Chapter 10. Double Trouble
Andy was too dazed to argue and even Stephanie was eyeing the puppies with disfavor, as the three girls ran giggling to Joanne’s bedroom where she firmly shut the door.
‘I don’t like them fighting,’ a woebegone Stephanie said. ‘Can’t you stop them?’ she turned her eyes to Ryan who took a step back as the puppies appeared to be fighting in earnest. One of them had its teeth firmly fixed in the other’s ear , but the sight of unpleasantly sharp white teeth and ominous growling noises made him reluctant to go near them.
‘I’m not touching them,’ he said hurriedly.
The puppies continued fighting until Joanne and her friends had gone out of the room then suddenly they vanished. Stephanie looked around in astonishment as the room returned to its usual tidy state while at her feet two little puppy slippers lay innocently on the carpet.
‘Alicia must have made a wish,’ said Ryan in relief.
Andy shrugged. ‘Well if anything awful happens to them they’ve only got themselves to blame,’ he said. ‘Stephanie, you’d better go home now. You had your wish.’
Stephanie slowly picked up her slippers. They were looking very tattered and stained and one had a torn ear.
‘I don’t want to wear them any more,’ she said sadly.
‘Tough,’ said Andy unsympathetically, as he firmly shut the front door behind her. ‘What a pest that girl is. Thank goodness she’s gone. Come on Ryan, let’s get the Playstation out. I’ll bet I can beat you in the Martian War game.’
‘Not a chance,’ scoffed Ryan.
The next couple of hours were very peaceful, apart from the beeps and screeches as thousands of Martians died lingering deaths under the onslaught of the bombs and laser strikes the boys aimed at them. Andy’s mother arrived back, took one look and shuddered.
‘How can you bear this awful noise,’ she yelled. ‘You’ll both go deaf before you’re twenty. Turn the sound down, Andy.’
‘What?’ asked Andy, intent on annihilating Ryan’s Martian commando team that had crawled inside a large crater for safety.
‘I said turn it down,’ said his mother crossly, turning the knob and reducing the volume by about a hundred decibels.
‘But I like to hear the screaming,’ said Andy in injured tones.
‘Not as loud as that, thank you,’ said his mother firmly. ‘Where is Joanne? Go and see if her friends are staying to lunch, will you? What about you, Ryan?’
‘Um, no thanks. Mum’s picking me up,’ mumbled Ryan, trying to destroy Andy’s spaceship while he was distracted.
Andy groaned and reluctantly went down the hall and barged into Joanne’s bedroom. He came running back.
‘Hey, Ryan. Something is wrong. You’d better come and see.’
‘What? Oh, all right’ Ryan reluctantly put down the hand control and followed Andy into his sister’s room.
‘Look at this,’ said Andy, and pointed to the bed. Lying on the bedspread were three paper dolls with various pieces of paper clothing scattered around them.
‘Oh, cut-out dolls. I remember when Tracey used to play with those. That was years ago.’
‘Take a closer look. Don’t you recognise them?’
Ryan bent closer. One of the dolls was the spitting image of Joanne and the one next to her was identical to Mindy. He didn’t recognise the third but it looked vaguely like the fair-haired girl he had seen hanging around with Joanne, which meant it was probably Alicia.
‘Oh heck. They’ve gone and turned themselves into paper dolls,’ he said with a horrified look at Andy.
‘Heaven only knows what they wished for,’ Andy said. ‘But it’s certainly very peaceful.’
Ryan was horrified. ‘We can’t leave them like that. Where is the spoon.’
‘Oh that was easy. It was here on the bed.’ Andy produced the spoon from his pocket.
‘We’ll have to find someone who can wish on it for us, then get Tracey to chuck it away somewhere no one will find it. It’s far too dangerous,’ said Ryan despairingly.
‘I suppose so,’ said Andy regretfully. ‘It seems an awful waste though. What do you reckon we ask Jason?’
‘Well…’ Ryan hesitated. ‘The problem is that Jason will almost certainly tell Mike. And if too many people know about it they’ll all want to use it. And what if it suddenly stops and someone is stuck with their wish?’
‘Yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. Jason doesn’t believe in magic anyway, so it would be really hard to get him to take it seriously.’ Andy was silent for a few minutes. ‘What about Yecart?’ he asked finally.
Ryan brightened. ‘That might work, but we’d have to tell Tracey about it first. Otherwise Yecart is bound to tell her. They have all sorts of secrets together. They are both pretty miffed, though, because the last spoon didn’t work.’
‘That wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know it wasn’t the real spoon.’
‘Okay. I’ll ask her. Oh look, there’s our car now.’
‘Put the dolls in your pocket,’ suggested Andy, ‘then you’ll be able to show them to Tracey in case she thinks you are making it up.’
‘Good luck,’ called Andy as they drove off.
‘Good luck with what?’ asked Tracey curiously.
‘I’ll tell you later,’ whispered Ryan.
He didn’t realise how much later that would be. As Mrs Hughes pulled into the driveway she gave a cry of delight. ‘Oh look, it’s Marion. I haven’t seen her for ages.’
‘She hasn’t got that Hell spawn with her, has she?’ asked Tracey.
‘Tracey. That’s no way to talk about your cousin. Helena is a very sweet child.’
‘The sweet child is here as well,’ said Ryan with loathing, as the their car pulled up next to a flash BMW. An attractive little girl with golden curls smiled happily as he opened the door and skipped up to Mrs Hughes.
‘Hello Auntie Pamela. My Mummy has just taken me to my tap dancing class and we thought we’d have lunch with you because Daddy is overseas again.’
‘Probably can’t get away fast enough,’ Tracey muttered to Ryan.
‘That’s lovely, Helena. We’re always happy to see you. Hello Marion.’ Mrs Hughes hugged her cousin as Tracey and Ryan exchanged long-suffering looks.
Helena was an only child. As far as Ryan could tell, this meant that Helena could do nothing wrong. She ruled her parents, and anyone else with whom she came into contact, with an iron will masked by an angelic countenance. In vain Ryan and Tracey had protested that Helena was a monster. Their parents were blind to her faults and insisted they entertain her. This normally meant that Helena did whatever she wanted to and blamed Ryan or Tracey for anything that broke or didn’t go her way.
They all trooped inside where Mrs Hughes hastily delegated Tracey and Ryan into setting the table while she organised the food.
‘It’s a good thing I stopped at the bakery on my way home,’ she beamed, setting out a plate of doughnuts next to the bread and salad. Ryan did a swift count. There were five doughnuts – enough for one each. And if his Aunt Marion was on a diet, he might even score another one. They were the sort of doughnuts he liked best. Large and oozing with jam and cream and lightly dusted with icing sugar. He reached out a hand to take one.
‘Have a sandwich first Ryan,’ said his mother in shocked tones. Ryan reluctantly took a piece of bread and spread it with peanut butter before talking a huge mouthful.
‘And what have you been doing lately,’ asked Aunt Marion brightly at the same moment.
‘Um, er, nothing much,’ mumbled Ryan unintelligibly through a mouthful of crumbs.
‘There’s no hurry. I’ll wait until you have finished your mouthful before you talk,’ said Aunt Marion disapprovingly.
‘It’s not manners to talk with your mouth full, is it Mummy?’ chimed in Helena.
‘Helena has such lovely manners,’ beamed Mrs Hughes. Ryan felt betrayed. His mother should be sticking up for him, not praising someone else’s child. H
e scowled at Helena who smiled prettily and took another bite of her sandwich with dainty white teeth.
‘Your mother tells me you are in the school orchestra,’ said Aunt Marion pleasantly. ‘What instrument do you play, Ryan?’
Ryan was forced to endure the torture of question after question as he answered in turn that he played the cymbals, no he didn’t want to be a musician when he grew up, and in fact he didn’t know what he wanted to be. He looked imploringly at Tracey but she had her head down and was fiercely eating her lunch and determinedly resisting all Helena’s attempts to get her to talk. The worst part was watching Helena finish her sandwich and reach for a doughnut. She even ate this neatly, without shedding icing sugar or spurting out cream, which was what always happened to Ryan. Tracey started on her doughnut as well and Mrs Hughes offered the plate to Aunt Marion. Ryan took advantage of the pause in questions to stuff the rest of his sandwich into his mouth. Aunt Marion’s hand hovered over the plate.
‘Oh, I really shouldn’t,’ she said with a tinkling laugh. ‘But I will. They do look delicious and I deserve a treat sometimes. Do you like doughnuts, Ryan?’
Ryan nodded vigorously. The peanut butter was sticking to the roof of his mouth and resisting all his attempts to dislodge it. He chewed desperately as his mother took a doughnut and put the plate down.
‘Finish your mouthful before taking something else, dear,’ she frowned at Ryan who was eyeing the last doughnut despairingly.
Helena finished her doughnut. ‘Ryan doesn’t have very good manners, does he Mummy?’ she asked complacently. To Ryan’s total horror, she calmly took the last doughnut from the plate and put it on her own.