Ruby Rogers is a Waste of Space Read online

  Ruby Rogers is a Waste of Space

  Sue Limb

  Illustrations by Bernice Lum

  Contents

  Chapter 1 You idiot! You blinking idiot!

  Chapter 2 Frankly, this evening sucks

  Chapter 3 I knew I was going to cry

  Chapter 4 Temper, temper!

  Chapter 5 She’s so cooooool!

  Chapter 6 Don’t mess with him, babe!

  Chapter 7 I’ve had a brilliant idea!

  Chapter 8 I don’t like the sound of her

  Chapter 9 It’s all your fault!

  Chapter 10 You look like a film star!

  Chapter 11 What amazing stuff!

  Chapter 12 Why are you blushing?

  Chapter 13 My blood froze. This smelt like trouble.

  Chapter 14 How completely and totally brilliant!

  Chapter 15 Wait! Stop! Don’t go!

  Chapter 16 Fantastic! Fabulous!

  Chapter 17 It’s a mystery!

  Chapter 18 I almost exploded with rage

  Chapter 19 I don’t believe it!

  Chapter 20 Clear off or I’ll set the dogs on you

  Chapter 1

  You idiot! You blinking idiot!

  My name’s Ruby Rogers and I’m going to be a gangster when I grow up. Sort of like a modern Robin Hood, only female. I’m going to live in the treetops with my gang. I haven’t thought of our name yet, but it’ll be scary. We’ll have swinging rope bridges and Tarzan-type vines up in the forest canopy. And whenever any horrible people come, we’ll drop disgusting stuff on their heads.

  We’ll drop babies’ dirty nappies and carrier bags full of sick. We’ll pelt them with bombs made from bogeys. Then, when they’re totally grossed out, covered with gunk and frozen with fear, we’ll slide down the trees and steal their valuables. They’ll run off screaming and we’ll give all the money to a charity that helps kids.

  Hmmm. Nice thought! And it was all going to begin today. I had a secret plan. OK, I may not be grown up yet, but inside my head I’m a gangster already.

  It was the first day of the summer hols. The perfect moment to reveal my secret plan to my unsuspecting family. I had to tell them because I needed their help. Who would be the lucky person to hear it first? It would be awful if my big announcement was spoiled by somebody being In A Strop.

  My brother Joe? Hmm. Not sure. Usually Joe is a bad-tempered, snarling, wild beast. But he’d been on holiday for ages already. The sixth form escape from school the moment their exams are over. He’d been out all day with his mates, doing something cool.

  I knocked on Joe’s bedroom door. There was a weird, sinister silence. No reply. I knocked again. ‘You dirdy rat!’ I drawled, trying to sound gangsterish. Still no answer. Maybe he was fiddling about with one of his dreary old projects.

  Joe’s into art. He makes little sculpture thingies out of wood. They’re really models for great big enormous things, as big as a room. Or even bigger. His ambition is to make a huge Christmas pud by covering the dome of St Paul’s Cathedral with yellow custard-type stuff and a gigantic sprig of holly. It’s called ‘installation art’ apparently.

  ‘Joe!’ I called. ‘Can I borrow a pencil?’

  I couldn’t just say, ‘How was your day?’ He’d smell a rat.

  ‘Don’t go in my room!’ His voice came thundering out from the bathroom. ‘Use your own stupid pencils!’ I was annoyed. My pencils aren’t stupid.

  Joe didn’t deserve to hear my secret. He had insulted my pencils. Besides, he would probably be in the bathroom for hours. He reads comic books in there.

  ‘OK, OK, relax, why dontcha?!’ I called gangsterishly, and slouched off in search of Dad.

  I thought Dad might be in the garden. You never quite know with Dad. Sometimes he sits on his bed, playing his guitar and trying to compose songs. The lyrics are usually something to do with city streets. ‘A stranger stalks … the city streets … his name is George, no Fred, no Clive …’

  But Dad doesn’t actually like being in city streets very much. We went to London for the day once, just him, Joe and me. Big mistake – Mum’s the only one capable of organising a day out. Dad had a panic attack in the waxworks.

  ‘I’ve got to get out!’ he gasped, racing for the exit. Dingbat! Can you imagine anything more embarrassing?

  Many people have dads who are the strong, silent type. My dad’s the panicking, noisy type. He only really relaxes in the garden. And he grows peas, which I like to eat raw, straight from the pod.

  I found Dad in the garden shed. He was standing with his back to me, nailing something to the wall.

  ‘SURPRISE, SURPRISE!’ I shouted.

  Dad jumped, hit his thumb instead of the nail, and let out a yowl of pain.

  ‘You idiot!’ he yelled, hopping about and cradling his hand. Dad’s not very brave when it comes to injuries. ‘You blinking idiot, Ruby! Never do that again!’

  ‘Sorry, Dad!’ I backed off, quick. I could see it wasn’t the moment. Dad can lose it just like that. Even on an ordinary day he’s only moments away from a full-blown panic. And he does hate hitting himself with a hammer. He’s such a wuss. I decided to run indoors and talk to Mum. She was my only hope now.

  Chapter 2

  Frankly, this evening sucks

  If Mum’s in a good mood, somehow the whole house is. Although she’s quite small, she bosses everyone about. She’s a bit plump and she’s got wild, curly, reddish-gold hair and a Welsh accent. She can be a bit strict about things being clean and tidy, but it’s because she’s a midwife. She spends all day delivering babies. It’s a family joke: ‘Did you have any nice babies today?’ ‘Oh no, love. I only had a rather nasty one that looked like a turnip.’

  Thank goodness I’m not one of her patients. I’m not going to have babies anyway. I’m going to have pets instead. Monkeys, mainly. They’ll live with me in the forest canopy.

  I found Mum asleep on the sofa. She often has catnaps after work. Waking her up is strictly against the rules. If you wake her, she’s grouchy as anything. If you let her wake up naturally, in her own time, she’s only slightly grouchy.

  I watched her for a little while. She was lying on her back with her mouth half-open, frowning. Mum often talks in her sleep.

  ‘Where’s the nearest toilet?’ she muttered, all of a sudden. ‘That one’s full of snakes!’ Same old dream! I sighed.

  Suddenly I remembered that I hadn’t tidied my room. I’m supposed to tidy it every day, but somehow I always forget.

  I went upstairs. Not to tidy my room – obviously. I’d never do it without being nagged. I felt a bit low really. Not a single member of my family had been ready to share in my fabulous secret plan.

  At times like this I like to hide in a den. The airing cupboard is a favourite location. I’m still small enough to curl up in the middle section, where the sheets and stuff are kept. I climbed up, pulled the door almost shut and closed my eyes in the darkness.

  I thought about my secret plan. It was so exciting! If only I could tell somebody! I heard Joe come out of the bathroom and go back into his room. Right away he put on some loud, shouty music. I don’t understand teenage boys. Thank goodness I’m not one. Besides, if I had been a boy, apparently I’d have been called Tristram after my uncle. He runs a bookshop in Bath and knits his own ponchos. Not really a gangsterish role model.

  Suddenly someone walked past the airing cupboard and pushed the door shut with a click. Immediately I panicked. Although I have inherited Mum’s love of curling up somewhere cosy, I’ve also inherited Dad’s fear of being shut in. The airing cupboard only opens from the outside! Ohmigawd! I was in danger of being aired to death!

 
; ‘Heeeeeelp!’ I yelled. Moments later, Mum flung the airing cupboard door open. Her face was still a bit crumply from her recent sleep.

  ‘Oh, Ruby, get out of there!’ she said grumpily. ‘You’ll crumple all my sheets! I spent hours ironing them!’

  I scrambled out. I was tempted to growl, ‘Iron yuh face, why dontcha, lady?’ but it didn’t seem like the right moment somehow.

  ‘Supper is in ten minutes sharp!’ said Mum. ‘Tidy your room! I’m going to inspect it and if it’s not tidy you won’t get any supper!’

  I didn’t worry. I knew she would never knowingly starve a child. Mum does sometimes shout or snap, but she’s not really strict underneath.

  I went into my room, shut the door and lay down on my bed. My two monkeys, Stinker and Funky, were lying on the pillow. Stinker is fat and bald and the boss. Funky is thin, woolly and very bendy.

  ‘Stinker, Funky,’ I told them sadly, ‘it may be the first day of the hols, but frankly, this evening sucks.’

  It wasn’t the ideal moment to reveal my fabulous secret plan to my family. But I just had to tell somebody tonight. I needed grown-up help. My plan was that big. It was immense.

  Chapter 3

  I knew I was going to cry

  Supper was pizza and salad. I ate some salad because I knew Mum was watching me. And there’s nothing like eating healthy stuff to make your mum happy.

  ‘That’s right, petal!’ she said. ‘Lovely salad, isn’t it?’ She’d forgotten to inspect my room, of course. I could tidy it later anyway. I couldn’t concentrate on anything else until I’d revealed my secret plan.

  OK, Mum was in a better mood now, but Dad hadn’t smiled at me since The Incident in the shed. Joe was glaring at his plate as usual, wolfing down his pizza like – well, like a wolf, I suppose.

  Any minute now I would reveal my amazing secret. But I thought I’d better soften them up a bit first.

  ‘I’ve decided to keep my room tidy for the whole holidays,’ I said with a sneaky goody-goody sort of smile. Mum looked amazed.

  ‘I’ll believe it when I see it, petal!’ she said, shaking her head. Although I quite like it when she calls me ‘petal’, she’s going to have to stop all that nonsense when I’m a gangster.

  ‘No, it’s true,’ I went on. ‘I’m going to tidy my room every day after supper, round about eight o’clock.’ Mum still looked pleased, but it was as if she’d already started to think about something else.

  ‘Well done, then,’ she said. ‘Good girl. That’s the spirit. Pass the salad dressing, please, Joe.’

  ‘Did you have any nice babies today?’ I said. The family joke.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘I had a lovely one with ginger hair all down his back.’

  ‘Hmmm – sounds like a werewolf,’ muttered Joe.

  ‘The water heater’s set too high,’ said Mum to Dad. ‘Can you adjust it? I nearly burnt my hands earlier.’

  Dad looked startled. You could see he was beginning to panic.

  ‘Couldn’t we get a man in to do it?’ he said. ‘A proper man, I mean. With spanners and things. I think I need a spanner to do that. Where have my spanners gone, in fact? I haven’t seen one for months.’

  Joe finished his pizza with a greedy grunt, and drained his glass of juice.

  ‘What’s for pudding?’ he asked.

  ‘Yogurt or fruit,’ said Mum defiantly. Joe groaned and dropped his head in his hands.

  God, my family were so DULL! I had to reveal my magnificent idea to them now, to brighten up their tedious little lives.

  ‘You know it’s my birthday in a fortnight,’ I said loudly, in a silence. They all looked at me kind of anxiously. Even Joe.

  It was the moment of truth. It was so quiet, you could hear traffic going up and down the main road, miles away. My knees felt weak, even though I was sitting down.

  ‘Well, come on, Ruby!’ snapped Mum. ‘We haven’t got all night. What is it?’

  ‘I want a tree house!’ I said.

  ‘A tree house, sweetheart?’ said Mum. Her eyes went big and strange, and puzzled.

  ‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ said Joe, ‘we haven’t even got a tree.’ He gave a mocking smile.

  ‘It doesn’t have to be in our garden,’ I said. ‘I realise that, obviously. I’m not a complete moron. It could be in any old tree in the countryside somewhere. Or in the park.’

  ‘But if you had a tree house in the park,’ said Mum, ‘it wouldn’t be just yours, would it, love? Anybody could use it. Big rough boys could use it. They might not let you go anywhere near it.’

  ‘Big rough boys would trash it,’ said Joe.

  ‘It wouldn’t be allowed in the park anyway,’ said Dad. ‘Health and Safety regulations. You might fall out and hurt yourself.’

  ‘Local Child Falls from Tree and Starts New Life as a Pizza,’ said Joe. He often talks in newspaper headlines.

  Dad went pale at the thought of my tragic fall and fiddled nervously with the pepper mill. I knew he was secretly trying to think of a song to be performed at my funeral. ‘Oh, my beloved child, dear Ruby … She never lived long enough to roam the city streets …’

  Sadly, nothing rhymes with Ruby except Scooby. Or booby. Hardly a dignified funeral-type song.

  ‘I could have a tree house out in the countryside, then,’ I said. ‘Or at Auntie Megan’s house.’

  Auntie Megan lives in North Wales, in a place with a weird long name that sounds like somebody sneezing. Something like Lllantishoo! It’s lovely up there. She’s got loads of trees in her garden. I climb them every time we go, in the summer hols.

  ‘But we only go to Megan’s for a week or so every year,’ said Mum. ‘And anyway, we couldn’t just ask Megan if we could build a tree house in her garden. It would be rude, petal.’

  ‘And anyway,’ said Dad, ‘if you’re expecting me to build you a tree house, forget it. You know carpentry’s not my strong point. I’m still reeling from my last injury.’ He sucked his thumb.

  ‘And Dad can’t stand heights, remember,’ said Mum.

  ‘I can’t even stand the thought of other people standing heights,’ said Dad.

  ‘So,’ said Joe with a kind of sadistic grin. ‘Looks like your tree house idea is a non-starter, huh?’

  I knew I was going to cry. I jumped down from my chair, ran out and slammed the door. I raced upstairs to my bedroom, slammed that door too, grabbed my monkeys and hid under the bed. Then I burst into tears.

  Chapter 4

  Temper, temper!

  When I’d finished crying, and I was just doing that sort of shuddering you get afterwards, I heard the TV being switched on downstairs. I knew I was going to get into trouble for jumping down from the table and slamming the doors. But not right now, it seemed. Nobody came.

  Sometimes when Joe goes off in a strop and slams the doors, Mum just says, ‘Leave him! Give him time to cool off.’ She’d probably said the same thing about me.

  I stayed under the bed. It’s one of my best dens, although there’s always a bit of a mess down there. In fact, right now, there were a few stale crisps in my hair. I could smell them – salt and vinegar. I grabbed my monkeys.

  ‘OK,’ said Stinker to Funky, in a gangsterish sort of voice. ‘These cellars are right under da Houses of Parliament. We gotta seventeen boxes of high explosives. Gimme da matches.’

  ‘Oh heck!’ said Funky. ‘I forgot the matches!’ And he tried to make up for it by kissing his own ankles.

  Suddenly there was a rough knock on my bedroom door. It was Joe’s knock. It goes Knock-knock! Knockety-knockety-knockety KNOCK! I ignored it. Stupid boy! I lay still, under the bed, hoping he hadn’t heard my monkeys talking.

  Joe opened my door. There’s no privacy in this house. I’d ask Dad to put a bolt on the door if he wasn’t so useless at carpentry. I stared at Joe’s feet, which were encased in rancid old trainers. No wonder he hasn’t got a girlfriend.

  ‘Great news,’ said Joe. He knew I was under the bed. ‘I’ve been l
ooking at tree houses on the internet for you. They start at four thousand pounds and go up to twenty thousand. Amazingly cheap, huh? Won’t take you long to save up, will it? Then all you have to do is plant the tree. Or maybe grow it from a conker.’ And with a cruel laugh, he was gone.

  A boiling wave of pure rage washed through me from top to toe. It was bad enough that Mum and Dad had so utterly dashed my hopes of a tree house. It was tragic that I’d been crying under my bed for what seemed like days. And what did my darling brother do? Twist the knife.

  I crawled out from under the bed and jumped up, seething. I flung Stinker and Funky on the bed. Monkeys couldn’t help at a time like this. It was up to me. I had to turn myself into a lean mean killing machine.

  Joe and I often have fights, and I have to admit that so far it’s Joe 299, Ruby nil. But I still attack him occasionally when he’s been even more vile than usual. And this was one of those moments.

  I burst out of my room. Joe was on the landing, holding a comic. I hurled myself at him, but he ducked sideways, jumped into the bathroom and locked the door.

  ‘Temper, temper!’ he jeered from within. He can whip me up into a white-hot fury. Suddenly I realised it was a waste of time waiting for him to come out of the bathroom and then attacking him. He’d only hit me back twice as hard.

  I longed to drop something disgusting on his head. But there’s never a carrier bag of sick around when you need one.

  Wait! His bedroom was right there, at my mercy. I rushed in. His little art installation model thingies were everywhere. One was a model of a boat, designed to look like a bird. He’d spent ages on it. It had an eagle’s head on the front, and along the side, instead of rows of oars, it had sort of wings.

  ‘Stupid Schoolgirl Gets Stuck in Tree House!’ Joe’s voice called again, in a newspaper headline voice, from the safety of the bathroom – mocking, taunting. ‘Fire Brigade Called. “I’ll Never Leave Planet Earth Again,” Sobbed the Tearful Tot.’