Mimosa Fortune and the Smuggler's Curse

by Freer, Echo;

  ‘Hi, Joel. You OK?’ I asked.

  But before he could answer, the door opened again and a backpack was lobbed out after him, spilling books and pens all across the floor.

  I bent down and picked up a notebook for him.

  ‘It’s OK. Just leave it.’ He looked flustered. ‘Thanks,’ he added as an after thought.

  Then the toilet door opened and a large boy with horribly familiar piggy eyes came out. He kicked the backpack and sent it spinning along the corridor.

  ‘Pack it in, Eddy,’ Joel said, standing up and eyeing the other boy in the chest. ‘I’ve said I’ll get it sorted.’

  Now I might have been putting two and two together and coming up with a number in double figures, but I was fairly sure this must be Eddy Proudfoot, the boy who two-timed Milly and stole twenty pounds from his mother’s purse.

  ‘You’d better!’ Eddy threatened.

  I stepped forward. ‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here, but I’m sure it can be sorted out in a non-confrontational way.’

  ‘Oh look! If it isn’t the Freak Fairy!’ Eddy sneered. ‘Rack off weirdo! Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage round here already? You and that psycho mother of yours.’

  Whoa! Look who’s talking when it comes to the psycho mother bit - I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Eva Proudfoot was one of Wanda’s clients and it wouldn’t look good to start slagging her off - especially to her own son.

  ‘Come on Joel.’ I picked up some more of Joel’s things and pulled him towards the Food Technology room.

  ‘That’s right, get a girl to fight your battles for you.’ Talk about sexist! I was liking Eddy Proudfoot less and less. ‘I’m warning you Chapman, you’ve got one week,’ he yelled after us.

  ‘Quaking in my wellies!’ Joel said casually as he and I headed down the corridor away from Eddy.

  ‘What was all that about?’ I asked.

  ‘He wants me to teach him Kung Fu,’ Joel laughed, slashing the air and making weird ha-so type noises. He looked and sounded less like a martial artist and more like a stick insect with an adenoid problem, but I didn’t want to disillusion him. ‘I told him; Eddy, my son, no amount of provocation will persuade me to divulge the secrets of the ancients.’ Joel tapped the side of his nose knowingly, then made a massive sweep of the air with his arms and kicked open the door to the Food Technology room with the side of his foot.

  Unfortunately, Ms Oliver was standing right at the other side and she was propelled sideways into one of the cookers. Uh oh! This was my first introduction to Food Technology and I couldn’t help thinking it could have gone a lot better.

  Ms Oliver stood up, rubbing her elbow and glared at us. ‘Good afternoon,’ she said, purposefully looking at her watch. ‘Kind of you two to drop in. You can spare me your pathetic excuses for the moment - you can write them down for me over break, which, by the way, you’ll be spending with me,’ she went on. ‘Now, we’re working in twos today, so it looks like the pair of you have both drawn short straws - you’re together.’

  Ms Oliver thrust a sheet of paper at us, which said that we were supposed to be thinking up ideas for a range of luxury fast foods for busy people who enjoy entertaining but don’t have much time. Which, actually, I thought sounded pretty cool. I love cooking and if I’d known it was going to be this much fun, I’d have got here earlier.

  ‘OK, I make a mean butternut squash and sunflower seed risotto,’ I said to Joel, excitedly. ‘We could have that for one of the main course meals. And, you should taste my pecan pie. That could be one of the deserts.’

  ‘Oh sorry,’ Joel said, cheekily. ‘I thought the brief said luxury.’ He held the paper up to my face and ran his finger along the word. ‘Oh yes, so it does. That rules out your ideas - unless we’re planning a range of foods for busy rabbits!’

  ‘Very funny!’ I must admit, although I hardly know Joel, I’ve always wondered why Kameran is friends with him. He always strikes me as a bit of a light weight. You know the sort - can’t take anything seriously and is always fooling about.

  ‘I suppose you’d rather plan some ready meals for a Neanderthal? Let’s see, we could have kebab soup for the starter and some roast kebab for the main course with kebab sorbet for pudding.’

  Joel looked at me and then screwed up the paper. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I was thinking more along the lines of using local produce so it would be a seafood based range. My dad used to own his own seafood restaurant in the Old Town and I want to go to chef school when I leave here and do the same.’

  Wow! Now I felt really guilty for thinking badly of him. You see - this is why I should never judge people. You never know what’s going on in a person’s life. And, the more I talked to Joel, the more I realized that there was so much to take seriously in his life, there was no wonder he was always fooling around. It was probably the only way he could cope. It turns out that his dad died when Joel was a baby and cooking’s never been his mum’s forte, so the business went bust. Then, to make matters worse, his mum’s not well either. She used to be a nurse but she hurt her back lifting a patient and hasn’t been able to walk properly for over a year. Joel used to work two paper rounds to try and help out with the money but then the school complained because he was always tired, so his mum made him give up and now they’re so behind with their rent that the landlord’s threatening eviction.

  ‘That’s awful!’ I was shocked. ‘Can’t social services help?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ laughed Joel. ‘They’ve offered us a flat on the ninth floor in a block in Scarborough - great help!’

  ‘I hate to interrupt this little tête-à-tête.’ Ms Oliver was standing over us with a face like a carbuncle that was about to burst. ‘You two have obviously finished the task, so perhaps you’d be good enough to share your ideas with the rest of the class. Alternatively, you can stay behind at lunchtime and do the work you’re supposed to have done in the lesson.’

  Oh great! I’d already got one detention tonight with Mrs Twigg and our break this morning had been cancelled. Unless we could come up with something pronto, my lunch time sitting with Kameran’s new clients would be in jeopardy too. Prison camp has nothing on this place.

  But, the good thing about working with someone as quick-thinking as Joel was that when it comes to winging it, he’s an absolute eagle! So even though we’d done hardly any work, he stood at the front of the room and blagged it, selling our product - Fishtastic Feasts - till even penguins would be queuing up for seconds.

  ‘You were amazing,’ I said as we left the room at lunchtime. ‘Any time you want another reading, you can have one for free,’ I offered. ‘Why don’t you come to the back of the sports hall now? And if your mum wants me to come and do some healing on her, I’ll do that too.’

  Joel smiled. ‘Cheers but we’ll be OK. Anyway, I’ve got to go and earn some money to pay off Eddy Proudfoot.’

  I looked at him, questioningly. ‘Pay him off? What for?’

  Joel raised his eyebrows, surprised that I didn’t know. ‘He’s the one threatening to evict us - well, his mam is. She’s our landlord.’

  Oh no! This was too awful. Last night I’d had to witness Josiah Proudfoot bring about the downfall of Isaac Chapman and now I was hearing that two hundred and fifty years on, history was repeating itself.

  I had to do something - and I knew just the person to help me. But where was Quill when I needed him?

  9

  Typical - just when I was relying on Quill to help me out with the Joel situation, he didn’t show up all week. Every time I did a reading I was waiting for the Arctic gale to hit, but - nothing! And it wasn’t just that I wanted his advice on the Chapman v Proudfoot vendetta either - I needed him to put me out of my misery on the outcome of his unfortunate encounter with the dragoons. The last thing I’d seen he was hurtling down the face of a cliff without
a bungee rope. I wanted to know if all the king’s horses and all the king’s men had managed to put Quill back together again or if he really had been unbelievably macabre and taken me to witness his own death. I was starting to think I must have offended him - or, maybe I’d imagined the whole thing? Either way, I couldn’t get him out of my head.

  But, if Quill was noticeably absent, Kameran was working so hard at drumming up work for me that, by Friday, the queue for palm readings went half way round the sports hall and on to the tennis courts.

  ‘Whoa!’ I said, as I came round the corner. ‘There’s no way I can do this many readings in one lunchtime.

  Kameran shook his head in dismay. ‘This is amazing. Hey - maybe I should think about a career in PR?’

  ‘Well, right now, PR needs to stand for ‘people reorganisation’ because I don’t like letting people down. You’ll have to start an appointments system.’ Eeeew! You have no idea how much I hated saying that - it made me sound so institutionalised; like a health service or a bank.

  ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll see if I can cadge an appointment book from Mum and Dad’s surgery.’ See what I mean? ‘So,’ he went on, rubbing his hands together, ‘would you be up for breaks and after school as well as lunch times?’

  Boy was he a hard task master. But the truth was, Wanda and I desperately needed the money. Eva Proudfoot, it seems, has a mouth the size of the Grand Canyon and her opinion of Wanda had gone round Whitby faster than the bubonic plague on turbo boost. Despite Teddy’s best efforts to counteract Eva’s bad-mouthing, Wanda’s clients had almost dried up.

  On the positive side, she hadn’t packed our bags yet (the jury is still out on whether that was down to having Mushka to look after, or the fact that Teddy seemed to be a permanent feature in our kitchen) but she’d now resorted to her second favourite way of coping with disappointment - baking. We had so much food in the cupboard, she could have set up shop as a patisserie and made more money than she had ever done as a psychic. Even Teddy, with his fisherman-sized appetite, was having trouble eating his way through all the scones, flapjacks, muffins and pies Wanda was producing.

  That morning I’d taken a bag in to school to give to Joel - I knew it would hardly pay the rent for him but I hoped it might ease their situation a little.

  He eyed it warily. ‘We’re not a charity case you know?’

  ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘There’ve been times when I’ve begged on the street corner, not knowing where the next meal was coming from. People helped me out; now I’m helping you out. When you and your mum get back on your feet, you can do the same for someone else. It’s Karma.’

  ‘Calmer than what?’ he said, looking in the vague direction of the sea.

  I looked at him trying to work out whether or not he was serious. ‘Just take the food, Joel.’ And he did.

  By Friday afternoon, I was feeling thoroughly fed up. I’d started the week with two goals; the first was to try and help Joel and his mum and the second was to find out what had happened to Quill. I hadn’t achieved either. But worse than that, I realised that I’d been spending so much time doing readings to try and earn money that I’d turned into the sort of person I really despised - a materialistic money-grabber. And, on top of all that, I’d totally lost sight of the fact that Kameran was spending all his time acting as my secretary and hardly any time pursuing the girl of his dreams. You see this is what they mean when they say; the love of money is the root of all evil. I’d sold my soul to capitalism and now my friends were suffering too.

  When I’d finished the lunchtime rush, I would have really liked to take some time to meditate and get back on track but as it turned out that didn’t happen. There were so many palms to read that Kameran and I went straight from the back of the sports hall to Geography. Amanpreet had saved me a seat and Kevin had saved one for Kameran just the other side of the aisle.

  ‘Hurry up, you two,’ Mr Spiggins spluttered as we shuffled into the lesson.

  I wasn’t sure why we had to hurry; it didn’t look as though anyone was doing much work. There was a video playing about hurricanes in the Caribbean but most people were chatting or doing their homework from other subjects. Amanpreet was busy scribbling in her Art sketchpad. I sat down next to her and got out my exercise book.

  I was trying to make out where the video had been shot - and even if we’d been there at the time - when Kameran leaned across.

  ‘It was sweet of you to give Joel that food.’

  I shrugged. ‘It was nothing.’ I wasn’t sure how much Kameran knew about Joel’s situation, so I didn’t want to give anything away.

  Then Kevin leaned over too. ‘You know, my dad was going to let them have the cottage you’re living in.’

  Oh great! Now, not only was I exploiting school kids to line my own pockets, but I’d also contributed to putting a disabled single mother and her son out on the street! ‘Are you saying that we’ve deprived them of somewhere to live?’ I felt awful. What use was a bag of buns when we’d taken the roof from over their heads?

  ‘Don’t be daft!’ Kevin whispered. ‘Joel’s mum couldn’t manage the steps.’

  Phew! But even so, I felt guilty that we were living rent-free while Joel and his mum were scratching about for money and could be homeless in a couple of days.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said to Kevin, ‘I could have a word with your dad and get him to let us off the decorating for a while and I’ll give some of the money I’m earning to Joel?’

  Kameran smiled. ‘That is so sweet of you. But between you and me, I think it’ll take more than a few quid to help them out. I never used to believe in bad luck, but when you hear Joel’s story....’

  Kevin leaned over again. ‘I reckon someone’s stuck pins in their effigy at some time. Believe me, there’ve been some seriously weird things have happened to him and his family.’

  I was intrigued. ‘What sort of weird things?’ This sounded like my sort of territory.

  ‘Dhillon!’ Mr Spiggins squawked. ‘Stop talking and come out to the front.’ See what I mean about him picking on the nice ones. Did he yell at anyone else to stop talking? I don’t think so! ‘Perhaps you’d like to enlighten us as to the weather conditions that lead to hurricanes - you seem to know so much about them that you don’t need to watch the video.’

  Oooo! I had an urge to put up my hand and shout; me sir, me sir! But I didn’t. I’d lived through so many hurricanes, I could probably teach him a thing or two about the weather conditions.

  Kameran stood up to go the front, but as his chair scraped back, it was as though the hurricane had somehow leapt out of the TV screen and ripped its way across the classroom. There was a violent whoosh and books and worksheets were whisked up into a spiral of paper swirling round and round in the middle of the room. Then some heavier things started to go too: jumpers were lifted off the backs of chairs and carried upwards, flapping their sleeves like big ghostly birds. Uh oh! As soon as the word ghostly came into my mind, I realised that this was starting to look horribly familiar. My heart sank. As much as I’d wanted to contact Quill all week, the last thing I needed was him paying a visit during class.

  I started looking round the room for any sign of his presence but I couldn’t see anything. Not that I would have noticed him with everyone jumping up and down and standing on chairs trying to retrieve their belongings. Pretty soon, anything that could be moved was being whipped up into the air; not just books and clothing but the tables were starting to rock backwards and forwards too. Some people were laughing, others were starting to get scared but, when Mr Spiggins’ toupee was lifted right off his head and swept upwards, the whole room collapsed into hysterical whooping and shouting.

  ‘Silence! Silence!’ he shrieked, leaping up and down like a boiled egg on a trampoline. ‘Whoever’s responsible will own up immediately or you’ll all be in detention! Come on, out with it! I
know someone’s got a fan in here somewhere. You,’ he pointed at Kameran.

  ‘Me?’ Kameran looked aghast. ‘Why would I bring a fan into school? And,’ he held out his arms. ‘Where exactly am I supposed to have hidden it? Sir!’ he added.

  ‘Well you can shut that window for a start,’ Mr Spiggins snapped.

  I’ve only known Kameran a couple of weeks but in that time, I’d never seen him looking so annoyed. He slammed the window shut and, weirdly enough, the wind dropped immediately. Hmph! I’d been convinced it was Quill who’d whipped up the whirlwind, but maybe I’d been wrong. All the books and papers fluttered back to the ground, the tables stopped rocking and gradually people gathered up their things and sat down again. The only thing left above desk level was Mr Spiggins’ hair piece, which was hanging, like a dead rat, from the end of the fluorescent light fitting.

  ‘Settle down now,’ he spluttered, going as red as an over ripe tomato. ‘And you, Dobson, go and fetch the caretaker and tell him to bring his step ladder.’

  ‘Nice of him to apologise,’ Kameran muttered as we sat down.

  I was just about to say something when I noticed that my exercise book hadn’t moved; it was just where it had been before the temporary tornado. So, I had been right all along. There was no way an ordinary wind would have left one book on the desk and sent all the others up to the roof. It must have been Quill! A momentary flutter of excitement shot through me. I did another quick glance round the room but I couldn’t see him. Then I looked down at my book. The page was open at the centrefold and there, in beautiful copperplate handwriting, were the words;

  Meet me at the turnpike on York Road after school

  I snapped it shut quickly. I didn’t want anyone else seeing it. I glanced sideways and was relieved to see Amanpreet busily drawing a caricature of Mr Spiggins in her sketchbook but, too late - Kameran was looking directly at my book.