by Ali Sparkes
Piddle backed right into a corner by the shed, growling and shivering. “You don’t have to be afraid!” insisted Danny. And then he opened his immense jaws . . .
And closed them on Piddle.
“DANNY! STOP! STOP!” Josh bellowed.
“Whaaa-at? I’m only playing!” Danny said. He turned around and grinned at Josh. Piddle, jammed in Danny’s teeth, squirmed and yelped.
“STOP IT! You might eat him by mistake!” Josh whacked Danny hard with his powerful tail. Piddle shot out of Danny’s jaws and landed in a soggy lump right in front of Josh.
Josh had to admit that the urge to snap up the little dog was very strong. Poor Piddle lay in a puddle, staring up at Josh in horror. But to Josh, he smelled a lot like dinner. Josh realized his jaws had opened. Very wide . . . .
Which was why it was a very good thing that he S.W.I.T.C.H.ed back right at that moment. He found Piddle’s tail in his mouth, even so.
“Sorry—sorry!” He grabbed the shocked pet and rubbed his head. Over by the shed, Danny was also back in boy shape and looking rather ashamed. He came over to say sorry to Piddle too. But Piddle just wriggled out of Josh’s grasp and bolted away through the side yard.
“That was a bit . . . bad,” muttered Josh. “We’ve never tried to eat Piddle before.”
“No,” agreed Danny. He shrugged. “But he’s tried to eat us. Several times. So I think we’re even.”
Josh still felt bad, even though Piddle had nearly eaten him when he was a daddy longlegs—and had actually chewed on Danny when Danny was a frog.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go down to the park and try to AlligatorS.W.I.T.C.H. in the lake.”
“What if we get seen, though?” asked Danny. It was Saturday, and he knew the park would be busy. “And what if we get munchy around some person’s dog. . . ?”
“Or some dog’s person . . .” said Josh darkly. He sighed. He was still very shaken up by nearly eating Piddle. “Maybe we should just stay here. Think harder about what we’re going to do about Petty.”
“Yes,” said Danny. “We shouldn’t really be having fun while she’s in some kidnapper’s den.” He shook his head. “There could be torture. Screaming, yelling, slapping, shouting in the face . . . . I bet they won’t keep her for long once she starts all that.”
They went back indoors and hid the lunchbox deep under the bunk bed. Then they sat on the floor, trying to think. After a few minutes of this, Jenny barged into the room and chucked something at them. “Just came in the mail,” she muttered. “Can’t think why anyone bothers to send stuff to you two dweebs!” And she turned and went out again.
Danny picked up a yellow envelope with their names on it. He ripped it open while Josh leaned over his shoulder. This could be it . . . a message from the kidnapper.
Inside, though, was a printed invitation. It read:
DESTINY IN THE PARK!
Don’t miss the Destiny Darcy Show, recording at
YOUR LOCAL PARK this Saturday at noon!
“That’s today!’ said Josh, peering at the glossy photo of Destiny Darcy in front of a live studio audience. “In about an hour! It’s a bit late to send an invitation out to everyone, isn’t it?”
“But I don’t think this has been sent to everyone,” Danny said. He flipped the card over, and on the back was some familiar scrawly writing.
COME ALONG, JOSH AND DANNY. IT’S
TIME TO MEET DESTINY. AND SEE YOUR
MARBLE MAKER AGAIN!
Josh and Danny stared at each other. Destiny? Their destiny? Or . . . Destiny Darcy?
“Come on!” Danny said, jumping to his feet. “The marbles and Petty’s kidnapping—it’s all tied up with Destiny! Destiny Darcy!”
“Wait,” Josh said, grabbing the lunchbox back out from under the bed. “We’re going prepared!”
The park was busier than usual. There were big trucks and a couple of large yellow tents set up by the lake. There was a large, metal dish thing set up on one of the trucks.
“It’s a TV show all right,” Danny said.
“Look—they’ve got cameras and an audience and stuff.” Audience clapping and cheering and whooping could be heard from inside the larger tent.
Josh screwed up his face when he saw what was written on the tent in huge black letters. “I can’t believe we’re going to see the DESTINY DARCY SHOW! It’s the one Mom and Jenny are so nuts about. It’s awful!”
“But it all connects with the Mystery Marble Sender and Petty,” Josh said. “So we have to go in.”
Danny suddenly stood still, clutching the yellow envelope.
“Let’s go in,” Josh said. “Or we might never see Petty again.”
They gazed at the big yellow tent for a few seconds. Then they walked toward it.
Petty started to fully wake up just at the point when she was led into the wings of the stage. The last few hours had seemed like some weird dream . . . but then she could hear the rowdy audience, and she knew it was real. The audience was shouting at the man with the kettle on his head. There was a short, plump, red-haired woman sitting next to him on the sofa, crying into a wadded-up tissue.
“I just don’t understand it,” sniffed the woman. “I sent him to a nice school. Cooked his favorite dinners. Let him watch all his favorite TV shows. Bought him lots of toys. And for what? For him to grow up pretending to be a superhero with a kettle on his head!”
The kettle-headed man sprang to his feet and shouted, “I am NOT pretending to be a superhero, Mother. I AM a superhero!”
The audience laughed and booed. Then a dark-haired woman in a sparkly yellow jacket shimmied across the stage with a microphone. “Well, Brian,” she asked, “If you are a superhero, what are your super powers? What can KettleMan do? Apart from make lots of really hot cups of tea . . .”
The audience fell apart, exploding in laughter. KettleMan was now steaming. Literally. He pressed a switch on the kettle on his head, and a jet of steam shot out of the long spout above his eyebrows. “BEHOLD MY POWER!” he shouted. Then two burly security guards grabbed him and dragged him offstage. “If I WANT to be KettleMan, I have the RIGHT to be KettleMan!” shouted Brian as he was dragged past Petty. His mother hurried after him, looking weary.
Destiny Darcy sighed, gazed at the audience, and said, “So sad!”
She walked to the center of the stage and stared out into the crowd. There were about two hundred people squeezed into the tent. They perched on tiered seating, which had been set up on some kind of scaffolding. They were behaving every bit as badly as they would in the proper TV studio back in London, thought Destiny. It was a good idea to take the show on tour. A very good idea. And now, it was going to get even better.
“Imagine how it feels,” Destiny said, her voice a whisper, echoing through the many speakers in the tent, “to know that your mother rejected you.” The audience made a sympathetic murmur. “To know that her work was always far more important than her daughter.” Destiny’s voice began to rise. “To realize that she was SO selfishly caught up in her own ambition that she—LITERALLY—forgot you existed!”
Standing in the wings, Petty Potts felt her arm being taken by one of the burly security men. “I’m NOT going out there!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, yes, you are, love!” he replied, gripping her arm tighter. “This is Chatz TV’s biggest show. Nobody walks out on it.”
Petty stamped on his foot. But he didn’t seem to notice. Back onstage, Destiny Darcy was still talking. Goose pimples ran up and down Petty’s spine. There was something weirdly familiar about that voice . . . .
“Today, I bring you a world exclusive,” Destiny said. “A story which will shock you to the core. Because the coldhearted, ruthlessly ambitious mother who neglected her own daughter is HERE TODAY! Bring her on, boys!”
And Petty was propelled into the hot, bright stage lights to a chorus of boos and catcalls.
“And the daughter she FORGOT . . .” went on Destiny, turning to stare at Petty.
“.
. . is ME!”
The audience gasped. Josh and Danny were so shocked they just sat in their seats, mouths open.
Petty Potts had a DAUGHTER?
Back onstage, sinking into the leather sofa, was Petty, peering at Destiny Darcy in absolute amazement.
“What are you talking about, you deranged woman?” she spluttered. “I haven’t got a daughter!”
“Oh no?” Destiny said. “Then I wonder who this is.”
Up on a big, white screen at the back of the stage, a photo appeared. Josh’s and Danny’s mouths dropped open even wider. It was the photo from Petty’s new lab. They’d just seen it days ago. It was of Petty’s former best friend—and now worst enemy—Victor Crouch, with his arm around Petty. And next to Petty on the other side was a teenage girl who was undoubtedly Destiny Darcy.
There was a gasp of amazement from the audience.
“That’s the bit of the photo that was cut out of the frame!” hissed Danny, finding his voice at last. “We thought it looked odd!”
Petty was gaping too now. That girl in the photo DOES look familiar, she thought. Didn’t Victor Crouch give me the same photo years ago? If so . . . why was the girl cut off the end of my copy? So I would forget she existed? “This is ludicrous!” she muttered, aloud. “How could I forget having my own daughter?”
She shook her head. As she did so, some of the more recent memories slid back the right way up. She suddenly recalled being kidnapped from her lab only days before. She shook her head again, trying to remember who’d kidnapped her.
Destiny Darcy saw the head-shaking and began to stomp around the stage in a rage, her black sequined trousers glittering and flouncing in the TV lights. “You STILL don’t believe me?” she shouted. “Well—how about this for proof?” She held up a bit of paper with the words POSITIVE MATCH written on it in large blue letters. A cameraman whizzed up to her, focusing on the paper. Behind her, the huge screen above the stage cut to the image. It said “DNA TEST” at the top.
“I have PROOF!” snarled Destiny. “I know how to prove who is related to who!”
“Whom,” Petty said. “Who is related to whom. Surely if I was really your mother, you would have learned better grammar.”
“GAAAH!” shouted Destiny, stamping her foot. “You were ALWAYS just like this!”
Petty sat still and tried to work out what to do next. All she really wanted to do was to get back to her lab and find Josh and Danny and carry on with the S.W.I.T.C.H. project.
“And what hurts most of ALL . . .” Destiny furiously paced the stage as the audience sat transfixed. “. . . is exactly WHAT all that research you were doing—the research that meant you FORGOT I EXISTED—was FOR!”
Suddenly, she took a small drawstring bag out of her jacket pocket. “THIS,” she told the audience, “is my mother’s GREAT WORK!” She tipped up the bag, and marbles rained out of it and clacked onto the stage, rolling off in all directions.
“Yes,” said Destiny. “My mother has spent her ENTIRE LIFE working on a new design . . . for MARBLES!”
The audience gasped, then laughed and jeered.
Josh and Danny stared at each other, feeling panicky. “It’s definitely her!” hissed Danny. “Destiny Darcy is the Mystery Marble Sender!” And now, of course, it began to fall into place, thought Josh! The black sequin in the note, the prize from Chatz TV containing one of the marbles—there were even Destiny Darcy Diddly DeeDee dolls in the goody bags where they’d found their last marble.
“The Destiny Darcy Show was in Cornwall, when we got the third marble!” hissed Danny. “Jenny and her friend went to it, remember?”
“And there was a Chatz TV tent up at the zoo when we S.W.I.T.C.H.ed into anacondas!” remembered Josh.
Back onstage, scrabbling to pick up the marbles, Petty was furious. “You FOOLISH woman,” she shouted. “You have NO IDEA what these are, have you?”
“Well,” smirked Destiny, “whatever you think they are, Mother, you’ve obviously LOST YOUR MARBLES!”
The audience hooted.
“But this is sad,” Destiny said, her face suddenly tragic. “Because, clearly, my mother has gone insane. And earlier today, a good friend of hers and I . . . well . . . this is terribly hard to say, but we signed the forms to have her committed . . . to a mental asylum!”
Petty, with her hands full of marbles, was alert and staring around. “Look,” she said. “Destiny . . . Maybe I do remember you after all!”
“Oh-ho!” chortled Destiny, “And now perhaps you conveniently remember this man too!”
And then, to the tune of a theme song, a man walked onstage. He carried a hat and had a full head of light brown hair, which was obviously a wig. His eyebrows had been penciled in, but Josh and Danny could still see the long, sharpened fingernail on the little finger of his left hand. And even if they hadn’t seen it, they knew.
“It’s him!” hissed Josh, shocked and scared.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” sang out Destiny Darcy as the man took his place next to Petty on the sofa. “This is my godfather and my mother’s oldest friend—VICTOR CROUCH!”
Victor Crouch smiled sadly at Petty and attempted to pat her shoulder as she stood up, leaving the marbles to roll across the stage. Petty slapped his hand away. He sighed and turned his hurt face to the audience.
“It is a terribly tragic case,” he said. “I was Petty’s best friend for many years.”
“Aaaaaaah,” went the audience.
“Yes! Until you decided to stab me in the back, steal my work, and burn my memory out!” raged Petty. “Some kind of friend you turned out to be!”
“Aaaaaaaw!” went the audience.
“Ah, Petty,” sighed Victor Crouch, “it is very sad that you can’t remember what really happened. You worked far too hard, and your mind just snapped . . . Poor Destiny and I tried to help, but you were really quite mad by then, and you pretended you didn’t even know us. It broke poor Destiny’s heart . . .”
Petty’s face twitched as she stared at Destiny. “Do something for me,” she asked the chat show host. “Take off your shoes!”
Destiny looked confused. “Take off my shoes?”
“Yes, dear. And show me your feet,” Petty said.
Destiny looked a little awkward, but she sat down on one of the sofas and pulled her sparkly black sandals off. Petty came closer and peered at her feet. “Aha!” she said. “Just as I thought. Rampant warts! Even after all these years . . . Yes . . . I definitely remember your fungal feet!”
“Eeeeeurgh!” went the audience.
And then Petty clapped her hand across her brow. “Of course!” she cried out, spinning around to face her old enemy. “I forgot Destiny because YOU burned out bits of my memory. It’s YOUR fault, Victor Crouch! You are my ENEMY, and you’re not going to get away with it!”
Victor attempted more shoulder patting and said: “It doesn’t matter now, Petty, because Destiny and I still love you...”
The audience went “Aaaaaaaaah!”
“. . . And we’re going to take you to a happy, safe place . . . where we can get to know each other again.”
Three burly men, this time dressed in white coats, stepped onto the stage. Josh and Danny sat bolt upright in their seats. This was going wrong. Badly wrong.
“We’re taking you to a lovely hospital to help you get better, Mommy,” purred Destiny. “And you can still do all sorts of fun experiments while you’re there. You can even have your little helpers come along with you. And guess what? They’re here today!”
And then the cameras swung around to the audience, and Josh and Danny saw their own awestruck faces staring out of the screen at the back of the stage.
“Victor Crouch is after US too!” gasped Josh. “QUICK! Get DOWN!”
Josh and Danny threw themselves under the legs of the audience and slid through the gap in the seats, amid much shouting and squealing.
“Help us! Help us, audience!” called out Destiny. “Little Josh and Danny have to be
caught and helped! They’ve been contaminated by my mother’s experiments and need hospital treatment NOW!”
There was uproar. People started grabbing for the boys as they scrambled through the scaffolding until they reached the grass. In a gap between someone’s legs, Danny watched as Petty was seized by the men in white coats.
“S.W.I.T.C.H.! We have to S.W.I.T.C.H.!” he yelled to Josh.
“What—HERE? In public?” Josh squawked.
“YES! We have to cause a HUGE distraction or they’re going to get Petty and lock her away and we’ll never see her again!” Danny hauled the S.W.I.T.C.H. spray out of his jeans pocket. “And then they’ll come for US!”
“GO!” Josh said. A second later, the S.W.I.T.C.H. spray hit him. Danny sprayed himself and pushed the bottle back into the case. Stashing it under his T-shirt, he saw that Josh was an alligator again. And FURIOUS. Josh’s long, strong tail swished back and forth. He lost no time running out from under the seats as he thundered toward the stage, roaring with rage. Danny came hot on his brother’s scaly heels.
The audience screamed with fear. Two huge alligators appeared out of nowhere and careened towards Destiny Darcy and her guests. Josh saw one of the men in white coats freeze, his mouth falling open in terror. Josh climbed onto the stage and ran for him, snapping at his heels. The man squealed and staggered offstage.
Destiny leaped onto one of the leather couches and shrieked for her burly security men. But they had all fled in horror. The audience, too, stormed out of the tent, falling over one another. Those still standing were shoving others out of the way to reach the exit first. Only a couple of cameramen stayed to film the action. Josh’s and Danny’s antics showed on the big screen behind them. Their tough brown scales gleamed in the bright lights.
Josh and Danny roared even more. They opened their huge jaws, showing off their many rows of teeth. They bellowed loudly. Victor Crouch sank into the sofa next to Petty, covering his face with sweaty fingers. One of his penciled-in eyebrows rubbed off.