Mo Lottie and the Junkers Read online

  I tried again to talk to him when we were putting our trays away, but he hurried off while I was scraping the beans off my plate. I started to call after him, but then I noticed a folded-up piece of paper stuck to the bottom of my plate. I looked around, but nobody was watching me and giggling, like they were pranking me. A secret note! I was rather excited, so I opened it immediately. I expected it to be a letter from an admirer telling me that they had fallen madly in love with me. But it wasn’t a love letter.

  I’d now like you to look at Exhibit B – aka The First Note Of Destiny:

  YOU ARE IN GREAT DANGER! DO NOT TRUST ANYBODY! PEOPLE ARE NOT WHAT THEY SEEZM! THE JUNKERS COULD BE ANYWHERE!!

  My first thought was that there was a rather thrilling use of multiple exclamation marks. My second thought was that I had no clue what ‘Junkers’ were, but they sounded dirty. My third thought was that I wanted to show Mo.

  A bunch of girls dragged me into their game. Not knowing who was a true friend, I played and laughed along, keeping an eye open for Mo. Finally, one of the boys kicked a ball out of the MUGA, so I made a big show of running around with it, so that I could look for him at the other side of the playground.

  At last, I found him, sitting on a wall and chatting away to Jax. He wouldn’t talk to me, but he would talk to the doodler? I was deeply offended.

  From the moment I met Jax, I didn’t like him. He was strange and arrogant and he didn’t seem to care what I thought of him. It was completely unacceptable. And there he was, buddying up with Mo while stuffing his face with forbidden sweets. Mo must have noticed them, because I saw his face change suddenly, as he said something to Jax.

  ‘Now you’re for it,’ I said, waiting for the argument that would end with Mo stomping off to be on his own. Mo doesn’t like people who break the rules.

  But then I saw Mo smile, take a sweet and put it in his mouth. Just like that, he had turned to a life of crime. I didn’t know what I was most annoyed about: that Jax hadn’t offered me his illegal sweets instead of Mo; or that Mo had gone over to the dark side for Jax when he would never do anything even slightly risky with me. Mo had only known Jax for about two seconds, while we were practically family. It was exceptionally infuriating and it made me wonder if I knew him at all.

  If the note was a trick, who had sent it? And if the note was real, my life was in danger. Either way, I didn’t know who I could trust. And that included Mo.

  ‘Mo and I have decided we want to invent some kind of reuniting device,’ Jax said, showing me some diagrams he and Mo had been working on behind my back.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Mo has a collection of things he’s found and he wants to get them back to their owners.’

  ‘And we’ve done some research here at school and the lost-property situation is getting out of hand,’ Mo said.

  ‘The school office has been overwhelmed with items that have been left over the years,’ Jax added.

  ‘So we will design a solution to this problem.’ Mo said, in a voice that sounded like he’d been practising his lines.

  ‘Sounds boring,’ I said. ‘We need to think of something with more wow.’

  ‘Two votes to one,’ Jax said, giving Mo a secret smile. ‘And we have good news: the Head has given us permission to go through lost property to help us with our invention.’

  He wiggled a bunch of keys in my face.

  We went to the lost-property cupboard, which was basically a small room, with shelves on the walls, cupboards and drawers and piles and piles of stuff.

  ‘Do we not need some kind of plan of what we’re actually going to make, before we look through these mouldy old things?’ I said.

  ‘We have to be methodical, Lottie,’ Mo said. ‘We’ll go through and document each item and put the information into a database.’

  ‘Inventions are supposed to be exciting,’ I said.

  ‘Inventions are supposed to be useful,’ Mo huffed.

  ‘Let’s just get looking, shall we?’ Jax was already rooting through a heap of rags.

  ‘Are you looking for something specific, Jax?’ I said.

  ‘Of course not,’ he said, without glancing up. ‘Just thought it might trigger some more ideas.’

  ‘Maybe we should do it in a particular order…’ Mo said, looking worried as Jax threw old school jumpers everywhere.

  Honestly, Jax was going a bit crazy, opening boxes and tipping them out all over the floor. It was Mo’s idea of a nightmare. I have no problem with mess, but to me it seemed suspicious, like he had an ulterior motive.

  ‘I’ll start making notes, then.’ Mo opened his notebook.

  ‘Ugh, this tie is covered in hair,’ I said, dropping my bundle in disgust.

  ‘That’s it!’ said Mo. ‘DNA!’

  ‘What?’ I asked, as Jax ignored both of us and kept digging.

  ‘We can design a system to locate the owners of items using DNA. All these items have hair, or skin flakes or bodily fluids on them. We’ll run forensic tests!’

  ‘First, that’s gross,’ I said. ‘And second, we only have a couple of weeks until our inventions have to be ready. That sounds like it’s going to take years of dull, boring work.’

  ‘But it’s brilliant,’ Mo said, ‘We can get all these items, and the ones in my collection, back where they belong.’

  ‘It’s not exciting and it’s not going to work,’ I said. ‘What do you think, Jax?’

  ‘What Mo said.’ Jax picked up a box and shook it. He smiled when it rattled and ripped it open.

  ‘I’ll get some specimen jars and labels,’ Mo said, running off all excited.

  I watched Jax rummaging around in a box and I wondered about my note. I’d only just joined the school, and I didn’t know where to start looking, either for the person who sent it to me, or for these Junkers it was warning me about.

  I sat on a stack of old books and started flicking through a load of dusty class photos. They all had dates on them – I even found one from 1989, which was basically like Victorian times.

  That’s when I came across my first clue. It was a class photo, from ten years ago. I glanced at the smiling faces of the children and noticed one face that wasn’t smiling. Take a look: Exhibit E – front row, three from the right. The miserable boy in the picture had the same straight, floppy black hair as the boy who was right in front of me, emptying the pockets of old school shorts. And even more shockingly, he had the exact same face. It was impossible, but the boy in the Year 6 photo from ten years ago was identical to Jax.

  Mo

  When I ran back into the storage room, Lottie was stuffing something into her pocket.

  ‘What was that?’ I said.

  ‘A tissue,’ she said, ‘I have a dreadful cold.’

  It was not a tissue and she didn’t have a cold. I didn’t know why she was lying to me, but it made me even more determined not to talk to her. Unfortunately, I’d promised Mum we’d walk home together.

  We heard the screech of tyres and angry voices before we even got to the gates. A crowd had gathered at the crossing, surrounding this kid called Leo who was sitting at the side of the road, while his mum yelled at the lollipop man.

  ‘He could have been killed!’ she screamed, pulling Leo up by his arm and dusting him down so ferociously that he backed away from her.

  ‘You see! He’s terrified!’

  ‘Ah, I do apologise,’ the lollipop man said. ‘First day on the job and I’m still getting used to this stick thingy.’ He waggled his lollipop.

  ‘His scooter’s broken! HIS SCOOTER’S BROKEN!’ She pointed at Leo’s scooter which had obviously gone under the wheel of a car. It was one of those black shiny ones, with lights that came on when you were going fast. I knew this because he drove it into the backs of my feet pretty much every day on the way into school. It was badly bent and the front wheel was half off.

  ‘Ooo,’ Lottie said. ‘That boy’s scooter’s broken.’

  ‘Hooray,’ I said, smiling at the thought of walking to school without the skin being scraped off my heels. ‘That lollipop man’s done us a favour.’

  ‘It’s not completely broken,’ the lollipop man said, picking it up. ‘Look – it works!’ He got on it and tried to scoot around in the road. The lights on one side flickered and then went out completely and the front wheel popped off and rolled away.

  Leo’s mum got her phone out. ‘I’m taking pictures and reporting you to the council!’ She pointed it towards the lollipop man.

  ‘That’s out of the question,’ he said, pulling his hat down even further over his face. ‘No pictures. If you don’t put that phone away, I’ll have to take it.’

  ‘You’re a psycho,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be working near our little ones.’

  ‘Ooh,’ said Lottie, who was enjoying herself a weirdly large amount.

  ‘What’s your name? I’m going to write a letter to the school governors!’ Leo’s mum shrieked.

  ‘You’re free to cross, now,’ he said, turning his back on her.

  ‘Not until I have your name!’

  ‘It’s Hector. Now get off my crossing.’

  The crowd went off in their separate directions and Lottie and I reached the kerb.

  ‘This lollipop man is a liability,’ Lottie said, as he straightened his yellow coat. He walked into the road, one hand holding his stick and the other in his pocket, which was so full it was bulging.

  ‘I wonder what he has in his pocket,’ I said.

  ‘Probably the bones of the children who’ve been run over on his crossing,’ Lottie said. ‘Or mouse brains.’

  ‘Why would he have mouse brains?’ She was absolutely mental.

  ‘More importantly, why would he wear yellow when it does nothing for his complexion?’ Lottie said. ‘He’d look much better in a cobalt blue.’

  ‘It’s a uniform,’ I said. ‘I don’t think he got to choose.’

  Hector looked over at us from the middle of the road and frowned.

  ‘I think he heard you again, Lottie,’ I whispered. ‘Why do you always have to be rude so loudly?’

  ‘I’m not going to be rude quietly, am I?’ she said. ‘That’s a much worse way of being rude. Everyone knows that.’

  Hector nodded for all the people waiting on the pavement to cross, but he looked only at us. When we reached where he stood in the middle of the crossing, he suddenly reached out a hand and grabbed me.

  ‘The Discovery Competition,’ he said. ‘You must win. The future depends on it.’

  ‘Oh, er, I’ll try?’ I said, wriggling myself out of his grasp.

  ‘You must succeed.’ He pulled me closer to him and looked right into my eyes. Then he let me go.

  ‘What was that about?’ I said to Lottie when we’d made it over the road to safety. ‘It was kind of creepy.’

  ‘It was extremely creepy,’ she said. ‘And even worse, he touched you with his mouse brain hand. Now you’ve got mouse brain on your sleeve.’ She started laughing.

  I rubbed my sleeve on her face.

  Lorelai and the Thief

  Lottie

  As we walked up to the house, the woman from across the road was coming out of our front door, buttoning up her jacket. She was smiling fakely, showing rows of teeth, which looked too bright and too straight to be real. They practically glinted in the sun. When she spotted Mo and I, just for a second, her smile turned into more of a silent snarl, which was surprising since all we were doing was walking up the steps to our own front door.

  ‘Did I do something?’ Mo whispered. ‘Is my face offensive?’

  ‘No more than usual,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what her problem is.’

  ‘Mo-Bear! Lottie! How was your day?’ Emma said from the doorway. ‘You remember Mrs… Oh, I’m so sorry – I can’t remember your last name?’

  ‘Lorelai is fine,’ the woman beamed back at Emma.

  ‘Why are your curtains always closed?’ Mo said.

  Lorelai laughed and flicked her glossy hair behind her shoulder.

  ‘Did I say something funny?’ Poor Mo looked very confused. His freckly cheeks had turned bright pink.

  ‘Oh, bless you, lovely observant little boy!’ Lorelai reached out as though she was going to pat him on the head or something, but pulled her hand back at the last moment, as though she found him too disgusting.

  ‘She must know about the mouse brains,’ I said.

  Mo nodded.

  ‘So why do you keep the curtains closed, Rapunz… I mean, Lorelai?’ I asked.

  She ran her tongue across her top teeth, ‘There’s a very good reason, actually. Don’t worry, I’m not a vampire,’ she laughed.

  Mo looked uncomfortable.

  ‘I’ve just decorated and bought new furniture.’

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘That was quick.’

  ‘Thank you, angel,’ she said, though I don’t know what she was thanking me for. I didn’t mean it as a compliment. ‘The sun is so bright at the front of the house, and you know it makes colours fade if it shines on something too much. So I keep the curtains closed to protect my lovely things. Having a beautiful home is so important to me.’

  ‘Mewl perowt err,’ Sadie said, which meant ‘it would be more believable if she told us she really was a vampire – what a bunch of …’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I nodded.

  Mo just squinted at her and wrinkled his nose.

  ‘Come on in then, you two – I want to hear all about your day,’ Emma gave us both a squeeze as Lorelai walked down the steps waving goodbye.

  ‘So wonderful to see you again, darling Emma,’ she half sang, as though she was a Disney princess, ‘And thank you for the cookies – I’ll be sure to pay you back.’

  ‘Yes, you too, and no problem at all – do let me know if you need anything else – it must be tough to manage alone when you’ve just moved in and don’t know the area.’

  ‘Yes, very tough, but I know I have a friend close-by now. I’ll pop over after dinner, shall I? Thank you so much! So long!’

  ‘Let me take your bags, my lovelies. I’ll get some snacks and then we can catch up.’ Emma walked through to the kitchen.

  ‘Why is she so obsessed with my mum?’ Mo said, closing the front door.

  ‘Meeeeeoooow,’ said Sadie.

  ‘Ooh, burn,’ I laughed and high-fived Sadie.

  Mo spun around. ‘What did she say? If she said something bad about my mum, I swear, I’ll…’

  ‘You’ll do what, exactly?’ I said, standing between him and Sadie. ‘And anyway, you’re too stupid to understand Sadie, so you’ll never know.’

  Mo

  I really wanted to be alone, but whatever room I went into, someone walked in and started talking to me. It wasn’t cold out, even though it was October, so I snuck into the back garden for a relaxing bounce on my trampoline. Although I’m not a very sporty person, I have always loved my trampoline. I can block everything else out and think about stuff that makes me happy. I get my best ideas on the trampoline.

  I closed my eyes and started thinking about the science competition. I loved science – it made me feel close to my dad and, when I did well, I could tell my mum was really proud. So I was desperate to win. I felt in my heart that inventing was what I was meant to do with my life. I smiled as the breeze tickled my neck and the birds chirped in the trees behind me. I breathed in the smell of grass and let the creak of the springs soothe me as I bounced. For the first time since moving, I felt calm.

  Until I heard the back door crash and Lottie and Sadie came running and yelling up the garden towards me.

  ‘Can we play with you, Mo? Let’s invent a new game which involves the trampoline, a football, the rhododendron bush and this broken flowerpot.’ Lottie said.

  Sadie prodded her with a twig.

  ‘And this magic twig,’ Lottie added.

  I cursed the day these impossible girls had come into my life. They spoke in ways I didn’t understand. They did random things for no apparent reason. They made me feel stupid and stressed. Everything was hard and uncomfortable while they were around.

  For example, Sadie suddenly put her hand under her T-shirt at the back and pulled something out of the back of her pants. Why? Why would someone keep something down there?

  ‘Oh, Sadie – you haven’t been at it again, have you? Dad will go mad,’ Lottie said, as she took the something, which was a folded-up piece of paper, out of Sadie’s hand.

  ‘At what again?’ I asked, even though I knew I wouldn’t like the answer.

  ‘Sadie has a bit of a problem with taking things that don’t belong to her,’ Lottie said, looking at the piece of paper.

  ‘You mean stealing?’ I said.

  ‘She collects things, like you do,’ said Lottie.

  ‘No, I pick up things that have been lost so I can try to get them back to their owners. That is not the same as being a thief. It’s like the opposite of being a thief.’

  ‘Don’t call Sadie a thief.’ Lottie turned to Sadie. ‘Where did you get this, Sades?’

  ‘Prew mew purowt.’ Sadie looked down at the grass as though she felt bad, but I was pretty sure she was smiling.

  ‘So?’ I said.

  ‘She slid it out of Lorelai’s pocket while she was chatting to Emma.’

  ‘That’s really not good – we should probably give it back.’

  ‘Do you want to knock on her door, Mo? Because I know I don’t,’ said Lottie. ‘Besides, it’s just a piece of paper. It’s worthless.’

  ‘Let me see what’s on it.’ I snatched it out of her hand.

  ‘Rude,’ she said, while Sadie looked as though she was going to cry.

  ‘It’s a list of dates, times and numbers,’ I said. ‘The title is “Class X Occurrences Over the Past Century.’