Drama Queen

by Susannah McFarlane

  Lemonfizz Media

  PO Box 499

  Elwood, Victoria 3184

  www.lemonfizzmedia.com

  Scholastic Australia Pty Limited

  PO Box 579

  Gosford, NSW 2250

  ABN 11 000 614 577

  www.scholastic.com.au

  Part of the Scholastic Group

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  Published by Lemonfizz Media and Scholastic Australia in 2011. Text, design and illustrations copyright^© Lemonfizz Media 2011. Cover design and Illustrations by Dyani Stagg of Merchantwise

  A CIP record for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.

  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.

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  It is our policy, in association with McPherson’s Printing Group, to use papers that are renewable and made efficiently from wood grown in sustainable forests, so as to minimise the environmental footprint.

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Emma Jacks and EJ12 will return in BOOK 9

  Back Cover Material

  It was late Saturday afternoon. Emma threw her gym bag in the cupboard and raced to her room. She had performed her best beam routine ever and she wanted to write about it in her diary before she forgot how she felt. She went straight to the secret spot under her beanbag and reached underneath. There was nothing there. Emma scrunched her nose and frowned as she picked the beanbag right up off the floor and shook it hard. The diary had to be there; she’d put it back carefully that morning, she was sure of it. But it wasn’t.

  Perhaps she’d forgotten to put it back in its usual place? Emma looked on her desk and under her bed. But there was still no diary. What had happened to it or, she suddenly thought, what had someone done to it? Had someone found it and taken it? Emma’s mind raced. Who has taken my diary? This needed investigating, now. She stomped out of her room.

  ‘Someone has taken my diary,’ she yelled to no one in particular, now convinced that this was what had happened to her diary. No one answered.

  She continued stomping down the hallway and stopped outside her brother Bob’s bedroom. Emma looked in through the open door and there, in the middle of the floor, on a pile of disgustingly dirty clothes, was her diary. Open.

  ‘No!’ cried Emma, horrified, but, as she went to pick up the diary, she saw it was even worse. There were muddy, smudgy marks all over the page and one of the corners was torn. ‘It’s ruined!’ Emma gasped. ‘Did Bob do this?’

  Emma, her face nearly scarlet with anger, raced into the kitchen where Bob, still in his dirty soccer gear, was drinking a glass of milk. Dad was stirring the pasta and Mum was reading the newspaper. Emma looked from Bob in his muddy soccer kit to the dirty pages of her diary, found in his room. She was right; it was Bob who’d taken it.

  Emma exploded. ‘Look at this!’ she shouted. Mum, Dad and Bob spun around, looking slightly alarmed. ‘It’s ruined, completely ruined. I won’t be able to use it ever again! And,’ she added, yelling and looking straight at Bob, ‘it’s all your fault!’

  ‘What?’ said Bob, his mouth hanging open. ‘What is?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about!’ cried Emma.

  ‘I don’t need to pretend, I don’t have any idea what you are talking about,’ replied Bob. ‘Mum, Dad, I promise I don’t.’

  ‘You, you, you— brother!’ Emma spluttered in fury. ‘You’ve ruined my diary!’

  ‘I didn’t even know you had a diary,’ said Bob.

  ‘You did so! And you found my secret hiding spot and now you’ve ruined it with your dirty footy boots or your dirty hands or your, your dirty something. It’s not fair, why do you have to be so mean?’ Emma’s eyes were watering and she was angry, so angry that she didn’t notice that Bob was looking blankly at her, completely confused. She kept going. ‘And you read it and you put your stupid muddy football mud all over it! And then you...’

  ‘I did not,’ said Bob flatly. ‘And, anyway, when would I have done it? I’ve been at soccer all afternoon.’

  Emma ignored him and turned to her parents. ‘Mum! Dad! Say something!’

  ‘I was hoping you might calm down a bit first,’ said Dad.

  ‘How can I be calm? My stupid brother has ruined my diary!’

  ‘Are you sure Bob took it?’ he said, peering over at the diary. Continuing in an irritatingly calm voice, he added, ‘Are you sure it is ruined? It looks like only a few little spots and I reckon we could—’

  Emma broke in, not giving him a chance to finish.

  ‘They’re not little spots, they’re huge dirty spots and they are right across the page, probably the most important page in the whole book!’ cried Emma. ‘It is ruined, completely ruined!’

  ‘Get a grip, Emma. You’re such a drama queen!’ said Bob.

  ‘I am not!’ Emma screeched rather dramatically.

  ‘You so are!’ replied Bob. ‘I didn’t touch your diary. Why would I want to?’

  ‘Because, because...’ Emma couldn’t actually think of a good reason but it didn’t stop her being convinced that it was Bob’s fault. ‘Because you’re a mean brother! Because you did!’

  ‘I didn’t,’ repeated Bob. ‘Drama queen!’

  ‘Dad!’ cried Emma.

  ‘Well, you might be overreacting just a little,’ suggested Dad.

  ‘Mum!’ Emma looked to her mother pleadingly. ‘I’m not being a drama queen, am I?’

  But her mother just smiled. Emma knew what that smile meant. Her mother agreed with the others. She did think Emma was overreacting.

  ‘Gee whizz, lemonfizz!’ cried Emma. ‘I’m not being unreasonable!’

  And with that, Emma stomped unreasonably out of the kitchen, back up the hall and into her bedroom, slamming the door hard behind her. She heard the plaque with her name on it fall onto the floor and break. Now even grumpier, she threw herself down on to her beanbag and folded her arms tightly across her chest. ‘Why doesn’t anyone understand?’ she fumed to herself. ‘I’m not being unreasonable. It is my special, secret diary and now it is not special anymore. Who wouldn’t get angry about that?’

  But somewhere quite deep down, just for a moment, Emma thought that maybe she might have got a little carried away. Still, Bob shouldn’t have taken her diary. Now that she thought about it, how did Bob find it? It had been so well hidden. No one could have suspected anything was under her beanbag—could they? Then the thought that she may have hidden it badly crossed her mind. Emma felt worse. After all, what sort of secret agent must she be if she couldn’t even hide a diary from her brother?

  Being a secret agent, that was Emma Jacks’ other secret thing. When she wasn’t a schoolgirl, a gymnast and an irritated sister of Bob Jacks, she was Special Agent EJ12, field agent and code-cracker in the under-twelve division of the SHIN
E agency.

  SHINE was an international agency that helped keep the world safe from the plots of evildoers, particularly those belonging to the SHADOW agency, which was as bad as SHINE was good. SHADOW was constantly launching new schemes that endangered the environment and the world; SHINE was constantly sending its agents out to find and stop SHADOW. SHINE had agents of all ages, all with special talents that they could use to help in the fight against SHADOW. But a secret agency couldn’t simply put an advertisement in the paper or on the Internet for special agents. Instead, they had quieter ways to find clever, good people to work for them. They had found Emma Jacks at an inter-school maths competition.

  Emma loved maths, she loved the way it always made sense and didn’t change, that the answer was always the same answer and you could always find that answer if you found the right clues. And that was why SHINE wanted Emma: they needed code-crackers, people who looked calmly at a problem, patiently found the clues and cracked the code. They then used that decoded message to stop the evil scheme. And as EJ12, Emma was a great agent, in fact one of SHINE’s best. She always stayed calm and thought things through.

  But Emma Jacks was not doing any of that now. As she sat on her beanbag furiously writing in her dirty diary, she didn’t think anything of her kitten Inky walking off with her hair ribbon. It just made her more annoyed.

  ‘Oh great,’ she cried. ‘Now everyone is taking my stuff!’

  And she certainly didn’t notice Inky’s dirty paws as the kitten walked out of her bedroom and padded her muddy way down the hallway.

  Later that evening, after a sulky dinner, things were calmer. Dad and Bob had gone out to a movie and it was just Emma and her mum at home, stretched out on the sofa together in front of the TV. Well, just Emma and Mum if you didn’t count the animals, which Emma always did. Emma was lying on the couch with her head on a cushion on her mum’s lap. Pip their husky puppy was tucked in behind her and Inky was sitting against her tummy, purring. So it was just the four girls. Emma liked that; no irritating, diary-dirtying brother and she had her mum all to herself. Her mum was playing with Emma’s hair while Emma munched on the warm popcorn they had just made together. Pip, who was looking intently at the bowl, seemed to be thinking she might like to eat some popcorn but Emma didn’t agree.

  This is nice, Emma thought to herself. The movie is about to begin and I still haven’t got into trouble for all that yelling.

  ‘Em,’ her mum began.

  Uh oh, here it comes, Emma thought. She knew from the tone of her mum’s voice that ‘a talk’ was about to begin. Emma didn’t really want to have ‘a talk’. She wanted to eat popcorn and watch the movie while her mum stroked her hair. And, anyway, the whole thing was over now. She was sorry she had yelled at Bob, well she wasn’t actually but she was sorry she had yelled at her mum and dad. Was that a good start? She thought she would try it out.

  ‘I’m sorry I yelled, Mum,’ said Emma, looking up at her mum with what was, she hoped, her most endearing expression.

  ‘Thank you, Em,’ said her mum.

  Emma was rather hoping that would be the end of it but she doubted it.

  ‘You did make rather a fuss...’

  ‘But my diary...’ Emma began.

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ replied Mum. ‘You really went over the top, shouting at everyone. The diary isn’t ruined and you don’t even know it was Bob who got it dirty.’

  ‘Well, who else would it be?’ muttered Emma sulkily.

  ‘I don’t know but things are not always how they look. I also don’t see how Bob could have done it if it happened before soccer but he only got dirty after soccer.’

  Hmmm, thought Emma. That was a good point. No wonder her mum had been such a good SHINE agent. Her mum’s code name was SJ45R. The R stood for ‘retired’: with her family and her work, Emma’s mum didn’t really have time for missions anymore. She did, however, have time to be back-up for Emma, EJ12, if she needed it on missions. Mum was part of EJ12’s BEST network. SHINE knew that agents often needed support so they created the BEST agent assistance system. BEST stood for Brains, Expertise, Support and Tips and each agent had their own, security-cleared network of BESTies, as they were called, who could help them on missions. ‘Don’t get depressed, call a best!’ was one of SHINE’s many mottoes. The BEST system was great but there was one rule—an agent could never discuss her spy work outside a mission. It was much too risky; you never knew who might be listening. Em might not be able to talk about her work, but it was still good to know her mum understood. She snuggled into her, hoping their talk was over.

  ‘So, Em,’ continued Mum, ‘don’t sweat the small stuff, don’t get upset about things that don’t matter and...’

  ‘Yes?’ asked Emma.

  ‘You will need to apologise to Bob.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘No, no buts. You need to apologise to Bob in the morning.’

  ‘Mum!’

  ‘No, Emma. It is too silly to get so worked up about little things. You can do better than that,’ said Mum. ‘Okay, that’s the lecture over.’ Emma’s mum smiled down at her daughter. ‘Pass the popcorn. The movie is about to start.’

  They both looked at the TV screen as the studio logo came up. Then the screen went black before large white letters appeared, as if they were being keyed onto a computer screen.

  ‘They won’t know anything about what real secret agents do,’ said Mum. ‘It should be a hoot!’

  And then, a long-legged woman with impossibly straight and impossibly blonde hair, dressed in a black trench coat and wearing dark glasses appeared on the screen. As she peered over the glasses, revealing very long and definitely not real eyelashes, the shot froze as the screen split in half, with one half going black again as more letters appeared.

  ‘Now there’s a real drama queen,’ said Mum. Sydney Radisson was a young actor who did seem to be known more for her tantrums on set than her acting skills. She played the main secret agent in the film. ‘She doesn’t even look like a proper spy! As if she could do a mission in those heels!’

  ‘And Agent White!’ laughed Emma. ‘What sort of a code name is that?’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ agreed Mum. ‘And look at her nails! Okay, it’s starting. Let’s see how many mistakes we can find.’

  And Emma and her mum spent the whole film finding spy errors, eating popcorn and giggling. Emma still wasn’t convinced Bob hadn’t ruined her diary but she had stopped worrying about it.

  Which was just as well because SHADOW was acting up again and SHINE was going to need clear-headed agents who could see the big picture. Correction, they were going to need a clear-headed EJ12.

  The next morning, the radio was on in the kitchen as Bob and Emma were getting themselves breakfast. Emma tipped some muesli into a bowl and was about to put the container back in the cupboard when she looked across to Bob who had, as usual, his head in the fridge. She smiled to herself and opened the saucepan drawer instead. As she did, Bob turned around and saw her.

  ‘Hey, I want that,’ said Bob.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ said Emma, ‘I was just putting it away.’

  ‘In the saucepan drawer?’

  ‘Oh, it’s just a new secret place—you should have no problems finding that, should you?’ said Emma, smiling a little too sweetly.

  ‘Emma, get over it!’ exclaimed Bob. ‘I did not take your stupid diary and I have no idea how the pages got so dirty.’

  Emma banged and clanged a lot of saucepans and felt her face growing hot as she started to get irritated all over again.

  ‘Hey, what’s all this noise?’ cried Mum as she walked in to the kitchen. ‘Emma, I thought you had something to say to Bob?’

  Emma clanged a saucepan and glared at Bob as she whispered, ‘Thanks, now you’ve got me into trouble again!’

  ‘Come on, you two,’ said Mum. ‘Sit down and eat your breakfast. Bob, can you turn up the radio, please? It’s time for the news.’

  Dad came into the kitchen and
sat down at the table. As the family ate their breakfast, they all listened to the news bulletin.

  ‘In breaking news this morning, there has been a disturbing discovery at one of the city’s reservoirs. Staff were stunned to discover that the water had turned into pink gel-like balls. Police are on-site but have so far found no explanation for what has happened and experts are being rushed to the scene. We will keep you up to date as this story develops.’

  Emma stopped eating and looked at her mum. No explanation: that was unusual.

  ‘Movie star Sydney Radisson flew into town last night,’ the newsreader continued. ‘She has jetted in to film her final location scenes of Spy Movie 2—Black and White, the long-awaited sequel to last summer’s popular comedy, Spy Movie. The film is being shot on location for the next month and although details are top secret, insiders have leaked that this movie will be set around water. And now to the weather...’

  ‘That’s funny,’ chuckled Bob. ‘Get it? Leaked, about water, water leaking!’

  ‘Very funny, Bob,’ said Dad, laughing as he tied up his trainers and headed for the door. ‘I’m off for my run, keep up the jokes, Bob.’

  But Emma and Mum weren’t in a joking mood. Mum turned off the radio and looked at Emma. Emma opened her mouth to speak but was interrupted—

  It was Emma’s phone, which was no ordinary phone. It was a SHINE special-issue phone. It looked like a cross between a gaming console and touch-screen phone. If you swiped the screen in a particular way, a new screen would appear with special SHINE apps: code-cracking apps, invisible ink-reading apps, animal files, fingerprint-testing apps and more. The phone also had special ringtones and the one that had just sounded was a mission alert, telling the agent to report into SHINE HQ immediately. Emma looked at her mum, her mum looked at Emma then they both looked at Bob, who was still eating his way through an enormous bowl of muesli. He wouldn’t notice a thing.