Mr. Edgar Spears gave the lanky, dark-haired girl in front of him a look of terror surpassing even the one he usually gave to children. How he had ended up in the teaching profession no-one really knew. However, it was obvious to even the most sceptical of his career path that without this particular student, Unfortunately, for the past year and a half he had been attempting to teach Umbrielle Carbone.
It wasn’t that Umbrielle wasn’t intelligent - she displayed ample cunning and deviousness, and was usually at the top of the class. It wasn’t that Umbrielle was lazy - she had laser focus and iron discipline when it came to achieving her goals. No, Mr. Spears was sure that Umbrielle would be a fine student if she wasn’t so damned determined to be wicked! She had no qualms about demonstrating her malevolent intentions, and when pressed, admitted that she tried to break the rules. Like today, for example.
“M-Miss Carbone,” Mr Spears stammered, “what d-do you think you’re doing?”
“Tying your hands up,” she said calmly, moving on to his legs. By the time Umbrielle was three weeks into kindergarten, students had already been banned from bringing rope into school. That couldn’t stop her. Last week it had been grass, the week before that skipping ropes, and today it was her hair ribbon. Mr Spears was distinctly familiar with the differences between them all at this point in his career - how they chafed, how quickly they would cut off his circulation.
“But h-how am I supposed to get out of the cupboard if my hands are tied?”
“I can’t be expected to think of everything, can I?”
“I… I can’t just spend the break in a cupboard! I have duties as a teacher at this school…”
She shrugged, face betraying almost no emotion. “Your problem, not mine.”
* * *
Thomas ‘Big T’ Tucker and William ‘Billy’ Gregory were, in their opinions, the kings of the school. At twelve years old they were both tall and hulking for their age, with big mouths and bigger fists. Yes, they were kings of the school - and they wanted everyone to know it.
“Hey kid!” Billy yelled at a passing child who couldn’t have been more than five years old, “Gimme your lunch or I’ll give you a wedgie. Ain’t that right, Big T?”
“That’s right,” said the other boy, licking his lips in anticipation. The little boy looked up at them, wide-eyed, hands trembling slightly. He clutched a brown paper bag tightly to his chest which Billy made a teasing swipe at. “Mmm. Smells like… meatloaf.”
A thin girl with dark hair pulled back in a braid walked up to them. She was only in year four, so Big T turned up his nose at her, but she didn’t seem perturbed. “Emily Hansen told me to ask you why you didn’t meet her in the staffroom this break.”
Billy could almost see the gears ticking in his head. Emily Hansen hadn’t asked him to meet her in the staffroom. Big T mightn’t have been the brightest, but he knew that. However, he also knew that Emily Hansen was the prettiest girl in school.
“She said she’d only wait five more minutes.” The pipsqueak (she had to be at least an inch shorter than him) checked her watch. “You’d better hurry.”
That was the icing on the cake for Big T, and he was off like a flash. Billy didn’t really care. T had bunked off without him before, and Billy was perfectly capable of tormenting the small fries by himself.
“Now, you little twerp,” he said, “gimme that meatloaf.”
The pipsqueak was still standing there. “Whadda you want, kid? Scram!”
“Mr Spears wanted to see you on the soccer pitch about your track performance last week. I think there may have been some kind of reward involved.”
His eyes lit up. If there was anything he loved more than beating stuff out of people, it was when they just gave it to him. He rushed off as well.
“I’m not going to take your meatloaf,” she said to the boy, “but you are going to give me your money.”
He burst into tears.
* * *
Mr. Spears was just opening the staff meeting - only slightly late, he’d only been calling for help five minutes before a cleaner opened the closet - when Thomas Tucker burst into the staffroom. “I’m so sorry I was late,” he said, “I guess I just forgot…” he trailed off as he saw the eyes of every teacher in the school upon him and his face grew very red.
“Mr Tucker, what are you doing?” Asked Ms Euston, the vice principal, with a frown on her characteristically pinched face.
“I, uh… nothing?” His face was florid with the anger and embarrassment coursing through him.
“Mr Tucker, I think a detention may be in order if you don’t explain what you are doing here, now. I should think-”
At that moment, however, a cream pie came sailing in from the upper window and caught Ms Euston squarely in the face. She gaped, looking something akin to the abominable snowman. Mr Spears found himself similarly treated a few seconds later. There was no point deliberating over what had happened.
“Umbrielle Carbone! Was that you?”
“Yes.”
“Why on earth would you do something like that? Now we’re all covered in whipped cream!”
She shrugged, letting another pie fly into the face of the principal. “Your problem, not mine.”
* * *
Umbrielle walked through the wrought-iron school gates with her typical proud posture, but as soon as she caught sight of the tall, tight-lipped woman standing on the street corner she began to slouch slightly. Throwing her bag into the 1968 Volkswagen Beetle (her mother had a bizarre infatuation with antique cars), she slumped into the passenger seat.
“How was your day?” Her mother asked in an indifferent term.
“Fine. I threw cream pies at all the teachers. I shut Mr Spears in the closet again.”
Her mother didn’t reply, her disappointment palpable. After all, Umbrielle had done it three weeks in a row.
“I stole a kindergartener’s money.”
Her mother’s eyes gleamed avariciously. “How much?”
“Three pounds fifty pence. He cried.”
“I don’t care if he cried! Your mother is the leader of an international crime syndicate and at ten years old you can only steal small change from babies? Umbrielle Carbone, you are such a disappointment!”
She hung her head in shame.
“Try harder!”
* * *
“Where are you going?” Umbrielle asked. It was late evening, the sun already almost below the horizon, and yet her mother was dressed in a stylish travelling coat with abalone buttons and trimmed with ermine. (Umbrielle herself, of course, was dressed in a plain grey dress. The only adjustment her wardrobe had had in the past three years was when she had hacked off all the frills. Of course, her mother was a very busy woman - it wasn’t her fault she had forgotten to buy more.)
“To Palermo.”
Umbrielle didn’t remember her mother talking about going to Sicily at any point. So she dared another question. “Why are you going to Palermo?”
“Because my cartel has an important smuggling operation this week and I don’t trust Antonio Esposito not to mess it up like he did last time. And on the subject of hopeless incompetence, don’t ask me to bring you with me. You’ll only get in the way - you couldn’t take candy from a baby if its mother was looking the other way!”
With that, her mother walked out the door, closing it with a bang of finality. Without even a goodbye.
Umbrielle sat there for a few moments, stunned, before the gears began to whir in her mind. She needed to do something big. The perfect crime, something even her mother would be impressed with. Regardless of what she said often and loudly, Umbrielle did like to think of everything, and she was sure she could plot a worthy heist.
After all, the Louvre was only sixty pounds and a three-and-a-half hour train ride away…
* * *
Intrigue floated by in the Parisian air. It was after dark and the Louvre had shut its doors. Luckily, Umbrielle had discovered a disused service entrance. So, smiling to herself and crouched behind a stack of mouldering crates, she lifted her hand towards the door. Nondescript metal and adorned with a scratched sign reading ‘Employés Selument, Entrée Interdite,’ it was hardly an auspicious portal to the biggest moment of her ten years of life. However, the smallest things can prophesy greater ones to come. Umbrielle turned the handle and saw…
