H2O (24 page)

As we zoomed toward London, Darius fiddled with the radio, skipping through miles of hiss in between repeats of the broadcasts that had not changed: “Stay home. Remain calm.”

Yeah right. Someone needed to tell them that advice really wasn't working.

“Can you turn that off now?” I asked.

I asked it nicely the first time; the second time, because he'd ignored me, I said it not so nicely.

“Just a sec,” he said, skimming through again.

So, third time: “TURN IT OFF!” I snarled and death-rayed him.

“So how come you don't want to know what's going on in the world?” he said, putting his naked feet up on the dashboard. Evening sunlight caught the hair sprouting on his toes. He'd used his window to hang his socks and mine out to dry. They flapped about together as we zoomed—with our clothes, still pool damp, drying on our bodies.

“I don't want to not know,” I said, “I've just heard all that stuff before, right? What's the point?”

I wasn't exactly comfortable—in my clothes or in my head. I kept shifting about.

“Because they might be saying new stuff.”

“Err.
Hello? Hello? Who might?
Have you not noticed? Everyone is dead.”

The second I said it, I was waiting for him to DARE say something about my dad, but he didn't. No need. I was thinking it anyway.

I felt sick and like I needed air; I hit the wrong window button and our socks left us. I hit the right window button and stared out the window for a dangerously long time, breathing. Just breathing.

After that, we bickered about what music to listen to. The music collection in that car was a best-ofs bonanza (but at least it didn't include The Carpenters), and I've noticed that in a lot of cars. It kind of supports my theory about how stressful driving is; you couldn't cope with listening to anything interesting at the same time. I made him put some retro
Best
of
the
'80s
CD on, and it flustered me instantly because every single song seemed to be about LURVE and kissing and such, but luckily I discovered I had an executive control switch on the stick you would have thought would be for the windshield wipers, so I kept skipping anything that sounded like it might be too slushy, which annoyed the Spratt.

“Oh, come on!” he whined when I did it yet again. “I was listening to that!”

He actually leaned forward and did a manual override on the CD player, skipping back to the lovey-dovey ballad. And he sang! The Spratt sang! And the worst and most annoying thing about the Spratt's singing was that the Spratt's singing was
good
. Not better than Caspar good; I will never say that.

“I don't like it,” I said, skipping forward again.

“Why's it got to be what you want all the time?”

“Because,” I said. “I'm the driver.”

“So?”

The Spratt skipped back; I skipped forward.

“So we listen to what I want,” I said. “Or we could always turn it off and play I Spy… That'd be fun, wouldn't it? I spy with my little eye something beginning with DB.”

The Spratt looked confused.

“Dead body?” I said. “Or maybe CC? Crashed car! Oh look! It's another DB!”

The Spratt went quiet. I felt mean, so I even though I wanted to skip the current track too because it seemed to be all about SEX (what was
wrong
with those '80s people?! They were obsessed!), I let it play. The Spratt lounged sulkily in his seat.

Honestly, what is it about songs, even crappy songs you wouldn't normally bother to listen to, that makes you hear every EXCRUCIATING word when you most don't want to?

But it gave me a brilliant idea. A Ruby genius idea.

“I hear, with my little ear, something people won't be able to sing about anymore,” I said.

“Well, what does it begin with?” the Spratt asked.

“I dunno,” I said, “but there's bound to be one.”

The Spratt, I noticed, got a little less loungey. I could see his toes tensing. In the rearview mirror I saw the kid perk up, listening.

(More than that, I'd see her poke Darius a couple times, when a word was coming up. It turned out the Princess knew some of those songs.)

“LB! LASER BEAMS!” I shrieked.

I skipped forward.

“Why can't we listen to the rest of it?” cried Darius.

“Too bad!” I said. “Winner chooses!”

“Game on,” said Darius, sitting up.

It was hilarious. It actually really was—once I'd carefully explained to Darius that it didn't even matter whether stuff still existed or not; it was just stuff that would OBVIOUSLY never be the same again. (“Look, it's really simple, dummy! No one's gonna sing about it being hot in the city again, are they, you idiot? It doesn't mean ‘hot' hot, as in ‘ooo, isn't it warm?' It means
exciting
hot. So: HITC—point to me—next track, loser!”

CB (cocktail bar!). M (money!). ST (steam train!). T (telephone!). PR (phone rings!). E (electric!).

Darius got grumpy about the electric one. Even though I was prepared to admit that you'd still be able to get electricity from batteries and generators and whatnot, I decided it was perfectly allowable because it was perfectly obvious when people sang about electricity they didn't mean electricity that came from batteries and generators and whatnot.

It came up loads of times, electric. Those '80s people were obsessed with that kind of thing too: electricity, atomic stuff, nuclear stuff… N (neutron!).

D (dime!). D (dollar!). I (industry!). T (tickets!). R (rent!)

We got silly (J! Jam! It doesn't mean that kind of jam! It's not about
fruit
!); we got picky (P! You can't have phone again—you just had phone!). We had this mind-boggling fight about whether FAM (four a.m.!) would still exist if all the clocks ran out or were busted, and people couldn't make clocks anymore and didn't care what time it was anyway because it wouldn't be like they had to go to school or work or anything, would it, and—anyway—what exactly is time?

(In a closet, at a swimming pool, it had ceased to exist.)

I.e., we had pretty much the kind of argument you'd have to go to Wikipedia to solve. Only we didn't have Wikipedia, did we? I (Internet!) never came up in any of those '80s songs. Not much of the stuff that was really important in our lives did. That's why it was fun, I guess… I mean, even though it was terrible, it wasn't really exactly completely
now
, was it?

“M!” shouted Darius. “Medicine!”

After a sec, he skipped to the next track, as the winner was allowed to do.

I had this thought. This thought about Darius and medicine and…

“So how long
will
those tablets last you?” I asked.

“Shut up, Ru,” Darius said.

He laid his head against the window. OK, so everything had gotten weird. OK, so better not to ask.

“Hey,” I said. I reached out and poked him. I should have just said sorry.

“B,” he said.

“B?”

He didn't even look at me; he just said it: “Braces.”

My braces aren't the kind that come out. They're glued onto my teeth. How would I ever get them off now? I was going to be wearing braces for the rest of my life. I was going to be sitting in an old people's home eating canned fruit, fretting about the weather, and…still wearing TRAIN TRACKS.

“Sorry,” said Darius. “I'm sorry.”

Some band squawked on about lurve.

“This is crap,” I muttered, trying to eject the CD; the car swerved.

“I'll get it,” said Darius. He took the CD out. “What do you want to listen to?”

“Not that.”

“This?” said Darius, holding up some best-of classical music thing.

I thought he was just joking, so I said yes to annoy him.

He wasn't joking.

Actually, it was better not to hear people singing
about
stuff (like LURVE, for example), and the swoopy, sad violin music was a much better soundtrack for my mood, which had returned, completely, to deeply brooding and tragic.

And then I screamed.

I screamed because a car zipped past us. A little red sports car, traveling so fast I never even saw who was in it.

After that, I was too nervous to be tragic. I kept looking in the rearview mirror. Over the next hour, there were three more cars. I saw two of them coming. The first one, a silver car, tooted as it cruised past, a guy in it, alone.

“Honk back!” said Darius, craning out of his window.

I hesitated, then I honked. I don't know whether he would have heard. He didn't stop.

Some way past the Chippenham turn-off, I saw another car gaining on us from behind. This one didn't zoom past; it came up steadily.

“Look,” I said.

“At what?” said Darius.

“That car. Behind us.”

He turned.

“Hn,” he said, sitting back round.

Hn?!
We were being followed! I glanced at Darius. Another penny dropped with a massive clunk.

“Where are your glasses?” I asked.

“Polytunnel,” he said.

“Oh my
. Can you actually see anything?”

“A little. Not much. Look—I can see things close up. I can see you, all right, so stop making that face. It's not my fault, is it?”

“I Spy!” I squealed. “No wonder you didn't want to play I Spy!”

“Nothing I can do about it, is there? I can't just walk into an optician's and get a new pair, can I?”

“
Can't
you?
”

“No! They're
prescription
glasses.”

“What? Are your
eyes
sick too?”

“No! It just means you need someone who knows what they're doing—just like
you
and your braces!”

Tchuh! No wonder he wanted to stay at that farm! He'd have made us all hang around there until he got the guts to go back into that polytunnel and get them! No wonder he wanted to hang around in Bristol! If he was as blind as a bat he could hardly roam around, could he? But he had, hadn't he? He'd roamed around with me! He'd put ME in danger!

“Get the crowbar,” I said.

“Ru—”

“Just get it.”

Darius sighed and took off his seat belt.

“Don't crash,” he said to me as he clambered into the back.

“Yeah, and don't call me Ru. Do NOT call me Ru,” I said. “Not ever.”

Uh. I realized he had to be rummaging through a ton of my underwear to find that crowbar. I had no time to be mortified. That car grew larger in my rearview. Darius clambered back, brandishing the crowbar.

“Don't let them see it,” I said… Then, “No, do.”

That car, it came right up behind us. Then it swerved right to overtake…but they didn't overtake; they came up alongside.

, I thought.
!

Darius leaned across me—he squinted, then he waved. I looked over…There was a family in that car: a mom; a dad driving; two kids in the back, a girl, a boy…all of them waving like crazy—and smiling. Smiling!