When You Wish upon a Rat (5 page)

The words
Ruth and Rod
were written in pencil underneath
the photo, with one of her mother's big exclamation marks at the end. Ruth sighed heavily. Trust her mother to get his name wrong. Rodney was
never
Rod! Never in a million years.

Ruth remembered so clearly the day that she'd brought Rodney home. While Mary Ellen chatted with her mum in the kitchen, Ruth had slipped past them, past her little brother practicing handstands, and up to her room.

The rat was lying right at the bottom of her backpack under her night things. She didn't want to risk Marcus or Paul or even her parents catching sight of him until she had a chance to at least get a feel for him in her room.

Ruth shut her bedroom door behind her and looked around. Where would be the best place? She unpacked her pajamas and toothbrush, her spare undies and her books. She pulled Rodney out of her bag, marveling at him all over again. She loved his sharp little claws, long pointed nose, and spiky fur. On her bed seemed wrong somehow. What about on the little rickety table near her bed? But there was hardly room for her lamp and her book. No room for a large rat. There was the bottom drawer of the dresser. She could pull him out whenever she wanted to play. But that didn't feel right, either. Putting him
away
wouldn't do. He was no ordinary toy.

In the end, she put him on top of the bookshelf, next to a pretty vase that Mary Ellen had given her the year before. He
looked comfortable sitting there with his tail hanging over the edge.

She sat on her bed and stared up. He looked so wise and humorous. It was going to be such fun waking up every morning and having him up there peering down at her. She lay back with her hands behind her head and wriggled her toes with pleasure. He looked as if he'd been there forever.

“Ruth!”

“Coming.”

Ruth smiled at the rat and gave a wave as she went out the door. She had the odd feeling that he inclined his head as she walked out, but she knew that she was most probably imagining things.

For the rest of the day, Ruth had felt a rush of happiness whenever she thought of the rat waiting for her in her room. And that feeling continued into the next day and then the next. She felt truly and utterly
lucky.

Even when Mary Ellen had gotten so desperately sick, Ruth knew that it was just a matter of time before she got better. Miracles happened all the time, didn't they? There were a million stories on television about people
beating cancer.
Those pessimistic doctors didn't know what they were talking about. That was why Rodney was there. He was special and he would bring them luck.

For the most part, Rodney stayed in her room. He was the
first thing Ruth saw every morning when she woke up and the last before switching off the light at night. She took to telling him about her day as she got into bed. He didn't talk back to her in any
formal
sense, but it didn't matter because she was almost sure that his expression changed. Sometimes he was amused, at other times angry and disapproving; occasionally she could have sworn he was totally bored by her! They had an understanding that if she went somewhere interesting, she would take him with her in the bottom of her bag.

Meanwhile, Mary Ellen got sicker and sicker and sicker.

Ruth got up from where she'd been lying on the floor and tried to shake off the sadness as she put the photo back on the wall and picked up her cup and plate. Rodney was gone now. The way she'd lost him still rankled.
Better to just accept the facts,
her parents had told her.
Other wonderful things will come into your life, Ruthie, just you wait and see!
But what did they know? Not so long after she'd lost the rat, Mary Ellen had died, and then only a few weeks later she'd lost all her friends in one fell swoop.

Not only that, but her former best friend Lou spread around so many stories about her at school that no one else wanted to be friends with her, either. So what wonderful things had come into her life to replace all that she had lost?
Absolutely zilch!
She was nearly twelve and her life was
emptying out,
not filling up.

Ruth ran up to the bathroom to brush her teeth. She had a
free day in front of her and she didn't want to waste it being miserable. She rinsed out her mouth and straightened up and looked at herself in the mirror; she was still tall and skinny and plain.
Too bad!
She decided then and there that she had to
do
something completely out of the ordinary. Something wild and dramatic that she would remember all her life, the way people did in books. If only she could think
what
exactly.

She toyed with the idea of heading into the city. If she stacked on the makeup and found some different clothes, she might just pass for fifteen and be able to get into an R-rated movie. Afterward, she could sit in a café and wait for someone exciting to come along and talk to her. That had happened to her aunt once when she was in Paris.

Ruth closed the bathroom door behind her, wishing she were in Paris and that her mother had some fashion sense so she could rifle through her clothes.

Just then, the front doorbell rang. Strange! It was still very early. Who would be calling at eight o'clock in the morning?

a little out of breath, holding something in a black plastic bag. Howard Pope, the oddball who'd arrived at school the year before, whom nobody much liked, was standing there looking dirty and slightly off-the-planet,
as usual.

“Hi, Howard,” she said.
How did he even know where she lived?

“Craze,” he replied with a sharp nod, no smile. “Can I come in?”

Howard tended to call people by their surnames, which Ruth found kind of interesting. When she nodded, he pushed past her into the hallway. Ruth shut the door and they stood in the hallway looking uneasily at each other for a moment.

“What is it?” Ruth asked bluntly, pointing at what he was holding.

“A camera.”

“Did you steal it?”

“Yeah.” Howard frowned thoughtfully, looking past her
down the hallway toward the kitchen. “But I'm not sure I got … everything,” he mumbled.

“What do you mean,
everything?
”

“Might need batteries and a cable. I don't know.”

“You want to check it out in here?” Ruth turned to open the door into the front room, but he didn't follow.

“You got anything to eat?” he asked in the odd, scratchy voice that always caught Ruth's attention in class.

“Sure.” She led him down to the kitchen, wondering if it was the theft of the camera that made him seem so agitated.

“Was it scary?”

“What do you mean?” He gave her a hard look.

“Pinching it? Did you nearly get caught or anything?”

“Nah.” He sniffed and stared at the ceiling, then walked over to the window and looked out. “Nothing easier.”

Ruth pulled out a chair for him and went to the fridge. He had his back to her now, and she could see that he was trembling. There was not much in the fridge except some cheese and tomatoes.

“Are you cold?”

“Nah,” he grunted.

“So how come you're shivering?”

Howard didn't answer but lifted up both legs of his jeans to his knees. Big red stripes like burns crisscrossed the white skin. He stood there and said nothing, letting her look.

“My old man went ballistic.”

Ruth was shocked. “When?”

“Last night.” He nodded thoughtfully, as if he were finding it hard to believe it himself.

Ruth went to the cupboard above the sink and pulled down the zinc and castor oil cream—her mother's answer to every skin condition known to humankind—and handed it to him.

She indicated the chair again and noticed the way Howard winced when he sat down. He unscrewed the lid of the plastic tub, scooped out some cream with his finger, and began to rub it on his legs.

“Use it all,” Ruth told him. “We've got more.”

Howard nodded and kept applying the cream.

“Sandwich okay?”

“Yeah,” Howard said. He finished with the cream and started fiddling around with the camera on the table in front of him, frowning.

Ruth pulled out the bread and quickly threw together a couple of big cheese-and-tomato sandwiches and put them under the griller, trying to think what to say. Behind her, Howard sighed a couple of times.

“Needs batteries and another cord!” he said, exasperated. “Should have taken the box as well.”

At school, Ruth had heard
of
Howard Pope before she'd even spoken two words to him. Within a week of him arriving at the
school, Lou's phone had gone missing and was eventually found in the bottom of Howard's bag under his smelly socks, along with Justin Appleton's PSP and Melissa Todd's iPod. The fact that all these items were banned wasn't the point. Howard had stolen them
and then left them at the bottom of his bag!

Ruth found that rather intriguing, even though she had pretended to be outraged like everyone else. It had made her wonder about the quiet new kid with the thick glasses and solemn face. Why would he steal something and not use it? After that incident, everyone was wary of Howard Pope, but that didn't seem to bother him too much. Or stop him. Two months later, the police were up at the school looking for missing items from the local electrical shop. A toaster, a milkshake machine, and an electric kettle were found in Howard's locker. Crazy! Why would an eleven-year-old want those things?

He was also known to have stolen a tray of doughnuts and fifteen Mars bars from the school cafeteria and then shared them around with anyone game enough to partake.

After that, most kids at the school had a grudging respect for Howard. They wouldn't be seen dead actually
hanging out
with him, but he had a kind of status. He was the official
school thief.
When anything went missing, everyone blamed Howard, whether he was guilty or not. And the most intriguing part of it all, to Ruth, was that he didn't seem to care.

She poured him some milk.

“So your dad beat you?” she asked after a while.

“Yep.”

“What with?”

“A leather belt.”

“Why?”

“I took a look at his rifle.”

“His rifle?”

“He goes pig shooting. I was mucking around with it and … he caught me.”

“Were you
shooting
it?”

“No way.” He sniffed. “He was at his girlfriend's place, and I didn't have anything to do. So I took it out just to see how it worked. It's a good gun,” he said proudly. “Worth about three grand.”

“Yeah?”

“He only ever hits me when he's drunk or hungover,” Howard added as an afterthought.

Ruth nodded. After her friends dropped her, Howard was virtually the only one in the sixth grade who'd have anything to do with her. Not that the two of them hung out together in any normal sense. That would have attracted too much attention. The two biggest losers in sixth grade becoming friends would have meant being hassled mercilessly by just about everyone. But when there was no one else around they would talk sometimes. She could usually find him slinking around somewhere on his
own, under the peppercorn trees on the far side of the school or near the library. Their conversations were never normal. No talk of how many brothers and sisters they had or what their parents did, nor, for that matter, any discussion of the school or the other kids. Nothing like that. They discussed general things like if it was right to eat meat, or if footballers deserved all the money they got, or if ants felt fear before you stepped on them.

The thing Ruth liked about Howard was that she could never be sure what he was going to say next. Once they were talking about space and how big it was and he told her that the light we see from the stars is actually from
years
ago.

“You mean to tell me that when we see a star we aren't seeing it as it is now but …”