A Thousand Water Bombs

by T. M. Alexander

  ‘Jamie! You do not shout out, you put your hand up. Haven’t we been through this enough times?’

  Jamie sat down, said ‘Yes’ and then put his hand up. Ed picked up Alice’s pencil and gave it to Jamie. Callum took it off Jamie and gave it to Alice.

  ‘Right,’ said Miss Walsh. ‘Are we all ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ shouted Jamie, with no hand in the air.

  Miss Walsh sighed, retied her bun-type thing and read out the first question.

  I try and get top marks so I was concentrating quite hard when the Head came in and interrupted Miss Walsh’s flow.

  ‘You know who you are. The five of you, follow me!’

  You can tell a lot by the way people speak. The Head was not inviting us for tea and scones, if you get my drift.

  In the Head’s office there are pictures everywhere. Loads were done by the kids in school but some are posh in gold frames, and there is a certificate and a photo of the Head being given a cup and another photo of the Head opening the school library after it was ‘modernised’. I liked the library the way it was before, when the books were all over the place in no order and you could take out what you liked. Now there’s a system and you have to sign ‘out’ and back ‘in’. (I was having a good look at the walls because I was too scared to look at the Head.)

  ‘Enough is enough,’ she said. ‘A kangaroo court indeed! What were you thinking?’

  There was silence. So Bee spoke. ‘What exactly is a kangaroo court?’

  ‘It is a cowboy court.’ The Head looked at our faces and gave us another clue. ‘A court that cannot possibly deliver a sound judgement because it is made up of people who are not equipped to understand or implement the law. A lawless court. A bogus court. A sham.’

  I was getting the picture. The Head had obviously found out about the Year 3 interrogations. And she didn’t seem to be impressed, which was odd considering we were trying to catch the thief for her.

  ‘We were only trying to help,’ said Jonno. ‘Flo, Keener’s sister, said that Jack was very upset.’

  ‘She begged us to help,’ said Fifty, making a prizewinning begging face together with praying hands.

  ‘What is it about the five of you? I know you to be decent, responsible children, yet you cannot walk around a corner without causing some disruption or other. I have had to talk to you about bribery, about emails sent without authority . . . Can you not follow the basic rules of school, which are not dissimilar from those of life?’

  It was a question, but no one had an answer. I smiled, hoping to remind her of the decent, responsible bit before she handed out the punishment.

  ‘You will do no more interrogations of the Year 3 class, and you will personally apologise to those you have already quizzed. Mr Dukes is expecting you. Go away, and do not attempt to interfere further. We, the staff, will address the matter of Jack’s medals. Try, for the rest of the term – which is, after all, the end of your time in this school – to think before you act.’

  Not bad advice, I thought.

  ‘Yes, we will,’ said Bee. ‘Thank you.’ As I followed Bee out of the door I mumbled a ‘thank you’ too.

  Mr Dukes is Flo’s teacher. He’s all right. We trooped off in his direction.

  ‘That’s so mean,’ said Bee. ‘We’d have had the case all wrapped up if only she’d let us do M to Z.’

  There were murmurs of agreement. Me, I didn’t care about Jack. I was happy to be let off. Fifty knocked on the door and we went in.

  ‘A-ha!’ said Mr Dukes. ‘Here come the NYPD.’

  No one laughed except Copper Pie. ‘New York Police Department,’ he explained. There were a few more giggles. I glanced over at Flo but she didn’t look at me. Perhaps she feels guilty that we’ve got in trouble because of her, I thought. We hadn’t agreed who was going to say sorry but Jonno spoke first so that was fine. He said all the right things, as usual, except for the last sentence, which was: ‘If anyone knows anything about the medals but is too scared to tell a teacher you can tell one of us.’

  Mr Dukes didn’t like that. ‘Children, you don’t need to turn to the Year 6s, you can always come and talk to me in private, as I’m sure you know.’

  He nodded at us, which meant LEAVE. So we did.

  ‘The mystery of Jack’s missing medals will stay exactly that, I reckon,’ said Fifty.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Jonno. ‘Tribe was appointed by Flo to find out who did it. We’re not giving up.’

  I should have known.

  old-fashioned detective work

  Bee’s mum was waiting at the gates again, with Doodle. Bee was about to go with them when Jonno said, ‘Do you want to come round to mine?’

  ‘Too right, I do,’ said Bee. ‘Sorry, Mum. I’m off to Jonno’s.’

  ‘But what about Doodle?’ said Bee’s mum.

  ‘He’s your puppy,’ said Bee, and walked off.

  ‘Can we all come to yours?’ said Fifty.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonno. I was mega-excited because I was the only one who’d ever been inside his house. The others had never seen his fabulous stuff: telly, computer, executive desk . . .

  ‘But won’t your dad send us away?’ asked Fifty. We all know Jonno’s parents don’t much like kids.

  ‘No. He’s too polite. But he might suggest I don’t invite you again, after you’ve gone of course. That’s how it works in our house.’ So we went to Jonno’s. On the way Fifty made the mistake of asking Bee how the dog was settling in.

  ‘The dog’s fine,’ she said. ‘It’s me that’s not.’

  BEE’S REASONS NOT TO HAVE A PUPPY

  • They poo randomly. They wee randomly. (At least Bee’s brothers used the bathroom, even if they did sometimes wet the seat.)

  • You need stair gates everywhere to keep the dog and its mess in the kitchen.

  • Bee’s puppy has already chewed the leg of the red armchair and eaten one of Bee’s mum’s boots. Bee’s hidden all her stuff.

  • Puppies eat grass and then they throw up. Doodle sick went behind the radiator.

  • Outside, Doodle acts like a wind-up toy on superfast setting and tramples all over the flowerbeds.

  • Doodle hates his crate (he’s meant to sleep in it). He has to be shoved in. (Bee’s thinking of moving into it instead, to get away from him.)

  • Puppies cry like babies. They wake up in the night, like babies.

  • Puppies are always hungry (like Bee’s brothers).

  Bee didn’t stop for breath for about ten minutes.

  ‘Where’d your mum get the mutt from anyway?’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘Some posh woman Mum works with couldn’t cope. She’d only had him for a few weeks. She told Mum and next thing Doodle was ours. She must have been desperate to get rid of him – she gave us everything free! But that’s not how it’s meant to work, is it? You’re meant to beg for a pet for years. You’re meant to hope every Christmas Eve that there’ll be a tiny fluffpot in your stocking. You’re NOT meant to have a crazy dog move in with all its rubbish while you’re at school one day.’

  We walked the rest of the way in silence.

  Jonno’s dad was busy somewhere else but his mum was in the kitchen, writing. She took out her earphones, smiled at us all, said, ‘Hello, I’m Frances. You must be the Tribe.’

  We all said our names.

  She smiled (again), put her earphones back in and went back to her writing. The beads in her hair made the same clackety-clack I remembered from the first time I met her. I waited for her to say something else, maybe offer us a snack, or at least a drink . . . but she was obviously busy.

  ‘Come on.’ Jonno led us all upstairs to his room and I watched the faces of the Tribers as they clocked all his gear.

  ‘You are so lucky,’ said Bee.

  Copper Pie put the telly on and started flicking channels. Fifty swivelled on the see-through plastic computer chair, with his feet dangling because they didn’t reach the floor. Bee had her mouth wide open. She didn�
�t seem to know what to do. Jonno did.

  ‘Right, Tribers. Time for a new plan. We can’t interrogate the Year 3 bambinos so we’ll have to try something else. Ideas?’

  Complete silence, except for the commentator yelling from the telly. Copper Pie had found football. Fifty was messing with the web, in between spinning round. Bee didn’t seem to have anything to say (odd). I was wishing I’d sat on the computer chair before Fifty so I could play the game I played last time.

  The complete absence of anyone saying anything was interrupted by Jonno’s mum. She poked her head round the door, nodded towards the telly, raised her eyebrows, smiled, nodded towards Fifty, who was going round quite fast, shook her head, and left with a beady jingle.

  ‘Copper Pie,’ said Jonno. No response. He said it again. ‘Copper Pie!’

  C.P. answered without taking his eyes off the screen, which was about a nose-length from his nose.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Mum doesn’t agree with telly, unless it’s something she approves of, which means David Attenborough or the news.’

  ‘How come you’ve got a telly if that’s how she feels?’ I said.

  ‘To watch DVDs when they want me out of the way,’ said Jonno. ‘You’d better either turn it off or kill the volume.’

  Copper Pie grunted, and muted.

  Fifty slowed down.‘Do I need to get off the chair? I don’t think she approves of spinning either.’

  ‘No, don’t worry, she can’t see through walls, so you’re safe, unless she checks again.’

  I was beginning to see that maybe Jonno’s mum wasn’t quite as fantastic as I thought she was. There seemed to be a lot of invisible rules that I was slowly discovering, like secret writing in lemon juice slowly turning brown from the heat of a lamp (you must have tried it!).

  Fifty hopped off the seat anyway, landed on two feet, immediately wobbled, nearly fell over, wobbled again and finally grabbed Bee.

  ‘All that spinning has affected your inner ear,’ she said.

  Fifty let go, stood up, still weaving slightly from side to side, and made an announcement. ‘So, Tribe, despite the setback of the kangaroo court, has to find the answer to the mystery of the missing medals. Are we all of the same mind?’ He does that occasionally – speaks like someone in a play.

  ‘Yep,’ said Jonno.

  ‘Don’t mind,’ I said. I meant ‘No’ but that didn’t seem the right answer. Copper Pie half turned round, opened his mouth, and then went straight back to stare at the silent telly instead.

  ‘Well, if we don’t, it’ll seem like Tribe failed . . .’ said Bee.

  ‘Same,’ said Fifty.

  A bit more silence. I remember thinking that after Jonno joined we’d never ever run out of ideas again. Seemed like I was wrong.

  ‘We either need to find the medals, or the thief,’ I said. To help things along.

  ‘We could offer a reward,’ said Jonno.

  ‘That could work.’ Bee pulled the pocket of her jacket out. ‘But we don’t have enough money.’ Bee never has any money.

  ‘Maybe we could get chatting to the ones in Flo’s class we didn’t interview and see what we find out.’ A useless suggestion from Fifty, but at least he was trying.

  Bee spoke in a very slow you’re-an-idiot voice. ‘The Head’ll never guess what we’re up to if we start hanging out with Year 3s. Duh!’

  ‘What’s your idea then . . . boss?’ Fifty was getting his own back.

  Bee sighed. ‘We could get Flo to do it for us.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘Flo, who never stops talking, likes pink and babies, is going to conduct police interviews with the (twenty-six kids take away the fifteen we’ve already grilled) eleven kids we didn’t get round to? Don’t think so,’ I said. ‘She’d ask the questions and answer them.’

  ‘She’d make them swear on her dolly’s life,’ said some sound waves from somewhere near the telly. Copper Pie was watching football and listening to Tribe. I don’t think any of us thought he was that clever.

  ‘I don’t think finding the thief is going to be that easy,’ said Jonno. ‘We should concentrate on trying to find the medals.’

  ‘Same,’ said Fifty.

  ‘But how?’ I asked.

  ‘Old-fashioned detective work,’ said Fifty. ‘Also known as searching thoroughly. I mean, do you really think the Year 3s looked properly? We could take sticks to poke down the radiators, and a feather duster to swish out anything under the cupboards and on the high-up shelves.’

  Copper Pie turned round, all the way this time, and said, ‘Waste of time. They’re probably in the bin,’ before turning back to the football.

  Bee had had enough. She marched over to the telly and turned it off. ‘Last time I looked you were a Triber, like us. How about helping rather than shouting out rubbish, in between watching mindless morons try and put a ball in a net so big even I could score?’

  WOW! I wasn’t sure how Copper Pie was going to react. She’d insulted him, and worse, his great love – footie.

  ‘OK,’ said Copper Pie, standing up and looking down at Bee’s ponytail. ‘I can see you need help.’ (Ha ha.) ‘Let’s spread a rumour that we’re gonna uncover the thief in the playground at lunch.’

  ‘And . . .?’

  ‘And, if it was me, I’d come and confess and beg you not to tell the whole school as long as I give back the medals.’

  ‘Top idea,’ said Jonno. ‘Football’s obviously good brain juice.’

  I was stunned. Since when did my old friend, Tribe’s trusty thug, have ideas like that?

  Copper Pie gave Bee a wide smile. She wanted to be miffed, I think, but she couldn’t help grinning back. ‘I like it,’ she said.

  ‘So how do we spread the rumour?’ said Fifty.

  ‘That’s easy,’ I said. ‘We tell Flo.’

  ‘Tell her what?’ said Fifty.

  ‘Tell her that we’ve found out who stole the medals and we’re going to announce it at lunch. She’ll be full of it. How Tribe discovered —’

  ‘So we lie to Flo?’ said Bee.

  ‘Well, we can’t tell her the truth – that it’s all a hoax. She’d let it slip. She has to believe it’s true if we expect her to blab to everyone.’ I didn’t mind lying to Flo. It was in a good cause, after all.

  Bee looked at each of us, checking. ‘OK.’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a plan. We tell Flo it’s all solved and we’re identifying the culprit at lunchtime.’ She slapped her hand down and we did a Tribe handshake.

  ‘Flo’ll be really excited that we’ve solved the crime,’ said Fifty. ‘She was so upset about it, wasn’t she, Keener?’

  I nodded, despite the fact that we hadn’t actually solved the crime yet. Fifty seemed to have forgotten that.

  ‘Will you tell Flo?’ said Bee.

  I had a quick think. If I told Flo that we knew who had stolen the medals she would go on and on and on at me until I broke, like a tortured prisoner of war, and told her everything.

  ‘Why don’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Fine,’ said Bee. ‘I’ll tell her before the register.’

  ‘Sorted,’ said Jonno. He walked towards the door. ‘It’s probably time you were off.’ We’d only been at his for about twenty minutes! I hadn’t played on his computer. We hadn’t had a snack. We hadn’t done anything. I looked at him. He looked kind of weird. ‘I’ll ask Mum if you can come another time. She doesn’t really like having a lot of kids in the house when she’s studying.’

  It was the first time I’d ever felt sorry for Jonno. Usually I want to be him.

  The four of us trudged down the stairs. Jonno came to the door with us.

  ‘Are your friends leaving?’ came his mum’s voice from the kitchen.

  ‘Yes,’ shouted Jonno.

  His mum came into the hall. ‘Bye, everyone.’ She smiled. I didn’t smile back. Jonno’s mum was a bit of a mystery herself. All nice on the outside, but . . .

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ I said to Jonno, and I made a fist. We
banged knuckles in a fist of friendship. He shut the door and we headed up the road.

  ‘What was that all about?’ said Fifty.

  ‘If I didn’t know Jonno better, I’d say he was scared of his mum,’ said Bee.

  ‘No, that’s me,’ said Copper Pie. ‘My mum’s the scary one.’

  ‘Your mum’s not scary. She just shouts a lot,’ I said.

  ‘Same,’ said Fifty. ‘It’s my mum who’s the scary one. Always trying to have cosy chats so she understands me. I don’t want to be understood. I want to be fed sugar.’

  ‘A t least your mum doesn’t cry,’ said Bee. ‘That’s scary.’

  Seemed like I was the only one with a normal (ish) mum. I decided I’d better join in anyway. ‘What’s scary,’ I said, ‘is having a mum who sends you to school dosed up on a deadly combination of pink, white and yellow medicine and wrapped in a vest, even though you’re only a whisper away from falling into a coma.’ I liked the way they all shut up and listened. ‘A mum who thinks nothing of sending you out in all weathers with a throat that makes swallowing as painful as eating a . . . hedgehog.’ (Wished I’d picked a better scratchy thing.)

  ‘Does she really make you wear a vest?’ said Fifty. I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to. They laughed all the way to where I turn off. I wished I’d shut up.

  a friday feeling

  ‘What are you going to do next, Keener?’ said Flo at breakfast on Friday morning.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘But you promised to help.’

  ‘We tried,’ I said. ‘But the Head won’t let us carry on with the interrogations, so that’s it.’

  ‘Can’t you do something else?’ she said.

  ‘Nope.’ I wasn’t going to mention anything about the hoax planned for lunchtime. That was Bee’s job.

  ‘Can’t you look for the medals at school? They might be behind the radiator, or by the coats.’

  ‘They’re not likely to be though are they?’ I said. She’s quite thick, my sister. People think she’s bright but they’ve got her wrong. ‘Who would steal something from your classroom and then hide it near where they took it from?’

  ‘Please,’ she said.