Pick Your Poison. Lauren Child

let’s get this over with.’

      It was a long and testing day, not because the competition was especially tough, nor because the test questions were especially tricky, but because one of the candidates, one Dakota Lyme, was a royal pain in the butt.

      Dakota Lyme was a girl Ruby had met twice before on the mathlympics field. Once when Ruby was four and once when she was eight. Dakota was one year and nine months older than Ruby and behaved like a child of that exact age.

      She was a sore loser and, what was worse, she was an even sorer winner. On both previous occasions she had narrowly beaten Ruby in the final round and spent a lot of time afterwards crowing about it. Though what Dakota’s parents had not pointed out to their little prodigy was that Dakota had been coached in the advanced math that was at the competition’s heart and Ruby had just that day happened upon it.

      This time things went a little differently.

      They were equally matched right up until the final question, and the tension emanating from the parents could almost be touched.

      ‘OK, you two,’ said the compere, ‘draw the shape represented by this formula.’ Letters and numbers appeared on the screen:

      Ruby frowned for a moment, then smiled. She glanced over at Dakota, who was looking panicked; it was obvious that nothing was coming to mind.

      Ruby drew quickly. She had worked out in seconds that the formula represented a tesseract, or a 4-dimensional cube – a shape with 24 edges that was to the cube what the cube was to the square. She chose to render it as a kind of fake 3D image that she knew was called a Schlegel diagram:

      Then Ruby hit her buzzer.

      ‘Redfort, you have the diagram?’

      ‘Yes,’ she said.

      ‘Bring it to the podium for checking, please.’

      She took her piece of paper over to the desk where the math checkers sat. They in turn checked it over and handed it on to the compere.

      ‘Correct!’ declared the compere. ‘We have our winner.’

      Dakota Lyme glared at Ruby, one eye covered by her long dark hair. Her mouth was pinched like she had just eaten something sour, her arms folded tightly across her chest.

      The photographer stepped up to take some pictures and Dakota and Ruby were asked to stand uncomfortably close.

      ‘If I could ask you to hold up your trophy Ruby, and Dakota, your runner-up prize.’

      Ruby tried to force a smile, but it was hard because she hated this kind of dorky contest and even more than that she hated the dorky victory photographs. Dakota couldn’t force a smile because she was too sore about her defeat. So they stood there looking in some ways remarkably similar. They were the same height, same build, had the same long dark hair, they even sort of dressed alike, though Dakota’s T-shirt was pink and said Party Girl, and her sneakers had glitter detail and her jeans had a heart patch on the pocket. But their expressions weren’t so very different – even if Ruby managed to look coolly aloof and Dakota unattractively bitter.

      It was in the parking lot that Dakota became even less attractive. Ruby and Sabina were just driving slowly towards the exit when Dakota Lyme shouted, ‘You’re a phoney, Redfort. You cheat, I know you cheat, and your clothes are ugly, you dress like a boy.’ Dakota stamped her foot.

      Sabina Redfort reversed the car, wound down the window and said, ‘And you, pipsqueak, are a very unpleasant little madam who will never be attractive no matter what you wear!’ Then she put her foot down on the pedal and took off at more speed than was wise.

      Ruby winked at her mother and said, ‘Nice going, Mom.’

      And her mother said, ‘I simply can’t abide a sore loser.’

      

      TUESDAY MORNING CAME AND RUBY STUMBLED OUT OF BED. She looked out of the window and there was Mrs Gruber walking her Siamese cat. Mrs Gruber always walked her cat on a Tuesday; it was something you could count on.

      Ruby got ready for school and went down to the kitchen. No one was there. She was about to grab a bagel and walk out of the back door when she caught sight of an envelope lying on the table. On the front, written in her dad’s neat hand, the words:

       For Ruby, congrats on the big math win, love Pop

      And on the back:

       P.S. I had to go through hell and high water to get this

      She slit it open and pulled out a leaf-shaped piece of green card that said:

       YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE ENVIRONMENTAL EXPLORER AWARDS.

      She smiled. Nice going, Dad. There was a further note under the envelope, this one from her mother:

       I’ve ordered you new glasses, the pair you liked, as opposed to the ones I liked. Love Mom. P.S. Am I a nice mom or what?

      Ruby smiled. ‘Nice going, Mom.’

      Ruby climbed aboard the school bus and made her way down to her usual seat and sank into it. Stuck to the window was that same sticker of the cross-eyed kid and someone had scribbled WAKE UP AND SMELL THE BANANA MILK underneath.

      Del, thought Ruby, pushing back her sleeve to see the still very loud and clear message written on her arm. That’s not gonna disappear any time soon. Someone else had put a line through Del’s words and written, WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE.

       Who drinks coffee on a school bus?

      She caught sight of Bailey Roach sitting across the aisle – probably him, she thought. For just a second they locked eyes, but neither of them said a word. To the casual observer, this was no different from two strangers glancing at each other in the street, but to a person with good observational skills, the boy’s awkward running of hands through hair and biting of lower lip told a story.

      They were not friends, Ruby Redfort and Bailey Roach: he had blown his chances of friendship when he had picked on Clancy Crew. It wasn’t just that Clancy was Ruby’s closest friend; it was also a lot to do with the fact that Ruby couldn’t stand watching someone get picked on, period. Roach might be a bully, and his previous actions could certainly be deemed cowardly, but he was not a fool. He had figured out that to cross Ruby Redfort was to take on one determined enemy and, to be frank, Bailey Roach always went for the easy target.

      That was why Bailey Roach had avoided coming face to face with Clancy ever since the Marty’s minimart incident. No one in Bailey Roach’s gang, least of all Bailey, had understood how a wimpy-looking boy like Clancy had beaten him in a fight. Word had gone round school that Clancy Crew was not someone to be messed with, that he had some special moves, probably taught to him by some kung fu master. Whatever the reason, Roach certainly didn’t want to repeat the experience.

      Ruby made it into school in good time. This would give Mrs Drisco no opportunity to comment on Ruby’s lack of regard for the school clock (something her form teacher did most days) but she would have ample opportunity to comment on the T-shirt Ruby was wearing, which read: Have you had a frontal lobotomy or have I?

      The first person she ran into was Del, who said, ‘So I saw a picture of you in the paper standing with your little identical twin friend.’

      ‘What?’