Ruby decided to wait until Sam was asleep. There were a number of reasons for this.
1. When she went to knock on his door, which she did straight after her dad had entrusted her with this mission, he didn’t, like last time, get all grumpy with her and refuse to let her in for ages, but she did have to wait until he finished hammering. Then, when there was a moment’s silence from inside and she knocked, her brother shouted, “Hold on! Just a minute!” Followed by a lot of rustling. Ruby, being a very clever eight-year-old, knew this meant that he would be hiding whatever it was he was making. And, indeed, when Sam opened the door, the middle of the floor was covered by his duvet. Which, frankly, was a bit of a giveaway. But she pretended she hadn’t noticed, and had just come in to feed Spock.
2. It felt more exciting and secret-agenty to creep in when he was asleep.
So that evening she let her mum and dad say goodnight, and kiss her gently on the forehead. She closed her eyes, and allowed them to think she’d gone to sleep really quickly. And then she whispered for nearly an hour to her monkeys (Ruby had a collection of furry, cuddly monkeys, all of whom had different names and different voices, who lived with her on her bed) in order to keep herself awake until she heard this conversation:
“Night, Mum! Night, Dad!”
“Shall we come and tuck you in?”
“No, no, Mum. I’m fine.”
Which was, in fact, the conversation Sam had been having with his parents, just before he went to bed, for the last couple of nights. And then she listened for the sound of Sam doing something else he’d been doing for the last couple of nights, which was locking his bedroom door.
Except tonight there was no sound of that. Because when Ruby had gone into his room earlier in order to feed Spock, she’d hidden his key under some hay in the cage.
(I mentioned that Ruby was a very clever seven-(now eight)-year-old, right?)
Then she whispered to her monkeys for five minutes longer, to be sure that Sam would be asleep. Then she crept out of her room, tiptoed carefully past the living room where her parents were watching TV, and gently opened the door to her brother’s room.
So what she was expecting was to be able to easily see what Sam was building, because the duvet that was covering it would no longer be covering it: it would be on top of Sam. But it was still covering whatever the thing was Sam was building. It was also covering Sam. Because Sam was sleeping under his duvet, but also on top of the thing that was still in the middle of the floor.
Ruby knelt down. Her brother’s face was calm and quiet. He was wearing his space pyjamas. She went over to where his feet were, and, very gently, lifted up the duvet.
Underneath was what appeared to be a platform – Sam had hammered together the six planks of wood, securing them across with the coils of rope. In the coils of rope, on either side, he had put each of the two brooms. She looked further down, underneath the platform. Nailed to the underside were the skateboards: one beneath each corner.
Ruby frowned. This was very confusing. In her secret-agent persona, she wanted to report back to her boss – her dad – but at the moment she still didn’t know what Sam was trying to make here. She heard a noise. It was Spock, scrabbling to the edge of the cage bars. She looked over at him. He looked over at her with quite a strong sense of, “Next time you want to hide something in my hay, I’d like a request in writing, if you don’t mind!” And also, with quite a strong sense of – and this wasn’t reading too much into a guinea pig’s face, as the guinea pig in question was raising its face towards him, as if to make this clear – “Don’t look now, but Sam’s woken up.”