Freaks Out!. Jean Ure
said Jem.
“I’m not scared of spiders!”
“I know, I know!” I clapped my hands. “Not getting A+ for her maths homework!”
“And for her French homework!”
“And for geography!”
“And for history!”
Now I was going off into giggles myself. Skye is like the class brain; it would frighten the life out of her if she ever got a B for anything. She once got A-for an essay and it threw her into total depression for a whole week.
“You are such morons,” she said.
I suppose it is not quite fair to laugh at a person, especially if they are one of your best friends, but all the same I do think people should be able to take a joke now and again. I know I can. I am always being laughed at. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Even if it does, I don’t make a big thing of it.
“Where are you going?” said Jem.
“I’m going to school, if that’s all right with you.” Skye flung it at us over her shoulder. “I want to get there on time.”
We watched as she went stalking on ahead of us, her legs, long and spindly, clacking to and fro like a pair of animated chopsticks.
“What’s her problem?” said Jem.
I shook my head. It is a known fact that Skye doesn’t have the hugest sense of humour. Unlike me and Jem, who have been known to giggle ourselves senseless, Skye is a very serious-minded person. But still there was something not right.
I said, “I dunno. In some kind of a mood. Thing is, about horoscopes –” I folded up Crystal Ball and put her back in my bag – “they might just be all made up, but that doesn’t mean they’re rubbish. Loads of what they say actually does come true.”
“This is it,” said Jem. “I remember once my auntie was told she was going to have a shake-up in her career, and the very next day she shook a bottle of tomato ketchup and the top flew off and it went everywhere, all over the place, and look what happened!”
“What?” I said. “What happened?”
“She got a new job!”
“What, because of the tomato ketchup?”
“No, cos she went down the job centre.”
“Because of the ketchup.”
“No. She was going there anyway. The ketchup didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Excuse me?
“Just that she shook it,” said Jem. “Like it said in her horoscope… a shake-up. And then she got a job. See what I mean?”
I nodded slowly. I do sometimes find that I have a bit of difficulty following Jem’s train of thought. She has a brain that hops about all over the place.
“My auntie was really miffed about the ketchup,” she said. “It went all down her blouse, and she couldn’t get it out. You can’t, with ketchup. But if it hadn’t been for that, she might never have got the job. Least, that’s what she told Mum, so I reckon you’re right. There’s got to be something in it.”
That was better. At least I’d got one of them to agree with me.
“Know what?” I said. “We could do horoscopes. We could ask everyone what their star signs are, and then we could make up horoscopes for them, and wait and see if they come true.”
Jem liked that idea. I could tell, already, that her brain was whizzing into overdrive, thinking what sort of things she could make up.
“What about Skye?” she said. “Are we going to tell her?”
I said yes, we had to. She was our friend; we didn’t do things separately. Besides, it might cheer her up. Stop her being so glumpy.
“Even though she thinks it’s rubbish?”
“We’ll tell her it’s just a game,” I said. “After all, it’s not like we’re really expecting things to happen.”
“So long as it is only a game,” said Skye.
I assured her that it was. “Just a bit of fun!”
“So long as that’s all.”
“It is. I just said.”
“Cos I think it’s really stupid, when people take this sort of stuff seriously.”
I laughed, as if the very idea was absurd. “Whoever would?”
“You’d be surprised,” said Skye.
“Well, but sometimes –” Jem jumped in eagerly – “sometimes they get it right. It’s just a question of working out what they mean. It’s not always straightforward. Like if your horoscope said ’Beware of big hairy monsters!’ and later that night a bunch of spiders went marching across your bedroom ceiling, well, you mightn’t realise that that’s what it had meant. You might have been expecting something more, like, a load of big hairy muggers coming along and…” Her voice faltered slightly under Skye’s withering gaze. “And mugging you,” she said. “Or something.”
“You might,” agreed Skye, “if you were dumb enough.”
“No, honestly,” said Jem, “they can predict things! Like with my auntie. There was this one time—”
Omigod! She was going to go on about the tomato ketchup again.
“I think we should get started,” I said.
“But I want to tell Skye about my auntie! See, her horosc—”
“Later!” It’s important, with Jem, to stop her before she gets going. Preferably as soon as she opens her mouth. Mr Hargreaves, our maths teacher, once said that if uncontrolled babble was an Olympic discipline, Jem could babble for England. And get a gold medal. “We don’t have time for all that now,” I said. “We’ve got horoscopes to write.”
Jem looked at me, hurt. “Just because you’ve already heard it!”
Just because I didn’t want Skye hearing it. Fortunately, Skye came to my rescue.
“No, Frankie’s right,” she said. “If we don’t get started we’ll never get anywhere. Everybody pay attention! First we need to get organised.”
Jem pulled a face. Normally I’d have pulled one too, and even given an inward gro-o-an, cos when Skye starts organising she turns into this really evil dictator type, bossing and bullying and laying down the law, but at least she’d managed to stop Jem going on about her auntie all over again.
If Skye had heard the tale of the tomato ketchup she’d have gone into full boffin mode and started lecturing Jem about being gullible, cos you can just bet she’d know what gullible meant. Jem would then have got upset, and then they’d have had words, and then they’d have tried dragging me into it, both of them wanting me to be on their side, like, “Frankie, tell her! You heard about my auntie,” and “Frankie, for goodness’ sake! You don’t believe in all that rubbish?”
I wouldn’t have known what to say. I mean, I did sort of believe. Sort of. Just not in the tomato-ketchup story. What we needed was some kind of definite proof, which was exactly the reason I was conducting my experiment. Cos that was what it was, I suddenly realised. Not just a game or a bit of fun, but a proper bony fido experiment. Or whatever the expression was.
“What’s that thing you say when you mean something’s, like, real?” I said.
“You mean, like, real?” said Skye.
“I