Shrunk! (6 page)

‘It's about taking part,' says Eric. ‘Not winning.'

‘Why would you want to do that?'

Eric stares at the little red bulbous thing on the ground in front of him. ‘If you don't get it, then I can't possibly explain.'

I pick up one of Grandma's pumpkins. It's completely perfect.

‘Grandma sent us here on purpose,' I say. ‘She's suspicious about the meteorite, and she wanted me to see that her pumpkins were as good as mine.'

‘Why?' asks Eric.

‘Exactly,' I answer.

We move on through the model village, the meteor showers now filling the whole sky, except for one small cloud hanging over the sea.

‘Wow,'
says Jacob, climbing into the miniature post office window.
‘I didn't realise how pants these buildings were. They're really rubbish.'

‘Thanks, I think I knew that.'

‘They're all junk, except this one.'
He stops by a barn that I've never noticed before.
‘This,'
he says,
‘is not pants. Look, it's even got those mushroom things underneath. And, woah, there's tiny initials scratched in the stone. Did your gran make this? Awesome.'

I shine my torch at the barn. It's not in the real village – so why's it in the model village?

‘Hey – and this – this is mega.'
He's standing next to a water trough
. ‘It's even got the writing on it – 1888, presented by, oh, I dunno, some boring bloke. Awesome.'

Lit by fairy lights in the trees, Jacob chases off through the houses.

Eric's stopped. He's staring at the barn. ‘I've seen photos of this. This used to be in the real village. It was taken by aliens, just when Dad was abducted. A whole load of things went, all at the same time. There's a newspaper cutting about it, on the stairs, at home.'

‘You mean this
was
in the village, and then disappeared?'

‘Yeah. Although why would the aliens shrink it and leave it here? I don't know.'

Luckily, in the dark, Eric can't see the colour of my face. I feel the flush charge down my back and right down to my feet. So it's happened before. There must be someone else who's done this, someone who hid the things in the model village. But they can't have done Eric's dad, otherwise he'd still be tiny. That really must have been aliens. I stand staring at Jacob's shiny red body skipping through the model village.

My brain grinds into action.

‘How old is your dad?'

‘Why?'

‘Just how old is he?'

‘Fifty-five.'

Fifty-five years ago. Grandma would have been here then, Grandma's always been here. It was her father's house before. He started the model village and she grew up in my bedroom.

I glance back at the perfect pumpkin lanterns on the bowling green.

‘Eric, it's Grandma!'

‘Grandma?'

‘She must know. She's the one. That's why she's been following me, looking in my bag. That's why she wanted me to see the pumpkins.'

‘What do you mean?' Eric stops. ‘You think she can shrink things too?'

‘The night that the meteorite fell,' I say. ‘She didn't want me to get it. She didn't want me to wish.'

‘Because she can do it herself?'

I stand paralysed.

Eric grabs me by the arm. ‘Come on,' he says. ‘We'd better get a move on. We need to find Jupiter as soon as possible.'

‘But, Eric – even if we find it, I don't know how to put it back.'

‘Ask your grandma. If she can shrink things – she can probably unshrink them.'

Ask Grandma? A shudder of fear runs down my neck. ‘Bet she can't,' I say. ‘I can't, can I?'

‘Bet she can. Your grandma can do most things.'

Jacob clambers over Eric's shoe and undoes one of his shoelaces.

‘But what if we can't find it?' I think of another excuse.

‘We won't know, if we don't look,' says Eric, sounding a lot like Grandma.

‘But, but . . .'

‘What is it?

‘I can't ask her,' I whisper. ‘I'm too scared.'

‘Oh! We're all going to die. Model Village has messed up the solar system. We're going to crash into the sun and fry – if we're not squashed by a giant asteroid first, and all because scaredy Model Village doesn't want to ask scary granny.'

‘Oh, do shut up, Jacob,' Eric says. ‘Anyway, I've been thinking, if Jupiter's about 143,000 kilometres in diameter, and it has a magnetic field of 1,600,000 kilometres, then even if it's only the size of a bead, it would still have a magnetic field – it would have a pull.'

‘What?'

‘How big was Jupiter?'

‘What are you on about?'

Jacob undoes Eric's other shoelace.

‘How big was Jupiter – before you lost it?' He says ‘lost' like I did it on purpose.

‘Half a centimetre, maybe.'

Eric mutters to himself and stares at his fingers. ‘One million six hundred thousand, one hundred and sixty thousand, sixteen thousand, take the noughts off – then that's divided by a hundred and forty-six thousand, so, take away the zeros all round – um, about five centimetres. It would have a magnetic pull of five centimetres.'

‘Five centimetres?'

He nods. His glasses reflect the fairy lights but I can't see what he's thinking.

‘We can't exactly drop a nail and watch Jupiter suck it towards it, can we? I mean, you've got to be pretty close already to notice a magnetic pull of five centimetres. That's about the size of a saucer.'

Eric nods, his face creasing with disappointment. He removes Jacob from his shoe; gently pulling the laces from Jacob's tiny hands, and placing him back on the ground.

‘Still,' I say. ‘It was a good idea. Let's get to school. I'm sure you're right about the magnetic thing. Anything that helps us find it . . .'

I wish Eric
was
right. And I wish I had the courage to tell Grandma. I'm starting to feel so sick about this that I'd like to go back to her house and climb under the duvet with a comic, and stay there for a week.

Perhaps I'll wake up on my birthday and find it was all a horrible dream.

Jacob puts his hands up to be carried like a fat red baby. Eric's already down by the crazy golf, so I have to pick Jacob up. He sits on my shoulder.

‘Gee up, horsy, this is fun!'

I don't deliberately give Jacob a bumpy ride, but I'm not as careful as I should be and he quickly clambers down to sit in the crook of my arm.

‘Got any sweets?'

‘No.'

‘No toffee squashed in the bottom of your pocket?'

‘The only thing I want to find squashed at the bottom of my pocket is you, Squit.'

No one cares about us as we run along the seafront. They're all staring at the sky. We stop at the side of the castle. We can cut ten minutes off the walk if we go through the castle grounds.

‘It's a bit spooky . . .' says Eric.

Inside, I agree, but I'm not going to confess in front of Jacob. ‘I don't think so – come on.'

I climb over the railings and run straight ahead into the darkness. Eric thumps along behind me.

‘Whooooooooo, whooooooooo,'
calls Jacob from my shoulder.

‘I could just leave you here,' I say. ‘On your own, in the dark.'

‘You wouldn't.'

‘You never know,' says Eric. And then we're out the other side and the school's in front of us.

The playground's weird at night, really unfriendly. A cat looms up out of the dark and Eric jumps.

‘Whoooooo!'
says Jacob, so I drop him in the sandpit.

‘But you need me!'
he shouts. I let him lie there for a moment, then, really slowly, I pick him up.

‘I'd have left you there,'
he says, clambering up to my elbow.

‘Would you really?' asks Eric.

Jacob doesn't answer.

We stop where the fight happened. Eric holds the torch and I put Jacob down on the ground. He sets off along the beam of the torch, and then stops.

‘Nah, it's no good, I need to hold the torch, get the angle right.'

Eric lays the torch on the ground and Jacob rolls it round in a big circle. ‘Bingo!'

‘What? Can you see it?' asks Eric.

‘No. But it's fun. Bet I'm having more fun than you two, Scaredy Four Eyes, and Scaredy Model Village.'

I could just squash him.

I stare at the ground just in case I can see anything. Glistening, red and fat, like a pair of tiny Edam cheeses, Jacob bounces among the lumps of gravel in and out of the torchlight. He stops and walks towards something. ‘Oh – it's nothing, just a broken bead. Sorreeee.'

‘Where?'

‘Over here. But it's not Jupiter.'

Jacob's standing next to something exactly the same colour as the rest of the gravel. I pick it up. It's half a brown bead. A dull wooden bead. I close my eyes and try to remember how Jupiter looked the last time I looked inside the capsule. It looked very like this.

‘Look – here's the other half.'
Jacob's standing at the very edge of the torchlight and I can't even see what he's pointing at. He moves it, and I pick it up. It's the missing piece.

‘Coo, so Model Village can put two bits of bead together. He's a genius. Pity he's going to kill us all – by messing about with things he doesn't understand.'

I really could just step on him, but he's lucky because my mind's turning over again. It's turning over and over on these bits of bead. The other two are still searching for Jupiter, but I don't think it's there – I think this is the Jupiter that I took to school, and that it wasn't Jupiter at all. Somehow, I lost it in my bedroom, and this lousy bead must have been in the capsule all along.

Jupiter must have rolled out when the capsule was lying on the floor. I must have kicked it somewhere.

‘C'mon, Tom,' says Eric.

‘Yes,' I say in answer, but I don't really mean it. If this bead was the dead planet in the bottom of the capsule, then perhaps the planet isn't dead. Perhaps somewhere in Grandma's house, there's a little glitter ball going round and round.

Maybe Jupiter's back in my bedroom after all.

I turn to run back to the house.

‘Hey, Tom, where are you going?!' shouts Eric.

But I can't stop. ‘I don't think it's here – I think it's at Grandma's.'

‘What?' Eric says. ‘What are we doing here, then?'

‘Too difficult to explain. C'mon – no time to waste.'

I pick up Jacob and stick him on my shoulder.
‘Yeth, come on, Tom, save the planet.'

Eric doesn't say anything, just sighs and heads back towards the castle.

I follow him. It doesn't take me long to catch up, and we walk next to each other over the edge of the rock that the castle's built on. It's not spooky any more, the sky's bright, and the castle grounds are all lit up. The big rock almost glows in the starlight. I stop for a moment and stare. It's like it's reflecting more than the meteor showers. It's as if it's got a star inside.

‘Weird,' says Jacob.

‘It's always been like that,' says Eric. ‘Dad says the castle's built on a giant meteorite, one that fell millions of years ago. That's why this is such a special place. The whole town's full of special people too.' He prods me. ‘You're one of them now.'

‘How d'you mean? Special.'

‘You can do things, weird things. There's Miss Darling, for a start.'

‘Who?'

‘The one who always wears gloves?'

‘What can she do?'

‘She's got green fingers.'

‘Yuk,'
says Jacob.

‘What d'you mean, green?' I ask.

‘I mean, she's actually got green fingers. Like an alien, but it makes her plants grow really well.'

‘Er-ic,'
says Jacob.
‘I've never heard such rubbish.'

‘Well, it's true. Ask your gran, Tom.'

This is all news to me.

‘Do you think your dad's a special person, with special powers?' I ask.

Eric stumbles off ahead. ‘Nah – Dad was definitely taken by aliens, otherwise how else would you explain him?'

I follow, my feet slipping on the glittering rock.

We run back along the seafront to Grandma's. The air's warm on my face, I could really enjoy this if I didn't feel the weight of chaos on my shoulders.

And Jacob.

‘Are we going back to yours then, Model Village? Or are you going to take me home, explain me to my mum and dad? Oh – sorry, Mr and Mrs Devlin, I accidentally on purpose shrank your little cherub.'

Jacob seems heavier. It might just be that he's becoming more of a pain. Eric said that no matter how daffy his dad was, there was no way he'd miss a tiny devil living in the house. So I'm landed with him.

‘I'll put you in the model village. You can have your own house.'

‘I'm not living there. It's stinky and gross. I want a warm room, with comfy chairs, beds and stuff, and plenty of food.'

‘How about Tilly's dolls' house?'

‘How about your bedroom?'

We stop to stare at a house in the high street. A load of people are trying to get a dinghy out of the front door. They've taken down the mast, but it doesn't want to fit.

They joggle it backwards and forwards, and a little bit sideways. It's really stuck.

‘Weird,'
says Jacob.
‘That's my friend's house. I didn't know he had a boat.
'