by Ali Sparkes
“Will you?” asked Danny. The lady spider lowered her brown and grey speckly face toward him. She slid a pair of fat fangs out of her mouthparts.
“No,” admitted Josh.
Danny shut his eyes.
“But they will!” Josh yelled.
There was a crunching noise.
Danny opened his eyes just in time to see the spider’s last leg disappearing into the furry face of . . .
“SCRATCH!” he yelled, joyfully. “SNIFF!” he added, just as joyfully. Another furry face appeared. Two giant brown rats were now peering at him with great concern. The last time he and Josh had met Scratch and Sniff, the rats had saved their lives. It looked as if it was becoming a habit!
“Careful now,” said Scratch. “It’s pretty delicate work, picking silk off a fly without picking the legs off with it. Normally we just eat flies still wrapped.”
Danny hiccuped in fright. “Oh, don’t be silly—I’m teasing you,” laughed Scratch. “We don’t eat flies. We and flies have a bond! Humans hate ’em as much as us! And all rats and flies do is tidy things up, you know. Clear up the gooey stuff that you don’t want lying around. Nah. We get along all right, rats and flies. Want me to get a swarm together and have them attack that Petty Potts for you? Ow—this stuff is sticky!”
“Oh, move over! Let me!” said his wife. Sniff leaned over. She carefully began to unwind the silk with her delicate, long-nailed fingers.
Josh landed next to them. “You gobbled that spider in one munch!” he marveled. “I thought you two said you never ate spiders . . . the last time we met.”
“Well, dear,” said Sniff, still carefully unraveling Danny. “We were being polite. You were both spiders yourselves at the time.”
“Don’t really like ’em much,” said Scratch. He picked a bit of thorax out of his teeth with a cough. “But can’t have one of ’em eating an old friend, can we?”
“What are you both doing here?” asked Josh.
“Oh, just doing our rounds, love,” said Sniff.
“Always worth popping in when she’s making cakes. We heard a bit of a to-do in here. We recognized your voices!”
“Thank you so much!” sighed Josh. “I thought Danny was done for this time.”
“Well, he will be, if you hang around here much longer,” said Scratch. He cast his beady eyes around the dark cave behind the sofa. “Plenty more spiders where that one came from. How come you let that mad scientist catch you and spray you again?”
“We didn’t—I mean—we decided to spray ourselves, this time,” said Danny. He got back up on his six feet and carefully flexed his wings.
“You must be stark-staring bonkers,” said Sniff. She shook her head with a quiver of whiskers. “You nearly got eaten last time. And here you are nearly getting eaten again! Didn’t you learn your lesson?”
Danny and Josh quickly explained their mission.
“So,” said Scratch, “let me get this straight. You let Petty Potts turn you into flies so you could rescue some bits of twig for your mom?”
“Well . . . sort of,” said Josh. He had to admit that it now seemed like a fairly silly idea. “We wanted to find out if they cut off Mom’s birds. Now we know Tarquin cut the birds off. And now we’ve found them here, Mom might still be able to wire the twigs back on again if we can get them back.”
“What—those bits of twigs that they’re picking up and pulling apart now?” checked Scratch.
“NO!” shouted Josh and Danny, together.
“You’ve got to stop them! Please!” begged Josh. “We’re too tiny to make any difference! Can you both create a distraction?”
Scratch and Sniff looked at each other, shrugged, and then ran out across the carpet.
“Eeeeek, eeeeek,” said Scratch in a rather bored voice. Mrs. Sharpe whirled around, looked down, and began to shriek with horror. “Eee-eek. Look at me. I might be carrying the plague . . . ”
He and his wife disappeared into the hallway, calling back, “Come on! Eeeeeek! Chase us!”
“How many times must I tell you,” they heard Sniff scold him, “not to keep bringing up the plague?”
With much squealing and hand flapping, Mrs. Sharpe and Tarquin ran out after them.
Josh and Danny grinned at each other. Then they flew up away from the dusty, dark cave behind the sofa. From high up on the ceiling, they could see the hedge birds still lying on the floor. Only one of them had lost a wing.
“Let’s fly back and get Petty to debug us. Then bring Mom around here fast to confront them before they have time to destroy the evidence!” said Danny.
“OK,” said Josh. “If we can ever get Mom to believe us.”
Danny zoomed across the room and out into the hallway. But Josh suddenly felt rather peculiar and heavy. One moment he was in the air, about to fly after his twin brother—the next . . .
Josh found himself face down on the swirly red carpet. He had just changed back into a boy! He sprang up and opened his mouth to shout to Danny. Then he realized that he couldn’t. He was in Mrs. Sharpe’s living room! She and Tarquin were just outside in the hall squawking about Scratch and Sniff.
“Let’s get the poker and the coal tongs from the fire. We can beat them out with those!” shrieked Mrs. Sharpe.
And the living room door was flung open.
Josh hurled himself back behind the sofa—a much tighter fit this time—just as they walked in.
“Ugh! How disgusting!” shuddered Mrs. Sharpe. “We shall have to call in an exterminator. But how can we? The neighbors will see. I will be so humiliated. Imagine—rats! Vermin in my home—my garden!”
Josh stared through a narrow gap between the sofa and the wall. He watched them crouch down by the hedge birds. There was a whimpering noise.
“Oh for heaven’s sake!” snapped Mrs. Sharpe. “Stop crying, Tarquin!”
“But, Mother! One of them scratched me when I tried to kick it. I might have caught the Black Death,” sniffed Tarquin.
“For a genius, you really are an oaf, Tarquin!” was his mother’s tender reply.
Jammed behind the sofa, Josh wondered what to do next. The evidence of cheating in the Best Garden Contest was right in front of him. But now he was trapped! The window was just above his head. But if he tried to escape through it, Mrs. Sharpe and Tarquin would see him. They could call the police and then hide the evidence of their own crime before the police arrived. Even with Danny backing him up, who was going to believe two eight-year-olds against Mrs. Sharpe and her son?
And where was Danny?
This was not going as planned. Not at all. Josh sighed. Then he felt something digging through his jeans pocket. His new camera! Josh grinned. He got the camera out and turned it on. He focused the zoom lens through the gap. Then he took a picture of Mrs. Sharpe and her son. Not a very flattering one . . .
“It’s like a plague in here!” muttered Mrs. Sharpe. “First flies, then rats—whatever next? A swarm of locusts?” Just as she reached for Mom’s favorite hedge bird her eyes widened and she paused.
“What was that clicking noise?”
“Locusts?” breathed Tarquin, looking scared.
“It came from behind the sofa!” she whispered. Mother and son turned to stare right at the spot where Josh was hidden. He could see them through the gap, but could they see him?
“Tarquin—go and look behind the sofa!” ordered Mrs. Sharpe.
“But—I don’t want to!” wailed Tarquin. “It might be more rats . . . ”
“If you want any dessert today, you’ll do as you’re told!” snapped his mother.
Tarquin crept toward the sofa. He curled his bony fingers across the top of it and pulled. Josh cringed. He was about to be found out, skulking behind the furniture in a neighbor’s house, like a burglar.
“AAAARGH!” screamed Mrs. Sharpe. “RATS! RATS! THERE THEY GO AGAIN.”
Josh laughed silently with relief. Scratch and Sniff had run into the room, done a loop around the carpet, and ru
n off out again.
Mrs. Sharpe and Tarquin hurried out after them. Josh leapt to his feet, jumped over the sofa, and gathered Mom’s hedge birds into the trash bag. He slung it over his shoulder and then climbed through the front room window. He landed on the immaculate front lawn. With Mrs. Sharpe’s screams and Tarquin’s shrieks echoing from the house, he ran for the gate and made straight for home.
As he reached the corner of the road, he ran right into Danny.
“There you are!” cried his brother. “We thought you’d been swatted!”
Petty could be seen hurrying along the road behind Danny. “Oh, thank goodness!” she puffed. “You’ve not been eaten! Now—you naughty boys. Don’t ever do such a thing ever again!”
Josh and Danny turned and gave her a very hard stare.
“Oh, all right,” she muttered, adjusting her spectacles. “I just like to pretend to be a normal grown-up sometimes . . . ”
The camera memory stick slid into Petty’s computer. It clicked and whirred.
“It’s very powerful but a bit slow,” said Petty, in the green light of the laboratory.
“Um . . . one thing I’ve been wondering about . . . ” ventured Danny.
“Yes, Danny?” said Petty. She pushed her glasses up her nose and jabbed at the keyboard.
“Why aren’t I stark naked?”
Petty blinked in surprise. “Because it’s a little chilly today?”
“No—I mean why aren’t there a couple of piles of clothes in the plastic tent thingy where we got S.W.I.T.C.H.ed?” went on Danny. “When we turned into flies we should have flown right out of our pants, shouldn’t we? And then, when we came back to being human, we should’ve been stark naked!”
Petty laughed. “A good point, Danny. It’s to do with how S.W.I.T.C.H. works. It actually changes all your cells’ energy patterns. And everything that’s connected to them at the point when you are sprayed gets changed too.”
“Energy patterns?” repeated Josh.
“Yes. All you need to know is that everything immediately connected to you changes with you. OK?”
Josh and Danny nodded, slowly.
“And a jolly good thing too,” added Petty. “A pair of identical streaking eight-year-olds is the last thing we need when we’re working together on a top secret project.”
“Are we . . . ?” said Danny, looking at Josh.
“Working on a top secret project? With her?” Josh shrugged. He hadn’t decided yet. No matter how exciting it was to think of being a dragon one day, it was just so dangerous. Only an hour ago, Danny had nearly been a spider’s lunch!
There was a ping.
“Ah!” said Petty. “Here are your photos, Josh.”
A series of photos opened up across her large screen. Josh’s finger. Josh’s eye. Danny, his head sideways, laughing hard at Josh for trying to take a photo with his new camera backward and sideways. Then pictures of Mom in the garden, a close-up of the rockery, Danny pretending to be a giant fly, Danny sitting up behind Jenny’s shoulder, Jenny hitting him with her rolled-up magazine . . .
And then, three really clear shots of . . .
“What?” squawked Josh. “Oh no! Where’s Mrs. Sharpe and Tarquin? Now we’ve got no evidence!”
“You must have messed up the angle,” muttered Danny. “What a waste of time!”
“Nonsense,” said Petty Potts, leaning in close to peer at the photos. “You got the hedge birds back for your mom, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but I wanted the police to go around and arrest Mrs. Sharpe and Tarquin!” huffed Josh.
Petty had maximized one photo on her computer so it filled the whole screen and was now peering so closely at it that her nose was against the monitor. “Who cares about them?” she said, with growing excitement in her voice. “Josh! Where is this?” She jabbed her finger at the picture of Mom’s rock garden. Josh noticed, for the first time, that something bright was shining under one of the rocks. Probably a bit of a broken bottle.
“I took that in the front garden,” said Josh. “Why?”
“Take me there! Right away!” demanded Petty, springing to her feet. Josh and Danny shrugged at each other and led the way. Two minutes later, Petty Potts was on her hands and knees, scrabbling through the rockery. It was a good thing Mom had gone inside after wiring the hedge birds back on. She would have been horrified. But after just a few seconds, Petty leapt to her feet. She held up something covered in dirt. “YESS!” she cried. “Look! Josh! Danny! I can’t believe it!”
They stared closely at the thing in her hand. Some of the loose dirt fell away from it. It was a glass cube.
“Wow—it’s—it’s one of those S.W.I.T.C.H. cube thingies!” breathed Danny.
Now he could see a holographic image inside the glass. It looked a bit like an alligator.
Petty Potts held the cube to her cheek. “Another REPTOSWITCH cube! I knew they couldn’t be far away! I knew it. Now . . . if only I could remember where I’d hidden the rest.”
“Are you sure you hid them?” said Josh.
“Yes—my memory is burnt out in places, as you know. But I remember hiding the cubes where I could find them later in an emergency. There are another four of these—the REPTOSWITCH ones—hidden somewhere near the lab,” explained Petty.
“Except you forgot where,” pointed out Danny.
“Yes! Exactly! So far, I’ve only managed to find the cubes with the BUGSWITCH code. All the others have been lost for years! And that’s why I need your help. Will you look for REPTOSWITCH cubes for me?” asked Petty, smiling at them hopefully. (She looked less like a spider in a web this time.)
“Look,” said Josh. “We will help you. We will look for your cubes. But we won’t change into any more bugs. OK?”
“Absolutely fine!” said Petty. “I would never dream of asking you to.”
She put the glass cube in her pocket. She put her rather muddy fingers on each of their heads.
“Josh—Danny. Welcome to the S.W.I.T.C.H. Project!”
“Well, this is lovely, I must say!” The Best Garden judge smiled approvingly at the garden. “I particularly like these!” he added, patting the hedge birds. “They must have taken years to grow and cut into such delightful shapes.” Around the judge, the crowd murmured, impressed.
“Oh yes—years,” agreed Mom, smiling back, nervously. “But I have to admit to you that yesterday somebody came along and chopped them off. I had to wire them back on.”
The crowd gasped and the judge’s eyebrows rose up. “They won’t last, of course,” went on Mom. “In a week the leaves will have died, but for now they look fine. I hope it won’t mean I’m disqualified, but I’d rather not pretend.” She was still amazed that the hedge birds had been returned. Josh and Danny had run into the house to tell her that the hedge birds were lying on the garden path yesterday afternoon.
“Well—I think it’s very good of you to be so honest,” said the judge. “I certainly won’t disqualify you over someone else’s nasty trick.”
The crowd walked on, and Mom, Josh, and Danny walked on too. They watched as the judge inspected other gardens in the competition.
Petty Potts suddenly arrived behind Josh and Danny. They smiled at her, glumly. How they wished Josh’s photo of Mrs. Sharpe and Tarquin with the hedge birds had come out. They’d spent all morning grumbling about it, sitting by the shed in the backyard. Even when Scratch and Sniff had shown up (they lived under the shed) and sat on their shoulders for a while, they felt sad. The rats shook their furry little heads when Josh told them what had happened. “I can’t stand to think of that stuck-up Mrs. Sharpe winning the prize!” said Danny. Scratch and Sniff squeaked at each other. Then they vanished back under the shed just as Mom came down the garden to tell Josh and Danny the judging was starting.
Now the crowd gathered at Mrs. Sharpe’s garden while the judge walked around it.
“You know, I don’t think you really wanted to get the police involved, anyway,” Petty muttered. “
After all, they would have wondered how you came to be inside the Sharpes’ house. It’s for the best.”
Mrs. Sharpe’s garden was very neat with carefully arranged plants and flowers, a perfect lawn, and a water feature with a little fountain. Mrs. Sharpe stood at her gate, wearing a wide-brimmed hat, waving white-gloved hands, and nodding at everyone, as if she were the queen.
“Very good, as usual, Mrs. Sharpe,” beamed the judge, after looking around for a few minutes. “Always one of our star gardens. Quite immaculate.”
“Well, you know I cannot bear untidiness or unpleasantness in a garden,” simpered Mrs. Sharpe. “For me, there has to be perfect order. Nothing less.” Tarquin stood behind her. He wore a neat navy-blue suit and a smug smile.
“Well,” said the judge. “As this is our last garden, I think I can now announce the winner.”
An expectant hush fell upon the crowd, broken only by the buzzing of a few flies. Then a few more flies. And a bit more buzzing.
The judge fanned his face. “Gosh! Your garden is a haven for insect life, Mrs. Sharpe.”
“Well—butterflies and bees, of course,” trilled Mrs. Sharpe. She swiped something off her chin.
“No—bluebottles and cluster flies,” said Josh.
He grinned. There were a lot of flies. Really quite a swarm in fact. Someone gave a little scream. There were now clouds of flies all over Mrs. Sharpe’s garden. They settled on her neat borders and danced around her little fountain.
“They’re attracted to garbage, old meat, dog poo. That kind of stuff,” Josh cheerily informed the crowd.
“I don’t have garbage or old meat or dog poo in my garden!” exclaimed Mrs. Sharpe.
“Well, you must have. You’ve certainly got vermin!” pointed out Petty. And there—running around the fountain—were Scratch and Sniff.
They raced up and down the lawn, squeaking, and swirling cyclones of flies followed them.
As the crowd turned panicky, Josh and Danny were doubled up laughing. Scratch and Sniff had obviously decided to help out, after hearing Josh and Danny’s bad news earlier.