Mo
The next part of the plan was by far the trickiest and most likely to lead to injury or junking. I was nervous about it but, when I thought about the poor kids being abducted by the Junkers, I knew it was the right thing to do. We had to find a way to get the armband back.

Lottie’s idea was to go running over to the Junker house and hope for the best. I persuaded her that we would stand a much better chance with a bit of preparation. The day before our planned infiltration, we took a detour on the way home from school. To the post office. It might not sound very butt-kicking, but it was an essential part of the plan.

‘Why are you two late home?’ Mum said when we walked through the door.

‘There was a food sale after school, to raise money for dogs with two legs,’ Lottie said. I usually left the lying to her – she was so much better at it than I was.

‘Oh, that’s an unusual charity,’ Mum frowned and hung our coats up for us.

‘Dogs with two legs need our compassion, Emma. Imagine how hard it is for them. The money goes towards building them tiny wheelchairs.’

‘Of course. I didn’t mean to be insensitive. What food did you eat at the sale?’

‘Oh, all sorts,’ Lottie said. ‘Cakes and cheese and this strange meat that tasted a bit funny.’

‘Sounds delicious,’ Mum said.

‘It was, wasn’t it, Mo?’

I nodded.

‘We’re going upstairs to work on our Discovery Competition entry,’ I said.

‘Alright, my loves, I’ll call you down when dinner’s ready.’

‘Can we eat in my room today? We have so much work to do.’

‘I suppose that would be OK,’ Mum said. ‘As it’s for something so important. I’ll bring you up some trays.’

‘Thanks, Mum. You’re the best.’

Up in my room, we really did work on our invention. I was putting together a prototype, while Lottie was writing our presentation.

‘It’s way too big,’ I said. ‘It needs to be a thousand times smaller. It’s not good enough.’

‘Mo, it’s just a prototype to give the judges an idea of what the final product will be. Plus, you’re ten years old and you just built a tracking device out of bits of broken phones. I think they’re going to be impressed.’

‘But I don’t know if it’s enough to win.’

‘I’ve been snooping around looking at the other teams’ inventions and they’re a big pile of poop compared to ours. Just make sure it works and I’ll take care of the rest.’

‘What do you mean by “the rest”?’

‘Oh, you know, the market research, the branding, the sales pitch…’

‘It isn’t Junior Apprentice, Lottie.’

‘Of course it is, Mo. Cherry Corp aren’t just investing in the invention; they’re investing in the inventors. We need to show them how awesome we are.’

‘It’s not going to involve costumes, is it?’ I asked.

‘Mo, we’re professionals – we can’t be wearing silly outfits. We’ll be wearing something appropriate. Maybe with new hairstyles…’ she side-eyed me.

‘No,’ I said.

‘We’ll discuss it later. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about product names. We want something catchy. Maybe something that ties in with the Cherry Corp brand.’

‘It’s called a Pet-Tracker, and the viewing software is called The Trace.’

‘I see two problems with your names, Mo,’ Lottie said. ‘Firstly, you’re not thinking of the bigger picture. By calling it a Pet-Tracker you’re limiting our market to just pets, when it could be used for other things.’

‘What other things are likely to go missing?’

‘OMG – that’s it, Mo! Children: children are likely to go missing in the future. What if, one day, our tracker can be used on people, to stop them from getting lost or disappearing?’

She was right. She’d cracked it. That must be what all this stuff was about – the thing we were yet to do that would lead us into danger, the reason why the Junkers wanted to get rid of us. It had to be!

‘That’s possible, I suppose,’ I said. ‘But we’re nowhere near being able to use the tracker in that way.’

‘We don’t have to be. This is just the start – we have years to work on it. I just think we should give it more of a multi-use name. What exactly is it again?’

‘It’s a massive, messy ball of parts at the moment, but one day I want it to be an implantable positioning system. And it needs to be tiny – smaller than nanotech.’

‘What’s smaller than nanotech?’

‘I don’t think there’s a word for it yet… Maybe picotech?’

‘So, how about this: Picotechnological Implantable Positioning System. They can be called PIPS for short, which works because they’re so tiny.’

‘That’s quite good, actually,’ I said.

‘Ooh, ooh, and it goes with Cherry Corp. Cherry – pips. You see?’

‘Can we keep The Trace, though? I like that.’

‘Absolutely not. What sort of a name is The Trace? It sounds like a gameshow. Nobody’s going to remember something like that.’

She kept bobbing on for a while, but I stopped listening and got on with making the device.

A while later, Mum brought up our dinner trays and then went downstairs to eat with Spencer and Sadie.

‘Spaghetti Bolognese,’ Lottie smiled. ‘Perfect.’

‘Can we at least eat some of it?’ It smelled so good.

‘We can eat most of it. Just leave like a big handful.’

‘It seems as if you’ve done this before,’ I said.

‘Don’t worry, Mo – you are in expert hands.’

We ate most of our dinners, leaving a large dollop each, which we mashed up with our forks and poured into cups. Lottie went into the bathroom and filled the cups with water, and then we stirred the mixtures until we had a bolognesey-soupy-mush.

‘Are you ready?’ Lottie said, hiding her cup.

I nodded and filled my mouth with the bolo-puke.

‘Emma!’ Sadie called, ‘Can you come up? Mo’s not feeling well!’

Mum ran up the stairs just as I spat the bolo-puke into the toilet, making lots of sicky noises at the same time.

‘Oh, Mo-Bear!’ Mum gave me some tissue and felt my head. ‘When did you start feeling sick?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. I felt really guilty about lying to her. ‘It might have been that meat we ate at the food sale. It did taste strange.’

‘Do you need to be sick again, or do you want to have a lie-down?’

‘Lie down, I think,’ I said, letting Mum lead me to my room.

‘Actually,’ Lottie called from the bathroom, ‘I think I might be…’ And she spat her bolo-puke into the toilet, too, doing the most over-the-top puking noises I’ve ever heard.

‘Oh god,’ Mum said. ‘Spencer! Can you come up, please? Lottie’s sick!’

‘Really sick or fake sick?’ Spencer called back. He was so much more clued up about Lottie than Mum was.

‘Really, really sick,’ Mum said.

Mum and Spencer got me and Lottie dressed in our pyjamas and into bed with glasses of water and buckets next to us. I had to hand it to Lottie – her part of the plan had worked perfectly.

The next morning, Mum came into my room and stroked my forehead.

‘How are you feeling, lovely?’

‘Much better,’ I said. ‘Do you think I should go to school?’

‘Not today, Mo-Bear. I’m not allowed to send you back until at least twenty-four hours after you were last sick. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s OK, Mum, I understand.’

‘You and Lottie can stay home today and snuggle up in front of the telly. Do you think you can manage anything to eat?’

‘Maybe something small to start off with,’ I said.

‘Good boy – I’ll get you some dry toast and we’ll see if you keep it down.’

Five minutes later, Lottie came in. ‘I told you it would work,’ she said. ‘With Jax safely at school, that’s one less Junker to worry about.’

‘The next part is up to Sadie – do you think she’ll get it right?’

‘Of course. Sadie is very good at that type of thing. She won’t let us down.’

Lottie and I got dressed and worked on our invention while we waited for the right moment.

At 10 am, Mum called up, ‘Mo! Lottie! I’m just popping over to Lorelai’s to see if she wants to come over for a coffee.’

‘Why’s that, Emma?’ Lottie said, as we made our way down the stairs.

‘Sadie saw her looking out of the window and thinks she’s lonely. She very kindly suggested we invite her over. Isn’t she a sweetie-pie?’

‘Being sweet is Sadie’s third best quality,’ Lottie said.

‘I’ll be back in two minutes.’ Mum went out of the front door.

We watched from the window as she rang the Junkers’ doorbell and Lorelai answered. They spoke for a moment, then Lorelai did one of her Disney smiles and came out of her house, pulling the door closed behind her.

‘We’ll be in the kitchen, you two,’ Mum said as she walked through the house with Lorelai. ‘I’ll keep Lorelai out of your way, just in case you’re contagious – we wouldn’t want her getting sick, would we?’

‘If I really was contagious, I’d go and lick her coffee cup,’ said Lottie.

She was so much better at being bad than I was.

We went back to the window and waited. At 10:12am, the postman walked up to Lorelai’s front door and rang the bell. Our postman always got to 79 Morello Road at between 10:10am and 10:18am. I knew this because I used to wait at the door for my Lego Club magazines to arrive.

‘You were right, Mo,’ Lottie said. ‘It was worth spending £7 on that parcel.’

At the post office the day before, we’d paid for special delivery on an empty box we’d wrapped in brown paper and addressed to Lorelai.

‘Now we’ll see if anyone else is home,’ I said.

The postman rang again, and rattled the letterbox, but there was no movement from the house. Eventually, he left a card and moved on.

‘Are you ready?’ I said, suddenly feeling nervous.

‘Totes.’

We told Mum we were going upstairs to chill out, and then we snuck out of the front door. Sadie was on distraction duty but we didn’t know how much time we’d have. Our aim was to go in, find the armband thing within a few minutes, and get out again. No messing.

We ran down the alley and I lifted the loose planks in the fence so that Lottie could slip through.

‘All clear,’ she said, and I followed.

As we raced to the back door, I pulled Jax’s keys out of my pocket and slotted the smaller one into the lock. It turned with a clunk.

‘Quiet, Mo!’ Lottie whispered.

‘How am I supposed to make a lock turn quietly?’

‘Are you telling me you haven’t been practising?’

‘Of course I haven’t been practising. I’ve had other things to do, like inventing a device that will change the future of the world.’

‘Well, if the job of opening the door had been assigned to me, I would have practised doing it quietly.’

‘But you’re making more noise arguing about it than the lock made in the first place!’ I was getting cross.

‘Well, why are you talking then, Mo?’

I swore inside my head and tried to focus on the task.

The door swung open.