by Sophie Lee
A Clue in the Wasteland
‘Over here!’ Edie called, momentarily distracted from their mission by the sight of a discarded washing machine decorated with a smiley face. ‘Cheesy, doesn’t this look like a space invader?’
‘Humph, more like a plain old white good,’ said Cheesy, who was still sulking.
At this precise moment the seagull returned, crimson tassel dangling enticingly.
‘There it is!’ shouted Edie.
She wondered if the lace was caught on the poor bird’s beak. It seemed to be taunting them. Perhaps it was having its revenge on Mister Pants, who had barked at it earlier.
The seagull, red lace flapping sideways, circled three times overhead then did a large plop that unfortunately landed right on Cheesy’s glasses. Edie stifled a giggle as Cheesy’s cheeks reddened. She could tell Cheesy was about to fly into one of her rages.
Sure enough, Cheesy’s top teeth bit into her lower lip and words came tumbling out of her mouth in sharp bursts.
‘Told you . . . hum hum, blasted glasses, blasted rubbish, blasted monkey shoe, told you I despise these disgusting diphtheria diseases disguised as . . .’ She was stabbing violently at the air around her, and seemed to be on a roll with long words beginning with d that made no sense together at all.
Edie knew to stand well clear, that Cheesy’s outburst could be of longish duration and that small children and animals could be injured as she flailed about. Cheesy poked and punched, turning this way and that with every word until her energy started to ebb. She breathed sharply in and out through her nostrils, staggering left and right. Eventually she stumbled over a jagged cardboard box, sat down beside it and became still.
The box had the words Lucky Dragon Restaurant Fortune Cookies written on the side and was accompanied by an illustration of a large green dragon winking one eye.
Hidden Treasure
Mister Pants stopped chewing on a slimy rubber mat. The smell of cookies must have permeated the cardboard (which is just a fancy way of saying they had flavoured the box) and he trotted over, snuffling with his short snout.
‘Cheesy?’ enquired Edie cautiously. ‘You need some water or something?’
‘Got any?’
‘Well, no, but, I mean, we could go and get some . . . Mister, no,’ said Edie, trying to pull Mister Pants away from the open Lucky Dragon box in case he gobbled a plastic-wrapped cookie by mistake and had to be rushed to the vet. (‘That blinking dog is chewing up our limited resources!’ Michaelmas Sparks had remarked when Mister Pants had been taken to the animal hospital emergency ward for the fifteenth time that year. Michaelmas, out of desperation, had invented a device that could administer oral medications to dogs with clamp-jaw and had presented it to the vet as a gift. The vet was now happy to provide free service to Mister Pants out of gratitude. Nevertheless, Edie did not want to try his patience unnecessarily.)
Mister kept snuffling at the box’s ragged opening and Edie checked inside it, wondering what had aroused his curiosity.
‘Oh my goodness!’ She clapped a hand across her mouth in shock.
‘Are there fortune cookies in there?’ asked Cheesy, her outburst forgotten.
‘No, well . . . yes, a couple, but it’s something else. Oh my goodness . . .’ she said again, taking a closer look. ‘This looks remarkably familiar. But it couldn’t be . . . I mean . . . how could it be? Here, in this box, at this tip? It doesn’t make an ounce of sense.’ In her bewilderment she was reverting to ancient forms of measurement. She reached down to take hold of the item that was causing her heart to race at double the speed.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Edie, spit it out!’ said Cheesy, hopping clumsily from foot to foot. ‘What is it that you’ve got there?’
Edie gently lifted a piece of purple paper from the box. It fluttered in the breeze and she held onto it tightly, hoping her instincts were right.
Sure enough, when Edie turned the piece of notepaper over, she was rewarded with the sight of scientific notes scrawled on the other side. ‘Aha!’ she cried, nodding her head, for there it was, the messy handwriting she was so familiar with.
There was no doubt in her mind at all that she had found something belonging to her father.
The Thick Plottens
‘I don’t get it,’ said Cheesy. Her curiosity had by now overcome any remaining traces of ill temper.
Edie sat on an upside-down bathtub and scratched her head. She stared at the piece of purple paper. It was exactly the same as the hundreds of little handwritten notes, scrawled with Michaelmas’s scientific equations, that were scattered all over The Pride of the Green. Mister Pants, disappointed that there were no longer cookies on offer for him, had turned his attention to a discarded chip fryer instead.
‘This is definitely my dad’s,’ said Edie. ‘See? His initials are in the corner: MS. And see these scrawled words? That’s him, for sure!’ Edie’s mind was abuzz, and she knew it was important to focus. ‘Hmm, now, it has this word . . . let me see . . . is it monkey? Plus, what is this?’ She struggled to decipher the pen strokes and held the piece of paper closer to her face. ‘Wind . . . turbine . . . 23 it looks like. What does that mean?’ She took a deep breath. ‘Well, I don’t know what it means,’ she concluded, ‘but this is definitely his handwriting. Why on earth would my dad’s notepaper be inside a box belonging to a Chinese restaurant?’ She puzzled over this for a moment. ‘I suppose Chinatown is close to the University,’ she continued, ‘but why—’
‘Edie,’ interrupted Cheesy, ‘I know you’re probably enjoying having a nice long chat with yourself here in this dustbin graveyard, but please remember your dad doesn’t have a job any more.’
‘Neither does yours!’ said Edie defensively. ‘I mean, he doesn’t have the same job that he used to.’
‘Rubbish, Daddy had his balloon captain’s uniform on just this morning and walked up to the bastions.’
‘What bastions?’
‘I said bus stop, not bastions, you idiot.’
‘Look, you just said bastions,’ said Edie, at which point there was a deafening clap of thunder and the air seemed to sizzle. It made the rubbish smell more pungent.
Cheesy jumped sideways and clung to the Lucky Dragon box for dear life.
‘Look, Sparks,’ she said, scouting for safety (she looked as though she was considering taking refuge inside the box itself), ‘for the love of all things sanitary, can we get out of this . . .’ Then she stopped. ‘Get over here!’ she shouted. ‘You missed something, here, in the corner of this box. I think you’d better take a look.’
Edie joined her and peered inside. Cheesy was right. In the bottom right-hand corner there was something tiny and metallic beside a seagull feather, something so small it could very easily have been overlooked. Edie withdrew her magnifying glass from her detective kit and, on closer inspection, she was able to identify the small object as a microchip. Edie used her tweezers to pick it up as carefully as she could.
‘Well done, Charisma,’ said Edie. ‘Well spotted.’ She leaned forward and gave Cheesy’s shoulder a squeeze.
‘A pleasure to be of service to the investigation,’ replied Cheesy, going pink in the cheeks. ‘Now get out your notepad,’ she said impatiently. ‘You know better than anyone there’s a logical explanation behind all this. Even I can see a tenuous link between a missing monkey shoe, a piece of notepaper with the words monkey wind turbine 23 on it and a box belonging to a Chinese restaurant situated, as you say, near the University.’
She pushed her glasses back up her nose with her right index finger. ‘And while we’re on the topic, this latest addition to the chain of evidence, this microchip, well, doesn’t your dad record all his, you know . . . scientific data on microchips?’
Lightning flashed across the sky and Cheesy jumped. ‘Blast,’ she said, ‘can we PLEASE get the heck out of here? I don’t know if you’re aware, but I’m thunder-a-phobic!’
Solving the Riddle
‘Does that
include the fear of lightning as well?’ asked Edie, gathering her new evidence in the strengthening wind. She was thinking about her dad.
Michaelmas Sparks’s thesis was a work of borderline genius. It showed how people could convert recycled rubbish into electrical power by pedalling specially designed bicycles. The idea was simple enough, but the mathematics behind it were awesome. One of Edie’s favourite times of day was before supper, when her dad would invite her into his study to give her updates on the invention and show her sketches and diagrams. Edie was thrilled to be part of something that could help save the planet. Her father imagined a time in the near future when these special bicycles would be part of every household, so that each and every family could be accountable for their own waste management and for the wellbeing of the wider community.
‘Do you think rich people would feel silly pedalling the bikes, Dad?’
‘You know, dear, rich people are always worried about the size of their backsides, and this is a way for them to keep in shape and create energy at the same time. Besides, if they couldn’t be bothered they could always get their servants to pedal for them!’
Edie placed the piece of purple paper in a specially marked evidence bag and the seagull feather in another. She transferred the microchip from her tweezers into the locket she wore about her neck, which was large enough to contain the mysterious device as well as the small photo of Mister Pants that was already in there.
Satisfied that all the evidence was now secure, Edie wiped her fingers on one of Cheesy’s handkerchiefs.
‘I shall call these exhibits A and B and C,’ she declared.
Cheesy gagged, grabbing her handkerchief and pushing it up to her face, overcome by the noisome rubbish fumes, which smelled like a mixture of rancid cheese and wet hyenas.
‘I always loved fortune cookies,’ said Cheesy, her voice muffled. She peered at the cardboard box through the folds in her handkerchief. ‘You?’
‘Mum once tried to make them at home out of oats and sea salt,’ said Edie, fastening her detective kit to her leather belt.
‘Oh,’ said Cheesy. ‘Did they work out?’
‘No, they didn’t bake properly, and the little messages burned to cinders in the oven.’
‘You mean “fortunes”, not “little messages”,’ sniffed Cheesy.
‘Yes, Cheesy, no need to be snippy,’ conceded Edie.
‘Well, there just so happens to be two remaining fortune cookies in this box, and I for one vote that we have them for ourselves. After all, we do need energy, and I’m not sure the cumquat pizzas on their own will suffice.’
‘Let’s have them then,’ said Edie, holding out her hand.
Cheesy hastily unwrapped her cookie and broke it open.
‘Talk about disturbing the evidence,’ said Edie, carefully removing her own fortune and eating half her cookie.
‘Shall I read mine first?’ said Cheesy.
Edie nodded, delicately nibbling the other half of her cookie.
‘Seize bravery to be truly free,’ recited Cheesy. ‘What nonsense!’ She snorted, causing Mister Pants to look up at her quite suddenly. Edie wondered what that particular snort had meant in his language.
‘Curly toes have curly shoes,’ said Edie, reading her own. ‘I think I must have a reject,’ and she looked through her notebook for a bus timetable.
Telling a White Lie
It began to rain as the girls ran back up the hill and down the wide street towards home, followed closely by Mister Pants, who had worked up a stiff little canter.
‘You must be joking . . . Oh great, now I’m getting drenched and I’ll probably catch pneumonia . . . How on earth do you think we’re going to get to Chinatown tonight? You must be out of your mind . . .’ Cheesy was saying between puffs.
‘Don’t be silly, it’ll be easy,’ Edie replied. ‘We’ll just say that we’re going to work on a science project at your house—we’ll only be an hour, we’ll be back before bedtime.’ She picked up the pace. ‘Is it the thunder or the lightning you’re afraid of?’ she asked, trying to change the subject.
‘Thunder. I’m brontophobic. And Mummy likes me in bed with a beaker at seven-thirty,’ protested Cheesy weakly, and Edie wondered whether she was actually afraid of Beltane.
Edie snorted. ‘A beaker?’
‘You know, a mug,’ Cheesy said, breathless.
‘Cheesy,’ Edie declared, ‘it’s time for you to live a little.’
‘Yes, well, the last time you suggested “living a little” we visited your precious Bouncy Log in Buckley Gully and we all know what happened next.’
‘Come on, Cheesy! Emergency Outpatients at the Royal Runcible Children’s Hospital was exciting. And you only needed four stitches!’
Edie knocked loudly on the front door of The Pride of the Green, preparing herself to tell a white lie. She wasn’t quite sure where her conscience lay in her anatomy, but she imagined it was somewhere near her appendix.
Cinnamon Sparks opened the front door with one hand and held what must have been at least a kilo of snake beans in the other.
‘I’m thinking of a delicious snake bean and cottage cheese soup,’ she told them as they bustled in.
‘Lovely! . . . Oh, Mum,’ Edie said as calmly as she could, ‘can we have our cumquat pizzas takeaway? I need to go to the Chompsters’.’
‘What, now?’ asked her mum, smiling at the two dripping wet girls before her. Her grey hair contained a few random pumpkin seeds and her eyes were shining, presumably from the frenzied preparations for the birthday party.
‘Yes, Mum, there’s a science assignment that won’t wait,’ said Edie with her fingers crossed behind her back. Her appendix gave a little twinge.
Edie’s mother tilted her head to one side and let the snake beans dangle. No doubt she was used to her daughter complaining vociferously (which sounds like the name of a vicious insect-eating plant, but isn’t) about paying the Chompsters a visit and sensed something afoot at this turnaround.
‘I’m not sure . . .’ she began.
‘Cinnamon!’ interjected Michaelmas, poking his head down the spiral staircase. His hair sprung every which way and he was in danger of losing his tortoiseshell glasses. ‘Never get in the way of science,’ he said firmly. ‘It’s obvious the child has important work to do. What’s your assignment?’ he asked.
‘Um . . . we’re co-designing a robot,’ said Edie, uncrossing her fingers and nervously toying with her locket.
‘A robot, eh,’ Michaelmas chuckled. ‘That reminds me of the time I—’
‘Very well,’ interrupted Edie’s mother, wrapping up slices of cumquat pizza in recycled greaseproof paper. ‘In the name of science,’ she said. ‘Do you want some coconut ice as well?’ she asked, adding some to the package without waiting for an answer. ‘When will Mrs Chompster bring you back? In an hour?’
Cheesy was not good at subterfuge and had gone quite red in the face.
‘Dad’s still flying Big Red,’ she blurted.
‘Nonsense, dear,’ said Mrs Sparks. ‘He’s been on dry land now for six months.’ She paused, looked at the girls’ faces and seemed about to change her mind again, but at that precise moment the oven timer went off and her attention returned to the kitchen. ‘The wakame pies!’ she cried. ‘Okay, off you go. See you girls at seven and not a moment after.’ She hurried into the kitchen. ‘Michaelmas,’ she called behind her, ‘what about these party preparations? I need to check on my pies . . .’
Edie reached up to the coat hook for her raincoat with the French bulldog motif, and got her spare yellow one for Cheesy. It had a tartan lining, and Edie hoped this would help ease Cheesy’s ill humour.
‘Oh, don’t sulk, Michaelmas,’ Edie heard her mother shout, ‘you can tell me about your robot while you finish the piñata.’
‘I’m not sulking, dear, I’m looking for my wellies . . . I have to pop out for a bit as well,’ came down from upstairs.
‘I’m being deserted,’ Cinnamon m
uttered loudly. ‘Oh, bother, I’ve burnt them!’
Edie made sure her detective kit was still firmly attached to her belt and grabbed an umbrella for good measure. ‘Let’s get going before my dad leaves,’ she whispered, handing Cheesy her raincoat.
Thus prepared for the bad weather, the three adventurers, Edie, Cheesy and Mister Pants, scurried out into the fading light towards the bus stop.
The Big Blue Bus
‘Science experiment!’ snorted Cheesy.
‘Well it’s one way of getting permission from my dad!’ said Edie. ‘Gosh, do you think the bus driver even realised that Mister Pants got on the bus too?’
‘He will if the wretched canine keeps producing flatus,’ said Cheesy disapprovingly. She did not like dogs (especially ones who were smelly from time to time) or cats or, in fact, insects, mice or possums. She proclaimed herself to be an admirer of horses (‘magnificent equine creatures’), but Edie was sure this was only if they were at a far distance.
‘Couldn’t you just use the word fart and be done with it?’ said Edie dismissively. ‘Pizza?’ She handed her a slice, knowing Cheesy could usually be placated by the offer of her mother’s macrobiotic delicacies.
Cheesy settled into her seat at the back of the bus with her pizza and an air of resignation. ‘How long till Chinatown?’ she asked through a mouthful.
‘It’s not far,’ said Edie consulting her city map. ‘Just beyond the tip.’
Edie took out her notepad and began to write:
Lucky Dragon Restaurant
Fortune Cookies
Seagull feather
Dad’s handwriting
