a perfect little hammock of material at my chest.

  And guess who was cuddled up in that hammock?

  Guess who was peering out through the fine, patterned cotton, getting quite a good – if blurry – view of the outside world, while no one could see it?

  ‘It’s very fashionable!’ I told Dad, then giggled.

  Now it was Dad’s turn to frown at me.

  He was wondering what the snigger was for, but I could hardly tell him that Thing had just squiggled about trying to get comfy. (All that squiggling with little claws was pretty tickly.)

  ‘I’m just excited,’ I fibbed, as we padded through the snow.

  In front of us was a trail of people, either coming or going to the slope in the middle of the park.

  You couldn’t see the slope from here; it was just beyond the café and the ridge of trees.

  But listen; the excited roars and waaah!s and wheee!s of sledgers drifted towards us.

  I couldn’t wait to join them!

  Me and Dad would find a spot as far away from Jackson and his cousins as possible, and we’d hurtle downhill till we were all hurtled out.

  Thing was going to have the best (secret) time ever, and tomorrow morning at school, I would shock Jackson by telling him that Thing had been with me the whole time at the park.

  He would be amazed, and probably slightly jealous of us having fun without him.

  Which would serve him right since he hadn’t been very nice to me since his horrible cousins had arrived …

  ‘Yoo-hoo!’ came a sudden call.

  We turned and saw that it was Jackson’s nan doing the yoo-hooing. She and Mr and Mrs Miller were sitting at an outdoor table by the café, hugging hot chocolates.

  ‘Hello!’ said Dad, steering me and the sledge over in their direction.

  Within about a nanosecond, the adults were all chit-chattering away together, in the way adults do. The way that is really, irritating for their children, who have to hover politely and not moan, not even a little bit.

  Jackson’s nan seemed to spot my ‘oh-no-they’re-going-on-and-on-and-on’ bored shuffle.

  ‘Why don’t you go and get sledging, Ruby?’ she suggested. ‘Jackson and the boys are already there.’

  ‘Yeah, Ruby?’ said Dad. ‘You want to do that, and I’ll catch you up in a couple of minutes?’

  ‘OK,’ I replied, glad to get away, even though I had no intention of looking for ‘Peanut’ and his mates.

  Dragging my red sledge along the path of to-ing and fro-ing footprints, I put one hand to my chest so Thing wouldn’t jiggle about too much.

  ‘Here we are!’ I mumbled to the bump in my scarf, as we cleared the ridge of trees and found ourselves at the top of the swoosh-tastic slope.

  Beside us were rows of kids and parents, lining up to take their turn zooming and shrieking.

  I scanned the place, on the lookout for Jackson, but it was too crowded to make him or his cousins out. (Good.)

  ‘Ready?’ I whispered, as I got myself settled in the sledge, about to push off.

  ‘I ready, Rubby!’ Thing purred softly back.

  ‘Here we gooooOOOOOOOO!!!!’ I yelped as we whizzed off at top speed.

  ‘Wheeeeeeeeee!’ came a weedy, high-pitched yelp from my scarf.

  ‘WHEEEEEEEEE!’ I yelped louder, just to cover it up.

  ‘BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK! BARK!’ woofed a blur of black and white, suddenly running alongside us.

  It was Frodo!

  Which meant Jackson had to be somewhere close by.

  As we slithered to a stop at the bottom of the slope, the dopey dog leaped on to the sledge and practically burrowed his nose in my scarf.

  Yikes – it could smell Thing!

  ‘Calm down!’ I told Frodo, as I scrabbled to my feet and pushed him off my chest.

  ‘BARK! BARK!’ barked Frodo, jumping right back up again.

  But suddenly
he flopped to his feet, tilting his furry head and cocking a fluffy ear.

  He was listening to a panting sound.

  A panting sound that was coming from the hammock on my chest.

  ‘What did you just say to Frodo?’ I mumbled to the scarf, checking noone was within hearing distance.

  ‘I say “Be nice, not jump, not scare girl”,’ purred Thing.

  ‘But I’m not scared for myself, Thing,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m scared for you, in case Frodo yanked the scarf and you tumbled out. We can’t risk you getting discovered!’

  ‘Yes, please, Rubby,’ Thing replied from deep inside the bundle of material. ‘But Dog not understandinging all that blah, blah, blah. Dog my friend, but tiny bit stupid.’

  Fair enough.

  I felt the same way about Jackson.

  And spook!

  Here was a coincidence; I was just thinking about my so-called friend, when a big baboon in a baby blue, smiley pirate hat lurched up in front of me.

  ‘Ruby!’ Jackson said with a friendly grin. ‘You’re here!’

  Wait a minute.

  When I saw him earlier, he was horribly cross with me.

  Yesterday, he was saying really mean things about me to his cousins.

  On Friday he sounded completely bored when he was introducing me to them.

  It was hard enough to be friends with the normal, nice-but-dim version of Jackson.

  All these different versions of him were making me very confused. More confused than the time I tried to explain how voices came out of mobiles to Thing. (‘Very little peoples stuck in phonie, Rubby?’)

  ‘Look,’ said Jackson, shuffling and sounding embarrassed. ‘I’m sorry if—’

  I didn’t get to hear the rest of his apology.

  It was drowned out by a shout.

  ‘Whooo-OOOO-oooo! PEANUT’S TALKING TO HIS GIRLFRIEND!’

  Jackson’s head dropped to his chest.

  ‘I keep telling them you’re not my girlfriend!’ he said wearily.

  I glanced over his shoulder at Luke and Matt, who were over by the closed-for-winter ice-cream booth, grinning in a non-friendly way.

  ‘PEANUT’S IN LOVE! AW!!’ yelled Matt.

  ‘Why do they call you that name?’ I asked Jackson, anger burbling in my chest. (And a scrabbling too – Thing could feel my heart pounding, for sure.)

  ‘When I was about five, they held me down and stuck a peanut up my nose,’ said Jackson, his head still hanging. ‘It was jammed up there till my auntie made me sniff enough pepper to sneeze it out …’

  All of a sudden, I realised something.

  Something that explained Jackson’s not-so-nice behaviour.

  My friend had been acting all kinds of strange with me because he was ever so slightly scared of his bossy, horrid cousins.

  They were nothing but bullies!

  Without knowing what I was about to say or do I started marching towards Luke and Matt, with Frodo barking at my side.

  ‘LOOK OUT! WEIRD GIRL COMING OUR WAY!!’ cackled Luke.

  ‘RETREAT!’ shouted Matt, disappearing around the side of the ice-cream booth.

  ‘What happening, Rubby?’ purred Thing. ‘Your chest go BUH-doom, BUH-doom!’

  ‘I’ve just got to tell some stupid boys to keep their stupid mouths shut!’ I muttered darkly, as I stomped closer to the wooden building.

  ‘Ruby? Ruby, don’t!’ came Jackson’s voice, trailing somewhere behind me.

  But a big red storm of was whirling in my head and my ears, and I didn’t pay any attention to my friend’s warning.

  Instead, I found myself on the far side of the ice-cream booth and saw Luke and Matt standing in front of a giant mega-snowman that must’ve been at least two metres high.

  ‘EEEEK!’ came a high-pitched squeak from my chest.

  ‘SCARED?’ laughed Matt, assuming I’d made that noise, and not the Thing hiding in my scarf hammock. ‘WELL, YOU SHOULD BE! HA HA HA!!’

  Thud!

  Thwack!

  Doof!

  I was hit by a splatter of snowballs, all of them hard – and they kept coming. The boys must’ve made a mountain of them.

  ‘Ouch!’ squeaked my chest, as it took a direct hit.

  Help! The icy missiles were coming so fast and furious that all I could do was fall on my knees and curl up in a ball to protect myself and Thing.

  ‘Not like giant snow peoples, Rubby! It scary!’ Thing squeaked in a panic, as we huddled nose to nose. ‘And not like snowblobs! They very cold and hurty!’

  ‘It’ll be OK,’ I whispered reassuringly, as thumps thudded, thwacked and doofed on my back.

  But it wasn’t about to be OK any time soon, even though I could hear Jackson calling for his cousins to stop, over the top of Frodo’s frantic barking.

  The reason I was so sure was because my chest had begun to vibrate.

  Thing was trembling.

  Uh-oh …

  A sparkle lit up the cramped hollow of my chest and arms.

  Yep, the seriously spectacular weirdness was starting.

  ‘Thing!’ I whispered. ‘Please don’t!’

  It was too late. Sparkles twinkled and danced in front of my face, so bright I had to squeeze my eyes tight shut.

  The sound of Thing’s rubbish magic was filling my ears and there was nothing I could do to stop it.

  ‘WHAT – WHAT’S HAPPENING?’ I vaguely heard a panicked shout from one of Jackson’s cousins.

  I bet flickers of light were spilling all round me, as if I’d set off a sparkler, and that sparkler had gone cartwheeling off, bouncing around on the snowy ground and into the freezing air.

  Then, just as soon as this amazing mini fireworks show started, it stopped.

  Slowly, I unfurled myself, and found Jackson beside me, helping me up.

  ‘You brought Thing here?’ he whispered.

  ‘Mmm. Who saw?’ I muttered back.

  ‘Cos of the ice-cream booth, the magic was hidden from everyone up on the slopes,’ Jackson pointed out. ‘No one saw it except those two …’

  Those two were Luke and Matt, of course.

  Both boys stood gawping at their giant mega-snowman, which was looking a lot different all of a sudden.

  ‘HOW …?’ Matt gasped, his eyes fixed on a neat mound of snowballs where the snowman had stood seconds before.

  ‘Well done, Thing!’ I muttered into my chest, patting at the fabric.

  But,

  There was nothing there to pat!!

  The scarf … it was empty.

  I gazed up at Jackson, who understood straight away.

  He twisted and turned, looking this way and that.

  ‘Frodo!’ he said suddenly, pointing off towards a black and white and blur, which was disappearing into the trees, a lead trailing behind it.

  The blur – it wasn’t totally black and white. There was a splodge of ginger in there too!

  Together, we began to run.

  Except those shrieks; they made us both hesitate and glance behind us.

  ‘OW! OW! AH!!’

  ‘NO! HELP! OUCH!!’

  Unmaking the snowman wasn’t the whole of Thing’s magic.

  The neat mound of snowballs; they’d risen up and were now whirling in the air, then went thundering down on Jackson’s cousins.

  ‘AH! OW! OOF!’ they both yelped.

  Jackson turned to me.

  We just had time for a quick smile and a high-five before we hurried after our runaway dog and Thing …

  ‘Looking for this fella?’ Dad called out, as me and Jackson sprinted breathlessly towards the café and the exit to the park.

  Dad was standing right where I’d left him, beside the table where Jackson’s mum, dad and nan were still hugging their mostly finished hot chocolates.

  By his feet was a panting Frodo, in his hand Frodo’s lead.

  ‘I think he, er, got spooked by something and took off!’ Jackson explained quickly.

  Meanwhile, I dropped to my knees, whi
spering, ‘Good dog!’ to Frodo, but wishing he could tell me more about his brave rescue operation. Like where exactly Thing was right now.

  ‘Frodo popped up from under the table!’ Jackson’s mum said chattily.

  ‘Probably sniffing about for food!’ Jackson’s dad chipped in, pointing to crumbs of muffin on a plate in front of him.

  The table …

  I dipped my head down a little – and saw a flash of red fur!

  There was Thing, clinging to a supporting metal bar underneath the tabletop. It looked exactly like a small, worried sloth.

  If its huge moon eyes could talk, they’d be saying ‘Help! Help! Help!’ for sure.

  ‘I’m a bit hot now after all that running,’ I muttered to no one in particular, unwrapping my scarf and casually chucking it down on the ground.

  But no one in particular was listening to me anyway; they were all calling out to Luke and Matt, laughing at just how snow-splattered they were.

  ‘Yoo hoo!’ trilled their nan. ‘You two look like you’ve been having a good time!’

  Unseen by anyone but me and a sniffy Frodo, Thing scuttled down from its perch and disappeared under the folds of the fabric.

  ‘What’s up, boys? You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’ laughed Mrs Miller as her two nephews ran ashen-faced – as well as snow-splattered – towards us.

  I quickly gathered up the scarf (and its occupant) and cuddled it in my arms.

  ‘WE GOT HIT BY ALL THESE SNOWBALLS!’ babbled Luke.

  ‘Sounds like fun!’ said Mr Miller.

  ‘IT WASN’T – NO ONE WAS THROWING THEM!’ Matt added.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ my dad joined in with their ‘joke’.

  ‘NO, HONEST! OUR SNOWMAN TURNED INTO A PILE OF SNOWBALLS!’ said Luke. ‘AND THERE WAS A SORT OF TORNADO AND THEY FLEW AT US!’

  ‘Wow, really?’ Mr Miller laughed. ‘I’d love to have seen that!’

  ‘IT WAS HER FAULT!’ Matt announced, pointing at me. ‘IT ALL HAPPENED WHEN SHE TURNED UP! IT’S LIKE SHE’S A WITCH OR SOMETHING!’

  ‘Now, boys, you’re getting a little bit silly,’ said their nan, her indulgent smile slipping a bit.