Molly Moon's Incredible Book of Hypnotism (3 page)

Molly diverted her thoughts to the giant billboard that stood on the edge of the town, displaying a different advertisement every month. Today the message beaming into everyone’s lives was BE COOL, DRINK QUBE. The picture on the huge board was of a man on a beach, wearing sunglasses, drinking a can of Qube. The famous Qube can flashed its gold-and-orange stripes, as if Qube, not the sun, lit up the world. Molly liked the way it was hot looking, and yet had a cool drink inside. Beautiful beach people crowded adoringly round the man who was drinking. They all had wonderful white teeth, but the whitest teeth of all belonged to the guy with the can of Qube.

Molly loved Qube ads. She felt she’d practically walked on the white, sandy beach where this one was set and knew the glamorous people who played there. She knew they were actors and that the scene was fabricated, but she also trusted that this world of theirs existed. One day she’d escape from the misery of Hardwick House to begin a new life. A fun-filled life like the lives of the people in her favorite ads—but it would be real.

Molly had tasted Qube once, when Mrs. Trinklebury had brought in a few cans of it. But the cans had been shared, and so she’d had only a few mouthfuls. With its minty, fruity taste, it certainly was different.

As Molly walked down into the town, she thought how great it would be if simply drinking one can of Qube could make a person popular. She’d love to be popular like the glossy people on the poster. How Molly wished she was rich and beautiful too. As it was, she was poor, weird-looking, and unpopular. A nobody.

Down the hill Molly walked, toward the town library.

She was very fond of the old, disorganized library. It was peaceful, and its thick photographic books gave her faraway places to dream about. Both Rocky and Molly loved it there. The librarian was always too busy reading or sorting books to bother them. In fact, it was the one place where Molly wasn’t the butt of a telling off. And she could relax in her secret place.

She climbed the granite steps and passed the stone lions at the top, going into the foyer. The sweet smell of the wooden-floor polish made her instantly feel ten times calmer. She wiped her feet and padded over to the library bulletin board, where there were messages from the outside world. This week there was somebody trying to sell a water bed and someone else trying to
find homes for kittens. There were notices about yoga courses, tango lessons, cooking classes, and sponsored walks. The biggest notice of all was for the Briersville Children’s Talent Competition the following weekend. This reminded her of Rocky, since he was entering with one of the songs he’d written. Molly hoped he’d win, but then, remembering that she was still cross with him, she immediately stopped herself hoping.

Quietly, she opened the door of the library. The librarian was sitting at her desk, reading a book. She glanced up at Molly and smiled.

“Ah, hello,” she said, her kind blue eyes twinkling through her glasses. “When I saw your school jacket through the doors, I thought it was your friend. He’s been in here a lot lately. It’s nice to see you again.”

Molly smiled back. “Thanks,” she said.

The librarian’s friendliness made her feel funny. Molly wasn’t used to grown-ups being kind to her. Awkwardly she turned away from the woman’s gaze and started to read the pamphlets that were stacked in front of the newspaper table.

So it was the
library
where Rocky had been secretly sloping off to. Molly wondered again if it was because he was trying to avoid her. Then she decided to quit worrying and walked toward the rows of bookshelves. She passed along the tall aisles of books. A to C, D to F. The shelves
were crammed with books, often two deep. Some books, Molly thought, hadn’t been looked at for decades. She passed the G to I books, then the J to Ls. M to P, Q to S,

T to W,

and X to Z.

Z. Molly’s favorite place. The X to Z section was all the way at the far end of the library, where the room narrowed and there was space for only a short shelf. In between the shelf and the wall was a snug place warmed by an underfloor pipe and lit by its own lightbulb. The carpet was less worn out, as hardly anyone ever went there, because there weren’t many authors or subjects that started with X, Y, or Z. Occasionally people would come to that aisle for Zoology, or books by an author whose name began with Z. But not very often.

Molly took off her jacket and lay down, her head by Y and her feet by Z. The floor was warm, and the distant, rhythmical thudding of the building’s boiler along with the librarian’s soothing voice on the phone helped Molly to breathe peacefully, and soon she was lying on the floor imagining herself floating in space again. Then she drifted off.

A rumpus woke her up. Someone—a man with an American accent—was in a terrible temper, and his gruff voice was getting louder and louder by the second.

“I cannot believe this,” the speaker bellowed. “I mean, this is unbelievable. I made a deal with you a few days ago on the phone. I wired you the money for the book, then I fly over from Chicago to get it. Four
thousand
miles I’ve come, and you, meanwhile—you go and
lose
it. I mean, what kind of badly run institution is this?”

This was a very strange sensation for Molly. Someone else was getting a telling off. The librarian’s wrenlike voice piped up nervously.

“I’m sorry, Professor Nockman, I really can’t think what could have happened to it. I saw the book with my own eyes last week. I can only assume it’s been taken out by someone … Although it’s always been in the restricted section, so that shouldn’t have … Oh, dear … Let me look in the files.”

Molly peeped through the shelves to see who was making this fuss. At the main desk the librarian was frantically flicking through a box file, staring beseechingly at the cards, as if begging one of them to explain where the missing book had gone. Molly knew what she felt like.

“It’s by Logam, you said?” she asked in a worried voice.

“Logan,”
the cross voice corrected her. “And the title begins with H.”

Molly got onto her knees to peer through a higher
shelf to see what this man looked like. There was his middle, a barrellike stomach in a Hawaiian shirt with palm trees and pineapples on it. Molly moved up a level. The shirt was short sleeved, and on his hairy arm the man wore an expensive-looking gold watch. His hands were small and fat, while his fingernails were disgustingly long. He strummed the desk impatiently.

Molly moved up one more shelf.

His nose was upturned and his face was round with a double chin. His black greasy hair started halfway back across his head and hung down to his shoulders. His beard was a small, sharp, black triangle just under his bottom lip, and his mustache was clipped and oiled. His eyes were bulbous and his face was sunburned. In all, he looked like a very ugly sea lion, and, Molly thought, very unlike how she imagined a professor should look.

“So?” he asked belligerently. “Have you found it yet?”

“Er, well no, I’m terribly sorry, Professor Nockman, it seems that it hasn’t been lent out. Oh, my goodness. Oh, this really is very embarrassing.” The librarian started to scrabble around in her drawer. “Professor Nockman, perhaps for now you ought to take your check back.”

“I DON’T WANT TO TAKE MY CHECK BACK!” boomed the ugly man. “WHAT SORT OF LOUSY LIBRARIAN ARE YOU, LOSING BOOKS!”

He stormed over to the G-to-I aisle. “Some idiot probably put it away in the wrong place.”

The man waddled through the aisles, huffing and sweating. Now he was just on the other side of her bookshelf, so close that Molly could have touched him. He smelled of old hamburger and tobacco. Around his fat neck, on a gold chain, hung a scorpion medallion. The scorpion had a diamond for an eye, which caught the light and winked at Molly. The professor’s pudgy, taloned finger ran menacingly along the top of the T-to-W books.

“Okay,” he suddenly announced. “Okay. It’s obviously not here, so what we’re gonna do is this. You,” he said, marching back to the librarian’s desk, pointing aggressively so that his fingernail almost poked her between the eyes, “you are going to check with your colleagues and find out what happened to my book. As soon as you know, you’ll call me.” He pulled a snakeskin wallet from his back pocket, and out of that a business card.

“I’m staying at the Briersville Hotel. You will telephone me and keep me updated. And you will get the book back as a matter of priority. I need this book for very important scientific research. My museum will be
horrified
to hear how it has been mislaid. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, professor.”

The professor then picked up a sheepskin coat and, grunting angrily, left the library.

The librarian bit her lip and then started adjusting the pins in her bun. Molly sat on the floor. In front of her a big Y denoted the beginning of the Y shelves. Y … Y. Why?

Why was that ugly man so keen to get that book? It must be a very interesting book. More interesting, Molly supposed, than Yachting or Yodeling or Ypnotism. Ypnotism? Molly looked at the book in front of her. Its cover had been ripped, so the first letter of the title had been removed. In a blinding flash Molly realized that the missing letter had been an H. Gould this be the missing book?

Quickly she pulled the heavy, leather-bound book from the shelf and, checking furtively that no one was watching, she opened the cover.

There in old-fashioned type were the words:

Molly didn’t need to look any further. She quietly shut the book, wrapped it in her jacket, and left the library too.

And that was the beginning of the change in Molly Moon’s luck.

W
ith growing excitement, Molly walked back through the streets of Briersville and across the fields to the orphanage. It was only teatime, but already the gray November light was fading. Pheasants chirruped loudly in the woods as they settled to roost, and rabbits darted for cover as Molly walked by.

When she arrived at Hardwick House, the windows of the stone building were already aglow from lights within. Molly could make out, behind the thin curtain in a second-floor window, the wizened silhouette of Miss Adderstone as she petted her bad-tempered pug dog, Petula.

Molly smiled to herself and pushed open the iron gates. As she walked across the gravel, the side door of
the orphanage opened. It was Mrs. Trinklebury. She threw her plump arms around Molly and hugged her.

“Oh, h-hello, Molly, poppet! You’re back. At least I didn’t m-miss you completely. H-how are you? All right?”

“Yeah, just about,” said Molly, giving her a hug back. Molly would have loved to tell Mrs. Trinklebury about the book, but she decided it was better not to. “How
a
re you?”

“Oh, good as ever. Look, I saved you a cake.” Mrs. Trinklebury reached into her flowery knitting bag and rummaged about. “Here you go,” she said, passing Molly a wax paper package. “It’s a ch-chocolate cupcake. Made some last night.” The glass in her spectacles flashed as they caught the light coming from the hall. “B-but don’t let Miss You-know-who catch you with it.”

“Oh, thank you,” said Molly appreciatively.

“M-must be going now, dear,” she said, pulling her old crotcheted coat tightly around her. “Keep warm, chuck. See you in a week.” With that, Mrs. Trinklebury set off for town, and Molly went inside.

She nipped up to her bedroom and, since everyone else was at tea, had time to eat her cupcake. She hid the book under her mattress. Then she went down to the dining room and sat by herself at a small table by the fireplace.

Molly usually had tea with Rocky, but he wasn’t there. She ate her bread and margarine, warily watching Hazel at the large table on the other side of the room. She was showing off because she’d won the cross-country race. Her beefy legs were covered in mud; her big face was still red from all the exertion.

Molly knew that when Hazel saw her alone, a bullying session would begin. Hazel would make a few vicious comments, and Molly would pretend not to care. Hazel’s taunts would become more malicious until she pierced Molly’s shell. Molly might blush or her face might twitch, or worse, she might get a lump in her throat and her eyes might water. Quickly, Molly stuffed the last of her bread into her mouth and prepared to leave. But she was too late.

Hazel shouted, “Look, everybody, Zono’s finally made it. Did you fall in a puddle, Drono? Or was there a frog in the path that frightened you? Or did your weird Spammy legs snap?”

Molly smiled sarcastically, trying to shake the insults off.

“Is that supposed to be a cool smile?” asked Hazel with a sneer. “Look everybody, Bog Eyes is trying to look cool.”

Molly hated Hazel—although she hadn’t always.

Hazel had arrived at the orphanage four years ago,
aged eight. Her bankrupt parents had been killed in a car crash, leaving her nothing, not even relations. And so, alone and destitute, she’d been sent to Hardwick House. Molly had done her best to make Hazel feel welcome, but very soon she’d realized that Hazel didn’t want her friendship. Hazel had pushed Molly up against a wall and explained to her that she was better than her.
She
had known a wonderful family life and she remembered her parents.
She
hadn’t been dropped like rubbish on the doorstep. She’d come there because a tragic twist of fate had killed her loving parents. And ever since then, Hazel had teased, taunted, and bullied Molly.

“I said, is that supposed to be a
cool
smile?” repeated Hazel.

“Maybe a farmer attacked her because she looks like a bog-eyed rat,” suggested skinny Roger Fibbin. He was Hazel’s informant; her spy. As Molly looked at him, in his crisp, white shirt and with his tidy hair, she thought how much he looked like a shrunken adult. His sharp nose and cold, spying eyes were sinister.

“Or maybe a rat attacked her because her sweaty hands stink so much,” piped up muscly Gordon Boils. He had tattooed each of his fingers, using a compass and ink. The fingers on his left fist read GORD, and the fingers on his right fist read KING. From where
she was sitting, Molly could just read KING GORD. As Gordon took a bite of his teacake, Molly was reminded of his trademark trick of taking a fresh slice of bread and blowing his nose in it, making what he called a snot sandwich, which he’d then eat.