Casper Candlewacks in the Attack of the Brainiacs! (7 page)

Like Tuesday mornings tend to do, it arrived soon after the end of Monday night. Casper yawned his way down to breakfast.

In the kitchen, Cuddles was bashing her bowl of mashed banana with a plastic fork while Amanda tried once more to make toast. Her latest attempt (putting bread in the kettle) had produced some soggy results and a terrible pot of tea.

Casper checked the cupboards and pulled down the mouse-nibbled box of Funky Flakez. On turning back round, he found Cuddles wearing a proud little grin and an empty bowl on her head. The mashed banana was dripping down the front of the fridge. Cuddles giggled and stuffed her mouth with thirty-seven pence from the kitchen table.

“Now, come on, darling.” Amanda scraped the banana back into the bowl. “Those coins just won't keep you going till lunchtime.”

Cuddles jangled and spat out a penny.

“Growing kids like you need all the food groups: fruit, dairy, jelly, bacon, carbohydrates, spaghetti and… erm… help me out here, Casper.”

The box of Funky Flakez contained some mouse droppings, the ripped plastic bag and a
grumpy mouse, but not a single Flake, Funky or otherwise. Casper put the box back on the shelf. “Mum, leave her. She doesn't like fruit, OK?”

“Ooh, actually,” she chirped, “Cuddles does catch a lot of birds. Are they a fruit?”

“Close enough,” Casper grimaced.

Cuddles squawked like a seagull and batted the mashed banana away once more.

The second day of school awaited Casper at the other end of a tractor 'n' train carriage journey. He groaned into his empty bowl. What he really needed was a bodyguard – a friend even stronger and fiercer than Bash Brewster. “But that's not going to happen, is it, Cuddles?”

Cuddles was busy grazing the varnish off the kitchen table with her fangs.

“Or
is it
?” Casper's eyes lit up and a plan
hatched inside his head like a sneaky newborn chick with a plan inside its head. “Mum?”

“Hmm?” Amanda was trying to light the bread on the scratchy bit of a matchbox.

“Isn't it time Cuddles started going to school?”

“Oh, is she old enough? What age is normal?”

“Any age, really. She's very bright.”

Cuddles bashed her head against the table and grinned at Casper with cross-eyes and a penny stuck up her left nostril.

“Oh. Well, it would be marvellous to get a day off. I like them loads more than days on. Could you take her today? See if she likes it?”

Underneath, Casper's heart pumped manically, but he maintained his composure, not looking up from the plate. “Suppose I could, yeah.”

“Oh, thanks, Caspy.” Amanda skipped over and kissed him on the forehead. “You're a gent.”

This day was getting better more quickly than a jet-plane full of cheetahs in a hurry. With Cuddles, Casper had a first line of defence against the Brewsters. “Come on, girl, let's get you to school.” It was tough not to bounce up from his chair and juggle Cuddles down the corridor, but Casper hid his glee, so Amanda wouldn't catch wind of his plan.

Back upstairs, Casper stuffed Cuddles into his
backpack and zipped it closed. Next he searched his cluttered floor for everything else: a dog-eared pad of paper, a cracked biro, a spare yellow tie for Cuddles's uniform and his TuneBrick™, a little music player he'd got last Christmas to drown out Lamp's ramblings. Weighed down with necessaries, he returned to his backpack to find Cuddles standing on top of it, arms held aloft like a champion wrestler, with one foot still caught in the hole she'd gnawed through.

“Cuddles,” Casper groaned. “That was my favourite bag.” (By ‘favourite' he meant ‘only'.) Luckily, he had a spare roll of gaffer tape. Unluckily, the bus left in fifteen minutes.

Twelve minutes later, Casper tumbled down the stairs with something resembling a silvery beehive that squirmed and screeched like he'd snared a pair
of weasels. “OY! Behave back there or you're not coming,” He jiggled his backpack up and down to keep Cuddles quiet.

“See you tonight, Mum!” Casper shouted, slamming the door a bit too hard and taking the doorknob with him. He shrugged and stuffed it in his pocket.

Casper sprinted so fast that all Mrs Trimble saw running past her window was a blur (but then she had lost her glasses). Casper careered down the street, through the park, into the square and on to the train carriage so fast he never noticed Betty Woons soaring about in her new rocket-powered wheelchair, or Mitch McMassive standing on an upturned bucket and reciting poetry to a small but captivated crowd, or Mayor Rattsbulge roaring with joy as he discovered the chemical symbol
for sausages. Neither did he notice Jean-Claude sneaking off towards Lamp's garage or even the four new inventions sitting at the doorstep of
Bistro D'Escargot
.

If he had noticed, he would've thought,
How odd…
but he didn't, so he didn't.

Sweating like Mayor Rattsbulge at a pie museum, Casper squeezed down the aisle of the carriage, avoiding the flight paths of paper
aeroplanes and Ted Treadington, and plonked down next to Lamp just as the tractor grumbled into motion, jerking the kids backwards in their seats.

“Hullo, Casper.” Lamp barely looked up, furiously scribbling on a piece of paper covered in dense pencil scrawls and a complicated diagram involving an eagle and a garlic crusher.

“What's that?”

“It pipes the choclit sauce into choclit croissants.” Lamp chewed his pencil, shook his head determinedly and rubbed out a whole corner of calculations (and the garlic crusher). “I'm putting in a nuclear reactor.” He scribbled lots of numbers over the eagle's wings and then, when he ran out of space, drew another wing and scribbled on that.

“Oh.” This was wrong. Casper knew Lamp like the back of his own hand (two brown freckles and a scar from the pigeons). His were simple clunky contraptions invented off-the-cuff that took weeks of oily explosions before they finally worked. But now he was messing around with
nuclear reactors
? That was far too clever for Lamp. Wasn't it?

But that wasn't it. More changes struck Casper as he looked about the bus. Across the aisle, Milly and Milly Mollyband, who spent yesterday's bus journey pinching each other, were reciting times tables. Samson Jansen was recreating Botticelli's
The Birth of Venus
with felt tips on the front of his pencil case. But the biggest change, and the only one Casper could explain, was Anemonie Blight. She sat snarling on the back seat with her
arms crossed, not doing any bullying at all. In the end, Ted Treadington was so confused that he trotted to the back and handed his lunch money to Anemonie, anyway.

“What's the point?” Anemonie spat. “They'll only nick it once we get there.”

“Oh…” whispered Ted, and he put the money back in his pocket.

A muffled snarl distracted Casper from his frowning. Below the seat, his backpack was trying to eat itself.

“Shh,” whispered Casper, gripping the backpack a little tighter between his legs.

A light rain pattered on the windows like tiny goblin fingers. Grey concrete buildings lumbered out of the smog and the tractor pulled right off the main road.

“Here we go again.”

Casper shuddered to think what role Snivel was playing in his brothers' game of football – if you're interested he was playing the role of goalkeeper's gloves – but he didn't stick around to find out. He fled with Lamp and the other Corne-on-the-Kobb kids, straight through the playground and into school to find the maths room.

“Hey, Candlewacks,” smirked Anemonie Blight, plonking her pink bag down on a desk at the back. “Blown up your restaurant yet?”

“Actually, last night went quite well,” said Casper proudly.

“Not what I heard.” Her pointy nose wrinkled. “I heard you're gonna be driven out of the village cos the Frenchman's a better cook than your daddy.”

“He's not!” shouted Casper. “All he does is omelettes!”

“But such lovely omelettes,” Milly and Milly Mollyband chimed in together.

“Crispy
and
juicy!” added Ted Treadington.

“Hah!” Anemonie snorted. “Looks like you'd better start packing, Candlewacks.”

Casper felt his skin prickle. “How do you know, anyway? I didn't see you at either restaurant last night.”

“As if I'd eat your swill.” Anemonie turned her nose to the ceiling. “I'm the heir to Blight Manor, not some common serf like you. I'm three-hundredth in line to the throne. I'll get my servants to cook my dinner.”

Casper had been to Blight Manor. He knew Anemonie had no servants. The house itself,
once the grandest in the Kobb Valley, was now a crumbling rotten heap with half a roof. Nevertheless, Anemonie Blight and her pointy mother thought themselves too important to be seen eating in public. Casper would get no support from her.

“Look, my dad's going nowhere, whether you like it or not,” Casper said confidently. “You just wait and see.” He wished he could share the confidence of his voice. In truth, he was terrified.

Snivel appeared five minutes later, a bit wobbly, but still in one piece, give or take a few clumps of hair and a tooth that he didn't want, anyway.

Then the maths teacher, Mr Flanty, pranced in. He had a floppy fringe and an orange Hawaiian shirt with palm trees and mongooses on it. He'd
also brought a guitar. He popped himself down on a stool at the front of the class and tuned up.

Casper groaned.