Nani gave me another hug, took the horrible letter out of my shaking hand, and shoved it back up her sleeve. Then she pointed a thumb at my Sita picture.
“Still keen to go, Yosser?” she asked.
It seemed like a funny question, but I looked up at Sita and her gleaming Snake Pod, and I thought about it. Stolen ferrets and entrance exams had put Thrill City right out of my head, but of course it was still there. I nodded at Nani, just out of politeness.
“Because if you are,” Nani went on, and she wiggled her eyebrows up and down (which is Nani’s sign that the next sentence contains Vital Information), “I’ll just point out that if you pass the Entrance Exam with Distinction, you get a Bursary. Which means no fees.”
She got up and headed for the door. Halfway out, she turned, nodded in the direction of Sita, and added, “Which means, I would have thought, a better bargaining position with You-Know-Who – wouldn’t you?” And, with one last, enormous, wink, she was gone.
Kylie and me sat for a while, letting it all sink in. At last Kylie spoke.
“If I were you, Yosser,” she said, “know what I’d do?”
“What?” I asked.
“I’d fail,” Kylie said.
I gasped. “Really?” I said, and Kylie nodded.
“I know it’s a desperate measure,” she went on, “but if you go to Our Lady of the Sorrows, it’s going to be awful. We’ve got to both go to Greater Malden Comprehensive.”
I was horrified. Fail the Entrance Exam? Deliberately fail? I sat, stunned.
Then, just as I was about to tell Kylie I thought her plan was too dreadful for words, she jumped up, grabbed the plastic snakes off my bed-knob, wound the yellow one round her neck, and stood to attention.
“Come on, Yosser,” she said, in a masterful voice. “There’s no point sitting around all day worrying. There is a great wrong to be righted, and no time to lose.”
Tossing the green plastic snake over to me, she added, “I’m Sita today, and you’re the Humble Vassal, so I’ve decided to dispense with the gloves!”
And with that, she led the way down the stairs.
I followed Kylie out into the sunshine, and as soon as we were marching down the path I began to feel a whole lot better. I coiled my snake more tightly round my neck, so that I could see its yellow, glinting, snake-eyes, and I thought of the terrible thing Big Matt McBain had done; and the nearer we got to his house, the braver I felt.
“Right,” said Kylie, stopping at a corner where a big privet hedge blocked our view, “we’re getting close. We must proceed with caution.”
And, keeping hard in to the hedge, she crept round the corner.
“On no account,” she whispered, “must Spike get wind of us.”
I gulped. Spike must be the name of the Dog from Hell, I realised, and there was no way on this earth I wanted him getting wind of me. I held my breath as we tiptoed along.
The big privet hedge seemed endless, but finally we reached a gate. The gate had a notice nailed to it, which said:
We looked over into Big Matt McBain’s garden.
I could hardly believe my eyes. It looked like a rubbish dump! There were bits of old furniture, and car tyres, and broken beer barrels, lying all over the place, and in between grew long grass, and thistles, and nettles.
There was a path of sorts, that led past Big Matt’s front door and on to another gate, and beyond that gate, partly hidden by bushes, were dozens and dozens of rusty, rickety cages. The cages were piled untidily one on top of each other. They were all painted in different colours, and the paint was faded and peeling.
“Wow!” I breathed. “What a mess!”
“It’s a proper disgrace,” muttered Kylie angrily. “And to think Thunderball Silver the Third could be in there!”
She sighed. “My dad keeps him in the most beautiful cage you could imagine. He’ll not know what’s hit him.”
We stood, leaning on the gate, wondering how poor Thunderball was coping with coming down in the world.
“It’s really quiet,” I said after a while. “Maybe Big Matt’s out somewhere, with Spike…”
“Maybe he is,” said Kylie, and she pushed the gate. It opened with a loud creak, and as soon as it did, all hell broke loose.
At first there was nothing to be seen. All we heard was the most almighty, high-pitched roar coming from somewhere in the long grass. Then we realised the roar was getting louder and louder, and then, suddenly we saw a narrow channel in the grass that was getting closer by the second. It looked as though a very small, but very strong, tornado was hurtling towards us.
“Quick!” yelled Kylie, pushing me backwards and out on to the pavement again. In the nick of time, she slammed the gate shut.
Frozen in horror, we watched as Spike hurled his tight little body at the gate, growling and snarling and baring his evil yellow fangs at us, his bloodshot eyes glowing like the very Fires of Hell.
Then the front door was flung open and Big Matt’s enormous form appeared on the doorstep. He was barefoot and wearing pyjama bottoms. His chest was bare except for a tattooed red heart with an arrow through it, and a thick growth of curly white hair. He shook his fist at Kylie and me.
“What the devil do yous think yous’re doing?” he yelled at us. “Can’t yous read?”
Kylie drew herself up as tall as she could, and gripped the yellow snake round her neck. She took a big breath, and when she spoke I was beside myself with admiration.
“Mr McBain, we have reason to suspect you are holding my dad’s prize ferret against his will,” she said, as calm and as steady as could be.
Big Matt’s big mouth opened wide for a moment. Then he threw back his big head and howled with laughter. After a while he stopped. His smile faded clean away, and he glared at us as malevolently as I’ve ever been glared at. You could have cut the silence with a knife.
When he spoke again, his voice was low and grim.
“I’ll tell you what, Kylie Teasdale,” he growled, “if you say one thing to anyone about your dad’s Thunderball, you’ll wish you’d never been born …”
He took a few steps along the path towards us, then thought better of it and retreated back into the doorway. Kylie opened her mouth and closed it again. She began to back away, pulling my arm.
“Yous have no proof! So make yourselves scarce,” Big Matt yelled. “And if yous dare come nosing around, I’ll set my dog on you!”
And with that he called Spike to heel, and the two disappeared into the house.
We made ourselves scarce as quickly as we could. We didn’t stop running till we reached my street. Then we sat on the wall outside my house, and when we’d got our breath back we looked at one another in utter dismay. Our snakes suddenly looked very limp, and very plastic.
“Can’t we go to the police?” I said.
“It’s no good,” said Kylie. “Big Matt’s right. We’ve no proof.”
We both sighed. It was true. You couldn’t report someone to the police for having ripply trousers and a bad look in their eye. We sat in gloomy silence, considering the situation. The Grand Ferret Championship was six days away. My Entrance Exam for Our Lady of the Sorrows was five days away. Things couldn’t have been more hopeless if they’d tried.
“It’ll take more than a couple of plastic snakes to get us out of this mess,” Kylie said at last, uncoiling hers and handing it sadly back to me.
And, as things turned out, in a way she was right. But, in another way, she was wrong.