But she hadn’t. Isabel had won it, really. There had been a little help from the rest of the school, of course, but mostly it was Isabel.
Who went round the tables after lunch and gathered up plastic for the blue bin? Who took home every single lolly stick and milk carton she could get her hands on, and made them into beautiful art? Who made sure that everyone turned the taps off when they finished washing their hands, sometimes even before they’d rinsed the soap off?
Isabel Donaldson, that’s who.
That should have been Isabel’s photo there. That real gold award was really Isabel’s. And she hadn’t even got a proper look at it yet.
Isabel glanced around the hallway. Mrs Peabody’s office door was open a crack. Isabel could hear her offering a triple-chocolate biscuit to someone inside; Mrs Peabody loved to invite girls in for a chat and some biscuits. She really was the kindest of the kind.
Next door in the school office, Mrs Biro was bent over her computer, clicking away on the keyboard. She was busy writing important letters to the Crabtree mummies and daddies.
On Isabel’s left, Lady Constance Hawthorne stared straight ahead, her stony eyes looking out towards the front door.
No one else was in the hallway. Isabel was alone. She reached out to touch the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy. Real gold felt smooth and cold. She thought she might like to hold the globe, just for a minute. It was heavier than she remembered.
Isabel was about to put the globe back down again when she noticed that her fingers, which were still sticky from the ice lolly and also covered in daisy juice, had left smudges on the real gold.
She began to rub the globe with her sleeve, to get the sticky off. But rubbing didn’t help: the sticky smudges just got covered with fuzz from her cardigan. Isabel rubbed harder. She couldn’t put the golden globe back all hairy and yucky. Should she take it to the toilets and wash it off?
Before she could do that, lots of things happened all at once.
Colonel Crunch came marching through the front door with a basket of apples. He was taking them to Mrs Crunch in the kitchen so that she could make her famous apple crumble for tomorrow’s pudding.
At the exact same time, loads of ghosts and goblins began pouring out of the assembly room right towards Isabel. The Reception girls had been practising for their Halloween play and they still had their costumes on.
Isabel froze. She closed her fingers around the sticky golden globe in the palm of her hand. She looked in fear at the spot on the pedestal where the globe was meant to be. She had to put it back before anyone saw.
But someone had already seen. Lady Lovelypaws had been watching the golden globe ever since Mrs Peabody put it on display. The cat was hoping that maybe this thing all the humans were fussing over was a mouse. Lady Lovelypaws had never actually caught a mouse before. She hadn’t even seen one up close. But if this did turn out to be a real, true-life mouse, Lady Lovelypaws was ready for it. All morning she had kept a half-closed but careful eye on the globe from the top of the stairs.
When the globe began to move (because Isabel moved it), Lady Lovelypaws was certain it was a mouse. She didn’t know that mice aren’t made of real gold and cardigan fuzz. Lady Lovelypaws took a minute to finish her morning bath and then sprang to catch it.
Which meant that suddenly, a big white fluffy thing landed right on the pedestal in front of Isabel! This hairy, squirming animal sent Lucy Lu’s photograph crashing to the floor. The frame broke into a million pieces.
“Ahhhh,” screamed Isabel in terror. Colonel Crunch dropped his basket of apples all over the floor as Lady Lovelypaws scrambled off the pedestal, knocking it over. The panicked cat jumped over Baron Biscuit’s head and disappeared into Mrs Peabody’s office to hide in her paper tray. Miss Tiny, the Reception teacher, rushed to steer her class around the rolling apples and broken glass in the hall.
Isabel couldn’t very well put the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award golden trophy back now, could she? A colonel or a teacher or a ghost or a goblin might see her.
Isabel could have just dropped the award amongst the mess on the floor. No one would have noticed. In the commotion that followed the cat crash, Colonel Crunch and Mrs Peabody and Mrs Biro were all looking for the globe. They thought that Lady Lovelypaws had knocked it off the pedestal when she jumped. Isabel could have pretended to find it. She could have just handed it over.
But that’s not what she did. What Isabel DID do was to stuff the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy into her cardigan pocket. Her heart beat fast, and the butterflies did cartwheels in her stomach. The Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award was hers.
She hurried away to wash her sticky hands.
Isabel stood in front of the mirror in the school toilets. In the reflection she could see the round top of the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award golden trophy poking out of her pocket.
What had just happened? What had Isabel done?
She’d taken something, that’s what. Something that didn’t belong to her. Was that stealing? Had Isabel just stolen something? She felt a buzz in her stomach, as if the butterflies had invited some wasps over for a party.
Yes, she decided. It was stealing. Isabel had done the naughtiest thing she could possibly think of. She was a thief, a stealer, a taker, a villain. In a film, she would be the baddie that everyone was afraid of.
She looked at her reflection more closely, to see if she looked different than she had earlier in the day. Would everyone be able to tell what she had done?
Isabel had the same blue eyes, the same small nose with its neat rows of freckles. Her pink plaits looked the same. (They smelled the same, too. The sweet bubblegum scent was beginning to make Isabel feel sick.)
No, she thought. No one will be able to tell. The location of the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award would be her secret. She would keep it all to herself, just for a little while. Because way deep down, Isabel knew that she could get away with anything.
Isabel took some toilet tissue and stuffed it in her pocket, tucking it around the globe so that no one could see the shiny gold. There. That looked fine. Her gran always had loads of tissues in her pocket, so why shouldn’t Isabel?
She buttoned her cardigan. Then she thought about it some more and unbuttoned it. In her tummy, the wasps were going mad. Isabel was afraid that people might actually see them buzzing inside her if her cardigan was pulled too tightly across her belly.
She waited there for a minute more, thinking.
She would put it back later. That’s what she’d do. Probably no one would even miss it. No one would even care it was gone. But she would know that she’d got to have it all to herself for a little while.
As Isabel passed back through the hallway on her way up to Year Three, Mrs Peabody and Colonel Crunch were on their knees looking for the lost award.
The wasps went bonkers, but Isabel kept going.
That afternoon was the Year Three spelling test. Normally Isabel loved spelling tests, because she always knew all the words, even the bonus words. You could learn just about anything if you practised it every day.
Except Isabel hadn’t practised yesterday. Would she get one wrong? For the first time ever?
The Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy was still in Isabel’s pocket, covered with toilet tissue. She’d thought about stuffing it into her desk, but moving it seemed risky. If she put it in her school bag, she might forget it and her mum would find it. Besides, she needed to keep it handy so that she could put it back, eventually. Seeing the headmistress crawling around on the floor had made Isabel realize that someone did care about the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award. Isabel couldn’t keep the globe forever.
Isabel made a plan to put it back: she was going to go to the downstairs toilet after the test. That way
she could pass through the hallway and if no one was looking—
“OK, girls,” said Miss Moody. “Take out your papers and pencils and get ready for the first word!”
The first word was take. That was easy. Isabel wrote it down in her neatest handwriting:
take.
They did a few more words and Isabel began to relax. Then came the bonus words. You got an extra point for these words, and a golden ticket for the jar if you got them all right.
“Curious,” said Miss Moody. Was that with i-o-u-s or u-o-u-s? Isabel wrote:
curiuos.
It looked correct.
Next to her, Rani sneezed.
“Bless you, Rani!” said Miss Moody. “Do you need a tissue?”
Rani did need a tissue. But the box of tissues on Miss Moody’s desk was empty.
“Oh dear,” said Miss Moody. “Too many runny noses this week! Does anyone have a tissue for Rani?”
“Miss Moody, Isabel has tissues,” said Lottie helpfully. “I can see loads of them right there in her pocket!” Lottie was sitting behind Isabel. She had clearly been watching Isabel’s pocket. Just how much had Lottie seen?
Did Lottie know what Isabel had done?
Isabel panicked. The wasps in her tummy buzzed and stung. Isabel was the kindest, most helpful girl at Crabtree School, but there was no way that Rani was getting one shred of the tissue from Isabel’s pocket. Isabel needed all of it to cover up her guilty secret.
“MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!” she shrieked at Lottie.
It was not like Isabel to shout at her friend. Lottie was shocked. But Isabel had other things to worry about.
“Rani wouldn’t want these tissues, Miss Moody,” she said quickly, patting her pocket. “These tissues are used. They are full of bogeys. Loads of bogeys. I have a cold,” she went on. “A terrible cold. The worst cold ever. At-choo.”
Rani shrank away from Isabel and her disgusting tissues. “I’m fine now, Miss Moody,” she said. “I don’t need a tissue. Especially not one of Isabel’s.”
The tissue trouble passed, but Isabel couldn’t concentrate. Why exactly had she taken the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy? It suddenly seemed like a very bad idea.
“The last word is hideous,” said Miss Moody.
Isabel began to write hideous: h-i-d-e… But what came next?
She looked down at her test paper. hide.
hide.
Hide.
Did the spelling test know what Isabel had done? Did it know what was hidden in her pocket right at this very moment?
No, decided Isabel. She was being silly. No one knew what she had done. Not even Lottie, who knew everything about everyone. Finally, Isabel had a secret that even the nosiest best friend in the world wasn’t in on. It was quite a terrible secret, of course, and Isabel would have to make it right soon, or someone might find out. But Isabel was sure she could get away with it in the end.
Keeping a secret from Lottie proved to be hard work. Isabel’s best friend loved a good mystery. The Case of the Vanishing Planet had Lottie’s full attention. She spent most of the afternoon snooping around the front hallway, joined by Colonel Crunch, Mrs Peabody, Mrs Potion and Miss Biro. This meant that Isabel’s plan to put the golden globe back became impossible.
By the end of the day, Lottie had gathered a number of clues. She found several apples that Colonel Crunch hadn’t tidied up, a tiny shard of broken glass that hadn’t been swept away and a bit of fuzz on the floor near the pedestal. These were truly amazing real-life clues, but still there was no trace of the golden award itself. And most importantly, there was no reason for anyone to suspect Isabel.
“We searched everywhere, but it just isn’t ANYWHERE!” Lottie told Zoe, Rani, Ava and Isabel. The friends had gathered round Lottie to try to help her solve the mystery. (Isabel, of course, was only pretending to help.)
“Because it’s round, I knew the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy might have rolled a long distance,” said Lottie in her best detective voice. “But I’ve checked everywhere it could have fallen when Lady Lovelypaws jumped up.”
“You mean down,” said Isabel. She was trying to stand with her pocket as far away from Lottie as she could.
“Sorry?” asked Lottie.
“Lady Lovelypaws jumped down,” said Isabel.
Lottie studied her closely. “How do you know that?”
So Lottie didn’t know that Isabel had been at the scene of the crime. Colonel Crunch had just told Lottie that Lady Lovelypaws had crashed into the pedestal. He must not have said anything about Isabel being there in the hallway when the crash happened. There was no mention of Isabel in Lottie’s notebook. This was a very good thing, if Isabel could only think of what to say next. Luckily, Ava spoke instead.
“It’s the aliens,” Ava said firmly. “I told you they were coming. They must’ve taken the award back with them into outer space.”
Lottie considered this. She wrote it in her notebook. But it seemed unlikely. What would aliens want with the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award? Aliens weren’t even from this planet.
“Maybe Lady Lovelypaws took the award?” suggested Rani.
Lottie liked this idea. It gave her a suspect. She wrote it down. The friends set off to find Lady Lovelypaws. It didn’t take long: she was in Mrs Peabody’s office, in the paper tray on the headmistress’s desk. She had been so frightened by the crash that she had crawled underneath Mrs Peabody’s papers.
“She’s been there all day,” said Mrs Peabody sadly, stroking the papers. “She wouldn’t even come out for a biscuit.”
The Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy was not in the paper tray with Lady Lovelypaws.
“Lady Lovelypaws is innocent,” declared Lottie. “But maybe someone else took the award. Someone human. Maybe it is not lost at all.”
“It is real gold,” added Rani.
Isabel did not like where this was going. This was starting to be a lot less fun than sneaking an ice lolly or making daisy chains.
The friends thought about the possibility that the award had been stolen. They studied Lottie’s list of clues. (Well, four of them did. Isabel concentrated on her pocket. She felt hot. She needed to take her cardigan off but she didn’t dare.)
“What if!!!” screeched Zoe, “What if, what if… Oh, I’ve got it!!! This is most definitely one hundred per cent what happened!!”
Isabel felt the wasps buzzing. Did Zoe know what she’d done? How could Zoe know?
“What is it???” gasped Lottie. “Out with it!”
“Whoever tidied up the apples must have tidied up the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy by mistake!” shouted Zoe. “If we find the apples, we will find the gold!”
This was a brilliant idea. Lottie was extremely disappointed that she hadn’t thought of it herself, and Isabel began to wish with all her heart that it were true. But, of course, Zoe’s guess was wrong. When the girls got to the school kitchen they found that Mrs Crunch had already chopped up all the apples and put them in the crumble. Big trays of her famous pudding were cooling on the kitchen counter.
Four of the friends gasped. Had Mrs Crunch baked the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy?
“Oh dear,” said Isabel. “That’s terrible. I suppose it is all melted and now it is gone forever. But at least we can stop looking, can’t we?” Isabel had to get Lottie off the case.
Then Isabel noticed that Lottie was looking at her strangely. She put her hand over her pocket.
“But how will we know it was really in there?” demanded Lottie. “We’ll have to investigate!” She grabbed a spoon and climbed up on the counter. She was just about to begin digging through the crumble for traces of real gold when a voice shouted, “FREEZE!”
Mrs Crunch was absolutely certain that she hadn’t chopped up any Our Beautiful Green Planet
Intergalactic Environmental Award trophies. She wasn’t about to let her crumble be ruined for no reason. She ordered Lottie off the counter and shooed the girls out of the kitchen.
It was time to go home, and the mums were all waiting.
“Thank you for trying, girls,” said Mrs Peabody sadly as they left. “It’s just so odd. I don’t know what on earth we are going to tell the mayor.”
Isabel hadn’t thought about the mayor.
Her pocket felt like the heaviest thing in the whole world.
Isabel had a new plan. It was too dangerous to put the Our Beautiful Green Planet Intergalactic Environmental Award trophy back, especially with Lottie on the case.
No, Isabel would just keep it. She’d keep the award forever and ever, until she was an old lady. No one would ever know. She would never get in trouble.
But where to hide it?
When she got home from school, Isabel set the Red alarm on her bedroom door and went straight to her secret hiding place: a glittery box that held all of her treasures. She kept it on a high shelf so the Reds couldn’t get at it. Isabel took the golden globe from her pocket without looking at it, and tucked it into the box next to a jar of fairy dust from Ava’s last birthday party. She shut the lid of the box and put it back on the shelf.
Isabel climbed down and sat on her bed. After a minute she climbed up again and took out the globe. She wrapped it in the tissue from her pocket, and she put it back. Just in case someone happened to discover her secret hiding place.
The Girl Who Stole the World Page 3