‘Are you really thick, or just a bit mad?’
It was a question I’d been dying to ask Jackson for more than an hour and a half.
After getting stuck behind the tractor, we were only just in time for school. The Head Teacher was hustling everyone inside in one great, big, bundled rush, and I lost sight of Jackson.
Then in class, I’d forgotten the other year-group class were crowding in with us for the first lesson, to watch a film about rainforests.
Then straight after that we had art, but I wasn’t in Jackson’s group.
All I could do was shoot him a what-are-you-playing-at? scowl across the paint pots, while keeping an eye on the motionless black rucksack lurking under his desk.
In fact, it took me all the way to break time to get a chance to ask it, and to get Jackson’s useless answer.
‘I’m not thick or mad!’ Jackson protested, talking to me through the slightly open window of the classroom, where he was doing his detention for snoring.
‘So you think it’s completely clever and sensible to smuggle Thing in here again today?’ I whispered, so no one could overhear me.
Though no one was listening – the playground was full of school-kid whoops, high-pitched nattering and roars.
‘Look, I snuck down to the trees to see Thing this morning,’ Jackson began his explanation, ‘and it was asking what we’d do at school today.’
‘So?’ I shrugged.
‘So I told it we were going to watch a telly programme about rainforests as part of our geography topic,’ he carried on. ‘Thing got all excited about the word “forest”, and was absolutely desperate to see the film. What could I do?’
‘You could’ve said no!’ I growled, thinking of the note that was taped up in the girls’ toilets this morning:
Gulp. The tomatoes had been discovered, then!
‘See – I guessed you’d be mad at me, Ruby. That’s why I didn’t tell you.’
‘Well, you guessed right. And I’m guessing that you made up the excuse about having a sore leg?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘Just so you could get your dad to give us a lift?’
‘Uh, yeah.’
‘’Cause you thought that would get Thing to school quicker, so it wouldn’t be sick in your bag like it was in mine?’
‘Uh … yeah. But Dad drove too fast and it was still sick,’ Jackson admitted, giving me a goofy, big baboon smile, as though that would make me forgive him. ‘I had to clean out Thing’s fabric conditioner top in the sink just now!’
I’d just spotted something pretty disastrous.
‘But today’s the last time ever, Ruby!’ Jackson tried to reassure me, not realising what was going on behind his back. ‘I told Thing that. And I told it to behave today. So everything’s totally cool.’
‘You’re one hundred per cent sure about that?’ I challenged him.
‘Absolutely! Scout’s honour!’ Jackson promised.
But we all know how useless Jackson’s promises are, don’t we?
‘So Miss Wilson is going to be OK about what Thing is doing right now?’ I asked, pointing at the group of tables where the paints and brushes were stacked, ready to go back in the cupboard after break.
Thing was holding a squeezy plastic bottle of yellow paint in one paw, and a bottle of red paint in the other, and was paddling in the great gloops of colour oozing out of them both.
‘Nooooo!’ yelped Jackson, whirling away from me and over towards Thing, who was now waddling over Miss Wilson’s plastic folder of notes.
Of course I thought Jackson was the biggest donut in the history of cream cakes for smuggling Thing to school again.
But I wasn’t a meanie (like Mrs Sweeney) and of course I couldn’t just stand there and let Thing be discovered and Jackson get break-time detention for life.
And so just a few seconds later, I’d snuck myself back into school to begin the big tidy-up.
‘Rubby! It so exciting! I see forest on VT!’
‘TV!’ I corrected it, wiping red + yellow = orange footprints off Mrs Wilson’s folder.
‘That forest has birdies and buzzies not in my forest!’
Well, yes. I’d gone for walks in Muir Woods since I was little and never seen any toucans or tarantulas.
‘Thing, can you get back into the rucksack?’ Jackson urged it, trying to stop it walking paint across things it shouldn’t, like Miss Wilson’s folder (again) and the remote control for the overhead projector.
‘I like little furry “eeek! eeek! eeek!” best,’ Thing burbled on, so thrilled by the rainforest programme that it couldn’t contain itself. ‘What animal is little furry “eeek! eek! eek!”, boy?’
‘It was a tamarin monkey,’ Jackson replied. ‘Can you get in my bag now?’
‘I like tammy monkey!’ Thing jabbered on. ‘I not like long thing. What is long thing, boy?’
‘It was a snake,’ said Jackson. ‘Now can you—’
‘I not like snake,’ Thing muttered darkly. ‘I know what it say!’
‘What did it say?’ I asked, grabbing Thing up and attempting to wipe its feet clean with a paper towel.
No matter how much of a rush and a mess we were in, I couldn’t resist knowing what an Amazonian snake had to say for itself.
‘Snake say, “Mmm, I think I eat little tammy monkey!”’
I pulled a face, partly because of what Thing had just said, and partly because Thing was covered in more paint than I had realised.
‘How are we going to clean you up?’ I sighed.
‘Maybe put me in flushy-flush?’ Thing said brightly.
‘Don’t tempt me …’ I muttered, rubbing harder.
‘Here,’ said Jackson, holding up the wastepaper bin with one hand and the rucksack with the other. ‘The end-of-break bell is just about to go!’
Urgh! The whole class would come jumbling in any second now. At top speed, I dropped the furball in the bag and the scrunched paper towel in the bin.
‘OK. Now promise me,’ I said, staring hard at Thing as it peered through the mesh panel of the rucksack, ‘you will not move, or snore, or get into any trouble, or do any magic for the rest of the day!!’
Thing’s tiny claws hooked through the lattice of the mesh, and I could just make out that it was nodding at me.
‘I not doing any of those not things,’ it purred. ‘I promising, Rubby.’
Sadly, it turned out that Thing was as lousy at keeping promises as Jackson Donut Miller …