Obsidian Pebble (15 page)

Intrigued, Oz moved the mouse and tried to shut the page down, but he couldn't. He clicked on the symbol. Immediately, it stopped rotating. He tried to make sense of it. It looked like a weird letter E with the middle arm poking out the back, twice as long as the other two. Oz tilted his head. Could even have been a fork or a trident on its side.

“Oz, if you don't leave now, you'll miss the bus,” sang his mother from the bottom of the steps.

Reluctantly, and with one final glance at the two images, Oz grabbed his school bag and ran out of the door, only to remember that he still had a mouth full of dribbling toothpaste. He did a U-turn and spat out the toothpaste into the bathroom sink before tearing out again.

Sitting on the bus to school, he racked his brain, trying to think what could have happened to his laptop. Had it been infected by a virus? Had Ruff, who was a genius when it came to computers, sent him some kind of message? He was still mulling it over as he bumped into Ellie on his way to registration.

“Mega weirdness,” he said to her questioning face. But he had no chance of elaborating as he followed Ellie's gaze and saw that Pheeps was making a beeline towards them, her expression set in malign delight.

“My father told me that you're selling that dump of yours at last.”

“Did he?” Oz said. “Knows more than me, then.”

Pheeps laughed and it was a high, unpleasant noise. “Everyone knows more than you,” she spat. “I even know how much you got in your maths test Friday.”

“How could you know that?” Ellie said.

Pheeps' eyes sparkled triumphantly. “Badger Breath was marking last lesson Friday afternoon and Daniel Cullen saw the papers. Shame he didn't see yours, Messenger, but it's obvious that maths isn't Chambers' best subject by a long way.”

“Get lost,” Ellie said.

“Have a nice day,” Pheeps said, smiling sweetly.

“I swear, that girl is a witch,” said Ellie as Pheeps flounced away.

“She didn't used to be like that,” Oz said. “It was only after her mother became ill that she started to—”

“Turn into Little Miss Nightmare? I'm sorry, but I don't buy that as an excuse.”

“She was in hospital for over six months,” Oz said gravely.

“You reckon? Don't go feeling sorry for her,” Ellie said exasperatedly. “Besides, she doesn't really know anything. She's just saying this stuff to wind you up. It's just a sick little game to her.”

“Really?” Oz asked, sounding desperate. He hated letting Pheeps get to him, but her mocking had an awful ring of truth to it and he felt his insides twist at the coming lesson. But by then they were at registration, and for once Miss Arkwright was early because she had announcements to make about a forthcoming trip to a pantomime (“Maybe we'll see Badger Breath there,” Ruff whispered). As a result they were late for first lesson, where Mrs. Conserdine, a dour Scottish lady who taught science, insisted on her full lesson time.

That left no time to speak about the laptop, since everyone had to rush to second lesson, which was maths. Although he didn't believe everything that Pheeps had said, he felt that there was probably more than a grain of truth in her carping words. Badger Breath handed out the marked papers without a sound and Oz deliberately avoided his gaze. Even so, it came as quite a shock to learn that he'd come next to bottom, beating only Jenks, who had scored a total of seven percent.

At the top of Oz's paper, in a red circle, was a scribbled ten.

Badger Breath stood at the front, a gleam in his small eyes. “Those of you with less than fifty percent will come back here lunchtime to re-sit the exam.”

There was a collective groan from nearly a third of the class.

“Will they be the same questions, sir?” someone asked.

“Of course not,” Badger Breath rolled his eyes. “And if you get less than fifty percent a second time, you will repeat the exam every day until you succeed in getting more than fifty percent. I suspect it will be a long term with very little lunch for quite a few of you. Now, let us get on with inequalities.”

* * *

At break, Ellie and Ruff were full of commiserations.

“I wouldn't have minded, really, except that megaphone Pheeps knows all about it and is broadcasting it all over the school,” Oz said glumly.

“Forget about her,” Ellie said. “Now, what was it you were trying to tell me before she butted in this morning?”

What with Badger Breath and the test, Oz had almost forgotten about his laptop and the weird images. So he told them as they munched on toast and jam in the refectory. He explained first about the dreams, and then about the black insect image and the funny trident symbol on his screen.

“You haven't sent me anything, have you?” he said to Ruff.

“No way,” Ruff replied, frowning.

“Then someone has been tampering with it, because I couldn't get them off my screen,” Oz said.

“We need to see them,” Ellie said.

Oz thought about the best way to do that all through biology and P.E. But then it was lunchtime and he was back in Badger Breath's class with ten others, waiting for another maths paper. Badger Breath made sure there were empty desks on either side of all the pupils and walked around distributing the papers face-down.

“You have forty-five minutes, starting now,” he said when the last paper was delivered. Oz didn't turn his sheet over immediately. Instead, he watched as Badger Breath took out a flask and some foil-wrapped sandwiches and proceeded to lay out his lunch. As he poured out strong-looking, steaming tea, he looked up into Oz's eyes and gave him a knowing and very unpleasant smile.

Oz dropped his gaze and turned over his paper, his heart sinking in his chest.

Ten more questions. Ten more columns of hieroglyphics. He hadn't even attempted any revision since the last test, not that it would have made any difference if he had. Besides, he hadn't known that Badger Breath would spring another test so quickly. Shaking his head, Oz knuckled down.

This time he'd try and get the easier ones attempted first and do his utmost not to get stuck on anything difficult.

Oz chewed the end of his pen in concentration. Unfortunately, the questions were still all algebra and, as usual, confusion crowded in and the letters and the numbers just became a jumble.

But then something really weird happened. Some of the numbers and letters changed colour. On his left, two desks away, Jenks was drawing a missile on his answer sheet, but the figures on his paper looked black, not green and purple and red like those on Oz's. He turned back to his own paper and rubbed his eyes, but the figures stayed coloured, shimmering slightly as he stared at them.

A momentary panic overtook him. Was he losing his mind? But then Oz saw the different coloured numbers and letters rearrange themselves in his head. They floated and melted together just like in his dream. And when they joined, what resulted was a new colour which flowed from his eyes like ghost images onto the paper. And Oz knew just by looking that the new images—which happened to be all in blue—were ending up as the right answer. Quickly, in case the whole thing faded, he scribbled over the blue letters and numbers, barely managing to stifle an excited giggle. His brain was doing algebra! Somehow, a calculator in his head was doing the maths in colour.

He looked at the next question, and then the next, and exactly the same thing happened in each one; coloured numbers and letters floated off the page and melted to form royal-blue answers, with varying shades as the workings out in between. The ten questions took him twenty minutes. He looked up and saw Badger Breath staring at him curiously.

“Sir, I've finished. Can I get some lunch now?”

Badger Breath tried to swallow, but failed as a lump of biscuit went down the wrong way. He coughed and turned an alarming shade of purple. Oz wasn't quite sure whether it was the coughing or simply pure rage at Oz's apparent impertinence that was transforming him into an aubergine, but finally, after wiping his mouth several times with a paper hanky, he got up and strode over to Oz's desk.

“Lunch? You leave here when you've finished and only then, Chambers,” he said and managed to pepper Oz with foul-smelling biscuit crumbs at the same time. He picked up the paper with a flourish but held Oz's eyes in a contemptuous glare. “Or are we just giving up, eh?”

“I'm not giving anything up,” Oz said, and watched as Boggs scanned his paper. Slowly, the crowing smile slipped from the teacher's face like a greasy egg off a canteen plate.

“But you've finished,” Badger Breath said, frowning.

“I just said that. So, can I go now?”

Badger Breath nodded dumbly, his face a dark cloud of confusion. But Oz didn't hang about. He was out of the door in a flash, feeling several pairs of eyes boring a hole in his spine. He had no idea what had just happened, but he didn't really care.

He could do maths.

He could do algebra.

Just wait until he told the others.

The first thing Oz did after he got home that afternoon was to look at his laptop again. The images were still there, but with a bit of experimentation, he could now make the images smaller by waving the pointer over the top left-hand corner of the screen. But they never went away altogether. He sent Ruff and Ellie some screenshots of the images. Within twenty minutes, Ellie was Skyping him back online.

“Ruff not around, then?” she asked, and Oz detected the little accusatory tone in her voice.

“He has a paper round most afternoons delivering the evening news.”

“Oh, I didn't know that,” Ellie frowned.

“Yeah. That's his only pocket money these days, since his dad is working part-time now that Brockets has cut back.”

“Is that why his dad was painting chalets over half term?” Ellie asked, frowning.

“Yep.”

But they had no chance to discuss this any further as a bleep on the screen brought up Ruff's shaggy-fringed face, and they immediately started discussing the images.

“Wow, these are amazing,” Ruff purred.

“I don't know what the E thingy is, but the other thing looks a bit like my grandma's old jewellery,” Ellie said. Even via the webcam, Oz could see her eyes glinting with excitement. “This is so cool, Oz.”

“Maybe, but the trouble is we can't see how big it really is from the screen,” Oz mused.

“Never mind that,” Ruff said. “The question is, how the buzzard did these images get on your laptop?”

“All I know is that they weren't there when I went to bed.”

“So does that mean that someone sneaked in and installed them while you were asleep?” Ellie asked.

“What, like a screensaver burglar in reverse?”

“Your mother?” offered Ellie half-heartedly.

“No way,” Oz said. “She still struggles with emails.”

“What about Caleb or Lucy Bishop or that Tim bloke?” Ruff suggested.

“But why? And besides, I would have heard them.”

All three of them sat back, befuddled. Finally, they agreed to do some thinking on their own and get back together in an hour or so's time. Oz knew he wouldn't find an answer because he'd been thinking of nothing else since he'd got home. But he was still mulling it over some time later when there was a knock on his bedroom door and his mother called, “Oz, it's me.”

He shut his laptop lid and got up to open the door. His mother stood there with Tim, complete with leather tool belt, in tow.

“Tim mentioned to me that some of the radiators on his side of the house were not working properly, so he's offered to check the central heating for us. That's nice of him, isn't it?” Mrs. Chambers was grinning.

“What sort of checking?”

“Bleeding radiators,” Tim said.

“They're useless, I know,” Oz agreed.

“No,” said Tim earnestly, “that's what I'll be doing. Bleeding the radiators to let out trapped air. Makes them less efficient if there's air in them. Can I come in?”

Oz stood aside and watched Tim fit a key to the top of the radiator under his window, whistling jauntily as he did so. Air hissed out, followed by a dribble of water.

“There,” said Tim. “Fixed.”

Mrs. Chambers grinned and gave Oz a thumbs-up. House maintenance always seemed to make her extremely happy.

“I'll just check the other rooms on this floor, too,” Tim said, very businesslike.

“Would you?” Mrs. Chambers simpered. “I'll leave you to it, then, shall I?”

Oz watched as Tim went into his dad's study and heard his mother whisper, “He's worth his weight in gold, that one.”

Oz shrugged and went back to his laptop just as a chat signal chimed. He accepted the call, and within seconds Ellie and Ruff were both staring back at him on his split screen.

“Well?” Oz asked.

“Nothing yet,” Ruff said.

“I've found something,” Ellie said, sounding pleased with herself. “In fact, I know exactly what that thing that looks like an insect is. It's a brooch, and it's from a sale of Victorian jewellery in a shop in Seabourne.”

“What?” said Oz, astounded. “But how…?”

“Like I said, it looked like some of my gran's old jewellery. I showed her and she thinks it looks a lot like Bakelite, too.”

“Bakelite? Sounds like a sort of bread,” Ruff muttered.

“It's a kind of plastic. All the rage when my gran was young, so she says. Anyway, I did a search for Bakelite brooches online, and this advert came up. ‘A well-preserved Bakelite dress brooch—with missing metal clip.' The shop is called Garret and Eldred Antiques. They even have a catalogue. I've sent the image to both of you.”

Oz opened his email and looked at the image Ellie had scanned. It did look the same, though the quality was poor and it was difficult to be certain.