Blue's Revenge (4 page)

‘Oh.' Toby answered like he didn't believe her. ‘Me too.'

Max stared after him as he walked away, his feet shuffling along the gravel path. She was relieved he had refused to walk with her, but now she felt bad again. Toby could do that. Make her swing from not wanting to have anything to do with him to feeling bad about being mean to him, even though he was the expert when it came to being mean.

Either way, there was no time to think about it. She pulled her bag against her chest. If she ran all the way to school she might just be able to slip into assembly without being noticed.

‘Lovely day, Max.'

No, no, no. Max thought. Not Peasers. The principal of love and happiness. The queen of mush. Where did she come from?

‘Ahh, Peasers … I mean, Ms Peasley.'

Why was it Max could thwart criminals all over the world, make it through the Amazon Jungle and escape from a Nightmare Vortex, but she couldn't sneak into school five minutes after the bell? She had to divert Peasers' attention from her being late.

‘Aren't you …' Peasers lifted her wrist to look at her watch. Max had to think fast.

‘I don't know if you get told often enough, Ms Peasley, but I just wanted to say how excellent it is to have you as our principal.'

‘Oh, thank you, Max.' Ms Peasley blushed beneath her pink eye shadow and lowered her hand. ‘That's very kind.'

Good start, Max thought to herself. Keep it up.

‘And that concert last Friday? We all owe its success to the direction we get from you. As everyone knows, that kind of talent radiates down from above.'

Peasers adjusted her hair, which was overloaded with frangipanis. ‘It is sweet of you to say, Max, but the students worked very hard.'

Max had on her sweetest smile. Now it was time to go in for the kill.

‘But Ms Peasley, a good performance comes from love, and it is your guidance that has brought us that love.'

For a terrible second, Max thought Peasers was going to hug her.

‘Yes, well, I always say a school that sings together grows together. Why, just last week I was at a seminar on fostering a harmonious playground and I –'

‘Actually, Ms Peasley, I need to go or I'll be late for class.'

‘Of course. It's always a pleasure talking to such a conscientious student.'

Max turned and walked down the corridor. She never thought she'd ever be this happy to go to maths.

After Max had explained she was late because she was talking to the principal, she sat down, took out her books and looked around. There was the same old Monday morning sleepiness over everyone's face, but Max noticed something else. Toby was missing. He hadn't made it to class. Maybe he got caught up in whatever it was he had to do. Or maybe he was in trouble. She couldn't get
his sad face out of her head, and the memory of those seconds when she knew he'd wanted to say something but didn't.

Something was wrong. She wasn't sure what or, more importantly, why she even cared. Mostly Toby did all he could to prove he had an oversupply of annoying genes, but there was also their mission in Hollywood he'd snuck onto where he actually seemed halfway decent.
³
Even though Spyforce had erased his memory of the mission, something had changed between them. Something Max wasn't comfortable with at all.

At recess, she found herself standing in the middle of the playground like a spindly tree in need of watering.

‘Why am I doing this?' she muttered out loud.

She walked over to Toby's friends, who were dividing up food from what looked like a post-tuckshop frenzy. As a firm rule of survival, Max never approached these guys, but when she did, it gave her the feeling of being thrown to a hungry pack of lions. Lions, of course, are much better-looking.

‘Any of you guys seen Toby?'

They stopped and stared, small glimmers of excitement replacing their scavenging scowls. Suddenly the possibility of a Max session was more exciting than chocolate and chips.

‘Why do you want to know were Toby is?' Josh was always the acting leader when Toby was away.

Max gave Josh a withering stare. She knew this had been a bad idea. ‘I just want to know if you've seen him.'

‘Maybe she wants to kiss him?' This was Zack. If you gave Zack and a monkey a maths test, they'd get the same results.

‘Yeah. Yeah. Kiss him,' they all chorused, and then broke into hyena-like laughing. Max tried to stay calm.

‘I need to tell him something.'

They weren't listening. Toby's friends never did. They loved the sound of their own voices too much to listen to anyone else.

‘Maybe she wants to be his girlfriend.' It was Zack again.

An angry shiver rattled through Max's bones. She could feel her temper curdling into a bitter word-fest she wasn't going to be able to stop.

Josh had this slimy smile that Max wanted to plaster with mud. ‘Or maybe she wants to marry him?'

That was it. Max took a deep breath and narrowed her eyes into two threatening slits. ‘And maybe you've got cow manure for brains.'

‘Ooooh!' They hooted like excited owls, happy that Max had taken the bait.

‘And maybe you …' Josh began but Max walked away, trying to block out their insults, as they pretended to spray the air for lovesick germs and sang songs about Max and Toby sitting in trees kissing. She could have stayed and fought it out but she had other things to worry about. Like Toby, facing an English exam she hadn't studied for and, the biggest worry, her mother's wedding.

She was heading for a seat as far away from Toby's gang as possible when Sasha, Georgie and Grace spilled out of the corridor and turned towards her.

‘Tell me they're not heading straight for me?' Max asked no-one in particular.

She focused on the blue bread sandwich with pink cucumber filling and the carrot and honey hash brown that Irene had made for her lunch, hoping everything else would disappear.

It didn't.

The three girls stood in front of Max like over-excited puppies. They always wore the right
clothes, got the right marks and had parents who looked like they'd stepped out of a shampoo ad.

What did I do to deserve the way this day is turning out? Max thought as she bit into her sandwich.

‘Max! Max! Is it true?'

In any other playground this may have been just another day at school, but these girls never spoke to Max, and in fact, until now, Max hadn't known they even knew her name. Either way, she was in no mood to start making friends with them today.

‘Is what true?'

‘You know!' Grace was short and had this high-pitched voice that could have cracked glass.

‘Um.' Max prepared to take another bite of her sandwich. ‘No, I don't.'

Sasha took over. She was cooler and more in control of her screech factor than Grace. ‘That your mum is marrying Doctor Shannon?'

Dr Rex Shannon was Aidan's soap character's name. He played a psychologist and even had his own doll made in his image. And yes, despite how Max felt about it, he was marrying her mum. She tried to think of what to do next, of how she could make them go away. Then she had it.

Outright denial.

‘Yeah right,' she scoffed, taking a bright red muffin from her lunchbox.

‘Well, what's this?' Georgie flicked a magazine in Max's face and there, on the cover, was a picture of her mother and Dr Shannon posing in wedded bliss. Max swallowed to try to keep her lunch from flying out of her reeling stomach.

‘I … I …'

When had this happened? Why hadn't she been told? Why was she always the last person to know anything her mother did?

‘You mean your own mum didn't tell you she was getting married?' Georgie's eyebrows flew up so high they almost rocketed off her forehead. ‘You have one strange family, Max Remy.'

They then walked away, swooning over how gorgeous Dr Shannon was and what they'd give to be his new stepdaughter.

Max stared at her muffin and lost her appetite for the second time that day. She put it back in her lunchbox and pushed hard on the lid. The bell was about to go so she slowly made her way past clutches of whispering students towards class.

Until she was slapped with her next idea.

‘Georgie! Wait for me.'

The three princesses turned around with a
confused, why-is-Max-talking-to-us look on their faces.

‘How would you like Doctor Shannon's autograph?'

Grace squealed yes but Georgie simply stared at Max. She'd learnt early in life that whenever she was offered anything, there was always room to increase the offer to something better. ‘On a photo?'

‘Sure.' Max guessed this was possible, considering how much Aidan enjoyed pictures of himself.

‘What do you want in return?'

‘I need Toby's home number. Do you think you can get it?'

Georgie's mum worked in the school office, where Georgie spent most of her time after school trying to look important.

‘Why do you want Toby's number?'

‘If you want the autograph, you won't ask.'

Max could see this was torture for Georgie, who lived for gossip, but she wanted the signature more, so she gave in.

‘I could do it in my sleep.' She eyed off the office with a slowly rising smile. ‘Give me five minutes.'

Max, Grace and Sasha watched through the office window as Georgie went into action. She
held her hand against her forehead and almost fainted. Her mother helped her to a seat while she disappeared in search of a cold pack.

Max was impressed.

The instant her mum left the room, Georgie was on the computer, operating the student database like she did it every day.

‘She's obviously done this before,' Max guessed.

‘Oh, lots of times.' Sasha watched in admiration.

Georgie wrote on a piece of paper and moved back to her chair just as her mother re-entered the room. None of the girls were surprised to see Georgie suddenly feeling better, and within thirty seconds she was standing next to them with the number.

Georgie handed it over. ‘I expect the autograph by the end of the week.'

‘Sure. Thanks.'

‘Oh, and Max? Don't think because of this you need to start talking to us.'

Max was relieved they were thinking the same thing. ‘Fine by me.'

As they walked away, the bell chimed for class. Max picked up her bag and folded the number into her pocket, frowning. She'd face the English test
now and work out later how she was actually going to use the number without sounding like a complete idiot. Her life was sometimes very strange, and today was proving no different.

This was not their usual assignment.

Max looked at her watch again and wondered what she was doing here. She was a good agent, one of Spyforce's best, yet here she was nestled behind a blackberry bush playing babysitter to a spoilt rich kid.

‘Ow!' Her finger sprang into her mouth. ‘If I get stabbed one more time by a thorn, I'm going to sink the next time I go swimming.'

Linden smirked and looked away, deciding it was best not to answer. Max's mood was nosediving with each thorny prick and even if he'd tried to sympathise, he knew he would only make it worse.

The kid they were guarding was Tobias Reardon, the son of an important foreign minister visiting England to discuss a peace plan aimed at settling decades of Middle East conflict. Many held high hopes for its success, but it was so controversial, the government feared opponents of the plan would do anything they could to ruin the talks. Even kidnap family. And because Tobias had an unfortunate habit of disappearing to explore his new surrounds, Max and Linden were put on assignment to make sure he didn't disappear for good.

With his miniature, high-powered binoculars, Linden peered into the Safe House Tobias and his
family had been placed in. Tobias was reading, while his mother sat at her computer. Nothing suspicious. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The house was an unassuming, three-storey London terrace that sat at the edge of a small green square speckled with benches, trees and neatly swept paths. The sun shone, birds tweeted, old couples strolled and Max counted the wasted minutes of her life that might as well have been flushed down the toilet.

‘If I'd wanted an assignment this exciting, I could have asked to have my brain removed and sent to Siberia.'

‘I hear it's a nice place.' Sometimes Linden couldn't help himself. He was right, though. Answering didn't help Max's mood.

‘Is that right? Well …'

‘Hold on, Max.' Linden refocused his binoculars and flinched at what he saw. ‘He's gone.'

The words sat in the air between them like a bad smell.

‘Gone?'

‘He must have slipped out.'

When Harrison had given them the mission, he told them that if anything happened to Tobias the security of the whole country, even the world, would be in terrible danger.

Then Linden spied something else. ‘That car. Look.' A black sedan with tinted windows was parked near Tobias's house.

‘And I'll bet that's the owner.'

Linden pointed towards a tracksuited man sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper. Max and Linden each pulled a silver pen from their pocket. They were designed by Quimby, Spyforce's head inventor, and contained darts that were guaranteed to put a person to sleep in seconds.

‘We'll use these to immobilise Tobias and get him to the Spyforce vehicle.' Max took a brief look at the ice-cream van that was parked in front of them. It may have looked slow, but beneath the old-fashioned exterior was a super-fast car capable of speeds of up to 240 kilometres per hour.

‘If we're quick, we can get to Tobias before he's taken on a joyride he may never return from.' Linden frowned. ‘If we can find him …'

‘There he is.' Max spied their young charge carefully creeping along the side of the house, but then her breath caught in her throat. ‘Toby?' What was he doing here? He was in danger. Max had to save him.

But as they were about to leap out from behind the blackberry bush, the doors of the sedan burst
open and two men leapt out, grabbed Tobias and dragged him inside.

‘The man with the baseball cap was a decoy,' Linden realised angrily. ‘Let's go!'

The two spies ran to the ice-cream truck, and just as they jumped in, Max saw Toby's sad face peering out of the rear window of the black car. Seconds later, he was gone.

Max gulped down a rising lump of fear as she started the truck. They had to rescue Toby or the world was doomed to chaos, to madness, to unspeakable horrors, to

‘What are you still doing in bed?' The shrieking cry jolted Max from her nightmare so that she slammed her face into her wooden bedhead.

Her thoughts raced in circles as she tried to focus on what was happening and who the white-gowned person at her door was, with hair swept into a congealed foam pile, face plastered with thick green goo and screaming like a wounded banshee.

‘I woke you up an hour ago. Why are you still asleep? We won't get there at all at this rate!'

Then she realised. It was her mother. Max had been woken up earlier, but she must have fallen back to sleep. And on the day of the wedding!

‘I'll make sure she gets up this time.' Linden snuck under the arm of Max's mother's fluffy white dressing-gown.

‘I'll be ready. Don't worry.' Max sat up, rubbing her sore head.

Her mother's eyes then landed on Linden's hair, which stared back at her like a hedgehog after a bad fright.

‘You are going to do something with that … aren't you?' she said with an obvious streak of horror in her voice.

But before Linden could answer, she spun from the room. ‘We'll never make it!' she wailed, her voice fading, until she suddenly spring-loaded herself back into the room and onto Max's bed. She held her daughter's face in her hands.

‘I love you, sweetie, you know that, don't you?' She blinked away some sudden tears and hugged Max firmly before leaping from the bed and continuing on her cyclonic way.

‘When should I tell her I
have
done my hair?' Linden stood in front of the mirror and tried to make a few minor adjustments to his wild
hair. ‘I spent a good ten minutes on this do.' He turned back to Max. ‘Everything's normal around here, then?'

‘Yep.' Max sighed. ‘Normal as it gets. One minute she's relaxed and happy, the next she's acting like she's been let loose from the jaws of hell.'

‘Makes for an interesting life.'

‘If by interesting you mean everything sane has been kidnapped.'

Kidnapped … Max's face fell as she remembered her dream. When she'd called Toby's house the day she saw him in the park, his aunt told her he was staying late at school. Max knew that wasn't true but had no choice other than to thank her and hang up. ‘Linden, what would your mum say is happening when you dream about someone?'

He offered her a fake look of embarrassment. ‘Max, are you dreaming about me, again? I guess it's not your fault, I am a good-looking man.'

Max gave Linden a pained smile. ‘Your mum must have had a theory on it.'

‘She said it meant you had something to sort out with that person. Why?'

‘Nothing.' She tried to shake the thought of Toby out of her head. Today was going to be hard
enough without him on her mind. ‘There's no getting out of this wedding, is there?'

‘Not unless your mum suddenly comes down with amnesia and forgets who you are.' Linden stood up to leave. ‘Just remember, we've survived plane crashes, death chambers and rooms of jelly and worms, so we can survive your mother's wedding.'

He gave her a grin that was a Linden special. ‘See you downstairs, chief.'

‘Okay,' she said, before adding, ‘You look good, by the way.'

Linden ran his hand through his billowing hair. ‘It's my natural beauty.'

‘And I thought it was the suit,' Max offered.

‘That's only part of it.' He sighed grandly and left.

Max smiled. It was like Linden had this zone of calm all around him – and she knew she needed as much calm as she could get if she was going to make it to the end of the day.

Especially wearing a dress.

She opened her wardrobe door. There it was. Hanging innocently. Staring at her like what she was about to do was no big deal. It wasn't that Max didn't like the dress, it was more that she and
dresses in general didn't get along. Her mother had even let her choose it. It was red with a deep crimson pattern of Japanese script embroidered along the neck and hem. Simple, discreet and hopefully would attract very little attention.

Max steeled herself. People wear them every day, she thought. How hard could it be?

At that moment, the three stylists her mother had booked came streaming through her door carrying bags, brushes and hairdryers, as if they were shoppers from an end-of-year sale. For the next hour, Max felt like she'd been pulled into the arms of a hyperactive octopus. She was prodded, brushed, sprayed and covered in face creams, powders and make-up, before being tugged into her dress. The three stylists then proudly held up a mirror.

‘What do you think?'

Max looked down at the floor. ‘Good. Fine. Thanks,' she mumbled.

She knew no matter how hard they tried, they weren't going to create a princess out of what they had to work with. And just as quickly as they'd swirled into the room, they gathered their things and left.

Max sighed and raised her head towards the
mirror, dreading what she would see. First she saw her red sandals, then the dress. She raised her head a little further and finally she saw her hair, which had been curled just a little.

She stood straighter, happy that what she saw wasn't a total disaster. ‘Linden's right. We have dealt with much scarier things than this.'

She took her Spyforce medallion from a hidden compartment in her chest of drawers and tucked it into her dress so it was completely concealed. She then cautiously opened her bedroom door. Down the hall, her mother's room was spilling over with people and noise. Max watched as designers, hairdressers and men arranging flowered bouquets fussed and fawned. She walked away quickly before she could get sucked inside, and made her way downstairs.

Outside the lounge room door, she heard the sound of Ben and Eleanor's laughter. It was the sanest noise she'd heard all morning and she rushed in to join them, but when she opened the door, the laughter was replaced by a shocked silence and the three dazed faces of Ben, Eleanor and Linden.

Max's bravado fell from her like a collapsing building. ‘It's bad, isn't it?'

No-one said anything. They just kept staring.

The dress that felt fine before now sat on Max's skin like it was made of prickles.

‘Someone needs to say something. Quickly,' she cautioned.

Eleanor scooped her up among her layers of white linen skirts and shawls. ‘Max, you look so … beautiful.'

Ben wore a goofy smile. ‘Every man there won't be able to stop looking at you. Lucky I'll be there to fend them off.'

But there was one person who hadn't said anything.

Linden. He looked like he'd been slapped in the face with a wet fish.

‘Doesn't she look like a pearl, Linden?' Ben asked pointedly.

Still Linden just stood there. He opened his mouth and tried to say something, but nothing came out. Ben slapped him on the back as if he'd stopped breathing, and finally Linden said, ‘You look amazing.'

Max just managed to hold back a huge smile. ‘Thanks, but you don't have to say that.'

‘I know.'

Linden kept staring. Ben and Eleanor exchanged a cheeky smile.

‘Max!' Max's mother's footsteps bounded down
the stairs. ‘Are you ready yet?' She barged into the lounge room with a large white smock over her dress. Half her hair was curled and dotted with flowers, while the other half was still in heat curlers.

Max turned and straightened out her dress, hoping her mother would like how she looked.

‘Oh, hello everyone. Good, you're ready. Help yourselves to anything in the kitchen. Can't stay. The cars are almost here.'

She turned and disappeared.

Ben turned to Linden. ‘You in?'

For once, the mention of food didn't catch Linden's attention.

‘Linden?' Ben asked as Linden's staring at Max went on. ‘Food?'

‘Oh yeah. Right,' he mumbled and followed Ben out.

Max watched the space where her mother had just been standing and sank into the lounge, feeling small and invisible. ‘She didn't say anything.'

Eleanor sat beside Max and took her hand. ‘You really do look lovely.'

There were times when Max guiltily wished it was Eleanor who was her mum. ‘I don't mean to sound horrible, but are you sure you two are sisters?'

Eleanor stroked her niece's cheek. ‘She's just
distracted. It's a big day.'

‘I bet you weren't like this when you got married.'

Eleanor smiled and stayed silent. Max knew this meant she wasn't.

‘What was your wedding like?'

‘Ben and I got married in bare feet on a beach down the coast. We giggled so much we had sore cheeks for three days.'

Max could see it all. No fuss, no stylists and no expensive dresses, just Eleanor and Ben looking like they always did, except maybe Ben would be dressed better.