Attack of the Cupids (16 page)

‘We should just let Viola and Billie sort it out between them. Mud pies at ten paces. Or maybe teeth and nails.'

‘That wouldn't solve anything,' said Windleberry.

‘It would keep
us
out of it.'

‘And what does it do for Viola and Billie?'

‘But it's their fault! It's Billie's fault, anyway. Why did she have to set herself at Tony?'

‘Is that why you're angry with her?'

(Walk, walk, walk, in the darkness of the thoughts of her mind.)

‘No,' said Sally. ‘All right – it's because she got him to notice her. Why her? Except that she did it by shouting and screaming.'

‘She didn't scream.'

‘No, maybe not. But she did shout. Twice.'

‘And if it had been you he had noticed,' said Windleberry, ‘wouldn't you have wanted Billie and the others to back you up?'

‘You sound just like my dad sometimes.'

‘You know why that is, don't you?'

‘Don't go there,' growled Sally.

Behind them, slumped and forlorn, trailed Muddlespot. He knew he should be at Sally's other shoulder, putting lots of ideas and cunning plans to her that would have all sorts of interesting consequences. His bosses down in Low Command had written whole books on situations like these – big black-bound books
with pages of human skin. If they found out what was happening here he would be bombarded with instructions and suggestions. Probably more than he could read, let alone carry out. Maybe they'd even send a team of consultants! He shuddered.

His heart wasn't in it. His life was misery. He felt physically sick. He could not take his eyes off Windleberry, and yet he knew that he was the one thing that Windleberry most hated, despised and thought lower than dirt. Being with him was agony. Being without him was emptiness.

‘I don't think Tony really cares about either of them!' said Sally.

‘I feel their pain,' sighed Muddlespot.

‘
SHUT UP!
' said both Sally and Windleberry.

‘Sorry,' he mumbled.

‘If only Billie would fall for someone else, maybe it'll all start to die down. But what's the chance of that?'

‘None,' said Muddlespot. ‘Take it from me. No chance. Whatsoever.'

They turned and looked at him then. He folded his arms and fixed Windleberry with a defiant stare.

A thoughtful expression crossed Windleberry's face. One square finger stroked the point of his square jaw.

‘Another golden arrow, another boy for Billie?' snarled Muddlespot. ‘Is that what you're thinking?'

‘Maybe. Why not?'

‘Listen. I've been on the sharp end of one of these things. I know. There's no way you can change what they do!'

‘In some cases – a few – you are right.' Windleberry was still looking thoughtfully at Muddlespot. ‘Even so, there
is
a chance.'

‘Do tell!'

‘The golden arrow causes the victim to fall in love. But for some very rare, very special cases, the cupids have another arrow. A leaden one. It has the opposite effect.'

‘Can you get it? asked Sally.

‘I know where it is kept. I know how to use it. What I need is an idea.'

‘I'm full of ideas,' said Sally. ‘Ideas are what I do. Big ones, small ones, made to order – exactly what kind of idea did you want?'

‘I need an idea,' said Windleberry, ‘of flesh-coloured paint.'

He weighed up Muddlespot with his eye.

‘I should say three buckets of it. At least.'

Sally dreamed that she was under the night sky. Someone was sitting beside her. She liked him being there. She could rest her head on his shoulder and look up at the stars. They were brilliant – thousands and thousands of tiny points of white fire. One slid from its place and flashed across the sky, drawing a streak of light behind it, growing and growing even as she watched.

‘What's that?' she said to the boy beside her.

‘Death,' he answered as he took her hand.

She woke and looked at the darkness. There were no stars, and no one was with her (unless she counted Shades, who had somehow found his way through her firmly-shut door so that he could curl up on her pillow and sneeze into her ear in the small hours).
She felt wide awake, and yet somehow not awake enough to get up and throw Shades out again.

She thought about an asteroid hitting the Earth. That would not be cool. Lots of people might die. Maybe everyone would.

She thought about all the things she wanted to do and wouldn't be able to if it happened. Suddenly she wasn't sure if she had got the right ones, anyway.

She wondered who the voice in her dream had been, and whether it had been Zac Stenton. Zac wasn't just good to look at. He noticed you. He was worth two Alecs and three Tonys, because of the way he'd grin and lift his eyebrow at you as you passed in the corridor. And that gig he had done at the end-of-term assembly had been side-splitting.

She wondered how long she was going to have to lie here before morning.

Then suddenly it
was
morning, and her alarm was beating out Cindy Platter's
I Love Ya Real
. So she must have slept again. She forced herself up, got dressed in a daze and made her bed as she always did. She could hear the family moving around the house. Mum was knocking on Billie's door.

Downstairs for breakfast. Greg, unshaven, was trying to talk to Mum. Mum wasn't answering –
something was wrong between them again. No good asking what. One side of Sally's toast was black and brown, the other practically raw. The toaster had been on its last legs for months. She ate it, anyway. She tried to decide, again, what Marmite really tasted of. She tried not to think what was going to happen at school.

Mum knocked on Billie's door for the second time. If she had to do it again she would shout. Greg slurped his coffee. That was one of the things that Mum hated, but somehow he couldn't stop doing it. One day, soon, something was going to go snap between them. As if there wasn't enough going on already.

Billie was up – unusual that she had managed it before Mum started shouting. She had gone straight into the bathroom, just as Sally was clearing her plate and was ready to go upstairs. Why couldn't she have come down to get breakfast? But no, she was in the bathroom, and now no one else could get in there until she had finished.

Sally's bag was packed. She had done that the evening before – R.E. books, Maths and History, as well as the English for Mr Kingsley. Her games clothes had dried overnight. She folded them and put them in her sports bag. There were no bloodstains on any
of them, which was astonishing. Billie's kit was still hanging on the radiator. It looked as if one of Billie's sports socks had got lost somewhere in the washing process. Probably it had never made it into the machine in the first place. Mum-and-Billie screaming match, here we come.
When
Billie managed to get out of the bathroom.

‘Right,' grumbled Greg, passing in the hall below. ‘I'm off. Maybe someone at the office will be pleased to see me.'

The front door closed behind him.

She'd be more pleased to see you, thought Sally, if you could be the same for her.

Here came Mum, climbing the stairs. ‘Isn't Billie up? I thought I heard her?'

‘She's up all right,' said Sally. ‘She just can't get past the mirror.'

Mum looked at the bathroom door in surprise. She banged on it.

‘In a minute,' came Billie's voice.

‘What's she doing?' said Mum.

‘Her make-up, at a guess.'

‘
Billie's
doing make-up?'

You haven't spotted a thing, have you? thought Sally. Amazing what grown-ups don't notice.

‘But Billie never makes up!' said Mum.

She was this morning. She was making up thoroughly and carefully. And breakfast, sports kit, schoolbags, the whole of the rest of the world, could just wait until she was finished.

Mum banged on the door again. ‘Billie?'

‘In a
minute
, I said.'

‘It's just that we're all waiting out here!'

She had got to the bathroom ten minutes early, Sally calculated. How long could she take over a five-minute job? Fifteen minutes? Twenty? It was ten to eight already.

‘I'll wash my face in the kitchen,' she said. Makeup would have to wait till she got a moment at school. Teeth, until she got back home again. She'd have all day to decide what Marmite tasted like now. Joy.

‘Billie!' Thump-thump-thump.

‘All
right
! Billie catapulted from the bathroom. At the top of the stairs she looked herself over in the mirror, sideways. Sally saw her frown as she took in the profile (or lack of it) of her chest. Why couldn't you have a film star's body parts when you needed them? Too bad, Billie. Find some other way to pull your boy. Preferably without getting the rest of us murdered.

She hadn't done a bad job on her face, though.

She really meant business today.

‘Keep still,' said Windleberry. With a fine brush he dabbed at Muddlespot's cheek. Once.

‘What was that?' said Muddlespot.

‘A dimple,' Windleberry said. ‘At least, that's what it will look like.'

The Inner Sally passed, dressed for school and wiping at her face with a kitchen towel. She glanced at them and frowned. ‘Are you sure that will work?'

‘Of course I'm sure,' said Windleberry. ‘Why shouldn't it?'

Because, Muddlespot thought, I am standing in a coat of flesh-coloured paint.
Thick
flesh-coloured paint. I smell of flesh-coloured paint, I drip flesh-coloured paint, I even sweat flesh-coloured paint. When I move, I'm going to leave flesh-coloured footprints wherever I go. And if I wait till it dries, it'll start to crack and peel and I'll look like a walking encyclopedia of flesh-coloured skin diseases.

‘Just have faith,' said Windleberry.

It was possible, Muddlespot discovered, to be both madly in love with someone and yet to have no faith in them at all.

‘This is.
Not
. Going to work,' he said.

‘Yes it is,' said Windleberry. ‘Wig.' He plonked a wig of soft blond curls on Muddlespot's head.

‘How can you be sure?'

‘I know them. You don't.'

‘Yeah? And how much do you know, exactly?'

‘I was one of them once,' said Windleberry grimly.

Muddlespot staggered. He tried to imagine Windleberry in the wayward chubbiness of a cupid's body. He couldn't do it. Everything about his hero was neat, crisp, straight lines. The jacket, the bow tie, the squareness of his jaw, the littleness of his mouth, even the cut of his fiery hair. He was a dream of geometry, a mass of powerful rectangles and triangles. His circumference at the shoulder was approximately twice that of his waist, and both were trim.

‘
You
were a cupid?'

‘I'm surprised too,' said Sally.

‘The day I left them, I went and locked myself in the Celestial Gym for a hundred years,' said Windleberry. ‘By the time I walked out, no one recognized me.'

‘I bet they didn't.' said Sally, open-mouthed. ‘You pumped iron for
a hundred years
?'

‘Iron? No. I started on White Dwarfs and worked up to Black Holes.'

‘That's gotta hurt!'

‘The pain did not matter,' said Windleberry grimly. ‘All it means for us now is that I haven't the shape to pass for a cupid. And
he
has.' He jerked a thumb, square and powerful, at the hapless Muddlespot.

‘Some of it anyway,' he added.

‘You'll have to do something about his tail,' said Sally.

‘I'm going to. Stay still . . .' He bent down.

‘What are you . . . Ow!' cried Muddlespot. ‘Hey! My tail is part of me! I demand that you show it resp—
Ow!
What are you
doing
?'

‘All done,' said Windleberry, rising.

‘What did you . . .?' said Muddlespot pitifully. He looked down.

It felt as if his tail – his beautiful, long, hairy-tipped tail, which was the pride of any self-respecting demon – had been dragged between his legs, looped once around each thigh and then tied in a tight little bow between his legs with only the tip poking out.

That was what it
felt
like. He couldn't actually see it, because his tummy was in the way.

Sally could.

‘Well,' she said at last. ‘It's in the right place, and it's in
roughly
the right shape. But do you really think he'll get away with it?'

‘They won't give it a second glance,' said Windleberry.

‘How can you be sure?'

‘They'll all be averting their eyes.'

It was half a mile from the Jones house to the gates of Darlington High. It
could
be done in five minutes. If they ran.

Aching, sweating, gasping, Sally and Billie pounded into the playground. The bell had gone. The clamour was dying in the classrooms and corridors. Registration was beginning. If you weren't in your place when your name was called, you got a ‘Late'. Last year Billie had clocked up thirty-four ‘Lates' in two and a half terms, which was a school record. After that Mum had made her rule about the twins leaving the house together, since when Billie had been on time (just about) every morning and both girls were a lot fitter than they otherwise would have been.