Jean Ure - Freaks Out!

In the meantime, we kept our eyes fixed firmly on Daisy Hooper. I guess I wouldn’t have minded if she’d got clonked on the head, but all that happened was she got whacked by a hockey stick. On the ankle, not the head.

Jem tried claiming that was just as good. She said you had to know how to interpret these things – they were never straightforward. Clonk on the head didn’t have to mean clonk on the actual head, it could just as easily mean clonk on the top part of something, such as for instance the top part of the foot, which was, of course, the ankle. Well, if you looked at it one way it was. The ankle was on top of the foot. In other words, it was the head of the foot. And Daisy had been clonked on it and was now all bandaged up and hobbling.

We wouldn’t normally wish ill upon someone, but Daisy Hooper is such a disagreeable person. Really loud and overbearing. And mean. She is so mean! Plus she hates us and we hate her.

Jem was eager to open up all our bits of paper and check whether clonk on the head had been matched to Daisy’s star sign or someone else’s. She said, “I know which sign she is, I asked her, she’s Libra! So please can we just look? Please, Skye? Please?”

But Skye said no. She was very firm about it. The end of term was when we were going to look. Not before.

Jem grumbled to me later that “Skye can be such a bore at times!”

I had to admit she was being a bit more bossy than usual.

“Why do we put up with it?” wondered Jem. “It was our game – we invented it. Then she comes barging in and takes over. I think we should tell her.”

“Tell her what?”

“That we’ve had enough! We want all our bits of paper back, and we’ll play the game without her.”

“Thing is…” I hesitated.

“What?”

“I wouldn’t want to upset her.”

“But she’s upsetting us!”

“Yes, but she’s been really funny just lately. Like there’s something on her mind.”

“Mm.” Jem thought about it. “She has been a bit odd.”

“It’s no use asking her, you know what she’s like.”

“Secretive.”

She is a very controlled sort of person, is Skye. Unlike me and Jem, who tend to splurge, Skye prefers to keep things to herself. She wouldn’t dream of splurging.

“What we’ve not got to do,” I said, “we’ve not got to nag, cos that’ll only make things worse.”

“Make her all ratty.”

“We’ll just have to be patient.” Mum is always urging me to be patient. She says patience is a virtue. I don’t get it, myself, I don’t think it’s natural; I mean you want something to happen, you want it to happen now. But as I said to Jem, sometimes you just have to wait.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah!” Jem waved a hand. “Wait till she gets over it.”

“Or till she feels like telling us.”

“Whatever.”

“In the meantime,” I said, “we can still go on watching, see if anyone gets clonked.”

We watched like hawks all the rest of the week, but nobody got clonked. Nothing, as far as we could see, happened to anybody, though Jem did turn up for school one morning bubbling over with excitement and obviously bursting to tell me something. She made it clear she couldn’t do it while Skye was there, cos she kept pointing at Skye behind her back and pulling faces. If Skye hadn’t peeled off at the school gates to go and talk to one of the teachers, I really think Jem would have exploded. Her face had gone bright scarlet with the effort of not saying anything.

“Guess what?” she squeaked, before Skye was even properly out of earshot. “Guess what happened?”

I said, “Tell me, tell me!”

“Huge hairy monsters!” Jem announced it in a trumpet-blast of triumph. Heads swung round to look at us.

I said, “Where?”

“In the kitchen,” whispered Jem. “All across the floor!”

Wow! Our first bit of evidence. I stared at her in awe. Skye must have stuck the huge hairy monsters horoscope to the star sign that belonged to Jem’s mum. So predictions could come true!

“I reckon most people would have screamed,” said Jem. “I didn’t! Not even when it ran across Mum’s foot.”

I said, “It?”

Her eyes slid away.

“What d’you mean it?”

I might have known it was too good to be true. When I questioned her more closely I discovered that in fact it had only been one hairy monster and it hadn’t even been a proper monster, if it came to that, just one tiny little mouse. Jem tried arguing with me, like she always does. She is a very argumentative-type person. She said that as mice went it had been pretty huge, it seemed to her, plus everybody knew that mice didn’t come singly.

“They live in nests. With other mice.”

She said there was obviously a whole family of them hiding away somewhere, and that if you stayed and watched, you’d probably see hordes of them come out and run across the floor. I told her rather sharply that in that case she had better be prepared to sit in the kitchen all night, and maybe, if lots of mice appeared, and if they were really big mice, I might be prepared to put them on my list.

Jem immediately said, “What list?”

I said, “List I’m making of stuff that happens, ready for when Skye lets us open up and have a look.”

“So what’s happened so far?” said Jem.

I had to admit nothing, apart from Daisy Hooper getting whacked on the ankle, which I didn’t honestly think we could count. Jem said she reckoned I still ought to make a note of it.

“And Mum’s mouse. Cos these things aren’t ever straightforward.”

“Yes, but you can’t just twist them to mean anything,” I said. “They’ve got to have a bit of resemblance to what’s written down.”

Jem said, “Clonk – Daisy. Monster – Mum. That’s two of mine, and they do have some resemblance! It could be,” she said, “that I’m the one with psychic powers. Not everybody has them. How much of what you wrote has come true?”

Loftily I said, “Too early to tell. I’m waiting for proper scientific proof.”

I certainly wasn’t putting Daisy Hooper’s ankle on the list, and I wasn’t putting Jem’s mum. Jem could argue as much as she liked. An ankle is not the same as a head, and one small mouse isn’t the same as a horde of huge furry monsters. On the other hand, something very remarkable happened later that day. I got home to find that a leaflet had been pushed through the letterbox. It was there, lying face up on the mat.

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THIS EXCITING OPPORTUNITY!

GET FIT, HAVE FUN!

SIGN UP NOW FOR ONE MONTH’S FREE TRIAL AT THE

GREENBANK LEISURE CENTRE.

Well. That was more like it! It was exactly what I’d written: An exciting new opportunity will arise. It should be grasped with both hands.

If I could just get someone to grasp it… I rushed into the kitchen to show Mum.

“Mum,” I cried, “look! You can have a month’s free trial at the Greenbank Leisure Centre!”

Mum said, “Oh, Frankie, I don’t have time for that. I’m far too busy.”

It’s true that Mum is quite busy, doing dressmaking and stuff for all her ladies, but I’d have thought a bit of fun and keeping fit would have brightened up her life.

“Not really,” said Mum. “I’d sooner put my feet up and have a cup of coffee.”

What can you do? I try to be helpful.

I showed the leaflet to Angel, suggesting she might like to grasp the opportunity, but she seemed to think I was insulting her.

“Why should I need it?” she shrieked. “Are you implying I’m fat?”

I said, “No, but it’s free.”

“So you do it,” said Angel.

Next I tried Tom, who just grunted, which is pretty much all he ever does.