Catch Your Death

by Lauren Child

  ‘You got to get out of here Clancy and you gotta go real early or it’ll be Wichitino Camp for you.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ he said.

  Still Clancy worried, even as he packed up his rucksack he worried, even as he set the alarm for 5 am he worried. Running away was a dramatic gesture, it could even sound heroic, romantic, escaping to freedom, but when the dust settled it was going to be him on his own in the middle of nowhere. It was going to get depressing.

  Chapter 51.

  CLANCY AWOKE EARLY THE NEXT MORNING to the sound of his alarm clock. The first thing he saw was his backpack; it was stuffed to bulging and sitting there next to his bed, like a fat little guard.

  He groaned; he felt kind of stupid now in the bright light of day. What was he thinking of, running away? How far did he think he’d get? What a bozo. Lulu was right. Lulu was often right.

  The room was stuffy, the sun slanting in from the east; he went to open the window and there he saw the bike. The dazzling blue of it. He stood just looking for a while and then the flip-flop girl appeared.

  Boy, was she an early riser. She started busying herself, adjusting the handlebars and generally checking the thing over. He longed to go take a closer look; maybe she might even let him take it for a ride – just up the street and back.

  It wouldn’t hurt to talk to her.

  And if he was quick no one would notice he had slipped out, no one meaning Olive, the only one likely to tell his father who was still fast asleep upstairs.

  There was no one around, not even Drusilla. Yes, he would go and talk to the girl; after all, he was only stepping out of the gates for a few minutes.

  Clancy stuffed his backpack on top of his closet out of sight. He didn’t want anyone to see it and figure out what he had been planning. He tiptoed downstairs and quietly left the house. The heat of the sun hit him and he had to shield his eyes from its rays.

  The girl was still tinkering with the bike, setting the saddle a little higher. He walked nearer to the gates and he thought she caught sight of him, but she didn’t acknowledge him with a wave or smile, she just carried on doing what she was doing. He didn’t want to bug her, but he wanted to see the Windrush up close, ride it round the block, just see how it felt.

  He watched as she climbed on the bike and rode very slowly up the road. She called behind her to someone he couldn’t see, her mom, Clancy guessed. ‘I’m just gonna do a few circuits of the bike park up by Fir Forest Edge. I’ll be back in an hour.’ She clearly hadn’t been living here long because no one from Twinford called Fir Forest Edge, Fir Forest Edge, they all called it Fir Edge.

  He wondered what school she attended, certainly not Twinford Junior High; she was older than him.

  And as he thought these thoughts an idea came; he would cycle up there, introduce himself and get talking to her; she would probably be glad to make a new friend in the neighbourhood. He would ask her if he could take a turn on the Windrush. She wasn’t going to say no; at least he hoped she wasn’t.

  He ran around to the garage where the bikes were kept. Nancy’s bike had a flat, Lulu’s bike wasn’t there, Minny’s bike was in the wrecking yard and so the only thing available to him was Olive’s bike with its little pink basket.

  ‘Oh brother!’ he muttered. But it was that or a pogo stick and he wasn’t going to get far jumping up and down like a bozo.

  He grabbed the bike and there in the basket he saw a pack of bubblegum and a tube of mints – the ground glows, that’s where she put them!

  He slipped both items in his sweat-top pocket and wheeled the bike though the iron gates and off he set on the tiny bike like he was practising to become a circus clown.

  Ruby was staring out of her bathroom window, watching the neighbourhood toings and froings. Nothing much had happened. It was early and apart from Niles Lemon (who had already been out jogging), the dog walker and the grocery van no one was really doing much. This gave Ruby a lot of time to think and what she was busy thinking about right now was Clancy.

  It didn’t sit right with Ruby, being mad at Clancy. Sure, he could really be a major pain in the behind, but when all was said and done there was no friend like Clancy Crew. It was stupid feeling like this about someone she liked so much; it was a waste of time and wasting time was a foolish activity. If he wasn’t going to pick up the phone to her, then she would go over there in person. She would climb in the window if necessary, though to be honest she would rather use the stairs.

  By the time he arrived at the bike park, Clancy was sweating more than a little; it was quite a distance from the Crew house. The park was on the edge of things, where the road met the pines and the pines met the desert valley. Beyond it were the mountains.

  When he skidded to a halt on Olive’s tiny bike, Clancy thought perhaps the girl had changed her mind: she didn’t seem to be there. Perhaps he had taken too long and she’d already gone, but as his eyes adjusted he saw her there sitting in the shadows under a large spreading tree, drinking a soda.

  ‘Hey!’ he called.

  The girl looked up.

  ‘I like your bike!’

  ‘Yeah?’ she said.

  ‘I’m thinking of getting one myself,’ said Clancy.

  ‘Really,’ said the girl.

  ‘Probably,’ said Clancy, ‘I haven’t made up my mind.’

  ‘You wanna try it?’ said the girl.

  Yes! thought Clancy.

  ‘Sure,’ he said, like he wasn’t bothered.

  It sort of felt like he was flying, like he was flying, not the machine but him. The Windrush was as amazing as he had imagined, better in fact. How was he going to get one of these things? As he passed the girl for the fifth time, he caught her looking at her watch; she obviously had to get home, and so he reluctantly came to a stop.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘I mean, really, that bike is something else.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said the girl. ‘Do another circuit if you want to.’

  But he was staring at her now and thinking how she did look kind of familiar.

  ‘Have we met someplace before?’ asked Clancy.

  The girl shrugged and smiled; she had a really nice face. ‘If we have, I don’t remember,’ she laughed. ‘Twinford’s a big place.’ She looked at her watch again.

  She was twitchy – what was that about?

  Ruby was greeted by Olive, who was idly swinging on the banister. Drusilla gave Olive a disapproving look as she crossed through the hall, but it didn’t seem to bother Olive.

  ‘Hello Ruby,’ said Olive, ‘do you like my shoes?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say like, but they are interesting,’ said Ruby. They looked like tiny toadstools. ‘Clance around?’

  ‘Uh uh,’ said the little girl.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Gone,’ said Olive.

  ‘Gone where?’ said Ruby.

  Olive shrugged. ‘He’s run away from home.’

  ‘I doubt that very much,’ said Ruby, making for the stairs.

  ‘I saw him packing,’ said Olive, ‘and now it’s gone.’

  ‘You’re saying his backpack’s gone?’ said Ruby.

  ‘Uh. . . huh,’ said Olive, cleaning some dust off her shoes with her thumb.

  Ruby raced up the stairs.

  ‘You won’t find him,’ called Olive, ‘because he’s run away.’

  Clancy’s room was a mess; lots of drawers had been left open, their contents spewed out onto the floor. There was no sign of his backpack. It looked very much like the room of someone who had left in a hurry. Maybe Olive was right, or then again it could just be the untidy room of a thirteen-year-old boy.

  RULE 17: ALWAYS CHECK THE EVIDENCE BEFORE JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS.

  She climbed up on a chair and looked on top of the closet; there was the backpack. She wrenched it down and it fell to the floor with a thump. Olive was right about the packing: it was full of lots of stuff one might take if one was running away. So, if he had run away, then why hadn’t he tak
en it? There was no sign of a note in the room, no coded message for her.

  Ruby walked slowly down the stairs and bumped into Minny coming the other way.

  ‘Hey Ruby,’ she said.

  ‘Hey Minny, do you know where Clancy’s got en to?’

  ‘Haven’t you heard? Dad made him go on the Wichitino Camp. He left early this morning, I heard him go.’

  Ruby was dumbfounded. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I know,’ said Minny, ‘dorky, huh?’

  ‘How come he left his stuff?’ asked Ruby. ‘I mean it’s all packed up like he was planning on taking it.’

  ‘I guess he changed his mind about making a run for it.’

  ‘So why not take it on camp?’

  ‘He wouldn’t need it on camp,’ said Minny. ‘Camp Wichitino provides everything, right down to your undershorts. Believe me, I know!’ Minny had evidently done time at dork camp herself.

  ‘Well, that explains where he’s gone, but why didn’t he tell me about it?’ said Ruby.

  ‘He’s grounded,’ said Minny. ‘No phone calls, no nothing and then worst of all Dad told him it was either Camp Wichitino or he could say bye bye to his summer vacation. I guess he chose camp.’

  ‘He’s taken my bike with him,’ said Olive.

  ‘Why would he take your bike Olive?’ said Minny.

  ‘Because it’s got a basket,’ said Olive. ‘It’s really useful if you’re running away.’

  Chapter 52.

  CLANCY KEPT HIS EYES TRAINED ON THE GIRL and noted how the smile was a little off, more fake than real. Her eyes didn’t sparkle either: she wasn’t interested in him, she wasn’t interested in the bike, so why was she there? She was young, but she was no teenager, he was pretty sure of that now that he looked at her carefully.

  For the first time in a long while Clancy started listening to the voice he usually relied on. His instincts were coming back to him, his warning system switched on – something was not just a little bit wrong, it was a whole lot wrong, that’s what his gut was telling him. A breeze blew in from the desert, just enough to stir the air. It lifted the fragrance from the girl and carried it past Clancy. He breathed it in; the smell was Turkish delight.

  He remembered the woman outside the department store. The woman who had been ‘helping’ her neighbour.

  Get out of there! said the voice in his head.

  Clancy let the thoughts race through his mind, one after another. Run? No way, no point, the girl would have backup, someone was bound to appear from somewhere and however good a runner he might be (and he was good) he wasn’t going to get away from these guys; they would have a plan.

  But the thing to consider was would they have banked on him having a bike? A bike like this?

  He doubted it; they were probably far too certain, too sure of themselves to imagine Clancy might twig that he had been lured into a trap.

  He was thinking: I have a bike, there’s a track, and if this machine is all it is cracked up to be then I have an escape route out of here. The girl had no idea all these thoughts were lining up in his head. He was smiling (Clancy Crew was good at smiling when he didn’t particularly feel like smiling, he’d had a lot of practice); he was sitting on the saddle, his fingers gripping the handlebars. The girl looked pleased: he was a fly trapped in her web.

  He could hear a vehicle on the dirt road, a truck of some sort. His instincts told him that this vehicle was coming for him, that he had to get out of there before it got too close.

  ‘I’ll just take the Windrush round the track one more time. Is that OK?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘enjoy.’

  ‘Oh, I will,’ called Clancy and as he gathered speed he suddenly veered off the bike circuit and took off, down the rock path towards the forest. He rode fast like every ogre in every book of fairy tales was on his tail.

  He could vaguely hear the girl shouting; her voice sounded deeper, older suddenly. But then of course she was no girl, she was a woman: Lyla, the woman from the perfume counter, and he had a growing suspicion that Lyla, despite her beauty and her sweet fragrance, was anything but the nice woman she pretended to be. In fact, now he let his instinct take over, he was pretty sure that what she was, was a murderer. She had killed that man and Clancy was pretty sure she would murder him if she caught him. He could hear her shouting, screaming at him, but he didn’t take it in; his only thought: to put as much distance between him and her and the truck full of murderers.

  Two things were now bugging Ruby. One was Clancy’s unClancy-like behaviour. Clancy was not the sort to run away; he was not an impulsive person, he always thought about the consequences; plus, he wasn’t so keen on the dark.

  Ruby also considered it very unlikely that he would go away with the Wichitinos without leaving a note to tell her he had gone on camp. Unless of course he was very mad at her, but if so why was he very mad at her?

  Ruby paused to think about this and came up with more than a few reasons. For a start there was his detention, her fault because she had Forgotten to meet him in the diner before school; that was pretty uncool. Then there was dragging him out of his French test and getting him to climb a wall and drop himself into a wild animal reserve. Well, that could be considered at the very least kind of thoughtless; she knew Clancy was stressed about being kept down a year if he failed his test, and then there was the whole dangerous animal thing – not good for someone who didn’t exactly flirt with danger.

  And to top that there was the whole tiger incident; she had actually set him up to be devoured by a wild creature. OK, so it wasn’t intentional, but it would have been down to her if that cat had got his chops round Clancy’s neck. These three examples alone were reason enough for Clancy not to want to talk to her. He was in big trouble with his dad and now he was off with the little Wichitinos; how much worse could it get for poor old Clancy Crew? It was all her fault and she needed to track him down and put things right; she would rescue Clancy from camp and bring him home.

  Ruby really hadn’t been on top of her game; she had missed a lot: she had not taken any notice of her mother’s claims that a pig or possibly a hippo was loose in the backyard (it had seemed preposterous). Nor had she listened to her dad when he suggested her mom might just be right (the logical explanation: heatstroke). Del’s report of a tiger she had dismissed as a Del Lasco exaggeration (fair enough), but there was other evidence, clues she should have picked up on. What had Gemma Melamare seen in the school corridor? (As it turned out, a python.)

  What had taken a bite out of the Harker Square table tennis table? What had happened to Mrs Gilbert’s dog? It seemed unlikely, highly improbable, that wild animals would be roaming the city of Twinford, but what kind of investigative agent was she if she didn’t take the improbable seriously? To quote the great detective Sherlock Holmes:

  ‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’

  Or, in other words, Ruby’s RULE 28: IT DOESN’T MATTER IF IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE: IF THERE’S NO OTHER EXPLANATION, IT’S GOTTA BE TRUE.

  So now she had woken up and what she was thinking about was Connie Slowfoot or more specifically what Connie had said. ‘I’m not talking about “wolves”, I’m talking about the wolf.’ These words had wormed their way under Ruby’s skin, encircled her thoughts, resulting in a bad feeling in her gut, because what Connie Slowfoot was talking about was an extinct, possibly mythical wolf prowling the forests surrounding Twinford. Connie Slowfoot had said some pretty weird and far-fetched things and Ruby Redfort wouldn’t have minded putting them to one side and ignoring them, but for the fact she believed her. Crazy as it all sounded, every word she had spoken rang true.

  Ruby went downstairs to Mrs Digby’s apartment to search out a book she had read many times as a young child. The book was precious to the housekeeper since it had been given to her by her father and, when younger, Ruby had never been permitted to look at it unsupervised for fear of it meeting
some sticky end.

  It was entitled Improbable Truths and Believable Myths and was more like a book of fairy tales than a useful encyclopedia. She remembered how much she had enjoyed being scared of some of the more gory illustrations and unpleasant descriptions. Ruby flicked through the pages, filled with all kinds of strange and exotic creatures; some had been erased from the planet and others had never existed in the first place. Eventually, she fell upon the page she was searching for.

  The Cyan Wolf

  Appearance: pale blue eyes ringed with violet. Dark tips to ears and fur that in moonlight can appear blue.

  Like other wolves, the Cyan wolf had scent glands in its paws and these helped it to mark territory, warning rival wolves to steer clear and also to attract mates by telling them he or she was in the area. However, in addition to the above functions, the Cyan wolf also used its scent to lure its prey to it – the scent it created being so intoxicating that both animal and human alike would seek it out, losing all sense of fear in their quest to discover the source of this overpowering aroma.

  This scent was of particular usefulness when food was scarce and the wolf needed to preserve its energy. By luring its prey right to its lair, it managed to survive in the most hostile of conditions.

  The legendary scent of the Cyan Wolf was allegedly much sought after by perfumers. Unlike ambergris*, found in the intestines of sperm whales (also worth a small fortune to those lucky enough to find it), the ‘Alaskan Cyan’ (as it became known) needed no time to develop from a foul smell to a fragrant one.

  Ruby looked up the footnote on ambergris.

  * Ambergris is a waxy, flammable substance produced by the digestive systems of sperm whales. Having initially an unpleasant odour of decay, it gradually acquires a sweet, earthy scent. It has long been prized as a fixative in the making of perfume (allowing the scent to last much longer).

  Alaskan Cyan, on the other hand, is not only a fixative but it is also the perfume itself, with an utterly intoxicating aroma. Consequently hunters, in particular one Jacob Holst, began to hunt Cyan wolves not for their skins but for their scent. By 1800 they were completely wiped out.