It was Haward pape standing on her doorstep a little out of breath, holding something in a black plastic bag. Howard Pope, the oddball who'd arrived at school the year before, whom nobody much liked, was standing there looking dirty and slightly off-the-planet, as usual.
"Hi, Howard," she said. How did he even know where she lived?
"Craze," he replied with a sharp nod, no smile. "Can I come in?"
Howard tended to call people by their surnames, which Ruth found kind of interesting. When she nodded, he pushed past her into the hallway. Ruth shut the door and they stood in the hallway looking uneasily at each other for a moment.
"What is it?" Ruth asked bluntly, pointing at what he was holding.
"A camera."
"Did you steal it?"
"Yeah." Howard frowned thoughtfully, looking past her down the hallway toward the kitchen. "But I'm not sure I got…everything," he mumbled.
"What do you mean, everything?"
"Might need batteries and a cable. I don't know."
"You want to check it out in here?" Ruth turned to open the door into the front room, but he didn't follow.
"You got anything to eat?" he asked in the odd, scratchy voice that always caught Ruth's attention in class.
"Sure." She led him down to the kitchen, wondering if it was the theft of the camera that made him seem so agitated.
"Was it scary?"
"What do you mean?" He gave her a hard look.
"Pinching it? Did you nearly get caught or anything?"
"Nah." He sniffed and stared at the ceiling, then walked over to the window and looked out. "Nothing easier."
Ruth pulled out a chair for him and went to the fridge. He had his back to her now, and she could see that he was trembling. There was not much in the fridge except some cheese and tomatoes.
"Are you cold?"
"Nah," he grunted.
"So how come you're shivering?"
Howard didn't answer but lifted up both legs of his jeans to his knees. Big red stripes like burns crisscrossed the white skin. He stood there and said nothing, letting her look.
"My old man went ballistic."
Ruth was shocked. "When?"
"Last night." He nodded thoughtfully, as if he were finding it hard to believe it himself.
Ruth went to the cupboard above the sink and pulled down the zinc and castor oil cream-her mother's answer to every skin condition known to humankind-and handed it to him.
She indicated the chair again and noticed the way Howard winced when he sat down. He unscrewed the lid of the plastic tub, scooped out some cream with his finger, and began to rub it on his legs.
"Use it all," Ruth told him. "We've got more."
Howard nodded and kept applying the cream.
"Sandwich okay?"
"Yeah," Howard said. He finished with the cream and started fiddling around with the camera on the table in front of him, frowning.
Ruth pulled out the bread and quickly threw together a couple of big cheese-and-tomato sandwiches and put them under the griller, trying to think what to say. Behind her, Howard sighed a couple of times.
"Needs batteries and another cord!" he said, exasperated. "Should have taken the box as well."
At school, Ruth had heard of Howard Pope before she'd even spoken two words to him. Within a week of him arriving at the school, Lou's phone had gone missing and was eventually found in the bottom of Howard's bag under his smelly socks, along with Justin Appleton's PSP and Melissa Todd's iPod. The fact that all these items were banned wasn't the point. Howard had stolen them and then left them at the bottom of his bag!
Ruth found that rather intriguing, even though she had pretended to be outraged like everyone else. It had made her wonder about the quiet new kid with the thick glasses and solemn face. Why would he steal something and not use it? After that incident, everyone was wary of Howard Pope, but that didn't seem to bother him too much. Or stop him. Two months later, the police were up at the school looking for missing items from the local electrical shop. A toaster, a milkshake machine, and an electric kettle were found in Howard's locker. Crazy! Why would an eleven-year-old want those things?
He was also known to have stolen a tray of doughnuts and fifteen Mars bars from the school cafeteria and then shared them around with anyone game enough to partake.
After that, most kids at the school had a grudging respect for Howard. They wouldn't be seen dead actually hanging out with him, but he had a kind of status. He was the official school thief. When anything went missing, everyone blamed Howard, whether he was guilty or not. And the most intriguing part of it all, to Ruth, was that he didn't seem to care.
She poured him some milk.
"So your dad beat you?" she asked after a while.
"Yep."
"What with?"
"A leather belt."
"Why?"
"I took a look at his rifle."
"His rifle?"
"He goes pig shooting. I was mucking around with it and…he caught me."
"Were you shooting it?"
"No way." He sniffed. "He was at his girlfriend's place, and I didn't have anything to do. So I took it out just to see how it worked. It's a good gun," he said proudly. "Worth about three grand."
"Yeah?"
"He only ever hits me when he's drunk or hungover," Howard added as an afterthought.
Ruth nodded. After her friends dropped her, Howard was virtually the only one in the sixth grade who'd have anything to do with her. Not that the two of them hung out together in any normal sense. That would have attracted too much attention. The two biggest losers in sixth grade becoming friends would have meant being hassled mercilessly by just about everyone. But when there was no one else around they would talk sometimes. She could usually find him slinking around somewhere on his own, under the peppercorn trees on the far side of the school or near the library. Their conversations were never normal. No talk of how many brothers and sisters they had or what their parents did, nor, for that matter, any discussion of the school or the other kids. Nothing like that. They discussed general things like if it was right to eat meat, or if footballers deserved all the money they got, or if ants felt fear before you stepped on them.
The thing Ruth liked about Howard was that she could never be sure what he was going to say next. Once they were talking about space and how big it was and he told her that the light we see from the stars is actually from years ago.
"You mean to tell me that when we see a star we aren't seeing it as it is now but…"
"As it was in the past." Howard had finished her sentence with a sly grin. "And some of that light is from hundreds of years ago."
"Wow!"
Ruth pulled the sandwiches from under the griller and spread butter over them. Then she found a plate and put them in front of Howard.
He picked one up and ate ravenously.
Ruth stood watching and thinking. There was something mysterious about him that she liked, something unknown. He never gave much away. Everyone at school couldn't wait to tell everyone else what they'd been doing, or what had happened to them, or what they thought about things, but not Howard. He kept his views close to his chest, which was probably why he had no friends.
"Do you hate him?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Your dad," she said.
Howard shrugged and took a long gulp of milk.
"How did you find my place?" she asked.
"I've seen your address on your schoolbag," he said through a mouthful of food.
"So you're a bit of a spy, huh?"
"Kind of." He looked around furtively as if he might, right at that moment, be looking for fresh clues to a mystery that he wasn't going to tell her about. "That's why I need a camera. So, where is your family?"
Without really intending to, Ruth told him the whole story of how she couldn't stand Marcus's bike races and even how she'd lied to her parents.
Howard made no comment, but she could tell he was listening carefully.
"So what are you going to do today?" he asked.
"Not sure yet," she said. "Got any ideas?"
He took a huge bite of his second sandwich and shrugged as if he weren't very interested at all.
When Howard finished the sandwich, he stood up.
"Mind if I have a look around?" he asked.
"Okay," Ruth said.
After he'd checked out the backyard and the bedrooms, they ended up in the front room, where it was warmer. Ruth sat on the heater and watched him snooping around. He banged a few notes on the piano, switched on the computer, picked up the delicate coffee cups on the sideboard and examined them closely. Then he picked up Marcus's guitar and strummed a few chords, all the time looking thoughtful, like he was on the verge of saying something important. Ruth was still trying to formulate a plan for the day.
Howard put the guitar down abruptly and took his jacket off, then went over to study the photos on the wall. Within a few moments he'd taken down the black-and-white shot of her and Rodney.
"Who is Rod?" he asked, taking it over to the window for more light.
"Rodney," Ruth corrected him.
"Rodney, then," Howard said. "Who is he?"
"The rat," she said.
"I figured that!" Howard grinned, still staring intently at the photo. "So where did you get him?"
"From my aunt."
"The one who died?"
"Yep."
"Is he alive?"
Ruth looked up in surprise. "You mean the rat?"
"Yeah."
No one had ever asked her that before.
"He looks alive," Howard persisted.
Ruth suddenly wanted to hug the skinny boy standing by the window.
"Of course not," she said. "It's just that I sort of…," she began tentatively. "I sort of thought…" She stopped again.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"Tell me." Howard flopped down in front of the heater. "Come on, I want to know about him."
So she told Howard about the day she was given the rat and about her sense that the rat knew things and actually understood what she said in some weird way. Then she told him how her good luck had disappeared when she didn't have the rat anymore.
"In what way?" Howard asked, his expression blank.
Ruth couldn't work out if he thought she was crazy or…not. "Well…my aunt died," she said bluntly, "my friends turned on me, and…my family became…totally obnoxious."
Howard nodded thoughtfully. She didn't care if he did think she was crazy; she could tell by the way he was listening that he wasn't a blabbing kind of person.
"So what happened to him?" Howard asked when she finally stopped talking.
"I…I lost him." It hurt to have to admit it, even now.
"How?"
Ruth shrugged.
