“I’m here, right in front of you. I need your help. Please come and set me free… I’m begging you!”
Oksa was hurrying back to the courtyard, her shirt still damp, when the wail of a foghorn caught her attention.
“Hey, that sounds like Gus’s mobile!”
The ringtone grew louder as she walked past the first-floor lab, then cut out. Oksa stopped and listened for a few seconds. With a smile, she heard what she’d been expecting to hear: Darth Vader’s rasping voice telling Gus that someone had just left a message. It was Gus’s phone. She immediately pushed open the lab door and walked in.
“Gus! Are you in here?”
No answer. Oksa glanced around and looked under the desks. Her friend didn’t usually play tricks like this, but you never knew what he might get up to. Suddenly she spotted his mobile on the floor.
“What’s his phone doing there?” she muttered with a frown.
She picked it up and looked around again with a puzzled expression, then walked out of the room and went to join the others.
“You haven’t seen Gus, have you?”
Zoe looked up, an expression of concern on her pretty face. Oksa kicked herself for worrying her friend for no reason and hurriedly continued:
“What an Incompetent he is. Look, he’s lost his mobile!”
Grabbing Zoe’s hand, she dragged her after her as spontaneously as ever.
“Come on, he must be hiding around here somewhere. Let’s go and track him down.”
Since Zoe had been living with the Pollocks, Oksa had discovered how nice it was to be friends with another girl. Real friends. The pity she’d felt for Zoe at first—aroused by the girl’s unhappy past—had been replaced by a sincere, mutual affection that had taken them both by surprise. Now they were firm friends, united by a huge secret.
“Just wait till he dares to show his face again…” grumbled Oksa.
After half an hour spent searching fruitlessly for him, the two girls were back where they’d started and they were both feeling more concerned than they cared to admit. It was getting late and the students were beginning to file out of the school.
“You’d better phone home,” suggested Zoe, her forehead creased in an anxious frown, which only made Oksa feel more unsettled.
By the time Pierre Bellanger and Pavel Pollock had arrived in the courtyard, the girls were beside themselves with worry. They had spent nearly an hour searching the school from top to bottom again with mounting desperation.
“He isn’t at Bigtoe Square, or at home,” declared Pierre, sliding shut his mobile.
The caretaker locked St Proximus’s heavy gates and they had to face facts: Gus was nowhere to be found. Oksa and Zoe gazed at each other, eyes brimming with tears. The peace and quiet of the last few months had obviously just been a brief respite.
The Runaways were in shock. Brune and Naftali Knut, the imposing Swedish couple, and Dragomira’s brother, Leomido, had rushed over to the Pollocks’ house in a show of solidarity. Night had fallen long ago, doing nothing to lighten the heavy mood. Pierre, his face furrowed with worry, had his arms around his wife, Jeanne, who couldn’t stop crying. Dragomira walked over and gave them a hug, but couldn’t think of anything comforting to say. Standing behind Marie’s wheelchair, his eyes fixed on Oksa, Pavel felt paralysed by a creeping sense of anxiety.
“Perhaps we should inform the police?” suggested Oksa hoarsely.
“We can’t do that, Oksa” replied Abakum, the protector of the Runaways. “Anyway, we all know they’d just say he’s run away.”
“Gus wouldn’t run away from anything. He’s been kidnapped!” cried Jeanne, frantic with worry.
“But by whom?” they all wondered, though no one dared to voice their thoughts. Only Oksa plucked up enough courage to say what they were all thinking:
“You don’t think it could be a Felon, do you? Orthon McGraw can’t have been the only one to have got out of Edefia; who’s to say there weren’t others?”
They looked at her with some degree of gratitude. This was the best-case scenario for all of them. It would mean that Gus was going to be used as a bargaining counter by the mystery kidnapper and wouldn’t be harmed while negotiations were under way. But what if the kidnapper wasn’t a Felon? It didn’t bear thinking about.
They sat there all night constructing theories and possibilities, mobiles in hand and eyes glued to the front door. Around five o’clock in the morning, slumped on a sofa next to Zoe, who was just as despondent as she’d been the night before, Oksa suddenly discovered what was to be their first lead. She’d kept Gus’s phone and was listening for the umpteenth time to the last message that had activated the voicemail alert she’d heard. It was from Jeanne. “Gus, I haven’t been able to get hold of you. Your dad will pick you up in an hour. See you soon!” Amazed that she hadn’t thought of it before, Oksa carefully examined everything her friend might have recorded. There wasn’t anything much of interest in his messages, but there was something weird in the phone’s photo gallery: just before his mother had called—the clock on the phone confirmed it—Gus had taken an odd picture.
“Look!”
Oksa showed them the thumbnail on the screen of the mobile.
“What on earth is that?”
Pavel immediately switched on his computer to enlarge the photo and everyone crowded round to take a look. As soon as the picture appeared, Zoe cried out:
“That’s my gran, Reminiscens!”
“Are you sure?” exclaimed Dragomira.
“Of course I am!”
They all stared at the screen: the picture showed the upper half of a woman who looked around seventy. She was staring straight ahead, her pale blue eyes wide with despair and fear. She was slim, dressed in dark colours and her drawn face aroused compassion.
“That’s my gran…” repeated Zoe, her voice hoarse with tiredness and emotion.
Dragomira and Abakum exchanged surprised looks. Suddenly, a spark of understanding caused them to break their silence and, still gazing at each other, they chorused:
“Impicturement!”
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Translation © XO Editions / Sue Rose 2013
Oksa Pollock: The Last Hope first published in French as Oksa Pollock: l’inespérée by XO Editions in 2010
Original text © XO Editions, 2010.
All Rights Reserved.
Published by Pushkin Children’s Books in 2013
ISBN 978 1 78269 039 9
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