Chameleon Chaos (4 page)

Danny didn't answer for a while. He sat down on the sun-warmed front steps, and Josh sat next to him. “I know what you mean,” he said. “But
it's been two weeks since we found the marble with the code in it. And whoever sent us the first marble and the clues hasn't been back in touch again. So maybe it
was
just someone having a silly joke, and that's that.”

Josh looked at him. He knew Danny didn't really believe that. The marble thing was weird. The first marble they'd been sent had been an ordinary one. But the next one they'd found after following the clue had code in it. It was like the code in the glass cubes that made up Petty's BUGSWITCH and REPTOSWITCH formulae. But whoever had sent them to find the marble—it wasn't Petty.

“Let's tell Petty about the marble tomorrow, after school,” Josh said. “She's calmed down a bit since the broken window thing. So she probably won't freak out too much if we tell her now.”

Suddenly, the front door opened and Mom was staring down at them, smiling. “There you are!” she exclaimed. “I've been wondering where you'd gone to. I've got a surprise for you! It looks like you've won something.”

Josh and Danny followed her into the hallway,
curious to see what she meant. Piddle, their dog, danced around their feet as if he was fascinated by the mail too. Mom picked up a small cardboard package, which had on it both of their names, their address, and a big sticker that read “CONGRATULATIONS! COMPETITION WINNERS!”

“Go on, then!” said Mom. “Open it!”

“Must be one of Josh's wildlife competition things,” Danny said. “Nice of you to enter both of us.”

It seemed Danny was right. Josh often went in for competitions in his wildlife magazines. The prize was a shiny box set of six small books about wildlife—all kinds of animals from panthers and lions to bats and rats. There was a brief note with the prize, but it didn't tell them much. It just said, in printed letters, “Well done! You're the winner of the Chatz TV channel Marbelous Mammals competition!” There was a website address but no phone number or any further information.

“Well, that's nice! From Chatz TV too! That's the channel Jenny and I watch—the
Darcy
Show
and all that. I didn't know you'd entered a competition with Chatz TV, Josh!”

“Nor did I,” Josh said.

“Well—well done! You can share those, can't you?” Mom said, ruffling their hair and then wandering off upstairs.

Danny nodded and said, “Yeah—they're cool books. Well done, Josh.”

But Josh didn't say anything. He stared at the note, looking odd. Then he stared at the box set of books, looking … odder. When Mom had gone all the way upstairs he glanced up at Danny and said, “Back garden—bush den—now!”

Danny ran after his brother, puzzled. Piddle followed them, his tongue hanging out. Once inside the woody den beneath the rhododendron bush, Josh sat cross-legged on the earthy floor. He flipped the note around for Danny to read. As Piddle skidded in beside them, Danny read it quickly. “Yeah? What?” he said.

Josh huffed in frustration. “Don't you see it? LOOK! Read it properly!”

“I did,” argued Danny. “It says, ‘Well done! You're the winner of the Marvelous Mammals competition!' So what?”

“Not marvelous,” Josh said, looking a little wild-eyed himself. “Mar
B
elous.”

“What?” Danny said. “A spelling mistake?”

Josh biffed him on the head with the box set. “As in a MARBLE, you dipstick!”

Danny went quiet and rubbed Piddle's floppy ears thoughtfully. “You think it's from the Mystery Marble Sender?”

“Positive,” Josh said, tipping the six books out into his lap and sticking his fingers into the empty box. He sucked in a quick breath … “Because of this.”

And he held up another note—with the same strange spiky handwriting as before:

HELLO AGAIN, JOSH & DANNY. ARE YOU READY FOR ANOTHER CLUE …?

WITH EACH YOU FIND,
YOU MOVE CLOSER TO YOUR DESTINY.
DARE YOU SEEK?

Danny stared at the note in Josh's hands. “That's what the first one said, isn't it?” he whispered. Josh nodded. Below was another clue—presumably leading them to another coded marble:

CLUE 2: GO WHERE MANY FEET ARE BARE. RISE TO THE LIGHT. SLIP AND YOU WILL BURN.

Josh looked at Danny. Danny looked at Josh.

“Any ideas?” he asked.

Josh shrugged. “Nope. Doesn't make much sense, does it? ‘Go where many feet are bare?' Where's that then?”

“The bathroom?” ventured Danny.

“But—many feet? I mean … there're only the five of us—Mom, Dad, Jenny, and you and me—who go to the bathroom with bare feet.”

“Well—that's ten feet … Let's look anyway,” Danny said.

Two minutes later, they stood in the bathroom, looking around for a mysterious coded marble. Piddle had lost interest by now and remained in the garden, chasing his tail.

“Rise to the light. Slip and you will burn,” read Josh, still clutching the note. They peered at the light. It was just an ordinary bulb under an ordinary shade. It wasn't the kind of shade that anything could be put into—it was just a cone, hanging open.

“You could slip in a bathroom,” murmured Danny. “But why would you burn? There's nothing hot here—except if you filled the bath right up and … no. Then you'd boil! Or scald or something. It doesn't make sense.”

Josh sighed and shrugged. He folded the note and put it in his pocket. “Let's sleep on it tonight,” he said. “See if the answer comes when we wake up tomorrow.”

They were both late for school the next morning. Not because they were distracted thinking about the clue—they'd more or less forgotten that. But because time started messing with their heads. It started going really fast. And they, it seemed, were going really SLOWLY.

They took ages to get up and then a lifetime to wash. Their porridge went cold and solid before they'd eaten even half of it. And with only five minutes to go before they had to leave for school, they were both still staring at their socks, nowhere near to finding their shoes. Mom asked them seven times to put socks and shoes on before Dad got involved. He yelled at them off for winding everyone up.

The weird thing, though, thought Josh, was that he
wasn't
winding anyone up. He was doing everything normally—it was just that Mom and Dad seemed rather hyper and busy and fast today. Danny agreed as they walked to school. Last term Mom used to give them a ride, as the walk to school was about half an hour. But this term, Dad said they should walk. It was safe enough. And the exercise would be good for them.

And so they had been walking. And it wasn't too bad, and they usually made it in to class on time.

Not today. When Danny and Josh arrived, the playground was completely empty and the crossing guard was heading home with his STOP sign under his arm. Josh stared at his watch in disbelief. “It's a quarter past nine!” he gasped. “How did that happen?”

They got another telling off from Miss Mellor when they got in. She accused them of dawdling and messing about and having no respect for her time and the gift of education. And so on.

It was not a good day. Again, thought Josh. And it didn't get much better as the morning wore on.
When everyone else handed in their math tests, Danny was only on question three out of ten. And Josh was only on question four. Miss Mellor sniffed with disapproval when she collected them from their desks and glared at them both. “Is this some kind of a joke? Or a dare?” she asked, scrutinizing first Josh and then Danny.

They just stared at her, open mouthed and confused. Then Danny's left eyeball rolled so far around in its eye socket that Miss Mellor went pale and had to sit down on Claudia Petherwaite's desk. She sent him to see the receptionist, who was also the school nurse.

“That was freaky,” Danny mumbled to himself as he ambled along the corridor. He did feel a little weird today. The eyeball thing was peculiar. But odder still was the way that—right now—he really wanted to climb into the ornamental weeping fig tree next to the head teacher's office. No—really! He wanted it
so
much. Like he wanted to ride the rollercoaster at World of Adventure. Like he wanted a mountain bike. That
tree
! That amaaaaazing tree!