CHAPTER ONE
TOM AND ALICE BUTTON
“For boringness,” declared the Guide to the Dullest Places on Earth, “Drabton scores 11 out of 10. There's one key difference between watching paint dry and visiting Drabton: when paint dries, you put another coat on, which is something to do. In Drabton, there's nothing to do.”
That was a tad unfair. Like most places, Drabton didn’t have a famous sports team like Real Madrid or the New York Yankees; it wasn’t home to adrenalin-pumping theme parks like Singapore or Paris; and neither did it supply 24-hour free ice cream and toys to children like Sanexistpar in France.
Drabton was, nonetheless, a perfectly fine place in which to grow up and go to school. Tom and Alice Button had lived there for all 11 years of their lives and were perfectly content. That said, it had been a particularly slow start to the summer holidays. The latest headlines in the Drabton Gazette included: “Cat Stuck in Tree in Centenary Park” and “Cat Rescued From Tree in Centenary Park.” The only recent non-cat headline was: “Lamppost Gets New Lick of Paint.” A photo showed a crowd transfixed, watching the paint dry.
Drabton wasn't totally drab, however. Indeed, once a month, when the Drabton Fireworks Company tested out new products, it was one of the most fantastic places on the entire planet. The company's factory - known as The Works - was a short drive out of town on a vast site at the foot of Falcon Mountain. State-of-the-art firecrackers, Catherine wheels and rockets were devised there and dispatched to all corners of the globe. Bored travel writers were in so eager to get out of Drabton that none had stuck around long enough to witness one of the spectacular displays held on the 15th day of every month.
The entire town would gather in Centenary Park to watch the multi-coloured streaks of light swish through the night sky. Tom and Alice looked forward to the extravaganzas more than anything other than their birthdays, which, oddly for twins, were on different days.
This week’s display promised to be even better than usual, according to Norm Anderson, the mayor of Drabton. He seemed to think that something special was planned; something out of the norm.
*
Like most of Drabton’s adults, Tom and Alice's parents worked at the gigantic fireworks factory. Mr. Button liked to boast joke how his rockets were among the best on the planet, and possibly the galaxy, while Mrs. Button made a living as a nutritionist; her kids were always puzzled why a fireworks factory needed a food expert but at least she seemed to bring home huge amounts of chocolate.
Norm Anderson had once worked as a “Senior Whiz Engineer” developing the noises that rockets produced. Their dad once told the twins how the mayor had tried to invent a pet-friendly rocket because he felt terrible that fireworks made cats cower behind sofas and dogs bark as if burglars had smashed through the backdoor. His aim was to eliminate pet-scaring bangs and screeches by attaching tiny, mega-speakers to fireworks playing recordings of people saying in soft tones: “Cool doggy, cool doggy!” and “Sweet kitty, sweet kitty!”
However, during testing the speakers got damaged by the explosions, instead producing monstrous, distorted voices screaming something that sounded like “Kill doggy, kill doggy!” and “Eat Kitty, Eat Kitty!” The pets were traumatised, the project got scrapped and Norm Anderson left to run for mayor.
Tom and Alice weren't sure how serious their father was. When they overheard him and the mayor talking that day, he sounded deadly serious. The twins had separated from their dad in Vale Carpets - Drabton's biggest shop where you could buy everything under the sun except, strangely enough, carpets. Hank Vale, the store owner, worked part-time at the fireworks factory but seemed to do a roaring trade selling anything from chocolate bars and underwear to oxygen tanks and laser guns. This month’s sale included bras reduced to ₤3.50 and laser guns cut to ₤1.3 million for two.
The twins were in an aisle full of ladders fronted by a sign: “Suitable for rescuing all breeds of cats from trees.” They were stroking a tiny, black terrier with a cheeky face when Mayor Anderson whispered so loudly he may as well have shouted: “Apparently it's a new turbo-rocket that just keeps going and going towards the stars. Have you heard about it, Mr. Button?”
“You know I cannot discuss new fireworks, Mr. Mayor,” he replied. “I’d be breaking company policy.”
“I heard it may be unveiled soon, perhaps even this month,” the mayor enthused, as if discussing the location of buried treasure. Mayor Anderson was the announcer at the monthly displays so would find out before most people about any new fireworks, but he had little patience and was a renowned gossip who loved to exaggerate. A short, stocky man who stood on tiptoes in photographs, he regularly tripped over because his trousers were too long. He had once even tried to convince Mr. Li of the Shanghai Fireworks Association that the chef at Drabton's Chinese restaurant had invented chopsticks. The mayor wore a wig and was convinced everybody thought it was real hair. In fact, his brown mop looked like a guinea pig and moved from side to side when he talked.
“Well hello there, Tom and Alice,” he declared. “How the devil are you two? My, how you have grown!”
“We're children so of course we've grown,” Tom and Alice thought to themselves but didn't say. Being the smallest in their school year, they actually hadn't grown much at all. The mayor was exaggerating again.
Instead they responded: “Fine thank you, Mr. Mayor.”
“I was admiring Hank’s fine selection of ladders. Did I tell the story about great grandfather Anderson climbing Mount Everest using only a step ladder and a piece of string? It was similar to this one-”
The mayor caught his shoe on his trouser hem and tripped into the ladders, causing them to cascade like dominoes in an enormous clatter. The terrier barked.
“Are you ok, my old fruit?” asked Hank as he helped the mayor to his feet, stopping for a moment to let out a mammoth sneeze. Hank was almost twice the mayor’s size and, with his pony-tail and colossal, clonking boots, seemed 10 times bigger.
“I'm fine, I'm fine,” scoffed Mayor Anderson, dusting himself down.
Tom and Alice weren’t the only ones too embarrassed to tell the mayor his wig had fallen off. The dog sniffed the brown tuft of hair and started to cock his leg to relieve himself. Mayor Anderson pointed outside the shop and shouted: “Look everyone!” As they turned, he went to pick up the wig and grabbed the dog by mistake. The pooch was understandably upset given the delicacy of the moment and nipped Mayor Anderson’s hand. The mayor quickly shoved the hairpiece back on at a funny angle.
“Look at what?” asked Hank, turning back.
“It was a group of Tibetan lemurs,” continued the mayor, red-faced. “They've gone now. Anyhow, Mr. Button, let me know if you hear anything about you-know-what.”
He winked repeatedly at Mr. Button and marched out of the shop, tripping on his trousers again, this time grabbing his wig before it fell. He'd kept the guinea pig on his head, but had he let the cat out of the bag?
*
“What was Mayor Anderson saying about a turbo-rocket, Dad?” asked Tom, climbing into the top bunk in his Arsenal pyjamas.
“You know I can’t discuss new fireworks, even with you. If news leaked to the Gazette then every firework maker in the world would copy us.”
“But they copy you anyway. You find Mr. Li from the Shanghai Fireworks Association at every display with his video camera.”
“That's not the point. And you know Mayor Anderson. If a dog barked, he'd tell you he heard a lion.”
“Anyway what's the point of talking about what might happen at the display?” added Mrs. Button, the top of her curly brown hair brushing her husband's chin. The children took after their mother when it came to height, freckles and hair. “We're going to see for ourselves this week. Why ruin the surprise?”
Tom couldn't think what to say but Alice was good at this.
“You always ask dad what a movie is about and whether it's any good before you see it,” Alice reasoned. “So why can’t Tom ask about the fireworks before we go to the display?”
“But that's different,” replied Mrs. Button, tucking Alice into the lower bunk. She didn't say why it was different (an annoying parent thing) but it closed the conversation and she turned the light off. “Sleep time now.”
“What about the brainteasers?” asked Alice. “Make them hard please.”
“I nearly forgot,” said Mr. Button.
Their father liked to leave Tom and Alice in bed with puzzles to ponder as they dozed off. Mr. Button said it was good exercise for the brain and would help them make sense of problems later in life. He wasn’t to know they would come in use much sooner.
“So first, how can of your cousins have an aunt that isn't your aunt?”
“Oh boy,” sighed Tom.
“All your cousins have an aunt who isn't your aunt? That’s easy,” mused Alice, her shoulder-length brown curls spread over the pillow like a crazy fan.
“Second,” said their father, “what planet do you get if you scramble the letters of heart?”
“That’s so easy,” said Alice, disappointed.
“And last one; how do you say in French the phrase “that doesn’t exist”? Goodnight guys,” said Mr. Button, shutting a door covered by a giant poster of the solar system with a “You Are Here” arrow pointing at the blue planet third from the sun.
As the twins lay in near darkness, Alice recalled that her father hadn't actually denied the turbo-rocket would appear at this week’s display. In fact the way he had behaved suggested that something out of the ordinary might be planned. That was typical of Alice: she was a deep thinker who calmly assessed the evidence before reaching a logical conclusion.
Tom tended to react instantly, guided by emotions and his sense of right and wrong. That meant he could be brave and fearless at times, a hothead at others. He had only recently pushed Wally McSnide into a swimming pool for stealing his goggles. Wally, a gormless and neckless brute whose hobbies included inflicting pain on smaller kids, stole goggles for fun, but this time Tom had got it wrong. Embarrassingly, the missing goggles were still on his head. As punishment, he was barred from attending last month's firework display. Even worse, he had been taunted by Wally for weeks.
For the coming display, Tom would try to talk Alice into joining him on Devil's Mound, the best view in the park but out of bounds and seriously creepy at night. Alice would normally refuse to go there but would then give in to her brother to calm him down.
Their secret power meant that it sometimes paid for Alice to stop Tom getting angry.
“Mum!” declared Alice, staring at the underside of Tom's bed.
“Why do you want her?” yawned Tom.
“That's the answer! How can all your cousins have an aunt that you don't have?”
“Oh, I see. Mum is the-” Tom tailed off. “I don't get it.”
“Mum is the aunt our cousins have, but she's not our aunt. And the other answers are Earth - it's an anagram of heart – and the French answer is Ca n’existe pas. Easy-peasy.”
Tom wasn't really listening. All he could think about was the display. Maybe the turbo-rocket was about to be unleashed; maybe it didn't exist and Mayor Anderson was in a tizzy about nothing. Whatever was happening, the twins wouldn't miss the display for the world. Even with their special gift, it wasn’t like they had anything better to do.
© Grant S Clark 2011
