A Thousand Water Bombs

by T. M. Alexander

  I was getting fed up with the medals business. ‘Why do you care about Jack’s medals if you don’t like him?’

  Flo, the sister who always has something to say, the sister who is little but has a big mouth, said nothing. Her mouth made a few shapes that suggested something might come out, but no sound followed. I had a revolting thought. Maybe she’s in love with Jack. Maybe she wants to find the medals so she can give them back to him.

  ‘I never said I don’t like him,’ said Flo and burst into tears, which brought Mum. I got a version of the usual being-kind-to-your-sister lecture. Blah blah. It made no difference to me. I am me. Flo is Flo. We will never be friends. I couldn’t remember why I’d tried to help her in the first place. I grabbed my bag and left.

  Fifty and I caught up with Copper Pie, who was kicking a stone to school.

  ‘You’re early,’ he said. He’s usually first.

  ‘Keener had to escape from the evil eye of his evil sister,’ said Fifty.

  ‘You wait,’ I said. ‘One day soon Probably Rose will turn round and say she hates you.’ As soon as I’d said it I knew it was a mistake. Fifty’s face lost all its bones and went all soggy. I wished I could take it back.

  ‘But she won’t mean it, because she’s really . . . great.’ I was going to say nice or kind but they didn’t sound good enough. Anyway, it worked, because Fifty gave me a I’m-so-glad-you-like-her-too look (and Copper Pie gave me a sideways you’re-a-weirdo look) and we carried on to school.

  Jonno was talking to Bee on our patch. They stopped when we got there.

  Copper Pie clapped his hands together. ‘All set to catch the thief?’

  ‘We just need Flo,’ said Bee. (She doesn’t get to school until about half-past eight.) While we waited, Fifty, Copper Pie and I peeled the bark off our tree and compared shapes. If you’re careful you can get great big bits. I managed to get Italy (a long boot) and a duck. Fifty cheated and made an F. Copper Pie made a shotgun and pretended to shoot me. Remind me, why is he my friend?

  ‘Can’t you stop doing that?’ said Jonno. ‘Loads of creatures live under the bark.’

  It’s no fun having your own Tribe entomologist.

  ‘She’s here anyway,’ said Fifty, pointing at my sister.

  ‘Off I go then.’ Bee flicked her black fringe out of the way – it falls straight back over her eyes but at least she gets to see for a second.

  We watched Bee walk across the playground, avoid being hit by an out-of-control diabolo and miss a stray netball chucked by a Year 5 (who must need glasses) doing goal practice. Bee tapped Flo on the shoulder and she swivelled round. I couldn’t hear what was said but I knew as soon as Bee left she’d be off, spreading the news.

  Bee didn’t come straight back. She went over and spoke to Ed and Lily. I watched Flo to see how quickly she’d work her way round the Year 3s. Except she didn’t move. She stayed where she was.

  A funny feeling started growing inside. A sort of have-we-done-it-all-wrong-again? feeling. I don’t know why, because either the thief would confess, or he wouldn’t. What could be simpler? I tried to push the worry away and replace it with one of Dad’s ‘Friday feelings’. Fridays are great because the weekend starts, and Dad comes home early. He says that all day he has a holiday feeling. A holiday feeling sounded good to me.

  ‘Did she believe you? asked Jonno, when Bee finally made it back, thirty seconds before the bell.

  ‘I think so. But she didn’t look too happy about it. She said it would be kinder if we whispered in the robber’s ear. She said it was mean to tell the whole school.’

  She’s right, I thought.

  ‘What did you say to that, Bee?’ I asked.

  ‘I couldn’t agree, could I? So I said we were doing it because the thief needed to learn a lesson.’

  The have-we-done-it-all-wrong-again? feeling rose up again, smothering the Friday feeling. It was going to go wrong. I just knew it.

  the rest of friday

  This is what happened.

  ABSOLUTELY NOTHING

  All through break I waited for some Year 3 to come up, all tearful, maybe with a friend, and confess to the crime. All through lunch I kept scanning the hall to spot the kid, red-eyed and head bent over, coming to find us – Tribe, the rooters-out of evil. But no one came. No one even looked a bit dodgy. In fact the only dodgy-looking people were the Tribers, who were all on high alert waiting for the medal-nicker. Afternoon break followed the same pattern. Except that Flo came over to our area.

  ‘Have you done it?’ she said. ‘Have you said who’s the thief?’

  I looked at Bee. It was her lie. So she needed to sort it out.

  ‘No, Flo. We . . . we might have made a mistake.’

  She’d put all her faith in Tribe, but we’d failed. I knew she’d be disappointed. Please don’t start sobbing again, I thought.

  But all she said was, ‘Oh.’

  ‘Sorry, Flo,’ said Fifty. ‘But we’ll keep trying, won’t we?’

  Jonno nodded. His woolly hair bobbed up and down. I looked at the floor. The medals were turning into a pain in the neck. We were never going to get to the bottom of it.

  a change of venue

  It’s not a rule or anything but lately we’ve started meeting at the Tribehouse on Saturday afternoons as well as Wednesdays. When I arrived, Jonno was there already.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Hi.’

  The Tribe flap flapped and Bee arrived. Copper Pie came next.

  ‘Mum gave me some biscuits.’ He plonked them on the safe.

  ‘Why?’ said Bee.

  ‘Because the nursery kids didn’t like them.’

  ‘They must be bad then,’ said Bee. ‘I’ll pass.’

  ‘Suit yourself.’ Copper Pie took one – it was a biscuit sandwich with a layer of chocolate in the middle. I took one too.

  ‘Lush. How could anyone not like these?’ I said, reaching for a second.

  ‘Mum said that one of the children said it looked like nappy mess.’

  I nearly gagged, but managed to tell my brain that I was eating chocolate spread, nothing worse.

  Fifty shot in as though he’d been thrown out of a cannon. He’d smelt sugar, for sure.

  ‘Excellent,’ he said, eating one and holding a second ready for immediate digestion. He loves sweet things. Unfortunately his mum doesn’t love him having sweet things. She says they’re mostly full of artificial sweeteners that will make today’s children really ill with lots of horrible diseases (whose names I can’t remember) when they’re older.

  ‘Right,’ said Jonno. ‘Fist of friendship.’

  We did the fist thing, a bit stickier than normal thanks to the biccies. I’d got the list I made on Wednesday with stuff for Tribe to do, and I was about to get it out but Jonno spoke first. He’s done that to me so many times. I’m going to have to work out a way to get in before him or I’ll spend my life never saying what I want to.

  ‘I know we failed yesterday, but I feel like Tribe made a pledge to Flo to clear up the medal business. Surely we can think of something between us.’ He looked at us all in turn.

  We couldn’t exactly say ‘no’ – it just wasn’t Tribish.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘But I haven’t got a clue what to do.’

  ‘All right,’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘Same,’ said Fifty.

  Bee made an I’ll-go-along-with-the-rest-of-you face.

  ‘Come on then.’ Jonno headed out of the door.

  Where’s he going? I thought.

  ‘Where’s he going?’ said Copper Pie.

  ‘Search me,’ said Fifty.

  ‘Come on,’ said a disembodied voice from the garden, so we did what he said.

  ‘Where are we going, Jonno?’ Bee asked the back of Jonno’s fluffy head.

  ‘Keener’s.’

  ‘Why?’ said Bee.

  ‘Because that’s where our only lead is.’

  Bee turned round to look at me. ‘Why are we going to yours?’

/>   I shrugged. ‘Ask him?’

  ‘Jonno, why —’

  He was already through the cat flap so Bee didn’t bother with the end of her sentence. We all wriggled through after him.

  ‘We’re going to Keener’s because we need Flo. She was there. She’s our best witness.’

  Great! We were going to spend all afternoon getting nowhere with Flo. I was miffed, so I hung back, hoping someone would notice. But no one did so I caught up. No one noticed that either. Jonno and Bee were talking about Doodle – they sounded like parents! Jonno seemed to know a lot about dogs, considering he doesn’t have one.

  ‘How do you know so much about dogs?’ asked Bee.

  ‘My friend, Ravi, the one from Glasgow. He had a Labrador called Taylor,’ said Jonno. ‘She looked a bit like Doodle, but not as curly.’ That explained it.

  Copper Pie was telling Fifty how he managed to get through five interviews with the Year 3s so quickly. ‘I gave them twenty seconds to answer. If they didn’t say anything – too bad! How come you only did one?’

  Fifty made a smug kind of smile. ‘I wanted to be absolutely sure the kid wasn’t hiding anything so I asked all the questions and then asked them again in a slightly different way. Cunning of me, don’t you think?’

  I thought about joining in – explaining how I did my interrogations – but I was in a mood. And knowing we were on our way to see Flo didn’t make it any better. She was bound to be all bossy when she realised Jonno needed her.

  ‘I didn’t expect you back so soon,’ said Mum. ‘Or there to be so many of you. Has the Tribehouse fallen down?’ (Her idea of a joke.)

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘We’ve come to —’ It occurred to me just before I said the next word that Mum might not agree with us being on the trail of stolen medals.

  ‘We’ve come to play with Keener’s models,’ said Fifty.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said and walked past Mum, out of the door and up the stairs. I could hear Flo upstairs. She was talking to her cuddly toys. ‘Don’t cry, there are a few bumps and then you’ll be at the bottom.’ She was obviously mattress surfing again. She likes to warn the toys so they don’t get scared. Mum says it’s role-playing. I think it’s stupid.

  We waited on the landing for her to slide down from the top floor. Whoosh! She nearly ran into Jonno who was standing right by the bottom stair.

  ‘Hello Flo,’ he said.

  ‘Hello Jonno.’ She smiled. ‘Have you got another idea? Shall we look in all the classrooms on Monday? Maybe behind the radiators? Or by the coats.’ Flo sounded really happy, for the first time in ages.

  ‘No. I’ve got a better idea, but it needs you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. We need you to sit down and go through every single thing that happened in Show and Tell. Where everyone was sitting? Where Jack showed off his medals? Who went before him? Who went after him?’

  Flo’s face switched from happy to terrified.

  ‘It’s all right, Flo,’ said Bee. ‘It’s to get ideas, isn’t it, Jonno?’

  ‘Partly. But also because if you go through it step-by-step you might remember something that you didn’t before. The police do it all the time. It’s called a reconstruction.’

  Flo started sobbing. ‘I don’t want to do it, Keener.’

  ‘Yes you do – you love talking,’ I said. That didn’t exactly help. She pushed past me and went into her room. She tried to slam the door but there was a cuddly toy in the way (exact species unknown: a cross between a bear and a dog) so there was no ‘slam’, only a decapitation (just joking).

  Bee knocked on the slightly open door.‘Flo,’ she whispered.

  ‘Go away,’ said my angry little sister.

  ‘Come on,’ said Fifty. ‘Let’s play with Keener’s Deathmobile.’ (I didn’t use to like anyone messing with my models but we’re Tribe now and sharing is part of it.)

  Fifty bagsied my hammock. The rest of us found things to shoot him with as he swayed. Copper Pie had his own catapult, of course, I grabbed the Deathmobile (which shoots missiles), Jonno had a rocket that launches foam darts but Bee was empty-handed.

  ‘I’ll have this,’ she said. ‘Whatever it is.’ She hoicked a long blue handle out from behind my skimboard.

  I laughed. ‘It’s not a weapon.’

  ‘It is now,’ she said, swinging my metal detector round like a ball and chain.

  ‘Cool,’ said Jonno. ‘Does it work?’

  ‘Not very well,’ I said. ‘Dad buried some money in the sand for me to find when we were on one of our trips. Even though he knew exactly where he’d put it we never found the 50p.’

  Bee turned it on. It made a long beep.

  ‘That means it’s alive,’ I said.

  ‘What does it do when you find metal?’

  ‘It makes little bleeps with gaps in between and the closer you get, the smaller the gap between the bleeps.’

  Bee wanted to metal detect my room but we wanted to fire stuff at Fifty.

  ‘OK. I’ll try somewhere else.’

  Off she went.

  In between launching attacks on each other we talked about you-know-what.

  ‘Who would bother to steal someone’s medals?’ said Fifty. ‘You’d have to find a way to take them with no one seeing you. Then you’d have to find somewhere to hide them. It would be silly to take them home because your mum would know you haven’t been out winning competitions on the dirt bike you don’t have without her knowing. All too much trouble.’

  ‘You’d have to be really mean,’ said Jonno. ‘And a bit stupid because there’s a risk you’d get caught. There are easier ways to get back at someone.’

  ‘Hitting them works,’ said Copper Pie. We all laughed. He stood up and pretended to box. Fifty slid out of the hammock and boxed as well. I didn’t join in. The trouble with pretend fighting is that Copper Pie sometimes forgets the ‘pretend’ part. Jonno hasn’t worked that out yet. He stood up and got a karate kick in the chest. It must have hurt but he didn’t say anything. He took his glasses off and put them on my bookshelf, did a few shoulder rolls (to limber up) and launched himself across the room, screaming something that sounded Chinese. Copper Pie sidestepped and then the three of them rolled around on my rug for ages as though they were about four years old. I reclaimed my hammock and watched them being idiots. It would have gone on and on if Bee hadn’t come back in with my red-eyed sister and told them to stop.

  ‘Flo’s got something to say.’

  It took us a few seconds to get the right way up and the right way round.

  ‘Go on then,’ I said.

  My sister’s hand, which was behind her back, crept round to the front. She was holding something. Another terrible pom-pom animal most likely, I thought. I got ready to say how lovely her pom-pom guinea pig was . . . but I was wrong. She was holding three medals. They caught the light as they swung gently from side to side on their stripy ribbons.

  Flo is the thief

  No one spoke. It was too awful. I wanted to throttle her. My sister, a thief! She started sobbing. Good. Sob all you like, I thought. You’re in dead trouble.

  ‘Flo, you need to stop crying and tell them why you’ve got Jack’s medals,’ said Bee.

  ‘Because she took them,’ I said.

  ‘Leave it, Keener,’ said Bee. Charming! My sister steals precious medals and I get the grief.

  ‘Come on, Flo.’ Bee’s voice was kind, not like her normal bossy one.

  ‘I took them.’ She started to howl.

  ‘Shh,’ said Bee. ‘Do you want your mum to hear?’

  What did it matter? I thought. Everyone was going to know soon – Mum, Mr Dukes, the Head.

  Flo wiped her snotty nose on her sleeve, and the tears slowed down. ‘Sorry,’ said Flo.

  ‘Don’t worry, Flo,’ said Fifty.

  What!

  ‘Why are you being so nice?’ I said.

  ‘There must be an explanation,’ said Jonno, looking directly at me.

  ‘
Let’s hear it then.’ I was all ears. I folded my arms and stared at Flo, evil-personified. She gulped, looked up at me, looked quickly back down and started talking in a very small un-Flo-like voice.

  ‘Jack was really mean.’ Big sniff. ‘He said Fat Cat was dead because she hasn’t got legs. He said they’d been chopped off by the Fat Cat butcher.’OK. Quite mean. But not bad enough to steal from Jack’s desk. ‘And then he said Fat Cat was ugly, even uglier than me.’ Another big sniff.

  ‘But Flo, you can’t take things from people because they upset you,’ said Jonno.

  ‘I wasn’t going to keep them. I was going to put them back.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘I was too scared. I didn’t want to get found out.’ She started crying again.

  I sighed. Fifty was nearly in tears too. He’s so soppy about girls.

  ‘Hang on there, Flo,’ said Jonno. ‘Something doesn’t make sense. Why did you ask us to find them if you knew where they were?’

  ‘I was too frightened to put them back in Jack’s desk. I thought if I put them in the muddle by the coats and bags and lunch boxes, the bit Mr Dukes is always telling us to tidy, you could find them and you could give them back. But you wouldn’t do it.’

  ‘So that’s why you kept asking us to look for them at school,’ I said. It was all fitting together. Flo wanted us to agree to search the school. Then she was going to put the medals there for us to find, to keep her out of trouble. Not a bad plan. Perhaps she wasn’t that dim.

  Flo nodded. ‘If you’d done what I’d said Jack would have them back already and you wouldn’t be cross with me.’ A big tear rolled all the way down her cheek.

  ‘We didn’t do what you said because if the medals were by the coats they’d have been found already.’ I was cross, but not as much as before. She did look totally pathetic, all wet-faced and blotchy. And Jack was wrong – she’s not as ugly as Fat Cat. No one’s as ugly as Fat Cat.

  ‘So where were the medals?’ asked Jonno.

  ‘In her pom-pom box,’ said Bee. ‘With Fat Cat.’

  ‘And where’s that?’

  ‘In her toy cupboard.’

  ‘How did you find them, Bee?’