The Crims #2 Read online

  The only thing Barney seemed interested in attacking was his toy bone—which, Imogen, realized, was the small, red thing that had whistled past her head and which was now lying on the floor next to her. She managed to grab it and hurl it down the hall. Barney bounced off her and chased after it. At last.

  Imogen sat up and brushed the curly white dog hairs from her gray school uniform. “Nick!” she called. “Nate! Stop throwing Barney’s bone at people!”

  “It’s the only way we can get him to attack anyone!” said Nick.

  “Barney didn’t attack me. It was more like a very heavy hug,” Imogen said.

  “Well, that’s a start!” said Nate, ruffling Barney’s fur. “He’s definitely getting scarier. He growled at me the other day, and he bared his teeth. It was adorable.”

  “Adorable isn’t going to save us from the Kruks,” Imogen pointed out. But before she could meditate further on how totally incapable Barney was of protecting her family, her father ran down from the upstairs of the apartment and started cooing at him.

  “Who’s a lovely boy, then?” said Al, taking Barney’s toy bone and throwing it down the stairs. Barney bounded off to fetch it while Al beamed at him.

  Imogen actually felt quite jealous; her father had never shown her the attention he showed Barney. He wasn’t usually one for public displays of affection—he preferred public displays of equations (he had a gallery of framed math problems in his office that he liked to show off to visitors). But Al was different with Barney. He seemed to glow whenever the dog was near, like a lightbulb in a suit.

  Of course, Imogen thought, once I’m back in school, outshining the other students on a daily basis, I’m sure he’ll take notice. . . . Al had always been the proudest of Imogen when she’d been flying high (academically speaking) at Lilyworth Ladies’ College. Speaking of which . . . Imogen looked down at her watch and was stunned to realize it was almost eight o’clock. She was five minutes behind schedule. Her heart began to race the way it always did when she wasn’t exactly on time. School didn’t start till nine, but she wanted to get there early, to get the lay of the land, scout out the best locker—and figure out how soon she could take control. She rushed into the apartment and grabbed her schoolbag from her bedroom floor. “Delia!” she called down the stairs from the apartment. “Let’s go! Now!”

  The sun was shining as Imogen and Delia walked toward Blandington Secondary School. The birds were tweeting, and the clouds looked fluffy and delicious, like vanilla meringues, even though Imogen knew they were just collections of frozen water droplets because science was one of her favorite subjects. But the moment the cousins walked past the school gates, the sky above them turned gray, the birds stopped singing, and it looked as though it might rain at any minute.

  Delia pulled up the hood of her coat. “Summer vacation really wasn’t long enough,” she muttered.

  Imogen hugged herself. I want to go home, she caught herself thinking. And then she shook her head and put her hands on her hips like confident people do. No I don’t, she thought. I love school. But was she going to love this school?

  Lilyworth’s red bricks had seemed to glow from within, the way places do when they’re filled with rich people and politeness and children who thought “Gosh!” was a rude word. Blandington Secondary School didn’t glow at all. In fact, it seemed to snuff out light. The school was a solid lump of gray concrete, with unwelcoming gray doors and tiny windows. It looked like a really depressing LEGO building made by a really depressed giant. The whole place seemed bleak and empty; there were a few other students clustered in small groups in front of the school, but it was hard to see them because their gray uniforms (and gray faces) blended in perfectly with the building behind them. Imogen could tell it was going to be quite an adjustment from Lilyworth.

  “I can’t believe we’re actually at school early,” said Delia, looking around suspiciously. “I never even get here on time. Who are these people who turn up to school before they have to?”

  Delia’s question was answered when three mousy-looking girls rushed up to them. “Imogen!” said the one in glasses—and then she noticed Delia and backed away a little. It took a moment for Imogen to recognize her.

  “Hannah?” she asked. Hannah had been Imogen’s best friend before she’d left Blandington—partly because she seemed to have absolutely no interest in becoming queen bee herself. Hannah looked incredibly innocent, but she’d been responsible for more than one of their primary school teachers running screaming from the building, singing the lyrics to obscure Sondheim musicals, never to return. Imogen had never quite worked out what Hannah had done to them . . . but it couldn’t have been pretty.

  Beside Hannah stood Willa, who was much more intelligent than Imogen but also much more socially awkward (she couldn’t bear to look people in the eye unless she had one of her own eyes shut, which is why everyone called her “Winky”), and Penelope, who looked exactly the same as she had two years previously, except she now had braces on her teeth. My old clique! thought Imogen. But then she realized that Penelope was wearing her frizzy hair in a ponytail. Interesting, Imogen mused. Everyone knew that only the queen bee was allowed to wear her hair in a ponytail. Without Imogen there, Penelope had obviously become ruler of the school. Imogen was surprised—Penelope had always been a bit of a sheep (she was always cast as one in the school Nativity), so eager to please, and Imogen had never had any trouble getting her to do exactly what she wanted. She’d once convinced Penelope that “wonderbits” was the new word for “cool,” and Penelope had gone around saying it for an entire week before Imogen revealed that it been a hilarious joke. But now that she thought about it, “wonderbits” had actually caught on in a big way. . . .

  “So here you are,” said Penelope, staring at Imogen.

  “I am,” said Imogen, staring at Penelope.

  The other girls looked from Imogen to Penelope and back again, seemingly trying to work out who would crack first. Imogen hadn’t lost a staring contest since she’d been beaten by Great-Uncle Umbrage when she was eight—and that didn’t really count because it turned out that Great-Uncle Umbrage had two glass eyes. So it wasn’t very surprising that after a couple of minutes Penelope blinked.

  Yesssss, thought Imogen.

  Penelope pulled out her ponytail and combed her fingers through her hair, smiling at Imogen with a “you win” sort of expression, which was Imogen’s favorite type of facial expression on other people.

  Good, thought Imogen. This isn’t going to be hard at all. I’m queen bee again already.

  Penelope actually looked a little relieved not to have to be in charge anymore. She linked arms with Imogen as they walked toward the school building. “Everyone is going to die when they see you,” she said. “Like, literally die.”

  “I hope not,” Imogen said. “I don’t fancy doing time for manslaughter.”

  “You’re still a total legend here,” Hannah said. “Everyone remembers that time at primary school with the worms and the caretaker—” But then she stopped speaking. She was looking at someone off to the side.

  Delia. She was standing where Imogen had left her, arms crossed, foot tapping as though she were feeling very angry—and a little bit left out. Imogen had completely forgotten that she was there.

  “Sorry!” said Imogen.

  “Whatever,” Delia said, looking away, her lips pursed.

  Imogen felt a stab of guilt. She and Delia had only just properly become friends again, and now here she was, abandoning her for her old clique. “See you after school?”

  Delia rolled her eyes. “If I don’t find someone older and cooler to hang out with.” And she stalked off to the other side of the school.

  Hannah hadn’t been exaggerating, Imogen realized, when she walked into her classroom. She really was a legend in Blandington. Maybe not a good one, like The Legend of Zelda—more like an old Greek myth that seems sort of familiar, even though you haven’t actually read it. Her classmates fell silent wh
en they saw her . . . and then they started whispering to one another, making her feel like she had something embarrassing written on her forehead (which she definitely didn’t—she’d checked just before she left the house). But she just smiled at her new subjects. I don’t blame them for whispering, she thought. Things must have been pretty boring around here without me and my caretaker-defeating worms.

  Imogen marched straight to the back of the classroom and took the seat next to Penelope. At Lilyworth she’d always sat front and center, and generally behaved like an insufferable goody-goody. But Imogen Collins, her Lilyworth alter ego, was dead and gone like an out-of-date dodo bird. Everyone here knew who she was: Imogen Crim, math genius, criminal mastermind, junior tiddlywinks champion. And they liked her already. Or feared her, which was pretty much the same thing.

  The boy in the seat in front of her swiveled around and stared at Imogen. “Is it true?” he asked.

  “Probably,” she said.

  The boy looked impressed. “So when do you turn into Catwoman? Where do you get your powers from? Were you bitten by a cat or something?”

  Which wasn’t the response Imogen had been expecting. “What?” she said. “I’m not Catwoman. Catwoman isn’t real.”

  “Right,” said the boy, giving her a wink.

  “Anyway,” said Imogen, who had read a lot of Sam’s comics, “Catwoman doesn’t have powers. She’s just a very good burglar.”

  “Like some other people around here, eh?” said the boy, winking again. “Everyone knows you managed to get your family off on the whole Lunch Box Heist and that you can leap across buildings like a cat—”

  This was ridiculous. “Seriously, not even Catwoman can do that.”

  “I thought you said Catwoman wasn’t real.”

  Imogen sighed. It probably wasn’t a good sign that she was exhausted after just five minutes inside. Fine, she thought. Let him think I’m Catwoman. There were worse reputations to have.

  “Sorry I’m late!” said a small man with a very large bow tie who rushed into the classroom carrying a huge stack of books. Imogen recognized him at once—it was Mr. Stanton, her old primary school teacher. He looked a little less gray than he had back then . . . possibly because he hadn’t had Imogen in his class for two years. Such happy, innocent days, Imogen thought, remembering her tenth birthday, when she had set off explosives during silent reading so she would be able to go home early for birthday cake with her cousins. . . . Hm. She’d forgotten just how badly behaved she had been before she left for Lilyworth.

  Mr. Stanton dumped his books on the desk, and then realized he couldn’t see the students because the pile of books was so tall, so he walked around to the front of the desk. And then he took one look at Imogen and screamed.

  Imogen looked behind her, thinking for a moment that he might have seen a rat, or a ghost, or someone with an even bigger bow tie than him, but no: Mr. Stanton was screaming because of her.

  “Hello, boys and girls and Imogen Crim,” said Mr. Stanton, edging as far away from Imogen as possible. “I’m Patrick Fry, and I’ll be your teacher this year.”

  Hang on a minute, thought Imogen. His name isn’t Patrick Fry . . .

  “Yes it is,” said Mr. Stanton/Mr. Fry, as though he could read her mind. “I had to have my name . . . legally changed. . . .”

  Oh yes. Imogen remembered now. Mr. Stanton had testified against the Horrible Children regarding the Milk Carton Heist they’d pulled off just after she’d left Blandington. He must have changed his name through a witness protection program. He had obviously left his job at the primary school and come to teach at Blandington Secondary School. Which had been pretty pointless, seeing as the Crim children had followed him there.

  Mr. Fry straightened his bow tie, his hands shaking slightly. “Let’s get started, shall we? Sooner we start, sooner we can get out of here and back to the safety of our own homes!” He gave Imogen another terrified glance. “Open your history books to chapter four, ‘The Russian Revolution.’ Will the czars survive? Spoiler alert: No, they will not!”

  Everyone clattered around, trying to find their textbooks, and just as they were settling down again, there was a sharp knock at the classroom door.

  “Come in!” said Mr. Fry.

  A tall girl with an unnecessarily wide smile walked into the room. She was beautiful. Not only was she beautiful, but she was stylish. And not only was she stylish, but she was wearing her hair in a massive, glossy ponytail that put Imogen’s to shame. Honestly, a horse would have been proud of it.

  “So sorry I’m late,” she said, smiling her wide smile. “My mother’s Rolls-Royce broke down. They’re so much less reliable than BMWs, am I right?” She tossed her glossy ponytail and walked confidently up to the teacher, her hand outstretched. “Hello . . . Mr. Fry, is it? What a fantastic name. Is it German? My last school was in Germany. Es war fantastisch!”

  “Why, yes!” said Mr. Fry. “‘Fry’ does derive from the German word ‘frei,’ meaning ‘free.’ What a clever thing to know.”

  “Oh, well,” the girl said with a shrug, smiling. “I am clever, so I can’t help knowing things.”

  “And what’s your name?” asked Mr. Fry.

  “Gud,” said the girl, turning her unnerving smile on the classroom like a toothy searchlight. “Ava Gud.”

  “Welcome, Ava!” said Mr. Fry, showing Ava to a seat right at the front of the classroom. The seat that at Lilyworth would have been Imogen’s.

  Ava put down her expensive designer bag and pulled out an expensive designer pencil case, and unzipped it to reveal some expensive designer stationery. The classroom oohed appreciatively. Who knew Gucci made pencil sharpeners?

  Imogen looked over at Penelope, who was staring, openmouthed, with undisguised admiration at Ava.

  Uh-oh, thought Imogen. Reclaiming my queen bee status is going to be tougher than I imagined.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “WHY, YES,” AVA was saying to a circle of admirers who’d materialized around her desk. “I did live in Paris for a while before I moved to Germany. Can you tell because of my amazing skin? I’ll let you in on a secret—the French smear Brie on their faces at night. I’ve lived all over the world, actually, which is why I have so many friends and can speak seven languages, plus Welsh.”

  Penelope had already pushed her seat back and rushed over to introduce herself to Ava. She wasn’t the only one—all the girls in the room (and most of the boys) were now buzzing around the new girl like flies around an annoyingly attractive trash can.

  Imogen crossed her arms and studied Ava. Listening in on Ava’s conversation, she’d learned that she was glamorous, well-traveled, and extremely rich . . . and Imogen was pretty sure that the sparkly specks on her tie were diamonds. (“If you can’t identify precious stones from a distance, you might as well become a wig salesperson” was one of Big Nana’s favorite sayings.) Ava would have fit right in at Lilyworth, where pupils were dropped off at the start of the term by private helicopter, and the badly behaved girls spoke to one another in ancient Greek just for fun (the good girls preferred Latin).

  Then there was the ponytail. If Ava had been another girl—smaller, less sure of herself, someone who didn’t use soft cheese as a moisturizer—Imogen would have marched up to her and demanded that she wear her hair in plaits. But something about Ava made Imogen feel strangely insecure—and Imogen had never felt insecure, not even during Uncle Clyde’s failed circus heist, when he had forced her to do very dangerous tricks on a very rickety trapeze.

  What was a girl like Ava doing in a place like Blandington?

  Mr. Fry clapped his hands in a futile attempt to get the class’s attention. “Settle down now!” he said. “That’s enough excitement for one day!”

  Everyone kept on talking and whispering and generally admiring Ava.

  “Please?” said Mr. Fry, getting red in the face. Even his bow tie looked a bit upset. “Please be quiet? Just for a teensy-weensy second?”

  “Yea
h, come on, guys,” said Ava, turning around to look at the rest of the class. “Let’s show Mr. Fry some respect.”

  Of course, as soon as Ava asked them to, the class fell silent. You could have heard a pin drop. And then everyone did hear a pin drop—one of Imogen’s bobby pins slithered out of her ponytail and dropped to the floor, sending her cowlick sproinging back across her forehead. Great, thought Imogen. Even my hair thinks Ava should be queen bee.

  “Thank you, Ava!” said Mr. Fry. “Right, class. Now that I have your attention, I’d like you all to give a great big Blandington welcome to our newest student.”

  “Newest students,” corrected Imogen. “This is my first day too, remember?”

  “Oh dear, I suppose it is,” said Mr. Fry. “It feels like you’ve been here a lifetime already.” His bow tie was beginning to droop. It really was very expressive. “Right, then. Let’s give a great big Blandington welcome to our newest students: Ava Gud! (And Imogen Crim.)”

  You could hear the parentheses.

  A great big Blandington welcome, unsurprisingly, turned out to be a lukewarm round of applause.

  “Lovely!” said Mr. Fry. “Now, why don’t we ask our new students to tell us a bit about themselves. Ava, would you like to go first?”