LITMIR.BIZ

      “Psst, Frankie! Get down!” Kenny hissed at me in class one morning.

      “Wha…?”

      Kenny flicked a paper pellet with deadly accuracy across the classroom, and caught Emma Hughes bang on the back of her shirt. Result!

      “Ouch!” whined Emma, whipping round and glaring at Kenny. “I know that was you, Laura McKenzie!”

      Kenny reaalllly hates being called Laura. I thought she was going to jump up and clock Emma one, when—

      “Behave yourselves, girls,” snapped Mrs Weaver, who’d suddenly appeared. I don’t know how she does that. She must have a teleporter by her desk, like in Star Trek. One whiff of trouble, and she beams up from nowhere.

      “But Miss, it was Kenny,” butted in Emma’s crony, the Goblin girl herself, Emily Berryman.

      “I don’t know what she’s talking about, Miss,” said Kenny innocently. “I was nowhere in the vicinity.”

      Kenny watches too many police dramas, I reckon. It was true, though – she hadn’t been anywhere near Emma, exactly. Fliss’s mouth went all pinched like a dog’s bottom, and Lyndz got the giggles and had to stare very hard at her maths book like it was the most interesting thing she’d ever seen. Me and Rosie just kept very quiet.

      “That’s quite enough. I don’t want to hear another squeak from anyone, do you hear?” said Mrs Weaver sternly.

      Ryan Scott and Danny McCloud started squeaking like a pair of mice, and then howled with laughter like it was the funniest thing in the world. Aren’t boys totally pathetic?

      “Well, really!” said Mrs Weaver, looking extremely unimpressed. “I don’t know what’s got into you all today. You’re behaving as if you were still in the Reception class. Get on with your work, or you can finish off this maths instead of doing your Easter displays this afternoon.”

      As if by magic, the whole class went silent. Maths in the afternoon! Quel horreur! That’s French for ‘serious doom’, by the way. I learnt it in Paris at half-term – but that, as they say, is another story.

      “And while we’re on the subject of the Easter displays,” continued Mrs Weaver, now she’d got our attention, “this year’s theme is Poetry. There’ll be prizes for the most original idea, as usual.”

      Groans and death noises and mumblings immediately spread across the classroom.

      “But Miss, that’s really BORING,” protested Ryan Scott. “Poetry is all love and stuff.”

      The boys all yawned and looked completely fed up. I have to say, I agreed with them. Soppy stuff really does my head in. My parents have gone totally soppy since my baby sister Izzy was born, and I swear – I have to leave the room to be sick. Kenny was looking grumpy, and so were Rosie and Lyndz. Only Fliss went all pink and hopeful-looking. She really fancies Ryan, would you believe it? In fact, Ryan even sent her a Valentine’s card this year.

      “Poetry isn’t always about ‘love and stuff’, as you put it, Ryan,” corrected Mrs Weaver. “Poetry can be about nature, and people, and war – everything under the sun.”

      “What, even football?” piped up Kenny suddenly.

      Mrs Weaver looked slightly flummoxed. “Well, yes, I expect so. No poems about football exactly leap to mind, Laura, but yes – I’m sure if you looked around, you could find poems about sport. Let your imaginations run! Why don’t you ask Miss Malone to show you the Poetry section in the library? You’ll be amazed at what you find.”

      The boys looked much happier when she said that. It was kind of a relief all round, to tell you the truth.

      At break time, we all gathered together in our usual spot. It was really gorgeous just then, because the bank beside the playground was covered with bright yellow and white and orange daffodils, waving in the wind.

      The daffs were totally Mrs Poole’s pride and joy. We’d all helped plant them a while back. Someone had come up with the idea of spelling out ‘Cuddington Primary’ with the orange bulbs, but it had gone a bit wrong. Now the flowers were out, all you could really see were a couple of orange squiggles, then ‘ding’, then a couple more orange blobs ending with a big curly ‘y’. Mrs Poole had been a bit disappointed, I think. I quite liked it myself.

      Anyway, Fliss immediately started banging on about Kenny’s little stunt.

      “I can’t believe you cheeked Mrs Weaver like that,” she began. “If we’d had to do maths instead of our displays this afternoon, you’d be in big trouble, Kenny.”

      “Calm down, Fliss,” said Rosie mildly. “It is nearly the end of term, after all.”

      “Yeah!” squealed Lyndz, doing a weird little dance on the spot. “Nearly the holidays! Everyone messes around at the end of term. The teachers would be disappointed if we all behaved ourselves.”

      “Well, I think it was stupid,” said Fliss primly.

      I couldn’t resist it. “Like Ryan Scott wasn’t joining in,” I said with a giggle. “Your Valentine!”

      Fliss went a deep shade of pink. Ever since Ryan Scott had danced with Fliss at the Valentine Disco a couple of months earlier, we’d really been taking the mickey.

      “Oooh, Ryan, your mouse noises were like, totally real. I swear, I thought you had whiskers and a tail there for a minute!” cooed Rosie wickedly.

      The rest of us fell about. Then Rosie squealed as Fliss started chasing her across the playground.

      “So guys, what’s our Easter display going to be, then?” asked Lyndz when Fliss and Rosie came panting back again. “It’s got to be a good one!”

      “Remember the M&Ms’ prize-winning one last year?” said Fliss.

      We all groaned and made sick noises. Last year’s theme had been ‘The Countryside’, and the M&Ms had done this really cutesie-wootsie display of woolly sheep made of cotton wool and matchsticks. The way Mrs Weaver had gone on about it, you’d think it was a piece of really precious art. It had been displayed in the assembly hall with a big sign saying ‘First Prize’, and the M&Ms had crowed about winning for like, months.

      “Well, I’m not doing anything as wet as those baa-lamb blobs of fluff,” said Kenny in disgust. “I think we should—”

      We started making stupid noises, la-la-la-ing and covering our ears and all the usual stuff. Kenny’s ideas always involved football, or blood, or both – and whatever Mrs Weaver said, neither topic was exactly poetic.

      “Give me a chance to finish,” protested Kenny. “It might be the best idea you’ve ever heard in your lives.”

      “Your ideas are always stupid, Laura McKenzie.” Emma Hughes’ horrible weedy voice floated over to us. She was obviously still mad about the paper pellet thing. “I don’t know why you even bother thinking.”

      “Yeah,” bleated Emily Berryman, hanging round her friend like a bad smell.

      “What’s it to you, fart-breath?” snarled Kenny. “At least I’ve got a brain to think with.”

      We all started giggling at this point. Kenny’s always dead quick with smart answers.

      “Huh!” Emma tossed her stupid blonde hair. “Well, I don’t see you and your pathetic friends winning any Easter display prizes,” she came out with in the end. (I just

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