by Jean Ure
I was just about to open my mouth and say so when Skye got in ahead of me.
“D’berer,” she cried, “ha waor!”
Omigod. She’d flipped.
“D’berer.” She flashed us this bright smile. “Ha waor!”
Rather nervously, Jem said, “Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. You’re so right!” Then spinning round so that her back was turned on Skye, she hissed, “What is she talking about?”
“Anagrams!” Skye announced it triumphantly. “It was an anagram!”
Jem said, “Nanagram?”
Even I knew better than that. I said, “Anagram. It’s where you jiggle letters around.”
“Exactly,” said Skye. “I’ve been jiggling and jiggling! I kept waking up in the night, almost driving myself mad, and then this morning… ta-da!” With a flourish, she produced something from out of her pocket. Something small and slim and silvery. “It came to me!”
“Oh.” Jem clapped a hand to her mouth. “You found it!”
Her gran’s pencil!
“Where?” I said. “Where?”
“In Gran’s room,” Skye giggled. “It was there all along!”
“But how did you find it?”
“I worked out the anagram. D’berer ha waor… If you jiggle the letters around they spell WARDROBE. Er ha wardrobe.”
Jem crinkled her nose. “What’s er ha mean?”
“It’s like when someone’s speaking,” said Skye. “Like, er – ha – wardrobe!”
“And that’s where you found it?” I couldn’t help shooting this little sly glance at Jem. Now let her say I wasn’t psychic! “Right there, in the wardrobe?”
“Oh, it wasn’t in the wardrobe,” said Skye. “I’d already looked in there heaps of times.”
I was getting a bit lost. “So where was it, then?”
“It had fallen into this tiny little crack between the wall and the edge of the carpet. We only didn’t see it before cos of the chest of drawers being there.”
Jem’s chest went puffing out. “So it wasn’t anything to do with the Ouija board!”
“Excuse me,” I said. “If it hadn’t been for the Ouija board, she wouldn’t ever have thought to go back and have another look.”
Skye agreed that she probably wouldn’t. “I’d just about given up, you know? If it hadn’t been for you guys, I would have done! It was only when I worked out the message I felt I had to have one last go.”
“But the message got it wrong,” protested Jem. “It didn’t mean anything!”
“That’s all you know,” I said. “You can’t expect spirits to talk in ordinary everyday language. You have to be able to interpret what they’re saying. I mean, fr’instance, if Skye’s gran couldn’t actually remember where she’d left the pencil, which she probably couldn’t, she might well have said ‘er ha wardrobe’ meaning ‘Have another look!’.”
Jem did that thing that she does, crinkling her nose. She just didn’t want to believe, even now, that I was the one who was psychic.
“Why don’t we check out our horoscope pages?” I said. That would show her! “I know you said not till the end of term, but we’ve only got a few days to go, and—”
“You can check them out, if you like,” said Skye. “They’re still in my bag; I’d forgotten all about them.”
“Let’s do it at break,” I said. “We can read them all out and see who got the most right.”
I’d thought it would be fun, but Skye and Jem both seemed to have lost interest. Skye had never been all that interested to begin with, but even Jem no longer seemed to care whether any of the things she’d predicted had actually come true. Just as well, since none of them had! She did try mumbling about the one that I’d picked. Things will happen. But she only did it half-heartedly. She didn’t argue when Skye pointed out that things are always happening.
“Especially to Frankie!”
“But look,” I said, “look what I wrote for Virgo… An exciting new opportunity will arise. Virgo’s my mum’s star sign, and guess what?”
There was a silence. Then Jem said, “What?”
“She did have an exciting opportunity! She was offered a month’s free trial at a gym.”
Very solemnly, Skye said, “Wow.”
I could tell they weren’t impressed, but I was! How often do you get offered a month’s free trial? A whole month without having to pay for it!
“What about Skye’s one?” said Jem. “Trouble ahead. That didn’t happen! That was one of yours. Now, if she’d had this one –” Jem jabbed a finger – “A treasured possession will be lost. That’d make more sense.”
I have to admit, that was the one I thought she’d picked. But the other one was just as good. After all, there had been trouble. Skye had got a B-for her maths homework. That was trouble big time!
“If you ask me,” said Jem, “it’s a load of nonsense.” She swept up all the bits of paper and scrunched them into a ball. “You’d have to be really stupid to believe any of it.”
Really, there are times Jem quite takes my breath away.
“What about your auntie?” I said. “All that stuff with the tomato ketchup.”
“Oh, that!” Jem dismissed it with a wave of the hand. Like she hadn’t gone on and on and on about it. “Mum says Auntie Fay talks a lot of rubbish.”
Now she told us.
“Well, anyway,” I said, “it was my Ouija board helped Skye find her pencil.”
“Yes, it was,” said Skye. She suddenly threw her arms round me and hugged me. I was, like, knocked out! Skye just doesn’t do that kind of thing. “You can copy my maths homework any time you want,” she said. “Both of you! And I won’t have a go at either of you ever again, about anything, ever.”
She would, of course. She wouldn’t be Skye if she wasn’t always lecturing us and telling us off. But that was all right. She was our friend, and you have to accept your friends the way they are.
I could hardly wait to get home that afternoon and tell Mum. Not about the Ouija board, of course, but about Skye. I knew she’d be pleased.
“Mum,” I said, bursting through the kitchen door, “Skye found her p—”
I stopped. There on the kitchen table was my Ouija board.
“Ah, you’re back,” said Mum. “I’ve been waiting for you to arrive. What, pray, is this?”
How had she found it? What had she been doing in my wardrobe?
“It’s – um – ah – a sort of game,” I said. “A sort of… asking questions sort of thing. It’s not the same as a seance! I was just trying to h—”
“I meant,” said Mum, “what is this? E.J. TOOLS LTD?”
I swallowed.
“It’s your dad’s box! The one he was looking for.”
Wild thoughts whizzed at supersonic speed round my head. It wasn’t Dad’s box, it was a totally different box! It was a box I’d found on the pavement, I’d brought home from school, it had already been cut up, someone else must have done it, it wasn’t me, it wasn’t—
“Well?” said Mum.
“I can explain!” I said.
“I think you’d better,” said Mum. “Your dad’s in the other room. I suggest you go and throw yourself on his mercy.”
Dad was lying back on the sofa, watching television. He looked tired. He’d been getting up really early just lately, like four o’clock in the morning. I wished I had something nice to tell him instead of having to make a horrible confession.
“Um… Dad,” I said.
“Mm?”
I took a deep breath.
“I’m-very-sorry-to-have-to-announce-that-itwas-me-that-cut-up-your-box.” The words came gabbling out. I knew it wasn’t any use waiting for another miracle. There are times when you just have to be brave and go for it.
“I didn’t mean to cut it up! I didn’t know you wanted it. I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known you wanted it! I thought it was just an empty box. I mean, it was an empty box! I didn’t know your drill had come in it. I just
wanted something to make a Ouija board, which is not the same thing as a seance, I wouldn’t have held another seance cos Mum told me not to, and I promised I wouldn’t, but she didn’t say anything about Ouija boards! It was for Skye, cos of her gran dying and Skye not being able to find her silver pencil, and she was so unhappy! I just wanted to help her, and I did help her, cos you’ll never guess what… she’s found the pencil and it’s all because of me! And cos of your box, which I’m very very sorry about, but—”
“Fifty lashes,” said Dad, “and no pocket money for the next six months.”
I stared.
“Oh, go away, go away!” Dad waved a hand. “I’ve solved the problem. Just don’t destroy any more boxes without asking me.”
Phew! I turned and fled, crashing into Angel, busy eavesdropping at the door.
“So it was you,” she hissed. “I might have known it!”
I shoved past her. “You’d better watch it,” I said. “I have psychic powers!” I rushed back to the kitchen exultantly. “Mum, I—”
“Did you tell him?”
“Yes, and Mum—”
“Did you apologise?”
“Yes! Mum, listen… Skye found her pencil! I found her pencil. It was in her gran’s room all the time, and it was all thanks to me!” I grabbed Rags by his front paws and we danced together round the kitchen. “I found the pencil, I found the pencil!”
I guess it must have been Rags’ tail that swept the milk off the table. Accidents happen! Mum didn’t have to get all tetchy about it.
“Frankie Foster,” she said, “you just clean that up! I’m not getting down there with my back. And make sure you don’t leave the floor like a skating rink this time. It’s thanks to you I have a bad back in the first place!”
I couldn’t help reflecting that if Mum had gone to the gym when the opportunity was there, she wouldn’t still have a bad back. That is what gyms are for, to sort out these things. I did tell her! If only people would just listen to me occasionally. But they never do. They are too busy blaming me for everything.
“And please,” said Mum, “don’t splosh water about like that! Use some kitchen roll.”
There she went again. Poor Mum! She gets so worked up.
“See, look, now I’m using kitchen roll,” I said. “All nice and dry!”
“Thank you,” said Mum, cracking eggs into a bowl. “I appreciate that.”
I suppose, really, it is quite easy to make her happy. I’d made Skye happy, too! And Dad had solved his problems, and Jem had accepted that she didn’t have any psychic powers, which I’d known all along she hadn’t, and next week was half term, so yay! I squished the kitchen roll into a ball and tossed it to Rags, who skidded across the floor and—
Oops!
Mum stood, gazing in silent wonderment at the spreading puddle of egg.
“Do you know what?” she said. “I’m going to go and sit down.”
“That’s right,” I said. “You take it easy. No problem! I’ll sort things out.”
But I didn’t have to. Rags was already seeing to it.
“Look at that,” I said. “He’s cleaned it all up for you!”
And guess what?
The floor was bone dry.
Coming Soon!
Other Books by Jean Ure
Frankie Foster: Fizzy Pop!
Ice Lolly
Love and Kisses
Fortune Cookie
Star Crazy Me!
Over the Moon
Boys Beware
Sugar and Spice
Is Anybody There?
Secret Meeting
Passion Flower
Shrinking Violet
Boys on the Brain
Pumpkin Pie
Skinny Melon and Me
Becky Bananas, This is Your Life!
Fruit and Nutcase
The Secret Life of Sally Tomato
Family Fan Club
Special three-in-one editions
The Tutti-Frutti Collection
The Flower Power Collection
The Friends Forever Collection
Copyright
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books 2012
HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk
Jean Ure’s website is
www.jeanure.com
FRANKIE FOSTER: Freaks Out!
Text copyright © Jean Ure 2012
The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
ISBN 978 0 00 743162-5
FRANKIE FOSTER FREAKS OUT!. Copyright © Jean Ure 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2012 ISBN: 978-0-00-743163-2
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