Frankie glanced at his sister. Lou’s eyes were so wide open they were in danger of rolling out of their sockets and onto the library floor.
Unaware of the group of time-travellers watching her, Lisa Chadwick quickly but carefully began scooping flour onto each wing of the ceiling fan.
Lou’s face was now bright red, and Frankie could tell she was about to lose it. But just as she opened her mouth, he grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t say anything,’ he mouthed. ‘You can’t!’
Lou glared at him, her eyes blazing. ‘But she’s to blame for all of this!’ she whisper-yelled, so quietly that Frankie strained to hear. ‘For Miss Davis quitting, for me running away to Ancient Greece, and for you getting the blame. She nearly ruined everything!’
‘I know,’ whispered Frankie. ‘But there’s another way of busting Lisa Chadwick. You just have to trust me.’
Lou struggled silently, and finally nodded. ‘I trust you, little bro.’
When they turned back, Lisa had finished depositing flour on the fan. With a satisfied smirk, she rolled up the flour bag and dragged the chair back into place. Then she sneaked out of the library, none the wiser that her prank had been witnessed.
‘OK, then,’ Frankie said, breathing out loudly as the door swung shut. ‘Let’s do this!’ And once more, he reached for the Sonic Suitcase.
CHAPTER 26
THE TRAPPiNG OF A CHADWiCK
With a thump, the intrepid time-travellers hit the ground.
Cautiously, Frankie opened his eyes to see that they had landed smack-bang in the middle of Grandad’s shed. Just as he was scrambling to his feet, he heard a kerfuffle outside the door.
Nanna’s voice came loud and clear. ‘Now, dear, you really should wait until the others return before going in there. And besides, it’s locked.’
Then he heard another voice – one that was familiar and not completely unexpected – say, ‘Not anymore, it’s not!’
Next came a loud bang as someone kicked hard against the door, which wobbled in its frame for a moment before collapsing inwards with a crash. And there, silhouetted against the late afternoon sky, was Lisa Chadwick, smiling like she had just caught the cat, the cream, the dog and the milkshake.
‘Oh, you’re back!’ Nanna exclaimed to Grandad, clearly relieved as she popped her head around the gap where the door used to be. ‘I’m so sorry about this. I did try to tell her she was forbidden from coming in here.’
‘Don’t worry, Nanna,’ said Frankie with an eye-roll. ‘Lisa Chadwick has a habit of sneaking into places she isn’t supposed to.’
Grandad snapped out of his shock. ‘What do ye think yer doing?’ he roared at Lisa.
Facing off against Grandad at the height of his fury, most people tended to shrivel up like a worm on a hot footpath – but not Lisa Chadwick.
She crossed her arms and stared defiantly at Grandad. ‘I am looking for stolen property!’ she declared. ‘I KNOW you are stashing stuff in this shed.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ spluttered Grandad, who had gone a very interesting shade of puce. ‘Are ye accusing the Fish family of theft?’
‘What I’m saying,’ stated Lisa, ‘is that the last time I saw my hula hoop, it was in his hands!’ She pointed at Frankie. ‘I’m onto you guys. I know you’ve been running a crime ring at school, and you did that terrible prank to Miss Davis to get rid of her before she figured out what you were doing. How shameful!’
‘Well!’ huffed Nanna, who’d been watching all this from the shed’s doorway. ‘I thought you were a nice little girl, Lisa. Now I can see that you are not very nice at all!’ (For Nanna, these were very harsh words indeed. After she’d said them she felt a little dizzy and had to hurry back to the house for a lie-down.)
‘Oh, did you lose a hula hoop?’ said Lou innocently. ‘Did you think to check at St Monica’s Lost and Found? I am absolutely positive it’s in there.’
‘Of course I haven’t checked there,’ flung back Lisa.
‘Well, that solves that problem, doesn’t it,’ said Lou. ‘Because I took it there after the Halloween Parade. Is that all you wanted, Lisa?’
If Lou had backed Lisa into a corner, it was only for a moment. The teacher’s pet quickly regained her regal composure and snorted nastily. ‘You don’t fool me for a minute. I know what you guys are up to. And the moment I find some hard proof, I’m going to expose you.’ As she spoke she pulled her phone from her pocket and held it up, ready to film.
‘Now confess, Frankie and Drew,’ Lisa said shrilly. ‘Tell us who REALLY sent poor Miss Davis into early retirement!’
Lisa pointed at them like a lawyer prosecuting the defendants in front of the grand jury.
But the problem for Lisa Chadwick was there was no grand jury in the Forbidden Shed. There was simply Frankie, his best friend, his sister and his grandad – and they all knew Lisa’s deep, dark, floury secret that was about to self-raise to the surface.
Frankie glanced at his sister, who gave him a wink. At least, he was pretty sure that’s what it was. Lou was not normally a winker, so it was possible that she’d developed a nervous twitch (which wouldn’t be surprising after what they’d just been through), or that she simply had some flour in her eye. But it had looked a lot like a wink.
He took a deep breath, and looked into Lisa’s phone camera. ‘Hello, my name is Frankie Fish. I’m the person everyone blames for the flour prank and there’s a good reason for that.’
Lisa Chadwick smiled a sinister smile behind her camera phone.
‘You see,’ Frankie went on, ‘my best friend Drew Bird and I are the prank kings!’
Drew jumped his best friend and photo-bombed him. ‘Yeaahhh boi!’ he screamed with a big fist pump.
‘Get out of it, ye idiot,’ Grandad snapped, yanking Drew out of shot.
‘The reason we are the prank kings is that we put a lot of work and thought into our pranks,’ Frankie explained. ‘The flour prank, however, had absolutely NO thought put into it at all! But we know which idiot REALLY did it.’
This was NOT what Lisa Chadwick had been expecting. Her smile dropped from her face like a popped balloon descending from its string.
She lowered the phone ever so slightly, but kept a haughty expression on her face. ‘Well, then, Frankie, if you didn’t do it, who did? One of the Mosley triplets, I suppose?’
Lou stepped forward. ‘No, Lisa, the Mosley triplets had nothing to do with this prank,’ she said coolly. ‘The culprit is YOU!’
And with that, Lou proceeded to describe every moment of Lisa’s prank prep, right down to her satisfied smirk and the chair she’d dragged over to the library’s front desk. ‘And then you sneaked out of the library like the little brat that you are, and we caught the whole thing on camera. You’re not the only one who likes to film things.’
Frankie and Drew tried very hard to keep their faces straight, while Lisa’s went even whiter than the bag of flour she’d carried that very morning. ‘But … I never … how …’
Finally she snapped her phone shut, before finding her famous fighting spirit. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, her voice trembling.
‘Oh, yes, you do,’ Lou said smoothly. ‘And if you don’t go and apologise to Miss Davis right now, I’ll show everyone at school the video we took of you doing it – including Principal Dawson.’
For a moment, even Frankie forgot that Lou was bluffing. She was giving Lisa a very, very hard stare.
Lisa shrank back, looking frightened. She swallowed hard, and finally said, ‘OK,’ in a very small voice.
Then, recovering some of her Lisa Chadwick self-confidence, she swished her ponytail, spun on her heels and stormed out.
Grandad roared with laughter.
‘You’re amazing, Lou,’ Frankie said admiringly.
‘Totally!’ Drew grinned cheekily. ‘You know Lou, technically speaking, you just helped us prank Lisa. Big time, in fact.’
Lou looked surprised, then shocked, and finally m
ore than a little proud. ‘Yeah! I guess I did.’
‘That probably makes you the Prank Queen,’ quipped Frankie, giving his sister a playful punch.
‘Well, ye might all be prank royalty,’ said Grandad, coming up behind them, ‘but I am the tripe master. It should be ready by now and just how I like it – extra chewy.’
Drew quickly turned his groan into a cough as Grandad glared at him.
But as they walked back into the house, they were greeted by a very welcome sight. Nanna, who had recovered from her dizzy spell, was laying some boxes of home-delivery pizza on the table.
‘What happened to my tripe?’ grumbled Grandad, disappointed.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry, dear,’ said Nanna. ‘I accidentally turned the heat up on the oven and I’m afraid the tripe burned. Will you forgive me?’
Grandad sighed. ‘Well, Mavis, I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose,’ he said.
But Frankie caught a glimpse of a little smile on Nanna’s face and wasn’t so sure.
CHAPTER 27
ALEXI, THE GOD OF WHAT?
By the time Monday morning rolled around, everything appeared to be back to normal. It turned out that Miss Davis had received a visit over the weekend from a very apologetic Lisa Chadwick, who blamed her appalling actions on a higher-than-usual sugar intake that week.
As it turned out, Lisa was a champion groveller and so, even though he knew she was responsible for the flour prank, Principal Dawson let her keep all her captaincy and prefect roles.
‘Remember when we got caught with the Assembly Wedding Proposal prank, Frankie?’ Drew complained when he heard the news. ‘We got hauled over hot coals, but Chadwick gets given a Nobel Peace Prize!’
The boys were hanging out in St Monica’s library at lunchtime. It had become somewhat of an unspoken tradition that Frankie and Drew laid low for a few days after one of their time-travelling adventures. They liked to take a few days to make sure the universe was still intact, their parents were still their parents, their homes were still their homes, and the sky was still blue.
If Frankie was honest, it also took a couple of days for one of them to be brave enough to dive into Google and poke around to discover if they had accidentally disrupted the timeline. No matter how careful they were not to tamper with history, it was a bit like walking through a shallow puddle. There were always going to be some ripple effects.
This time around, Frankie and Drew decided to dive in together, which meant that Drew covered his eyes with his fingers while Frankie nervously searched various keywords on the library computer.
After a few minutes, Frankie cleared his throat and paused.
Drew peeked through his fingers. ‘What? What did we mess up this time?’
‘Well, the good news is the Academy is still there, but …’ Frankie began.
Drew dropped his hands and leaned towards the computer. ‘But WHAT?’
Frankie pointed. On the screen was an image of the Academy, which pretty much looked exactly how they left it. With one small difference.
Drew squinted at what looked like graffiti near the entrance. ‘My Ancient Greek is a little rusty,’ he said slowly, ‘but does that caption beneath say, “Why did the chicken cross the road”?’
Frankie half-groaned and half-laughed. ‘Yep, and that’s not all,’ he added. He brought up a picture of Alexi and Alessandro underneath the heading LESSER KNOWN GODS, with these words written beneath:
‘Alexi, the minor Greek God of Pranks, would travel throughout Greece playing jokes on all who needed joy in their lives, together with his famed noble steed Alessandro. Alexi’s pranks were never cruel and his kindness was never forgotten by those whose paths he crossed. Alexi was also seen as being progressive, scandalising many by suggesting that in the future, women would be allowed to compete in the Olympic Games.’
‘So,’ Drew said, wide-eyed. ‘The annoying little pain finally became a god! What’s higher, do you think – a god or a king?’
Before Frankie could answer, he felt someone poking his shoulder. He looked up to see Lou grinning. ‘You aren’t hiding any flour, are you?’
Frankie grinned back.
Behind her, Miss Davis had taken some books off a shelf and was dusting underneath. She turned and smiled at the trio. ‘What are you boys googling?’
Frankie quickly shut the screen down. ‘Oh no, we were just researching a project for, um …’
‘History,’ Lou jumped in. ‘They were looking for a topic for their next project.’
Drew nodded. ‘Yeah, we have to choose a period of history, but it’s hard to decide,’ he said. ‘It’s like choosing your favourite ice-cream flavour.’
Miss Davis glanced at the book she was holding, and handed it to Frankie. ‘You two troublemakers might be interested in this.’
Frankie read the cover. ‘The Complete History of the American Wild West,’ he said aloud.
‘I wouldn’t want to have lived there, but it sure is fun to read about,’ Miss Davis said pleasantly.
Frankie looked at Drew and then to Lou. ‘I guess it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit of research, would it?’ he grinned.
THE END (FOR NOW)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Helliar is the best-selling author of the Frankie Fish series and one of Australia’s favourite comedians. He lives in Melbourne with his wife and three kids.
The Gold Logie nominee co-hosts the award-winning news and current affairs program The Project, and wrote and starred in the new TV comedy How To Stay Married, both on Network Ten. His latest family comedy show is The Complete History of Better Books. He plans to interview Frankie Fish on The Project one day, in what will hopefully be an exclusive.
Frankie Fish and the Sister Shemozzle
published in 2019 by
Hardie Grant Egmont
Ground Floor, Building 1, 658 Church Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121, Australia
www.hardiegrantegmont.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.
Text copyright © 2019 Peter Helliar
Design copyright © 2019 Hardie Grant Egmont
Illustration by Lesley Vamos
Design by Kristy Lund-White
eISBN 9781743586259
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Frankie Fish and the Sister Shemozzle Page 10