I looked around my room for something – anything – to do. Normally I’d be watching TV, flicking through one of my old comics or shooting baddies on my PlayStation. Not tonight. Jasper Stinkybottom’s cage was on the desk in front of me where all my fun stuff used to be, but my hamster was inside his little house and he was not budging.
My mum was in the living room, sewing a costume for Lucy’s next show. My dad was next to her, watching the horse-racing on TV and struggling with a crossword.
My sister was practising tap-dancing in her room. The sound was really annoying – tappety-tap, tappety-tap – like someone was forever knocking on the door but never coming in.
And Jasper Stinkybottom, my very last hope for entertainment, seemed to be having a snooze.
I sighed. The situation was desperate: there was absolutely nothing to do except my homework.
And so, very reluctantly, I pulled my maths book from my schoolbag and stared at the first question.
I was already stumped. I scratched my head. I rubbed my chin. Finally, I read the question out loud, like I’d seen my dad do with his crossword clues (although it didn’t seem to help him much).
‘Eighty-five minus twenty-eight,’ I said.
‘Fifty-seven,’ came a small, rough voice.
I glanced around. No one. I must have imagined it.
I said the sum once more, and again I heard a voice:
‘That would be fifty-seven.’
It sounded like the whisper of someone with a bad cough.
I looked around, completely baffled. Was someone playing a joke on me? My sister wouldn’t have known the answer, but it could have been my dad.
I got up, opened my bedroom door and looked around. There was no sign of anyone.
So I closed my door, sat at my desk and wondered if I was going crazy.
‘Eighty-five minus twenty-eight,’ I said, for the third time.
‘As I told you,’ came the same voice, more impatiently this time, ‘the answer is fifty-seven.’
I leaped out of my seat and looked under my bed and in my wardrobe, before sitting back at my desk in disbelief.
It was then that I saw the hamster peering at me through the bars of his cage.
‘It’s rude to stare,’ he said.
I gasped.
‘Not you?’ I said, astonished.
He looked behind him as if there might be another talking hamster in the cage.
‘I guess so,’ he said.
‘You know how to …?’
‘Do basic maths?’
‘I was going to say “talk”.’
‘I can hear things too, as it happens,’ he snapped. ‘Like your family discussing my you-know-what over dinner.’
‘Sorry,’ I said, blushing. ‘My dad does get a bit overexcited sometimes.’
‘And “Jasper Stinkybottom”?’ he continued, in the same annoyed tone. ‘How would you like it if you were called – I don’t know – “Roger Smellington” or “Sebastian Poo-Poo”?’
‘Not much,’ I admitted. ‘Especially not “Sebastian Poo-Poo”.’
‘But it’s done now, I suppose. You may call me “Stinky”.’
‘OK, “Stinky”. I’m Ben.’
‘So, Ben – you’re not very good at maths, I take it?’
‘Or writing. Or science. Or art. Or anything, really.’
There was a silence.
‘Fifty-seven,’ he said.
‘Excuse me?’
‘The answer to your question.’
‘Oh. Thanks.’ I scribbled it down. ‘And I need to show the working-out too. Otherwise, Beardy McCreedy will think I used a calculator. He’s suspicious like that.’
‘Beardy McCreedy?’
‘My teacher. He’s got this enormous beard. And he hates kids.’
Ten questions, and answers, later, I stuffed the book back into my bag and took out my writing homework: Describe your house.
With Stinky’s help, it was a piece of cake. He described my room as ‘unkempt’, which is a fancy way of saying messy, he told me.
‘I don’t suppose you know any French, do you?’ I asked him, fishing out my final bit of homework.
‘Mon français n’est pas mauvais, pour un hamster,’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘I said, “My French isn’t bad, for a hamster”.’
‘Fantastic,’ I said.
‘Fantastique,’ he corrected.
