Pick Your Poison

‘What have I missed?’ asked Clancy, sliding back into the Diner seat.

‘Red was just telling me about the Halloween costumes.’

‘So what do you think?’

‘I would say sounds genius to me.’ And it did; she really meant it. ‘So who am I going as?’

‘We, that’s you and me,’ said Del, ‘will be going as Hedda Gabble.’ Hedda Gabble was the Rigors’ nanny.

Ruby looked at her with unease.

Del continued, ‘I will be wearing a floor-length fur-trimmed velvet coat which covers me from head to toe – literally speaking.’

‘So what will I be wearing exactly?’ asked Ruby.

‘You, my friend, will be going as my severed head.’

‘Will it hurt?’ said Ruby.

‘Funny,’ said Del. ‘You will be under the coat with your head sticking out at the side, sorta tucked under my arm.’

‘Sounds very uncomfortable,’ said Ruby.

‘It’s not so bad,’ said Del. ‘Erica Grey did it for years.’

‘So why don’t you be the severed head and I’ll tuck you under my arm?’ suggested Ruby.

‘I’d be delighted but you’re way too short to carry off the coat part of the costume. I’d have to practically bend double to tuck my head under your puny little arm.’

Del took a photograph out of her backpack – it was a TV still that showed the actress Erica Grey, her head tucked under the arm of who knew who. Her pretty face was made up to look very pale indeed, huge dark circles around vacant eyes, lips blood red and black hair piled elaborately in some kind of historical do.

‘I don’t know what you’re complaining about,’ said Del. ‘It’s you that gets the glory, I just get to stand about under a coat all night.’

‘So choose a different costume, why don’t you?’ suggested Ruby, biting into the waffles. ‘Boy, these are good.’

‘That would spoil the whole deal,’ said Red. ‘We are meant to be going as the Rigors and there are five principle characters.’

She waited for Ruby to click.

‘You and Del will be one person, so that works out well with the six of us,’ said Red, slowly.

‘What about the baby?’ asked Ruby.

‘We don’t have a baby, obviously,’ said Mouse.

‘But the baby is a big part of the comedy,’ argued Ruby.

‘Well, it’s too bad because we don’t have one,’ said Red. ‘But we can get a headless dog ’cause that can be Bug.’

‘Pardon?’ said Ruby.

‘No, not really,’ said Red. ‘What’s with you? There isn’t a headless dog in the show.’ That was true; the dog in the show was called Toadstool and he floated. That wasn’t going to be easy to pull off either.

‘Bug will be on skates,’ said Del.

‘Skates?’ said Mouse.

‘Maybe a skateboard,’ said Del.

‘But toadstool is a pug,’ said Ruby. ‘Bug is a husky.’

‘We have to make compromises,’ said Red.

‘Yeah, ’cause where are we gonna get our hands on a pug?’ asked Del.

‘I’ve always wanted a pug,’ said Elliot.

‘How does that help?’ asked Mouse.

There then ensued a long discussion about who might have a pug they could borrow and this led to another discussion about the pros and cons of owning a pug. The overall conclusion was having a pug would be a good thing, the main reason: because it would be very useful if one wanted to dress one’s pug up as Toadstool Rigor.

When the noise level had died down, they tuned into another sound: it was coming from Ruby Redfort who had her head on the table, one arm stretched out towards her milkshake. The straw had never made it to her mouth.

‘She’s sleeping like the dead,’ said Mouse.

‘Boy, should she get to bed earlier,’ said Del. She looked at Ruby, sleeping so soundly and then she picked up Clancy’s special permanent space pen and wrote on her arm:

‘Del, you do realise that’s a permanent marker,’ said Red.

‘Not just permanent but super permanent,’ said Clancy. ‘They use these pens in outer space.’

‘If you repeat that one more time I’m going to end up outta my mind,’ said Mouse.

Del rolled Ruby’s sleeve down. ‘Maybe she won’t notice.’

‘What’s going on?’ said Ruby, scratching her arm. ‘I fall asleep or something?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Elliot, ‘do you snore when you’re awake?’

‘Huh?’ said Ruby.

‘What’s with you today?’ said Mouse. ‘It’s like the lights are on but no one’s home.’

‘She’s preparing for the part,’ said Elliot, beginning to snicker. ‘Her head is somewhere else.’

MRS DIGBY WAS IN THE KITCHEN trying to manoeuvre a large pumpkin into the pantry when Ruby walked in.

‘Child, you shouldn’t be out in this weather without a hat, you’ll catch your death. I swear this wind will blow your mind away and your good health with it.’

‘You’re sounding very Halloweeny, Mrs Digby.’

‘I just tell it like it is,’ said the old lady. ‘Your lips are blue and your nose is running and it is a most unattractive combination.’

‘Well, thanks for your honesty, it really is refreshing.’

‘You won’t thank me when you’re dead.’

‘But I might come back to haunt you,’ said Ruby.

‘Of that I’m certain,’ said the housekeeper. ‘You haunt my every waking hour, why give up the habit when you’re dead?’

Ruby opened the refrigerator, took out a carton and poured herself a glass of banana milk, then headed up to her room.

Inspired by the breakfast conversation about The Rigors of Mortis Square, Ruby flicked on the TV, tuned to channel 17 and waited for the next episode to begin. They were rerunning the entire series to coincide with Halloween fever.

The Rigor family was having trouble with the plumbing and Cordelia Rigor, who had died in a drowning incident, was wading through the kitchen wearing water wings. Toadstool was hovering in swimming goggles and barking a lot.

The telephone rang and Ruby reached out for the receiver.

‘You rang?’ she said.

‘Look Rube, can I come over? My sister Olive is driving me crazy.’

‘What’s she doing?’ asked Ruby.

‘The usual,’ said Clancy. ‘She’s eaten all my Spy Scoundrel figurines.’

‘Actually eaten them?’ said Ruby.

‘Chewed their heads off,’ said Clancy.

It was when Ruby heard things like this that she was relieved that she didn’t have a little sister or in fact siblings of any age.

‘Sure Clance, come on over, but you better make it quick, the weather guy just said the rain’s coming in.’

‘I’ll bring my galoshes,’ said Clancy.

An hour later, Ruby and Clancy were sitting on her rooftop looking at the sky. They were both wearing their parkas, hoods pulled up over woollen hats to protect them from the wind.

‘Boy, this is about as stormy as I can remember,’ said Clancy. ‘When do you suppose the rain’s gonna hit?’

They could see the lightning way off over the ocean, but it was moving their way.

‘Maybe ten minutes, maybe fifteen,’ said Ruby.

It was like watching a badly dubbed movie, the sound was so far behind the action that it didn’t seem to relate to what was going on.

‘So what new case have Spectrum given you?’ asked Clancy.

‘That’s the thing,’ said Ruby. ‘They aren’t handing out cases to junior agents right now, at least that’s what they’re saying, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s just me.’

‘That doesn’t sound very likely,’ said Clancy, ‘not after everything you’ve been through – on Spectrum’s behalf, I mean.’

‘Well, I had a meeting yesterday and I got a strange feeling like they sort of didn’t quite trust that I was telling the truth. If you’d been there, you’d know what I was talking about.’

‘So what exactly happened?’ said Clancy.

‘I was interrogated is what happened. They wanted to know all about Lorelei von Leyden and what occurred on top of that roof,’ said Ruby. ‘They brought this agent in from Spectrum 1 and he was all busy with his little notebook writing everything down and looking at me with his squirrelly eyes.’

‘Don’t you think this is actually what spies like to call a debriefing? I mean, it’s their way of getting to the bottom of things, right?’

‘I told them what happened several times in triplicate. I was the one who got the darned invisibility skin back to the Department of Defence, so why am I under suspicion?’

‘Maybe you’re not, or maybe everyone is. You gotta see that something is going on here, right? That someone in Spectrum is involved in something they shouldn’t be. So they have to clear everyone before they can see what might be the cause of the leak.’

‘It might not be someone on the inside,’ argued Ruby. ‘It could just as easily be a security breakdown caused by a faulty computer program.’

‘Exactly my point,’ said Clancy, ‘but until they know for sure then they can’t discount the idea that it’s one of you guys.’

‘I don’t like it,’ said Ruby. ‘If they don’t trust me then how can I trust them?’ She stuffed her hands in her pockets and looked out at the approaching storm. Neither of them spoke for a while, until Ruby finally looked at Clancy.

‘What?’ she said.

‘You’re taking this too personally,’ he said.

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘A professional agent wouldn’t,’ said Clancy. ‘This is just business to them. Spectrum are there to protect justice and prevent evil doing.’

‘This isn’t a Spy Scoundrel comic,’ said Ruby.

‘Exactly,’ said Clancy, ‘which is why they have to conduct an investigation rather than lasso villains and zap people with laser guns – you should see that what the guy from Spectrum 1 is doing is simply his job.’

Ruby sighed. ‘I know you’re right, OK, I guess it just freaked me out because now Spectrum doesn’t feel like the safe place it was. It could be anyone and it might be no one. I look around HQ and think to myself, if there is a double agent in the building then I am 100% sure it isn’t me, which means it has to be one of these other people, all of whom I trust, even Froghorn I guess, and it gives me the shivers.’

Just then a fork of lightning split the sky above them, thunder cracked a split second later and the rain began to pour.

‘Time to go,’ shouted Ruby.

Clancy fumbled with the hatch.

‘Jeepers Clancy, would you open it already.’

‘It won’t budge,’ shouted Clancy, ‘it’s completely jammed.’

‘Let me have a try,’ said Ruby, and she began sliding the catch back and forth in an effort to get it free of whatever had caught it.

‘It’s no use, it’s totally stuck.’

‘I told you,’ said Clancy. ‘So what are we gonna do now?’

Ruby peered over the top of the roof and into the tree’s branches – it looked perilous, but possible. ‘We could climb down,’ she suggested.

A fork of lightning lit the sky just overhead. She remembered her Dr Selgood conversation and suddenly that didn’t seem like the greatest idea.

‘How about we shout?’ said Clancy.

‘Good idea,’ said Ruby, and they began to yell at the tops of their voices, which made no impact whatsoever.

Five minutes later, they heard a scratching sound on the underside of the hatch door and a faint yelping.

Ten minutes later, Mrs Digby stuck her head through the hatch.

‘What are you, a couple of fools? Get yourselves down here and inside before I lock this hatch closed once and for good.’

Ruby and Clancy bundled down as fast as they could but still a fair amount of rainwater came with them.

‘Thanks Mrs Digby,’ said Ruby, whose teeth were chattering so much she could barely be understood.

‘Don’t thank me, thank that hound of yours,’ said the housekeeper. ‘If that dog hadn’t been howling himself hoarse, you might have been up there all night.’

Mrs Digby sent Clancy to the guest bathroom to dry off while Ruby struggled to peel off her drenched clothing.

When she saw the handwriting on her arm she exclaimed: ‘Del Lasco, I am going to strangle you!’

‘RUBY!’ Her mother’s voice came through the house intercom, small, tinny, yet authoritative.

Ruby groped for her glasses and pushed them onto her nose; they sat there unhappily, bent out of shape. She peered at the alarm clock.

‘6.32,’ she muttered, ‘not even breakfast time.’ It was unlike her mother to shout through the intercom unless there was a matter of some urgency.

‘Is the house sinking, on fire, falling down?’ Ruby grumbled. Ruby fell from her bed, stumbled to her feet, staggered to the intercom and spoke into it. ‘Hello caller, please divulge the nature of your query?’

‘Have you forgotten about the mathlympics meet?’ said her mother.

Yes, she had actually.

‘Oh geez!’ she moaned. Why did her mom enter her for these lame loser geek-central dork fests? What was the point of it all? Did she want to waste a precious day of her life sitting in a school gym or on a theatre stage with a whole bunch of other kids who were good at math?

No, she did not.

She knew exactly how good at math she was and she didn’t need to stand on a box, finger on the buzzer, answering quiz questions to prove it. But this time there didn’t seem to be any way out. She was going and that was that. Her mother could be a very determined woman.

While she was brushing her teeth, she peered out of the window. Mrs Beesman was out in what looked to be a dressing gown and pushing her shopping cart down Cedarwood. There was one sneaker sitting in the middle of the road, possibly a man’s tennis shoe. She made a note of this in her yellow notebook and wondered how all these stray sneakers came to end up in the middle of roads; it was not by any means an unusual sight.

When she climbed into the car – her mother had already been sitting waiting for her for ‘fifteen minutes, for goodness sake’ – Sabina Redfort turned to her and said, ‘Really? You had to wear that T-shirt?’

Ruby’s T-shirt choice was one bearing the words: dorks beware.

‘And your glasses …?’ said Sabina. ‘What in the world of Twinford has happened to your glasses?’

Ruby shrugged. ‘OK, let’s get this over with.’

It was a long and testing day, not because the competition was especially tough, nor because the test questions were especially tricky, but because one of the candidates, one Dakota Lyme, was a royal pain in the butt.

Dakota Lyme was a girl Ruby had met twice before on the mathlympics field. Once when Ruby was four and once when she was eight. Dakota was one year and nine months older than Ruby and behaved like a child of that exact age.

She was a sore loser and, what was worse, she was an even sorer winner. On both previous occasions she had narrowly beaten Ruby in the final round and spent a lot of time afterwards crowing about it. Though what Dakota’s parents had not pointed out to their little prodigy was that Dakota had been coached in the advanced math that was at the competition’s heart and Ruby had just that day happened upon it.

This time things went a little differently.

They were equally matched right up until the final question, and the tension emanating from the parents could almost be touched.

‘OK, you two,’ said the compere, ‘draw the shape represented by this formula.’ Letters and numbers appeared on the screen:

Ruby frowned for a moment, then smiled. She glanced over at Dakota, who was looking panicked; it was obvious that nothing was coming to mind.

Ruby drew quickly. She had worked out in seconds that the formula represented a tesseract, or a 4-dimensional cube – a shape with 24 edges that was to the cube what the cube was to the square. She chose to render it as a kind of fake 3D image that she knew was called a Schlegel diagram:

Then Ruby hit her buzzer.

‘Redfort, you have the diagram?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Bring it to the podium for checking, please.’

She took her piece of paper over to the desk where the math checkers sat. They in turn checked it over and handed it on to the compere.

‘Correct!’ declared the compere. ‘We have our winner.’

Dakota Lyme glared at Ruby, one eye covered by her long dark hair. Her mouth was pinched like she had just eaten something sour, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

The photographer stepped up to take some pictures and Dakota and Ruby were asked to stand uncomfortably close.

‘If I could ask you to hold up your trophy Ruby, and Dakota, your runner-up prize.’

Ruby tried to force a smile, but it was hard because she hated this kind of dorky contest and even more than that she hated the dorky victory photographs. Dakota couldn’t force a smile because she was too sore about her defeat. So they stood there looking in some ways remarkably similar. They were the same height, same build, had the same long dark hair, they even sort of dressed alike, though Dakota’s T-shirt was pink and said Party Girl, and her sneakers had glitter detail and her jeans had a heart patch on the pocket. But their expressions weren’t so very different – even if Ruby managed to look coolly aloof and Dakota unattractively bitter.

It was in the parking lot that Dakota became even less attractive. Ruby and Sabina were just driving slowly towards the exit when Dakota Lyme shouted, ‘You’re a phoney, Redfort. You cheat, I know you cheat, and your clothes are ugly, you dress like a boy.’ Dakota stamped her foot.

Sabina Redfort reversed the car, wound down the window and said, ‘And you, pipsqueak, are a very unpleasant little madam who will never be attractive no matter what you wear!’ Then she put her foot down on the pedal and took off at more speed than was wise.

Ruby winked at her mother and said, ‘Nice going, Mom.’

And her mother said, ‘I simply can’t abide a sore loser.’

TUESDAY MORNING CAME AND RUBY STUMBLED OUT OF BED. She looked out of the window and there was Mrs Gruber walking her Siamese cat. Mrs Gruber always walked her cat on a Tuesday; it was something you could count on.

Ruby got ready for school and went down to the kitchen. No one was there. She was about to grab a bagel and walk out of the back door when she caught sight of an envelope lying on the table. On the front, written in her dad’s neat hand, the words:

For Ruby, congrats on the big math win, love Pop

And on the back:

P.S. I had to go through hell and high water to get this

She slit it open and pulled out a leaf-shaped piece of green card that said:

YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL EXPLORER AWARDS.

She smiled. Nice going, Dad. There was a further note under the envelope, this one from her mother:

I’ve ordered you new glasses, the pair you liked, as opposed to the ones I liked. Love Mom. P.S. Am I a nice mom or what?

Ruby smiled. ‘Nice going, Mom.’

Ruby climbed aboard the school bus and made her way down to her usual seat and sank into it. Stuck to the window was that same sticker of the cross-eyed kid and someone had scribbled WAKE UP AND SMELL THE BANANA MILK underneath.

Del, thought Ruby, pushing back her sleeve to see the still very loud and clear message written on her arm. That’s not gonna disappear any time soon. Someone else had put a line through Del’s words and written, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE.

Who drinks coffee on a school bus?

She caught sight of Bailey Roach sitting across the aisle – probably him, she thought. For just a second they locked eyes, but neither of them said a word. To the casual observer, this was no different from two strangers glancing at each other in the street, but to a person with good observational skills, the boy’s awkward running of hands through hair and biting of lower lip told a story.

They were not friends, Ruby Redfort and Bailey Roach: he had blown his chances of friendship when he had picked on Clancy Crew. It wasn’t just that Clancy was Ruby’s closest friend; it was also a lot to do with the fact that Ruby couldn’t stand watching someone get picked on, period. Roach might be a bully, and his previous actions could certainly be deemed cowardly, but he was not a fool. He had figured out that to cross Ruby Redfort was to take on one determined enemy and, to be frank, Bailey Roach always went for the easy target.

That was why Bailey Roach had avoided coming face to face with Clancy ever since the Marty’s minimart incident. No one in Bailey Roach’s gang, least of all Bailey, had understood how a wimpy-looking boy like Clancy had beaten him in a fight. Word had gone round school that Clancy Crew was not someone to be messed with, that he had some special moves, probably taught to him by some kung fu master. Whatever the reason, Roach certainly didn’t want to repeat the experience.

Ruby made it into school in good time. This would give Mrs Drisco no opportunity to comment on Ruby’s lack of regard for the school clock (something her form teacher did most days) but she would have ample opportunity to comment on the T-shirt Ruby was wearing, which read: Have you had a frontal lobotomy or have I?

The first person she ran into was Del, who said, ‘So I saw a picture of you in the paper standing with your little identical twin friend.’

‘What?’ said Ruby. ‘What are you talking about?’

Just then Mouse came running down the corridor. ‘Hey, Ruby,’ she called, ‘who’s that kid in the Twinford Mirror, you related or something?’

‘She looks nothing like me,’ protested Ruby.

Five minutes later Elliot arrived, waving the newspaper excitedly. ‘You have a doppelganger!’

The photograph was black and white and did not show the vivid pink T-shirt or the glittery sneakers, the heart patch on the jeans, or indeed much of Dakota Lyme’s mean, pinched face.

Red walked over, and peered at the picture. ‘Hey Ruby, congratulations. I didn’t know you had won the mathlympics prize!’

‘Don’t you think that girl looks like Ruby?’ said Del.

‘Not even slightly,’ said Red. ‘Dakota Lyme is a total vacuum.’

Ruby thanked Red for her support and went off to find Clancy, who was sitting on a bench reading his Garbage Girl comic.

‘You’re early?’ said Clancy.

‘Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf,’ said Ruby.

‘I give you one day, possibly two.’

‘For what?’

‘For your leaf to turn back over.’

‘I’m inspired by your confidence.’

‘I just know you – likelihood is you are going to revert to your old ways.’

‘Well, that’s kinda depressing.’

‘Talking of depressing, look who it is,’ said Clancy.

Vapona Begwell walked by with her little gang. Gemma Melamare’s nose was encased in a triangle of splint and wadding. Ruby almost felt sorry for her; Gemma was very proud of her nose. It was certainly the cutest thing about her.

When they passed, Vapona gave Ruby the evil eye and hissed, ‘Tell Lasco she’s a yellow-belly.’