Storm (23 page)

He doesn't even answer, too busy giggling in kid mode.

My brother-brat has amassed a “World's Deadliest” collection of creatures.

How—HOW?!—has he been able to do this?!

Yeah, I am SO going to have to talk to my dad.

Unable to bear the horror of the conservatory, I wander into the kitchen. Oh, my brother has truly excelled himself. But the first thing I see is my grandma's cookie tin—and I pick it up and I cuddle it.

It's such a sty in that kitchen, anyone would need a cuddle. It takes a few minutes to see the true scale of his stupidity and naughtiness—but you can smell it right away. Above (high, high above) the smell of human and animal food is a jumble of weird, chemically burned smells, more powerful than the stink coming from the front room.

The kitchen isn't just an animal-feed restaurant; it isn't just a Dan snack bar. It's a lab. The contents of one of those advanced chemistry sets—the kind of thing a kid like Darius Spratt probably had when he was five but is really meant for older teens—are scattered all over the table. And I mean scattered: there's powder and liquid stuff spilled out of tubes and containers. A mess in which half-eaten packets of cookies and chips lounge. This makes me and the Princess's science-lab excursion seem as carefully controlled as anything they would dare to do in school. This glass rod, intended for the stirring of lethal boiling mixtures of toxic chemicals, is shoved in a bowl of noodles. My brother has been cooking up instant noodle snacks on top of a Bunsen burner that is connected to a MASSIVE gas canister—in glass beakers that have had
knows what in them. It is beside the point that I may have just done a similar-ish thing myself. The beaker I used looked very clean indeed, whereas Dan's—

I pick up another beaker that still has
knows what still in it; stinky, scorched chemicals coat its sides. I sniff and choke.

“Ru?” Dan says. He's leaning against the door; the Princess stands behind him, petting her new guinea pig.

I shake my head at him, still choking. He shrugs…uncomfortably. He knows this is bad.

“I'm trying to find a cure,” he says.

Oh boy, this is worse than bad. On the table, there's a bottle of clear liquid. On the bottle there's a label; a label Dan has drawn a skull-and-crossbones on. He has copied it very accurately from the labels on the various other lethal substances.

“What's in there?” I ask quietly, pointing at the bottle.

“Water,” says Dan. He goes into emergency squeak-speak. “I use gloves! I'm really careful! Look!” he squeals, shoving his hands into a pair of proper hospital-type gloves…

“STOP!” I bellow, before my idiot brother can grab the water. “Don't you touch another thing in here. Don't you EVER touch ANY of this stuff again.”

A distant bell clangs.

He looks like he's going to cry.

The Princess shuffles, bothered by the bell that keeps clanging.

“What is that?” I ask.

“Dinner,” says Dan.

Unbelievable. My dad is letting my brother run wild.

I AM GOING TO HAVE TO HAVE A SERIOUS CHAT WITH MY DAD.

“Come on, then,” I tell them, shooing them out of the room.

I stand, holding the front door open—and holding my temper.

“You'd better leave Pretty here,” I hear Dan tell the Princess. “She'll be OK.”

It'd be hilarious—if I wasn't so mad. That guinea pig is the ugliest one I ever saw.

I stalk back to the house, the kids trailing behind me…then Dan comes trotting to catch up with me. “Ru,” he says, “you won't tell Dad, will you?”

Honestly, I feel so exhausted and sad just looking at his worried face.

“No,” I tell him. “But you're not to touch any of that stuff again, OK?”

He's relieved, I can see. Brother-brat beloved nods.

“We'll get rid of it. And we're gonna have to get rid of the scorpion and the snakes.”

His mouth opens in protest.

“You can't keep stuff like that. You just can't.”

His mouth clamps shut in a tight line. A further thought looms up in my mind.

“What do they eat anyway?”

The tight line of my brother's mouth wavers.

“What have you been feeding them, Dan?”

“Casualties,” he mutters. “From the hamster wars. I wouldn't kill things, you know that.”

Yeah, only yourself
, I think.
Like I want to kill my dad right now
. “Get inside,” I tell him.

He grabs the Princess's hand, and they run for the house.

“You're not the boss of me!” he shouts over his shoulder.

Brother-brat be-teenaged beloved.

Dinner is pretty much a rerun of lunch, only, my dad and Tilly-Dilly are now drinking wine, so they're even more oblivious to the plight of the children around them. Dan is keeping a watchful eye on me, just in case I change my mind and tell on him after all—or make out like I'm going to—which, in our old life, would have been tempting.

You'd think my dad would use this occasion to consider the responsibilities of his new family, but apparently my explanation for the existence of the Princess is enough for him (“She's just a kid I found. She's doesn't speak”), and even more shockingly, it appears he is in no hurry to listen, with tears in his eyes, to the heart-rending account of my survival—elements of which, like the fact that I am a
FREAK
, would have to be missed out. I mean, I guess I will tell him that (“YOU SHOULD LEARN TO KEEP QUIET”), but as it's the sort of thing that's way off the imaginable scale of terrible things to tell, and as I'm
dog dead
very tired, I think it can wait until tomorrow. Or the day after. I've had enough trauma, and there is no telling how he will react. If I can even get him to listen.

Tonight, he is listening, enthralled, as Tilly tells us all about a zoo trip she once went on with a bunch of kids and how it all went horribly wrong when one of the kids freaked out on the “treetop” walk climbing thingy and refused to come down the zip-line.

I am listening to a woman I don't know, telling a story I don't care about, from a time that no longer exists. About a subject—fear of heights—that I do not find in the least bit funny.

Though I am keeping my mouth shut, I am raging internally. Not because it is a really boring story—it is, though my dad seems fascinated—but because I have this weird feeling that the real point of this story is not even how Tilly saved the day, and isn't she so marvelous, but what a pain kids are. And what idiots they are. And even though I have just seen for myself evidence of the truth of this, it makes me mad. And when my dad laughs, it makes me furious. Seems to me there might be a lot to be said for being silent like the Princess. Seems to me sometimes it might be better not to speak.

“Right, bed, then?” my dad says to Dan when dinner is done.

I expect Dan to kick up; he'd kick up even if it were one in the morning…but it's only half past eight and it's not even a school night, is it?

“Sure. Night,” says Dan, and kisses him AND Tilly.

He really is a little creep, and I make sure he knows I think that with an “I'm wise to you” stare when he has the nerve to come and kiss me good night too. He grins like a monster at me. Brat.

“You can sleep in my room if you like,” Dan tells the Princess. “I don't mind sleeping on the floor.”

The Princess trundles off after him. You'd think someone would go with them to make sure the whole bedtime thing happens in a sensible manner—but no. My dad is fiddling with the DVD player. He can rig up a generator, but he can't do basic “Press play” technology.

“You wanna stay up and watch a movie with us?” he asks.

This I would have snatched at. This would be such a gorgeous thing…in the past. Right now I would rather eat second helpings of what he just served up for dinner than sit and watch a film with…I can hear her, Tilly, clattering away behind me, clearing up dishes.

“No thanks, Dad. I'm really tired…”

BECAUSE I JUST CAME THROUGH MONTHS OF TERROR TO GET TO YOU
, I think—and I try to think it hard enough so he comes to his senses and says something a little more meaningful and sympathetic than…

“OK, night then, Ru,” which is what he actually says.

He does then manage to tear himself away from fiddling with the DVD player for long enough to give me a kiss. “It's good to have you home, my lovely girl,” he says, then goes back to pressing the wrong buttons.

I could sort it out in a second.

I take pity on him; he is my father after all. I set the DVD up to play. He beams. “Night, Dad,” I say. My heart feels melty and strange.

“Good night, Ruby,” the Tilly woman dares to say. “We could have a chat tomorrow, if you like?”

I do not like.

I squeeze a lemon-juice smile at her for the sake of my dad.

I'm not in with Dan. I've got a room all to myself. I bang on his door as I pass, though, and shout for him to shut up and go to bed, because I can hear him messing about, laughing.

It goes quiet, and I hear a massive
thump!

I know exactly what he'll be doing, building himself a Dan nest on the floor—which is just a good excuse to fling bedding around and jump on it.

Before the rain, I'd be in there doing it too…or when I got older, I'd pretend to disapprove and then—
thump!
—randomly fling myself down on it too.

It was really funny.

Part of the fun was you knew you were going to get told off; only I bet that doesn't happen much in this house. It is going to tonight. I wait until there's another massive
thump!
then fling the door open—for one tiny second, I hear what I couldn't hear outside: the Princess, making this sweet, soft, breathless giggling. She stops immediately; she's standing on the bed, about to take a dive into the pile of duvets. The brother-brat has a pillow at the ready, to dump on her when she lands.

I'm instantly distracted (and shocked) by the state the brother-brat's room is in. Like really, anyone would think he'd been holed up here for years, not weeks. It is a terrifying boy-mess of items and clothes—and from the smell of it, I wouldn't be surprised if he has pets lurking in here too. He's also been having a go at his own graffiti art; the walls are colorfully sprayed with his own name, over and over. Brother-brat's working on a tag for himself.

“It's good, isn't it, Ru?” he says. “I wanna do the sitting-room wall, but Dad says I've got to practice first.”

“It's brilliant,” I tell him. “Now, you two! Go to bed!” I shout at them.

It's not proper shouting; it's that pretend shouting parents do—you know, playful with a hint of I-might-flip-out-soon-for-real.

Dan does a comedy dive onto his nest—but the Princess isn't ready for this. She just sinks down onto the bed. She thinks I am totally serious. More stuff inside my heart feels strange. I can't handle this.

“Night,” I say and shut the door.

THUMP!
Dan flings the pillow at the door.

I lie on my bed for ages. Even when those kids finally shut up, giggling and bed-bombing, I cannot sleep.

I just want one night of not thinking.
I am safe
, I tell myself. I do feel safe. Safe for now.

This house my dad picked is not a good house. The piece of land it's on sticks right out into the estuary; there is WAY too much water around, but at least the house is modern, so it's all double-glazed and sealed up…but, boy, with that oil-fueled stove going, it is HOT. I feel like I can't breathe. I get up and—it's raining out. Not pouring down, but feeble stratus-type rain.

What do you care? Just open the window,
freak.

I take hold of the handle…I twist it open…but I can't do it. I can't put my hand out into the rain. That was how my mom died, wasn't it? Just putting her hand out into the rain. Just trying to help someone.