by Ros Asquith
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Keep Reading
Also by the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Have you ever ridden a palomino stallion in the clouds? I have. I’m doing it right now.
Of course, I realise you might not know what a palomino stallion is, so I’ll tell you and then you’ll know what you’re missing. (On the other hand, if you’re always riding a palomino stallion in the clouds then I look forward to cantering into you any minute and we can compare notes.)
A palomino is a beautiful horse, and a stallion is a beautiful boy horse. Sigh. Mine is called Merlin. He doesn’t have wings, so I don’t know quite how he does it, but he can fly – we’ve just hurtled out of a cloud and you can see the rivers and mountains below, looking about a million miles away. His mane is flying out in the wind and I’m holding tight to it, my face close to his straining neck …
“HOW DARE YOU, PATRICIA TEMPEST?!!”
I realise pretty quickly that this is not the voice of a palomino stallion. Nor is it the Voice of God, rebuking us for playing in clouds usually reserved for Higher Spiritual Beings and all, whatever. It is the voice of Warty-Beak, the Teacher From Hell. I am dreaming my favourite dream again, the dream where I actually own a real live horse. Trouble is, I made the mistake of dreaming it in Warty-Beak’s classroom, in the middle of a lesson. And when Warty-Beak calls me Patricia instead of Trixie I know something is Very Extremely wrong.
“Sorry?”
“How DARE you?!!”
It was like those Itchy and Scratchy cartoons where they run straight out of a top-floor window and keep on running in the air until they realise – help! There’s nothing underneath! As soon as Warty’s yell broke the spell Merlin and me fell like stones, and the only sounds were a rushing wind and a long Warty cackle: the grisly sound of Warty-Beak’s laughter, like a rusty saw trying to cut through a tin can.
“Sorry, Warty … er, Mr Wartover, but what’s the matter?” I ask with a sigh that Warty takes to be annoyance but is actually me still half in my dream, seeing Merlin land neatly on his four shiny hooves and gallop off out of my life.
“THIS … THIS … is the matter!”
The class gets the joke long before I do, and of course Warty doesn’t get it at all. My two best friends, Dinah Dare-deVille and Chloe Caution, had been looking anxious when Warty started going on at me. (Well, Chloe always looks anxious. Dropping her pencil on the floor so other people can hear it is a major disaster as far as she’s concerned.) Now Dinah was stuffing a fist in her mouth to stop herself spifflicating with laughter and Chloe had gone red-as-a-postbox. Splutters and giggles were breaking out all over the room. Warty-Beak was droning on like an alligator gargling concrete, about how he couldn’t even bring himself to show it to the head teacher, Mrs Hedake. How it would upset her too much. What a disgrace it was. How a five-year-old would be ashamed of it, and on and on.
I tried to focus on the big piece of paper Warty had unfolded and was holding up in front of me. It looked like this:
I stared at the picture. I could feel a BAD giggle starting. It was one of those snuffly, snorty giggles that start in your toes and tickle your legs all the way up to your tummy until your tummy just has to let them explode up your chest and out of your mouth with the sound of a thousand squealing piglets, otherwise you will die.
It would have been a desperate moment, except that the whole class was laughing so much because by now they’d realised what I hadn’t at first – that this was a picture of Warty-Beak snogging Mrs Hedake, the head teacher! So I turned the monstrous giggle into a very convincing sounding fit of coughing. Dinah flung her arms around me and did her best to look concerned for my life as the coughing got louder. This look is difficult to manage when you’re helpless with laughter, but somehow Dinah managed it, just about.
“Maybe you’d better call an ambulance, sir,” Dinah said, hysterical tears streaming down her face. I nodded furiously, between coughs.
“I’m sure there’s no need for that,” Warty-Beak said, but rather anxiously now. “Take her to the toilets and get her a drink of water. We’ll discuss this … this ABOMINATION later …”
In the horrible toilets I leaned over the basin and splashed myself with freezing water.
“Why ever did you do it?” whispered Chloe when I finally came up for air.
“To stop myself dying laughing,” I said.
“No, I don’t mean the drowning yourself in the sink bit,” Chloe said. “I mean the drawing. Well, not just the drawing, the writing your name on it. Why did you do such a rude drawing and then leave it lying around where anyone could see it, and with your stupid name on it?”
“I didn’t do it,” I said. “And what do you mean, my stupid name?”
“I don’t mean your name’s stupid, I mean why did you sign it? It’s signed. In your writing,” she mumbled, looking at her feet.
“I know that, but I didn’t do it. Someone’s trying to get me in trouble.”
“Why didn’t you say?” Chloe’s eyes were wide with astonishment.
“I couldn’t say. I was laughing too much.”
“You have to go back in and tell him it wasn’t you!”
“He won’t believe me.”
“You’ve got to try.”
“Yes. But honestly, why did he show it to the whole class? Isn’t he embarrassed?”
“Well, it might seem strange, since it’s such a good likeness,” said Chloe, “but I don’t think he realised it’s a picture of him. He doesn’t know he’s called Warty-Beak, does he? He was going on about how unfair it was on Mrs Hedake. I think he thought it was just a rude picture of her with a man.”
“It wasn’t that rude,” I said. “Not compared to those magazines you see in the newsagents.”
I didn’t know there was a brighter red than a postbox, but Chloe has now proved there is.
Back in class I told Warty I didn’t do the drawing.
He turned to the class. “Patricia …” (He said this with a disgustrous sneer as though I was something he was wiping off the sole of his shoe.) “Patricia says this drawing, which is signed in her own hand, is not by her, so would the culprit please own up?”
Dinah’s hand shot up at once.
“There’s no point in pretending, Dinah,” he said, rather nicely for him, “unless you know who it really was.”
“It was me. It was just a joke,” said Dinah. “I can do Trixie’s handwriting with both hands tied behind my back.”
Warty was not convinced.
“She didn’t do it. I did,” piped up a voice from the back of the class. Everyone turned to look. It was Martha Marchant, the new girl who is Very Extremely keen to be Dinah’s Best Friend, so we have to keep including her in our games.
“That’s not true, is it, Martha?” said Warty, and poor old Martha went even pinker than Chloe does.
“I didn’t want Dinah to take the blame for Trixie,” she mumbled.
Warty turned his gimlety gaze back to me: “I’ll be writing to your parents. Meanwhile, you can tell them you’re in detention after school tomorrow, writing I will not make disrespectful drawings of my teachers out a hundred times. That will represent a much more productive use of a writing implement than this disgusting doodle.”
A horrible chill went up my spine when I took in what he had said.
“Oh, but… I can’t do that,” I stuttered. “No
t … not tomorrow.”
Now, I know I am not the best-behaved person in our school, and certainly not the best-behaved person in Class 5T, or, to be Very Extremely honest with you, even in my own house, but one thing I can’t stand is injustice. I don’t mind being told off for things I have done (well, I do a bit) but when all I have been doing is sitting Very Extremely quietly dreaming about my Dream Pony, Merlin, that I am going to buy when my grandma wins a million quid, then I am entitled to Justice and Fair Play.
So it wasn’t only injustice that made the chill go up my spine like the touch of a ghostly finger; it was that I had permission to leave school at lunchtime tomorrow, and tomorrow is going to be the most exciting day in my whole life ever, and I have been looking forward to it for three whole months! Why? Because Grandma Clump, the nice round normal grandma on my mother’s side (as opposed to the exciting witchy one on my dad’s side, who has purple hair and wears jump suits and drives fast cars) is going to be on a big TV quiz show, on which she (and everybody else in the family) expects to win a million quid!
And she has said when she does, she will give me some to buy my Dream Pony, which I have been dreaming of for my whole life. My very own granny on a TV quiz show! How can Warty-Beak expect me to concentrate or be on detention when something as amazingly exciting as this is about to transform my life? But try telling teachers like him anything like that.
“My grandma’s on TV tomorrow,” I ended up spluttering. “I’m supposed to be there.”
“How nice for you,” Warty said sarcastically. “You should have thought of that before you decided to make a vulgar mockery of those who are doing their best to turn you into a civilised human being. Not that I hold out much hope for that.”
Horror of horrors. I won’t make the TV show. What to doooooooo?
Dinah tried to cheer me up as usual on the way home and Chloe was unhelpfully sunk in a deeper gloom than me. She kept saying “poor you” which made me feel worse.
I had to thank Dinah for trying to rescue me about the drawing. “You are a true friend, pretending it was you,” I said.
“Well, I didn’t want you to miss your gran’s TV show,” said Dinah. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime’s chance to go to a real TV studio. You might see them making Eastenders or Vera the Vegetarian Vampire. Take an autograph book and make sure you ask if Vera is going Vegan, like it said in TV Titbits.”
“That’s a bit weird for a vampire, isn’t it?” I said. “Anyway, I won’t be seeing Vera or Eastenders or anybody. Whoever did that drawing has blown it for me.”
“Do you think it could have been that new girl Martha Marchant? She seems quite nice, but she was looking shifty and she DID confess …” said Chloe.
“No way,” said Dinah. “I’ve been to her place and she’s cool.”
“You didn’t say …”
“I suppose I am ALLOWED to have another friend? Martha was only trying to protect me cos she knows I wouldn’t do anything like that. She’s really sweet and she’s got about a million brothers and sisters and she’s CRAZY about ponies, in fact…”
“Harrumph,” I said, my mind on more important matters.
“We have to find out who drew that picture and get them to confess before tomorrow afternoon,” Chloe said. “Otherwise Trixie won’t get to the TV studio at all. And she’ll miss the chance of seeing her gran make a billion quid so she can buy herself a million horses.”
“Surely your mum can talk to Hedake and tell her it’s a really special occasion,” Dinah said. “Tell her you’ll do the detention next day, stay after school for a hundred years if necessary.”
“Are you kidding?” I said gloomily. “With that drawing? Maybe if it wasn’t a picture of Hedake herself snogging the horriblest teacher who ever lived, but with my name on that, I’ve had it. She’ll probably hang, draw and quarter me, not just make me do a detention on the most important day of my life.”
The others tried to cheer me up about it.
“Your gran probably won’t get past the first round,” Chloe said. “Maybe it would be a waste of time going anyway.”
“Yeah, do they have a fastest-finger-first thingy like on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” asked Dinah.
I forgot that Dinah and Chloe had never seen the show because it’s from the USA and Grandma’s one will be the first ever to be shown in the UK. Mum and Grandma Clump have been talking about nothing else for weeks and they’ve been sent a tape of the American show, so I knew all about it. I launched into a description.
“It has loads of rounds. It’s called SWOPPITT OR DROPPIT! This smarmy guy Micky Swoppitt is the compere and he’s going to do the British version too because he wants to enjoy our fab ‘old traditions’. He thinks we all wear Union Jacks and have cream teas with the Queen. All the contestants have to sit around nodding and smiling as if they don’t care whether they win or not, while Micky Swoppitt asks them cosy questions about their families and jobs and pets. Then, just when they’re really relaxed, everyone shouts ‘SWOPPITT OR DROPPIT!’ And Tricky Micky makes them do five things very fast, testing all their senses.”
“What do you mean?”
“They have to touch something and guess, you know, if it’s spaghetti or intestines.”
“Yuk. Do you mind?” said Chloe, who was munching at her usual vast amount of sweets and turning a pale shade of green.
“They have listening stuff, smelling stuff and seeing stuff and, er, I forget … What’s the fifth sense?”
“Taste,” said Chloe, thoughtfully licking the remains of a Toffee Twister off her cheek.
“But won’t your gran be at a disadvantage? Because of her age?”
“Yes, of course she will! That’s why she needs my support. And I need her to win so I can buy my Dream Pony. She’s promised.”
“But you can’t REALLY have a PONY,” said Chloe, as if she’d only just cottoned on to the fact that I was serious. “You’ve nowhere to keep it.”
“You sound just like Mum,” I said.
I didn’t want to tell her that I hadn’t really talked it over with Mum. I was convinced that as long as we had the money everything would be OK. “Anyway, stables won’t be a problem,” I went on. Dinah’s dad is best mates with old Whippett. You know, that guy who looks like a boomerang and owns the racing stud and the riding school. He says they’ll keep it for free as long as I let them use it as a riding pony sometimes.
“Oh, I see. You two have got it all planned. You don’t need me,” huffed Chloe.
“Shut up, Chloe,” said Dinah, giving her a playful poke in the ribs. “You know it’s been Trixie’s dream since she was seven. Now there’s a real chance of it coming true! Don’t make her feel bad about it.”
Appealing to Chloe’s kind side always works. This is because she doesn’t have an unkind side. “Do your folks know that’s what you’re planning?” was all she said.
“Um, not exactly,” I admitted. “Last time I mentioned it they weren’t too keen.” (This was what is called the Understatement of the Century.) “But they’ll be fine about it when they know I can keep him at the riding stables,” I added with what probably looked like confidence.
Chloe looked at me sideways, but she just said, “Let’s go to yours for tea. We can plot how to uncover the Dread Drawing Culprit.”
I realised it was Tuesday, the day my little brother has his little fiends from nursery back to tea. “If you can face the Invasion of the Killer Tomatoes,” I said.
Tomato is my little brother. Completely round with a scarlet face. I have no idea why we call him Tomato.
Sure enough, when we got home there were fairy cakes flying around the kitchen and the floor was awash with orange juice and pasta. My poor mum, who races home early from the school where she teaches every Tuesday so she can be a Good Mother, was frantically scrubbing the floor at one end while trying to soothe a small crazed toddler who was screaming as if his whole family had been eaten before his eyes by a T Rex or something.
; “What’s up?” I squeaked.
“Tomato stole his bun,” snapped Mum.
What is it with toddlers? Why are they so emotional?
Me and Dinah and Chloe grabbed a few fistfuls of fairy cakes and raced up to the comfort of my room. My humungous dog Harpo and her puppies were flat out on the bed, so we heaved them off.
Flat out is never a very good description of Harpo since she is the fattest dog in the universe, and Bonzo (her cutest little puppy and the one I am begging my parents to be allowed to keep) is threatening to go the same way. I think it’s because Mum feeds them a diet of Fidoburgers instead of expensive Plumpy Pooch, which would be much better for their health but, as Dad likes to point out at every opportunity, which would be much worse for the health of his wallet. Mrs Nosey-Parker-Next-Door feeds her dog, Lorenzo, on Pooch de Luxe, “a whole other canine experience”. Lorenzo’s the father of Harpo’s puppies, much to Mrs Next-Door’s disgust. Not that he lifts a paw to support them, which only goes to show that posh food does not always make for posh manners.
“So,” said Dinah, “Plan A: we find the culprit by tomorrow afternoon so Trixie’s off the hook, or she pretends to be ill tomorrow and doesn’t go to school at all.”
“That’s a Plan A and a Plan B,” Chloe said very seriously. “It’s two plans.”
“Oh, why do you have to be so lame?” Dinah snapped. “However many plans it is, those are the only options.”
“Just trying to help,” Chloe muttered.
“Whoopee!” I shouted, and did a little cartwheel. This is a mistake in a room the size of a nit’s lunchbox. All the books on my bedside shelf clattered on to the floor to join my socks, underwear, old Barbies, bus tickets and so on. Harpo got slowly up and thought about barking, then realised what a big effort that would be and sat down again.
“Don’t you ever tidy your room?” said Chloe.
