by Lauren Child
‘You know what I’m saying Rube,’ said Clancy. ‘This is the “thing” thing I want more than anything else.’
‘I guess it’s a nice bike. Yeah, I can see that, but I can think of a whole lotta things I want a whole lot more than that bike.’
‘That’s what my dad keeps saying. “Clancy, I can think of a thousand and one better ways to spend my money than on some blue bicycle.” I keep telling him it’s not just any bike, it’s the only bike, the only one worth having.’ Clancy had studied the bike catalogues over and over; he had literally gone to bed with them, slept on them and woken up with his cheek squashed to the inky pages, and he knew for a fact that the Windrush 2000 was the best bike on the market for a kid of his age. ‘Not only does it look cool, but it’s got speed too.’
‘Sounds OK,’ said Ruby, checking out the price tag, ‘but considering it costs a whole heap of dollars, I guess you oughta expect it to be cool and speedy.’
‘Sure,’ agreed Clancy. ‘But there’s more to it than that.’
‘One would imagine,’ said Ruby, blowing a large bubblegum bubble.
Clancy didn’t say anything: he was just staring, almost hypnotised by the bike’s perfection.
‘What?’ said Ruby. ‘It’s got a nice shiny bell?’
Clancy ignored that. ‘I mean Rube, it’s got these tyres, right, these tyres that are unpuncturable. You don’t need to be weighed down with a bicycle pump or a repair kit. Never have the problem of a puncture, imagine that?’
‘I’m trying,’ said Ruby.
‘You don’t believe me?’ said Clancy.
‘I believe you,’ said Ruby, ‘I just don’t believe them, the bike manufacturer guys. No one yet has come up with tyres that can’t be punctured. If you get that bike, don’t chuck away that puncture-repair kit man.’
Clancy frowned. ‘Well, it’s the coolest bike I’ve ever seen and look at it, it’s that amazing blue. You can’t miss it. I got a get my hands on one somehow or I’m gonna lose my mind.’
‘Talking of crazy,’ said Ruby, ‘my mom said she saw a huge sorta pig run across our yard.’
‘What?’ said Clancy.
‘Some sorta huge pig-thing is what she said,’ said Ruby.
‘And where does she imagine this huge pig came from?’
‘Imagine being the operative word,’ replied Ruby. ‘She seems to think someone musta got themselves a smallholding.’
‘What did Mrs Digby say?’
‘She said, “Your ma’s been sitting around in the sun too long and the heat’s finally got to her.”’
‘I told you,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s the temperature: it’s making your mom hallucinate.’
‘So maybe you’ll get lucky and your dad’ll start losing it too,’ said Ruby. ‘Hey, perhaps if you offer to smile extra hard in his publicity photos he’ll get you that bike.’
Clancy came to a dead stop in the road. ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’m gonna ask him.’
‘Clance, I was kidding.’
‘I’m not,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s a good deal for him and it’s a good deal for me.’
When they reached the side alley next to Ruby’s house, Clancy said, ‘So how are you gonna get back inside?’
‘Ah, it’s a breeze,’ said Ruby, pulling off her jeans and T-shirt to reveal her pyjamas. She stuffed the clothes through the open window of the laundry room and then walked up the front steps to the house.
‘Mrs Digby will hear you,’ hissed Clancy.
‘No way,’ said Ruby, ‘she’ll be watching Crime Hour by now – she won’t hear a thing.’
Ruby, as usual, was right about this, and she easily made her way upstairs unnoticed. Bug followed noiselessly – he was a very well-trained dog.
The door to the
warehouse groaned
its iron groan. . .
. . .and spiked heels clicked on the stone floor.
Bound to a metal chair was a figure, small in the vastness of the space. Yet, despite the uncompromising situation, this figure was still defiant, not yet broken.
Not yet.
‘You. . .’ he uttered.
‘Yes, it’s me. Who were you expecting, the Girl Scouts?’ Lorelei laughed. ‘No, no one’s coming to rescue you.’
‘I don’t care about myself,’ he said.
‘That makes two of us.’ Her blue eyes twinkled.
‘I will repay you your money. I tried to. I came to your apartment, but you weren’t there.’
Lorelei’s eyes narrowed. ‘You have no business coming to my apartment. How did you even get ahold of my address?’
He tried to calm her by keeping his voice low and steady. ‘I told that other guy when he brought me in, I will repay you.’
‘And how do you propose to do that when it’s clear that you have been spending my money on little luxuries? Your shoes, for instance, how much did they cost?’ She tapped her foot like she was waiting for an answer.
‘I will repay you,’ repeated the man, ‘everything – more than you gave me.’
‘I didn’t give you anything, I paid you for something and that something is now mine, only you released it. So where is it?’ She was angry, very angry.
‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t like what you’re planning. I let it go – the deal’s off.’
Her face was very close to him now, her perfume quite intoxicating. ‘A bit late for climbing up to the moral high ground, don’t you think?’
‘I never would have agreed to it if I’d known what you were up to,’ he said. His eyes held hers and the hatred he felt was quite tangible.
The elegant woman laughed, a short, sharp, unamused laugh.
‘Yet you didn’t think to ask.’
‘You should have told me,’ snarled the man. ‘How was I to know you had such foul plans?’
‘All that money? And yet it didn’t occur to you something unpleasant might be afoot?’ Lorelei’s shoes click-clacked on the hard floor. ‘A stranger offers you a suitcase of cash and in exchange all you have to do is turn your head the other way, close your eyes, open a gate – and yet you gave the “why” no thought?’
The man was silent.
‘I made a promise – you made a promise. Did no one ever tell you a promise is for life?’ She regained her composure, straightened her jacket. ‘So tell me where I must look.’
‘I’ll never tell,’ he said.
‘You might want to have a little rethink, unless you really feel death is such a good option.’
‘Too late, it’s gone,’ he said.
Lorelei walked towards the door. ‘Like I said, you might want to think about that. Stew on it, why don’t you?’
Chapter 19.
The thing
IT TOOK SOME PERSUADING FOR RUBY TO CONVINCE HER PARENTS AND MRS DIGBY that she was well enough to attend school, but, as had often been remarked, Ruby was a very talented actress and arguer so had the ability to convince most people of most things.
Mrs Drisco was less than overjoyed to see her brightest pupil and possible nemesis back in class again. Ruby had been away for a few days and Mrs Drisco had prayed she would be away for a few more. She had actually secretly hoped that perhaps Ruby would be off until next term with some nasty summer cold or an ankle sprain.
‘Ruby Redfort, you’re not late! What a nice surprise. I feel bad for feeling so sure you would be.’ Mrs Drisco smiled a tight and uncomfortable smile.
‘If it makes you feel better Mrs Drisco, I almost was; I had planned to grab a waffle before class, but the waffle stand was all shut up – so I guess my loss is your gain.’ She gave her teacher the big eyes; she looked like an angel.
Mrs Drisco was racking her brain for a really sharp retort, one that would put Ruby Redfort right back in her box, but her sour train of thought was interrupted by a commotion in the corridor.
Gemma Melamare was screaming. Screaming was actually a polite word for what she was doing: it sounded more like a
hyena being strangled.
‘What in the world of uncivilised is occurring?’ demanded Mrs Drisco, flinging the door open wide.
Gemma couldn’t speak because she was too busy shrieking and when she finally did manage to utter words all she said was, ‘I saw this thing slithering down the corridor!’
Mrs Drisco, who couldn’t tolerate the sound of a shrieking child or teenager for that matter, shouted very loudly in order to drown out the sound of Gemma’s hysterics. ‘Well, no doubt this “thing” – like the rest of us – is partially deaf by now!’
Gemma was then sent off to the medical room to go and have a lie-down.
No one knew what she had seen or for that matter believed that she had seen anything at all; Gemma Melamare was just the kind of girl to shriek her head off in order to get out of class or to attract some boy’s attention. She got a lot of attention from boys because she was perfectly pretty, as sweet-looking as her cohort, Vapona Begwell, was not. Like Vapona, Gemma was unpleasant, really unpleasant, but due to being such a perfect portrait of cute, people found this hard to take on-board. Beauty can throw a lot of people off the scent.
When the bell rang and everyone spilled out into the corridor, Ruby got a chance to chat to Clancy before the next class.
‘So what did your dad say?’ she asked. She was chewing on a piece of bubblegum, midway to blowing a bubble, and her voice was somewhat distorted, but Clancy knew exactly what she was talking about. He looked downcast.
‘He said, “No way, no day,”’ said Clancy, dragging his bag along the floor.
‘Clancy Crew!’ snapped the sharp voice of Mrs Drisco. ‘We do not drag our backpacks along the ground; we are not apes.’
‘I didn’t know apes used backpacks,’ said Ruby. ‘I kinda thought the use of backpacks is what separated man from the apes?’
‘Miss Redfort, you are this close to a detention. I mean it, this close,’ said Mrs Drisco, holding her quivering hands very close together.
‘Oh, that is close,’ said Ruby.
Clancy yanked his friend round the corner before there was no space at all between Mrs Drisco’s hands.
‘So where were we?’ said Ruby. ‘Oh yeah, you were telling me about your father. He said, “No way, no day”?’
‘Yeah,’ said Clancy. ‘He said, “Smiling for the camera is all part of being the ambassador’s son.”’
Ruby’s bubblegum bubble popped and she fed the pink string back into her mouth. ‘Well, there’s a surprise. By the time your old man reaches for his wallet, you’ll have grown a beard Clance.’ She gave him a look and slung an arm across his shoulder. ‘Don’t let it get you down Clance my old pal. It’s just a bike, right?’
Clancy sighed. ‘I guess, if you can call the Windrush 2000 just a bike. By the way Rube, you might want to go easy on the perfume.’
‘What dya mean?’ asked Ruby. ‘It’s the same perfume I usually wear.’
‘It’s not the smell, it’s how much smell you’re smelling of – it’s like you bathed in it or something.’
‘Oh, must be my nose – it’s all stuffed up – I can’t smell a thing,’ said Ruby. ‘This morning I drank a whole glass of bad milk. I nearly puked.’
They peeled off towards their different classes – Clancy to French with the formidable Madame Loup, Ruby to biology with the Dread Mrs Greg.
Mrs Greg was called the Dread Mrs Greg because she was one of those people who was absolutely certain that she was right. Unlike Mr Singh or Mr Piper, both inspiring teachers, Mrs Greg was everything that made school a bore. For this reason Ruby generally used the classroom time to do a little of her own reading up on things.
Humans have lost a lot of their natural ability to easily distinguish one scent from another, though it is possible to tune up one’s olfactory skills. Perfumers and wine experts have to work on this sense to improve their understanding of what they are smelling and distinguish scents, one from another. However, although we may not have the ability some of our early ancestors had, we use this sense more than we think. Subconsciously, we are very aware of people’s odours; we make judgements and decisions based on scent we are not conscious of.
We react to chemicals both natural and engineered and a person’s odour can be a reason for trusting or not trusting, feeling reassured or not. Sometimes a smell can mislead: we might be inclined to like a person because of the perfume they are wearing or the washing powder they launder their clothes with, even though this is a superficial and applied smell and nothing to do with the individual’s biological scent.
The way a perfume reacts with the skin of the wearer changes from person to person, which is why we might like a perfume worn by one person and not another. We all have our own natural smells, smells our subconscious is aware of, smells animals can pick up on even when we humans can’t. A shark for instance can smell a drop of blood in a hundred litres of water. A dog can pick up the scent of an escaped convict and track him across rocks, woodland and – despite what movies may have us believe – even rivers. The human nose is less attuned to subtleties of smell than the animal nose.
Ruby considered Bug, how he relied on smell to tell him most of what he needed to know. Sure, he used his eyes, his ears, but it was his sense of smell that was most important. She read on. The book also contained a chapter showing the chemical make-up of smells. It turned out that smelly substances contained ‘aromatic compounds’, circular structures of carbon and hydrogen such as benzene rings.
Benzene, C6H6, is a ring of six carbon atoms, connected by alternating single and double bonds:
Benzene
The right image shows standard chemical notation which omits carbon sand most hydrogens for the sake of space. In this kind of diagram, there is a carbon atom at every corner. Hydrogen atoms are worked out according to how many bonds are shown leaving each carbon atom.
This was all pretty fascinating, Ruby thought. The idea that the characteristic smell of an ordinary herb, for instance, was often the smell of just one or two chemicals, out of the hundreds which make up that plant – but the ones which we recognise and identify with it. The smell of vanilla is contained in a single chemical the molecular structure of which is a benzene ring with three hydrocarbon branches sticking off it:
N
Vanilla
None of this was exactly relevant to what she was supposed to be learning about today in Mrs Greg’s lesson but it was interesting information and forty minutes later Ruby had finished the book.
She met up with Clancy at lunch in the queue for the salad counter.
‘So what dya think Melamare actually saw?’ said Clancy.
‘Her own reflection,’ said Red. ‘My guess is she forgot to put her make-up on this morning and her real naked face gave her a chilling fright.’
‘Yeah,’ mused Clancy, ‘I wonder what she does look like without all that pancake.’
‘Did I hear someone say pancakes?’ Del Lasco sauntered into the canteen.
‘Oh, hey Del,’ said Ruby. ‘We were just talking about Melamare’s face.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Del, ‘I heard she saw something that gave her the chills. It wouldn’t surprise me – I saw something real strange yesterday evening,’ said Del, ‘real strange, I’m telling you, crazy strange.’
‘You’re beginning to sound like my mom. I mean jeepers! She swears she saw a giant pig running across the yard.’
Del looked Ruby hard in the eye. ‘She probably did, ever consider that?’
‘A giant pig Del? You seen a whole lot of those lately?’ said Ruby.
‘No, but I’ve seen a giant cat, a tiger most probably.’
‘A tiger?’ repeated Red. ‘You really saw a tiger?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Elliot.
Ruby took a slurp of her milkshake and said, ‘Del, you might wanna start calling yourself the exaggerator.’
‘Look who’s talking – aren’t you the one that said you saw an alien space craft hovering over the Crews’ house?’<
br />
‘It’s true,’ said Mouse, ‘you did.’
Ruby sighed. ‘You’re never gonna let that go, are you Del?’ What Ruby had actually seen was an unusually designed hot-air balloon land in the Crews’ grounds, a mistake anyone with unusually poor eyesight and steamed-up glasses might make.
‘Yeah, well, I’m just pointing out that as far as exaggeration goes you have your moments,’ said Del.
‘OK, well, let’s drop my “moments” for twenty seconds and talk about yours. You see, all I’m saying is that when you say you saw this tiger walking around Twinford how do I know you aren’t talking about some fat old tabby cat?’
‘Yeah, right Ruby, tabby cats are likely to swallow Mrs Gilbert’s spaniel – whole, all in one.’
‘And who’s saying that’s ever happened?’ said Ruby.
‘Only all of everybody,’ said Del.
‘Oh and there you go again – I don’t hear myself saying that there’s a spaniel-swallowing tiger on the loose.’
‘I think there is,’ said Red.
‘You see! Everyone but you is saying it.’
At precisely the moment where this argument looked like it might turn physical, the school bell went.
‘OK, I better get changed for athletics practice,’ said Del, heading off towards the locker rooms. ‘By the way, anyone else here smelling rose bushes?’
‘No,’ said Ruby.
Ruby was going to be sitting out athletics training on account of her foot so she went and found a seat in the shade and watched.
Clancy was feeling pretty confident, and it wasn’t like him to feel confident. There was only one more training session left before the interschool track and field event. Clancy had always been a good runner, but had never actually won a final because there had always been someone in between him and coming first.
His main adversary, however, was himself. He could talk himself out of winning very easily by talking himself out of competing, the little voice in his head telling him that he was likely to be humiliated, that he would trip, that he was useless anyway.
But this time Clancy wasn’t to be defeated, not by himself, not by anyone. Marley Cassolet had got slower, or perhaps she had lost her hunger to win, or maybe Clancy had speeded up? Dean Brice had moved to senior school and Ruby, well, this time Ruby wasn’t in the running.
