Pick Your Poison

by Lauren Child

  ‘I hope I’m right about this,’ she said.

  ‘You’re not the only one,’ said Clancy.

  There was a pause.

  Then: ‘Clance, don’t hate me,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Why would I hate you?’ whispered Clancy.

  ‘Because you have to stand up.’

  ‘I hate you,’ moaned Clancy.

  ‘It’s just I think we gotta get out of here.’

  ‘I like lying down,’ said Clancy, ‘and I like this floor.’

  ‘I know,’ said Ruby, ‘but if I told you that the Australian woman is walking towards the building what would you say?’

  ‘I’d say let’s take the stairs.’

  Ruby grabbed him around the waist and hoisted him up over her shoulder, much like a firefighter might carry a person from a burning building, and began tottering towards the door.

  ‘Have you … been eating … spinach or something?’ croaked Clancy.

  ‘I told you, it’s the kung fu.’

  They had not got far before they heard a shout.

  ‘Ruby, you in there?’

  It was Hitch, and following hot on his heels a SWAT team, all trampling down the stairs from the roof, weapons at the ready.

  Hitch looked relieved when he heard her call out to him, but less so when he saw Clancy’s frail body.

  She explained about the antivenom and Hitch explained that, fearing the worst (although he was expecting the worst to be an injured Ruby as opposed to a poisoned Clancy), he had a paramedic team waiting outside.

  Soon they were on the sidewalk and Clancy was in an ambulance. There was no sign of the Australian woman, nor of Lorelei or Baby Face. It was as if they had melted into the night.

  In the blink of an eye and a flash of blue and red lights, Clancy was driven at great speed to the St Angelina Hospital.

  Ruby made a call to Mr and Mrs Crew to let them know that their son would be OK and that he was doing just fine but that he had stepped on a nest of vipers while walking across some wasteland. ‘There’s a lot of it going around,’ she said.

  Hitch had Ruby checked out too for good measure, but apart from an unpleasant bruise round the eye and a cut to her arm she was just fine.

  ‘What took you so long anyway?’ demanded Ruby.

  ‘What do you mean, what took me? I arrived in ten minutes flat, which considering the traffic is pretty remarkable.’

  ‘You didn’t have any traffic,’ said Ruby, angrily, ‘you came by helicopter, and by the way I radioed for assistance more than forty minutes back.’

  ‘Well, that seems unlikely since we got no call.’ They were almost shouting at each other now.

  ‘Well perhaps you should blame this dumb spy watch Spectrum is so proud of,’ said Ruby, pulling it from her wrist, ‘BECAUSE IT DOESN’T WORK!’ she slapped it in his hand.

  He didn’t look too happy about it.

  ‘What is this?’ he said holding it by its strap. He was referring to the drool that was dribbling out of the watch.

  Ruby fell silent.

  ‘In your own time,’ said Hitch.

  ‘That’s dribble,’ she said. ‘It’s from a baby.’

  Hitch raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I was babysitting Archie Lemon. He … likes to suck on the watch.’

  ‘You let a baby suck a piece of highly sophisticated Spectrum equipment?’

  ‘Talking of which,’ said Ruby, ‘we really need to go fetch the Lemon, I promised to have him home by seven.’

  VAPONA WAS SURPRISED WHEN SHE OPENED THE DOOR to see a battered-looking Ruby, her clothes a little torn, her left cheek and eye swollen and her hair a tangled mess.

  ‘Boy, Redfort, what happened to you during the past couple of hours?’

  ‘We were skateboarding,’ said Ruby.

  ‘You’re obviously not doing it right,’ said Vapona.

  ‘Also, we got into a fight with some snakes.’

  Vapona looked impressed.

  ‘Cool,’ she said.

  The skateboard was swapped for the baby, and Hitch and Ruby drove back to Cedarwood Drive.

  Ruby zipped her parker hood tight to prevent Mrs Lemon from seeing the state of her face – a freaked out Elaine Lemon was more than she could handle right now. Then she deposited the Lemon and returned home.

  Mrs Digby was in the kitchen and when Ruby walked in she simply shook her head and said, ‘I won’t even ask.’

  ‘Just as well,’ said Ruby, ‘because it’s a long story and I could use a bath.’

  ‘You won’t get any argument from me,’ said the housekeeper.

  Ruby climbed the stairs to her room and while she waited for the tub to fill she began easing off her battered sneakers and tattered clothing.

  The light on her answerphone was blinking like crazy.

  Every single message was from Del and every single one started the same way.

  ‘Rube, it’s Del, I made a mistake, a huge mistake, I’m super sorry, I got things all up the wrong way and I guess you hate me now but please don’t because I know you’re one in a million.’

  Beep.

  ‘Ruby, I figured it out, the person who set you up was Dakota Lyme, she’s mean enough to do it, plus she kinda looks like you, only not cool and she’s super unattractive – I can’t prove it, of course, but I told the principal how it wasn’t you, so you’re off the hook.

  Beep.

  ‘Rube, I even confessed to the whole homework scandal, I told Levine that I had written the note because I was mad at you, he believed me right off the bat, means a lot of detentions but I don’t mind about that.’

  Beep.

  ‘Rube, I 100% admit I was a total duh, look I’ll let you have my new sneakers, you can have my bike too if you want.’

  Beep.

  ‘Look Rube, I got a big mouth and a short temper and sometimes I wonder if I even have a brain.’

  Beep.

  The messages got shorter and shorter as they went, until finally:

  ‘Rube, I’m sorry, please call, even if you hate me.’

  Beep beep beep.

  She would have liked to have called Del there and then so she could tell her not to sweat it, but at this exact instant all she wanted to do was climb into a nice warm tub and stay there a while.

  RUBY WAS ON HER WAY UP TO CLANCY’S HOSPITAL ROOM. She had slept long and late, and by the time she woke, the day was already the afternoon.

  Flustered, she had quickly pulled on her clothes – no time to eat breakfast; she had promised to be with him just as soon as she could. She’d cast around for some kind of get-well gift, had grabbed a carton of banana milk, which she’d tied to a bouquet of peach-coloured roses (roses she had taken from her mother’s dressing table, but she guessed her mom would understand). The note attached said:

  Crew wake up and smell the banana milk.

  Then she had run all the way to the Greenstreet subway.

  Having finally arrived at St Angelina’s, she stepped into the large hospital elevator to join an assortment of other people on their way to wish loved ones well. The doors closed and the elevator began travelling upwards. Ruby’s finger hovered over the buttons … she couldn’t remember which floor, was it fourth or fifth?

  Clancy had been moved from intensive care, but where had they taken him? Well, happily not to the LLG – the lower-lower-ground floor level – because that was the morgue. She shivered, for had it not been for her careful study of deadly snakes then the morgue was where Clancy Crew might certainly have wound up. The lower-lower-ground floor was the place to avoid – a place for the dead, for crypts and catacombs.

  Crypts.

  Catacombs.

  And just like that it struck her.

  What if the location she and Blacker had been looking for was under the ground?

  What if she was actually trying to find a building that was no longer there?

  Or at least a building that one could no longer see …

  She thought about the map of old Twinfo
rd her father had found for Mrs Digby, now framed and up on the housekeeper’s wall. Ruby remembered her words … ‘Seems every day now they go knocking an old building down, or running a road through it … If it weren’t for the place names, you wouldn’t have a blind clue what used to be there.’

  She thought about the slogan on the back of the Taste Twister labels. FOUR GREAT TASTES SINCE 1922. The four had been significant – a 4-dimensional cube was used to encode the locations. The tastes had been significant – that was how the coordinates were communicated.

  So why shouldn’t the 1922 be important too?

  She remembered on her community service duty lifting up that tyre and discovering the plaque to mark the site of the old law courts.

  She thought of the road running under the subway line, the vacant lot just next to the intersection, the lot that had become a trash heap … She and Blacker had concluded there was nothing there. But what if they hadn’t looked hard enough? What if they had needed to dig?

  What if we were looking at the wrong map? thought Ruby.

  ‘Which floor?’

  Ruby looked up at the woman, and was pulled out of her thoughts.

  ‘Getting out,’ she said, as she dodged through the closing doors. She needed to get home fast. She grabbed a passing nurse.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she asked, ‘would you be able to give this to Clancy Crew? He’s the kid recovering from the snake bite.’

  ‘We have several boys recovering from snake bites,’ said the nurse. ‘There’s an epidemic in Twinford.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Ruby. ‘Well, this kid has an ambassador for a dad, and if you’ll pardon me for saying it, this dad likes everyone to know it.’

  The nurse gave her a look of weary recognition. ‘Sure, I know the one.’ She took Ruby’s gift. ‘Who shall I say it’s from?’

  ‘He’ll know,’ said Ruby, ‘just tell him I had to be somewhere, but I’ll be back before you can say “painkillers”.’

  Ruby arrived home to find the house empty – even Bug was absent. There was an envelope lying on the kitchen table and inside it was the watch. The note that came with it simply said:

  Fixed. P.S. keep clear of dribbling infants.

  She ran down to Mrs Digby’s apartment, half expecting to find the old lady sitting on the settee watching one of her early evening shows, but the apartment was quiet.

  But no matter, it was the map she wanted to see. It was freshly framed and newly fixed to the kitchenette wall just by the table. Ruby stood right up close and searched for the spot where Numeral Street crossed Pythagoras, and there she saw no vacant lot, no elevated subway line but instead the Sacred Heart Cathedral. Where the trash was now piled was where the church steps had once been.

  Bingo.

  So the cathedral had been knocked down when they extended the subway line, which was maybe in the late 1940s or early 50s … anyway, it was gone. It had been razed to the ground …

  Or at least, thought Ruby, from the ground’s surface.

  She sprinted back upstairs to her father’s study and located a book on Twinford history. She flipped through the pages looking for a photograph of anything that looked like a church, and after a few minutes, there it was. Sacred Heart Cathedral. Spanish revival style. Sure enough, it had been demolished in 1947 to make way for the elevated subway.

  She glanced through the few paragraphs of text until something caught her eye:

  ‘The cathedral was one of the few in America to possess an underground crypt in the medieval European style, where important Twinfordites were often buried in the early decades of the town’s history. Notable residents interred here included …’

  It went on, but nothing more that was relevant. Still, thought Ruby, what if the crypt remains? What if they only destroyed the part above the ground?

  Those important Twinfordites might very possibly still be there. The crypt would be a good reason for not running a subway tunnel underground – it would have disturbed the dead. Instead the elevated track swooped over the roads, the roads beneath burying the crypt below.

  Ruby pressed the radio transmitter on the watch, hoping for Blacker to pick up.

  He didn’t, either his transmitter was off or he was busy. Ruby’s finger hovered over the emergency button, but she remembered how Holbrook had been scolded by Delaware for being a bit trigger happy with the emergency button and immediately thought better of it. Don’t use the emergency button unless there is a life-or-death situation in progress.

  So instead she called through to reception.

  ‘Agent Redfort, convey your message,’ said Buzz.

  ‘I’m trying to contact Blacker, his transmitter is off,’ said Ruby.

  ‘He’s in a briefing,’ she said.

  ‘It’s important,’ said Ruby.

  ‘He’s in a briefing,’ repeated Buzz.

  ‘It’s urgent,’ said Ruby.

  ‘Please hold the line, I’ll phone through to the briefing room,’ said Buzz.

  No more than fifteen seconds later and: ‘I have Agent Blacker for you.’

  BLACKER: Is there a problem Ruby?

  Ruby could hear voices in the background; LB she thought, maybe Hitch.

  RUBY: Am I interrupting?

  BLACKER: It’s OK, how can I help?

  RUBY: I think I have figured it out.

  BLACKER: You have?

  RUBY: It’s exactly where we thought it was, only impossible to see.

  BLACKER: How’s that?

  RUBY: It has to do with 1922.

  BLACKER: Meaning?

  RUBY: It’s cryptic – that’s a joke by the way.

  BLACKER: I’m not sure I’m with you.

  RUBY: You’ll need an old map of Twinford … do you want me to explain over the airwaves?

  BLACKER: No, come in to HQ.

  RUBY: OK, I’ll be in as soon as.

  Pause.

  RUBY: Do you mind if I grab a snack first? I’m actually starving.

  BLACKER: Sure, take your time, I’ll be in the coding room.

  RUBY: I won’t be long.

  Ruby felt better having spoken to Blacker. She poured herself a glass of banana milk, dropped some bread in the toaster and thought about what it was they might be about to discover.

  When she heard the ping of the toaster, she reached around grabbed the toast and very nearly missed what it was trying to tell her.

  She was surprised but happily so: this was a sign that things were looking up for her and her career at Spectrum. She was a trusted member of the team. In the past, Spectrum had gone out of their way to ensure she was kept out of the action (mostly unsuccessfully). She grabbed her raincoat and the map with the location area outlined in red, not that she needed a map, she knew exactly where she was going. She checked that her watch was on her wrist, even though she knew it was; she checked her hair for the fly barrette – she was taking no chances this time – and then she headed on out into the rain.

  She took the subway downtown, changing at Acacia Park onto the College Town line and travelling on to Cathedral Avenue. She had never before considered why this station might be named ‘Cathedral’, but now of course she knew.

  She took the steep steps down from the station to the sidewalk and then walked towards the section of busy road that crisscrossed underneath the elevated tracks. There, just to the left, was a paved area where the steps to the cathedral had once been – the traffic was heavy, it being late rush hour now, and it took a minute to get there. When she reached it there was still very little to see, just a whole lot of trash, mounded up, leaves blown in and trapped there, spinning in the wind. She set about lifting the garbage, searching under it until, beneath a Dime a Dozen shopping cart, was revealed a grate about the size of a very small door, and next to it a tarnished and grimy plaque which read: SITE OF THE SACRED HEART CATHEDRAL.

  There was no sign of Blacker so she tried him via the watch, but the signal came back blocked.

  So she continued to wait. The traffic
was beginning to ease, rush hour almost over, she looked at her watch again. Where are you Blacker?

  She had been there an hour now. What should she do? Continue to wait? She looked at the grate and bent down to see if it was secured. It had a padlock but when she held it in her hand it fell apart.

  That was strange.

  She looked at her watch and remembered the message her colleague had sent.

  The penny dropped.

  Ruby, you bozo, he’s down there already!

  She heaved the grate up, looked around her, saw no sign of anyone lurking in the shadows, could feel no eyes on her, no one watching, so she ducked down into the dark, pulling the grate closed after her.

  She shivered. Not because it was cold, though it was. She shivered because although when she looked up through the bars she could still see light, she was aware that beyond her there would be nothing but black.

  She steadied herself, calming her breathing, then stared ahead into the pitch darkness. Her worst fear in reality was not being ostracised by all her friends and fellow pupils as she had claimed to Hitch. It was in fact a fear of being trapped and lost in the darkness of what lay underground.

  To be buried alive was Ruby’s worst fear.

  She called out Blacker’s name, her voice a dull echo in the dank chamber.

  No one was down here – well, no one except for the long-dead, and she wasn’t a bit scared of them.

  But where was Blacker?

  Where Blacker was, was back in the coding room waiting for Ruby.

  He’d told her to take her time but still, I mean, how long did it take to grab a snack?

  He kept looking at his wrist but he’d mislaid his watch somewhere between here and the canteen. He’d put an announcement out, but so far no one had handed it in. He looked at the huge map of Twinford displayed on the light-board and the notes taped next to it.

  The Little Seven Grocers, the Bodice Ripper movie museum, the music school, and … the fourth one had slipped from the wall, it was lying on top of Ruby’s book, Pick Your Poison, with the big red apple shiny on the cover. He took the note in his hand and looked up at the wall clock.

  Rube, he thought, you’re a great kid, but do you ever look at a watch?