The Extincts Read online

  “What is it?” I asked. Its body was the size and shape of a large mango. I counted the tentacles. Eight. I shuddered, remembering what they had felt like on my bare skin. “Is it an octopus?”

  “Kraken. Only a baby, but it’s getting too big for the bathtub. This time next year it’ll be the size of a garden shed. Not full grown, of course. Not for another century.”

  “A hundred years?” I stared at the kraken. It stared back at me. “How big will it be then?”

  “Have you ever been to the Isle of Wight?”

  “Once.” I nodded. “On vacation.”

  “Well, about that big.” Leaning against the sink with his hands in his pockets, the boy inspected me. “What are you, anyway?”

  “Me? I’m … er … I came about the job.”

  “Numpty Numbskull’s job?” The boy raised an eyebrow. “Think you’re up to it, do you?”

  “Yes,” I said firmly. If somebody called Numpty Numbskull was up to it, so was I. Whatever it was. “Mrs. Lind said I was the Right Person.”

  The boy shrugged. “In that case … She’s as daft as a wet parrot sometimes, but she makes up her own mind, and it’s never any use arguing. You can’t be any worse than Numpty. I’ve known beetles with more brain than him. Didn’t know the difference between February and Friday, and couldn’t count past nineteen. And that was using all his fingers and toes.”

  “Wouldn’t that make twenty?”

  “Not in Numpty’s case,” said the boy. “Don’t make assumptions. But he was quite good at acting out Viking poetry on the kitchen table in his pajamas. Can you do that?”

  “Um, not really.”

  “Oh well.” The boy hunched his shoulders. “It used to pass the time on a winter evening. Can you make pine needle porridge?”

  “Pine needle…? No.”

  “Pine needle soup?”

  I shook my head. Perhaps I wasn’t the Right Person after all.

  “Pine needle fritters?”

  “I could learn.…”

  “Don’t!” said the boy. “They’re disgusting. The whole house used to smell of burnt Christmas tree. Mrs. L. pretended to like them. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but if you ask me…”

  He stopped. A furious squawking was coming from downstairs.

  “Dumb-cluck bird’s stuck in the cat flap again. All feathers and no brain.” As he spoke, the boy tweaked another fish from the tank and tossed it into the bathtub.

  “The poor fish!” I said, watching its tail thrash as the kraken caught it.

  The boy spun around to face me, his eyes glittering and fierce.

  “Listen,” he hissed. “We have a lot of mouths to feed here. All of them like their food fresh. If you’re going to get all squealy and squeamish every time somebody gets eaten, then you’re really, really not the Right Person for the job—”

  “I won’t,” I said quickly. “I won’t squeal, or … or have squeams. I am the Right Person. I promise you. I want the job—I really do!”

  * * *

  “What on earth’s that?” asked the boy when he set eyes on Sir Crispin at the bottom of the stairs. “Is it meant to look like that?”

  “It’s Mrs. Poker-Peagrim’s pug.” I untied the leash from the banister. Sir Crispin was yapping at something. A lonely feather, shiny blue-black, like a magpie’s wing, lay on the hall flagstones, rocking in a puff of air.

  “Dumb dog!” I tugged at the leash.

  The boy picked up the feather. With an odd little twitch of his shoulders, he put it in his pocket.

  “He’s not as dumb as you think, Mrs. Poker-Peagrim’s pig.”

  “Not pig, pug.”

  The boy shrugged. “Whatever.”

  At the sound of his voice, another burst of angry squawking broke out from behind a closed door. I wanted to see what sort of bird gets stuck in a cat flap, but the boy just gave the door a kick.

  “Shut your beak, featherbrain!” he ordered. “Or I’ll come around behind you and poke you through that cat flap with the carving fork. I mean it—I’m hungry.”

  There was silence, then a bit of bad-tempered proop-prooping, but it wasn’t very loud.

  “She thinks she’s safe because she’s too fat to fit in the oven,” said the boy darkly. “But we have sharp knives and a very large saucepan. There’s more than one way of cooking a bird, you know.”

  Out in the stable yard, Sir Crispin hid behind my legs, whining unhappily.

  “He can smell it,” said the boy.

  “Smell what?” I sniffed the air.

  Smoke.

  Little frilly wisps of smoke were squeezing through the cracks in one of the stable doors. As I watched, the wisps darkened and thickened. I could hear crackling … Fire.

  “There’s somebody in there!” I said urgently. “The TV was on—I heard it.”

  “Only Grissel.” The boy didn’t sound at all worried. “She does it for attention. And when she wants the channel changed.”

  “Who’s Grissel?” I asked.

  “Grissel’s … just Grissel.” He was looking up at the sky.

  “But—shouldn’t we do something? Call the fire department?”

  “What for? Anyway, no phone.”

  “No phone?” What sort of house had no phone? “I could go for help. I’m a fast runner. Where’s the nearest house? They’ll have a phone and—”

  “I said no phone.” His eyes were still on the sky. “And no people. I’ll deal with it. It’s better if you go.”

  I looked at the fire extinguishers on the porch.

  “I can help.…”

  “No, you can’t. You’ll just get in the way. Go.”

  He didn’t say good-bye. He didn’t even look at me. Staring upward, he seemed to be concentrating on something I couldn’t see, like someone doing a really difficult sum in their head.

  * * *

  As I rounded the corner of the house, I stopped and looked back. The boy still had his face turned up to the sky, his eyes fixed on the clouds. He drew his jacket around him as the first raindrops began to fall.

  Clouds? Rain?

  Five minutes ago, there had been nothing up there but clear blue sky. Now it was growing dark as clouds rolled in out of nowhere, blotting out the sun. The boy didn’t move. Nor did I. I hardly noticed my sodden T-shirt and dripping hair as the rain came tipping down on the burning stable and the spiral of smoke grew thinner and fainter, and finally died out altogether.

  It was all over, as suddenly as it had started. The boy shook himself like a wet dog and turned to go back into the house. By the time he closed the door behind him, the sun was shining again.

  If the Squermington Wyrm had been in the woods as I walked home, I’d probably have tripped over it without even noticing. My head was full of Wormestall. I was in a hurry to get home and check out a few things on the Internet. Things like krakens and Early Mammals, and whether anyone had ever been able to control the weather. I wouldn’t say anything to Mum or the girls. They would only laugh at me and make annoying jokes about Overactive Imaginations. Let them go on thinking Wormestall was an ordinary farm.

  It would be my secret.

  FOUR

  THE WEEK STARTED badly. Miss Thripps was having one of her Moody Mondays. We hadn’t even gotten through roll call, and she was already moaning.

  “I’m sick and tired of you boys at the back talking all the time,” she told us. “I’m splitting you up. Joshua, go and sit next to Yasmin. Prudence—you can sit next to George.”

  Prudence was new. All I knew about her was that she had red hair. I’d only noticed because Nathan had been teasing her about it, out on the playground. Not orange. Red, like blood, with fierce dark eyebrows that frowned a lot. The frowning might have been because of Nathan. Nathan has about three and a half brain cells. His favorite thing is making people cry: new kids, little kids, weird kids, substitute teachers—anyone. He’s good at it. But it hadn’t worked with Prudence. Yet.

  Prudence sat down beside
me. I didn’t look at her. She didn’t look at me.

  “As this is Prudence’s first day,” said Miss Thripps after roll call, “I think it would be nice if she introduced herself to the class. We can practice our listening—nicely, Nathan—while she tells us all about herself.”

  Sideways, I glanced at Prudence. She looked as if she wished she were somewhere else.

  “Stand up, Prudence,” said Miss Thripps, “so we can all see you.”

  Slowly—very slowly—Prudence scraped back her chair and got to her feet.

  We all looked at her, waiting.

  Nothing.

  “Well?” said Miss Thripps.

  Prudence shrugged.

  Miss Thripps’s smile was dying. “Why don’t you start with your family, dear? Do you have any brothers and sisters? What about your parents?”

  “I have my mother’s hair,” began Prudence, at last. “And her eyes. That’s what everybody says. I don’t have any of the rest of her. She’s dead. I don’t have a father, either. He was killed. By a hippopotamus.”

  A ripple of interest washed through the class. You could see Miss Thripps wondering if she had made a mistake.

  “Hippos are very dangerous beasts,” she said. “Did it happen in Africa, dear?”

  Prudence shook her head.

  “No. At a museum.”

  Miss Thripps looked a bit surprised. Before she could say anything, Lakshmi’s hand shot up in the air.

  “If you haven’t got a mum and you haven’t got a dad, who do you live with?”

  “My stepmother.” Prudence said the word “stepmother” the same way I might say “Brussels sprouts.” Her nose wrinkled as if something didn’t smell good. “Diamond Pye. She’s a taxidermist.”

  “A taxi driver?” said Miss Thripps. “That’s a very useful thing to be. I had to take a taxi myself, just the other day, and—”

  “Not a taxi driver,” Prudence interrupted her. “A taxidermist. She stuffs things. Birds. Animals. And … things.”

  “Eeeeww!” said several of the girls, making faces.

  “Is it dead?” asked Dean. “The stuff she stuffs?”

  Prudence nodded.

  No one but me heard her add, “By the time she’s finished, it is.”

  * * *

  On the playground at recess, Nathan had another go at making Prudence cry.

  She was leaning against the jungle gym when he barged into her, making her drop the book she was reading.

  “BLAAARGH!” he roared, opening his mouth very wide. “I’m going to eat you! And your dad. I’m a hippopotamus!”

  Actually, he did look quite like one.

  Prudence picked up her book. “Hippopotamuses are herbivores,” she said. “They don’t eat meat. Everybody knows that. And another thing,” she added. “There’s never been a hippopotamus nearly as ugly as you.”

  “Prudence Pye! That is a very unkind thing to say!” Miss Thripps was on playground duty, stalking about, sticking her nose into other people’s business and getting it all wrong, as usual. “You’ve hurt poor Nathan’s feelings. I think you should apologize right now!”

  Prudence shrugged. “Sorry.” Her nose was already back in her book.

  She looked as if she didn’t care. She looked as if she was reading—but she can’t have been, because her book was upside down.

  * * *

  Nathan wasn’t on the playground doing hippopotamus impressions at lunchtime, because he was in the principal’s office, being told off. He’d been in trouble twice. The first time was for laughing at Jamie May, who was crying because his dog, Peanut, had run away and not come home. The second time was for telling Aisha and Katie that the Squermington Wyrm was hiding in the girls’ bathroom. None of the girls would go in there after that. They just huddled outside with their legs crossed.

  * * *

  When the bell rang for the end of the day, Miss Thripps kept Josh back. He had been drawing spaceships in his English book again. I was hanging around outside the school gates, waiting for him, when a car screeched to a halt beside me. Roof down, music thumping, it parked with its near wheels up on the pavement, practically running me over. I leaped backward, squeezed up against the school railings, and stared.

  The car looked fast, expensive, and mean. And pink. Bright, shiny pink. You couldn’t really see what the driver looked like, because most of her face was hidden by her sunglasses. Her hair was long and loose and slippery—and the same color as the car. Bright, shiny pink. She was sucking a lollipop.

  The horn blared sharply, making me jump. Then I saw Prudence. She came out of the gates, head bent, rummaging for something in her schoolbag. At the second blast of the horn, she looked up and saw the car. Schoolbag hanging from her hand, she just stood there.

  The woman took the lollipop out of her mouth. It was pink.

  “It’s like waiting for a snail,” she complained. “Hurry up, girl!”

  “I said I’d walk.” Prudence’s face was blank, like a piece of paper with nothing on it.

  Pink fingernails tapped on the steering wheel. “Well, I’m here now.”

  “I want to walk,” said Prudence.

  “Other children—nicer children—would say thank you. You—that boy there!” The woman jabbed her lollipop at me. “You’d like a ride in this car, wouldn’t you?”

  “Mmm…,” I said. I don’t really like being told what I’d like. “Actually … well, it’s a bit pink.”

  The woman laughed—a clinky, tinkly laugh, like the wind chimes Mum has in her shop. Wind chimes can be really annoying. “You men,” she said. “You’re such scaredy-cats—afraid of a color! Prudence, get in the car.” The wind chimes had stopped tinkling. “Get in now—or you’ll be spending the night you-know-where.”

  Prudence flinched as if someone had hit her. She got into the car. As it disappeared around the corner, I noticed the license plate: 5TUFF U.

  I wondered, just for a moment, what it was like when you didn’t have a mum and your dad had been killed by a hippopotamus. Then Josh appeared, kicking his water bottle across the playground, and Prudence went out of my head.

  * * *

  Usually, Josh and I hang out together after school on Mondays. Today it was different: He was going to Matt’s house. They were going to mess around on their bikes. Matt had a new bike—gleaming black and silver, with about a million gears. He could ride it with no hands and you could see him thinking he was the coolest thing on the planet. They were going to look for lost pets. Half the pets in Squermington seemed to be missing. There were posters up everywhere, offering rewards.

  “We’re starting a lost-pet detective agency,” Josh had said.

  “And you’re not in it,” added Matt, “because you haven’t got a bike.”

  * * *

  Mum was in the kitchen when I got home. The Mermaid’s Cave doesn’t open on Mondays. Never any customers on a Monday, says Mum. Never any customers on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, either. But nobody says that out loud.

  The washing machine had broken down. Again. There was a flood in the kitchen, with Mum standing on one leg in the middle of it, doing her flamingo thing. Her eyes were closed and the palms of her hands were pressed together.

  Yoga’s okay, I suppose, but sometimes what you really need is the washing machine repairman.

  “Mum?” I stayed in the doorway, on dry land. “Have you called the repairman?”

  She opened one eye, then shut it again. “The repairman costs money. We can’t afford him. Not again.”

  “Oh.” I looked at the dirty gray suds swirling around the floor. Next-Door’s Cat was marooned on the ironing board. “Where’s all the water going to go?”

  “Shh,” said Mum. “I’m breathing.”

  I had nothing to do. I didn’t even have Sir Crispin to walk anymore.

  “Due to your irresponsible behavior,” Frank had told me, “I have no option but to terminate your employment.”

  “What?”

>   “You’re sacked, stupid.”

  Mrs. Poker-Peagrim had complained. She said I couldn’t be trusted with the care of a sensitive, highly bred animal. I had kept Sir Crispin out too long and made him walk too far. He might have had a heart attack. I pointed out that as I’d carried the fat fur-bag most of the way, if anyone had a heart attack it was more likely to be me.

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Frank. “I’ve finished my essay. And my science. I don’t need you anymore. You’re redundant.”

  She felt in her pockets and down the back of the sofa and gave me some redundancy money, which (she said) was kind of her. I put it in the shoe box under my bed marked, EMERGENCY BIKE FUND—EXTREMELY URGENT!!! But it wasn’t going to get me very far.

  It was the Right Time to go back to Wormestall Farm.

  * * *

  “Mum? I’m going out.”

  “You’ve only just gotten in! Have you done all your homework?”

  “Mmm.” Sort of true. I could study for that science test anytime.

  “All right, then. Don’t be late back.”

  I did feel a tiny bit guilty, leaving her alone in her puddle. Honestly, if Dad had to take tests in being a dad and a husband, he’d hardly pass. I’d just about forgiven him for not letting me have a killer whale, but he could have bought Mum a new washing machine before he left.

  FIVE

  AS I TURNED up the track toward Wormestall Farm, the horned cows were chewing peacefully. The bull lifted his heavy head to watch me, licking his nose with a meaty pink tongue. He must have decided that I wasn’t worth bothering about, because he went back to eating grass. The horse had his back to me, with his nose in the hedge again.

  I was about to clang the bell when I saw the scrap of paper pinned to the door:

  Back soon. Cookies in kitchen. Mind the eggs.

  I wasn’t sure what to do. Was the note meant for me? They didn’t know I was coming. On the other hand, who else were they expecting? People were not welcome at Wormestall—Mrs. Lind had said so.