Mayo - Itch: the explosive adventures of an element hunter

ITCH

THE EXPLOSIVE ADVENTURE
OF AN ELEMENT HUNTER

SIMON MAYO

SPLINTER and the distinctive Splinter logo are trademarks of Sterling Publishing Co., Inc.

2012 by Simon Mayo
Cover illustration Dominic Harman (figures)
and Getty Images (background photograph)

Previously published in Great Britain by Random House Childrens Books. Published by arrangement with Random House Childrens Publishing, UK, one part of The Random House Group Limited. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781454905110

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www.sterlingpublishing.com

To my son Joe,
where it all
started.

Contents

Cornwall, England
December

The earthquake was a small one. The post office shook only slightly, the window rattling in its frame and dislodging an Advent calendar. The van outside vibrated just enough to set off its alarm, and if you were watching closely, you might have seen the traffic lights shudder and sway.

A nurse out walking her dog felt a vibration through the pavement and stopped. She would have thought nothing of it but for her Labradors sudden bark and raised hackles. She could hear at least two other dogs reacting with a torrent of howls and yelps in houses nearby. The nurse looked around, then shrugged and resumed her walk. Her dog followed, tail between his legs.

A man reading his newspaper in the bathtub felt a rumbling sensation. Glancing down, he noticed a tiny series of waves running from the edge of the tub to his knees. There were three sets of waves in all, each about half an inch apart. He got out of the bathtub, telling himself it was because the water had gotten too cold.

Underneath the mans house, the foundations absorbed most of the tremor. Three feet below his basement, the peat moved and folded, and the silt that lay thirty feet below cracked and heaved for the first time in decades.

Under this was another thirty feet of sand and all sorts of crushed shells laid down over millions of yearsall moving, creasing, and pushing into new shapes and layers. Below that lay sixty-five feet of slate and tin that had shaped so much of Cornwalls history. Then came the granite; under pressure from the magmathe liquid rock heated by the Earths coreits veins and cracks opened and closed.

And from deeper still came a dark cluster of strange rocks, pushed up higher and higher, forced through the fissures, stopping only when it met the cooler, solidified mass of granite that ran for miles like a ceilingnorth, south, east, and west.

The cluster stopped there.

Half a mile beneath the man and his bathtub.

Waiting.

I tchingham Lofte had caused explosions before. There had, in truth, been many bangs, flashes, and smells coming from his bedroom in the past. His multi-stained carpet and pockmarked walls were a testament to that. But there had been nothing like this explosionit made even more of an impact than the small earthquake that had rippled under Cornwall a few months before. It wasnt just the bedroom walls that shook; it was the whole house. Windows and doors rattled, the pots and pans in the kitchen jumped, and two drawers in the dresser opened.

Not that Itchingham was aware of any of that, because he was unconscious. He would have stayed that way, too, if it hadnt been for the fact that his eyebrows were on fireand the astute decision of his eleven-year-old sister, Chloe, to throw a cup of water over his face.

Itch (everyone called him Itch except his mother, whose bright idea it had been to name him Itchingham in the first place) sat up sharply, shaking the water out of his eyes.

What did you do that for, Chloe? he said. I had it all under control, you know.

Chloe rolled her eyes. Yeah, right. Your eyebrows were burning, and she turned and went back to her bedroom, which was across the hall.

Itch felt for the prickly remains of what used to be his eyebrowswhat was left crumbled in his fingers. Then the unmistakable smell of burned hair filled his nostrils and he realized Chloe had been right. He stood up a little gingerly and thought hed better go after her and admit it, but when he poked his head into her room, he found she was already asleep. Itch marveled at her ability to fall back to sleep in secondssomething he had never been able to do. The truth is, if you sleep in the room next to a fourteen-year-old science-crazed boy who likes to blow things up, you learn very quickly only to take notice of the very big bangs.

Itch went into the bathroom to dry and inspect his face. Both eyebrows were indeed gone, and about an inch of his bangs too. His wavy blond hair tended to be straggly anyway, but this explosion had forced it into a completely new style. Most of the sooty black smudge on the left side of his face came away with a vigorous rub.

Itch went back to his room and surveyed the mess. A really bad one this time. White smoke hung in the air and clung to the walls. Where the contents of his beaker had splashed, the carpet had turned black. Itch thought it had originally been green, but that was a long time ago. The beaker itself had shattered into a number of pieces, three of which had embedded themselves in the curtains, where they continued to smolder. Burn marks surrounded each of the fragments. He climbed onto his bed to retrieve them and stepped on a fourth piece, which poked its way right through his sock. Itch winced and pulled it free. Blood began to ooze through the cotton.

There had been a few posters on the walls, all bearing the scars of previous mishaps. All had now been blasted to pieces. He put what was left of them under his bed, together with the fragments of the beaker. He scraped the chemical remains of the explosion off the carpet and wrapped them in his wet towel. These too he shoved under the bed.

Itch changed into his pajamas and took his clothes, along with his bloodied sock, downstairs to the washing machine. As he had learned, this was the only way to get rid of the smell of smoke. His foot still hurt from the sharp beaker shard and he hobbled along to get the laundry detergent. He put the washing machine on its quickest cycle and hoped it would all be done before his mother got back. Thirty-one minutes later the machine beeped at him, and he hung his clothes up to dry.

With any luck, thought Itch, Mum wont notice, and Ill get away with it. He had gotten away with so much over the years that this wasnt necessarily wishful thinking.

But Itchingham Lofte had forgotten about his missing eyebrows.

Jude Lofte arrived home just after eleven-thirty. Though she often had to work weekends, this was late, even for her. Itch had been in bed for twenty minutes but was nowhere near sleep. It always took his brain a couple of hours to shut down anyway, but tonight he was lying in his dark room, increasingly aware of how much it stank. Even with the window open, as it had been for the two hours since the explosion, there really was no escaping the smell of burning phosphorus. He was annoyed with himself for many reasons; mostly because hed used too much of the phosphorus hed collected from a couple of old ship flares. Too many matchstick heads as well. And maybe, on balance, mixing everything up with a screwdriver had been one of his stupider ideas. He was also irritated that he had awakened Chloe and that she had seen the post-explosion chaos in his room.