Spyforce Revealed

by Deborah Abela

  ‘Now where were we?’ he asked the kids standing near him who were happy to be entertained during something that was usually really boring. ‘I know, I was just about to read something from Max’s secret spy book.’

  Max cringed as she lay in the mud. A wall of legs and feet gathered closely around so that none of the teachers could see her, penning her in and making it impossible for her to get up.

  Toby began to read like he was a narrator at a very bad and overacted school play.

  The rope dug into Max’s and Linden’s wrists as they were tied to the suspension bridge high above the vat of slimy, green jelly. The evil Mr Blue’s laughter rang out around the chrome-grey room as he told them of their fate. A slow, sticky doom awaited them and if they didn’t give him the secret code to the Time and Space Machine, they would find themselves on the night’s menu as dessert. Would this be the end of Max Remy, Superspy? Would Spyforce, the secret spy organisation she worked for, be able to save her? Would she be able to thwart the sinister plans of the evil Mr Blue? Would the world be forever doomed to live without her?

  ‘Oh no!’ Toby stopped reading from the book and looked around him, getting more melodramatic by the second. ‘This is terrible! What are we going to do? The world won’t cope without Max Remy …’ and the next part he said like he was enjoying every syllable, ‘Su-per-spy.’

  Never before in her life had Max so badly wanted to disappear. She wished now she had her uncle’s Matter Transporter control panel, so she could zap herself as far away as possible from the crush of faces leaning in and laughing. Some of the kids were laughing so hard they were crying. Others had to hold their stomachs from laughing so much.

  ‘I hope lying in the mud wasn’t your secret weapon for outwitting the evil Mr Blue?’ asked Toby like nothing was ever going to shut him up. ‘Because I can give you a hint, it’s not going to work.’

  He relished the laughter that swirled around them like a whirlpool and made him feel as though he was leader of the world. He got ready to read another piece. Max watched him turn the pages and knew she had to get the book off him fast. She lunged forward from where she lay and grabbed the book at the top and bottom. Toby held onto the sides and pulled it back towards him. Max wasn’t going to let go until she had her book back and was surprised at how strong her anger made her feel.

  ‘Give it back!’ Her teeth were clenched as she pulled the book towards her.

  ‘No! Not until I’ve read out a bit more of your amazing spy adventures,’ he wheezed as he tugged the book against his chest.

  That was when Max found herself doing something she’d never done before. She hadn’t even had time to think about it before she realised she was surrounded by excited faces screaming, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’

  Mr Fayoud pushed his way through the students and pulled Max off Toby.

  ‘And just what is it you think you’re doing?’ he shouted. His face was twisted into a purplish mix of anger and shock.

  Max looked at Mr Fayoud’s oversized face leaning into her and knew she had no explanation. She rubbed her hands together which seconds before had been around Toby’s neck. This time she was in for it. She was never going to be able to explain what she’d done. She could hardly explain it to herself.

  Toby ran his hands over the deep red marks on his neck.

  ‘I don’t know what I did, sir,’ he said, putting on his best pathetic act. ‘One minute I was standing here obeying the fire drill, the next she tried to strangle me.’

  Max’s mouth fell open. She looked at Toby and then down at her book. The cover had been torn off in the fight and was lying in the mud.

  ‘You two can both go to Ms Peasley’s office. I’m sure she’ll have a few things to say to the pair of you about bullying and violence. As for the rest of you, the fire drill is over. Form two lines and follow your fire warden back to your classes.’

  There was a general moan of disappointment as everyone realised this was probably as exciting as the day was going to get. Mr Fayoud walked behind Max and Toby as they made their way to Ms Peasley’s office. That was never a great experience, mostly due to the floral wall hangings she painted herself out of a cheap monthly magazine. The place was full of them and other puke-inducing stuff like embroidered signs that said, ‘A school that learns together loves together’, and cushions on an old lounge that were shaped as love hearts. The entire place should have been condemned as a health risk for having so much phoney love it could choke someone.

  Either way, being marched to the principal’s office was never a good thing no matter how much stuff it had in it. Max held her breath and prepared herself for the worst.

  Alex Crane took a deep breath as she faced one of the most fearsome monsters of her life. It writhed before her like a hungry ogre, ready to feast on anything in its sight. Only this was no ordinary, foul-smelling ogre but the two-headed perfumed princess of the fabled land of Taraxakum, which, like Atlantis, was believed to be completely mythical. That is until Spyforce uncovered a time slip that had for centuries kept Taraxakum hidden from the world and which the fragrant princess was using to steal precious energy reserves to power her overly aromatic land.

  Taraxakum was once a prosperous land but when the princess ascended to the throne after her father had been eaten by a freakishly big fly, she declared that all the land’s energy be employed in the making of perfumes that would be sprayed across the land in a constant sprinkle of delicate rain. Even the simplest of Taraxakumanians could see that the princess was missing a couple of floors in the brain department, but as she was the ruler, her orders were to be obeyed. This soon resulted in the running down of the economy and an extraordinary oversupply of sweet-smelling stuff. She also decreed other ludicrous laws. Flowers were to be strewn at ten-minute intervals throughout the capital and she had three Taraxakumanians with her at all times to throw rose petals at her feet so she walked across an unending bed of colourful scents. Slogans were to be written across the sky reminding people to love each other. Schmaltzy, hideous, idiotic, mind-numbing, trashy

  ‘Max, are you listening to me?’

  Max had been doing her best to avoid listening to Ms Peasley for the last twenty minutes by thinking about another Alex Crane adventure. Why couldn’t she just disappear into Alex’s world forever? She was sure she wouldn’t be missed and life would be a lot more pleasant than it was right now.

  And it was about to get much worse.

  ‘Yes Ms Peasley.’ She frowned, trying to look like she’d heard every word.

  Being in Ms Peasley’s office was as painful as Max expected. Toby stood next to her in front of the flower-filled desk, rubbing his neck and acting in pain and as innocent as he could. There was a small trickle of blood from a scratch on his brow but apart from that Max was sure Toby had never felt better in his life. Especially now that she was in such trouble.

  She couldn’t tell what was more annoying, Toby’s lame attempt at acting or Ms Peasley’s speech about how ‘the world is a place full of strife and turmoil and how it was up to each and every one of us to do our part to fill it with love’. She said lots of other pukey stuff too that sounded like it came straight out of one of those corny self-help books displayed at supermarket checkouts. Books like, How to Make the World a Better Place in 10 Easy Steps. Max tried not to listen to most of it for fear her brain would seize up in protest and never want to work again.

  After the positive-guide-to-life sermon was over, Max was sent to sit in the corridor and did her best to block out Ms Peasley’s sugar-sweet voice that was still ringing in her ears like a lovesick mosquito. She was picking a piece of dried mud from her hair when through the congealed strands she saw her mother marching down the corridor towards her to pick her up. And to see Ms Peasley so they could have ‘a word about Max’s behaviour’.

  The way her mother’s footsteps echoed off the walls, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to see she wasn’t happy. From the other end of the corridor she looked quite small, but eac
h footstep made sure that soon she’d be towering over Max like a crazed giant with a sore head.

  Max looked above her at the Gold Clock of Peace (it was actually called that) hanging from the ceiling by gold tinsel and realised class was just about to finish. This was going to be embarrassing. Not only because the whole school was going to witness Max’s mother in one of her tirades but because that same mother was being followed by Aidan! Now everyone was going to know her mum was going out with someone who was young enough to be her son!

  Why does everything in my life have to be so hard? thought Max, and almost in answer to her question, the school chime echoed around them like an invisible, cloud-like cotton ball bouncing against the walls.

  ‘Great,’ Max whispered into her muddy uniform.

  As the corridor filled with the multitude of arms, legs and eyes that poured out of every class like a volcano, the once small image of her mother now loomed over her like a huge storm cloud about to burst.

  Which it soon did.

  ‘Have you anything to say for yourself for having me dragged away from a very important lunch so that I can spend my time listening to how you’ve been misbehaving?’

  The excited titters of the other kids flew around Max like sparks from fireworks. This was going to be even better than they expected.

  Max’s mother stared at her with eyes so wide they looked like two bugs under a magnifying glass. Aidan finally caught up to Max’s mother and stood like a stuffed dummy behind her. Max sunk as low as she could onto the bench wishing she could disappear into the polished wood as her mother’s dressing-down was only just getting started.

  ‘And why every time I come to pick you up from school do you seem to be covered from head to toe with slime or mud or some other repulsive goo?’

  What was Max supposed to say to that? She’d had a few ‘accidents’ with slimy substances in the past. Nothing out of the ordinary though, and besides, even if she tried to defend herself, her mother wouldn’t listen. She wouldn’t have wanted to know about how Max had fallen into the mud or how Toby had stolen her book and humiliated her by reading her secret story to the whole school. She could have been kidnapped by a pack of sumo wrestlers in front of a hundred witnesses and it still would have been Max’s fault. No excuse was ever good enough for having dragged her mother away from work.

  Max looked at her mother’s new exclusive salon haircut and expensive designer suit as she stood there waiting for an answer. What she wanted to say was, ‘Stop yelling at me in front of everyone. Don’t you know how embarrassing it is? And what is he doing here? Only family members are supposed to come and pick kids up from school. You spend more time with him than me and if it wasn’t for Ms Peasley calling you to school you wouldn’t have spent more than ten minutes with me all week.’

  But what she ended up saying was, ‘I don’t know.’

  From the look on her mother’s face, Max knew this wasn’t the right answer and that she was in even more trouble than she was before.

  ‘If you think for one minute that is any kind of reasonable explanation for your behaviour, young lady, then we’ll see how the next week without television alters that opinion of yours. Now wait here while I see what Ms Peasley has to say about you.’

  Max wanted to warn her to sneak away before old Peasers had a chance to sprout her hippie love babble all over her, but just then the door opened and Max’s mother’s already over-big eyes nearly rocketed out of her head when she saw a sore-looking and very bandaged Toby come out with Ms Peasley. Toby was gently sent on his way with Peasers cooing all over him before Max’s mum and Aidan were invited inside.

  Phew, thought Max, relieved to have a break from her mother’s flip-out, but before the principal’s door closed, her mother leant down and whispered, ‘Make that two weeks without television!’

  Toby was instantly surrounded by kids wanting to see his bandage and hear what Peasers had said. Others were role-playing the goggle-eyed frenzy of Max’s mum and only just managing to stand up at how funny they were. The sounds swirled around Max like she’d been dumped in a cement mixer on maximum speed.

  After what felt like an hour, Max’s mother came out. She took a hanky from her purse, dabbed her cheeks and with barely a look towards Max said, ‘Come with me.’

  The words sounded innocent enough, but as Max peeled herself off the bench, she knew they meant big trouble.

  The corridor that day seemed longer than it ever had been as Max followed her enraged mother and a quiet Aidan outside. She thought about her punishment and the fact that she’d only have to wear it for a few days as the Easter holidays were coming up. This meant she was only days away from escaping the smirking faces of the kids she was passing, escaping her mud-splattered life and most of all, escaping her mother.

  Max had been invited back to Ben and Eleanor’s farm and the holidays couldn’t come soon enough.

  As Max and her mother drove away from Hollingdale, Max thought about what had happened in the last few hours. She’d been humiliated in front of the whole school, was covered in brown smelly muck and her Spyforce notebook was ruined as it lay at the bottom of her bag in two torn, mud-smudged pieces. Her life was so miserable at least things couldn’t get any worse, Max thought. But when they got home, things got much worse.

  Her mother was in one of her ‘I’m-not-going-to-talk-to-you-until-you-learn-to-behave’ moods. Which would have suited Max fine if she had been able to stick to it. These moods only ever lasted a few minutes regardless of how determined her mother was to keep quiet. Her need to talk was like an out of control train and no matter how much anyone tried, she could never be stopped.

  ‘Max, you and I need to have a serious talk.’

  Serious talk? Max knew trying to strangle Toby wasn’t the smartest thing she’d ever done, but even prison would have been better than one of her mother’s serious talks.

  ‘I am very concerned about your behaviour lately and just for your information, so is Ms Peasley.’

  Her mother paused to give Max time to say something. Max pushed a clump of muddied hair behind her ear and had nothing to say that she thought would help, so her mother continued.

  ‘We’ve decided a few things need to change and that perhaps your complete lack of regard for other people, including that sweet boy you so viciously attacked, is perhaps connected to the lack of time you and I spend together.’

  Sweet boy! Toby was a lot of things but anyone who thought he was a sweet boy was having serious problems with reality!

  ‘So we thought you and I could change that by making plans to be together.’

  What! Max thought. She’d just had one of the most traumatic days of her life and all that Peasley and her mother could come up with was a recipe for making it worse. She could just hear them now. Peasers blathering on about how all the world’s problems could be solved with a ‘pinch of love’ and a‘dash of kindness’ — Nos 43 and 45 on Peasers’ Guide to a Better World — and her mum going on about how mothers and daughters really are best friends they just sometimes forget that — she would have dug that up from some women’s magazine. And both of them finally agreeing to a whole lot of sickly, honey-coated stuff that would have been better off on the closest compost heap.

  Max sighed as she waited to hear how this mother and daughter bonding time was going to be played out.

  ‘So, instead of spending Easter on the farm, you and I are going to take a holiday together,’ Max’s mother said proudly, like it was the best idea she had ever had.

  ‘Sorry?’ Max asked, feeling like someone had sucked all the air out of her so she could only just whisper the question.

  ‘You and I are going to Queensland!’ she announced like she was telling Max she had just won the lottery. ‘We’ll book a hotel, go to the beach, eat at fancy restaurants. Spend some real time getting to know each other again. Won’t it be great?’

  Peasers’ talk had done more damage than Max had expected. Her heart sank as she saw her time wit
h Linden, Ben and Eleanor fading and her hopes of being in London for her Spyforce meeting disappearing in a cloud of New Age drivel.

  Max would have rathered a ban on television, a stern talking-to, a thousand lines saying why she would never try to strangle Toby again — no matter how much he deserved it — but not a holiday with her mother!

  ‘That sounds great,’ she mumbled unenthusiastically.

  ‘I thought you’d like the idea.’ Her mother beamed unnaturally, like some alien had taken over her face and was pushing up the edges into a smile.

  Then there was this pause where neither of them knew what to say until Max said, ‘I think I might go to bed.’

  ‘Okay, sweetie.’ Her mother sounded relieved that the awkward silence was broken.

  Max made her way to her room leaving a scattered trail of grass and dried mud behind her. Her shoulders drooped like two heavy weights had been tied to them. She turned on the computer and had two messages. One from Linden telling her how excited he was about her visit and one from Spyforce confirming their meeting on 20 April. Steinberger said he would send more details in time and even added what an honour it would be to meet them. An honour!

  This only made Max feel worse. She tried to write a reply to Linden, but didn’t know what to say. How was she going to tell him she couldn’t go to London with him? She had to think of a way out of this holiday with her mother. If she turned down this opportunity to visit Spyforce they may never want to meet her again. All her hopes of being a Superspy would be smashed forever. She turned off her computer, picked up her pyjamas and made her way to the bathroom knowing only two things: first, she needed to wash away the mud that had glued itself to her and, second, by tomorrow morning she needed a plan to save her from a trip that would be a holiday from hell.