Freaks Out!

by Jean Ure

  “I thought you made it with tea bags,” said Jem. And then, before I could explode, cos I did so want to get on with it, “Oh, I know!” she cried. “You mean tea out of a packet?”

  Yessssss! “Has your mum got any?”

  Jem said no, but her nan had. “She says it’s the only way you can make a proper cup of tea.”

  I said, “But your nan lives miles away!”

  “You can get it in the supermarket,” said Jem. “What d’you want it for?”

  I told her what Mum had said, about people reading tea leaves. “I’m going to Google it,” I said. “See if I can find out how to do it. Maybe we could buy a packet on the way home tomorrow and give it a try.”

  “I expect it’ll only work if one of us is psychic,” said Jem. “But that’s all right, cos I think I probably might be.”

  I ground my teeth and reminded myself that we were doing this for Skye, not for the honour and glory of having psychic powers.

  There was loads on the computer about tea-leaf reading. I found five whole pages telling you how to interpret the signs! There was also a page full of how you had to swirl the cup three times clockwise, and what it meant if bubbles came to the surface, and a lot of other stuff I didn’t specially want to know about, so I didn’t bother with any of that, I just printed out the five pages of signs.

  I had to do it in Mum and Dad’s bedroom, where Dad keeps his computer and all his business stuff. If Mum had asked me, I’d have said it was homework, but fortunately she was safely shut away downstairs with one of her ladies, taking up a hem or doing a fitting. I had this feeling she wouldn’t be happy about me and Jem preparing to read tea leaves.

  “Dunno what she’s got against it,” I said as we called into the corner shop next day on our way home from school to buy a packet of tea. “She seems to think it’s messing with the supernatural. We’d better do it round your place, just in case, and maybe best not to tell your mum.”

  We probably could have told Jem’s mum as she isn’t at all the sort of person to get fussed, but Jem made up this story about how we wanted to try “real proper tea, like Nan has”. Her mum laughed at that. Jem’s mum does a lot of laughing. She is big and jolly and what I call a fun person. She said, “You probably won’t notice any difference from ordinary tea bags, but you can make me a cup while you’re about it.”

  When we’d made it, she laughed some more cos she said we’d done it wrong.

  “You’re supposed to pour it through a strainer, not just dump the tea leaves in the cup!”

  We couldn’t very well explain that we wanted tea leaves in the cup.

  “It’ll be all right,” said Jem. “We’ll just let them settle.”

  We rushed along the hall to Jem’s bedroom.

  “Now what do we do?” said Jem. “We don’t have to drink it, do we?”

  I said, “Yuck, no!” I hate tea. “We’ll just pour it away and leave the tea leaves.”

  Easier said than done! But we were left with a smattering, more in Jem’s cup than in mine, which pleased her as it confirmed her belief that she was the one that was psychic.

  I said, “Now all we have to do is read the signs. I’ll read mine, and you read yours.”

  “What are we looking for?” said Jem.

  I was tempted to retort that if she was psychic she wouldn’t need to ask, but I dug out my list and said, “See if there’s anything that looks like one of these.”

  We both peered intently into our cups.

  “I’ve got a thing like a bow and arrow,” said Jem.

  I said that I had what looked like a dog.

  We rushed to consult the list. Bow and arrow wasn’t on it. Dog was! If the tea leaves made the shape of a dog, it meant good friend, unless it was at the bottom of the cup, in which case it meant friend needs help. Mine was kind of, like, halfway, so “Good friend needs help?” I said.

  Jem made a sound like a baby elephant trumpeting. She said it wasn’t fair. “You already knew what was on the list!”

  I assured her that I didn’t. “I didn’t have time to read it.”

  “I bet you had a look!”

  I didn’t argue with her. I knew she was probably just a bit jealous, cos of bow and arrow not figuring.

  “Anyway,” she said, “where’s it s’posed to have got us? Hasn’t got us anywhere! We still don’t know where the pencil is.”

  I said, “No, but at least it’s proved one of us has psychic powers.”

  I was careful not to say which one, cos I didn’t want to upset her. But, I mean, good friend needs help. What more proof could you want?

  She still went into a huff. “Don’t see it proves anything, personally,” she said.

  I said, “Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. What we ought to do is try other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like… well! Crystal ball, like you said.”

  I thought that would please her, seeing as it had been her idea, but she just sniffed and said, “Where d’you think you’re going to get one of them?”

  I said, “I dunno! Make one?”

  “Then what?”

  “Then we can gaze into it, and if one of us is psychic, we’ll see things.”

  Jem said, “I think it’d make more sense if we asked Saint Anthony.”

  Pardon me? I tried not to let my mouth gape open. You don’t expect Jem to know about saints and all that kind of stuff.

  “What would he do?” I said.

  “He’s the one you pray to for things that have gone missing.”

  “What, and he tells you where they are?”

  “Dunno if he actually tells you. Just helps you find them.”

  “Hm.” I was a bit doubtful, cos after all, who was this saint person? I didn’t know anything about him! Plus I was really eager to get on with the psychic stuff. Still, if it was what Jem wanted, it seemed only fair to give it a go.

  “I s’pose we could try him,” I said.

  “I could try him,” said Jem. “You couldn’t, cos you’re not a Catholic.”

  I immediately bristled. “What difference does that make?”

  “He’s not your saint! He’s one of ours.”

  “Are you saying he only helps Catholics?”

  “N-no. Not exactly. Just that he’s more likely to listen to me than he is to you.”

  “Don’t see why,” I said. “Not as if you ever go to church.”

  “I used to! When I was little.”

  “You haven’t ever since I’ve known you. I bet it only works if you go regularly.”

  “Well, anyway,” said Jem. “Nothing to stop me asking him.”

  “I think you ought to make a promise that if he helps us find the pencil, you’ll start going to church. Regularly. Like you should,” I added.

  She didn’t care for that. In these quite aggressive tones she said, “Why should I?”

  “Cos it’s only right,” I said. “You can’t expect him to do you a favour if you’re not offering him something in return. That’s the way it works. Like, Please God, don’t let Mr Hargreaves discover I copied my maths homework and I’ll never do it again, sort of thing.”

  I could see the struggle going on in Jem’s head. Pleadingly, she said, “Couldn’t I just promise to go, like, every now and again? Like on his saint’s day. I could go on his saint’s day!”

  “No.” I was very firm. “If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to do it properly. You have to be prepared to make sacrifices.”

  “Why me?” said Jem.

  “Cos you’re the one that suggested it!”

  She sulked for a bit, but there wasn’t really very much she could say.

  “Are we agreed, then?” I said. “You’ll promise to go to church every single Sunday?”

  Jem waved a hand, impatiently. “Yeah, yeah!”

  “So, go on, then. Do it!”

  “I can’t do it now,” said Jem. “I’ll do it when I go to bed.”

  I imagine that talking to a
saint is quite a private sort of thing, so I didn’t press her. I said, “OK, so long as you don’t forget. I’d better be getting home now, or Mum’ll wonder where I am. How long d’you think it’ll take?”

  “Only a minute or two,” said Jem. “I’m not spending all night on it!”

  “No, I meant… how long before we know if he’s going to help us?”

  “I’m not sure.” Jem pressed a finger to the tip of her nose, making it go all turned-up and piggy. I don’t know why she does that. It’s like chewing fingernails, which is another thing she does. “Let’s ask Mum! She’ll know.”

  Mrs McClusky was still in the kitchen, mixing something lovely and gooey in a bowl. She is always making lovely gooey things.

  Jem said, “Mum, have you ever prayed to Saint Anthony?”

  “Ah! Saint Anthony, God bless him. A dear man, to be sure.” Mrs McClusky held out a spoon. “Want a bit of splodge?”

  We both greedily opened our mouths.

  “Did you ever ask him to find anything for you?”

  “I did, yes. My purse, with all my cards in it.”

  Politely, I said, “Did he find it?”

  “Well, no, I can’t say he did. But I’m sure he tried his best.”

  I looked rather hard at Jem. That wasn’t very encouraging.

  “Mind you, he did find your auntie’s engagement ring for her.”

  Jem shot me a smug glance. I wondered if this was the famous auntie that had splattered tomato ketchup all over the place.

  “How long did it take?” said Jem.

  “I can’t really remember. A few weeks, I think. She was going spare, and then it turned up somewhere very odd. Somewhere she’d never even thought of looking.”

  Jem nodded wisely. “He led her there. It’s what he does. He leads you to things.”

  “Well, he’d better lead us to Skye’s pencil a bit quicker than he led your auntie to her engagement ring.” I said it rather sternly as we parted company at the front door. “We can’t wait for ever!”

  “I suppose –” Jem turned hopefully to Skye as we walked into school next morning – “you didn’t find your gran’s pencil yet?”

  Very slowly and sadly, Skye shook her head. I felt so sorry for her. She looked really dejected.

  “Not even a hint?”

  Skye seemed puzzled. “What sort of a hint?”

  “Well, like… a sign, sort of? Like suddenly something tells you to go and look in a certain place, or you suddenly see something and it gives you an idea, or…” Jem’s voice petered out. “That sort of thing,” she said rather lamely.

  “Dad still thinks it got buried when they built the extension. In which case,” said Skye, miserably, “it’ll be there for ever.”

  “You don’t actually know that,” I said. “Not for certain.”

  “It’s the only thing we can think of. We’ve searched and searched all over the place.”

  “Maybe we should come and help look?” I turned to Jem. “We could do that, couldn’t we?”

  Jem nodded, brightly.

  “After all,” I said, “three pairs of eyes are always better than one. What d’you think?”

  “S’pose you could, if you wanted,” said Skye. “Don’t really see that it’ll do much good.”

  She was being a bit ungracious, but I forgave her.

  “We’ll come back with you after school,” I said. “We’ll look in your gran’s room. We’ll look all over.”

  “Yeah. All right.” Skye hunched a shoulder, like, Suit yourself. It’ll only be a waste of time. I knew she couldn’t help it; she was still upset at losing her gran. If we could just do something to find her pencil for her, it would make her so happy.

  “Who knows? We might be shown a clue,” said Jem. “I wouldn’t be surprised!” She bounced and swung her bag over her shoulder. “Might just come to us, like… Look under the carpet, or – or Look in the corner, or—”

  Skye gazed at her rather irritably. She’d probably looked under the carpet already. And in the corner.

  “Well, I mean, you never know,” said Jem. “My auntie thought her engagement ring had gone for ever, but then this voice told her to go and look in this particular place that she’d never looked in before and there it was, after all that time!”

  “How long?” said Skye.

  “Don’t really know. But she got it back!”

  “So where was it in the end?”

  But of course Jem didn’t know that, either. Skye shook her head as we walked in through the school gates. I jabbed at Jem with my elbow.

  “Did you do it?” I hissed.

  She hissed back at me. “Yes!”

  So that was why she thought there might be a sign. I just hoped Saint Anthony had been paying attention when she talked to him.

  We went back with Skye after school and Skye told her mum that we were going to have another search of her gran’s bedroom.

  Her mum said, “I’m afraid you won’t find anything, but by all means give it a go.”

  Skye’s mum is as different as can be from Jem’s. There is nothing round and jolly about her. She’s loads older for a start, almost like she might be someone’s gran. She is quite nice, but she teaches science and is ferociously clever in a rather forbidding sort of way, which is maybe, I sometimes think, the reason Skye finds it so difficult to talk about her feelings. What I mean is, you can’t ever imagine her and her mum settling down to a cosy chat, like I can with my mum.

  She asked us, as we prepared to troop upstairs, if we’d be staying to tea. If it had been Jem’s mum we would have said yes please, and we’d all have got together in the kitchen and just grubbed around.

  “Help yourselves! Go look in the cupboard, see what you fancy.”

  That’s what Jem’s mum would have said. But we knew with Skye’s mum it would have meant the table being properly laid, with knives and plates and cups and saucers, so we very politely said no, thank you, we had to get home.

  “This is Gran’s room.”

  Skye flung open a door and we walked into this really sad, empty space. The bed was stripped and all the surfaces were bare. Me and Jem gazed round helplessly, waiting for a sign, but none came. Skye watched as we made a show of opening drawers and peering under the bed. There was absolutely nothing to be seen. Whatever had been in the drawers was no longer there, and there weren’t even any fluff balls under the bed. (I have masses of dog hairs under mine.)

  Rather desperately we opened the wardrobe, but all we saw was a row of hangers without anything hanging on them. I felt goosebumps go thumping down my spine and wished we hadn’t come. It was hard to believe that just a few weeks ago an old lady had been living there, all happily surrounded by her things. Her knick-knacks, as one of my grans calls them. Now it was like she had never been. No wonder Skye was so unhappy.

  Mrs Solomons was waiting for us as we trailed back down the stairs.

  “No luck? We’ve been through it with a fine tooth comb; it’s hard to know where else to look. I’m afraid –” she patted Skye’s shoulder – “you’re going to have to reconcile yourself to the fact that we’re not going to find it.”

  “We’ve got to find it,” I said, as me and Jem went on our way. “You’d better have another talk to Saint Anthony.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Jem. “It would seem like nagging.”

  “You don’t have to nag! Just apologise for bothering him and ask if he can get a bit of a move on. Only say it nicely, of course.”

  “He’ll do it as fast as he can,” said Jem. “You can’t hurry a saint. He’s probably busy.”

  I looked at her rather hard. “You did do what we agreed, didn’t you? You did promise you’d go to church every Sunday?”

  “I told him I’d go every Sunday that I could.”

  “That’s not what we said!”

  “You mean it’s not what you said.”

  “But you agreed!”

  “Excuse me,” said Jem, “but who was talking t
o him, you or me? You don’t know anything about these things! You wouldn’t even know how to begin talking to someone like Saint Anthony. It’s no use making promises you mightn’t be able to keep.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but Jem just went battering on without giving me a chance.

  “Suppose I got the flu, or there was suddenly mountains of snow, or we got flooded, or something? That’d be an act of God. I could hardly be held responsible for an act of God!”

  I still didn’t see why she couldn’t just have done what we agreed and promised to go every Sunday. Saint Anthony, presumably, being a saint, knew all about acts of God; he didn’t need Jem reading him a lecture. Now he’d probably got the hump and wouldn’t help us at all.

  I said this to Jem and she went bright red and said, “That’s blasphemy, that is!”

  Now what was she on about?

  “Taking his name in vain,” said Jem. “You can’t talk about a saint like that!”

  “All I’m saying –” we’d reached Jem’s block of flats, where we parted company – “I’m just saying, it would be nice if you could ask him to make Skye a priority. That’s all.”

  I decided that I would give Saint Anthony until the weekend. If he hadn’t made a move by then, it would have to be up to me. Which, as a matter of fact, it usually is. I’ve noticed this before. Skye does a lot of thinking, and Jem does a lot of talking, but I’m the one that takes action!

  Jem was eager to know, next morning, whether anything had happened yet.

  “Like… any clues, or anything?”

  Skye said, “Why do you keep on about clues all the time?”

  “I just wondered,” said Jem.

  “You heard what Mum said… I’ll just have to accept that I’m never going to find Gran’s pencil. Ever!”

  “You might do,” said Jem. “You shouldn’t give up hope. I mean, look at my auntie.”

  I’m sure she thought she was being supportive, but I could see that all she was doing was making Skye even more upset than she already was. It would have made me upset if I’d had to hear about her auntie’s engagement ring all over again. Well, what I mean, I did hear it all over again, but at least I hadn’t just lost my gran.

  I told Jem later that I didn’t think she ought to keep asking Skye the same question over and over.