Look into My Eyes. Lauren Child
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child drew a truck on her chalkboard.
Her father smiled and patted her on the head. Meanwhile, the driver folded his map, thanked Mr Pinkerton and returned to his vehicle – waving to him as he drove off. The yellow hand-shaped leaf fluttered to the ground. The woman, now minus the picnic basket, walked on by. She had a fresh scarlet scratch on her left cheek.
The child spelled out the truck’s license plate with her alphabet blocks.
Her mother tidied them away and dressed her in a red woollen bobble hat and matching mittens.
The family left the house and strolled down Cedarwood drive. When they reached the grey clapboard house, the little girl paused to pick up the yellow leaf, and there underneath it, found a small tin badge embossed with an image of something. What was it?
A sudden cry shook the stillness of Cedarwood Drive. A cry that cut right through the heart of the child. She gripped the badge tightly and felt the pin dig into her palm. The neighbours came spilling out onto the street to find the kindly Mr Pinkerton doubled up with grief. Despite the best efforts of the Twinford Crime Investigation Squad – a search which continued for sixteen weeks – Mr Pinkerton’s prize-winning Pekinese dog was never seen again.
It was on that October day that the little girl resolved to dispense with the toddler talk and brush up on her language skills. More importantly, that was the day she set her sights on becoming a detective.
The little girl was Ruby Redfort.
WHEN RUBY REDFORT WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD she won the Junior Code-Cracker Championships – solving the famous Eisenhauser conundrum in just seventeen days and forty-seven minutes. The following year she entered the ‘Junior Code-Creator Contest’ and stunned the judges when they found her code impossible to break. In the end it was sent to Harvard University professors, who eventually managed to solve it two weeks later. She was immediately offered a place for the following semester but declined. She had no interest in becoming, as she put it, some kind of geek freak.
Some several years later…
You can never be completely sure what might happen next
RUBY REDFORT WAS PERCHED ON a high stool in front of the bathroom window, her binoculars trained on a cake delivery truck that had been parked on Cedarwood Drive for precisely twenty-one minutes. So far no one had emerged from the truck with so much as a blueberry muffin. Ruby gurgled down the last dregs of her banana milk and made a note in the little yellow notebook which lay in her lap. She had 622 of these yellow notebooks; all but one was stashed under her bedroom floorboards. Though she had taken up this hobby nine years ago, no one, not even her best friend Clancy, had read a single word she had written. Much of what Ruby observed seemed pretty mundane but EVEN THE MUNDANE CAN TELL A STORY {RULE 16}.
Ruby also kept a vivid pink notebook, dog-eared and smelling of bubble gum, and it was in this that she listed her Ruby rules – there were seventy-nine so far.
RULE 1: YOU CAN NEVER BE COMPLETELY SURE WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN NEXT. A truth no one could argue with.
Ruby was a petite girl, small for her years – at first glance a very ordinary looking kid. There was nothing particular to mark her out – that is, nothing until you looked a little longer. Then you would begin to see that her eyes were ever so slightly different shades of green. When they looked at you it was somehow hard to remember the point you were arguing. And when she smiled she revealed small doll-like teeth which somehow made it impossible to consider her anything other than a cute kid. But the most striking thing about Ruby Redfort was that when you met her you felt a strong need for her to like you. The bathroom phone rang; lazily, Ruby reached out and groped for the receiver.
‘Brandy’s wig salon, hair today, gone tomorrow.’
‘Hi Rube,’ came back the voice on the other end; it was Clancy Crew.
‘So Clance, what gives?’
‘Not a whole lot actually.’
‘So to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?’
‘Boredom,’ yawned Clancy.
‘So why don’t you get yourself over here, bozo?’
‘Well, I would you know Rube but my dad wants me home – he’s got some kinda embassy type function and he wants us all smiling, you know what I mean?’
Clancy Crew’s father was an ambassador and there was always some function or other in progress. Ambassador Crew liked to have his children scrubbed and serving canapés to prove what a great family guy he was – though truth to tell he was usually too busy to even remember their birthdays.
‘Some people have all the fun,’ drawled Ruby.
‘Yeah, my life stinks,’ said Clancy.
‘So cheer yourself up why don’tcha. Scoot yourself over, watch a few toons and you’ll still be home in time to smile for the camera.’
‘OK Rube, you’ve talked me into it, see you in ten.’
Ruby put down the phone. It lived on a shelf with two others: one was in the shape of a conch shell, the other disguised as a bar of soap. She had a whole lot more of them in her bedroom. She had been collecting telephones since she was about five years old, all in different shapes and colours. The donut phone was her first – the latest, a cartoon squirrel sporting a tuxedo. Just about all of them had come from yard sales.
She was about to continue her bathroom-based surveillance when the intercom buzzed – Ruby’s parents had sensibly fitted them on each floor to keep shouting to a minimum.
She pressed the ‘speak’ button.
‘Hello, how may I be of assistance?’
‘Howdy,’ came the voice from the other end of the intercom. ‘This is Mrs Digby, your housekeeper, may I please remind you that your parents will be home from Switzerland in two and a quarter hours.’
‘I know, Mrs Digby, you told me that a half hour ago.’
‘Glad you remembered. May I also point out that they may be a little grief stricken to see the state of your bedroom.’
‘It’s my style Mrs Digby – “layered”– it’s very in vogue.’
‘Well may I continue to remind you that some magazine folks are coming to photograph this very house tomorrow and if your mother sees it in its “layered” state, you will be in what’s commonly referred to as “the dog house”.’
‘OK, OK,’ sighed Ruby, ‘I’ll take care of it.’
The Redfort house, dubbed the Green-Wood house, on account of its environmental features, had been designed in 1961 by famous architect Arno Fredricksonn. Even now, a decade or so later it was still considered very state of the art and was regularly featured in architectural journals.
Ruby returned to the bathroom, sat back down on her stool and continued to stare out of the window; the truck was still there but now there was a raccoon sitting on its roof. The bathroom door pushed open and in ambled a large husky dog, which sniffed around before settling down to chew the bathmat.
‘Bored, huh?’ said Ruby, slipping off her stool. She padded into her bedroom and surveyed the wreckage. It was not a pretty sight. Ruby wasn’t so much untidy as she was a spreader – she had a lot of stuff and when she was busy working on something the stuff had a habit of creeping from one surface to another and this was what her mother did not like.
Darn it! muttered Ruby. If the magazine people were coming, her mom would just about freak if this was what they saw. She could almost hear her father saying, ‘for the sake of your mother’s sanity