Princess Incognito: a Royal Pain in the Class

by Humphreys, N. J;

  He stopped bumping me and wiped his spectacles. He was sweating and they had steamed up. He put them back on and squinted at me.

  “Sabrina, can I ask you something?”

  “No, Charles, you do not look like a garden gnome.”

  “No, not that. Something else. Who were you talking to on the laptop?”

  My throat felt ticklish. I found it hard to swallow. “What are you going on about?”

  “On those laptops. Were you making a video or something?”

  I felt a surge of relief hit my body like a bolt of lightning. “Yeah, I was making a video.”

  Charles kicked a clump of soggy mud under the swing. He didn’t want to look at me. “I don’t think you were,” he said, really softly.

  “You don’t know what I was doing. You were outside, spying.”

  “I think I do. I’m like a detective.”

  “You’re like an idiot.”

  “I solve detective puzzles every day. I do maths and English puzzles. Remember?”

  “Er, not really.”

  Of course I remembered. I remembered everything. But I wanted to change the subject. I didn’t want Charles to be a detective. That was dangerous. I wanted Charles the Weedy Boy Who Was Rubbish At Sports to come back. That was much better. Even Charles the Garden Gnome was better than Charles the Detective Busybody. He could get me in a whole lot of trouble.

  “Yeah, well, I know how to be a detective,” he said. “You look at all the evidence. You pick the best evidence and examine it and then you reach a conclusion.”

  “You’re nuts,” I said.

  But I was the one going nuts. I had to sit on my hands to hide them. They were shaking too much.

  “No, I’ve put it altogether. First, you arrive out of nowhere, but you seem really smart and confident, compared to the other girls.”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I went to a good school before, better than this dump.”

  But Charles the Detective Busybody ignored me.

  “Then you are shy to talk about where you come from or what you do at home. Then I come to your house and …”

  “You spied on my house!”

  He rolled his eyes. “Then I came to your house and saw that strange photo of you, dressed up in fancy, expensive clothes.”

  “I told you, it was a photo from a theme park.”

  “Then you can fight the biggest girl in the school using taekwondo. No one at our school can fight like that. And no girl our age can fight like that. But you fight like Wonder Woman.”

  “No, Charles …”

  “And then, your uncle has all those computers. Why would anyone need three computers in one room? And you were sitting in front of them all, talking to people.”

  “I was only sitting in front of one of them.”

  “And that’s when I worked it out all by myself. That’s when I realised who you really are.”

  I felt the sweat running through my hair. My disgusting, green blazer was soaked. I couldn’t see properly. My mouth felt dry, but I tried to speak. I had to know.

  “Ok, Mr Clever Clogs,” I croaked. “Who am I?”

  Charles looked ever so pleased with himself.

  “You’re not just Sabrina Parslowe,” he said. “You’re a famous YouTube star!”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Being a fake YouTube star had some brilliant advantages. First, dopey Charles was no longer Charles the Detective Busybody. He was Charles the Soppy Fan.

  He kept winking at me.

  If I saw him in the school canteen, he winked at me. If I walked into the classroom, he winked at me. And if we were with other students in the playground, he tapped his nose. That was Charles the Soppy Fan pretending to be Charles the Cool Fan. He thought we were part of this celebrity secret. I was the celebrity and he was keeping the secret.

  But his daft theory actually did me a massive favour. According to Charles, my strange, puzzling life had a simple explanation now. He could answer all the weird questions about me. Why do I not like to talk about my old life? Easy. I’m a YouTube star. I can’t tell my millions of subscribers where I live, can I? Why do I have family photos where I’m dressed up like a princess? Well, that’s obvious. I’m a YouTube star. I must have loads of fancy photo shoots, right? Why can’t he find me on YouTube? My site is switched to private to protect my privacy. Duh!

  YouTube stars always know life hacks and have awesome skills, like taekwondo. YouTube stars are always on their laptops. And YouTube stars must employ a hundred people to make their videos. I have Uncle Ernie. But he’s worth more than a hundred people.

  I was worried at first that Charles would get carried away with his YouTube-star theory. But it became our shared secret. He’d never had a shared secret with a friend before. He’d never really had many friends before. Now he had a friend who was a YouTube star. No way was he going to mess that up.

  So he started acting like my celebrity agent.

  One day, Miss Shufflebottom was teaching us geography. We were learning about the differences between towns, cities and countries. She went around the class asking each of us to stand up and say where we were born. Most of the students were all born in the same town. This town. It was a boring answer for a boring place.

  And then she turned to me! I couldn’t tell the truth, obviously. But I couldn’t remember any of Uncle Ernie’s little white lies either. He calls them cover stories. He says that spies all have cover stories and he loves making them up. It’s just impossible to remember them all.

  Miss Shufflebottom told me to stand up in front of the class.

  “It’s ok, Sabrina,” she said. “You can tell us where you are from?”

  “Erm, well, ok … I think …”

  I stuttered. I coughed. I blushed. I fidgeted. I did everything except think of an answer that would send Miss Shufflebottom away.

  Naturally, Awful Agatha loved every second of my humiliation. I could see the little witch giggling at me through the corner of my eye. I tried to think of her sliding through the pigswill, but it didn’t help.

  “You can tell us, Sabrina,” Miss Shufflebottom said. “Every one in the class is going to participate so we will all have a turn. Where were you born?”

  I was born in Mulakating, you wobbly old custard! When I was born, there were street parties held all over the country. I was born Princess Sabrina of the House of Valence, the only child of King Halbutt and Queen Beverly. I am part of a royal family that is having problems with the Government that I don’t really understand. It’s called politics. I call it a royal pain in the backside. If they weren’t having these political problems, I’d still be a princess and you wouldn’t be asking me all these dumb questions. Now take your bottom and shuffle off!

  That’s what I wanted to say anyway.

  “Erm, I was born in …”

  “She doesn’t like to say,” Charles interrupted. “She’s a bit shy, Miss Shufflebottom. And it makes her think of her parents, which makes her a bit sad.”

  Miss Shufflebottom nodded her head and hummed, like teachers do when they’re pretending to be sympathetic. “Of course, I understand,” she said.

  She didn’t.

  When I sat down again, Charles winked at me. I wanted to flick him in his winking eye. Ok, that’s a bit unfair. I didn’t want to flick him, but I wasn’t very pleased with him. He made me sound like a bit of a crybaby and I could already see Awful Agatha giggling.

  But Charles had saved me. He thought he was protecting his YouTube Star, but the nincompoop had no idea that he was actually protecting an undercover princess.

  To him, he was just looking after his friend.

  And my life actually got a bit better. Ok, that’s a HUGE exaggeration. My life was still miserable. I still missed my home and my parents and even Miss Quick-Pants. But my life wasn’t getting any worse.

  Awful Agatha really did stay away from me, at least most of the time. She whispered rude words when we passed each other in the classroom. She
poked her tongue out at me in the canteen. And one time in the toilets, she walked in on me when I was washing my hands. She bent down and looked under all the toilet doors and realised we were alone. She gritted her teeth and walked towards me.

  I thought she was going to crack me across the face. But she stopped, like she’d remembered something. Then she turned around and ran out of the toilets. I’ll say one thing about her: She was terrified of being sent home from school. Once she got out of my hair, the other girls left me alone, too. Most girls are like that, aren’t they? They hang around with the bullies only because they don’t want to be bullied. As soon as Awful Agatha went away, they went away.

  Charles and I were left alone in class and the canteen. I had time to think about my parents and the huge party they’d hold for me at the Palace when I returned. And he had time to ask me loads of ridiculous questions about being a YouTube star.

  “Do you know any of the actors on the Disney Channel?” he asked me at lunchtime.

  “No, Charles.”

  “What about CBeebies?”

  “No, because I’m not five years old.”

  “You must know some of the celebrities on Nickelodeon, right?”

  “Nickelodeon? Yeah, I know loads of actors on Nickelodeon.”

  “Wow! Really?”

  “No.”

  Charles looked really disappointed as he slurped his chocolate milk. So I gave him a gentle elbow in the belly.

  “But I know you,” I said.

  “Yeah, but I’m nobody.”

  “You’re my friend.”

  We smiled at each other as the school bell rang. We were probably saved by the bell, too, as the smiling was getting a bit awkward.

  Charles checked his watch. “It’s not time to return to class.”

  Miss Shufflebottom arrived and sent us straight to the school hall. The place was packed. There were rows of children sitting with their legs crossed on the wooden floor. All those green blazers made the hall look like a giant puddle of sick.

  Miss Shufflebottom put on her loud whisper voice and told us to sit down quickly. She was panicking a bit, which meant that Miss Cannington was on her way. Miss Shufflebottom always panicked when the old Cannibal was coming.

  Our headmistress marched into the hall and stood in front of the entire school. She didn’t speak at first. She just gazed at all the students. I’m surprised she didn’t throw up. I couldn’t stare at all those vomit-coloured blazers every day.

  The Cannibal cleared her voice really loudly. That was the signal for all of us to shut up and stop fidgeting.

  “Thank you for coming in so quickly and quietly,” she said. “And I’m sorry to those of you who never had enough time to eat your lunches. Perhaps we can make some time after this assembly for you to finish. But I believe this is a serious matter that could not wait.”

  The Cannibal put her hands behind her back and stood up straight.

  “This is an issue that needs to be settled right now,” she said. “I’m not happy about it at all. But I believe that one of the students sitting here is a thief.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  So now we had a criminal running around the classrooms. The Cannibal said he’d been doing it for months. He pinched wallets and purses, but was only interested in the money. The wallets and purses were dumped in the school bushes. The emergency school assembly was actually kind of fun. The gossip was fantastic!

  As soon as the Cannibal said there was a thief sitting in the hall, everyone started looking over their shoulders, as if the thief was going to jump up and start waving. But we were all thinking and muttering the same stuff.

  “Who do you think did it?” Charles mumbled.

  “How would I know?” I shot back.

  “Well, you’re really clever.”

  “And you do all those detective quizzes. Who do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re useless at being a detective.”

  At the front of the hall, the Cannibal did that loud coughing, throat-clearing thing. “Ahem, that’ll do,” she said. “This is a serious matter.”

  Of course it was a serious matter. For the rest of the day, we all talked about nothing else. Miss Shufflebottom said we must not speculate.

  We all ignored her and speculated. Charles was certain it was some older boy in the next year called Liam. Charles didn’t seem to have any evidence whatsoever, but Liam was a popular student who was really good at football and that seemed to bother Charles. I had no clue who the thief was and, to be honest, I wasn’t particularly bothered either. I had bigger problems than someone stealing my lunch money, like maybe never seeing my parents again.

  Miss Shufflebottom knew she had no chance of getting the class to concentrate, especially when she was trying to teach us equivalent fractions. Awful Agatha was getting super stressed. She kept making stupid comments about the maths questions, only because she was too thick to understand them.

  When Miss Shufflebottom told her to imagine a cream cake cut into four quarters, the annoying brat said that she couldn’t because Miss Shufflebottom would eat all four slices. That’s why she had a shuffling bottom. Naturally, all the girls sitting around Awful Agatha laughed. But no one else really did. Her comments were really mean and dumb, but they still turned Miss Shufflebottom’s cheeks into a couple of ripe tomatoes.

  Luckily, most of the other kids were nattering away about the thief and not really paying attention. So Miss Shufflebottom did that teacher thing, where they take a bit of gossip and turn it into a classroom discussion. She wanted us to have a group debate on the importance of sharing instead. But that didn’t make much sense to any of us. Even Charles got a bit frustrated.

  “But why should you share your lunch money?” he said to the class when it was his turn to speak. “My parents work really hard for me. They give me lunch money so I can eat. It’s mine. If someone takes it without permission, that’s not sharing. It’s stealing!”

  Some of the other children in the class actually applauded Charles, which gave him a bit of a big head.

  “They all clapped for me,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, some of them did,” I pointed out.

  “What was that, Sabrina?” Miss Shufflebottom said.

  I glared at Charles’ big head. “Look what you’ve done now,” I hissed.

  “Er, nothing, Miss Shufflebottom,” I said in a much louder voice.

  “Maybe you could share with us your thoughts on how your last school dealt with social issues like petty theft,” Miss Shufflebottom said.

  I stood up really slowly. “Well, we didn’t really have any stealing at my last school.”

  “Yeah, ’cos she’s a spoiled rich kid,” Awful Agatha said loudly.

  “Thank you, Agatha,” Miss Shufflebottom said. “Remember the agreement we had?”

  “Yeah, all right. Sorry, Miss.”

  “Not to me.”

  Miss Shufflebottom nodded in my direction.

  Awful Agatha snarled at me. “Sorry, Sabrina,” she said, not sorry at all.

  “Thank you, Agatha,” said Miss Shufflebottom. “Ok, Sabrina.”

  “Yeah, well, there wasn’t really any stealing in my school because we had, er, very small classes. In fact, it was a very small school.”

  Miss Shufflebottom’s eyes widened. “Ah, that’s a very interesting discussion point, Sabrina. Is there perhaps a connection between the size of a community, in this case a school, and the number of crimes in a community?”

  “I don’t know, Miss Shufflebottom.”

  “Well, let’s explore this topic further. How many students did you have, roughly?”

  “About eight or nine.”

  Awful Agatha and her pack of hairy hyenas started giggling.

  “Settle down, everyone,” Miss Shufflebottom. “No, I didn’t mean how many students in your class. I meant, how many students did you have in your school?”

  “About eight or nine, Miss Shufflebo
ttom.”

  Everyone was laughing now. Even Charles rolled his eyes. I realised straightaway that I’d made a big mistake. Obviously, regular schools had more students and bigger classes. Uncle Ernie had probably given me a little white lie for my fake school. But I had so many little white lies to remember I thought my brain was going to explode. Once, the Palace chef let me try and make some scrambled eggs in the microwave. But I left the eggs in there for too long and they splattered across the walls of the microwave. That’s what my brain feels like most days.

  “That’s quite a small school, Sabrina, if there are really only eight or nine students. No wonder there wasn’t any stealing,” Miss Shufflebottom said. “What was the name of your school?”

  My mind went blank. I knew I had an answer for this question, but the giggling had put me off. I couldn’t even remember my own name, let alone a made-up name for my fake school in my fake town in my fake life.

  “My last school? My last school was called … Its name was …”

  I heard Awful Agatha laughing. What was so funny?

  “Oh yes, that’s it, the name of my last school was …”

  A bang on the classroom door made everyone jump. Even Miss Shufflebottom looked shocked. She didn’t even have a chance to invite the person to come in. The door flew open and Miss Cannington marched into the classroom. I sat down so fast I whacked my bottom on the wooden chair.

  At first, our headmistress didn’t speak. She just moved her head from side to side. She didn’t look happy. In fact, I wasn’t sure if the old Cannibal was going to talk to us or eat us. She took a deep breath.

  “Agatha, can you come with me, please,” she said.

  The dirty rascal stood up. She didn’t say a word. Instead, she wiped her eyes. Were they tears? Was the most evil girl in the human race crying?

  She tucked her chin and followed Miss Cannington out of the classroom. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t complain. There was no sarcasm, no whining, no giggling, nothing.

  It was so obvious now. Everything made sense.

  This was turning into the best day ever.

  I grabbed Charles’ elbow and started shaking. “She’s being sent to the headmistress’ office,” I said.