The Case of the Exploding Loo (8 page)

“Cyclist,” I squeak. “Watch out for the cyclist.”

Ms Grimm swerves sharply, nearly hitting a lamp post.

“She’s going to invite you to join her freak show,” Holly hisses in my ear while Ms Grimm is distracted. “You have to say yes!”

“Where was I?” Ms Grimm says.

“You were wrapping us around a lamp post,” Holly replies.

Ms Grimm ignores her. “Ah yes, Hawkins, we were discussing your interest in LOSERS. I’ve been considering this for a while and I have decided to enrol you in my school. You will need
to be ready for collection at two p.m. on Sunday – Bah! Idiot!”

I flinch. Then I realise she’s shouting at a pedestrian who’s been foolish enough to stand on the pavement she’s just mounted.

Holly hisses in my ear, “This is the perfect opportunity for us to get inside the LOSERS building.”

Hmmm. What’s all this “us” business? This isn’t us, this is me, and that is
not
how I imagined the investigation going. I pictured Holly doing most of the brave
bits with me taking more of a desk-based-investigator role.

“You have three days to gather your things,” Ms Grimm says, hitting a signpost with her wing mirror. “You must be terribly excited.”

I must? Then why do I feel so sick?

Twenty-three hours and counting until LOSERS come to take me away. What am I supposed to pack? How can I conduct my investigation or contact Holly without my computer? And why
is there a loud speaker attached to the front door?

“GET BACK IN THE HOUSE, SPAWN OF SATAN!” the speaker growls as Holly decides to forget she’s grounded again.

The electronic voice has been going off every few hours, since Ms Grimm dumped us home last night. It sounds like something from the age-inappropriate
Terminator
film Uncle Max brought
round last week – evil and robotic, as if a hundred murderous machines are yelling at once.

“It’s probably an automated response triggered every time we open the front door,” I reassured Holly the first time it went off.

Holly, being Holly, tested my theory by clambering over the Christmas lights and straddling the sill of the bay window.

“BEHAVE YOURSELF, SCRUFFBUCKET, OR SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!” Terminator Voice boomed. “AND TIE YOUR SHOELACES!”

Terminator Voice has a sense of humour. This morning, when Smokin’ Joe tried to hide beneath the front hedge, Terminator Voice bellowed, “I CAN SEEEEEEEEE YOU.” When
Smokin’ Joe loped off down the road, Terminator Voice called after him, “RUN, FAT BOY, RUN!”

I grin at the memory.

“Hey, Spawn of Satan,” I call as Holly slams the door.

She throws a reindeer cushion at me. “Just because you never want to leave the house doesn’t mean we all like living in a prison. That voice is evil. How can it see us?”

“That’s obvious.”

But who? And why? Surely Ms Grimm wouldn’t go to all this trouble?

One thing is clear. Holly’s going crazy under house arrest. I don’t blame her. I just wish she wouldn’t take her excess energy out on me.

“Ow!” I yell. “I like to have fun as much as the next person, Holly, but if you ninja-jump onto my back one more time I’ll . . . I’ll . . . I’ll lock myself
in the bathroom.”

I need space to think. I’ve finally worked out what was bothering me about the plaque beneath Ms Grimm’s statue. It came to me while I was staring at the portrait of Dad, trying to
figure out the strange note in his hand. My eyes were drawn to that blanked-out word:

L _ _ _ _ S?

Eureka!

I grab Holly. “Look! This proves there’s a connection between Dad and the Remarkable Students’ building.”

Holly is less impressed than she should be. “We already knew that.”

“We suspected it,” I correct her. “Now we have proof.”

Holly yawns. “One of your many problems, Know-All, is you waste too much time proving things you already know. Now, if that’s all, I need to get to work. The back door is under
surveillance but I’m pretty sure the cameras don’t cover the back yard or the kitchen. So I’m digging a tunnel to emerge near the gate.”

“Great plan. Definitely not a waste of time. It only took eighty odd prisoners eleven months to tunnel out of Stalag Luft III in World War II.”

Holly’s recoils as if I’ve suggested Santa’s a kitten smuggler.

I feel bad. “On the bright side, it worked a treat for Fantastic Mr Fox.”

That’s enough to encourage Holly.

While my sister smashes kitchen floor tiles with a corkscrew, I go up to my room to check out LOSERS’ website. It doesn’t say much – it’s really just a slide show of
attractive, clever-looking teenagers doing attractive, clever-looking things. I stare at one of the photographs.

Is that . . . ?

No, it can’t be. For a minute I thought it was a picture of Porter, but that’s ridiculous. Isn’t it?

The attractive yet slightly toilet-like face disappears as LOSERS’ mission statement flashes over the top.

“To increase the intelligence of bright young people and contribute to the betterment of society as a whole.”

What’s interesting is what the website
doesn’t
show. No list of staff. No contact details. No record of the people in authority.

“G R R R R R R R R R R R R R - G - G - G - G - GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR.”

I jump up, smashing my knees beneath my desk.

Tim Berners-Lee!

What is that roaring sound? It rises to a whine and then deepens to a throaty grind. Holly must have raided the garage for tools to help with the tunnelling. Don’t tell me she found a
pneumatic drill?

“STOP THAT, THIS INSTANT!” Terminator Voice might not be able to see Holly, but it can obviously hear the racket she’s making.

I shut my bedroom door to muffle the lunacy and continue my internet search. Unfortunately, Google can’t tell me any more about LOSERS or why those letters were written on the picture. I
give my six computer monitors a pat and stroke my Meccano solar system. Why can’t I stay here, at home? Why do I have to go to this mysterious school? I’m not one of those people who
dream of adventure. I’m more the type that dreams of non-adventure.

I wince as the mechanical whining becomes a steady roar. Holly must have wandered into camera shot because Terminator Voice thunders, “HOLLY HAWKINS, PUT THAT CHAINSAW DOWN!”

The driver opens the sliding door of LOSERS’ van and glances at his watch while I take Holly through my list of Things to Remember While I’m Away.

I squint through the front window and wave at the back of Mum’s head. She turns slightly and for a moment I think she might make eye contact, but the moment passes and she
burrows deeper into the sofa.

The driver helps me into the van, explaining that the eleven Remarkable Students inside are on their way back from a field trip to a nuclear power plant. They have paired off, leaving the person
no one else wants to sit by up front, reading a book. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with that person. That person is usually me.

The unwanted student turns and I see it’s not a book he’s reading – it’s a catalogue of portaloo toilets and accessories.

Porter Lewis!

“Porter? What are you –?”

“Shhh.” Porter puts his finger to his lips.

“Why?”

Why didn’t Porter say he was a student at LOSERS? “What happened to you on Thursday?”

“Shhh,” he hisses again. “Talk about something different.”

“Maybe I don’t want to talk to you at all.” I pull out my mobile phone and text Holly, using textspeak in case anyone’s looking over my shoulder.

UR nvr gonna geS hu iz n d LUSRs bus . . . Porter! smTIN wErd goin on.

I can’t believe it. I was right. Toilet-faced Porter
was
one of the attractive, clever-looking students I saw on LOSERS’ website.

“I need a ruler.”

“Why?” Porter asks.

Oops. Didn’t realise I said that out loud. Well, he did ask me to talk about something different.

“You are abnormally photogenic,” I say. “I want to measure your face to see if it matches the rules of proportion.”

Someone sniggers behind me and a paper aeroplane lands in my lap. I unfold it and find a leaflet advertising LOSERS, with Porter’s face plastered across it. No wonder the
other Remarkable Students are avoiding him – Porter is LOSERS’ poster boy.

Porter screws up the leaflet.

“Abnormally photogenic?” He pulls a curl, which immediately springs back into place. “Not with this hair.”

“The hair’s part of it. It makes you look like Michelangelo’s statue of David.”
Crossed with a toilet
, I think, but I manage not to say that bit out loud.
“With clothes on, of course. It would be weird otherwise. Plus, he had a very small . . .”

The sniggers get louder. This might be a good time to stop talking.

No one says much for the rest of the journey. The other Remarkable Students are probably quiet because they’re thinking remarkable thoughts. I’m quiet because I can’t think of
anything remarkable to say and I don’t want to continue the naked-statue conversation.

As we scramble out of the minibus, I notice the name tag on Porter’s bag: “Porter Grimm”. Grimm? I thought he was Porter Lewis?

Porter catches me staring. “Not such a Greek statue any more?”

“
Greek
statue?” Going into Know-All mode helps me stay calm. “Michelangelo’s David isn’t a Greek statue. It was sculpted during the Renaissance. Surely the
Face of LOSERS should know something like that?”

Disturbed by the hurt expression on Porter’s face, I walk straight into the huge grey statue. “Oof!”

Ms Grimm looks even grimmer in the twilight, up there on her pedestal, glaring down at me.

“Watch out for Mother,” Porter warns.

“Mother?!
Copernicus!
” This is worse than I thought.

“Copper . . . whats?”

“Renaissance mathematician and astronomer who proposed that the Earth moves round the sun,” I mutter absently. “Ms Grimm’s your mother? Seriously?”

Porter nods and does an impressive impersonation of Ms Grimm. “‘I’m so proud of my school, I even enrolled my son.’”

As if on cue, the huge double doors swing open, revealing the Grimm Reaper (Holly’s new name for her) in all her gory glory. I scan her face for similarities to Porter and find none. Where
Porter is all symmetry and toilet-bowl curves, Ms Grimm is sharp and pointy with protruding eyeballs that make her look as though someone’s tried to strangle her with the tassels of her ugly
velvet cloak. The dark cape and chalky-white skin give the impression she’s just walked off the set of a Halloween movie and is simply counting the hours before returning to the undead.

She pulls out a box labelled MOBILES and demands our phones.

Before I put mine inside, I send a quick text to Holly:
U wont BLEv dis. TGR iz Porters mum!

“You lied about your surname,” I hiss at Porter. “On top of everything else I’m going to have to delete you from my database.”

“I didn’t lie – Lewis was my dad’s name,” Porter hisses back as Ms Grimm leads us down a long turquoise corridor.

“Whatever.”

“He’s dead now.”

I feel bad about the “whatever”. “Sorry,” I mumble.

“Don’t be. I never met him.”

“Oh.” I’m not sure what to say so I stare at the walls. The internet says turquoise has a calming effect. The internet lies. I grow less calm with every step.

Turquoise Curry in a Hurry boxes, turquoise Kazinsky Electronics vans, turquoise iPods, turquoise-bracelet-wearing taxi drivers and now turquoise LOSERS. Surely there has to be a connection. Dad
says it’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.

I stare at the non-calming turquoise walls and realise:

I read the quotations as we pass. Some make me feel ready to take on the world:

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is
even.

Muhammad Ali

Some make me laugh:

If winning isn’t important, why keep score?

Star Trek: The Next Generation

And some are probably supposed to make me laugh, but don’t:

There’s nothing to winning, really. That is, if you happen to be blessed with a keen eye, an agile mind, and no scruples whatsoever.