So, he went up to his mum (who hadn’t worn clown make-up for weeks, and who looked tired) and said, ‘Dr Surprise is taking me to the library.’
She put down the baguette she was washing (she was working on the bakery counter) and said, ‘Oh. Did Mr Pinkbottle say you could?’
Fizz said, ‘Um.’
Luckily Fizz’s mum took Fizz’s, ‘Um,’ to be a, ‘Yes, Mr Pinkbottle said we could go to the library,’ and Fizz didn’t correct her.
She went back to her baguettes and Fizz went back to the back door to find Dr Surprise waiting with an umbrella. (Not the same umbrella he used in the car park to protect customers (which had ‘Pinkbottle’s Supermarket’ printed in huge garish letters), but a neat little black pop-up one that played ‘God Save The Ringmaster of Ringmasters’ whenever it came in contact with custard (which doesn’t happen anywhere in this book, so don’t hold your breath).)
The doctor pulled out his pocket watch.
‘We need to be quick, Fizz,’ he said. ‘It’s ten past now and it’s a twelve-minute walk to the library. We’d best get going.’
And so they did. They got going.
It stopped raining as soon as Dr Surprise put the umbrella up and by the time they reached the library the sun was shining on them and the puddles were beginning to shrink, so Dr Surprise put the umbrella down again.
As they stepped through the automatic doors and breathed deep of the book-scented air the doctor looked at his watch and said, ‘It’s twenty-two minutes past three, Fizz. We need to be back before Mrs Leavings gets up at four o’clock. We need to leave here in thirty-one minutes. No later.’ (He was so exact because he had a good watch that told you the seconds and everything (also the phase of the moon and whether it was raining or not (but that wasn’t important right now)).)
‘But,’ said Fizz, lifting his finger as his head did the sums. ‘In thirty-one minutes it will be seven minutes to four. It’ll be three fifty-three. It took us twelve minutes to walk here. That won’t be nearly enough time to get back.’
‘Ah, but, Fizzlebert,’ said Dr Surprise, removing his plastic moustache, polishing it on his sleeve and tapping the side of his nose with the hand that wasn’t polishing, ‘I know a short cut.’
(He also winked through his monocle, but that sentence was quite long enough already, so I didn’t mention it.)
Fizz considered saying something, but thought better of it. Time was limited and sometimes talking wasted it.
So instead he looked up at the brimming shelves of books. There were so many of them. So many! And every one was different. Every one opened a door into a different world, into a different adventure. In each one you met new people, made new friends, learnt new spells and words and jokes. He liked the ones with space robots in, and the ones with monsters. He didn’t like ones with kissing in. Unless it was robots kissing monsters, maybe, although he’d never actually found a book in which that happened. Yet. (He hadn’t quite given up hope.)
Dr Surprise and Fizz split up. The doctor went to look at the books on tricks and magic and other stuff like that, because that was what he liked. And Fizz went and sat on the floor in the children’s section and started building piles of books around him, trying to decide which ones to take home.
Having a good book to read would make his lunch break so much better. If he could eat his yesterday sandwich (the staffroom was supplied with all the sandwiches that went out of date yesterday) while reading about space explosions and daring robberies and weird tentacles, then the yesterday sandwich might taste better.
After twenty-seven minutes of browsing books, of flicking through and checking that the pictures looked good, of reading the backs and making sure the stories sounded good, of sniffing the paper to make sure it smelt how a real book ought to smell (you know the smell, the best library books or second-hand books have it), Fizz had whittled the big pile down to three books he really wanted: Exploding Robots Fighting Stuff in Space by Sylvia Speck-Winkle and Arnold B. Clerk, The Penguin Who Flew (To Mars (and Back)) by Tyson Thumpracket and Spinoza and the Curse of the Mummy from Beyond the Grave by Brigadier Ryefoot-fforwerd (Rtd.).
Dr Surprise had one small paperback about carrots. (‘For Flopples,’ he explained.)
They queued up at the desk to check them out.
‘Can I take these ones, please,’ asked Fizz, who was very polite, especially when facing a librarian who had once loaned him some books that he had never returned (although, that was when he was using another name, for various reasons too complicated to go into right now – again read Fizzlebert Stump: The Boy Who Ran Away from the Circus (And Joined the Library) if you haven’t already and didn’t go and immediately do it when I told you to earlier).
‘Yes,’ croaked Miss Toad, the librarian.
She didn’t recognise him, it seemed.
She noisily licked her inky fingertips and flipped the pages of the first book to find the front page. She zapped the bar code with a laser thing and then slammed an inky rubber stamp down on the flap of paper, leaving a dark blue smudged inky date at the bottom of a list of other dark blue inkily smudged dates. Fizz could read none of them.
Once she had scanned and stamped the other two books and handed Fizz his library card back he let Dr Surprise step up to the counter.
‘Oh,’ said the doctor. ‘I’ve got it somewhere. Um …’
He patted his pockets looking for his wallet.
Fizz sat down on one of the chairs over by the automatic doors. He let his feet swing underneath him and balanced his little pile of books on his knee.
Oh, he felt better than he had for ages. Just getting out of the supermarket had buoyed his heart up, just smelling the fresh air of the world outside made him smile. Having new books to read made him laugh. While he’d been sat there dipping in and out of all the borrowable books he’d even forgotten Mr Pinkbottle for a moment.
‘Fizzlebert?’ said a voice.
He looked up, snapped out of his daydream.
He was looking at a boy who was looking at him looking at him looking at him.
‘Kevin?’ said Fizz.
‘Yeah,’ said Kevin.
Kevin had been the last person Fizz had expected to see. (Actually that’s not true, but to accurately tell you the name of the last person Fizz expected to see I’d have to run through the other seven billion or so people on earth going, ‘He didn’t expect to see this one or this one …’ until I reached the last one, who was probably living in an uncontacted tribe deep in a rainforest somewhere, and, frankly, however much I like you, I don’t have the time or space to do that.)
‘What are you doing here?’ Fizz asked, while I was talking to you inside that last set of brackets.
Kevin looked around him.
‘It’s a library, Fizz,’ he said. ‘I’m bringing some books back. But what are you doing here?’
‘It’s a library, Kevin. I’m borrowing some books.’
‘That makes sense.’
Fizz and Kevin had first met under very different circumstances which I won’t tell you about except to say it involved a sticky situation, some nefarious old people, a lot of housework, one lion, two parrots and a borrowed pocket watch.
‘You doing another show?’ Kevin asked, pointing over his shoulder with his thumb out at the outside.
‘No,’ said Fizz, feeling misery well up from somewhere underneath him. ‘We’re not really in the circus any more.’ He gulped. ‘We’re working at … Pinkbottle’s Supermarket.’
‘Oh,’ said Kevin.
When Fizz’s circus had visited his town before, Kevin had got to help Fizz with the show, because of the adventure they’d had together. The sparkle in his eyes, that dimmed as he heard Fizz’s words, suggested to Fizz that Kevin might’ve been thinking that he (Kevin) might’ve got to do the act with him (Fizz) again, even though Fizz knew that he did a different act to the act he had done when he first met Kevin and that Kevin probably wouldn’t be very good at it since it was a strongman
act, not a ‘put your head in the mouth of a lion’ act, and Kevin was just an ordinary boy without super-strength and, boy, has this sentence got long and I’m running out of breath even though I’m only typing it and not reading it out loud but for anyone who is reading it out loud, I’m sorry.
‘Yeah,’ said Fizz, agreeing with Kevin’s disappointed, ‘Oh.’
‘It’s just that I saw the Big Top,’ Kevin went on, ‘and then I saw you and I thought, “Aha!” like you do.’
‘Big Top?’ Fizz said.
‘In the park,’ Kevin said. It was what he’d been pointing at with his thumb.
That was interesting news, Fizz thought. If there was another circus in town, maybe they’d be able to help out. After all, circus people, even ones from rival circuses, stuck together when shove came to push.
If only he could get a message to them somehow, maybe their Ringmaster could buy their contracts off Mr Pinkbottle or something. Fizz didn’t know what exactly, but he knew the circus would only be there for a few days, so he had to act fast. But first –
‘Fizzlebert,’ said Dr Surprise, stepping up and peering at Kevin. ‘We need to hurry. It’s seven minutes to four.’
‘Gotta go,’ Fizz said to Kevin, apologetically.
‘It was nice to see you again,’ Kevin said.
‘You too,’ said Fizz.
‘Maybe I’ll see you in the shop,’ Kevin said, as Fizz and the doctor made their way outside. ‘Pinkbottle’s?’
‘Yeah,’ said Fizz over his shoulder.
And then they were gone, away into the gathering gloom, taking Dr Surprise’s short cut back to the supermarket.
This had been an interesting and useful trip out, Fizz thought. There were books under his arm and a tickle of hope somewhere just to the side of his heart. (Either that or some of lunch’s yesterday sandwich was coming back to visit.)
And that’s where we’ll leave them, scuttling through alleyways heading home on this ordinary Thursday afternoon. And we’ll find out what happens when they get back to the shop in the next chapter, because that’s what happens next. And trust me, it’s quite a good bit with a lot of shouting in.
CHAPTER SIX
In which an escape is thwarted and in which further punishment is meted out
By the time they arrived back in the supermarket, creeping into the car park where their caravans were squeezed up together, hoping to not be noticed, it was raining again. It was also four minutes past five.
They had left the library at seven minutes to four.
Dr Surprise’s short cut hadn’t quite lived up to its name. Not exactly. Not entirely. Not satisfactorily. Even the doctor was disappointed with it, and he was usually quite cheerful when things went wrong.
‘Oh, but Flopples will be worried,’ he’d squeaked as they’d stood and looked at a small oak tree they’d passed three times already. ‘She does fuss if I’m not home when I say I will be.’
‘It’s not Flopples I’m worried about,’ Fizz had said. ‘It’s Mrs Leavings. What if she’s woken up from her nap? She’ll be furious.’
Fortunately, when they arrived back, it turned out he hadn’t needed to worry about Mrs Leavings at all. She was awake, but she wasn’t angry. She simply tapped her pen on her clipboard and smiled at them.
Not angry at all.
Mr Pinkbottle, on the other hand, was a different kettle of rapidly boiling water (full of dead fish) entirely.
He was waiting in the doorway. His toe was tapping as if he had a really flipping furious song in his head.
‘Where have you been!?’ he thundered.
It was a surprisingly thundery voice for a man so short and pointy-faced.
The pointy face was red like a balloon. A red one.
Fizz didn’t say anything. He just stood under Dr Surprise’s umbrella as rain fell around him. He was cold. His feet were soaking wet (thanks to the ‘short cut’, which at one point had involved fording a shallow river) and his shoulder ached from the incident with the squirrels (which I don’t have room to tell you about).
‘We went to the library,’ Dr Surprise said, with surprising calm.
Mr Pinkbottle turned slightly redder (like a tomato that had just heard a rude joke) before bellowing, ‘I do not pay you to go to the library!!’
‘But,’ said Dr Surprise, meekly.
‘No ifs,’ yelled Mr Pinkbottle, irrelevantly.
‘But,’ said Dr Surprise, as if he were about to argue, really quietly.
‘No buts,’ yelled Mr Pinkbottle, relevantly.
Rain dripped down the back of Fizz’s neck, under his shirt collar.
‘You two abandoned your posts,’ Mr Pinkbottle said, talking more quietly now. ‘You left everyone else to do your work. You are not team players. I am shocked and saddened and appalled and embarrassed by your behaviour. I take you in, out of the kindness of my heart. Mrs Leavings and I welcome you into our dear supermarket family, this family we have built and that we love. And what thanks do we get? Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. You two just spit all our kindness back in our faces.’
He shook his head as if he were genuinely saddened (even though Fizz didn’t believe a word of it).
Behind him Mrs Leavings grinned and looked down at her clipboard.
‘Bonding,’ Mr Pinkbottle said eventually. ‘That’s what we need. Something that will make you feel at one with the family.’
Mrs Leavings leant forward and whispered something in his ear.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘That’ll do.’
Fizz and Dr Surprise were sent to their caravans without any supper and told to report extra early the next morning for their new assignments.
Fizz spent the evening reading one of his new books which wasn’t as good as he’d hoped it would be. (But sometimes that happens, doesn’t it? The publisher puts a really exciting cover on a book, with spaceships and unicorns and explosions and princesses and everything, but then when you start reading it you discover it’s actually about fourteenth-century Flemish tax law. Of course, by that point you’ve already paid for the book and the joke’s on you. (Which is one of the reasons libraries are so useful: no money has changed hands.))
When his mum and dad came in they didn’t exactly ignore him, but they were tired and preoccupied and more or less ignored him.
‘Mum, Dad!’ Fizz said excitedly. ‘There’s another circus in town, over in the park. It’s only twelve minutes’ walk away. Unless you take Dr Surprise’s short cut,’ he added. ‘We should go and ask them if we can join up.’
‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow, Fizz?’ his mum said, brushing breadcrumbs out of her uniform. ‘I’m tired, love.’
‘Dad,’ Fizz said. ‘I met Kevin in the library. You remember Kevin?’
‘You shouldn’t have gone off without telling anyone,’ his dad said, not angrily, but yawningly. ‘You could’ve got us all into trouble.’
Why had his dad become so boring? His mum was just the same – instead of being clowny and silly and funny and spilling custard and dropping teapots, juggling balls and feathers that clanged as if they were made of lead, she was always looking over her shoulder. She seemed to be worried about the consequences, worried about what Mr Pinkbottle might say.
It was as if their anarchic souls had been sucked out through their noses and sealed inside Canopic jars (with the brains and hearts of dead pharaohs). There was no fight in them. They just did what they were told.
‘But he has our contracts, Fizz,’ they’d said, as if that were some sort of explanation (which, of course, it was). ‘We can’t risk upsetting the apple cart or who knows where we’ll end up.’ And then they’d shrug and go back to whatever menial bit of supermarket shelf-stacking or floor-sweeping or trolley-polishing they’d been doing.
It was as if his funny, exciting, caring, happy parents had been taken away and replaced with robots that looked like them, but with grey bags under their eyes and voices emptied out of feeling. It sank Fizz’s heart like an iceberg. (Not l
ike how an iceberg sinks a ship, but like how an iceberg floats. Nine-tenths of it sinks, while the little bit sticks up out of the water, like a tiny reminder of hope.)
(He knew his mum was, secretly, worried, however, because she’d started sleep-eating. Sometimes Fizz would wake in the night to see her nibbling cheese, or making a soufflé, or drinking custard from the packet … while snoring and with her eyes fast shut. But if he tried to tell her, in the morning, she denied everything and said there was nothing to worry about and told him he must’ve dreamt it. But he hadn’t.)
Well, if they weren’t going to fight against what had happened to them, it would be up to him.
He had to get to the other circus. He had to get help.
And so, later that night, when everyone was asleep, Fizzlebert Stump ran away.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ hissed Mrs Leavings as Fizz climbed out of the caravan window. ‘Get back to bed. Now!’
Fizz climbed back through the caravan window and lay down on his bed.
He hadn’t expected her to be sat by the supermarket’s back door.
It was as if she was on guard. She’d had a steaming mug of coffee (he had smelt it) and had been reading a magazine by the light of a little torch (he had seen it).
Fizz could’ve fought her or made a run for it, maybe, but that wouldn’t have been much good. Not really. It wasn’t that he wanted to escape. He wanted to get help. It wasn’t just him that was in trouble, it was the whole lot of them. He couldn’t abandon his mum and dad and Dr Surprise and Percy Late and Emerald Sparkles and her husband and the others.
He lay on his bed with his eyes open and his brain ticking through impossible plans and stupid ideas until his eyes shut of their own accord and he began to dream.
The only dream he remembered in the morning was the one where he was being shaken awake.
Fizzlebert Stump and the Great Supermarket Showdown Page 4