reply.
‘Weird,’ muttered Ruby, replacing the handset.
There was no sign of Mrs Digby – no doubt she was still smarting about the tomato incident. So Ruby swallowed a large glass of orange juice in a single gulp, grabbed her school bag with one hand and a chocolate peanut cookie with the other, and shouted goodbye to her parents, who didn’t hear because they were engaged in a fascinating discussion about which drycleaners might best remove a tomato stain from a silk jacket.
BRANT: ‘Honey, take it to Quick Clean, then you’ll have it back in no time.’
SABINA: ‘Are you kidding, Brant? This is an Oscar Birdet jacket! Do you even know what that means? I’ll take it to Grosvenors.’
RUBY: Oh brother.
Ruby’s bike had a flat so she was taking the school bus this morning.
Twinford Junior High School was two buildings really. One old, grand and in some ways beautiful – a little run-down on the inside but somehow comfortable. The other starkly modern, stylish and sterile. Ruby sauntered into class just before Mrs Drisco, her homeroom teacher, called out her name. Mrs Drisco made the same comment she always made when Ruby was late, and Ruby made the usual faces behind her back.
The truth was Mrs Drisco found Ruby Redfort ‘rather full of herself, utterly unmanageable and impossible to teach’. Ruby Redfort found Mrs Drisco ‘a royal pain in the derriere’.
They were both right.
When it came to teaching the cleverest student in the history of Twinford Junior High, Mrs Drisco was out of her depth. On the other hand, it was a little pathetic for a grown-up teacher to be so snarky.
Once this little pupil-teacher exchange was over, Ruby went and sat down next to Clancy.
‘So was last night fun?’ whispered Ruby.
‘Well, that depends on what you call fun – my sister Nancy accidentally sat on the Spanish ambassador’s dessert,’ replied Clancy.
‘Oh, well at least she got dessert – some of us weren’t so lucky,’ said Ruby
‘What?’ said Clancy
‘Never mind, I’ll tell you later,’ whispered Ruby.
It was the usual Twinford Junior High day, nothing in any way out of the ordinary. Ruby had the usual interaction with her arch enemy Vapona Begwell, which went something like this…
VAPONA: ‘Hey Ruby, can you see outta those glasses because my suggestion would be – don’t look in the mirror if you don’t wanna give yourself a fright.’
RUBY: ‘Why, you gonna be standing behind me?’
There was a mildly interesting geography lesson followed by a mind-numbingly dreary French class (Ruby’s French was already so good that she spent the lesson reading War and Peace in the original Russian). History had Mrs Schneiderman promising in the next week or so to give a lecture on the Jade Buddha of Khotan. ‘My, is it ever the most fascinating story,’ she said. ‘I could talk about it forever.’
‘Meet my folks and you probably will,’ muttered Ruby.
At lunch time Ruby got into an altercation with Mrs Arthur over the let them eat cake T-shirt she was wearing. Ruby was protesting about Mrs Arthur’s strict guidelines about cake – or, more accurately, no cake. Mrs Arthur had banned cake.
MRS ARTHUR: ‘Cake is in no way essential and should not be present in any child’s diet.’
RUBY: ‘Cake is one of life’s great wonders and who would deny wonder to a child?’
All the pupils, with the exception of Denning Minkle, who had a sugar allergy, supported Ruby. However, Ruby was requested to turn her T-shirt inside out or risk a month of detention.
Ruby said goodbye to Clancy, who was being kept behind so he could retake his French vocab test. He was nervous; French made him feel queasy and Madame Loup gave him the shivers.
‘You’ll be fine, Clance,’ said Ruby, as she secretly slipped him an index card. ‘Copy this list onto your arm and you’ll have no problem.’
The piece of paper had all the test answers written in code – the code they had devised a couple of years ago and perfect for a situation like this. To the regular human on the street it just looked like gobbledygook.
Then it was time to catch the bus back to Cedarwood Drive.
Yes, everything was pretty normal. Things only began to get strange when Ruby arrived home.
She swung open the gate and saw that the front door to the house was standing open and a police car was parked in the drive. As she walked up the stairs to the kitchen she could hear the voice of Sheriff Bridges.
Now what is he doing here?
It didn’t take Ruby long to find out. She stood there in the living room, open mouthed.
Everything had gone. Well, almost everything. The telephone was still plugged into its socket and was sitting on the floor. Apart from that the house was as empty as a house could be. Even the dust was gone. It was obvious to anyone, even someone who had never visited the Redforts before, that they had been burgled.
‘Yes,’ said her mother, second guessing her daughter’s thoughts, ‘Every room is full of nothing.’
More of nothing
RUBY TURNED AND RAN UPSTAIRS, right to the top of the house. She went into her empty bedroom and set about pulling at the wobbly floorboards. As she lifted them up she was met by the yellow glow of her 622 yellow notebooks.
Thank goodness, it seemed everything was in order. Next she checked the doorjamb – and was reassured to see that, yes, the 621st notebook was also safe. She checked her other eleven hiding places before breathing a huge sigh of relief.
As Ruby turned to leave the room, she caught sight of her donut phone tucked underneath the bookcase. It was the only remaining phone from her collection and the only remaining visible object in the room. She picked it up and dialled Clancy’s number. He wasn’t home yet so she left a message. ‘Call me, OK?’ Then she went back downstairs. As she walked into the kitchen she adopted an expression of quiet distress.
‘I’m sorry sweetheart,’ said her mother kindly.
‘Don’t worry Ruby, we’re going to track this yoyo down,’ said the sheriff, patting her on the shoulder. ‘I’ll see myself out, Mrs R.’
‘Goodbye Nat,’ called Sabina.
Two minutes later the doorbell rang.
‘Oh, Ruby honey, would you get that?’ asked her mother. ‘It’s probably Nat, he’s forgotten his notepad.’
