by Matt Haig
But it was the next day that things got really weird.
She was walking to school, thinking about the double history lesson she was about to have on the Ancient Romans, and whether she’d done her homework right, when she noticed an air of weirdness. And it wasn’t just the usual kids from Lofting High shouting, ‘Hey, Lion Girl!’
She passed Scruff, who was sniffing the air wildly. ‘There is an air of weirdness,’ he confirmed, as he trotted by.
Then she saw a cat in a window of one of the houses. The window was slightly open. Evie recognised the cat.
The ginger tabby.
Marmalade.
‘Help me,’ the cat was pleading, with its mind and miaow.
Evie turned away from the cat. After the lion incident she had newly promised her dad not to respond to any animals, and this time she knew she really had to keep that promise. She had to keep a low profile. So she carried on walking.
‘Only you can stop this,’ the cat went on. ‘You have to stop this, before it’s too late.’
Hearing this, Evie turned and walked back towards the house.
When she got there, something incredibly weird happened.
Marmalade squeezed out of the gap in the front window and leapt onto the grass.
‘Marmalade? Marmalade?’
But he ran straight past Evie and down a side alley at full speed.
‘Weird,’ said Evie. ‘Very weird.’
The Missing Posters
loser to school, she saw something else weird.
A ‘MISSING CAT’ poster stuck to a lamp-post. There was a photo of a cat.
A posh-looking Persian cat.
She quickly scanned the words below the photo.
This was weird.
But it got weirder.
There were more posters. But they weren’t all posters of cats. Not completely. There was a poster of another cat – a chocolate-coated Burmese named Cocoa.
But then on the next lamp-post there was a poster of a missing Labradoodle called Mrs Cuddles.
Then one of a missing Shih Tzu.
And a French bulldog.
And a Yorkshire terrier.
And a Rottweiler.
And a dog with no breed.
And a hamster called Cheryl.
And a tortoise called Flash.
And a leopard gecko called Gordon.
Three unnamed ferrets.
And a parakeet called Pablo.
This is getting weirder and weirder, thought Evie. Cats went missing all the time. Even dogs did sometimes. But hamsters? Tortoises? Geckos? Parakeets? All on the same day?
But things were about to get even weirder than this.
She saw Leonora far ahead of her, typing on her phone, carrying a hockey stick.
As Evie passed Leonora’s house she saw a tiny white fluffy dog sitting in the window. On guard. A little Maltese terrier with a pink ribbon in its long, perfectly groomed hair. It was Bibi. The dog who had been the reason for Leonora and Evie’s falling out over a year ago.
The terrier yapped at the sight of her.
Most small dogs are yappy. Their yaps are also thoughts. Because for terriers there is very little difference between yapping and thinking.
‘He’s coming!’
That’s all the yap said.
Over and over and over.
‘He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s coming! He’s coming!’
Evie tried to send a thought across the air and through the window and into the dog’s brain. ‘Who?’ she asked.
And the Maltese terrier stopped yapping for a second and stared at Evie and cocked her head to the side and for a moment Evie thought she might get an answer. But no.
‘He’s coming!’ came the yap again. ‘He’s coming!’
‘WHO IS COMING?’ Evie closed her eyes and tried to reach the dawa, that life-force that connected everything, even schoolchildren and Maltese terriers. But for some reason Bibi’s mind seemed impenetrable. Harder even to step inside than the mind of a lion. All she could do was mind-talk. So she dared to ask another question. ‘Is it a man called Mortimer?’
But she got no different answer. ‘He’s coming! He’s coming!’
Maybe the dog’s talking about Leonora’s dad, Evie thought, as she moved away. Maybe that is who is coming.
And that was the thought she tried to keep in her head as she walked ahead to school and the abnormal day that awaited her.
The Weirdos
vie sat with Ramesh on a bench in the schoolyard.
She was now, officially, the joke of the school.
She knew this because Jacob Jeffreys, who had been the joke of the school ever since he had peed the bed on a school trip to the Lake District, had come up to her and said, ‘Thank you. I am no longer the joke of the school.’
‘Great,’ said Evie.
‘Even with this spot on my nose,’ said Jacob.
It did look a particularly massive spot.
‘Oh, yay,’ said Evie sarcastically, ‘happy to help.’
Jacob walked away.
‘You can hang around with us, Jacob,’ Ramesh called after him. ‘We could all be jokes together. Like, a human joke society.’
Jacob carried on walking. Holding onto a book called Aliens Are Real And May Be Among Us. ‘No, thanks. I’m not that desperate.’
Evie stared at Ramesh. ‘You’re not a joke.’
Ramesh laughed. ‘Are you kidding me? At my last school I used to get picked on for everything.’
Then he gave a list of Everything He Used To Get Picked On About. It included:
1. Having long hair.
2. Liking loud rock music from the olden days that his dad liked.
3. Being a vegan and a Hindu who was home-schooled until he was eight.
4. Being dyslexic.
5. Crying in assembly.
‘Well,’ said Evie. ‘You’re not a joke now.’
‘Really?’ he said cheekily. ‘Even though I hang around with Lion Girl?’
Evie smirked. ‘Well, okay. You are a bit of a joke. Yeah. Mainly, though, you are just annoying.’
Evie noticed Leonora and her gang of friends were looking over, so she tried to keep talking.
‘How’s your mum?’ Evie asked Ramesh. ‘I heard they’re closing down the zoo for a little while . . .’
Ramesh nodded. ‘A month. Mum’s fine, though. She’s just pleased no one got hurt.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Evie.
‘Hey, it’s not your fault. You were just trying to help the little idiot. I mean, BOY. Even if you hadn’t gone over it’d still be closed down. We might even be in a worse situation . . .’ He looked up to the sky. ‘Everyone really DOES think you can talk to animals, y’know? That’s what the boy said you told him. Sam. It’s all over the internet.’
Evie pulled at her hair and inspected it. ‘I never told him that.’
‘Oh.’
She stared at Ramesh. ‘But it is true.’
‘Whaaaaaaat? Don’t mess with me.’
She took a deep breath. It was time. And Ramesh, her fellow joke, was the person to tell it to.
‘I have something called the Talent,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘It means I can communicate telepathically with animals. It is a skill that, once out in the open, puts me in great danger.’
Ramesh laughed and shook his head.
‘I’m not joking,’ Evie told him. ‘I am incredibly serious.’
Ramesh could see she was serious, but still found it hard to believe. The wind blew his hair in front of his face and he pulled it behind his ears. He tried not to laugh.
‘Prove it,’ he said. ‘Prove you are not just . . .’
‘A weirdo?’
‘Well, I KNOW you’re a weirdo. But I’m a weirdo too. Weirdos are the way to be. Especially in a school full of NAUSEATING NORMALS. I mean, prove you’re a WEIRDO WITH SKILLS.’
Beak to the Rescue
vie tried to think how she could prove
to Ramesh that she had the Talent.
‘The lioness backed down. That’s because I told her she could get killed.’
Ramesh shrugged. ‘That’s not proof. The lioness might not have been in the killing mood.’
‘Oh, she was!’
‘Right. Sure. You know that.’
‘You saw me in the reptile house,’ Evie urged. ‘You thought I was acting a bit odd. That’s because I was trying to communicate with the axolotl.’
‘Ah,’ said Ramesh, though Evie could see he was starting to wonder. ‘Trying to and ACTUALLY DOING SO are very different things.’
‘And the elephant – Orwell – he told me . . .’
Ramesh suddenly looked worried. ‘What? What did the elephant tell you?’
She couldn’t bring herself to say ‘About your dad dying’. So she just said, ‘Nothing.’
Ramesh looked out at the schoolyard and saw Leonora and the other girls pointing over.
‘I miss him, you know,’ he said, as if he understood what Evie had been going to say. ‘Every day, I wake up and there’s a moment I still think Dad’s here. And then I realise that he’s gone. That he’ll never be able to go to the cinema with me, or tell me off about my messy room, and I find it too much . . .’
Evie nodded.
‘You’re a hero, mate,’ Ramesh told her, being serious for a second. ‘You probably saved that boy’s life.’
They heard someone giggling and looked up to see Leonora getting closer, taking a picture of Evie with her phone.
‘What are you doing?’ Evie asked, worried her face was already too much on the internet.
Leonora smiled broadly. ‘I’m taking a picture of you both. It’s for a photography project for art class . . .’ Her friends were laughing. Evie knew this was a lie.
‘You generally ask someone before you take their picture,’ mumbled Evie.
‘Ooh, the lion roars!’ said Leonora’s friend, Anoushka. Anoushka was the girl you wanted to be if you didn’t like being the girl you were. And she was quite evil.
‘I might put it on Instagram, too. Got 400,000 followers now. I just need a title for it. The picture, I mean. “Sad Boy and Lion Girl” . . . That might work.’ She scratched her chin, as if thinking really hard. ‘Or “The Girl Who Thought She Was Special Finds a Friend” . . . or just “Weirdos”. Yeah, I like that. What you reckon, Livs?’
Leonora’s friend, Livs – Olivia – a short, freckly girl who was chewing gum at three-hundred miles an hour – nodded and said, ‘Yeah. Love it. That’s art. You’ll get an A-star for that.’
Evie wondered why she was feeling so awkward. Why was it so much easier to stand up to an actual deadly killer African LIONESS than to an annoying, spoilt twelve-year-old?
Leonora was right there now. She leaned in, close to Evie’s face. ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’
Ramesh tutted at Leonora. ‘You’re just jealous that you’re no longer the most famous girl in school.’
‘Yeah,’ sighed Leonora sarcastically. ‘That must be it. Jealous. Got it. Well done, Sherlock Holmes.’
Then Evie saw something flying through the sky. Something small.
She recognised the wings instantly. They were the wings of a sparrow.
It wasn’t just any sparrow, either.
It was Beak.
Evie could feel his thoughts enter her mind as he danced and darted in the air overhead. Evie closed her eyes to focus better.
‘Are you all right, Evie?’ asked the bird.
‘Yes.’
‘Are you sure?’
There was never any point lying to Beak. Beak always knew the truth.
‘No, Beak. I’m not all right.’
‘Do you want that girl to leave you alone?’
‘Yes. But I don’t think that’s going to happen.’
Evie could hear Anoushka laughing. ‘Oh man, look at her with her eyes closed! What’s she doing? Yoga?’
Ramesh, meanwhile, was looked up at the bird. He knew something was going on.
‘Wait there,’ said Beak. ‘I’ll get my friends. They’re right there, in that tree.’
Evie opened her eyes and looked up and saw the sparrow had disappeared.
Leonora was waving her hand in front of Evie’s face.
‘Hell-ooo! Are you listening? Is anyone home? Earth to Evie . . .’
Evie and Ramesh kept watching as a whole flock of sparrows came into view. She could hear Beak.
‘Not the ones sitting down . . . the others.’
Then Anoushka grabbed Evie’s hair and yanked it.
‘Hey, Lion Girl. She saaaid, Are. You. LISTENING?’
Anoushka let go, and Evie stared at her former best friend and tried to pretend Leonora was no scarier than a lioness. ‘No. Actually, I’m not,’ she said.
Leonora and her friends were shocked by this answer and the sudden lack of fear in Evie’s eyes. But not as shocked as they were a second later, when Beak reappeared with all the sparrows from the tree – Evie reckoned there were at least thirty of them – circling over their heads. They flew fast. Closer and closer.
Leonora stared up at the sky and—
SPLAT!
A splodge of sticky speckled sparrow poo landed right in the middle of her forehead.
‘Ugh! Oh my god, it just pooed on me!’
SPLAT!
Another sparrow poo-splat, this time in her hair.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
Leonora was now covered in sparrow poo. And not just Leonora. Her friends as well.
‘Aaaagh! Those evil birds!’ spluttered Olivia.
‘Ugh!’ said one of the other girls. ‘It’s in my hair!’
Evie arrowed a message into Beak’s brain. ‘Okay, Beak. Thank you. That should do it.’
Beak circled overhead. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Sure.’
Beak called his friends away.
And now the whole schoolyard was watching. A massive crowd was gathering, then Leonora spotted a few people with their phones out, filming the whole thing. It was the first time this week that the news had been anything other than Evie and the lion.
‘PUT THOSE PHONES AWAY! STOP FILMING!’ Leonora screamed, bright red with rage.
Evie then felt her own phone buzz in her pocket. She looked at it and saw her dad had just sent a text message. It said:
I’ll pick you up from school. To be safe. Dad. X
Evie put the phone away.
Ramesh stopped staring at Leonora and looked at Evie and gave her a little smile and a nod. And even though Ramesh wasn’t a sparrow or a lion Evie knew what the look meant. It meant: ‘I believe you.’ And she was grateful.
It felt nice to be understood.
The Girl Who Talks to Lions
vie waited at the school gates for her dad to pick her up.
All the kids had left now, and her dad still hadn’t arrived.
A man with a springer spaniel walked by. It was the totally mad and friendly dog she had seen a few weeks ago. The one with the stern owner. As it had done before, it began to sniff and pant and wag enthusiastically in Evie’s direction.
‘Hello. Hello. Hello. How are you?’ he said. ‘Life is good. Life is good. Despite everything. Life is good. Like me. Like me. Do you like me?’
Again, the dog’s owner yanked him back hard on the lead. ‘Behave, Murdoch!’
‘Agh! I really do wish he knew how much that hurt.’
Evie couldn’t help herself. ‘I don’t think he likes that,’ she said.
The man looked at her with disgust. ‘What?’
‘He doesn’t like it when you pull on the lead.’
He leaned in closer. ‘It’s you, isn’t it? That stupid girl who thinks she can talk to lions.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve just read about it. In the Lofting Evening Post.’
He waved a newspaper in front of her, and then showed her the front page.
There was the headline, in bi
g bold letters, with Evie’s school photo next to it:
THE GIRL WHO TALKS TO LIONS
‘Oh no,’ Evie whispered. It was her seventy-second ‘oh no’ of the day.
The man walked away.
Evie looked at her watch. It was now a quarter past four. She sent her dad a text.
Am outside school. Are you still picking me up? X
No answer. So she sent another.
Dad, where are you? X
She even asked him in Spanish.
Papá ¿Dónde estás? x
Then another.
Dad?
Then one more.
Don’t bother picking me up. Am walking home. Hope all okay. X
And so she did just that.
But she had a terrible feeling in her stomach. On her way home, Evie saw even more posters for missing pets. There seemed to be one on every lamp-post.
As she passed Leonora’s house she saw Mrs Brightside being filmed by Mr Brightside, outside, on the pavement in front of their driveway. Daisy Brightside was talking into the camera.
‘I have some REALLY SAD news,’ she said, through dramatic sobs. ‘Really, really, really, really SAD. Our beloved baby fluffball Bibi is missing. And the only explanation is that somebody stole her.’ Then she waved at her husband.
‘What is it, babe?’ asked Mr Brightside, who was wearing a tight T-shirt to show off his fake-tanned muscles.
‘I think we’ll have to do that again, Jamie. My hair’s too messy. I look like an ordinary . . . person.’
Evie felt her heart quicken. She remembered what that very same Maltese terrier had been saying through the window that morning.
He’s coming . . .
She felt that whoever had stolen Bibi probably had something to do with all the other missing animals, too. That many pets simply didn’t go missing in the space of a day, unless it was part of the same crime.