“I don’t believe you, Elmo Blue,” said Kuba as we went to lunch. She swung her book bag over her shoulder and slammed me in the arm. “You really are too much sometimes.”
“Me?” I was flabbergasted. “I’m too much? What’d I do?”
The book bag whopped me again. “You bailed Eddie out, that’s what you did. Why can’t you ever just leave well alone?”
She could talk. The fastest way to get Kuba to do something was to tell her not to.
“Me? Excuse me … you’re the one who nearly got me in trouble with Eddie.” I gave her a sour look. “Again.” My look became accusing. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how you’re always provoking him and making it look like it’s me,” I went on. “Because I have, and I’m getting pretty fed up with it.”
“I hope you’re not threatening me,” said Kuba sweetly. “It isn’t something that I’d recommend.”
If anyone else had heard her, they would have thought she was joking. At school Kuba acts like she’s about as hard as custard. Which is ironic, really, since she’s the last person you’d ever want to mess with.
The important thing you have to know about Kuba is that she not only behaves like an angel – she really is an angel. She’s an undercover angel, disguised as an orphan from South America. She doesn’t have wings, but she does have a halo. It’s not a circle of light the way they are in old paintings, though; it’s a haze of blue over her head. I’m the only one who can see it, but she wears an old hat to cover it, just in case. Kuba claims she came to Campton to help people, but in my opinion the real reason she came was to bother me.
“I’m not threatening you,” I said irritably. “I’m just mentioning something you seem to have overlooked.”
Kuba, of course, continued to overlook it.
“Eddie was about to make a complete fool of himself,” she informed me. “And you saved him.”
“That’s not the point,” I protested. “The point is that you keep setting me up. And anyway, I didn’t save him. I just happened to know the answer. Since when is it a crime to answer a question?”
“Even Mr Palfry was annoyed with you,” said Kuba, and she opened the door to the cafeteria and strode through.
I walked straight into her because instead of striding on into the dining room she stopped at the door.
“Talk of the devil,” she muttered half under her breath.
Eddie Kilgour and Mark Crother were sitting with some other boys at a table near the drinks machine. Archie Spongo was at the table in front of Eddie’s with some other kids no one else wanted to sit with.
I watched Archie for a few seconds, sitting there in the wrong clothes and the wrong haircut. He looked like a pelican set down in a flock of parrots. Or a sitting duck.
And then I noticed something else. Archie didn’t know it, but Eddie was copying everything he did. If Archie scratched his head, Eddie scratched his head. If Archie unpacked his lunch, Eddie pretended to unpack his lunch too. I know it doesn’t sound that thrilling, but it was keeping Eddie’s table pretty amused.
“So,” said Kuba. “I suppose we’d better find some seats.”
I could tell she meant her and me. “We? Where’s Ariel today?”
Kuba usually had lunch with Ariel Moordock and I sat with Carl and Jamal.
“She had to go somewhere with her mother,” said Kuba vaguely. “To the optician’s, I think.”
That suited me fine. Carl and Jamal were all right, but we weren’t great mates. The only reason I sat with them was because they’d asked me to share a room with them on the class trip, and the only reason they asked me to share a room with them was so they weren’t the ones who got stuck with Archie Spongo.
“OK.” I pointed right. “Let’s sit over there.” Which was about as far away as we could get from Eddie and his mates and still be in the room.
Kuba didn’t budge. “Somebody should do something about them,” she mumbled to herself. “They’re getting out of control.”
Her eyes were on Eddie and Mark, who were nearly choking over Eddie’s impersonation of Archie trying to get his juice carton open, so I pretended I hadn’t heard her. If anybody was going to do something about Eddie and Mark, it definitely wasn’t going to be me.
“Come on.” I gave her arm a tug. “Let’s sit down.”
Kuba treated me to her sweetest smile. “Your table’s just been taken.” She pointed left. “We’ll have to sit over there.”
And she sailed off to the corner where Archie Spongo was inspiring Eddie Kilgour to new comic heights.
Even though I hate sitting by myself at lunch, I would have if it hadn’t been for the fact that Kuba was right – as usual. All of a sudden there wasn’t anywhere else to sit. It was like a reverse miracle. I took a deep breath and followed my best friend into the darkest corner of the cafeteria.
There were a couple of kids sitting at the table behind Eddie, but they suddenly got up and left as we approached.
“You see,” said Kuba. “Perfect.”
Perfect for what? I felt like asking. Suicide?
To my relief, neither Eddie nor any of the others seemed to notice us sit down. They probably couldn’t see through the tears of laughter.
I opened the brown paper bag that contained my lunch and Kuba opened the trendy chrome box that held hers.
“What have you got?” I spoke softly. If they didn’t know we were there, I wasn’t going to tell them.
Kuba said “What?” as Eddie and his mates let out a laugh that shook our table.
Kuba frowned. Tiny flecks of gold glinted in her eyes. Experience has taught me that the gold glints in Kuba Bamber’s eyes are usually a bad sign.
“What have you got?” I repeated. “I’ve got nut cutlet sandwiches and vegetable sticks.” My mother’s got a thing about healthy eating.
“Soup and pasta salad,” said Kuba. Mrs Bamber has a thing about the posh deli in town.
Kuba was taking her brushed-steel Thermos out of the box when Eddie tapped Archie Spongo on the shoulder. She had her back to them, but I could tell from the way the gold in her eyes got darker that she knew exactly what was happening.
I tried not to pay any attention to what Eddie Kilgour was doing. What did I care, as long as he wasn’t doing it to me?
“Soup,” I said wistfully. I never brought soup any more because my Thermos had a picture of Snoopy on it. “That sounds good.”
Which was more or less what Eddie was saying at that very second.
“Doesn’t that look good…” Eddie was saying.
Kuba slowly took the lid off her flask.
Eddie reached out and snatched Archie’s sandwich from him with one flick of the wrist. “Look what Spongo’s got for lunch!” He held the wedge of white bread and something pink in the air. “Doesn’t that look good?”
There was a chorus of “Yum … yum…” from his table.
Mark did his pig impersonation. “Looks like pork,” he said.
Eddie shook his head thoughtfully. “I’m not sure. It looks more like roast rat to me.”
Archie made a grab for Eddie’s hand. “Give me back my sandwich, please.”
Eddie turned so the sandwich was out of his reach. “What do you think, Mark?” Eddie lifted the top slice of bread. “Doesn’t this look like roast rat to you?”
Very, very slowly, Kuba poured some soup into the lid of her Thermos. She seemed to be a million miles away. That was OK with me because I was having trouble keeping up my end of the conversation. I really didn’t want to know what Eddie was doing, but I was fascinated. It was like watching the Godfather at work.
“I’m going to get a drink,” said Kuba suddenly. “Do you want anything?”
I must have been paying more attention to Eddie than I thought, because I hadn’t even seen her get up.
I shook my head.
Mark took a slice of pink stuff from the bread and held it between his fingertips. He turned it this way and that. “You know,” he said. “I think it is rat.”
Somebody made a gagging sound.
“Gross!” said Eddie. “Spongo eats rat! Get that stuff away from me.”
He shoved Mark’s hand and the slice of luncheon meat went flying. It landed on one of the other boys, who hurled it back across the table. It hit Archie on the head.
Archie was trying really hard not to cry as he removed the meat from his hair and watched the rest of his lunch soar through the air, but it wasn’t working all that well. His eyes were starting to glisten.
That’s when the table started to quiver. I didn’t notice at first, not until Kuba’s Thermos started to vibrate. I looked down at the table. It was quivering so much that I thought it was going for lift-off.
In the end, though, it wasn’t the table that took off – it was Kuba’s flask. It shot into the air like a tiny rocket, hung there for a few seconds, spraying liquid like a fountain, and then it drifted back down without so much as a bump.
Suddenly Eddie and his mates were all shrieking and jumping up and down, dripping Mrs Bamber’s gourmet soup all over the floor.
Eddie’s eyes met mine.
“Good grief,” said Kuba, reappearing with a carton of apple juice in her hand. She looked concerned. “Whatever happened?”
“Why don’t you ask Elmo?” snarled Eddie.
And that’s when I decided that I wasn’t going on the class trip. Not for anything.