The Plot Thickens Read online

  ‘I thought you liked computers,’ said Melanie.

  ‘I do,’ said Friday, ‘but computers are everywhere, whereas a quiet space is incredibly hard to find.’

  The girls ambled towards the swamp.

  ‘I just hope they’ve moved some armchairs down there,’ said Melanie. ‘Picnic tables are all very well for sitting, but it’s hard to lie on one.’

  ‘At least it’s near the swamp,’ said Friday. ‘I’m sure you can find a mossy patch of ground that is quite comfortable.’

  When they arrived at the outdoor study area, there were four picnic tables to choose between. But three of the picnic tables had signs on them saying:

  Wet Paint

  ‘That’s not very well-organised,’ said Melanie, ‘to close the study hall, and paint the outdoor study area on the same day.’

  ‘It probably wasn’t arranged by the same people,’ said Friday. ‘The caretaker, Mr Pilcher, would paint the outdoor tables, whereas the Headmaster would arrange tradesmen to renovate the study hall.’

  The girls sat down and started to get their books out.

  ‘Barnes!’

  Friday turned to see, Parker, a year 9 boy, walking towards her.

  ‘Friday,’ said Friday.

  ‘No, I think you’ll find it’s Monday,’ said Parker.

  ‘My name is Friday,’ said Friday. ‘Please stop calling me Barnes all the time.’

  ‘Oh, sorry, Barnes,’ said Parker. ‘Won’t interrupt you for too long. The Headmaster has got me showing this new boy around, thought I should introduce him to you in case he gets himself into any trouble.’

  Friday looked at the new boy. He was very tall, at least six feet, and thin. But his most distinctive feature was his sense of style. He wore all black, and his hair was black with blue spikey tips. In contrast, his face was an almost sickly pale white.

  ‘Are you wearing eye make-up?’ asked Melanie, as she peered at the boy. ‘Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that, it was thoughtless. Clearly, you are wearing eye make-up. What I should have said was, “Why are you wearing eye make-up?” but that’s none of my business, so just ignore me.’

  The boy did not respond, except to turn red in the face.

  Parker was also staring at his eyes now, Melanie’s revelation having made him forget entirely about his reason for being there.

  ‘You were going to introduce us,’ Friday prompted him.

  ‘What? Oh yes!’ said Parker, finally managing to tear his gaze away. ‘This is Epstein. He’s a new boy. He’s going into year 8.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, Epstein,’ said Friday. ‘Do you have a first name? Parker struggles to remember more than one name per person.’

  ‘Epstein is his first name!’ said Parker triumphantly. ‘His surname is Smith.’

  ‘Smythe,’ said Epstein, speaking for the first time.

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked Parker. ‘You’re not pulling my leg, are you? I’m terrible at knowing when people are doing that.’

  ‘Why are you changing schools so late in the academic year?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Friday, I know you like me to point out when you are being socially inappropriate,’ said Melanie. ‘This is one of those times. He might not want to tell us if he got expelled from his previous school.’

  ‘You just made inappropriate comments about his eye make-up,’ said Friday. ‘Why can’t I ask a perfectly innocent question about his schooling?’

  ‘My father got a new job so we had to move,’ said Epstein.

  ‘What does your father do?’ asked Friday.

  ‘Not much,’ said Epstein. ‘Fraud, mainly.’

  ‘That’s what a lot of the parents here do,’ said Melanie with a smile. ‘You should have no trouble fitting in.’

  Epstein didn’t smile back. He didn’t frown, either. He just looked blankly at the two girls, then dropped his gaze to his feet.

  ‘All right,’ said Parker. ‘We’d better keep moving. I’ve got to show Epstein where all the lavatories are. I remember what it’s like to be new. It’s fine if you get confused trying to find a classroom, but things can go horribly wrong if you can’t locate a toilet.’

  The boys turned and walked away. Melanie lay down the length of one of the bench seats with her head rested on a maths textbook. Friday opened her book. She was reading a copy of The Chemistry of Paint and Painting. Friday was finding the chapter on pigments to be particularly fascinating, so she didn’t notice when the picnic table she was sitting at started to move.

  ‘What’s happening?’ said Melanie, as she swung up into the seated position.

  Friday looked up to see the trees move or, as her brain soon processed, she was actually moving relative to the trees. Friday bent over and looked under the table. There was a small electric motor bolted to the underside, with cables running down each table leg. Friday leaned over further and saw what she had failed to notice when she first sat down.

  ‘Someone has embedded wheels in the legs of this table!’ said Friday. ‘And there is a one-thousand-kilowatt engine powering them.’

  At that moment the table started to accelerate. It was heading straight for the pier that reached out over the swamp.

  ‘Jump!’ Friday yelled at Melanie.

  ‘But I don’t like exercise!’ said Melanie.

  ‘Jump off now!’ said Friday. ‘Or in a few seconds you’ll be swimming.’

  Melanie disliked swimming more than jumping. Not that swimming wasn’t pleasant, but because it required washing your hair afterwards. She spun her feet out from under the table, ready to leap clear but then she hesitated. The table had picked up speed.

  ‘Jump!’ cried Friday.

  ‘I’m not sure about this,’ said Melanie.

  But the decision was made for her. The picnic table hit a rock and Melanie fell off. Friday turned to see that her friend was all right. Melanie rolled into the fall and sat up, apparently unscathed.

  Friday spun around the other way to jump off herself; she only had a second before the table was going to drive onto the pier. Friday gripped the edge of her seat, braced her foot against the diagonal leg of the table and pushed to leap off. But she didn’t go anywhere. Something was holding her to the table. Friday looked down to see a long strand of her cardigan caught in a crack in the bench seat. She grabbed her cardigan and tried to yank it free, but the polyester wool blend was surprisingly strong. She was stuck. The table was rattling down the pier now.

  Friday was starting to panic. She yanked her cardigan again, but it didn’t work.

  ‘Take it off!’

  Friday turned back to the bank. Melanie was yelling at her, ‘Take it off!’

  Friday quickly tried to undo the buttons on her cardigan. But the adrenalin that was now pumping through her veins was making her hands shake.

  ‘Take it off!’ yelled Melanie again.

  Friday looked up to see the end of the pier just a few metres away. She grabbed the hem of her cardigan and pulled it over her head. But with the strand still snagged on the bench, this pulled her head down more than it pulled the cardigan up. So Friday’s head was entangled in her knitwear, with her face just inches from the bench, when the whole picnic table drove straight off the edge of the pier and splashed into the water. As the table dropped down, inertia pulled Friday’s head up, so when the table hit the water, momentum slammed her forehead into the hardwood beam.

  As the splash receded, the picnic table was adrift in the middle of the swamp, with Friday floating off to the side, her cardigan-wrapped head slumped on the bench seat.

  ‘Friday!’ cried Melanie. ‘Wake up!’

  That’s when the table started to sink. Timber is obviously buoyant, but when attached to a metal frame and a heavy engine, it is substantially less so. The end farthest from Friday’s head began to tip up, which meant the end with Friday’s head began to sink down.

  ‘No!’ cried Melanie, as she sprinted down the pier (the first time she had run anywhere in several years), but she was soon
passed by someone moving a lot faster. It was the boy in black, Epstein. As he ran down the pier he whipped his black shirt off over his head, revealing a surprisingly athletic if somewhat slim figure, and he gracefully dived straight off the end, reaching Friday in three perfect freestyle strokes. He untangled her from the cardigan just as the picnic table disappeared under the water, grasped her firmly by the arms and swam sidestroke with her back to the pier.

  There was a ladder at the end so Melanie, with the help of Parker who had also run to them, soon pulled Friday out while Epstein clambered up onto the decking.

  ‘Is she okay?’ asked Epstein.

  Friday coughed and spluttered, pulling herself into a sitting position. ‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ said Friday. ‘Just a bump on the head.’ She rubbed a lump on her forehead.

  ‘And you nearly drowned,’ said Melanie.

  ‘I just swallowed a little water,’ said Friday huskily as she coughed some more.

  She looked up at Epstein. He was tall when she first met him, but now that she was sitting down and he was standing over her, he seemed very tall indeed. She met his eyes and said, ‘Thank you.’ She would have liked to have said more but then she had a coughing fit.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Melanie asked Epstein.

  ‘Fine,’ said Epstein. Clearly the short swim had barely taxed his cardiovascular system.

  ‘It’s just that there is black stuff running down your forehead,’ said Melanie. ‘So I wondered if you’d had some sort of head injury, too.’

  Epstein ran his hand across his forehead. His fingers came away black. He blushed.

  ‘It’s hair dye,’ said Friday. ‘Epstein is a redhead.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Epstein.

  ‘Armpits,’ said Friday, pointing at Epstein’s armpits.

  Now Epstein practically blushed purple.

  ‘Don’t tell anyone,’ said Epstein.

  ‘Why not?’ asked Melanie. ‘Being a redhead isn’t so bad … Obviously you can never go out in the sun without burning to a crisp, and people do say that redheads have terrible tempers, and it’s hard to find shirts in a colour that really suits you. But, apart from that, there’s almost no universal social stigma.’

  ‘I got teased a lot at my old school,’ said Epstein. ‘I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it.’

  ‘You saved my life,’ said Friday, coughing up some swamp water. ‘Keeping quiet is the least I can do.’

  They were interrupted by thundering footsteps running down the pier.

  Friday looked up to see Ian sprinting towards her. He came to a skidding halt, panting heavily as he struggled to get air into his lungs.

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asked.

  ‘I thought you weren’t talking to Friday,’ said Melanie. ‘Oh, I see, losing her made you realise your true feelings for her.’

  ‘No, he’s just feeling guilty,’ said Friday.

  Now Ian blushed, although it was hard to tell whether it was with shame or anger.

  ‘You’re the one who put the motor on the picnic table, aren’t you?’ asked Friday.

  ‘I’m not admitting anything,’ said Ian stubbornly.

  ‘What’s that in your pocket?’ Friday pointed at a large lumpy bulge in Ian’s hoodie. ‘It’s a remote control, isn’t it? Let me guess, you were someplace where you’d have the perfect alibi for this prank. Was it choir rehearsal? Cricket practice?’

  ‘He was in detention,’ said Parker. ‘I saw him when I was showing Epstein around the school.’

  ‘Perfect,’ said Friday. ‘Detention is in maths classroom one – which is on the second floor of the science block, which would give you a perfect view of the swamp. You could control the whole fiasco from up there, and if anyone suspected you, you could say you were under close watch in detention. But it all went wrong, didn’t it?’

  ‘Why didn’t you just jump free?’ asked Ian.

  ‘Her cardigan got caught,’ said Melanie.

  ‘Those stupid, ugly cardigans!’ said Ian.

  ‘The cardigan is just an ordinary cardigan,’ said Friday.

  ‘That is extraordinarily ugly,’ said Melanie.

  ‘It’s the motorised picnic table doing speeds of forty kilometres per hour that was the problem,’ said Friday. ‘A problem you caused.’

  ‘It was just a prank,’ said Ian.

  ‘You’ve gone too far,’ said Friday. ‘It’s not my fault your dad is a self-absorbed conman who hides postage stamps in your watch.’

  ‘You didn’t have to make such a public spectacle of finding out,’ said Ian.

  ‘But I didn’t deserve this!’ said Friday, pointing to the lump on her forehead. ‘I just stopped your father from serving a forged court document. I don’t deserve to be drowned in a swamp as punishment.’

  ‘It was an accident,’ said Ian.

  ‘No, it was a nasty, dangerous prank that you didn’t think through,’ said Friday. ‘If my cardigan hadn’t been caught, you’d be sitting up in detention chortling away to yourself right now.’

  ‘Actually, chortling isn’t allowed in detention,’ said Parker. ‘I know, because I got an extra week of detention for doing it once.’

  ‘Stay away from me,’ Friday said, stabbing her finger into Ian’s chest. ‘I won’t be your punching bag anymore.’

  Friday turned and started sloshing back along the pier. It was hard to tell if the water running down her face was swamp water, or tears, or a combination of both.

  Chapter 5

  Stuck

  The Headmaster was still preoccupied with the elusive ‘Red Princess’. He had launched a full search of the school in an effort to find the missing painting. But he hadn’t got very far before the students’ lawyers became involved, and he’d had to go before a magistrate to justify why he’d damaged Tabitha Cooper’s Taylor Swift poster. The corner had torn when the Headmaster had detached the sticky tack to look behind the poster. The magistrate had not been sympathetic to the Headmaster’s argument that he thought there might be a multi-million-dollar painting hidden behind it.

  Things were fairly quiet for the next few days. Ian had been sent on a cricket camp with the rest of the first 11. So Friday was having a pleasant holiday from his sarcasm and pranks.

  Friday and Melanie were idly wandering back to their dorm room after the last lesson of the day, when a huge boy called Dexter came chasing after them.

  ‘Melly, Friday!’ called Dexter.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Melanie. Dexter was a good friend of her brother Binky, so she knew him well.

  ‘It’s Binky,’ said Dexter. ‘He’s stuck.’

  ‘Really?’ said Melanie. ‘In what? I hope it’s not the mud in the swamp. I love my brother, but there are some things I just don’t want to do, and ruining my shoes is one of them.’

  ‘He’s stuck in the vending machine,’ said Dexter.

  ‘Surely, he’s too large?’ said Friday. Binky was now six foot five and very big and muscly.

  ‘Just his arm,’ said Dexter. ‘But his arm’s attached to the rest of him, so he can’t go anywhere. He’s going to be in trouble if one of the teachers catches him like that.’

  ‘We’d better come and see what we can do,’ said Friday.

  Melanie and Friday followed Dexter to the vending machine in the stairwell of the English department. It was tucked in behind the staircase, so it wasn’t visible unless you walked right around, planning to buy a snack.

  As they rounded the balustrade, they saw the first indication of the predicament – Binky’s legs. His legs were long, thick tree trunks at the best of times, but now that he was forced to half-lie on the floor they seemed to sprawl out for miles. When Friday and Melanie stood in front of the vending machine, Binky was a sorry sight. His right arm was stuck in the release tray at the bottom, his left arm holding his torso off the ground. It looked very uncomfortable.

  ‘Hello Melly,’ said Binky cheerfully. ‘I’m so glad to see you.’

  ‘What happened?’
asked Melanie. ‘Were you stealing a chocolate bar?’

  ‘Gosh, no,’ said Binky. ‘But that’s why I sent Dexter to find you. I know it looks that way. I don’t want a member of staff to catch me red-handed. Or red-armed.’

  ‘Then why is your arm stuck in a vending machine?’ asked Friday.

  ‘He was hungry,’ explained Dexter.

  ‘I don’t follow,’ said Friday.

  ‘I always get a chocolate bar from this vending machine every morning after first period,’ said Binky defensively. ‘The rugby master has me on a weights program before school and I get really, really hungry.’

  ‘Binky!’ exclaimed Melanie. ‘That doesn’t make stealing all right.’

  ‘But it wasn’t stealing,’ argued Binky. ‘I put in my money. The machine just didn’t give me a chocolate bar. Really, it stole from me!’

  ‘So you decided to take the law into your own hands?’ asked Friday.

  ‘I didn’t think it would be this difficult,’ said Binky. ‘The chocolate bar looked so close. I thought I’d easily be able to reach it.’

  Friday peered into the machine. She could see the problem. Binky’s arm had twisted up inside the machine successfully, but in his attempt to reach the Mars Bar, his cuff had become caught on the spiral that held the chocolate bars upright.

  ‘Well, you are only millimetres away,’ said Friday. ‘But you’re snagged on the spiral of the screw conveyor.’

  ‘The what?’ asked Binky. ‘That sounds painful.’

  ‘No, it’s just a simple screw,’ said Friday. ‘A coil, really. It works on the same principle as an Archimedes’ screw. The screw will push things forward without actually moving forward itself.’

  ‘Still don’t follow,’ said Binky.

  ‘It’s a simple but brilliant piece of technology that an old Greek guy thought up two thousand years ago,’ said Friday. ‘He came up with it as a way to irrigate the plains of Egypt. And now vending machine manufacturers use it as a way of distributing candy bars.’

  ‘That’s progress,’ said Melanie.