“Oh dear,” she sighs, scooping up one of May-Belle’s dark offerings and inspecting just how incredibly thick the icing is. “That is a LOT of sugar…”
“Zut alors!” Mademoiselle Fabienne calls out in horror, but the reason isn’t anything to do with potential sugar disasters.
She’s staring at the triplets, who’ve just finished fixing up the pot plant and are now obediently waiting to be told what to do next. Only they’re smeared in apple green eyeshadow and powder pink lipstick that looks like it’s been applied by a gorilla in a blindfold and boxing gloves.
Uh-oh. I suddenly have a VERY BAD FEELING about how the girls have ‘beautified’ St Grizzle…
“RAAAAGHHHHHHH!”
The roar comes out of the blue or, more precisely, in through the back door.
Y’know, most people find horror movies terrifying. But hide-behind-the-sofa-scary horror movies have nothing on ten eight-year-old girls crazy on sugar and food colouring.
Black icing is smeared around their grinning, growling mouths and every one of them is wild-eyed and wearing pants on their head, newly pinched from the washing line.
“HOLD IT!” yells Zed, selflessly steering his chair towards Blossom and the rest of her careering crew to try and head them off before they get any further into the front entrance hall.
Sadly Blossom assumes he has a completely different something in mind and leaps on to the armrests.
“Wheeeee!”
“No – get off!” shouts Zed, spinning the chair around.
“I’m KING OF THE WORLD!” yelps Blossom, her bare feet on the armrests, balancing like a wobbly baby goblin, her arms outstretched … just as Mum walks in through the open front doors.
There’s complete silence for a moment.
Mum stares up at Blossom, then around at her pant-headed girl tribe, the triplets with their clown make-up, the mini-goth clutching her black-splodged baking tray and the somehow-escaped goat that’s now chewing on the tissue-paper flowers.
Then I hear a nervous cough.
“Welcome, Mrs Dexter,” a bowing Toshio suddenly announces. “Please take a seat and don’t be here.”
Before anyone can react or correct his English, there’s another sound.
It seems that tissue-paper flowers don’t agree with Twinkle, and she has just thrown up a multi-coloured lump of them on the grand staircase.
“Mrs Dexter,” Lulu launches in, clearly thinking she’d better make the best of this clearly AWFUL situation. “Can I just say—”
But a wobbly little voice interrupts her.
“Oh, helium and hydrogen,” sings Blossom, “your daughter Dani taught us all of them!”
There’s a pause, then all of the pant-headed Newts join in with the entire ‘Periodic Table Song’ at high speed.
“Bravo! Bravo!” Miss Amethyst calls out at the end, clapping so wildly that everyone’s compelled to join in. “Apologies for the outfits, Mrs Dexter. The girls are … are rehearsing for a play I’ve written. A comedy, of course.”
“Mmm,” Mum mutters. “Can I just have a word with my daughter? In private, please?”
Me and my T rex follow Mum outside as she walks towards the car. This is when she tells me to get in and never look back, isn’t it?
“Dani, Granny Viv called me before I set off here,” says Mum, slowing down and turning to look at me. “She says that now you’ve got used to St Grizzle’s, you’ve had a change of heart. She says you love it here and that she thinks you’ll be very happy. Is that right?”
“Yes, yes!” I babble. “At first … well, I guess I thought I hated it. But then I got to know everyone and saw how brilliant this place is, even if it is a bit mad around the edges.”
“So you really think this would work, Dani?” Mum checks with me.
“I do,” I say simply, “cos I fit in here!”
And that’s the truth.
From smiley Toshio to the staring triplets, from Twinkle to Blossom the mutant goblin, St Grizzle’s is full of oddballs and strays. And I’m pretty much a dinosaur-loving, movie-making oddball and a stray, too – at least for the next three months, while Mum’s away.
“OK, so can you promise me that I’m not making a GIANT mistake if I let you stay here?” As Mum speaks, I see her frowning over at the statue of St Grizzle, with her smears of green eyeshadow and smudge of pink on her stone-grey lips – the exact same shade of pink as the spotty pair of pants she’s wearing on her head.
“I promise, Mum! Thank you!” I say quickly, giving her a giant hug before she can change her mind and trying not to jab her with the T rex.
“Oh, I do love you, Dani Dexter!” she says, hugging me right back.
“Even more than penguins’ bums?” I muffle into her chest.
“Even more than penguins’ bums!” she laughs, pulling away to look at me. “So, any chance of a cup of tea before I head off?”
“Definitely,” I reply, linking my arm into Mum’s as I lead her back towards the school. (I just hope she doesn’t expect cake…)
The staff and students of St Grizzle’s watch us from the doorway, smiling nervously and trying to figure out my fate.
Sensing from my own broad smile that I’m staying, Zed gives me a relieved thumbs up. Beside him, Swan blows and POPS! her bubblegum like a mini celebration.
“But PLEASE tell me you’re learning something here, Dani,” Mum sort-of-jokes.
“PLEASE tell me it’s not as silly as it seems…”
“I’m learning stuff and it’s not as silly as it seems,” I assure Mum, while quickly kicking a cabbage into the bushes.
As we stroll across the gravel, I also spot a trail of small, muddy bare footprints across the top of Mum’s car, as well as Miss Amethyst shooing Blossom out from under her long, flowing purple skirt, and a triplet attempting to put green eyeshadow on a very patient Twinkle.
Then – ping! – two thoughts hit me at once…
1) never mind my random toy actors – how many views would I get on YouTube if I filmed all this real-life loopy stuff?
2) And how much do I love, love, LOVE that this is just another NOT-normal day at St Grizzle’s School for Girls, Goats and Random Boys!
Things Mum is missing in the Antarctic…
1) me
2) Granny Viv
3) Hobnobs
4) green.
“It’s so WHITE here!” she said when she FaceTimed me yesterday, turning the phone around so I could see all the snow and ice.
So I’m making a mini-movie especially for Mum this afternoon, featuring a rolling English field and a herd of cows.
Sort of.
Well, OK, so it’s a bunch of potatoes on the front lawn of St Grizzle’s.
Yaz and Blossom helped by sticking googly eyes on the ‘cows’ (i.e. potatoes the triplets BORROWED from the school kitchen).
“Yep, that’s about right,” I say to Klara and Angel, who’ve been carefully placing the spud-herd on a patch of grass. I’m directing them as I lie on my tummy, holding my phone sideways to film. “And ready to move them again?”
I’m shooting a rehearsal. We’ll use proper stop-frame animation for the final version where, bit-by-bit, the ‘cows’ will meander across the screen.
“Moo!” says Zed, practising the sound effects.
“Excellent,” I tell him.
“Uh-oh!” I hear Swan call out. She’s watching us from over in the tyre swing. “Incoming GOAT!”
Before anyone can shoo Twinkle away, four giant legs have got into the frame. First she sniffs at the camera, then at the lead actor potato, before – CRUNCH! – happily munching it between her yellow teeth.
Well, that film’s ruined! I think to myself.
I’m about to stop recording, but then I hear ANOTHER sound – my schoolfriends howling with laughter.
So I stay where I am and keep filming.
After all, a giant goat photobombing a herd of tiny potato cows might get me my most popular ever video on YouTube
!
Though it’s going to be hard to beat the 903 views I got last Sunday when the Newts class decided that eight months was WAY too long to wait till winter and covered the statue of St Grizzle with squirty-cream snow…
Next, Dani will be directing a film for a local competition, which could mean a big prize for her, her schoolfriends AND St Grizzle’s! But will run-ins with the village kids, runaway grannies and ghostly goings-on TOTALLY ruin her excellent plan?
Copyright
STRIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of Little Tiger Press
1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2017.
Text copyright © Karen McCombie, 2017
Illustrations copyright © Becka Moor, 2017
eISBN: 978–1–84715–845–1
The right of Karen McCombie and Becka Moor to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
www.littletiger.co.uk
St Grizzle's School for Girls, Goats and Random Boys Page 8
