There’s a hurricane smashing through our house. There’s a hurricane smashing, trashing, bashing through our house. CRASH! BANG! WALLOP!
I read it over and over again. It was a great opening, I was convinced of it. CRASH! BANG! WALLOP!
Chapter Twelve
Wills bought Mom an enormous box of chocolates the next day, and said that he was sorry for upsetting her, and that he would never ever miss school again, and that he was going to try really, really hard to concentrate on his work so that she would be proud of him, and that he had spent all the pocket money he had saved up to buy her the biggest box of chocolates he could find to show her how sorry he was. Mom gave him a hug, but told him that he didn’t need to spend all his money on chocolates for her, and that she would be just as happy if he buckled down and stuck to the routines they had agreed on to help him with his work.
I made up my mind to search Wills’s bedroom. I know it was a real spoilsport thing to do when he was promising to be good, but I had to know if he still had the knife, because I didn’t want him to have it. If I found it I was going to throw it away. I was going to take it as far from our house as possible to get rid of it forever, and if Wills screamed and shouted at me when he found out, then he would just have to scream and shout, because I wouldn’t tell him what I had done with it. NO WAY JOSE.
I had to wait two more days for the house to be empty to grab my chance. Wills had gone off with his friends after school, and Mom wasn’t due back from work for another hour. I ran home as fast as I could, crashing through our gate just as our neighbor was coming out of her front door.
“You’re in a hurry, aren’t you?” she said. “What mischief have you been up to, then?”
“Nothing, Mrs. Hobbs,” I puffed. “Just desperate for a—”
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” she chuckled.
“—bag of chips,” I finished, before dashing into the house.
I couldn’t go straight upstairs. My heart was pounding so hard that I sat down on the bottom step and tried to calm myself. I felt like a robber. I felt as though this was someone else’s house and I had broken in. I was terrified of being caught. Why? I asked myself. If Wills came home and found me, well so what? I would just scold him for being so stupid. And if Mom came home and found me in Wills’s room, then I would tell her why I was there.
It was now or never. I tiptoed up the stairs and stopped outside his door with its ENTER-AND-YOU-DIE notice hanging from the handle. I tapped on the door, just in case, waited a few seconds, then opened it.
I’d seen through the door often enough to know what to expect inside. The room was like a landfill, despite Mom’s efforts to keep some sort of order. The only tidy part was where Wills kept his fossils, on a bookshelf, all neatly laid out and labeled. There was the ammonite he’d shown me, in a place of pride on the top shelf. I was surprised at how many he’d got. I picked up a shark’s tooth, big and white and smooth, and imagined a whole row of them biting into someone’s leg—CRUNCH! YEEOOOW! I could see why you would want to collect a shark’s tooth, but I couldn’t see why you would want to collect some of the other minerals and gems and fossils that Wills had. Some of them weren’t even pretty, just boring bits of rock like you find in the yard or on the beach. Shells would be better, I thought.
I wondered where to start looking for the knife in all the mess that was strewn around. I stepped over several days’ worth of used boxer shorts and socks, and smirked at the thought of Wills doing his usual yell of, “Mo-om, I haven’t got any boxers,” in the next day or so. I went to his chest of drawers and quickly opened one drawer after the other, picking up the clothes, checking underneath, then dropping them back again. Nothing. I poked around in the wardrobe. Nothing. I climbed on his chair and felt on top of the wardrobe. Dust. Years’ worth. I crawled under the bed. More stinky socks, a half-eaten, rock-hard currant bun, 92 million chocolate-bar wrappers, a used wad of chewing gum stuck to the carpet, a magazine, and a polystyrene carton containing a few dried-up fries and a charred edge of ketchup-spattered burger. Lovely.
I began to think that perhaps I was wrong, and the annoying thing was that if I didn’t find the knife I still wouldn’t know for sure that it wasn’t there. I was running out of time. Where else could I look before I gave up? Where else might he have hidden it so that Mom was unlikely to find it? And then I remembered where they hid their loot in gangster-type films I had seen, and police programs where they advise little old ladies not to keep their savings: UNDER THE MATTRESS. It would be just like Wills to hide the knife there, gangster-style (not little-old-lady-style!). I pulled the bedding away from the side, plunged my arms under the mattress as far as they would go and moved them around. Nothing. I did the same at the end of the bed. Nothing. No, something. My right hand hit something papery. I grabbed hold of it and dragged it out. It was a crimpled brown
