I reckoned it was important to get Archie back as soon as possible. Archie was the one who had gone off on his own, so he was the one who was going to get in trouble. Again. I just didn’t know how I planned to do it.
I looked below us. Ariel was putting her shoes back on. “What about Mr Palfry?” I asked.
“Ariel will keep him busy for a while longer,” Kuba assured me.
“Ariel? Ariel’s keeping him busy?”
“She’s not stupid, you know,” said Kuba with just a touch of self-righteousness. “Ariel saw Mark and Eddie as well as the ghosts, and pretty much worked out what was going on.” She smiled rather smugly for someone with celestial connections. “She was only too happy to help. I reckon Mr Palfry will be so worn out by now that he won’t ask too many questions. I’ll tell him you and the others finished your lunches and went off exploring.” She gave me another smile. “So don’t be too long. Eddie and Mark should be turning up soon.”
Don’t be too long? I didn’t even know where I was going.
“But what if I don’t find Archie?” This struck me as a rather important point. After all, it was a big mountain.
“You’ll find him,” Kuba assured me. “He won’t have gone far. Try near the stream.”
The route Mark and Eddie had taken ran more or less parallel to the route they were meant to take. Armed with my map, I found the stream without any trouble. I was pretty pleased. I didn’t think a trained soldier could have done any better.
There was no one on the ridge now, though.
“Archie!” I called. “Archie! It’s Elmo. Come on out!”
No answer echoed through the trees.
“Archie!” I called again. “Archie. It’s me. You’ve got to come back.”
I looked round, trying to think like someone who is angry and humiliated and doesn’t know what he’s doing or where he’s going. It wasn’t that difficult. I had quite a bit of personal experience to draw on. The day of the Womble slippers incident, I’d hidden in the teachers’ toilet.
Hiding in the woods was different, though. I’d known that if I hid in the teachers’ toilet, someone would find me eventually. But if you hid in the woods, no one would have any idea where you were. Before Archie could really go off in a sulk, he’d have to make sure that Mr Palfry knew that was what he was doing. So I reasoned that Archie would be looking for the rest of us, and was probably going back the way he’d come.
I headed downstream.
For a while the trail was narrow, and hemmed in by particularly spiky indigenous trees, but then it got so narrow that I couldn’t actually see it any more.
I took the map out again, and looked for some sort of landmark. The stream was a tiny dotted line that didn’t seem to pass anything of geographical significance.
“Archie!” I shouted. “Archie! It’s Elmo! Please come out!”
The only answer was the chatter of the birds.
I stood dead still, watching and listening for some movement or sound that might be Archie, but there was none – unless he’d suddenly sprouted wings.
I groaned.
Maybe I shouldn’t have made such a big deal about Kuba interfering – I could have done with her notebook. And then I thought of Bill Gates. Bill Gates never gave up, and I was pretty sure he had never had any help from an angel. If Bill Gates could keep going in the face of defeat, then I could too.
Determined, I stood up tall (well, as tall as I could) and lifted my chin. That’s when I saw something move in the woods ahead of me that was too large to be an indigenous mammal or bird. Whatever it was, it was pretty far away, and the woods were dense, so I couldn’t say that it was definitely Archie, but it was on its own, human, the right size, and it was carrying something in its arms that looked like a rucksack to me.
“Archie!” I shouted. “Archie, wait!”
He didn’t wait, of course. He was angry, humiliated and confused, a condition that can make you forget your manners. I’d only come out of the toilet on the day of the Womble slippers because the caretaker threatened to take the door off its hinges if I didn’t.
I ran after the distant figure.
“Archie, stop!” I called. “It’s me, Elmo! Everything’s going to be all right! I’ve come to take you back.”
But Archie still didn’t stop. Instead, he quickened his pace and marched deeper into the woods.
I reckoned I was getting the hang of being a soldier, because I didn’t even think twice about following. Using my arm as a shield, I fought my way through the thickest trees. It didn’t even bother me that my Nike sweatshirt was being clawed at by branches and my new trainers were being covered with mud and leaf mould, that’s how determined I was. I’d show Kuba Bamber I didn’t need her help.
I finally caught up with him, but not because of my skills as a tracker. He was sitting on a log in a small clearing, waiting for me.
Only it wasn’t Archie.
It was a small, swarthy man with a spear and a shield in his hands. He got up as I bashed my way into the clearing. And then he disappeared, just like a bubble.
“Archie!” I screamed. “Where are you?”
“Elmo?” Archie’s voice was so low, I wasn’t sure if I’d really heard it or not.
“Archie?”
This time his voice was a bit stronger. “Elmo, is that you?”
“Archie!” I nearly tripped in my excitement. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”
There was a crackle behind me. Archie was stepping out of the cave-like hollow in an enormous old tree where he’d been hiding.
“Kuba and I got worried when you didn’t turn up at the Sentry Stones,” I lied. “What happened?”
“It’s a long story,” said Archie.
I sat down on a dead trunk. “That’s OK,” I said. “I’ve got time.”
Standing a lot straighter than most of the trees around us, and staring at the ground all the time, Archie told me what had happened.
I knew most of it already, of course, but I pretended to be shocked and surprised. “You’re joking!”
“It’s all true,” said Archie. “I would not be surprised if it was Mark and Eddie who put me in the girls’ lodge last night.”
“What creeps!” I shook my head in amazement. “We’d better go back and sort them out.”
Archie frowned. “I appreciate you coming for me, Elmo,” he solemnly told me, “but I’m not going back.”
To tell you the truth, that wasn’t the response I’d been expecting.
“What do you mean, you’re not going back? You can’t stay here. You’ve got to go back.”
“No, I haven’t.”
I’d never suspected there was a stubborn side to Archie Spongo before but it was out now, in full force.
“Let Eddie and Mark get in trouble for a change,” he went on. He didn’t sound much like his usual, meek self. “Let them get in trouble for losing me. That’s what they deserve.”
“They deserve a lot more than that,” I said. “But they didn’t lose you. You ran away.”
Archie sat down beside me. “It adds up to the same thing.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I argued. “Eddie and Mark will tell some story about you getting all weird and stomping off, and it’ll be their word against yours.”
Archie shook his head. Stubbornly. “But they’ll be in trouble when Mrs Smiley and Mr Palfry hear the truth,” he insisted.
“And what’s the truth?” I asked. “That you fell off a log? That you were too stupid to realize that a few sandwiches shouldn’t weigh several kilos?”
Archie glared at me. “I’m staying here till Mr Palfry finds me.”
“And what will that solve?” I asked him.
“It solves the problem of how I survive the next few days, that’s what it solves. If Mr Palfry has to search for me, the trip will most likely be cancelled after that.”
Arguing with Archie was a lot like arguing with myself. I almost knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“And then?” I persisted. “Then what happens?”
“Then we go home.”
“Right,” I agreed. “And then everything’s just the same as it was – or maybe worse. Things only get worse if you don’t stand up for what’s right.”
That was something I’d learned from the incident with Mr Bamber and his bulldozers, only I’d sort of forgotten it in all my excitement about being famous, and getting my sweatshirt, and everything.
“I don’t care,” said Archie. “I just want to go home.”
“You can’t go home.” I handed him a tissue. “This isn’t over yet.”
“It’s over for me,” said Archie. “Eddie and Mark will tell everybody what happened. They’ll all be laughing at me.”
“Who cares?” I said. I handed him a sandwich and the apple from my own lunch. “It doesn’t matter what they do, it only matters what you do.” It sounded like something Grace Blue, or even Kuba Bamber, might say, but it also sounded true.
Either Archie thought so too, or the food was improving his mood, because I could tell from the way he was listening that he was starting to weaken.
“Don’t you understand?” It was as though I was on automatic pilot; the words came steaming out. “If you don’t stand up to Eddie and Mark, they’ll keep pushing you around. Right?”
Archie nodded. “Correct.”
“But if you do stand up to them—”
“They’ll keep pushing me around,” finished Archie.
“Well, maybe… But even if they do, it’s different because you’re not just letting them do it to you. As long as you don’t fight back, you’re telling them it’s all right.”
Archie looked at the sandwich he was holding for a couple of seconds, and then he looked over at me. “Do you really believe that?”
“Yes,” I said. Considering the way I’d been acting myself, I was a bit surprised to realize this was true. “Yes, I do.”
“All right.” Archie sighed. “We’ll go back and tell Mr Palfry what they did.”
But I was feeling bold and inspired. I wanted us to sort this out ourselves.
“No.” I shook my head. “No, we’ll go back, but we’ll carry on as though nothing has happened.”
“Are you serious?” said Archie.
“There’s an old saying in English that it might be useful for you to know,” I told him.
Archie regarded me warily. “What is it?”
“He who laughs last, laughs longest.”