by Katie Tsang
‘They can tell you!’ Bernard said, pointing at us.
I handed Ms Winkleworth the note from Mr Dougal. ‘It’s all true,’ I said. ‘We’re OFFICIAL SPIDER-CATCHERS now.’
Everyone wanted to hear the details, and Ms Winkleworth let us tell the class all about it.
‘Weren’t you scared?’ Zach asked. He’s one of Ralph’s friends and sometimes calls me Scaredy-Cat Sam too, but this time it didn’t sound like he was making fun of me.
I shook my head. I had been a little bit scared, but I knew now that being brave sometimes means facing something even if it scares you.
‘Who would have thought that Scaredy-Cat Sam would catch the spider?’ said Ralph. He was kind of smiling and kind of smirking, but at least he wasn’t snorting. I even thought I heard him mumble to himself that it was ‘kind of cool’.
‘It’s VERY cool,’ said Regina. ‘I just wish I had been there when you caught Tulip in the bucket.’ Then she looked at me, Bernard and Zoe. ‘I’ll definitely be there when you catch our zombie werewolf though!’ At the mention of the zombie werewolf, Ralph went pale.
Just because I was now an official spider-catcher didn’t mean I was ready to face a zombie werewolf! But I smiled at Regina and said, ‘That will be no problem!’
Next to me, Bernard and Zoe groaned, but they were smiling too.
We’d faced our fear of spiders, and proved to everyone that we were NOT afraid.
After school that day, I recreated the whole thing for Lucy. She was a great audience, gasping and cheering at all the right times.
‘Do you want to come into my spider court?’ she asked. ‘Now that you know about it, you can visit any time.’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I think I’ve seen enough spiders to last me a lifetime!’
‘I know I wasn’t with you when you caught Tulip, but can I be a member of the spider-catcher club too?’ Lucy said.
I grinned. ‘Of course. You’re a very important member.’ Then I paused. ‘In fact, not only are you a member of the spider-catcher club, you’re now officially a member of the crew too. If you’d like to be, that is.’
Lucy beamed.
‘Definitely!’ she said. Then her smile faltered. ‘Does this mean I have to watch with you all the time?’
I laughed. ‘Only when you want to.’
‘Okay, good,’ she said. ‘You watch a LOT of .’
I shot my hand up in the air like a rocket, and Lucy did the same thing.
‘For the universe!’
ENDNOTES
1 Spaceman Jack and Captain Jane are the main characters on which is the best show in the whole universe! They have lots of adventures and I want to be just like them. Ralph says he thinks the show sounds stupid, but he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
2 Bernard doesn’t actually need glasses, but he likes to put on a pair of ‘thinking’ glasses before he says something smart, which is at least three times a day.
3 He pronounced this like ‘kuh-lis-er-uh’, which sounded like it could be a type of alien on .
4 Char siu bao are fluffy, white buns stuffed with delicious barbecued pork. My mum makes them for me once a week. They are the BEST.
5 ‘Begrudging’ is a word I learned on . It means when you do something even though you don’t want to. Sometimes Captain Jane will begrudgingly let Spaceman Jack drive their spaceship.
6 ‘Sustenance’ is a fancy way to say ‘food’. Captain Jane always calls her food ‘sustenance’. Basically, on , they have their Space Nutrient Packs, and here on Earth, I have jelly beans.
7 It wasn’t true at all.
8 I learned this from – it means when you look back on something that has already happened.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We love writing Sam Wu – but we couldn’t have made it into a real book that you can hold in your hands without the help and support of some amazing people!
If we had our own space ship on Space Blasters, our captain would be Claire Wilson, our fearless agent who always guides us in the right direction. Thank you for believing in us and believing in Sam Wu.
We are tremendously grateful to everyone at our publisher Egmont for supporting Sam Wu. Thank you to our brilliant editors Lindsey Heaven and Ali Dougal.
Huge thank you to our incredibly talented illustrator Nathan Reed for bringing Sam and his friends to life on the page! The illustrations are our favourite part of the book and they somehow keep getting better and better! We are very lucky authors.
Thank you as well to our wonderful designer, Lizzie Gardiner, who made the pages look so awesome. And thank you to the publicity, sales, and marketing teams for their support, especially Hilary Bell and Olivia Carson.
We’d like to thank our families and friends for all their support and excitement. Special thank you to our grandparents, to whom this book is dedicated, our siblings, and our parents.
And to Baby Tsang, who will be in the world by the time this book comes out. We love you.
