by Dyan Sheldon
Nobody noticed how drawn and quiet I was later, when we were getting supper ready. They were all talking and laughing while I sat at the table, tearing lettuce like someone whose bones have dissolved. The only person who said anything to me was my Uncle Cal.
“Shake a leg there, Elmo,” said Cal. “Your mother can grow lettuce faster than you shred it.”
Nobody noticed how drawn and quiet I was at supper either. Normal families eat their meals in front of the telly and only speak if they want the salt or something, but my family sit at a table and everyone competes for air space all the time. It wasn’t until I’d spilled half my water on my pasta that anyone even remembered I was there. Some of the water splashed on my mother. She removed Gertie’s fist from her salad and looked over at me at last.
“Are you all right, Elmo?” asked my mother. She was studying me as if I might have leaf mould. “You’ve hardly touched your food.”
Trembling slightly, I put the glass back on the table and slowly lifted my head.
“Yeah…” My voice was weak and low. “No … I’m sorry…” My eyes narrowed with pain. “I’m not feeling very well.”
My grandmother broke off the argument she was having with my grandfather to clap a palm to my forehead. Breadcrumbs trickled down my face.
“He hasn’t got a temperature,” she informed my mother.
I moaned feebly. “I must have. I’m burning up inside.” I gazed at her with the dazed expression of someone whose temperature is high enough to cook an egg. “The hand method isn’t exactly scientific, is it?” I suggested gently.
My mother removed Gertie’s fist from her potatoes.
“No, but it works,” said my mother. She doesn’t care about things being scientific, and she hasn’t trusted thermometers since she realized they can be heated on a light bulb.
“Maybe it’s that flu that’s going around,” suggested my grandfather, joint owner of Blues’ School of International Dance. “Half the Latin class were away.”
My grandmother was peering into my face. “You do look a bit peaky. Maybe you need more exercise.”
My grandmother thinks everybody needs more exercise – preferably ballroom dancing.
“I don’t think I can even walk,” I whispered. “I actually feel a little faint.”
My Uncle Cal and my Aunt Lucy, who describe themselves as “wall artists” (which means they never paint a picture smaller than the size of a lorry), interrupted the conversation they were having on whether or not Cal should get his lip pierced to say in horrified unison, “Paint? It can’t be our paint. Our paint is non-toxic.”
“Not paint,” I croaked. “Faint. I feel like I’m going to faint.”
“Tell me exactly where it hurts, Elmo,” said my mother. “Your head? Your throat? Your stomach?”
“Everywhere,” I whispered. “Even my hair hurts.” I pushed my plate away. “Maybe I’d better just go to bed. I don’t think I’ve even got the strength to get undressed.”
My father, as usual, had been doodling fountain designs on a piece of paper, but now he joined the conversation too.
“What about the class trip?” asked my father. “Isn’t that soon?”
“Yeah,” I croaked. “Tomorrow. Eight a.m. sharp.” I groaned in misery. “I feel so awful, I completely forgot about the trip.” I took a deep breath and tried to sit up straight. I winced in agony.
My mother was disentangling Gertie’s hand from her hair and didn’t say anything, but my grandmother gallantly filled in for her.
“Oh, there’s no way you can go when you feel like this.” I assumed she was speaking to me, but she was looking at my grandfather. “Remember that time in Venice, Monrose? When you insisted on dancing even though you had that bug?”
My grandfather smiled fondly at the memory. “Brought down two waiters, four tables and the dessert trolley.”
My mother looked as concerned as a woman with a two-year-old attached to her head can look, which isn’t that concerned.
“Maybe you’ll feel better in the morning,” she said. “After you’ve had a good night’s sleep.” She can have a very sly smile when she wants, Grace Blue. “After all, I know how much you’ve been looking forward to the trip.”
She was being sarcastic. My mother thought the idea of roughing it in Wales was brilliant because there was plenty of vegetation and no modern conveniences or souvenirs, but she knew I would have preferred Disneyland.
“I was…” I lied. “I am.” I flinched with the effort of trying to speak. “I’ve got to go on the trip.” I winced again, for effect. “Maybe I will feel better in the morning.” To prove how much better I was going to feel in the morning, I tried to get to my feet. But I was too weak and unwell; I collapsed back in my chair.
My mother gave me a sympathetic smile. “Don’t worry. If you do miss the trip, I’ll take you to see that battery farm I was telling you about when you’re feeling better. Make it up to you.”
At this rate I could be sick for a really long time.
My room’s right at the top of the house. It’s the smallest room, but it’s also the most private. Once I got to the first floor and couldn’t be heard in the kitchen, I took the stairs two at a time, humming a happy song under my breath. I’d done it! I opened the door to my room.
I froze. All was not as it should have been in the room of Elmo Blue. Everything looked the way it had earlier – my shelves of books, my bed and bedside table, my desk and my computer, the newspaper photograph of Bill Gates, my hero and role model, that I’d taped to the wall – but there was one significant change.
Kuba Bamber was sitting at my desk with her back to me, blasting blue monsters into oblivion on my computer. She didn’t turn round.
I DISCOVER THAT EVERYONE HAS A PRICE
Unfortunately, there isn’t anything unusual in finding Kuba Bamber in my room, using my computer and trying to reorganize my life, when she should be across the road watching telly with the Bambers. Kuba has been appearing in my room, uninvited and largely unwanted, since the day I met her. This seems to be typical behaviour for angels.
“Go home,” I ordered. “I’ve got flu. I need to rest.”
Kuba squinted at the monitor as she blitzed a mob of shaggy creatures with glowing red eyes.
“What you need to do is pack,” Kuba corrected me. “You haven’t even started yet. The bus leaves at eight, remember.”
I threw myself on my bed and kicked off my vegan-friendly canvas trainers with a sigh.
“Let it leave.” My face looked anguished with pain and fever. I smiled inwardly. “I’m not going. I’m too sick.”
Clickclickclickclickclick … blue monsters evaporated from the screen in puffs of green smoke at a rate of knots.
“The right word is ill,” said Kuba. “And you’re not. You’re faking it.”
I’ve discovered that there are a lot of things people assume about angels that aren’t true. You know, that they’re very kind and patient and delicate, stuff like that. But there is one thing people assume about angels that is true: they’re hard to fool. I, for one, am happy my mother is not an angel, I’ll tell you that.
“All right, so I’m not that ill,” I conceded. “But I’m still not going on the trip.”
“Yes, you are.” Kuba leaned towards the monitor. “I’m only going because you’re going. And besides, you said you’d share with Carl and Jamal. You can’t pull out now.”
“Oh yes I can. Carl and Jamal will find someone else, and you’ve got Ariel to hang out with.” I was determined: wild BMWs wouldn’t get me on that trip.
“Ariel’s not you,” said Kuba. “And make sure you pack your rain gear. It may get stormy.”
“What are you, deaf?” I stared at the back of her head. “I’m not going, Kuba. Everything’s been OK between me and Eddie since the bulldozers, and I want to keep it that way. Stop rocking my boat. I don’t want to go.”
“Everything’s been OK between me and Eddie,” mimicked Kuba, making f
aces at the screen. “That’s typical of you, isn’t it, Elmo? You think only of yourself.”
“Well, you certainly don’t think of me,” I snapped back. “You sprayed that soup all over Eddie, and then you made it look as if I did it.”
“I didn’t make it look anything,” said Kuba primly. “Eddie jumped to his own conclusions.”
“Yeah, well, if I’m not around he won’t be able to jump to anything, will he? Because if you think I’m going to the wilderness with the two of you, you’d better think again. I know you, Kuba Bamber – for some twisted reason you’re determined to ruin my life.”
“I’m ruining your life?” Kuba swivelled round in my chair. She’s fairly good at snorting with derision. “You really do delude yourself, don’t you, Elmo?” she demanded. “If you were a little more objective, you’d see that you’ve been behaving pretty weirdly lately.” She scowled at the large white tick on my chest. “You and your stupid sweatshirt. You were making real progress, and now you’re backsliding again. You stood up to Mr Bamber and his golf course, but the minute you see Eddie and Mark you turn to jelly.”
“I didn’t stand up to the bulldozers,” I corrected her. “I sat down.” I picked up my book from the bedside table and ducked behind it. “And if you really want to know why I don’t stand up to Eddie, it’s because Eddie and I have a history.”
“Oh?” I could feel Kuba looking at me. “What sort of a history?”
I turned a page. “It’s a bit like the history between the white men and the Indians of the Americas.”
“Let me guess which you are,” said Kuba.
“He pushed me around all through primary school,” I said from behind my book. I felt sorry for Archie, I really did, but I couldn’t help being relieved that Eddie was pushing someone else around for a change.
“So why did he pick on you?” probed Kuba. “What did you do?”
I’d never told anyone about what happened, and I certainly had no intention of telling Kuba Bamber, but my mouth didn’t get the message from my brain.
“I wore my Womble slippers to school.”
“What?”
I said it a little louder this time. “I wore my Womble slippers to school.”
My Womble slippers were my favourite possession when I was little. I was so proud of them that I asked my mother if I could wear them to school. A normal mother who eats meat and takes her son to McDonald’s would have known that this was a really bad idea, but my mother thought it was brilliant. I wore my slippers to school. They caused quite a sensation. It was Eddie Kilgour who started singing “Remember you’re a Womble”, and it became my theme tune for the next five years.
By the time I had finished my tragic tale, my best friend was clutching her sides because she was laughing so much.
I glared at her over the top of my book. “It isn’t that funny,” I said sourly.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “Look on the bright side, Elmo,” said Kuba. “Maybe Bill Gates had a similar experience when he was little.”
“I don’t care if Bill went to school in his Mickey Mouse pyjamas.” I turned back to the page I was on, even though I hadn’t read a single word. “I’m not going on the trip, and that’s final. Maybe I’d risk it if we were going to Disneyland Paris, but not Wales. Wales is dead boring if you ask me.”
“Well, what do you know?” said Kuba. “Eddie and Mark agree with you.”
I should have ignored that last statement. It was meant to make me curious. It was meant to make me look over.
I was curious. I looked over. There were no more blue monsters on the screen. I was powerless to resist. Against my will, my body rose from the bed.
I could hear Mark Crother’s voice coming from my computer’s speakers.
“My cousin’s class went skiing for their class trip,” Mark was saying. “In Switzerland. They had a brilliant time.”
“My sister went to Barcelona,” said Eddie. “Even Barcelona’s better than Wales.”
I stood behind Kuba, staring at the monitor. Eddie and Mark were sitting on the floor of Eddie’s room. There were two cans and a bowl of crisps between them. I knew it was Eddie’s room because of the football posters. Eddie’s mad keen on football. I’m not. I’m not really a physical sort of person. Like Bill Gates, I’m more a mental sort of person. It’s another thing Eddie’s always held against me.
Mark sighed. “We’re going to be bored out of our brains.”
“As if they have any,” mumbled Kuba.
Eddie picked up a can and took a sip. “Oh, I don’t know,” he purred. “It doesn’t have to be that boring.”
Mark looked over at him. He smiled. “What are you thinking?”
Eddie smiled too. It was like watching a couple of vultures smiling at each other over the body of a cow.
“Oh…” He shrugged modestly. “I was just thinking that space isn’t the only place where no one can hear you scream.” He laughed unpleasantly. “We might be able to amuse ourselves a bit, you know.”
Mark has always been the perfect sidekick. When Eddie sang the Womble song to me all those years ago, it was Mark who joined in the chorus.
“How?” Mark was looking at Eddie with admiration and real interest.
Eddie’s smile grew more intense. It was enough to give me the creeps.
“I think our good friend Archie Spongo might be able to help us with that.”
Mark cackled. “Our good friend Archie Spongo…” He scooped up a fistful of crisps and chomped them into mush. “Our good friend Archie Spongo… That’s funny.”
“And it could be true,” said Eddie.
Mark stopped chomping. “What?”
Eddie picked up a single crisp and stared at it in a thoughtful way. “Why not? Archie doesn’t have any other friends, does he? He’s going to be all alone. Unless we declare a truce…”
“Declare a truce?”
“Mark Crother, the human echo,” muttered Kuba.
Eddie nodded. “That’s right, you heard it here first. We declare a truce, and make friends with the boy from planet Weirdo.”
Mark frowned thoughtfully. “But we’re not friends with him,” he said. And then, in case Eddie had overlooked this important fact, he added, “He’s a geek.”
Eddie sighed. “Yeah, I know he’s a geek, Mark. But Archie doesn’t know he’s a geek, does he? If we say we want to hang out with him on the trip he’s not going to wonder why. He’ll jump at the chance.”
Mark was looking at Eddie the way Watson looked at Sherlock Holmes when he worked out that a one-legged man smoking a cigar from Eastern Europe had committed the crime.
“You mean get him to think we want to be friends and then really have some fun?”
“Exactly,” said Eddie. “Think of it: alone in our room … up in the mountains…”
I shook my head as the image began to fade. “Eddie’s wasted in secondary school,” I said. “He should be a politician.”
“He probably will be,” said Kuba. The blue monsters reappeared, but Kuba didn’t go back to her game. She pushed back the chair, nearly running over my toes. “The question is, what are you going to do about it? It’s one thing abandoning me, your best friend, but you can’t stay at home and leave Archie unprotected for five whole days.”
“You protect him,” I said. “You’re the one on a mission from heaven.”
Kuba got that stubborn look on her face. “I can’t interfere, and you know it.” She sounded so sincere that anyone who didn’t know her better than I did would have believed her.
Not interfering is Rule Number One if you happen to be an angel. Angels can guide and direct, but they’re not supposed to actually meddle. This is a rule I’ve never seen Kuba pay much attention to.
“Just a minute.” I held my hand up like a policeman stopping traffic. “You interfered when it came to stopping the bulldozers.”
My mother, her environmental group, Keep Our Planet Green, and Mr Bamber all held
me totally responsible for stopping the bulldozers, but the truth is that I had some help. At a crucial point in my negotiations with the security guards, Kuba Bamber raised the dead. It wasn’t the sight of me sitting in the mud holding a SAVE OUR WOODS sign that made the bulldozers turn round – it was the sight of several hundred restless ghosts moving towards them.
“Don’t think it wasn’t noticed,” said Kuba. “I have very strict instructions now.”
“And so do I. My grandmother says I should stay in bed and drink plenty of liquids.”
“Mrs Bamber will give you a lift to the bus,” said Kuba. “Save your mother having to drive you in the milk float.”
“You’re wasting your breath,” I told her. “I’m not going. Elmo has spoken.”
“We’ll be leaving the house at quarter to eight,” Kuba continued. “Make sure you’re ready.”
I opened my mouth to repeat the bit about wasting her breath, but I didn’t say it because for the first time I noticed Kuba’s feet. They were the same feet she’s always had, but they were wearing something new – state-of-the-art Reebok trainers with reflective trim and a plastic wedge in the heel that glowed in the dark. They were the most incredibly beautiful shoes I’d ever seen.
“Where’d you get those?” I was practically whispering with awe.
“Mrs Bamber bought them for me,” said Kuba. “I like my old trainers better.”
“You’re mad.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her shoes. No one in the whole school had a pair that came close to them. I’d give anything to have a pair of trainers like those, I thought.
And that’s when Kuba started shaking my hand.
“Elmo Blue,” cried Kuba. “You’ve got yourself a deal. They’re yours. I’ll bring them over in the morning. You can wear them on the trip.”
I stopped looking at her feet and looked at her instead.
“Hang on,” I protested. “I didn’t mean—”
“A deal’s a deal,” said Kuba.
“But my mother won’t let me keep them,” I argued. “You know how she feels about Reebok.”