“A rat got into the kitchen a few months ago and Gizmo killed it.”
“Right. I see.”
“It was pretty brutal. That’s probably her best thing.”
“Good, right,” said Howard Howard, quickly moving down the line. “Sebastian. What’s the best thing about Gavin?”
Sebastian thought for a moment. “Uh, he’s got so many good qualities but I suppose if I had to choose … sense of humour.”
If Howard had looked surprised at Evie’s answer, it was nothing compared to the expression he wore now. He blinked several times in rapid succession, his smile fixed in place. “Sorry, sense of…?”
“Humour,” said Sebastian, his face completely straight. “He’s funny. Well, I think he is, anyway.”
Howard’s eyes crept down to the wasp in the jar. “Do you? Right. Wonderful. Good. And Dylan? How about you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never met him before.”
Howard frowned. “Sorry?”
“The wasp,” I said. “I’ve never met him. I’ve got no idea if he’s funny.”
“What? No,” said Howard, unable to disguise the irritation in his voice. He laughed falsely. “I mean what’s the best thing about Destructo?”
Through the window, Theo fumbled for a card, then held it up. He grinned at me over the top, and I felt my stomach flip.
Oh no.
Oh no, he hadn’t.
“I love how his breath smells,” I said, reading from the card. Theo flipped it over and laughed silently as he pointed to the words on the other side. “It smells like fairy hiccups.”
Howard Howard shot the camera a sideways glance and Theo quickly lowered the card out of sight. “Uh … right. Great! Well, now that we’ve got to know our contestants and their pets a little better, it’s time to check out their talents. But first, here’s a reminder of what our contestants could win.”
The light on the camera blinked out. “VT rolling. Back in twenty,” chimed a voice from the crew.
“What was all that about?” hissed Howard Howard. “Why are you coming out with rubbish like that?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then realized he was talking to Sebastian. “How can a wasp have a sense of humour? It’s a wasp!”
“Yes, but Gavin’s special,” Sebastian insisted. “When you get to know him, you’ll find—”
“But I’m not going to get to know him, am I?” hissed Howard Howard. “He’s a wasp. I mean, what sort of weirdo—?”
“And we’re back in four, three…”
Howard Howard turned to the camera, his smile clicking on at the same time as the red “On Air” light.
“That’s right, five thousand pounds, plus a chance at twenty-thousand pounds and – let’s not forget – a pat from the queen.”Everyone in the room glanced, just briefly, at Sebastian’s jar. All of us, I imagine, were trying to picture the queen patting a wasp.
“So!” said Howard Howard, all chirpy and full of fun. “Let’s get started!”After a brief chat with Evie, a set of drums was wheeled in.
Evie plonked Gizmo down on the drum kit’s padded seat and we all watched and waited as she sniffed the high-hat. Gizmo, I mean, not Evie.
At first the cat just looked a bit confused by the whole thing, but then she stretched herself up on to her back legs and began thudding her paws on the snare drum. Dum. Dum-dum.
“Aw,” said Howard Howard. “How wonderful.”
“She hasn’t started yet,” said Evie. “She’s just testing the sound.”
“Oh.”
With her sound-check complete, Gizmo bounded up on to the drum kit and began throwing herself around, a thrashing ball of legs and tail, sweeping like a tornado across the drums. By rights, she should have been making a pretty awful racket but somehow her frenzied thrashing and leaping was producing an actual rhythm.
Dum-dum-tsh-tsh, dum-dum-tsh-tsh, badda-badda-badda-badda dum-dum-tish.
I stared. Howard Howard stared. Even Sebastian, whose confidence had seemed pretty rock-solid so far, gave his jar a doubting glance.
Gizmo finished with a flurry of baddas, dums and tshs, and the crew erupted into cheers and applause.
“Amazing! Wonderful! Dare I say it? Pet-tastic!” said Howard Howard, beaming from ear to ear.
Evie took a bow, scooped Gizmo into her arms, then hurried back to her stool.
Howard began to ask her his scripted questions. I didn’t really hear them or Evie’s responses. I was too busy trying to combat the rising feeling of terror inside me. I could see my name creeping up from the bottom of the screen, which meant he was coming to me next. The big moment had almost arrived.
“Thank you, Evie … and the drum-playing superstar, Gizmo!” said Howard Howard, and another burst of music played, accompanied by applause from the crew.
Howard turned to the camera. “Now, what if I said our next guest is a dog? You’d probably say, ‘So what, Howard? It is a show about pets, you know!’” He nodded and chuckled. “And you’d be right! But what if I said our next guest is a dog who can ride a bike?”
Howard pointed at the camera and smiled. “Ah! That got your attention. Well, say hello to Dylan Malone and his bicycling best buddy, Destructo. Dylan, welcome.”
Destructo, who’d been lying beside me on the floor, chose that moment to raise his back leg and begin vigorously licking his bum.
“Hello,” I said, trying to ignore the bottom licking.
“So, Dylan. Tell us about Destructo,” said Howard, reading from his autocue.
At the window, Theo fumbled with his cards. “When did he first learn to ride a bike?”
“Ages ago,” I said, reading from Theo’s card.
“Right. I see,” said Howard. “Can you be more specific?”
That wasn’t on his autocue! At the window, I saw Theo frantically rummaging through his cards. It seemed to take forever before he finally held one up for me to read from.
“No,” I said.
Howard Howard hesitated, then his smile returned, wider than ever. “Well then, before we chat any further, let’s see him in action. Dylan Malone, the time has come. Show us your pet’s special talent!”
A few people had gathered around the edge of the car park to watch. They waved and cheered as Destructo dragged me round the side of the hall, straining on his lead.
Thanks to Theo and his cards, I’d been able to explain to Howard Howard that the cameraman had to keep his distance or Destructo would be too nervous. The cameraman was waiting at the front of the hall, ready to capture the moment when Destructo came cycling round the corner.
Wayne’s bike was propped up against the wall but Wayne himself was nowhere to be seen.
“Psst!” I whispered, covering my clip-on microphone with my hand. “Wayne? Where are you?”
A furry grey head popped up from behind a bush and Destructo let out a low threatening growl.
“Shh, it’s just Wayne,” I said, tugging on the lead. Destructo stopped growling but kept his eyes fixed firmly on the vaguely dog-shaped figure that clambered out from behind the bushes. “Hurry up!” I urged. “They’re waiting.”
Wayne was right – up close, the disguise wasn’t even a little bit convincing. It looked like someone had tried to make a Scooby-Doo costume and given up halfway through. In the cold light of day it was more brown than grey and the paws were all larger than my head.
“It doesn’t have a tail!” I realized.
“Neither does your dog,” said Wayne, his voice muffled by the headpiece.
Without a word, I pointed to Destructo’s tail.
“Oh, right,” said Wayne, straining to look down. “Has he always had that?”
“Just get on the bike!” I hissed.
While Wayne clambered on, I peeked round the side of the hall. The camera was pointed my way and Howard Howard stood in front of it, presumably filling time until Destructo emerged.
I gave them a thumbs up, then ducked back out of sight. Wayne was perc
hed on the bike but his massive paws were making it hard to get his feet on the pedals.
“I can’t see very well,” he said.
Destructo growled again and I gave another tug on the lead. “Just go in a straight line, then turn and come back,” I urged. “That’s all you have to do.”
“Right,” said Wayne. “Here I go!”
With a few turns of the pedals, Wayne went wobbling out from behind the church hall. I peeked round the corner to see Howard turning to watch. He had a look of genuine wonder and amazement on his face and right then – for that brief, glorious moment – I thought the plan was actually going to work.
And then Destructo started to chase the bike, and that’s where it all went wrong.
He shot after it like a cheetah after … whatever it is that cheetahs chase. Giraffes, maybe? I tried to hold on to his lead but he dragged me into the car park and I knew that if I wanted to keep my arm, I’d have to release my grip.
Free of me holding him back, Destructo ran faster. Hearing the barking behind him, Wayne pedalled harder. Even through the costume, I could hear his muffled cries for help as Destructo tore after him, snapping and snarling.
“Get off! Beaky! Heeeeelp!”
Wayne lurched to the left and was now racing straight for the ramshackle old fence at the side of the car park. The onlookers screamed and scattered as Wayne and Destructo barrelled straight towards them.
I – along with millions of people at home – watched, transfixed, as the front wheel of the bike hit the fence and Wayne was launched over the handlebars and landed with a thump in a patch of waste ground on the other side.
Destructo wasn’t letting him get away that easily, though. He vaulted the fence in a single bound. There was a growling, followed by a tearing, followed by a screaming. Wayne jumped to his feet, now missing the costume’s head, and ran for his life, sobbing and crying.
I turned to find Howard Howard glaring at me. The camera was still watching Wayne, and Howard’s face was red with fury. He pointed to me, then jabbed a thumb towards the door of the church hall before turning and marching inside.
For a split second, I thought about running away. I could join the circus. Or just hide under my bed. Anything that meant I didn’t have to go back in there.
But I knew I couldn’t do that. I had to see this through. Besides, it wasn’t like things could really get any worse.
Destructo trotted up to me, a bit of greyish-brown fabric hanging from his jaws.
I sighed and took hold of his lead. “Come on,” I said. “We’d better go and face the music.”
As I sat back down, I expected everyone to start shouting at me but to my amazement, they pretty much carried on as usual.
Rather than angrily accuse me of cheating, which is what I’d expected to happen, they just sort of laughed it off and pretended the demonstration had gone a bit wrong. I suppose they had to do that, what with it being a live broadcast and everything. They couldn’t exactly pin me in a corner and beat me up, or risk shouting at me so much I burst into tears.
The only problem was, because the demonstration hadn’t gone as expected, Howard was no longer working from his autocue, and was improvising his questions to me, which meant Theo’s cards were useless.
“So, Dylan, what went wrong there?” Howard asked.
I glanced out of the window at Theo, who was frantically flicking through his cards, trying to find one to fit the bill. “Quite a lot,” I said, stalling for time.
“Haha! Yes, you can say that again,” said Howard, winking to the camera. “But specifically, where do you think the problem lay?”
Theo shrugged and held up a card. I read it. “My dog can ride a bike.”
“Uh, yes. We saw… Well, I’m not sure what we saw, exactly, but…”
“It smells like fairy hiccups,” I said, reading from another of Theo’s cards that flashed up. Theo pulled a horrified face and shook his head. “No, wait, I didn’t mean that,” I said. “That’s the one from earlier.”
Theo pulled the top card away but that just revealed the one below.
“Hooray, I’ve won!” I read.
“Er, no. You haven’t,” said Howard Howard
Theo turned his stack of cards round. Unfortunately, this revealed another answer. “Sometimes he poos on the table.”
Theo tossed all the cards to the ground, where I couldn’t see them. By then, though, the damage was done. Everyone was staring at me, even Destructo.
I cleared my throat quietly. “Don’t really know why I kept reading those,” I said. “Should have just stopped talking.”
Howard Howard stared at me in confusion. Evie reached behind the back of the stools and tapped me on the side. “You OK?” she somehow managed to ask using just her eyebrows.
The look between us didn’t go unnoticed. Howard Howard smiled and turned his attention back to the autocue. I glanced at the words scrolling up the screen and felt my blood run cold.
“Leaving the pets aside for a moment, a little birdie tells me that we may have our very own TV’s Most Talented Pets romance brewing, right here in the studio.”
“It’s not a studio, it’s a manky old church hall,” I said, quickly trying to change the subject.
“Haha! Yes, quite,” said Howard Howard, smiling through his obvious rage.
Evie looked across at me in surprise but I didn’t dare meet her gaze. Instead I just watched in slowly dawning horror as the text continued up the autocue display.
Theo had his arms folded and was leaning against the outside window ledge, smirking at me with his face right up to the glass. The words on the autocue were all written in lower case and littered with spelling mistakes. It didn’t take a genius to work out who was responsible.
Theo!
“So what I want to know,” said Howard Howard, frowning slightly as he struggled to read the typo-filled text. “Is, does Beaky want Evie to be his girlfriend or what?”
The presenter’s frown deepened. “Who’s Beaky?” he asked.
“That’s me,” I croaked. I shoved my hand into my pocket, grabbing for my gobstopper, only to find it gone. Outside, Theo held up the bag with the big sweet inside and flashed me a grin.
“Oh no,” I whispered, feeling the eyes of the nation boring into me down the camera lens. “Not now. Not like this! Not on live TV!”
Evie’s face was red but she was smiling. Sebastian sat between us, cradling his wasp jar and looking increasingly impatient.
Howard Howard raised his perfectly plucked eyebrows. “Well, Dylan?” he asked. “I know that I, for one, can’t wait to hear the answer! Would you like Evie to be your girlfriend?”
As I sat there on my stool, Evie blushing nearby, Theo laughing on the other side of the window and a million-plus people watching at home, I couldn’t keep the truth inside any longer. It rose like a bubble all the way up my windpipe, before bursting on my lips like an explosion of pure humiliation.
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t.”
Well, I never said it was me the gobstopper was saving from being humiliated, did I?
I shot Evie an apologetic look but her face sort of crumpled and she looked away.
Theo looked in through the window, his mouth hanging open. Clearly he hadn’t been expecting that answer.
“I’m sorry, Evie,” I said.
But she just stared straight ahead and patted Gizmo’s head so forcefully the poor cat’s eyes went as wide as saucers of milk.
“Is it my turn yet?” demanded Sebastian. “Gavin’s going to need a nap soon, if we don’t hurry up.”
“What?” said Howard Howard. Even he looked like he felt sorry for Evie, which was saying something. He blinked and shook his head. “Um, yes. Yes! It’s… Next up is … the, uh, kid with the bee.”
“Wasp,” tutted Sebastian.
“Yes, right. Wasp,” said Howard. “The kid with the pet wasp who can play the… No, wait! Knots, wasn’t it?”
Evie stood up suddenly. How
ard Howard turned to speak to her but she barged past him and ran off the set. A moment later, the church hall shook as she slammed the door.
The lights all flickered, then something in the camera went bang, sending a puff of dark smoke drifting up towards the ceiling.
“Equipment’s all down,” cried someone from the crew. “We’re off air.”
I slapped my hands on my thighs and did my best to smile. “Still, do you know what?” I said to the room in general. “This wasn’t as bad as I expected.”
The fire alarm began to screech. A moment later, the overhead sprinklers activated, showering us all in freezing-cold water.
“OK,” I muttered, as everyone screamed and Destructo started barking his head off. “Now it’s as bad as I expected.”
After the show – which, to my surprise, the coffee-fetching teenager assured me was only the second worst episode ever – I met Theo outside. His chewed his lip guiltily.
“I thought you’d say ‘yes’!” he said. “I thought it’d be funny if you owned up to fancying Evie on the telly. I thought that’s why you kept shoving in the gobstopper, so you didn’t embarrass yourself by admitting it.”
I sighed and shook my head. “No. It was so I didn’t embarrass her by denying it,” I said, squirming a bit. “She’s my friend. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.”
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