Read Ruby Redfort 1 - Look Into My Eyes for Free Online

half hour ago.”
    Ruby went over and picked up the bag, and out fell three squishy plums.
    “Kinda weird to find plums at this time of year,” thought Ruby. And then she looked up at the tree and down at the fruit and she remembered what the voice had said. This was a plum tree and it was in the middle of the square.
    “Plum in the middle of the square . . .”
    “Where . . . everyone just walks on by
. . .”
    She walked right up to the tree and then walked around the trunk and then she saw it, something red.
    “Do you notice everything ruby red?”
    The voice had not been saying her
name,
it had been telling her to
look
for something red. The something red was a price sticker — it had Joe’s Supermart printed across the top and a price, $15:49, printed in the middle.
    Is this the clue or is this just a price sticker?
    She looked at it some more.
    If it’s a clue then I guess I’m meant to go to Joe’s Supermart — but fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents? I’m meant to go in there and find something for fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents? I bet there’s nothing in Joe’s Supermart for fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents. No one who had fifteen dollars and forty-nine cents would shop there.
    The dog looked at her stupidly — he didn’t know what was going on but he wouldn’t mind doing something else. Ruby was taking no notice though — she was just staring at the little sticker. After a couple of minutes of silent staring she got back on her bike and headed off toward school.
    When she got to the crossroads in the middle of Bird Street she called over her shoulder, “OK, Bug, time to go home.” The dog looked at her, disappointed, but he knew what to do and he took a left and Ruby cycled on up the hill. She would be early for once.
    As soon as she arrived at Twinford Junior High she went to look for Clancy. He was there already of course — overly punctual was his style.
    “Hey, what happened to you?” he asked. “You sorta look like a truck ran over you and then decided to reverse.”
    “Yeah well, I didn’t get too much sleep on account of someone stole my bed,” replied Ruby.
    “Someone stole your bed?” said Clancy, his mouth open like a fish.
    “Yeah, and that wasn’t all they took.”
    “What do you mean?” said Clancy, flapping his arms.
    “We don’t have a
single
piece of furniture left,” said Ruby dramatically.
    “You got robbed?” mouthed Clancy.
    “I guess you could call it that — though it looks more like we moved but no one bothered to tell us where we were moving
to
.”
    “They took everything?” said Clancy, his eyes widening.
    “Everything except the phones,” said Ruby. “By the way thanks for your call, buster.”
    “What call? I didn’t call,” said Clancy. “My dad grounded me on account of me having to re-take that French test, wouldn’t let me call, so I didn’t.”
    “No, I noticed,” said Ruby. “But someone did. I tell you I got some super strange telephonic activity last night.”
    “You did?” said Clancy. “What kinda super strange — weird strange or creepy strange?”
    “It’s hard to say,” said Ruby. “One was a hang-up and the other was this gravelly voiced woman.”
    “Like the woman in
A Date with Fate
?” asked Clancy.
    “Sorta,” said Ruby.
A Date with Fate
was a show that had been running for years; each week some mildly creepy ghost story was introduced by this old actress with this raspy voice — the stories tended to be a little lame.
    “What did she say?”
    “It’s hard to explain exactly — some kinda code.”
    “You crack it?”
    “Not yet, but listen — before that, this kinda chiseled guy turns up at our house and says he’s the house manager my mom requested, only of course my mom being my mom is calling him a butler.”
    “You got a butler! Wow,” said Clancy, impressed, even though
his
family had never been without one his whole entire life. “What’s he like?”
    “A total airhead,”