Pick Your Poison. Lauren Child

      MOUSE AND RED HAD STUCK AROUND TO WATCH THE REST OF THE GAMES, but Ruby and Del didn’t have the heart. They now had time on their hands.

      ‘You wanna go down to Back-Spin and play table tennis?’ asked Del.

      ‘Oh, interesting, you can hold a ping-pong bat but you can’t dribble a basketball?’

      ‘Table tennis isn’t a contact sport,’ countered Del, ‘basketball can be.’

      ‘You don’t need to explain that to me,’ said Ruby. ‘You wanna see the bruises Bugwart laid on me?’

      ‘I can’t wait for my sprain to heal – I’ll be only too glad to have her try and land a punch.’

      ‘I’d be happy to point her in your direction,’ said Ruby.

      ‘Don’t worry about it, I’ll get her soon enough.’

      ‘You should give up on the fighting, it doesn’t achieve a thing. You think if you punch her she’s not gonna punch you back?’

      ‘It’s an honour thing,’ argued Del. ‘If I let her knock me down and I don’t retaliate, what will people think?’

      ‘That you’re not as dumb as you look.’

      In the end they decided to give the table tennis café a miss and instead hang out at Ruby’s house. Ruby was keen for Del to keep a low profile and, in any case, Mrs Digby had mentioned that she might be baking. Mrs Digby’s baking was right up there with sliced bread – her cookies were in a league of their own.

      When Del and Ruby made it home to Green-Wood house, they found Mrs Digby peering at a large piece of black and white paper rolled out on the kitchen table. She had a comedy-sized magnifying glass in her hand and was moving it across the paper, back and forth.

      There was no sign of any cookies.

      ‘What are you looking at Mrs Digby?’

      ‘A map of old Twinford,’ she said without looking up. ‘Your father got it for me.’

      ‘Why dya wanna look at an old map?’ asked Del.

      ‘I like to see how things once were in this town,’ said the housekeeper.

      ‘And how were they Mrs Digby?’ said Ruby, her head in the pantry.

      ‘Better,’ said the housekeeper. ‘Seems every day now they go knocking an old building down or running a road through it. I barely recognise my own neighbourhood, find I get lost in my own city. If it weren’t for the place names, you wouldn’t have a blind clue what used to be there.’

      ‘So Mrs Digby,’ said Ruby, ‘we were sort of wondering if there might be any, you know, cookies?’

      The housekeeper put her hands on her hips and said, ‘Upstairs in your room, and don’t ever go about saying I’m not a slave to your every need.’

      It was while they were sitting on the roof eating Mrs Digby’s cookies that misfortune struck.

      Ruby had just popped down to the kitchen to fetch some banana milk and returned to find Del peering over the top into the next-door yard.

      ‘What are you looking at?’ asked Ruby.

      ‘Your comic – I just put it down for a second while I put on my sweater …’ said Del.

      Ruby looked over the roof edge: there was the comic sitting on Mr Parker’s lawn.

      ‘It was an accident,’ said Del. ‘The wind sorta took it.’

      ‘You know, Kung Fu Martians is rare – that’s a collector’s edition, plus I haven’t finished reading it.’

      ‘I’m sorry OK,’ said Del, getting to her feet. ‘Look, I’ll go knock on his door and ask for it back.’

      ‘You’re kidding. You think you can just go over to Mr Parker’s and ask for your comic back? You must be crazy.’

      ‘Sure I do – what’s the worst he can do?’

      ‘One – feed it to his dog; two – feed you to his dog.’

      ‘You’re being a little dramatic, aren’t you?’

      ‘No,’ said Ruby, ‘actually, NO. Remember Red’s hat?’ Del made a face, she remembered all right. ‘Oh, and don’t forget Clancy’s sweater, Clancy’s left sneaker, Clancy’s trumpet, my mom’s scarf – he apologised for that one, he even returned it, though the whole middle section was missing.’

      ‘OK,’ sighed Del, ‘I get your point, I’ll have to climb over the fence.’

      ‘With your wrist strapped? I don’t think so.’ Ruby stood up. ‘It’s me that’s gonna have to get it.’ Without another word, she stepped off the rooftop and onto the eucalyptus branch that extended towards the house. Darn it Del, she thought.

      Ruby walked the branch like a tightrope walker might, arms outstretched and feet stepping one in front of the other, until she reached the end. From there she looked out across the yard and the alley that ran between the backs of the houses. She was looking to see where Mr Parker was and, perhaps more crucially, Mr Parker’s dog, Bubbles. Mr Parker was a man who rarely had a good word to say about anyone or anything. He just didn’t like people and as Mrs Digby so wisely said, ‘Steer clear of folks who don’t like folks.’ Bubbles, meanwhile, was a dog who didn’t like people, but did enjoy biting them. For these two reasons Ruby rarely trespassed on Mr Parker’s land, not if she could possibly help it.

      She stood there perfectly still, listening for activity that might warn of her neighbour’s presence, but she could only hear the wind and feel its keenness to snatch her from her perch. She took a deep breath and leapt.

      She landed on the branch of the tree next door and she didn’t stop, running now, climbing as high as the tree would take her. She moved so quickly that the weaker branches had no time to snap, her weight gone before the branch realised it could not hold her.

      As Ruby swayed from limb to limb, reaching out to grab another, stepping lightly from one to the next, she felt almost like she were defying gravity, treading the space between things. Having left the safety of her own yard, she wanted nothing more than to retrieve the comic and get out of there. She couldn’t see Bubbles. She waited, she scanned the yard, looking all around, but there was no sign of the Doberman, which meant Mr Parker was out. Below her, a large cat watched, tail twitching, ready to pounce should the strange bird fall.

      If Bubbles was here, she reasoned, then this cat would be running for its life.

      She dropped to the ground, ran to the middle of the lawn and snatched up the comic, then stuffed it down her sweatshirt and began to climb back up the tree.

      ‘What exactly are you doing?’

      The voice came from far below.

      It wasn’t one Ruby