I Must Be Crazy

The house was quiet again. Darcie was in the kitchen, washing the dishes, when Markus peered around the doorframe. As quietly as he could he slipped into the kitchen and sat down on one of the chairs. Even as quiet as he was, it wasn’t enough; Darcie glanced around and smiled. “Hey Markus, what’s up?”
He broke a piece off one of the cookies which were on a plate on the table. “What kind of things can you hire at the agency?” he asked, and popped it into his mouth.
The nanny chuckled. “Things? I’m a thing, am I? Actually, don’t answer that.” She added an extra squirt of dishwashing liquid, and went on cheerfully, “Well, there’s all sorts. Me, of course - so nannies, childminders, all that sort of thing - and then Zariya, Hadrian and Crispin, so teachers. Then there’s maids and butlers and drivers, odd-job men and women, builders… everything you could ever need.”
“How does it work? I mean, the people who get hired, they all seem very different, like you and Hadrian, for example. Yet you both work there.”
“That’s simple. We decide we’d like to do a certain job, or think we’d be good at it or whatever, so then we go to the agency and say we’d like to put ourselves down in their books as up for hire to do that job. Then, when they search for someone available to do it, our names and details pop up.”
“So anyone could put themselves there? For anything? Like…” Markus cast about for an example, “An artist?”
“Oh yeah, of course.” Darcie grinned. “I knew someone once who put himself in as a professional gay best friend.”
“Did he get hired much?”
“You’d be surprised.” She put the past dish into the rack and pulled out a dish towel from a drawer. “Why do you ask?”
“I was just curious,” said Markus casually, standing up. “I need to finish off some homework, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“It’ll take that long? Night, Markus.”
“Night, Darcie.” He hurried up the stairs, aware of her standing at the bottom, watching him.

Markus didn’t go to school the next day. It was Thursday, and he had Music, English, Science, Maths and Art, but he had more important things to do than those. It was time to go to the agency.
He’d managed to get a vague idea of where it was, and so he was reasonably sure of where he was meant to be going when he snuck out of school that morning. The sneaking out was more difficult; he attended the morning registration, trying to ignore his uncomfortably fast heartbeat. Answering the register, he was struck by the sudden fear that his teacher would be able to see what he was planning from his eyes, that she would hear his heart and know, just know what he was about to do. But if she did, she said nothing, and did nothing, and that was how he managed to survive morning registration.
He’d heard somewhere that the more you tried to hide, the more conspicuous you would be. Sneaking around school like a trainee ninja was not, therefore, going to work; so instead of sneaking, he simply walked out of school as if he was meant to be doing just that. No-one stopped him; no-one challenged him. No-one even looked at him. It was as if Markus Vaun no longer existed.

Once he was a safe distance from the school he began to run. His bag, empty except for his lunch, flapping uselessly and annoyingly on his back; he considered throwing it away, but that might be a bad idea. He’d have to get a new bag if he did that.
The centre of town, where the agency was situated, was probably about twenty minutes away from his school, less if he ran all the way. That would mean that he could probably go there, find the place, see if it could help and then get back to school in time for afternoon registration. His classmates would ask questions, of course, but they probably wouldn’t say anything, and his teachers probably wouldn’t even notice he was missing. All should go to plan - as long as he found the agency quickly.
By the time he found it, he was hot, bothered and out of breath; he’d had to duck into a shop to avoid a teacher in a car from seeing him. While they wouldn’t have recognised him, they would certainly have recognised his uniform, and that would be bad. He breathed a sigh of relief on finding the agency, and slipped through the doors quickly.
The man behind the desk glanced up as Markus approached the desk, and said, a little irritably, “Shouldn’t you be in school somewhere, young man?”
Markus blinked at him. “Are you Mr Pith?”
Perking up a bit, the man said, “Why yes, yes I am. Have you heard of my great feats and my numerous wonderful qualities?”
“Um, yeah,” said Markus, deciding not to say anything about the less-than-flattering description he’d heard from his father. “Could you help me? I need to hire someone.”
“Oh, you do, do you? I suppose it couldn’t hurt.” Mr Pith spun around in his chair and then dragged it over to the computer. “What is it that you need? Girlfriend? Someone to tidy your room?”
Markus flushed. “Don’t make fun of me,” he said angrily. “I’m being serious.”
“Sure you are, little man.”
“And I hardly think you can call me ‘little man’.”
“Oh, oh, it’s height jokes, is it? Well, well, excuse me while I call my big muscular colleague to bash your weedy little face in! Once he’s done with you your tiny little brain will have been smashed out through the other side of your skull and I’ll be able to use your eyeballs for marbles! Now sit down and tell me who the hell you want to hire!”
Mutely, Markus sat down. He hadn’t noticed the chair behind him when he’d come in, but he was happy it was there now.
Mr Pith typed on his keyboard for a while before turning his attention back to Markus. “So, weedy one, what do you want?”
“I want someone who’ll stop the guys at my school bullying me,” the boy blurted, before he lost his nerve. There was a pause in Mr Pith’s endless typing.
“Oh yeah, Izzy, bet you feel bad now,” said a voice from the doorway in the wall behind the desk, as a pretty woman came out with a mug of tea. She placed it on the desk next to the computer and smiled at Markus. “I’m sure we can help, sweetie. Izzy - if I hear one more comment from you I’ll pour your next cup of tea over your head.”
Pith huffed crossly. “Why do you come to his defence? I’m the one who was a victim in this situation first.”
“But he’s cute and young and you’re old and ugly.” Grinning, the women vaulted over the desk and hugged Markus tightly. Mr Pith roared with laughter.
“He’s gone bright red…. how sweet. But, my girl, you are going to regret slighting me.”
“Oh, I’m sure. Seeya, Izzy, seeya, sweetie.” She vaulted back over the desk and strolled back through the doorway, humming.
There was a long silence. Apparently feeling that it had gone on long enough, Mr Pith cleared his throat.
“That was Alexa,” he announced.
“Oh,” said Markus weakly. Mr Pith turned briskly back to his computer.
“So, you want someone to solve your bully problem? What did you have in mind? Frightening new best friend? Bodyguard? Scary person? Weirdo no-one wants to get involved with?”
“I don’t care. Just someone who’ll make it stop,” he said quietly, ducking his head.
“You’re really not giving me much to work with here,” muttered Pith, hitting the ‘Enter’ key with some violence. “Here we go. Pretty girl, too, you’ll probably like her. Maybe if you treat her right you can get a girlfriend after all.”
“Will she stop them?”
“Should do, I’m pretty sure. Here, have a look.” Mr Pith turned the screen around, but Markus shook his head.
“I don’t care what she looks like.”
“You really are a misery-guts, aren’t you? You need to look so you’ll know who to grab by the arm and take to school with you when she catches up with you tomorrow,” said Mr Pith, rolling his eyes. Markus flicked his eyes over the picture, intending to give it no more attention than he would any other random picture - but he found himself being drawn back to look at it again.
The girl it showed was probably his age, possibly a little older. She looked a bit like the pretty woman Mr Pith had called Alexa, with black hair cropped quite short, except for a long fringe, and intense blue eyes. Sniggering, the man behind the desk turned the computer around to face him again. “Her name is Tiar.”
“Just Tiar?”
“Just Tiar. Can I take your details? If you want to hire her, that is.”
“Of course I do - Markus, Markus Vaun.”
Mr Pith paused in his typing again. “Markus Vaun as in son of Daniel Vaun? Good grief, I don’t know why you people don’t just hire everyone you want in one go, it would be much simpler.” Still typing, he added, “Which reminds me, you’d better be going back to school after this. We don’t serve vagrants and scoundrel, you know. We’re a very high class place, you know. We pay a lot for this location, you know. If you don’t go to school, you’ll fail your exams, you know -”
“I know, I know!”
“Good, at least you do.” Mr Pith tapped ‘Enter’ again in a self-satisfied manner. “She’ll find you tomorrow. Have fun together.”
Markus made it back to school just in time for afternoon registration, although on the way back he nearly got worried after discovering that his watch had stopped.