Pick Your Poison

by Lauren Child

  ‘That’s the least of my problems,’ said Ruby. ‘Listen, nice bumping into you and all but I think I gotta take a shower,’ she called as she strode off towards home. The garbage smell was making her nauseous and she needed to clean up before the stench knocked her out.

  ‘Thanks for your assistance anyway,’ called Del.

  ‘No problem,’ shouted Ruby, breaking into a run. She felt this day could surely only get better, that was until the wind blew her hair over her eyes and – vision impaired – she collided with a parking meter.

  Winded, she sat down for a moment on the sidewalk.

  A banana skin fell from her sleeve.

  It had to be said, this was not the kind of day she’d expected.

  AS RUBY STUMBLED IN THROUGH THE KITCHEN DOOR, Greg Whitney’s voice jingled out of the radio:

  ‘SO THOSE WINDS LOOK LIKE THEY REALLY MIGHT HIT HARD.’

  ‘YOU GOT THAT RIGHT,’ replied Shelly the weather girl. ‘THEY ARE REALLY BEGINNING TO WHIP UP AND IT WON’T BE LONG BEFORE TWINFORD CITY EXPERIENCES SOME VIOLENT STORMS.’

  ‘RAIN TOO, SHELLY?’

  ‘YOU CAN COUNT ON IT, GREG!’

  Mrs Digby put down her apple peeler and planted her hands on her hips. The dishevelled state of Ruby was one thing; the smell of her a whole lot worse.

  ‘Child, have you been crouching in a garbage can by any chance?’

  Ruby opened her mouth to explain but the housekeeper put up her hands.

  ‘Before you make up a whole bundle of untruths, I might as well tell you that Mr Chester saw you climbing out of a dumpster and he didn’t wait more than a minute before dialling up my number and spreading the good news.’

  Ruby rolled her eyes.

  ‘The man is a virtual loudhailer of other people’s business,’ said Mrs Digby, ‘if you can call crouching in a garbage can “business”.’ She tutted. ‘Not that it would have escaped my keen eye that you look like something the cat dragged in but, that said, whatever you have been up to, and for whatever reason you thought it necessary, one thing’s not up for discussion: you need to take a bath.’

  Ruby sniffed the air. ‘Yeah, it was sorta rancid in there.’

  ‘I thought you were lying low today?’ said the housekeeper.

  ‘I was trying to, and then I bumped into Del Lasco.’

  ‘Say no more,’ said Mrs Digby. ‘That child will have you banged up in the Big House before you can say, “call my lawyer”.’

  Ruby went upstairs to her room, set the shower running and scrubbed the dumpster dirt out of her pores. She sprayed herself with a large waft of Wild Rose scent and put on some clean clothes – a pair of jeans, striped socks and a T-shirt. Like most of her T-shirts, it said something, this one bearing the words: I’ve heard it all before. She put on her glasses and could immediately see that there was a problem. The fall into the dumpster had bent them out of shape and the left arm no longer made contact with her left ear, so the glasses now sat at a strange angle. Since right at that moment she had no idea where she had put her spares, she would have to resort to her contact lenses: without either option, life was a total blur.

  Once that was taken care of, she took a book from the bookcase and sat down to read.

  Ruby owned a lot of books, ranging across all subjects. She read for every reason: inspiration, information and escape. If she valued any of her books above the others, perhaps the ones she would single out would be her code books. After all, it was her interest in codes that had landed her a job at Spectrum, an organisation so secret it was hard to know who actually controlled it, and who it was actually working for. All Ruby really understood was that the agency was on the side of good, a fact she had taken at face value when LB, her boss and head of Spectrum 8, had told her so.

  Along with the job came her own personal minder and protector, a field agent who went by the name of Hitch and who disguised his true purpose by acting as the Redfort family household manager (or butler, as Ruby’s mother preferred it). He could have fooled anyone, and did fool everyone. To the outside world Hitch was one of those enviable assets – a manager who ensured one’s domestic life was pressed and ironed, and anything you forgot he was sure to remember.

  Yet he also possessed skills most domestic managers lacked. These included scaling buildings, leaping from rooftops and the odd karate chop when required. He wasn’t bad in a crisis either: should you need to board a plane when it was already taxiing down the runway, Hitch was your man. To Ruby’s mom he was the best darned butler this side of the hemisphere; to Ruby he was a mentor, bodyguard, loyal ally and at times royal pain in the derrière.

  The volume Ruby was engrossed in today, however, was neither codebook, textbook, nor true-life story. Today she was reading to relax her brain, a totally necessary pursuit if one wanted to find the answer to something one just couldn’t grasp.

  RULE 6: SOMETIMES NOT THINKING ABOUT A PROBLEM IS THE BEST WAY TO FIND THE SOLUTION.

  And there was a pretty big question that needed answering: what in tarnation was going on in Twinford? Ruby had worked four cases now for Spectrum, and all of them had been resolved, more or less.

  But there was something still nagging at her. A sense that those cases were connected somehow, in some way she couldn’t grasp.

  She hadn’t got a long way through Kung Fu Martians when one of her many phones began to ring. She had a good collection of telephones by now, having become interested in them when she was just five years old: every shape, every design, from a bar of soap to a squirrel in a tuxedo.

  She reached for the donut and flipped it open.

  ‘Twinford Garbage Disposal, we depend on your trash.’

  ‘Ruby?’

  ‘Oh, hey Del.’

  ‘Look, thanks a load Rube, I owe you one, man.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Ruby. ‘I mean, who hasn’t jumped into a dumpster to prevent a friend being socked in the kisser?’

  ‘Most people,’ said Del. ‘Anyway, the thing is, all I’m saying is I appreciate it.’

  ‘Any time,’ said Ruby. ‘Don’t think me rude, but I oughta get back to reading my comic book; I’m trying to figure something out here.’

  ‘Go figure,’ said Del.

  Del hung up and Ruby went back to her reading until the next interruption, which came from the ACA Insurance Company.

  ‘Hello ma’am, how are you today, my name’s Doris, I’m calling from the ACA Insurance Company and I would like to invite you to take out an ACA life insurance policy with ACA Life Insurance at half the cost of our usual policy and if you join us today right now over the phone I can throw in an alarm clock radio and a free watch, worth a grand total of fifteen dollars and ninety-nine cents.’

  ‘Well, thank you for the offer Doris,’ said Ruby, ‘and as good as that sounds, I regret to say I am only thirteen years old and have no dependents depending on my income and no income to speak of, a perfectly good alarm clock radio and a better than ordinary wristwatch, besides which I do not plan to die just yet.’

  ‘Oh, sorry dear, might I speak to your mother?’

  ‘She too has a wristwatch and no plans to die.’

  ‘None of us plan to die, dear.’

  ‘Believe me, my mom’s not dying, she looks half her age and eats muesli for breakfast – thank you for your call.’

  Ruby replaced the phone and resumed her reading, but three minutes later she was interrupted again. This time by Mrs Lemon.

  ‘Oh Ruby, I’m so glad I caught you, I was just wondering, I mean hoping to goodness, that you might be able to watch baby Archie tomorrow?’

  This was not a call Ruby wanted to take, and just how Elaine Lemon had got hold of her private number was a mystery and something she would be taking up with her mother when she came back from wherever she was.

  ‘Well, jeez Elaine, it’s good of you to think of me but I am up to my eyeballs right now.’

  ‘Up to your eyeballs in what?’ asked Elaine.

  ‘This and that,’
said Ruby. ‘I got the girl scouts and band practice and cheerleading, not to mention the Christmas pageant.’

  ‘Really? Aren’t you a little old for Christmas pageants?’

  ‘Never too old to join in, Elaine, and I’m a joiner.’

  ‘It would seem so. My, they do begin these Christmas rehearsals early these days, it’s not even October,’ said Mrs Lemon. ‘Well, Ruby, if you are too busy then I won’t press you and I must applaud your get-involved spirit.’

  ‘I appreciate that Elaine, I really do,’ said Ruby. Then she hung up and once again went back to her comic. By the time the fourth phone call came in Ruby was a little strung out.

  ‘What!’ she yelled into the receiver.

  ‘You OK Ruby? You sound a little tense.’

  ‘Oh, it’s you Clance, sorry about that,’ said Ruby, relieved to hear the voice of her closest friend and most loyal ally, Clancy Crew, coming back down the line.

  ‘Yeah, well I’ve had a kinda tense few hours,’ she explained, ‘not what I had planned.’

  ‘Yeah, I ran into Del, she told me what happened. She was concerned that you might be mad at her,’ said Clancy.

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ said Ruby.

  ‘I told her you wouldn’t be,’ said Clancy.

  No one knew Ruby like Clancy did, not even Mrs Digby, and she knew Ruby back to front and inside out.

  ‘So are you worried that Mrs Digby will tell your mom and dad?’

  ‘What makes you think Mrs Digby knows?’

  ‘You think she doesn’t?’

  ‘She knows,’ sighed Ruby. ‘She always knows. Mr Chester rang her, but she has no interest in getting my folks involved. You can imagine how they would react, right?’

  Clancy sucked air through his teeth; he knew all right.

  ‘So what have you been doing?’ asked Ruby.

  He let out a weary sigh. ‘I’ve been trying to make this petition to oppose Mrs Bexenheath’s suggestion that the school lockers be moved from the main corridor to somewhere totally inconvenient.’

  ‘Yeah, well that’s Mrs Bexenheath all over. Just so long as things are nice and tidy for her then she’s not interested in whether it works for any of us,’ said Ruby.

  ‘She doesn’t get it. The lockers are more than a place to keep your tennis shoes,’ said Clancy, ‘they are integral to social interaction.’

  ‘You’re preaching to the choir Clance, it’s Principal Levine you gotta persuade.’

  ‘I know,’ said Clancy, ‘but I have no idea how.’

  ‘You’ll think of something,’ said Ruby. ‘I have total faith.’

  Pause.

  ‘So you watching The Ex Detective?’ asked Clancy.

  ‘I totally forgot it was on this afternoon. What’s the deal?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘Larry’s got his mom in town, but she’s just been kidnapped.’

  ‘I didn’t know that Larry had a mom.’

  ‘No one did,’ said Clancy, ‘but now she’s been kidnapped Larry realises how much he’s been missing her and wishes he hadn’t let the grass grow under their relationship.’

  ‘It’s always the way,’ sighed Ruby.

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Clancy, ‘you just don’t know what you got until it’s gone.’

  ‘Talking of gone, when exactly are you flying to Washington?’ asked Ruby.

  ‘In about three weeks,’ said Clancy. ‘My dad’s planning on bringing along the whole pack of us.’

  ‘So what’s the point of this trip – pleasure or pain?’

  Clancy sighed. ‘He won’t tell us, but he said this time we’ll enjoy it. Unlikely, I think. I’ll bet he just wants us to be there looking like a super-happy family. It’s good for politics.’ Clancy’s father was Ambassador Crew and he liked his family to fall in behind him in a nice straight line and generally make him look good. The Crew children struggled with this, partly because they weren’t suited to a life of smiling and waving but mainly because Ambassador Crew was much more focused on himself than he was on them.

  ‘Jeepers Clance, just how much smiling time has he got you down for?’

  ‘Forty-eight hours at least,’ said Clancy. ‘I don’t think my jaw will stand it.’

  ‘You’re pretty resilient, Clance,’ she yawned, ‘you’ll think of something to smile about.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Clancy. ‘Anyway, have you spoken to Hitch since the whole, you know, thing?’ he asked.

  Ruby glanced around her as if somewhere in this Twinford teenager’s bedroom something lurked and listened. She was right to be concerned – it wasn’t prudent to talk on an unsecured line. She had learned this the hard way a few months back. Spectrum was not some sort of employment agency, it was a spy agency, and as anyone knew, spy agencies should not be blabbed about. In fact, blab and you could pack up your spy kit and head on home. It was Spectrum RULE 1: KEEP IT ZIPPED. Talking to your best pal Clancy Crew about Spectrum would also bring about a termination of your contract, but then Spectrum weren’t going to know about that since when it came to secrets, Clancy Crew was a vault and though Hitch knew that Clancy knew, he was also a vault.

  So you could be pretty certain this secret was well and truly secret.

  ‘No,’ said Ruby, ‘Hitch hasn’t been around here. He told my folks he’s in the Bahamas with his mother.’

  ‘I didn’t know he had a mother.’

  ‘I’m not sure he does.’

  ‘You think he just made her up?’

  ‘When it comes to Hitch, I think it’s hard to know what’s true. You think you know him but, look at it this way, what do I really have as hard evidence? Do I know anything?’

  ‘You know he likes coffee,’ suggested Clancy.

  ‘What I know Clance,’ corrected Ruby, ‘is that Hitch drinks coffee and a lot of it, but does he drink it because he likes the taste of it or because he needs to keep from falling asleep? Well, it’s anybody’s guess.’

  ‘So you wanna meet?’ asked Clancy.

  Ruby paused, for a moment torn between the pleasure of chatting to her friend and the pleasure that was reading Kung Fu Martians. She sighed. ‘Sure, why not, my day is ruined anyway.’

  ‘Oh, thanks a bunch, buster.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it like it sounded,’ said Ruby. ‘Just meant I was planning on a little downtime, but I guess your company might restore my mood.’

  ‘I’m beginning to think yours might have the entirely opposite effect,’ said Clancy.

  ‘See you in ten,’ said Ruby.

  THEY MET WHERE THEY USUALLY MET when they didn’t want to bump into anyone else – the old oak tree on Amster Green. It was a good spot for hiding coded notes when there were secrets to be passed, and it was also a pretty perfect spot to sit and observe the comings and goings on Amster. The leafy branches provided good cover from passers-by, even this late in the year. October was almost here and most of the leaves still clung to the branches, the colours vivid and varied. It was an exceptional fall due to the late summer and sudden cold snap, the old oak’s leaves turning a whole host of colours.

  ‘Ideal for leaf peepers,’ said Ruby.

  ‘What?’ said Clancy.

  ‘Leaf peepers,’ repeated Ruby, ‘folks who like to spend their free time looking at leaves turning.’

  ‘There’s a name for people who do that?’ said Clancy. ‘Looking at leaves changing colour has an actual name?’

  ‘Everything has a name,’ said Ruby. ‘And this is an especially good fall for leaf peeping. It’s due to that Indian summer we had; I mean, until a few weeks ago the days were pretty sunny, unusually so. We’ve also had some cool evenings and no rain to speak of – as I said, ideal conditions for leaf peepers. It all has to do with sunlight, sugar and sap.’

  ‘What?’ said Clancy.

  ‘The green in a leaf is chlorophyll, right? Well, chlorophyll disappears more quickly when the sunlight is bright and the evenings are cool. And dry weather makes more sugar in the cell sap, which accelerates production of red compounds.
So: bright days, cool nights and no rain means the green goes fast and lots of red is made to replace it. A leaf peeper’s idea of heaven.’

  ‘Jeepers, you really retain all this stuff in your actual brain?’

  ‘You never know when it might come in handy,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Apart from a biology test, I don’t see this info coming in super handy,’ said Clancy. ‘It’s not knowledge you need to have at your fingertips.’

  ‘How do you know?’ said Ruby. ‘You never know when a piece of information might prove vital for your future survival.’

  ‘I think you can be fairly sure this leaf thing isn’t going to help you in a life-or-death situation.’

  Ruby knew a lot of facts like this – she spent an awful lot of time looking them up in books. She sometimes even attended lectures on subjects which interested her, slipping in unseen to the Twinford University seminars. The more you know, the more you know was a motto of Ruby’s, and she knew a lot.

  Clancy and Ruby were sitting high in the oak’s branches and looking up at the sky and the dark clouds that were beginning to gather. Was the wind picking up or was there rain coming in?

  ‘You reckon you could outrun a tornado?’ mused Clancy.

  ‘No,’ said Ruby.

  ‘You say that, but I mean could you? I mean, has anyone tried?’

  ‘I’m sure plenty have tried, but unless they can run at two hundred miles an hour then no, they haven’t succeeded.’

  ‘Even on a bike?’ asked Clancy.

  ‘Who can ride a bike at two hundred miles an hour? Who does anything at two hundred miles an hour?’ said Ruby.

  Clancy changed the subject. ‘So how are you going to explain climbing into a garbage can?’ he asked.

  ‘To whom?’

  ‘Your folks?’

  ‘How are they gonna find out? Mrs Digby’s sure as darn it not gonna tell ’em.’

  ‘Yeah, but Mr Chester might.’

  ‘Oh, so he’s been broadcasting in your neighbourhood as well?’

  ‘Well, my sister Lulu knew about it. She overheard Mr Chester telling Mr Nori when she walked past the bus stop.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Mr Chester just get himself a radio station? It would give him wider coverage.’