by Annie Kelsey
“We were definitely more scary.” I grinned back at her. “How did you guess it was Jason and Tom?”
Sophie flung the towel over her shoulder and headed back to the fort. “I recognized Jason’s annoying giggle.”
Ms Allen knocked on the door a few moments later and asked if everything was OK. We told her about Jason and Tom and how we’d scared them more than they’d scared us. She wasn’t cross. Even though I saw her peeking over her shoulder towards our fort. She just said, “Well, I’m glad you’re all OK.” She glanced at Sophie, who was still smiling, and grinned. “Have fun.” Then she went back to her room.
So we got to finish our midnight feast, and once we’d got over the sugar rush and started to feel tired, Catie and Jenny went back to their room while me and Sophie brushed our teeth.
When we were lying in our bunks, I told Sophie that today had been one of my best days since I starred in the school talent show with Catie.
SOPHIE: Talent show?
ME: Yep. We danced and we came second. It was great.
SOPHIE: (thoughtfully) Is Catie your best friend?
ME: Yes.
SOPHIE: Have you been friends for ever?
ME: We hardly knew each other last year. Rachel was my best friend then.
SOPHIE: What happened to Rachel?
ME: She moved to Scotland.
SOPHIE: Do you miss her?
ME: Yes, but not as much as I used to. I made friends with Catie, and although I miss having Rachel around, I’m really happy to have Catie and Jenny and Julie.
Sophie went quiet for a bit, then she said in a sad voice, “I miss my friends.”
“From your old school?” I asked.
“Yes.” There was a crack in her voice like she wanted to cry.
That’s when I realized. Sophie wasn’t sad because she had an extra toe or her family were cheese freaks or there was a hippo in her bedroom.
She was sad because she was missing her friends.
I hung my head over the edge of the bunk to check she was OK. She looked at me with big eyes.
ME: I know how you feel, but you’ll feel better soon, I promise. Especially now you have new friends.
SOPHIE: (blinking at me) New friends?
ME: Catie, Jenny and me, of course!
I gave her my biggest grin and she grinned back.
SOPHIE: Thanks, Pippa.
ME: Thanks, Sophie.
SOPHIE: What for?
ME: Making this one of the best weekends ever.
Sophie grinned again. It was as if all the smiles she’d kept inside since she moved here were finally bursting out. She rolled over and went to sleep after that, which gave me the chance to write my diary ghost-hunting journal.
I can’t stop smiling either. So what if I didn’t find a real ghost in the Isle of Wight? I can always watch Marcus Flaunch find ghosts on Most Spooky. The most important thing is, I managed to make Sophie smile. And now she’s my friend. And making a new friend is better than seeing a hundred ghosts.
GHOSTS DETECTED: 0 (so far)
SMILE METER:
P.S. I still might see a hundred ghosts. Mum says we’re going to Wales this summer and there are loads of castles there. If we visit them all, I know I’ll definitely see a ghost!
THE PROS AND CONS OF HAVING A GHOST PET
PROS
#1: Space wouldn’t be an issue so you could have whatever animal you liked as a pet - like a gorilla or an elephant or even a whale! Who wouldn’t want a whale as a pet?!
#2: You wouldn’t ever have to feed them, so all the money you would have spent on pet food could be spent on something way more fun - like taking them to the circus or bungee jumping.
#3: You wouldn’t have to clean up their poo!! Unless ghost pets do ghost poos...? I’ll have to look it up on Wikipedia.
#4: You’d never have to take them to the vet because they’d never get poorly.
#5: They would NEVER DIE because they’re already dead! ☺
CONS
#1: Ghost pets aren’t cuddly so you can’t snuggle up to them or stroke them. If you tried to stroke them, your hand would probably go right through them, which is kind of gross.K
#2: They might not poo or wee but
they would leave slime
everywhere. (Jason says
he watched a movie
about ghosts and they
left green slime all over the house they were haunting.) I think I’d prefer being a pooper-scooper than a slime-scraper.
#3: Your friends wouldn’t be able to see them - unless they were able to see ghosts too but not many people are able to see ghosts so that’s unlikely. And if they couldn’t see your pet they might think you were just pretending and then you’d be known in school as The Girl With The Imaginary Pet, which would be really embarrassing.
#4: It would be really cold all the time with a ghost pet around - even in summer. I suppose I could wear lots of jumpers and scarves but having to get changed every time I left them would be pretty annoying.
#5: They could escape at any time because they’d be able to float through the bars of the cage. And the walls of the house!!! That would be SO STRESSFUL!
PIPPA MORGAN’S TOP TEN GHOST JOKES
How do ghosts like their eggs cooked?
Terror-fried
What do ghosts eat for dinner?
Spook-ghetti
What do ghosts like for dessert?
Ice-scream
What’s a ghost’s favourite fairground ride?
The roller-ghoster
How do ghosts travel to another country?
By scare-plane
When do ghosts play tricks on each other?
April Ghouls’ Day
Which ghost ate too much porridge?
Ghouldilocks
What do you call a dinosaur ghost?
A terror-dactyl
Where do ghosts mail their letters?
At the ghost office
What’s a ghost’s favourite game?
Hide and shriek
PIPPA MORGAN’S TOP-SECRET CODE FOR BFFs
Great-Granddad’s code is great, but what if there aren’t any walls to knock on?
DISASTER!
That’s why I’ve invented a SUPER-secret code for me and my best friends to use. You just need a piece of paper. Oh, and you also have to know the alphabet.
Here’s what you do. You move every letter in the alphabet along one place, so a becomes b, b becomes c, c becomes d, and so on... Simples!
NZ OBNF JT QJQQB NPSHBO
MY NAME IS PIPPA MORGAN
DIJDLFO OVHHFUT BSF UIF CFTU
CHICKEN NUGGETS ARE THE BEST
UJGGBOZ K SPDLT
TIFFANY J ROCKS
How cool is that?! Not even Mr Bacon will be able to crack it...
Published by Scholastic Australia
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First edition published by Scholastic Children’s Books in 2015.
This electronic edition published by Scholastic Australia Pty Limited, 2016.
E-PUB/MOBI eISBN: 978-1-760270-67-4
Text copyright © Hothouse Fiction Ltd, 2015.
Illustration copyright © Kate Larsen, 2015.
The rights of Annie Kelsey and Kate Larsen to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, unless specifically permitted under the Australian Copyright Act 1968 as amended.
Annie Kelsey, Isle of Fright
