Ruby for one was sincerely grateful. She eyed the bed longingly, then, before she lost all will to do anything but fall on top of it, she dragged herself to the bathroom and examined her face in the mirror. She was looking unusually pale; her complexion, normally olive-oil brown and healthy, seemed to have faded to a sickly grey. Her green eyes were a little bloodshot and her long dark hair was tangled and without shine. Ordinarily, Ruby was very particular about her appearance, styling her hair into a side-parting so one eye was almost obscured by a heavy curtain of glossy black-brown and fastened with a barrette; tonight she barely recognised herself.
Is this the face of failure? she wondered.
She set the shower running and had a good hot soak. Once just about all the mud and leaf was washed away, she got dry and dressed. She dabbed a little Wild Rose perfume on her neck and wrists. Boy, it was good to smell of something other than mulch and river sludge. She chose the warmest pyjamas she could find, long striped socks that stretched from her toes to her knee tops and – swamping her tiny frame – an outsized sweatshirt.
Even so she still felt cold.
Back in the bedroom she stood in front of the huge bookcase that extended from wall to wall, floor to ceiling. The bookshelves held Ruby’s large assortment of written works: everything from spy thrillers and classic novels to encyclopedias, factual journals to comics, graphic novels and codebooks. All these books she treasured, reading them again and again, over and over.
She was standing there, wondering what book to pull from the shelves, when she heard the familiar squeak of her father’s new and expensive Marco Perella deck shoes – the squeak was coming from outside, which surprised her since she was sure her father was tucked up in bed. She dimmed the light and peeped out of the window to check out what he was up to, but it was not her father she saw, but rather their neighbour, Niles Lemon, putting out the trash. He had on the exact same deck shoes as her dad and they made the exact same stupid squeak when he walked. They were, as far as Ruby was concerned, label before style, a whole lot of cash to look like a nerd. The only thing was Brant Redfort pretty much managed to look good in anything and Niles Lemon did not.
‘What a bozo,’ muttered Ruby.
Mr Lemon didn’t have an original idea in his whole body. Last month he had purchased the same sunglasses her father wore and, two weeks ago, the same tennis racquet (it hadn’t improved his game). Ruby reached for her yellow notebook, notebook 624 – the previous 623 were kept under the floorboards. She wrote:
Niles Lemon has bought the exact same deck shoes as my dad. A total waste of several hundred bucks.
These yellow notebooks of Ruby’s were all filled with tiny and mundane incidents like this one. Every now and again an event of obvious importance would be added, but usually it was something pretty dull, funny or odd. Most of these happenings had taken place on Cedarwood Drive, plenty in Twinford and a few out of town. Ruby simply noted the things she saw, the everyday-ordinary and the once-in-a-blue-moon weird. This Niles Lemon incident certainly fell into the first category, but then one just never could be sure when something utterly banal was going to become significant. RULE 16: EVEN THE MUNDANE CAN TELL A STORY.
The pencil almost didn’t make it to the end of the sentence before her eyes closed and the yellow notebook fell softly to the floor and Ruby was plunged into dream-filled sleep.
She was attempting to scale a cliff face; a pack of wolves was snapping at her feet: she could smell their fur, feel their claws. She felt a tug on her sleeve and hot breath on her cheek. She let out a squawk and snapped the light on.
‘Jeez Bug, what are you doing creeping up on me like that?’ Ruby sat up and scratched the husky’s head and he licked her cheek again before lying down on the mat next to her bed.
Ruby sighed, shut her eyes for a second time and didn’t open them until daylight crept into the room. The first thought that crossed her mind, the very first thought, was: I failed.
STRANGELY FOR RUBY, she had found herself waking early. It was probably to do with having slept in damp undergrowth for three nights – her body had got used to the idea that it didn’t want to lie down for longer than was totally necessary. Or maybe it was due to the lurking fear that gnawed at her dreams and caused her to stare up at the ceiling, wondering if this was the day when LB would kick her out for good; the Spectrum Field Agent Training Programme did not deal in failures.
She was shaken from her troubles by the marvellous smell which drifted up the stairs, reminding her that grubs and boiled-up bark weren’t on the menu in the Redforts’ architect-designed home.
Ruby pulled on jeans, a pair of Yellow Stripe sneakers and a T-shirt bearing the words don’t even ask. She secured her hair neatly with a barrette and put on her spare glasses. Then she made her way downstairs and into the kitchen.
‘Well, you could knock me over like a bowling alley skittle,’ said Mrs Digby, her hands on her hips and lips sucking in air. The sight of Ruby up before the crows always made the housekeeper react this way. Ruby was no early bird and it was more usual to see her go to bed at five in the morning than arise at that time.
‘How was camp?’ asked Mrs Digby, who was under the illusion that Ruby was on some scouting type of a trip organised by Twinford Junior High – she had been training for it off and on for the past several weeks.
Hitch had taken over all the liaising with the school regarding trips, holidays and general arrangements so the Redford household was in the dark about Ruby’s movements. It hadn’t occurred to Mrs Digby to wonder why on earth the scouting training should take place during school hours, rather than in summer vacation; if Hitch said it was so, then she didn’t question it.
‘It was pretty terrible,’ said Ruby.
Mrs Digby studied her face. ‘You do look terrible, I can see that with my own two eyes, but why is the question I ask myself – don’t you know how to have fun?’
‘Ah, you know what it’s like Mrs Digby, sleeping on bedrolls and eating oatmeal. What’s fun about that?’
‘You had bedrolls?’ exclaimed the housekeeper. ‘You young people don’t know you’re born. When I was a child, we would have thought it was Christmas to sleep in leaves let alone bedrolls. And as for hot oatmeal. . .’ She tutted and left the thought there.
Like Mrs Digby, Ruby also would have been grateful to have found some leaves to bed down in, but she knew if she mentioned how she had really slept and what she had really eaten, or rather not eaten, then the housekeeper would have by now been dialling the scout leader to give him a piece of her mind.
Ruby grabbed the pitcher of orange juice – she could use the vitamin C, her throat was bothering her and she was beginning to feel a bit feverish.
Hitch looked up from where he sat, reading the paper.
‘Nice to see you again kid,’ he said as if he hadn’t seen Ruby for several days. ‘Camp fun, was it? I’m guessing you kids spend your whole time singing and toasting marshmallows.’ He winked at her and she gave him a sideways look as if to say, You’re some comedian.
Mrs Digby tutted again at the mention of marshmallows and it set her off muttering about the privileged generation that was Ruby’s.
Hitch pushed a mug of something hot in Ruby’s direction. ‘This might help, at least for a few hours,’ he said.
Ruby