Hurray!
It was Thursday morning, and I was heading off to school feeling absolutely great.
My cerise-pink holdall was shiny and clean and had nothing in it apart from a hairbrush, some pens and half a packet of chewy mints.
I was wearing my school skirt and shirt, plus a thin blue cardie tied tight around my waist, all with absolutely no large pockets to hide anything in.
It was Jackson’s dad’s turn to walk us to school, and as I wandered next door to meet Jackson and Mr Miller, I knew that Thing was happily snuffling about in the trees at the bottom of the garden, doing whatever Thing liked to do.
Best of all, with Thing safe at home, it meant there’d be no tomatoes in the toilet or other magical mishaps to worry about at school today.
Wasn’t that ordinary and boring and brilliant?
(‘Promise we’re never, ever going to do that again!’ I’d said, once the three of us arrived safely home from school yesterday. Jackson promised. Thing just looked confused and said, ‘What is promise meaning, Rubby?’)
‘Well, hi, there, Ruby! Would madam like a lift to school?’ Mr Miller joked, as I turned into his driveway.
He was holding open the passenger door of his big red car and bowing low.
‘Aren’t we walking today?’ I asked, gazing up at the extremely sunny sun.
As there wasn’t a hailstone or a tornado on the horizon, I expected Mr Miller to say that he had to go straight off to a meeting afterwards or something.
‘It’s Jackson’s fault – he can’t walk very far,’ said Mr Miller. ‘He seems to have pulled a muscle in his calf.’
At that second, I saw Jackson step out of his front door with two very healthy-looking legs.
But as soon as he saw me, his right leg seemed to take a turn for the worse.
‘What did you do?’ I called over to him, as he began limping towards the car.
‘I sort of twisted it.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘When I was … uh … brushing my teeth.’
Huh?
What kind of lame fiberoonie was that?
Jackson was covering up for something for sure!
Had he hurt it doing something embarrassing?
Like dancing when he was putting his boxer shorts on and falling flat on his face?
(His bedroom window was right opposite mine. I’d once seen him singing along to loud hip-hop wearing nothing but Bart Simpson boxers. It was enough to give a girl nightmares for weeks …)
‘What’s he like, eh, Ruby?’ Mr Miller laughed, as he climbed into the driver’s seat.
A donut crossed with a big baboon, I thought.
Still, I should be kind and considerate. After all, Jackson had had to put up with a monster telling-off from Miss Wilson yesterday for ‘snoring’, AND he wasn’t allowed out at break times for the rest of the week as punishment.
‘Do you want to go in the front?’ I offered him, knowing EVERYONE prefers to sit there if they have a choice.
‘Uh … no – it’s all right. You can have it.’
That was very generous of Jackson. He wasn’t usually so generous.
I hesitated, wondering if he’d maybe put a whoopee cushion in the passenger seat …
Nope, nothing there.
‘Er, thanks,’ I said warily, as I got into the car, and heard the back door clunk shut.
‘So, how’s school treating you, Ruby?’ Mr Miller began chatting.
Mr Miller must have a degree in chatting, as he is very good at it. He can chatter endlessly about everything, and all you have to do is say, ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘fine, thanks’ in between his bouts of chatting.
‘How slow is this farmer going, eh?’ Mr Miller grumbled chattily, as we got stuck behind a tractor on the country lane that wended and wound its way towards school.
‘Yes’, ‘no’ and ‘fine, thanks’ didn’t seem to work as answers all of a sudden, so I just ‘mmmm!’ed.
Still, since Mr Miller was craning his neck to see the road ahead, I took the chance to peek round at Jackson, who’d been spookily quiet.
I mean, if his dad has a degree in chatting, then Jackson should have one for talking rubbish, so it felt kind of eerie, him being so silent …
‘You OK?’ I mouthed at him, so his dad didn’t suspect that something was up.
‘Yeah!’ he mouthed back.
But he didn’t seem OK.
He was sitting completely stiff and straight, his eyes wide, his rucksack perched neatly on his lap.
That was a perfectly good look for any other kid, but for Jackson it was all wrong.
The ‘normal’ Jackson didn’t so much sit as slouch. And in the mornings, it took him till at least half-nine for his eyes to be properly awake and more than half-open.
‘Right! Should be able to overtake at last, if I put my foot down!’ Mr Miller announced, swerving the car suddenly and accelerating to the speed of light.
‘EEK!’ came a small sound of alarm from somewhere in the vicinity of the back seat.
As soon as the G-force would let me, I turned around and scowled at Jackson.
‘What?’ he mouthed, trying his best to look innocent.
But I knew right then that he was hiding a guilty secret in his rucksack.
It looked as if he’d …
