Ros Asquith - Trixie and the Dream Pony of Doom

I made myself look Very Extremely excited about it. Chloe always needs a lot of reassurance about things like whether she is your friend or not. I sometimes think it would be easier to be a boy; they don’t seem to need to be Best Friends in the same way as girls do.

“OK, what’s your idea?” said Dinah, looking huffy.

“We could fingerprint her.”

“What?!”

“I’ve brought in this detective kit that’s got fingerprint powder.” Chloe rummaged in her school bag and pulled out a six-year-old’s Super Spy set.

“Chase after Griselda with a fake Sherlock Holmes hat on and a plastic magnifying glass hoping she’ll give you a finger print? VERY clever. Not,” said Dinah.

Chloe looked as if she was about to cry.

“Wait, it’s brilliant,” I said. “We don’t actually have to DO it, we have to PRETEND we’ve done it!”

“Eh?” said Dinah and Chloe.

I scratched my head in what I hoped was a professor sort of way (actually, I think I was worried about another invasion of Dreaded Nits) and patiently explained.

“We confront Griselda with the dread evidence. We TELL her we’ve got her fingerprints from one of her own exercise books and we say they exactly match the ones on the drawing! She’s BOUND to confess!”

At break we all strolled over to Griselda looking like we hadn’t a care in the world. She was sitting with a crowd of Year Threes, who all looked at her adoringly except for Little Thomasina, who she had pinched. She always picks on one so that poor person will feel all left out and forlorn and the others will all feel they are the favourites. It makes you want to throw up. Her bully-buddies – Big Barbara with the pineapple hairdo and Sniffling Sophie who always has a drip on the end of her nose – were with her, mocking the weeping girl.

“Hi, Griselda. I have to take my hat off to you. You are an absolute genius,” said Dinah.

Griselda looked surprised, but pleased. “Which particular bit of my genius are you referring to?” she asked.

“That drawing of Hedake snogging Warty you did. Hilarious. It’s exactly like both of them. Fantastic copy of Trixie’s handwriting on it too.” Dinah looked as if she was about to split her sides laughing about it.

But Griselda’s not dim. Flattered or not, she could smell a big fat rat. “I’ve no idea what you mean,” she said, looking haughty.

“Oh, go on, Griselda. No one in this school is clever enough to pull off a stunt like that except you. And me, of course.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Griselda again, only this time she had turned from haughty to flustered.

“Perhaps you’d like to discuss it further, somewhere private,” said Dinah. She can sound quite menacing when she wants to. “So all your little fans won’t hear about it.”

“There’s nothing to discuss.”

“Oh yes there is. We have fingerprints to prove it.”

Griselda made a faint gurgling sound. Then she said very loudly, “Oh well, if you really want me to help you sort out your little problem, I suppose I have to. Everybody needs me all the time,” she added theatrically for the benefit of her fan club. “I’ll see you later, sweeties. Come on.”

She gestured to her two sidekicks, and Big Barbara and Sniffling Sophie got up. Big Barbara aimed a sly kick at Little Thomasina, who burst into a fresh bout of weeping, and they followed us round the back of the caretaker’s hut.

“What do you mean, fingerprints?” asked Griselda.

“Chloe’s uncle’s in M15 – he always lets her play with his kit: invisible ink, fingerprint stuff, false beards, poison, high-velocity rifles, that kind of thing,” Dinah said.

Griselda shuffled uncomfortably and her mouth fell open.

“We nicked one of your exercise books and compared the prints on it with the ones on the Hedake drawing. They were identical. It was you. Confess all. If you don’t tell Warty it was you and clear Trixie, we’ll tell him ourselves.”

Griselda’s mouth fell open further, and then she burst into tears.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she wailed. “It wasn’t me, it wasn’t!”

“You’re lying,” Dinah hissed. “Of course it was you; it has to be!”

Sniffling Sophie and Big Barbara got in on the act. “Lay off her,” Big Barbara said. “She obviously didn’t do it and she can prove it.”

Dinah and Chloe and me looked at each other. Griselda’s lot so rarely say anything honest that somehow it sounds different when they do. “What do you mean, prove it?” I asked, doubtfully.

“Look at her hand, sucker,” Sniffling Sophie said.

Griselda held up her right hand. There was a huge plaster binding up her first two fingers. “Got bitten,” she said triumphantly. “I was trying to tie a Halloween mask on Sally Campbell’s cat to frighten her, and it bit me. Poisoned and all. I can’t even write at the moment, let alone draw.”

Big Barbara and Sniffling Sophie started to close in on us. We’d blown it. There was nothing for it but to beat a retreat.

Disaster! Granny Clump abandoned to her fate! I knew I just had to get to that TV studio, even if I was expelled.

“I’ll have to break out of school, there’s no other way,” I said. “Just tell Warty-Beak I fell in a cement mixer or something.”

I headed for the gates, but just as the bell rang Warty-Beak loomed from nowhere to shoo us all inside. I thought for a second of diving through his legs, but I could see Ms Dove was already locking the gates.

I doubled back, desperate, to a dismayed Chloe and a mischievously grinning Dinah.

“I know a way,” she whispered, grabbing my hand.

“Where are you going? Is it a new game? Can I join in?” said Martha Marchant, who appeared from nowhere like the Ghost of Gloom.

“Distract her, Chloe,” Dinah hissed in Chloe’s ear.

Chloe can be a bit slow at this sort of thing, but she did her best. She started off by standing up like a lamppost, putting both arms straight up above her head and sticking her hands up in a point.

“What am I being?” she asked Martha Marchant, who just shook her head and then looked at us for a clue. Phew. Some distraction this was turning out to be.

“A carrot,” Chloe said in the end, looking disappointed.

But Martha clapped her hands and giggled. “Be another one,” she said.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.