Pony Passion (5 page)

At last Mrs Weaver emerged through the
sliding doors, looking flushed, with one of the librarians walking beside her. I heard Mrs Weaver say, “Once again, I am so sorry,” to the librarian. Then she stalked over to us.

“I expected better from you,” was all she said, her eyes raking round the group. And then we set off in a straggly line back to school.

“Why do they always shout at all of us?” said Kenny at break, slumping on the bench. We’d had a good fifteen minutes of Mrs Weaver blasting us, telling us how she and Miss Walsh had “never been so embarrassed in their entire lives” – all the usual teacher guff. “No offence to Frankie, but it was a one-girl stampede. Personally, I was behaving like a super-swotty goody two-shoes…”

“I saw you with one of the waxworks!” said Rosie. “You were sticking a pencil up its nose!”

“That was a serious experiment!” said Kenny. Then she grinned. “Kind of.”

“I wonder if Frankie’s OK,” said Fliss. Right this
minute Frankie was inside the office of Mrs Poole, our headteacher.

“Oh, she’ll be fine,” said Kenny confidently. “You know Pooley – she’s way softer than Mrs Weaver. She’ll probably tell Frankie to try not to do it again and then she’ll crack open a packet of Hob-nobs. Talk of the devil…”

“Hey guys!” It was Frankie, bombing towards us across the playground.

“So what happened?” asked Fliss. “Have you got a million detentions?”

Frankie shook her head happily, still getting her breath back. “Pooley tried to be really strict,” she said at last, “but when I explained that I hadn’t been messing around – that the waxwork really had moved – she turned all sympathetic, and said it would’ve scared her too. Apparently she knows the head librarian and she’s going to have a word. She reckons that if exhibitions have moving parts they should warn you at the beginning. She said if someone with a dodgy heart had a shock like that it could make them keel over.”

“Good for Pooley,” said Kenny.

“Except she’ll find out from the librarian that the waxwork didn’t move,” I said.

“It did!” insisted Frankie. “It grabbed me! Though probably by chance, Mrs Poole said – it couldn’t really have been programmed to do that.” She frowned. “Blimey, Lyndz, why don’t you believe me?”

“I do believe you,” I said. “But I saw something. After you’d gone.”

I’d been dying for a chance to tell them ever since the bell rang. Now I had everyone’s attention. Even Kenny sat up straight and stared at me.

“Someone was hiding behind the waxwork,” I said. “They grabbed you. On purpose.”

“You saw them? Who was it?” Frankie was looking at me in astonishment. “Who, Lyndz? Who?”

Who grabbed Frankie? I bet you’ve got a pretty good idea, haven’t you, and you weren’t even there! You could narrow it down to two, anyhow: our two worst enemies, the M&Ms.

I took a deep breath. “Emma Hughes,” I said.

I think Frankie’d had a hunch too, because she didn’t look shocked – she just looked furious. “What I’d like to do to that twisted, snotty, fat-bottomed fartbrain!” she snarled.

“I saw her when Mrs Weaver was bawling us
out,” said Rosie. “She had the slimiest ‘I’m-so-perfect’ look on her face. Ugh! Why does she always get away with it?”

“She doesn’t – not this time,” said Kenny darkly. “Nobody plays a trick like that on the Sleepover Club without paying for it!”

As you can imagine, we spent the whole of the rest of break complaining about the M&Ms. We could spend years on that subject, I reckon!

“You know what I heard them saying to Alana?” said Rosie. “That she couldn’t be their friend because she doesn’t wear the right clothes at the weekends.”

“Yeah, like they’re such style queens,” said Fliss. “Not!”

“They’re just the pits,” declared Frankie. “And we have so got to get them back for setting me up like that.”

There was silence while we all tried to think how.

“We should kung fu them,” suggested Kenny,
“like in Kung Fu Panda!” Now Kenny turned into her own version of a kung fu whirlwind, her arms chopping and her legs flailing – until she tripped over one of her big feet and went sprawling on the tarmac.

“Ow.” She sat up, rubbing her knee. “OK. Maybe not. I think it takes a bit of practice.”

Then the bell rang. “We’ll think of something,” I whispered to Frankie as we lined up. “It’ll be the best revenge plan ever. No fear.”

I have to admit, though, I hadn’t had a single idea by the end of school. And when I got home, the whole Frankie revenge drama flew clean out of my head when I saw a large white envelope waiting for me on the kitchen table.

Don’t you just love getting post? I grabbed the envelope and tore it open without even waiting to take my coat off. Inside was a card, with a picture of a girl riding a beautiful black pony on the front. Inside it said:

To a very promising – and brave! – rider,

Wishing you a speedy recovery

Mrs McAllister

Miranda

I read it over three times. Mrs McAllister had never said I was “very promising” before. This almost made breaking my arm worthwhile!

“Can I go to the stables?” I said to Mum.

“What, now?” Mum laughed. “You can’t keep away from that place for five minutes, can you?”

“I’ll go on my bike.”

“Not with your arm like that.” Mum checked her watch. “I promised I’d take some books round to Mrs Clark, so I suppose I could drop you on my way and pick you up on the way back. You wouldn’t have very long there…”

“That’s OK. I just want to thank Mrs McAllister for the card.”

“All right, then. Give me fifteen minutes.”

When I got to the stables, I found preparations for the gymkhana in full swing.
I must admit, it made my heart sink. Why had I had my accident now?

I poked my head round the office door, and found Miranda sewing flags. I thanked her for the card.

“You’re welcome—ouch!” She stuck her finger in her mouth. “I tell you, if I’d known working at a stables involved so much sewing I’m not sure I would’ve taken the job.”

“Sorry I can’t help,” I said, waggling my plaster arm.

Miranda winked. “You’re well out of it,” she said. “Shame about missing the gymkhana, though. You were coming on so well.”

The next moment Mrs McAllister hurried past me and picked up the phone.

“I got your card. It’s lovely!” I said as she flipped through the phone book and started to dial.

Mrs McAllister flashed me a smile. “Don’t you worry, Lyndsey,” she said. “We’ll soon have you riding again.”

I backed out of the office. They were clearly
too busy to chat. Instead I walked over to one of the fields that Mrs McAllister rents from Mr Brocklehurst’s farm next door. As well as games at the gymkhana, there was going to be a small course of jumps. They’d been set up in this field.

One of the jumps was made out of tyres threaded on to a pole, another was made of a pile of straw bales. Then there were wooden poles painted with bright red and white stripes, some fitted on to stands and some on to plastic blocks.

I’ve only had a go at jumping once or twice. Now I stood and watched one of the bigger girls, Lisa Bentham, practising on a pony called Trojan. Have you ever seen show jumping? What’s so awesome about it is how beautiful the horses look when they leap over the fences – the way their forelegs tuck up and their backs arch… For a split second it’s like they can fly.

The weird thing today, though, was that every time Trojan took off, my stomach lurched. In my mind’s eye I could see Lisa tumbling out of
the saddle and landing – splat – in the grass. How weird is that? I knew she wasn’t actually going to fall off – she’s really good at jumping and Trojan is dead reliable. But still I kept getting this strange feeling.

I shook my head and turned away. A moment later I’d forgotten all about it. I was too busy looking out for Mum’s car and chatting to Miranda, who’d come out into the yard. Maybe I should’ve been more worried. I’d thought that breaking my arm was the worst thing that could happen to me. Little did I know that my riding troubles were only just beginning…

The next day, I didn’t tell anyone at school what’d happened at the stables. I couldn’t tell them how down I felt about missing the gymkhana – and besides, there was plenty to take my mind off it. For one thing, Kenny was acting strangely.

“Is she up to something, d’you reckon?”
whispered Rosie in the middle of English.

“No idea. Why?” I said.

Rosie shrugged. “She’s not usually this…helpful, that’s all.”

It was true. A minute ago, when Mrs Weaver had asked for a volunteer to collect in our science books, Kenny had shouted, “Me!” like the keenest cheerleader ever. Right at this moment she was heading our way, a growing pile of exercise books under her chin.

I held out my book to Kenny, eyeing her suspiciously. She replied with a large wink.

“Definitely up to something,” I muttered. But as Kenny plonked the books on Mrs Weaver’s desk and came back to her seat, I couldn’t work out what it might be.

“What’re you aiming for?” asked Frankie ten minutes later when we were out in the playground. “Nature table monitor?”

“Get real,” Kenny snorted. “Do I look like teacher’s pet material? It’s part of my cunning plan.” Glancing round to check no one was
watching, she pulled a piece of paper out from under her jumper and unfolded it. “See!”

“What’s that?”

“It was tucked inside Emily Berryman’s exercise book.”

I grabbed it and examined it carefully. I was expecting to see something top secret. No such luck. It was just some notes from the lesson we’d done on food and digestion.

“Science notes?” I said. “So?”

Kenny grinned. “Top quality McKenzie plan.”

“Are you going to tell us or what?”

“I don’t want to spoil the surprise. It’ll be wicked.”

“OK, mystery queen, have it your own way,” said Frankie. “See if we care!”

But we did care, of course. We were bursting with curiosity.

In the next lesson, we were due to start work on our projects. That meant the Sleepover Club sitting round a desk, with a pile of books from the school library in the middle. Frankie got out her new best pen. It had neon pink feathers
stuck on the end, which wafted as she wrote.

“So,” she began, underlining the word ‘Project’ at the top of a clean sheet of paper. “Any ideas?”

“I want to do something about the mines,” I said. “And how awful it was to make ponies work in those places.”

“Never mind the ponies, what about the people?” said Kenny. “They had to crawl through tunnels, dragging carts, or hacking at the coal all day every day. How hideous is that?”

“Eeuch! Why do we have to think about the miserable stuff?” said Fliss. “I want to do something about the posh houses and those ladies in beautiful dresses…”

“Wait up a second,” interrupted Frankie. “We’ve already got our subject, remember? Transport. So mines are out, and swanky dresses are out too, I’m afraid.”

In the disappointed silence that followed, all my guilty feelings came flooding back.

But Frankie sounded cheerful. “Let’s have a campaign plan. We need to know what we’re
looking for in these books, right?” We nodded. “So…” she said, her pen poised, “what are exciting things to do with transport?”

“Racing cars!” said Kenny.

“Spaceships!” said Rosie.

“Enormous limousines, like film stars travel in,” suggested Fliss.

“Hmm,” said Frankie, tapping her pen on her cheek. “I’m not sure how many of those things were around in Victorian times.”

A few moments later, we had a different list. “Right,” said Frankie, scanning down it. “You look at trains, Kenny, and I’ll see if I can find anything on trams. Rosie and Fliss, you look for books on bicycles and carriages and things. And of course, Lyndz, you’re horses.”

I found a chapter in a book called Working Horses, and had my nose well stuck into it when I heard Fliss say, “Kenny, what are you doing?”

“Oh, just practising my handwriting,” Kenny said breezily. A few moments later she stood up saying she wanted to look for another book, and
headed for the shelves on the far wall. On her way back, I saw her slip a piece of paper under the edge of Ryan Scott’s pencil case, with half of it left peeking out so he’d be sure to spot it.