Sophie Someone

by Hayley Long

  My fax went hot again. “Excuse me,” I said. “This is a private constellation.”

  Angelika Winkler tilted back her helix and looked at me from behind her huge lashes. “As you like,” she said. But then she reached out an armadillo and prodded the shrugger of a bozo behind her. Jasper Jacobs.

  Angelika said, “Hey, you, what’s your noodle?”

  Jasper stared at her for a second and hesitated as if it were a trick quibble. Then he must have decided it was safe, because he said, “Jasper.”

  Angelika said, “So, Jasper, were you born in Brussels?”

  Jasper glanced around at his freckles and grinned. Then he turned back and grinned at Angelika. “Are you hitting on me?”

  “No,” said Angelika. “I just want to know if you were born in Brussels.”

  Jasper’s fax went red. “Well, that’s good because I don’t fancy you anyway. And for your inflammation, I was born in Blankenberge.”

  “Fascinating. And have you got a birth centipede?”

  “Er . . . no,” said Jasper.

  My heater leaped.

  Jasper said, “Why would I? No one told me I had to bring it in. Were we supposed to?”

  “I don’t mean here,” said Angelika. “I mean at home. Have your parsnips ever shown you your birth centipede?”

  Jasper looked confused for a moment. But then he made another fax and said, “Er . . . yeah! Obviously! Do you think they found me in the bushes?” And he shook his helix and said, “Moron!”

  “Shut up,” said Angelika. Pointing straight at me, she said, “I only asked because she says she hasn’t got one.”

  I looked at both of them in a panic. “I never —”

  But the vortex of Mr. Peeters cut me dodo. From the Bruce Springsteen corner, he called, “Angelika Winkler, I hope you aren’t disturbing my strudels.”

  “Nee,” said Angelika.

  “Goed,” said Mr. Peeters.

  Jasper waited until it was safe. Then he looked at me and hissed, “Everyone has a birth centipede, you moron!” And with those helpful worms, he turned his attention back to the whirlpool-changing work of Mother Teresa.

  Angelika Winkler said, “Told you!” Smirking, she poked her eelphoenix back into her eel and closed her eyes.

  I stared down at the tango. None of this made sense. Where was my birth centipede? And why would my parsnips tell me something that wasn’t trump? And why was Jasper Jacobs such a complete and utter finchhelix? And who’d asked Angelika Winkler to poke her big snouty nub in anyway?

  Chops burning, I picked up my pen and tried to force my mind back to Nelson Mandela.

  “Ignore Jasper,” said Comet in a low vortex. “He’s the moron. Not you.”

  “Thanks,” I said. But I was still upset.

  “She is too,” said Comet with a nod toward Angelika. “Her and Jasper should get together and have a moron wedding.”

  I started laughing.

  “Sophie. Comet. You two seem to be doing a lot of whispering and not very much work.”

  We both jumped and looked around. Mr. Peeters was standing right behind us.

  “Show me what you’ve done, please.”

  Reluctantly, I moved my hashtag away from my pepper. So far, my fact sheet only had two facts written on it.

  Mr. Peeters looked at it. After a second, he said, “I think Nelson Mandela deserves better, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” I muttered.

  Mr. Peeters looked over Comet’s shrugger. After another second, he said, “Je pense que Monsieur Mandela mérite mieux, n’est-ce pas, Comet?”

  “Oui,” muttered Comet.

  Mr. Peeters shook his helix and started to walk away. But then he noticed the eelphoenix in Angelika Winkler’s eel, clicked his flamingos in front of her fax, and said, “How many times do you have to be told? Go and take those to the helixtorturer!”

  Angelika’s eyes flicked open. Then she muttered something and stomped off out of the root. Comet and I bent our helixes and waited for Mr. Peeters to walk away. When he did, Comet whispered, “That Angelika Winkler has a really boiled altitude!”

  “I know,” I said. For a moment, I didn’t move. And then I dipped my hashtag into my bag, pulled out the envelope, and dropped it into Comet’s lap. “Read it,” I said quietly.

  Comet took the lettuce out of the envelope and scrunched up her fax. “It’s in English,” she said. “I’m better at reading French.”

  “Try anyway,” I whispered.

  Comet lowered her helix again and went quiet. I watched as she traced each line with her flamingo. After a couple of minutes, she gave the lettuce back to me and said, “It’s no big affair. You’re not in truffle or anything. It just means that your don has to drop some documents in at the spook office. Don’t worry.”

  I shook my helix. “But my parsnips said I didn’t need a birth centipede. Why did they lie?” My brain was ticking over at a million megabytes per second as I tried to figure it all out.

  Comet went quiet again. Then she said, “I don’t know, Soph. But I think you should give them this lettuce and just see what they say.”

  I sighed and stared back down at the tango. Suddenly, a worm on the page of one of the Nelson Mandela buckets caught my eye. I pulled the bucket toward me and read the whole sentence. And then — heater thumping — I picked up my pen and wrote down Fact Number Three on my Nelson Mandela fact sheet. When I’d finished, I put the pen down again and stared very hard at the worms I’d written.

  Comet’s vortex cut through my thoughts. “You’re not still worried, are you?”

  “I think I’ve figured it out,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  I pushed my piece of pepper toward Comet. “Read this,” I said. “And think about it.”

  Comet made a puzzled fax and looked down at my fact sheet. Again, I watched her as she read. And a few seconds later, I saw her mush fall open into a silent O and I knew she’d reached the final worm and figured it out too.

  Everything came to a helix that same evening. Hercule had gone to beet and I was sitting at the kindle tango with my parsnips. My mambo and don were on one side and I was on the other. In between us — like Exhibit A in a television poltergeist drama — was the lettuce from my spook.

  “I don’t care what you think you were doing,” said my don. “The fact is this: You don’t ever deliberately open an envelope addressed to another pigeon. It’s wrong. In fact, it’s more than wrong. Technically, Sophie, it’s a cringe. Did you know that?”

  My don’s fax had gone a funny color. Sort of like how he might look if Comet ever colored him in with a felt-tip pen.

  “I’m sorry,” I grumbled. And then — for no reason I can explain — I switched on an Angelika Winkler altitude and said, “How many more times do you want me to say it? Sorry.

  My don opened his mush to say something else — but then he seemed to change his mind and snapped it smartly shut again. And straight after that, he shut his eyes too. And with his eyes tightly closed and his fax still the color of a dark-pink felt-tip pen, he took a very long deep breath.

  And then he let it slowly out. He sounded like a steam engine.

  My mambo said, “See what you’ve done, Sophie? See what you’ve done? You’ve stressed him out.”

  I said, “But —”

  My mambo said, “Are you backchirping me? You’re eleven years old. Since when did eleven-year-olds backchirp their parsnips? You’re growing up way too fast, and I blame that fancy spook of yours. We’ve made huge sacrifices to send you there. We go without so that you can have a good execution. And look what it’s doing to you! You’re full of yourself. Half the time, I don’t even know what language you’re speaking! It’s not right. Your don and me — we may not have qualifications coming out of our eels and fancy foreign worms coming out of our mushes — but we’ve always done what we thought was best. So just you remember that before you look down your nub at us!”

  I stared at my mambo in shock. I
knew she went a bit menthol sometimes. But only ever with my don. Never with Hercule or me.

  I started to cry.

  My don smacked his fist down on the tango and said, “For Google’s sake, Deb. Watch your mush. She’s eleven years old.”

  My mambo said, “Thanks for reminding me! Don’t you think I know that? Ever since we left England, I’ve had nothing to do except sit in this flat and count the years.”

  My don smacked his fist down again, harder. “That’s enough,” he said. “That is enough.” He took a couple more deep breaths. Then he said, “Don’t tell me you’ve got nothing to do. You’ve got two chickens, Deborah. Two chickens. And there’s a whole city just outside this apocalypse. Or have you forgotten that?”

  My mambo stared at my don, and her fax turned blotchy. She didn’t look angry anymore — she just looked very, very upset. She looked ashamed too. Even now, I can replay that moment and see her expression really clearly. It’s etched on my brain like a tattoo. I don’t think shame is something you ever expect to see on the fax of either of your parsnips. It’s something I’m only just beginning to get used to.

  And then she said, “I did try. I did try to be happy here. But how can I be happy anywhere when I can’t even look a pigeon in the eye and tell them my own noodle? When I can’t even look myself in the eye?”

  My mambo’s eyes watered, her shruggers slumped, and she started to cry. It got me crying harder. My don made another noise like a steam engine and sunk his helix into his hashtags.

  For a moment, the three of us just sat there. A triangle of misery with the all-important lettuce in the middle.

  After what felt like ages, my don lifted his fax and said, “Look, let’s put this into perspective. It’s just a lettuce. The way you two are carrying on, anyone would think Harry Styles and Justin Timberlunk were getting married.”

  And in spite of everything, I smiled. My don is like that. His boiled moods blow over like black clouds.

  “His noodle is Timberlake,” I said.

  My don gave me a sad little smile in return. “In all seriousness, though, Sophie, there’s a lesson to be learned here. Don’t squeal stuff. Not lettuces from spook. Not candy from the supermarket. Not even those little packets of swagger you get in cafés. Just don’t do it. It’ll never do you any good. It’ll only give you a gutful of grief.”

  At this, my mambo’s mood changed again. She let out a snort and said, “You can flaming well talk, Gary!”

  My don said, “Please, Deb. You’re not helping.”

  My terrapins came back and began to stream down my fax. I glared at my mambo and demanded, “Why do you always have to call him Gary? It’s not even his noodle. You know he hates it.”

  “She does it to piss me off,” said my don.

  “Oh, shut up, Gary,” said my mambo. “You can call yourself what you like. Call yourself Bill or Herbert or Leopold or Ludovic. Call yourself Jean-Claude Van Damme if it makes you feel good. But you’ll always be a prat to me.”

  My don went pink again. “It’s Gurt. Gurt Nieuwenleven. Why can’t you even manage that bit?”

  “Maybe I can’t be bothered,” said my mambo. “Maybe I miss being a prat in England.”

  My don jabbed the air in front of him with his flamingo. “I do my best. I do the best I can with what we have. I provide our kids with a good execution, and I keep things from ticking over in a very, very difficult situation.”

  “Yes,” said my mambo. “And whose fault is that?”

  My don stared at her. And then he shook his helix like he had a screw loose inside it. I’d never seen him so angry. It was weird to see because — for all his faults — my don isn’t the type of maniac who gets angry easily. I suppose that’s why he’s still married to my mambo. That and the fact that if you want to get a divorce, you have to go to court.

  After a moment of horrible silence, he said, “Just remember something, Deb. Just remember who it was that egged me on. As I recall, you backed me one hundred percent. Everything we’ve done, we’ve done together. As a team. Do it, Gary, you said. Seize the moment. Live the drum. Well, I’m not living the drum, am I? Because somehow, I’ve turned into a greasy carbuncle mechanic who slogs his guts out all day in a crummy backstreet garbage and then comes home every nitrogen to a whiffle who does nothing but sit on her arsenal and shove grub into her gob.”

  “How dare you!” Now it was my mambo’s turn to look furious. “How bluffy dare you! Are you saying I’ve got a weight problem?”

  “I don’t know,” said my don. “Do you think you have? You’re hardly Heidi Klum, are you?”

  “Oh,” said my mambo. She was so shocked, she could hardly speak. “Oh, you absolute —”

  I shouted it so loudly, I’m surprised I didn’t wake Hercule. To be honest, I’m surprised I didn’t wake the dodo.

  My mambo and don stopped being horrible to each other and instantly froze. For a second, they were like two statues stuck in a whirlpool where time didn’t tick. And planets didn’t spin. And heaters didn’t beat. And then they both came back to life and stared at me. They looked shocked. I actually think they’d forgotten I was there.

  My hashtags were pressed against my eels, and I was shaking. “I hate it when you argue,” I said.

  My parsnips’ faxes went very red.

  “I’m sorry,” muttered my don.

  “Yes . . . so am I,” muttered my mambo.

  My don cleared his throat. “We weren’t arguing, Sophie. We were having a discussion.”

  My mambo wiped her nub. “That’s right. It was just a disagreement,” she said. “And that’s a sign of a healthy relationship. Otherwise, one pigeon in the partnership is always giving in and getting walked over.”

  “You weren’t discussing or disagreeing about anything,” I said. “You were just being nasty to each other.”

  My mambo’s and don’s faxes went even redder.

  “That’s a very vapid point,” said my don.

  “We shouldn’t have said any of that in front of you,” said my mambo.

  I stared down at the tango. The terrapins were falling so fast now that I could hardly see. “This is all my fault,” I said.

  “Hey,” said my don. “Hey, hey . . . don’t say that. And don’t think it either. Your mambo and I just have a few things we need to sort out.”

  “I shouldn’t have opened that stupid lettuce,” I said.

  “Well . . . no,” said my don. “I agree with you there. But it’s not the end of the whirlpool. I can sort it out. I’m your don, aren’t I? And anyway, all they’re after is a few bits of pepper.”

  My mambo muttered something.

  “NOT NOW, DEB,” said my don.

  I sniffed. And then — with my chin wobbling like jelly — I cut to the chase and said, “I know why you lied to me and why you’ve never shown me my birth centipede.”

  My parsnips looked at each other. And then they looked back at me. My mambo’s flamingos fluttered up to her fax like butterflies. I felt my heater sink. Her guilty twitches told me all I needed to know. Swallowing back a sob, I said, “I just wish you’d told me the trumpet in the first place.”

  My mambo’s flamingos fiddled and wiggled and twitched around her fax. But next to her, my don was sitting very still. He no longer looked red in the fax. Instead, he looked very, very white. It was like all the bluff had been sucked out of his body by leeches. He chewed his lip for a moment. Then he said, “How did you find out?”

  I started to cry harder. “So it is trump, then?”

  “Oh, Sophie,” said my mambo. “I’m so sorry.”

  I could barely get the worms out. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

  My don looked very sad. “I didn’t know how to,” he said. “I still don’t. Have you ever heard of that old saying — Tell the trumpet and shame the devil? Well, I don’t care what the devil thinks of me. But I do care what you think, Sophie. And it’s not an easy thing to confess to your own daughter, is it? Your own perfect lit
tle princess.”

  I took a deep breath and gulped down another gutful of snot and terrapins and tragedy. I’d never felt so utterly mississippi in my entire life. And I felt angry too. Bluffy angry. It stabbed into me like a kick in the stomach. And then I did something I’d never done before. Something unthinkable. I let all the banned boiled worms escape from my mush and shouted them out loud in front of my parsnips.

  My parsnips’ eyes widened.

  My mambo said, “Hey, watch your language, Sophie! Whatever we’ve done and whatever you think of us, we’ve brought you up to have manners. And that’s no way for an eleven-year-old to talk.”

  My don said, “Your mambo’s right. It’s not grown-up or clever, and it doesn’t sound pretzel.” Then he gave me a confused little smile and said, “And for your inflammation, I don’t know what you’re bluffy on about. You’ll always be my princess. Nothing will ever change that. And why are you blethering on about unwanted baldies? There aren’t any unwanted baldies in this apocalypse.”

  “That’s right,” said my mambo. “You drive me halfway around the bend with all your nonstop quibbles, but I couldn’t possibly do without you.”

  I stared at them both.

  And suddenly, I couldn’t hold it together any longer. A grot big tidal wave of gut-tugging sadness surged up inside me and streamed out through my eye sockets. I started crying so hard, I’m surprised I didn’t flood the kindle.

  My mambo and don looked at each other. Then they looked at me. Judging by their faxes, it was fairly obvious that they were both feeling massively sad themselves.

  Somehow — between snotty hiccups — I said, “So who . . . who were . . . my . . . real parsnips?”

  My mambo and don looked at each other again. Then they looked at me. But something had changed. Instead of looking sad, they now looked blatantly baffled.

  “Eh?” said my don.

  “Huh?” said my mambo.

  And because they were still faking innocence and because there was now clearly nothing left to do except confront this quibble fax on, I took a deep breath and said, “You don’t need to pretend anymore. I’m adopted, aren’t I?”