Lauren Child - Feel the Fear

As Ruby scanned the room, trying to work out where exactly the noise was coming from, it slowly dawned on her that the sound was no ringing phone and in fact was almost certainly emanating from her watch, which was tucked away in her desk drawer. The watch was no ordinary Timex, Ingersol or Swiss. This watch was custom made, multifunctional, radio equipped, and though often referred to as a Rescue Watch, its official title was the Spectrum Escape Watch. It had once belonged to Bradley Baker when he was a kid.

Now it belonged to Ruby.

Ruby picked it up and switched it to speak-mode.

‘So how’s the broken arm doing?’ came a perky voice.

‘You woke me to ask me that?’ said Ruby.

‘It’s ten am,’ said the voice.

‘I wasn’t aware,’ said Ruby.

‘Perhaps you should set your alarm.’

‘I don’t need to. I got people like you bothering me.’

‘So the arm, is it giving you any trouble?’

‘Yeah, it’s preventing me from sleeping.’

‘How’s that?’

‘People keep calling to ask how it is.’

‘Is that so,’ said the voice, ‘and how is it?’

‘Itchy,’ said Ruby.

‘That’s a good sign,’ said the voice, ‘means it’s healing.’

‘So people keep telling me. By the way, do you mind giving me some idea of who you are?’ Ruby asked.

‘Oh I’m sorry, did I neglect to say?’

‘Uh huh,’ yawned Ruby.

‘I’m Agent Gill. LB asked me to coordinate your field test. Just wanted to say hi.’

‘Hi back,’ said Ruby scratching her arm with the yellow pencil. She tottered into the bathroom and examined her face in the mirror. ‘So this is a survival test?’ she asked, fake-casually.

‘I can neither confirm nor deny,’ said Gill. ‘When’s the cast due off?’

‘Today,’ said Ruby.

‘That’s good because you’re going to need both arms for this; fitness is key.’

‘Isn’t it always?’ said Ruby.

‘That’s correct, so you might want to get back on your bicycle and put in some miles. Give yourself a bit of a workout.’

‘I would, only I don’t have a bike,’ said Ruby.

‘Sure you do, I’ve seen you riding around, yellow isn’t it?’

‘Green,’ said Ruby.

‘That’s the one,’ said Gill. ‘Yep, you got to get back on that green bike of yours.’

‘It’s blue,’ said Ruby.

‘You just said it was green.’

‘Not any more.’

‘How so?’ said Gill.

‘I sprayed it Windrush blue and gave it to my pal Clancy.’

‘That was nice of you,’ said Gill.

‘Yeah, maybe, but it leaves me walking I guess.’

Gill sighed down the end of the phone line. ‘That’s what you get for being nice.’

‘Tell me about it,’ said Ruby.

‘My advice, take up jogging,’ said Gill.

‘You woke me to suggest I should take up jogging?’

‘No,’ said Gill, ‘I woke you to inform you that you’ll be contacted any day soon, maybe in the next few hours. You need to be on standby.’

‘You contacted me to tell me that you’ll be contacting me. . .?’

‘Correct, I’ll be contacting you,’ said Gill, and hung up.

Ruby’s watch vibrated – she looked at the words that appeared on the surface of the glass that covered the dial.

Be prepared!

‘I’ll count the hours,’ muttered Ruby. The truth was that despite her sarcastic tone she really was counting the hours. Life as it had been before Spectrum recruitment now seemed humdrum. Sure, she could happily live a week or two without the thrill of Spy agency work; her friends were amusing, her family likeable, there were books, there was music, museums, galleries, cinema, diners, rollerskates, the great outdoors, the great indoors, and then there was TV, and of course, ping-pong – all available to entertain, occupy and stretch her curious mind. But Ruby was no ordinary thirteen-year-old; her mind needed a lot of stretching and occupying.

As Ruby set about looking for things to wear she noticed a note, clearly pinned on her door by Mrs Digby. It said:

DON’T FORGET THE DO TONIGHT! 6.30 SHARP. MAKE SURE YOU’VE WASHED BEHIND YOUR EARS (WITH SOAP). PS YOUR MOTHER HAS BOUGHT YOU

A DRESS (YOU’RE NOT GONNA LIKE IT).

Ruby rolled her eyes and began the search for her Yellow Stripe sneakers and a fresh T-shirt. Her eyes settled on one – red with black text, the words pleading: please tell me I’m not awake.

Ruby had many T-shirts, all pretty similar in tone, all bearing slogans, statements or questions, some funny, some impolite, some funny and impolite. They caused her mother great consternation but Ruby wasn’t the sort of kid to let someone else’s opinion get in the way of her wardrobe, particularly not her mother’s.

‘You’ll appreciate me one day,’ Sabina would often say.

‘Mom, I appreciate you now,’ was always Ruby’s reply, ‘it’s just these outfits you keep buying me are causing me to appreciate you less than I would if you didn’t buy them.’

The intercom in Ruby’s room buzzed. ‘Yuh huh,’ said Ruby into the speaker.

‘This is your housekeeper, you know, the wretched old lady who attends to your every need?’

‘Hullo Mrs Digby, what can I do for you?’

‘Just reminding you about tonight,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Your mother and father want you hosed down, dressed, shoes shined, standing at the front door by six-thirty sharp.’

‘You already told me that in your note – anything else you wanna repeat?’

‘Yep, six-thirty sharp – be there or be in peril.’

Mrs Digby had been housekeeper to the Redforts for just about ever and she knew Ruby inside out and back to front. And one thing she was sure as eggs is eggs about was that Ruby Redfort would never be winning any punctuality award. She was a terrible time-keeper.

The buzzer buzzed again. ‘There’s a note from your father, stuck to the refrigerator.’

‘And?’ said Ruby.

‘And what?’ said Mrs Digby.

‘And what does it say?’

‘If you got your lazy self down here you could see for yourself.’

The housekeeper hung up and Ruby went downstairs to find something to eat.

The note was still fixed to the refrigerator. It read:

Dr Shepherd has found time for you in his schedule. Be at the St Angelina hospital at 1.15 pm. My chauffeur Bob will collect you from the house at 12.30 and return you home. Do not take the subway. And seriously, honey, don’t be late, the guy is doing me a big favour here. Love Pop.

Ruby looked at her watch; she had more than a couple of hours before she needed to be there. Time enough to check out the vintage store on Amster and find a dress she might want to wear to the evening’s event. Obviously she wasn’t going to wear the dress her mother had picked for her. But maybe if she wore a dress it would make Sabina happy.

She got lucky – the dress she particularly liked fitted perfectly, or at least would once she applied a little sticky tape to the hem. She also found a cool-looking old paperback thriller that she thought might be an OK read. Her dad would doubtless have booked his chauffeur to pick her up way early and she would rather read her book in the sun than in an air-conditioned waiting room. She would make a call.

As she was leaving she caught sight of the payphone in front of the store. She dialled her father’s number and was put through to his personal assistant.

‘Hi Dorothy, Sabina Redfort here. Look I’ve decided to drive Ruby to the hospital myself, you know how it is with kids, I just want to ensure she gets there on time and I know Bob’s a wonderful chauffeur and all but can he wrestle a teenager into a car on time? I doubt it. . .’ (Ruby laughed in exactly the way her mother would.) ‘Yes Dorothy, I hear you! So if you could cancel Bob, I would be very grateful, oh and don’t tell my husband he will think I’m being a worry worm. . . It’s wart? Really? Worry wart?’ (She laughed again.) ‘Bye, bye, bye.’