Jennifer looked over the fence straight into the face of the creature that made those terrifying sounds.
(I think this is a good time for me to tell you one of the Secrets of the three friends. Their Secret Drink with the pleasant perfumey smell was a hot liquorice drink. Nystagmus made it for them before every meeting.)
While Yaya and Papou were busy working in the shop at the front, Nystagmus folded a liquorice stick into a mug and placed it in the microwave and turned it onto HIGH. After exactly 45 seconds, he took it out. The liquorice stick was now a little pool of hot black stuff. Nystagmus knew it was so hot it would burn your tongue off. [This is far too dangerous to do without an adult!]
Nystagmus added warm water from the tap and sixteen drops of white liquid that he took from a baby’s bottle with a small syringe.
Then he repeated the entire process with the second mug and the third.
And what is so secret about a hot liquorice drink, you wonder? The secret is the sixteen drops of white liquid that Nystagmus counted so carefully as he syringed it into the mugs. The white liquid was rare and precious. Actually it was unique. It was human breast milk.
(And the terrifying noises from the far side of the fence? Please see Chapter Three.)
Chapter Three
Jennifer looked over the fence. She saw the creature that screamed and hissed. She jumped off Snoth’s shoulders and back onto the ground. She pulled Nystagmus and Snoth to her side. Jennifer put her lips to the ears of each boy in turn and whispered. The boys’ faces went pale, then they nodded.
Jennifer stood up. She reached high to the top of the fence and started to climb. Snoth held her hips and boosted her. He did the same for Nystagmus. Now Snoth raised his arms and grabbed the topmost timber of the fence and his friends grabbed him and pulled him up. Without a word the three leapt from the fence into the garden and faced the creature.
A small boy looked up, surprised. He held the tail of a tiger-striped cat in his hands. He was swinging the cat by the tail, swinging it in a circle, swinging it as the cat screamed and hissed.
When the boy saw the three children, older and bigger than he, his face turned white. He looked terrified. Jennifer noticed the front of the boy’s trousers darken. She saw the dark patch growing as the little fellow wet himself. The child let go of the cat, turned suddenly and ran, his short legs scampering away from his visitors, away from the creature that he had tortured. The child headed for the back door of the house.
Nystagmus spoke. His voice was urgent: “We’ve got to get out of here before that boy’s parents come outside. And we have to take the cat with us so he can never torment it again.”
Jennifer and Snoth nodded. They looked at the cat. It arched its back and showed its sharp teeth. In between the hissing and screaming they heard soft, fast mewing sounds. The children felt their hearts beating even harder than before.
Snoth took off his jumper and tiptoed towards the weeping animal from behind, holding his jumper in front of him. Suddenly he dropped the jumper over the cat’s head. He wrapped it firmly so the animal could not see or bite. He lifted the cat and nodded towards the fence, urgently signalling his friends to climb. Jennifer and Nystagmus helped each other to the top then looked around. The back door of the house opened as they watched and an adult emerged.
“Run, Snoth! Run!”
Snoth was trapped. He could climb and escape with his friends but he would have to leave the cat in the garden without any protection.
The taste of onion still fresh in his throat reminded him: he knew he would not leave the cat behind. He called in the direction of the fence: Go without me! Go!
Snoth turned to face the person hurrying in his direction. He saw a tall, tall person. He had never seen such a tall person before. Or such a scary face: sunglasses like blue mirrors hid the tall person’s eyes. The person did not speak. Snoth heard Nystagmus’ voice from the fence: “Pass the cat to us!”
Snoth was a good runner, the school champion. He set a new school record as he ran to the fence. He lifted the cat and four arms reached down and took it from him.
He could feel the adult’s footsteps shaking the ground behind him.
Then he had an inspiration: he shouted loudly, as loudly as he could: “Go! Go, get the police!”
(This is a good place to end this chapter. In Chapter Four, I might tell you a little about the Onion of Weeping.)
Snoth, Jennifer and Nystagmus
Chapter Four
Jennifer looked up from her computer at her friends. She had been reading Wikipedia. She said: “Hey, look at this! It says here onions are a deadly poison for cats. We shouldn’t feel so bad that we left the cat at the animal shelter. If Tiger (his name was on his collar) had stayed and joined the Club, we’d have fed him the Onion of Weeping; he’d have cried like we do and then he would have died.”
Nystagmus said: “Well, that’s true. If anyone joins, they must eat the Onion of Weeping. We would have killed poor Tiger.”
The three friends all remembered the Old Lady. How Jennifer was running late for school one morning and had taken a shortcut through the garden of the Old People’s Village. She had heard sounds that made her stop and listen. The sounds came through an open window in one of the tiny little flats. She looked in and she saw an old, old lady, eating an onion and crying. The old lady seemed weak. She was very thin.
The old lady stood and walked shakily to her fridge. When she opened it, Jennifer saw it was almost empty; it held only a bottle of water.
That was the start of it all, an old lady, thin and weak. By the look of her clothes, which were faded and torn, the lady must have been poor. Perhaps she was so poor she had only an onion and some water for her day’s food. When Jennifer saw the lady, she looked in her lunchbox. Mum had packed a tub of yoghurt again. Jennifer didn’t hesitate: she took the yoghurt, dropped to her knees and crawled to the window. She reached up and placed the little tub of food on the window sill. Then she crawled away. She didn’t want the poor lady to see her and feel ashamed.
At lunchtime her friend Nystagmus wanted to swap his fetta sandwich for Jennifer’s yoghurt. “I haven’t got yogurt today,” she said.
She told Nystagmus about the poor hungry lady in the old people’s cottages. Snoth listened quietly to Jennifer’s story. Quietly he popped his banana inside Jennifer’s lunchbox so she wouldn’t be hungry. At the same time, Nystagmus slid his fetta sandwich into Jennifer’s lunchbox.
When Jennifer finished her story she looked down and saw what her friends had done. She felt as if she would cry. She realised how good her friends were. Jennifer said, “You are very kind to give away your own food so I wouldn’t be hungry.”
Both the boys said: We only did what you did!
The three all learned that day how lucky they were to be in this friendship. They thought about the old lady and wondered whether she had any friends. They decided they would try to make sure the old lady never had to go hungry. Every school day Jennifer would deliver a tub of yogurt and all three would share their school lunches.
And on weekends, Nystagmus would drop off fish and chips from his grandparents’ shop.
One Sunday morning Snoth tried eating a raw onion. He cried as he peeled it and he cried more