“I hope you have reconsidered your behaviour,” Grandmother said austerely.

Linua had not, but judged it wisest not to say anything.

“You will not be sitting down to lunch until you are dressed appropriately.”

“You mean I’m not going to be able to eat at all?” Linua asked incredulously.

There was a short silence, but not even Grandmother could justify making Linua starve.

“You will eat in the kitchen,” Grandmother said stiffly.

It was probably meant to be a punishment, but for Linua it was a huge treat not to sit with Grandmother and suffer the constant pressure of being Lady Leylan’s granddaughter. Instead, she got to be an ordinary person sitting at the kitchen table, eating an ordinary dinner just like everyone else. Helged talked about ordinary, everyday things like the milk delivery, and didn’t once mention either astronomy or what Linua was wearing.

After she had eaten lunch, Linua prepared carefully. She set up her study books in her bedroom, and told Helged she was going to study up there for the evening. There was always a chance that no-one would check on her until she got back, and her absence would go unnoticed. She wrote a note to say she was going to the Observatory and left it on her desk just in case.

Then she went into her session with Mdm Patoni. She tried her hardest not to think of the evening ahead of her, and all the moves she had to make simply to get to the Observatory. She didn’t want Mdm Patoni to think she was distracted and complain to Grandmother.

Happily Mdm Patoni didn’t notice anything, and then finally, after what felt like hours and hours and hours of waiting, it was five o’clock, and Mdm Patoni left. Grandmother was doing something in the library, oblivious to what was about to happen.

Linua couldn’t leave the house via back door, as she would have to go through the kitchen itself, where Helged was preparing dinner in the kitchen, a dinner that Linua would miss. Linua couldn’t go out of the front door either, because the kitchen led off from the main hallway, and Helged might see her sneaking out there too.

That left only the window to the downstairs toilet, which was tucked away at the back of the staircase. Linua retrieved her mitani backpack and took a deep breath. This was the point of no return. It was now or never. Grandmother was going to be furious. Linua was going to be grounded for the rest of her life. But the thought of not going to Astronomy Club this evening, and not being able to tell the others about the missing artefact, was almost too much to bear.

She was going to do this.

Linua pushed open the tiny window above the toilet cistern. It was a small window, only a little wider than her shoulders. She threw her backpack and her flip flops through first, then grabbed hold of the lintel, lifted herself up by her arms, and posted her legs through. The metal catch at the bottom of the window scraped painfully against her back, but after a wriggle she was out. She dropped to the ground, picked up her things, and started running.

Linua pelted down the road towards the village as fast as she could. The last bus from the village to Herkow Bus Station was at quarter past five.

She arrived at the bus stop precisely one minute early, glad to see there was no sign of the bus. At quarter past the hour, satisfaction turned to concern when there was still no sign of the bus. At sixteen minutes past she began to be afraid that she’d missed it. At seventeen minutes past she was certain that she had missed it, and all her plans were in ruins. The rest of the Astronomy Club would be waiting at the bus station in vain for her. She would miss tonight’s meeting, and miss the chance to tell the others face to face about the missing artefact.

This was a disaster!

The bus finally trundled up just before twenty past five, while Linua was miserably contemplating the long, humiliating walk back to the house.

She climbed on, almost giddy with relief, and proffered one of the fifty-shekel notes that Uncle Wai Ren had given her earlier that day to the driver. He looked at the note, and then he looked at her. He did this several times.

“I don’t have change for that, love.”

“Oh,” Linua said, regarding the note doubtfully. “I don’t have anything else.”

The earlier panic Linua had felt when the bus was late resurged now in full force. Would he not let her on because she didn’t have the right kind of money?

The driver sighed and rolled his eyes, then jerked his head towards the interior of the bus. He had to do it a second time before she realised he meant her to get on without paying. She felt herself flushing with embarrassment.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“Oh. Thank you!”

She spent a good proportion of the next forty-five minutes worrying about what would happen at the other end. The first time she had ridden a bus she and Eret had got on at one bus stop and got off at another. But this time she was going all the way to the bus station. Would it be like when you travelled on a long-distance train and a ticket collector came round and checked that everyone had their tickets? She had only ever been on a train once, on the journey when she had first come to Herkow with Grandmother and Helged. What would she do if she got to the bus station but they wouldn’t let her out because she hadn’t bought a ticket? Would it get the bus driver in trouble if she said he had let her on for free?

She also spent some of this time worrying about how long the others would wait for her at the bus station. The bus had been nearly five minutes late, and it was taking forever. It lurched and juddered from stop to stop, and at one point dived into a side street to complete a massive detour through a housing complex.

Linua kept checking her watch nervously.

The bus was also grimy and disgusting. There seemed to be ground in dirt on the floors, and Linua was horrified to realise that there was a wad of chewing gum stuck in between the seat she was sitting on and the one next to her. She changed seats at the earliest opportunity.

To distract herself she fussed with her shirt, trying to decide how far she should button it down. She had left it hanging loose around her hips, but now she experimented with tying it in a knot at her waist. It was just short enough to ride up occasionally and show an inch of her midriff, but not so short that it showed too much.

A few minutes after 6pm, the bus finally pulled into the bus station. Everyone who was still on just got off, including the driver, and no-one asked her for a ticket or anything. Linua followed the other passengers into the bus station and looked around her. Eret hadn’t said where the car would be. Then she realised that Eret was standing in the concourse, looking around him. He hadn’t spotted her yet, so she waved. His eye caught hold of her, and he seemed to freeze.

“Hi,” she said, a little shyly, as she came up to him.

He didn’t respond immediately. She wondered if something was wrong, and then he seemed to pull himself together, blinking his eyes rapidly.

“Ah … er … hi! Yeah. Hi. You look really different! Er. I mean, not in a bad way obviously! Um. The car is this way.”

She fell into step beside him, and realised he was sneaking constant little glances at her. Did he think she looked pretty? Or was it because she looked odd? Maybe she shouldn’t have tied the shirt up in the knot—maybe it was obvious she was just wearing old pyjama bottoms and not real leggings. Or perhaps the fact that she had cut up another shirt and the seams were all raggedy made her look stupid. She felt a strange mixture of nervousness and joyfulness, all bubbling and churning together in a witch’s brew of happiness and uncertainty.

At least her plan had worked. All the stressful sneaking out and bus-related stuff was behind her now. She just had to relax and enjoy the meeting with the Astronomy Club.

Eret’s dad’s car was one of those big family ones meant to fit lots of children and pets. Anith had claimed the passenger seat in the front, which had left Pickle, Solly and Eret in the backseat. Eret ruthlessly turfed Solly out of the backseat and made him sit on a small fold-down seat in the boot, on the basis that Solly was the smallest.

This wasn’t actually true. Pickle was technically the shortest, but inclined towards plumpness. However, Solly was about the same height as Linua, and both of them had light builds. Linua felt that, as the one who had put everyone out of the normal routine, she ought to be the one to sit in the boot. Her attempt to say so was firmly quashed by Eret, in his typical rude way, when he held up a commanding finger in front of her face whilst raising an imperious eyebrow at Solly. Solly whined about it, but he went, and Linua found herself crushed up against Eret in the backseat.

Eret’s dad had been industriously cleaning his glasses during all of this, but now that the seating arrangements had been sorted, he suddenly decided to notice them all and smiled welcomingly at Linua. He seemed to approve of her. She had once overheard him telling Eret that Linua was a nice, polite child, although she felt that the point of the comment hadn’t really been about herself, but more a commentary on Eret’s own execrable manners.

Anith peered around the seat-rest and her eyebrows shot up at the sight of Linua.

“Wow, nice new outfit! That’s a bit different.”

Linua was saved from having to reply because everyone immediately got into a vociferous argument over whose turn it was to choose which music the radio would play. Linua sank back into her seat and let it all wash over her.

Eret’s thigh was warm against her own.

“You posted on the bulletin board last night about Professor Chuyn Hee Guo,” he said.

Linua had mentioned the obituary, but not the missing artefact. She wanted to do that in person. She would tell everyone in the Astronomy Club when they got to the Observatory.

“What do you think happened?” she asked Eret. “It didn’t say anything about the expedition at all. Did he catch something while he was on it?”

“I reckon it’s a cover up. I think something else happened to him and the World Council or the military said that stuff because they didn’t want to admit what happened.”

Linua felt sick.

“But that happened because of us! We sent that email with the image of the map!”

“It’s not our fault,” Eret declared. “Yeah we sent it, but if we hadn’t that treasure hunter might have got hold of it instead. We’re not responsible for any mistakes the archaeologists might have made when investigating the site.”

Linua didn’t find that particularly comforting, but then Eret was distracted by something Anith asked him.

At the Observatory everyone piled out of the car and went through the main doors into the building, chattering happily about the prospective tour of the upgraded telescope. Eret’s dad got called away by a junior researcher to answer a telephone message, leaving the Astronomy Club to their own devices.

“Hey,” Solly whispered. He looked over his shoulder. Linua could see he was full of suppressed excitement. “Gues what! There was a car following us! All the way from the bus station!”