I saw Darius open his trap.
‘AND I THINK SASKIA MIGHT STILL BE ALIVE,’ I shouted.
And Caspar – and Caspar – and Caspar, I thought. I didn’t speak it. I couldn’t bear to have to tell about that, to hear what Darius thought.
‘SASKIA MILLER?’ he shouted.
‘YOU KNOW HER?!’
Like, really, was he some kind of sixth-form perv? How come he knew all our names?
‘WELL, YEAH!’
I glanced at him. He smirked. Revolting. Apparently, like every other boy in the school, Darius Spratt fancied her.
‘AND THERE WAS A BLOKE WHO MURDERED MY STEPDAD,’ I shouted, to shut him up.
It didn’t work. There was this intense waft of stink, which could have been Whitby’s bottom or could have been Darius Spratt blowing off from the strain of calculating.
‘A HUNDRED AND NINETY-FIVE THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED!’ he shouted.
‘WHY DON’T YOU SHUT UP?’
‘I’M JUST SAYING.’
‘SHUUUUUUT UUUUUUP!’
Please, my heart thought, please don’t say another word I can’t bear to hear.
I knew we needed to turn off and find another car. Though I hated the thought that this might involve speaking to Darius, it’d have to be done. No way was there enough fuel in the truck to get us much further.
I was so busy thinking about how awful it was going to be, having to speak to him, that I missed the first turn-off. I could have turned round and gone back, but I couldn’t bring myself to do that, to admit I’d made a mistake. I was bristling about that so much we rattled past the next turn-off. That’s when Darius spoke up.
‘RUBY,’ he shouted.
‘I KNOW!’ I shouted.
He was quiet for a moment.
‘I NEED TO GO TO A CHEMIST’S,’ he shouted.
‘WHAT?!’
‘A CHEMIST’S.’
‘WHAT FOR?’
Even as I said it I knew. It wasn’t just Darius’s trousers that had got left in the polytunnel, it was that stash of medicine he’d had in his bag.
‘I NEED TABLETS,’ he shouted.
‘ARE YOU GONNA HAVE AN EPILEPTIC FIT?!’ I shouted, panicked.
‘NO.’
I glanced at him; he was crimson.
‘I JUST NEED THEM. THAT’S ALL.’
‘WHAT DO I DO IF YOU HAVE A FIT?’
‘I’M NOT GOING TO HAVE A FIT.’
‘YEAH, BUT WHAT IF YOU DO?’
‘I’M NOT. I JUST NEED TABLETS.’
So: the epilepsy thing was a total no-go sore spot, discussion-wise. Hello, Darius Spratt! Just like my dad’s chances of being alive! I felt like pointing that out. Only thing that stopped me was that if I pointed that out he’d probably end up saying again that my dad was DEAD. So I shut up . . . but I was boiling mad – and pretty scared that Nerd Boy would have some kind of fit on me.
Great, eh? But wait! It gets even better!
When we got to the suspension bridge in Bristol, the barrier was down. Being smart like I am, I backed up and drove across in the other lane. Not so smart; the barrier at the other end was down and I guess someone else had tried to leave through the incoming lane because they were still stuck there. Lovely choice: I could either reverse right back across the bridge or attempt to turn round.
Do you know how high that bridge is? Do you know what that drop is like? Do you know how out of the corner of your eye you can see seagulls swoop through the air and down UNDER the road?
Want to know something about me?
I DON’T DO HEIGHTS. I DO NOT DO HEIGHTS.
I revved up a bit – OK, a lot – and –
‘RUUU-BY!’ screamed Darius as I jammed my foot down on to the accelerator.
Too late. That barrier just snapped right off. Easy.
(Probably a lot of people got panicky on that bridge so they didn’t even bother replacing the barrier with a decent one every time.)
You think that’s the good bit? Nuh-uh!
The chemist’s was already smashed open, the pharmacy raided – but no one wanted the drugs Darius was after. He took what they had: two boxes.
‘How long will those last you?’ I asked, rooting through their (poor) selection of make-up for emergency items.
Darius shrugged. ‘A while,’ he said, and swallowed down two big purple tablets with some babies’ rosehip syrup.
I dabbed on some brand-you’ve-never-heard-of eyeshadow, while Darius hunted for something, anything, to drink and found precisely nothing but more yukky baby drinks.
‘Do you think you can drink this stuff?’ asked Darius, examining a bottle of contact-lens potion. ‘It says it’s mainly water . . .’
‘Of course you can’t!’ I said, deciding against a plum-coloured lipstick (that reminded me too much of the fingernails on a certain lady’s hand).
Thing is, I was really thirsty. I almost would have at least tried that contact-lens stuff. Hadn’t I told Darius not to put so much salt in the scrambled eggs?
We’re nearly at the good bit.
We’d left the kid, clutching Darling, just outside on the street, instructed to bang the crowbar on the side of the truck if she got scared. You couldn’t blame her for not wanting to stay in there, even with all the windows open; Whitby’s bottom was out of control. So the kid banged on the truck . . . and she banged on it pretty hard because you could hear it above the noise of an engine, above the blare of music, above Whitby’s big boomy bark.
But it was that, Whitby’s bark, I heard first. Dumb, smart, big, stinky dog. Gentle smelly-bummed giant. He heard that car coming long before we did. He warned us.
Me and Darius looked at each other; I hate that, when you see your own fear in the face of another person – how it had been with my friends at Zak’s, how it had been with Simon. People just shouldn’t look at each other when they’re scared.
What could we do? We couldn’t just leave the kid, could we? We had to go outside – and nothing to defend ourselves with if someone, anyone nasty was there . . . unless what? We threw sponges and baby bath toys at them? Pelted them with plum-coloured lipsticks? The fear wasn’t just crackling in my bones – it was jumping about in every cell of my body.
Parked up next to our truck – and blocking us in – was a pink stretch limo. Oh yes. One of those party cars that are kind of tacky in some ways and in other ways you just want to go in. Music thumped away inside it, but you couldn’t see a thing through the blacked-out windows. You could only see this boy driver (who looked about ten!) in a peaked cap that was way too big for him sitting in the front of the car and staring straight ahead, a bunch of wild-eyed kids packed into the passenger seat next to him.
Then the rear passenger doors cracked open like it was a spaceship – might as well have been! – and smoke and music and people piled out of it . . . but not just any people: super-cool people. Most seemed twenty-something – two fashionista-type trendy girls, a skater dude, some punky-looking characters and an ultra-preppy boy . . . and even the oldest one – who looked as old as Grandma Hollis, but was wearing some kind of skintight leopard-print Lycra cat-suit and a feather boa – looked desperately cool.
‘Hello, sweetie!’ one of the fashionistas cooed at Princess, trying to offer her some water from a bottle.
I sort of squared myself up – but not for a fight. It was weird, meeting that bunch of people, but I didn’t feel afraid of them. I tried to come over all dignified and like I’d never been scared at all, not even for one second . . . while at the same time: 1) relieved I had a superb outfit on, because – no matter how patchy my hair and make-up were they would surely see I was cool too and 2) wondering how come the world goes mental and some people end up with people straight out of some mega-stylish style magazine, whereas other people end up with Darius Spratt and a dog with a dodgy bottom.
They swarmed around Princess. It didn’t even seem to matter to them that Darius barged through them to put his arm round the kid, and it didn’t seem to matt
er to them that the kid wanted nothing to do with them, and just stood there looking (impressively) hostile: a small fierce thing in gigantic wellies.
‘Look at her little dog!’ cooed the other fashionista, reaching out to pet Darling (who didn’t even snarl).
The kid (even more impressively) actually raised the crowbar to stop the dog-petter. Darius took the crowbar off her and held it down by his side, but I could see his hand all tense on it – and his eyes were angry as the kid’s.
‘Do you wanna come with us?’ the preppy boy asked Princess, and the others laughed as if that was a brilliant idea.
‘Hey,’ I said, sort of starting to think that they were actually being pretty rude in some ways; it was like me and Darius Spratt weren’t even there.
I glanced at Darius; he glanced at me. He was frowning – boy, was he frowning.
Then this . . . other guy got out of the limo. Unfolded himself from it. The guy was seriously tall. Looked like a Dartbridge hedge-hugging crustie type, but cleaner and paler: skinny and scruffy and ratty blond dreadlocks poking out from under this country gent’s flat-cap hat, the sort of wintery, tweedy, what-are-you-wearing-that-for-when-it’s-boiling thing that made you feel hot (and thirsty) just looking at it (and wonder whether he sucked head-sweat out of it, like I’d thought about licking pit-sweat out of my cagoule). And I wouldn’t have looked at the hat or at him at all except 1) he was actually pretty good looking and 2) . . . although he didn’t speak a word, not to begin with, the way the others all acted around him it seemed like he was their king or something.
‘Xar! Look! Can we keep her?’ asked a fashionista.
‘You picked the last one!’ said a punky-looking boy.
‘But she’s so cute!’ said the fashionista. ‘Xar! Please?’ she whined.
‘ off!’ shouted Darius.
Whoa. The Spratt swore!
It basically had as much impact as Whitby’s barking. It was embarrassing. Not the way the kid was behaving, because she was just a kid and so you couldn’t blame her, but the way Darius was acting . . . because it was really obvious – to me – that these people weren’t about to hurt anyone. They weren’t just going to take Princess. If I had any worry at all, it was that they might – they just might – try to take MY dog . . . even though MY dog didn’t seem to be MY dog any more.
King Xar sighed. He flicked his gaze over us: the Princess, the Spratt and me.
‘The girls can come,’ he said quietly. ‘Just the girls.’
‘And the little dog!’ squealed a fashionista.
‘You’ll be safe with us,’ cooed Granny Lycra.
‘You really will,’ the skater dude said to me, nodding calmly. ‘It’s all cool.’
I nodded back – in a deadpan but pouty way; he was hot.
‘We’re going to London,’ the Spratt said.
Cheek of it! I was going to London.
‘Awwww!’ King Xar’s court groaned.
‘But we’ve got such an amazing house! Just come and see!’ said a punky girl. She pointed up the road and I admired her excellent silver skeleton hand bracelet.
‘Ruby!’ said Darius. As in, Snap out of it!
More cheek!
Being as how I wasn’t ever allowed to go to festivals, I think I can honestly say that – apart from me and my friends, obviously – they were the most interesting and exciting bunch of people I’d ever been up close to, even if they were behaving a tad badly-ish and had a giant hedge-hugging dread-head for their king. If I’d just happened to bump into them on any day prior to the global meltdown situation, and if – say – I was with Leonie . . . you know what? I think I would have gone with them. Just to see. But it wasn’t any day prior to. It was Day Six of.
‘I’m going to London,’ I said.
‘Awww . . .’ sighed the court.
The preppy boy pinged a finger on the window of the truck; Whitby went crazy.
‘Have fun,’ King Xar said to me through the din. For a second, he looked down at me, straight into my eyes, cocked his head just a little – like a dog does when it’s trying to figure you out. I looked at my shoes. He laughed – a quick and quiet haha of a laugh – then opened the door to the limo wide; who knows how they’d all crammed in there because it was rammed with bottles and containers of water.
‘Come, children,’ he told the court.
Whining like disappointed kids, they piled back into the limo – and Darius – Darius! – reached out and grabbed King Xar’s arm. Really, that whole manhandling thing was a very bad habit. Sooner or later someone (anyone?) was going to deck him for it.
‘Where’d you get the water?’ Darius demanded.
King Xar removed Darius’s hand by his shirtsleeve, picking it off like it was a speck of something unpleasant. He got into the limo and shut the door. There was a pause, one of the blacked-out windows slid down. Granny Lycra popped her head out, with what was obviously a joint in one hand and a glass of champagne in the other.
‘You need . . . to go . . . to the swimming pool,’ she instructed us – in a lazy voice, in between sips and puffs.
‘Which swimming pool? Where?’ Darius demanded.
It seemed like he was about to snap. He leaned in and put his hand on the window. Seriously; I thought the next thing he’d do would be to grab hold of her feather boa. Granny Lycra blew smoke into his face. The Spratt – oh my – coughed.
‘We . . . don’t know . . . where the swimming pool is,’ he said, mimicking the chilled-out tones of Granny Lycra.
On reflection, it was fairly – weirdly – a tiny bit impressive. At the time . . . I thought I’d die of shame in my killer heels. (I mustn’t say things like that.)
‘We’re from Dartbridge,’ I blurted – and instantly wished I hadn’t; the passengers tittered.
‘Oooo-aaaar!’ someone inside the limo mocked, trying to sound like the kind of country farmer-type you just don’t really get in Dartbridge.
The skater dude – who really was hot – leaned forward to speak to me. ME – not Darius. ‘Go into town, and follow the signs for the motorway,’ he said, pointing.
‘You . . . can’t . . . miss . . . it,’ purred Granny Lycra, blowing another hit of smoke into the Spratt’s enraged face.
The skater dude smiled at me (hot, hot, hot!) and then they both sat back, into the darkness of the limo, and the window glided up. The enraged Spratt pulled away his fingers – in plenty of time. He brandished them, embarrassingly, at the blacked-out glass, as if they’d wanted to trap him and he’d outwitted them. I could have died on the spot. I mustn’t say things like that either.
‘You . . . can’t . . . miss . . . it.’
That, unfortunately, turned out to be true.
‘What a bunch of jerks,’ spat Darius as the limo pulled away.
I was just working out a scathing reply to that – something like ‘It takes one to know one’, but without saying anything that might make it sound like I thought those people were jerks, because I didn’t – when he started on me.
‘Ruby . . .’ he said.
‘No!’ I said, working my way along the line of parked cars, tons of them . . . some locked, some unlocked . . . none with keys.
‘But, Ruby . . .’ said Darius.
He went on. He went on – and on – about how we really should get some water while we could, about how we couldn’t carry on drinking rubbish, about how we wouldn’t have to go breaking into places if we did, about how it’d just be a lot easier if we just went and got some now . . . on and on and on. I ignored him. I just kept on hunting for a car with Darius trailing behind me whining, and then I found a car – one of those massive family cruiser type-things – and I ignored him while we shifted all our stuff from the truck to the new car.
Only I wasn’t really ignoring him. Skilled though I am in the art of blanking out all manner of stuff I don’t want to know about, whether it’s stuff in my own head or stuff coming out of other people’s mouths, his going on about the water was quickl
y sending me nuts. It was like . . . when you really need a wee and your idiot (lovely!) friend tortures you going ‘Guuuuuuuuuussssssh’ until you feel like you’re going to burst.
But I am Ruby, and I am tough. So I kept my dry-as-dust mouth shut.
Until I caved. The thing that swung it was when he said we could maybe even get enough water to wash.
Now I’d already fully got my head around the babywipes deal – you can do a lot (so much more than you ever could have imagined!) with them – but I’d seen my face in the mirror in that shop and had been shocked again at how orangey I looked (in spite of the foundation). It was the sort of major orange only serious, prolonged scrubbing avec soap will remove.
‘OK,’ I said.
SO. THIS IS IT: THE GOOD BIT . . . (THAT’S GOOD AS IN DEEPLY BAD, BY THE WAY.)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
We followed the signs.
As we came down a long hill lined with smashed shops, you could see the city ahead of us: here and there little smudges of smoke rising almost straight up into the warm, still air. Reaching up for – and getting nowhere near – the sweetest, teensiest clouds. Cumulus humilis, they must have been. They look like the little puffy clouds kids draw. Like the world is a storybook and no harm will ever come to you.
We weaved our way through the city centre, saw a lady pushing a trolley full of bottles filled with water. Didn’t stop to ask. Didn’t need to. The motorway, it starts in the city centre. One minute there are houses and offices and shops and the next minute . . . It wasn’t a motorway like other motorways are – not three lanes each side in the middle of nowhere and you can’t even tell where you are – it was two lanes each side and a ton of dead cars to get around. And even if we hadn’t seen the sign hanging off the bridge saying ‘WATER’ with a great big arrow pointing where you should go, we would have known where to go because there were other cars ahead of us, pulling in at the junction and people wheeling trolleys and lugging bags over the bridge above.
No one – no one – coming into or out of that city could have missed that sign:
The Rain Page 20