Look into My Eyes. Lauren Child
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‘Yeah Del, I know, I’m sorry,’ said Ruby, wincing as she hobbled towards the medical room.
Mrs Greenford the school nurse couldn’t get either of Ruby’s parents on the phone, unsurprising since some time ago Ruby had changed their contact details in the school files. The numbers now sent any member of the staff to an answerphone with the reassuring message, ‘if Ruby should need to come home early today, I am around, please pop her in a cab.’ (Ruby could do a flawless impression of her mother.) This way, if ever she wanted to pull a stunt like this, her parents would not be informed.
Ruby limped off to the taxi.
‘So I’m to take you to Cedarwood Drive?’ said the cab driver.
‘Nah, change of plan – Joe’s Supermart on Amster,’ said Ruby.
The driver gave her a knowing look and nodded. ‘Yeah, I was a kid once – don’t worry, my lips are sealed, sweetheart.’
Don’t call us we’ll call you
WHEN RUBY ENTERED THE SUPERMART her ears were assaulted by the tinny sound of the worst kind of muzak. Ruby caught sight of old Mrs Beesman, who was busy filling her cart with what looked like two hundred cans of pet food. It was rumoured that she had somewhere approaching seventy-four cats but as far as Ruby knew no one had ever been in Mrs Beesman’s house to count them. She noticed Mrs Beesman was wearing ear-muffs.
Smart lady, this music could damage your brain.
Ruby walked slowly round the aisles, studying the shelves carefully until she saw what she was looking for. In the middle of a shelf displaying unnaturally vivid cookies and cakes, she saw an item that just didn’t belong. A box of very cardboard looking Real Health Crackers. They claimed to be ‘delicious nutritious yummy snacks – no sugar no eggs no wheat no additives’, but the truth was the packaging looked tastier than the contents.
Something wholesome in Joe’s Supermart, now that is unusual.
Ruby looked at the price sticker and sure enough, across the top it said, ‘Organic Universe’. The words of the mystery voice came back to her.
‘You can see when something is plum square in the wrong place.’
With the box of crackers under her arm, Ruby left the store and made her way across the street to Organic Universe. The wooden chimes jangled as she entered and the smell of sensible food hit her. She headed straight for the cookie aisle, and there, right next to two boxes of Health Crackers, sat a telephone directory. She replaced the box of Health Crackers she was holding, picked up the directory and carried it over to the phone booth by the door.
Now what? she thought.
Above the phone were hundreds of cards advertising all kinds of different health giving treatments, from colour therapy to Watsu, and then… a card which simply said, Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You.
Ruby took the card down from the board and looked at it closely, but apart from a decorative pattern round its edge, there was no other information. She sat down on the wooden stool by the phone booth and waited. After twenty-five minutes the man behind the counter was eyeing her suspiciously.
DON'T CALL USWE'LL CALL YOU
‘Can I help you?’ he asked in an extremely unhelpful tone. He was a young guy, nervous-looking with a nose which seemed too big for his face. The nose made his face look awkward.
‘No, I’m just fine thanks,’ replied Ruby doing her best to sound casual. ‘I’ll let you know if I need anything.’
The big nosed guy obviously didn’t want to get into an argument with a school kid but he wasn’t about to let her out of his sight.
Ruby silently watched the minute hand tick slowly round the clock face, while the big nosed guy walked around the store, eyeing her furtively. If someone was trying to test Ruby Redfort’s patience, they were doing a good job, though patience was not a thing that Ruby had ever been short of.
However, she was relieved when at exactly two minutes to five, the phone rang. She jumped and almost knocked the receiver off its cradle. ‘Hi, hello,’ blustered Ruby.
‘Am I talking to Ruby Redfort?’ asked that same gravelly voice.
‘Yuh huh, yes,’ confirmed Ruby
‘Good, glad you made it this far. I have a job offer for you – let’s make a date… how about tomorrow night at eight for eight not a minute sooner not a minute later. And keep it zipped.’
‘Anything else you wanna tell me?’ asked Ruby.
‘Yes,’ said the voice. ‘Be lucky.’
No goodbye, just the dial tone.
I guess directions would be too much to ask for, thought Ruby, as she left the store.
On her way back home Ruby stopped off at the green. Up in the tree she found a neatly folded origami cuckoo. She knew what that meant without even reading the note.
THE CUCKOO: a parasite bird who takes over the nest of another by pushing the host’s eggs out and laying its own in their place. If necessary the cuckoo will devour the host-bird’s young.
In other words,
THE CUCKOO: a ruthless killer and imposter.
The cuckoo of course was Hitch. It was classic Clancy Crew – he was joking but kind of serious at the same time. He had a sixth sense for trouble. He was often saying, ‘the thing is Rube, I got a hunch about this’, or ‘trust me, I got a feeling I’m right about that’. He could never explain why he had a hunch or where it had come from but the remarkable thing was, he was almost always right. Ruby unfolded the bird and read the note.
vc spf jdyye l fucefy xrs, C ussxubu ds!
Ruby smiled. It wasn’t easy to fool Clancy Crew. Ruby tore a piece of paper from her notebook, wrote
zvuu lvh miv, dsps mpcxd zcf oiwswuzv?
folded it and pushed it into the knot.
When Ruby got home she saw the same police car once again parked in the driveway, and as she walked up the stairs she heard the familiar voice of Sheriff Bridges and also another voice, a police detective.
‘So you didn’t notice she was gone, Mrs R?’ asked Sheriff Bridges.
‘Well to be honest, Nat, what with everything else disappearing I just didn’t get around to noticing. I wasn’t surprised not to see her yesterday – she said she was going to stay with Emily – but Emily says she hasn’t seen her for two weeks.’
‘Emily?’ inquired the detective.
‘Her cousin Emily – lives in North Twinford. You see the thing is she was offended, she shouldn’t have been, but that’s Mrs Digby all over, she gets offended at the drop of a hat.’
‘Offended? By what, Mrs Redfort?’
‘You know, anything really, it can be the smallest criticism, one has to be so careful, the slightest thing can set her off; I ask her to dust, she thinks I’m criticising, I ask her not to, she thinks I don’t trust her with a duster…’
‘No, Mrs Redfort,’ said the detective, trying hard to hold on to his short temper. ‘I meant to say how did you offend her this time?’
‘Well look, it’s like this Detective,’ interrupted Brant Redfort. ‘Sabina stepped into an argument between Consuela our talented new chef and Mrs Digby our much loved housekeeper – some tomato juice was thrown and Sabina was understandably rather