Cookie and the Most Annoying Girl in the World

by Konnie Huq

  After we’ve calmed down from our fit of hysterics, she says she also wants to say thank you. She explains that hanging out with me has made her see that she’s been taking Alison for granted. She says she’s realised how important it is to be there for your friends, which is why she’s decided to go and support Alison at her great-aunt’s place, just in case ghosts do exist …

  … which they don’t. Even Alison doesn’t believe in them anymore.

  ‘She’ll really appreciate that,’ I say. ‘It’ll mean an awful lot that you’re missing the Aliana gig for her.’

  ‘Yeah! And her great-aunt’s place is a mansion,’ she says excitedly. ‘I reckon it’s got a pool, stables, tennis courts and everything!’ She runs off.

  ‘She’s changed!’ grins Keziah. ‘But not that much!’

  ‘She reminds me of me when I was about to go to her house!’ I laugh. Then in my best Suzie voice I say, ‘I reckon it’s got a pool, stables, tennis courts and everything!’

  We both laugh. But we know Suzie has changed a little. I hope it lasts. She seems much more genuine now. I think we’ve all changed in some way after our camping trip. Changed for the better.

  The next week at school whizzes past and thankfully me, Keziah and Jake are totally back to normal. All us Foresters are on a post-camping-trip high.

  On Friday, Keziah and Jake suggest we hang out at the park on the way home from school. As we’re walking out of the school gates, we bump into none other than Mrs Edmonds.

  ‘Well, hello there, Foresters!’ she booms. ‘I’m glad I bumped into you. Next week’s my last week so if I don’t catch you before I go, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed our wonderful camping trip!! Thank you!!’

  We tell her we should be thanking her and ask her where she’s off to.

  She says she’s been giving it a lot of thought and our trip has inspired her to set up some sort of nationwide environmental-awareness-themed Forest Club. She wants it to be a charitable organisation that would be both fun AND help save the planet in the process! Good on Edmonds!

  ‘The planet won’t save itself!’ she says, waving goodbye as she disappears off. It sounds like a great idea! We’ll all really miss her, but it’s good to know that once she’s up and running we can repeat our fabulous adventure again whenever we want!

  When we get to the park, it’s starting to get pretty windy. Without even thinking about it, the three of us begin collecting up all the loose bits of rubbish that are tumbling around everywhere. We’ve changed!

  ‘So …’ says Keziah as we all sit down on a nearby bench. ‘Now that you and Jake are on speaking terms again, we thought we would finally give you your birthday present!’

  Jake hands me an envelope with a card inside that reads ‘Help Save the Planet: ride bikes, not cars!’

  ‘We thought the card was funny,’ he says, ‘as it doesn’t even make sense! You can’t ride a car!’ We all giggle.

  I open it up and inside is a fifteen-pound voucher for Mike’s Bikes. Amazing!

  I hug them both. ‘Thanks so much, guys! Soon I’ll be able to ride round to Keziah’s at weekends! You won’t be able to get rid of me!’

  My bike is actually within reach now, although it’ll probably take me a year to save up the remaining twenty-five pounds …

  But hey … a year is better than three years and it’ll be worth it in the end!

  Jake is going to his dad’s new place this evening, so he heads home the same way as Keziah. He’s actually really upbeat about it now and is excited to check out his new bedroom.

  Good on him. I decide to walk home past the bike shop so I can have a look at my dream bike in the window. But when I get there … there’s a sign outside. It reads ‘Sale on Now!!’

  There’s a big banner below it that says ‘25% off all bikes! This week only! Sale Ends Friday!’

  Huh?!!? It is Friday! This is the last day of the sale! And 25 per cent off one hundred pounds is … seventy-five pounds! That’s the exact amount I have!!

  My heart starts racing. Without pausing for thought, I rush into the shop and buy the bike there and then, on the spot. It feels impulsive and it feels good. Very good.

  Better still, the bike I choose comes with a matching helmet. It looks really cool. I feel so proud riding home on my brand-new bike. I’m so happy. Happy in my own skin just being plain me! Not pretending to fast, not pretending to be best friends with Suzie, not pretending to be into Aliana. I start humming out of pure happiness.

  The tune is stuck in my head – it’s annoyingly catchy. I hum it all the way home, beaming to myself. Life is good.

  APPENDIX

  HOW TO MAKE A DAISY CHAIN, COOKIE-STYLE!

  Daisy chains have been made since the beginning of time! Well, err, since the beginning of daises, I guess. Jake says that even his great-grandma used to make them. She lived in the countryside and the family still have a book from when she was young and used to press flowers from her back garden. Flower pressing is when you take a flower – the prettier and more colourful the better – and flatten it in a book till it completely dries out and is as thin as paper. Jake said that one time his brother got a Spotter’s Guide to Flowers and managed to identify all of the species in his great-grandma’s book.

  Materials

  As many daisies as you need for your chain!

  You can use all sorts of different wild flowers if you want to vary it up, but daisies and buttercups are ideal as they’re the right size. Obviously don’t go too crazy picking wild flowers, but the odd few won’t hurt.

  And certainly don’t pick them from other people’s gardens!

  Can you find any of these wild flowers in the great outdoors? Different flowers come out at different times of the year so don’t worry if you don’t find them all!

  Remember to check with an adult before picking flowers out of your garden – you wouldn’t want to pull out someone’s favourite begonia!

  Method

  Pick some daisies from your garden by pulling each wild flower up from the base of the stem. Hold it carefully or all its petals will come off!

  Using your fingernail, score a slit in the stem. Make sure that the slit doesn’t go all the way to the edge otherwise the stem will break in half!

  Repeat this with as many daisies as you want for your daisy chain. If you’re making a necklace, you’ll want more than if you’re making a bracelet!

  Thread the stem of one daisy through the slit of another. Repeat this until you have a long chain. Connect the two ends of your long chain by tying a knot between the two stems. Wear your chain or give it to a friend. I gave mine to Keziah.

  When you’ve finished wearing your daisy chain you could also press it into a book like Jake’s great-grandma used to do with her flowers!

  Method for Pressing Flowers

  Tape your flowers in between two pages of a notebook.

  Put some heavy books (like an encyclopaedia) on top of the notebook to squash the flower.

  Leave the notebook for two to three weeks till the flowers are fully dry! Your dried flowers will look beautiful and will be a lovely keepsake! Jake’s great-grandma was from Victorian times and Jake’s mum still has the book today!

  Results

  Pressing flowers can preserve them for a long time!

  Conclusion

  When you press something, you squeeze the moisture out of it and therefore stop it from rotting or breaking down naturally. While preserving flowers in this way is fun, what we really need to preserve is our environment. Wouldn’t it be awful if we lived in a world where there were no flowers to make daisy chains with? Flowers, and more specifically the trees and plants they belong to, are SO IMPORTANT! Basically, without them we’d all die!

  Plants and trees remove carbon dioxide from the air and replace it with oxygen, which is what we breathe.

  This process is called photosynthesis and it’s how plants make food for themselves to grow. Although it seems like plants are doing absolutely nothin
g, they’re actually working really, really hard.

  The oxygen content of our air is determined by the number of plants we have on this planet, which is why it’s so important to preserve all our green spaces!

  And now that us humans create so much carbon dioxide (CO2) because of modern living, the oxygen content of the air is more vital than ever. The cars we drive, the factories we use, the planes we fly and many other things humans do on a daily basis create carbon emissions.

  Our carbon footprint is destroying the ozone layer!

  We need to reduce our carbon footprint by living more responsibly.

  Unlike Suzie Ashby …

  MAKE YOUR OWN MINIBEAST HOTEL, COOKIE-STYLE!

  Method

  First you need to create the base of the hotel by arranging a small pile of logs.

  Make sure they’re not too big or heavy as you don’t want to drop them and hurt yourself!

  If you’ve got a wooden pallet or a wooden crate like I do then that would make a great base too.

  If you can’t find anything like that, you could use lots of sticks or a cardboard box instead!

  Once you’ve made the basic structure, use all your other materials to fill in the gaps.

  The idea is to provide an environment with loads of nooks, crannies, crevices, tunnels and cosy beds for the minibeasts!

  Results

  Hopefully lots of insects and creatures will come and stay at your hotel! Different insects are attracted to different materials …

  Write down in the table on the next page which insects and creatures came to visit your hotel and which bits they stayed in!

  Conclusion

  Insects love small spaces and dark, cosy atmospheres. Different insects like different environments.

  NATURE SCAVENGER HUNT, COOKIE-STYLE!

  Materials

  A list of the letters of the alphabet (I’ve made you one below!)

  A pencil

  A rubber in case you make any mistakes!

  Method

  Go outside (with your parent or guardian of course!) and try to find something in nature beginning with every letter of the alphabet. Don’t expect to get all the letters, as some are much harder than others, like Q or X. You could always use reference books or the Internet to help you … Remember, Mrs Edmonds helped us out with lots of cheats!

  A –

  B –

  C –

  D –

  E –

  F –

  G –

  H –

  I –

  J –

  K –

  L –

  M –

  N –

  O –

  P –

  Q –

  R –

  S –

  T –

  U –

  V –

  W –

  X –

  Y –

  Z –

  Results

  How many different things did you find? Write your results down here! How much did you score out of 26?

  Scoring system

  5 or fewer – Try harder!

  6-15 – Good work!

  16-25 – Excellent!

  26 – FULL HOUSE!!!! Way to go, brainbox!

  Conclusion

  Insects, bugs and creepy crawlies come in all different shapes and sizes. It’s important to have a wide variety of creatures on the planet so that there’s lots of biodiversity. Everything in nature is interdependent, which means we all need each other: humans need plants and animals and creepy crawlies, otherwise the whole system would break down. For instance, bees are really important as they help flowering plants reproduce. We even need fungus and bacteria to help break down dead and decaying matter and to return the nutrients to the soil so the cycle of life can repeat. Without them we wouldn’t exist! We have to preserve the habitats of each and every living thing on our planet.

  EXPERIMENT TO SHOW HOW THE FIRE TRIANGLE WORKS!

  Fire is AWESOME! It looks so pretty – I could watch it all day. But, because I’m at primary school, I’m only allowed to use it with a parent or guardian present. Luckily, it’s for my own health and safety. Whatever you do, please do NOT attempt this experiment without a grown-up.

  Materials

  Method

  Light a match and place it on your saucer. Put the jam jar on top of the match and the flame will go out because you’ve taken away the oxygen.

  Light another match and place it on the saucer again.

  This time don’t do anything. Once the matchstick has burnt out so it’s black and shrivelled, the flame will disappear because the fuel (the wood of the matchstick) has all been used up.

  Now pour some water on your saucer. Light another match and place it on the wet saucer.

  The flame will go out again because the water has taken away all the heat!

  Results

  The three things that fire needs are heat, oxygen and fuel.

  Fuel – this can be gas like some cookers use or coal like in a fireplace or wood as with our wooden match. Remove it and your fire goes out like when you turn your cooker off and the gas is taken away.

  Oxygen – fire burns well in open air as 20 per cent of our air is oxygen (just in case you were wondering, the other 78 per cent is nitrogen, 0.04 per cent is carbon dioxide, and the rest is made up of inert gases).

  This is why if you smother a fire by putting a blanket over it then it will go out. My dad’s restaurant even has fire blankets in the kitchen just for putting out fires. By covering a fire, its oxygen supply is cut off and it’s basically suffocated.

  Heat – fire needs to be hot to thrive. This is why throwing enough cold water over a fire will usually put it out – you’ve taken away the heat.

  It’s the best method for putting out big fires that you can’t ‘suffocate’ easily, like forest fires, which are sometimes tackled by spraying water over the top of them from an aeroplane.

  Conclusion

  A fire needs fuel, oxygen and heat to burn! Without any one of these three things, you can’t make a fire!

  HOW TO MAKE A CAMPFIRE HASH, COOKIE-STYLE!

  This is a variation of the breakfast we ate when we were camping. It serves four children. Maybe me, Jake and Keziah could come round and help you eat it! Remember, you should only make this recipe with a parent or guardian!

  Materials

  Frying pan – (my mum has a really heavy one but for little wrists like ours it might be better to use a light one so the food doesn’t jump out of the frying pan and into the fire – that’s a phrase that grown-ups use for when things go from bad to worse!)

  Wooden spoon – (I hope your hash tastes as nice as when I make it, otherwise I’ll win first prize and you’ll get the wooden spoon!)

  One medium onion, chopped – (here’s a good tip – if you bite a metal spoon when you chop onions it will stop you from crying. It works because the chemicals from the onion bind to the metal of the spoon before they can get to your eyes!)

  A tablespoon of cooking oil – (my mum makes me drink a teaspoon of cod liver oil every day – it’s really good for your bones, your heart, your vision and your brain apparently, but it’s definitely not good for cooking with! My worst oil is palm oil because palm trees are being cut down to make it, destroying the habitat of the orang-utans. Always use sustainable palm oil.)

  A garlic clove, minced – (garlic is good for warding off vampires apparently, although I don’t believe in vampires or ghosts as you know!

  Alison Denbigh probably does …)

  500g new potatoes, quartered – (if you keep the skin on them then you’ll get loads of fibre, as that’s where all their fibre comes from.)

  4-6 sausages, sliced into discs – (you can use veggie sausages too if you’re a vegetarian like I want to be when I grow up.)

  A can of sweetcorn – (if you don’t have sweetcorn you could use any chopped frozen veg knocking about in your freezer. Frozen veg is really healthy because i
t’s frozen quickly after it’s been picked so will remain at its peak in terms of freshness and nutrients. If a vegetable isn’t frozen then its nutrients reduce over time as it gets less fresh, which is why it’s good to pick veg that hasn’t travelled very far. Not only is seasonal local produce usually fresher but it has a lower carbon footprint too!

  Method

  Pour the oil into the frying pan.

  Once the oil is warm, fry your chopped onion and garlic. Add the potatoes and cook for twenty minutes, stirring occasionally. The smaller the potato pieces are, the quicker they’ll cook!

  Add the sliced sausage and stir for another 10–15 minutes until the potatoes are tender and golden, and the sausages are cooked through. Mix in the corn until all of it is heated well.