Trixie and the Dream Pony of Doom

Back in class I told Warty I didn’t do the drawing.

He turned to the class. “Patricia …” (He said this with a disgustrous sneer as though I was something he was wiping off the sole of his shoe.) “Patricia says this drawing, which is signed in her own hand, is not by her, so would the culprit please own up?”

Dinah’s hand shot up at once.

“There’s no point in pretending, Dinah,” he said, rather nicely for him, “unless you know who it really was.”

“It was me. It was just a joke,” said Dinah. “I can do Trixie’s handwriting with both hands tied behind my back.”

Warty was not convinced.

“She didn’t do it. I did,” piped up a voice from the back of the class. Everyone turned to look. It was Martha Marchant, the new girl who is Very Extremely keen to be Dinah’s Best Friend, so we have to keep including her in our games.

“That’s not true, is it, Martha?” said Warty, and poor old Martha went even pinker than Chloe does.

“I didn’t want Dinah to take the blame for Trixie,” she mumbled.

Warty turned his gimlety gaze back to me: “I’ll be writing to your parents. Meanwhile, you can tell them you’re in detention after school tomorrow, writing I will not make disrespectful drawings of my teachers out a hundred times. That will represent a much more productive use of a writing implement than this disgusting doodle.”

A horrible chill went up my spine when I took in what he had said.

“Oh, but… I can’t do that,” I stuttered. “Not … not tomorrow.”

Now, I know I am not the best-behaved person in our school, and certainly not the best-behaved person in Class 5T, or, to be Very Extremely honest with you, even in my own house, but one thing I can’t stand is injustice. I don’t mind being told off for things I have done (well, I do a bit) but when all I have been doing is sitting Very Extremely quietly dreaming about my Dream Pony, Merlin, that I am going to buy when my grandma wins a million quid, then I am entitled to Justice and Fair Play.

So it wasn’t only injustice that made the chill go up my spine like the touch of a ghostly finger; it was that I had permission to leave school at lunchtime tomorrow, and tomorrow is going to be the most exciting day in my whole life ever, and I have been looking forward to it for three whole months! Why? Because Grandma Clump, the nice round normal grandma on my mother’s side (as opposed to the exciting witchy one on my dad’s side, who has purple hair and wears jump suits and drives fast cars) is going to be on a big TV quiz show, on which she (and everybody else in the family) expects to win a million quid!

And she has said when she does, she will give me some to buy my Dream Pony, which I have been dreaming of for my whole life. My very own granny on a TV quiz show! How can Warty-Beak expect me to concentrate or be on detention when something as amazingly exciting as this is about to transform my life? But try telling teachers like him anything like that.

“My grandma’s on TV tomorrow,” I ended up spluttering. “I’m supposed to be there.”

“How nice for you,” Warty said sarcastically. “You should have thought of that before you decided to make a vulgar mockery of those who are doing their best to turn you into a civilised human being. Not that I hold out much hope for that.”

Horror of horrors. I won’t make the TV show. What to doooooooo?

Dinah tried to cheer me up as usual on the way home and Chloe was unhelpfully sunk in a deeper gloom than me. She kept saying “poor you” which made me feel worse.

I had to thank Dinah for trying to rescue me about the drawing. “You are a true friend, pretending it was you,” I said.

“Well, I didn’t want you to miss your gran’s TV show,” said Dinah. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime’s chance to go to a real TV studio. You might see them making Eastenders or Vera the Vegetarian Vampire. Take an autograph book and make sure you ask if Vera is going Vegan, like it said in TV Titbits.”

“That’s a bit weird for a vampire, isn’t it?” I said. “Anyway, I won’t be seeing Vera or Eastenders or anybody. Whoever did that drawing has blown it for me.”

“Do you think it could have been that new girl Martha Marchant? She seems quite nice, but she was looking shifty and she DID confess …” said Chloe.

“No way,” said Dinah. “I’ve been to her place and she’s cool.”

“You didn’t say …”

“I suppose I am ALLOWED to have another friend? Martha was only trying to protect me cos she knows I wouldn’t do anything like that. She’s really sweet and she’s got about a million brothers and sisters and she’s CRAZY about ponies, in fact…”

“Harrumph,” I said, my mind on more important matters.

“We have to find out who drew that picture and get them to confess before tomorrow afternoon,” Chloe said. “Otherwise Trixie won’t get to the TV studio at all. And she’ll miss the chance of seeing her gran make a billion quid so she can buy herself a million horses.”

“Surely your mum can talk to Hedake and tell her it’s a really special occasion,” Dinah said. “Tell her you’ll do the detention next day, stay after school for a hundred years if necessary.”

“Are you kidding?” I said gloomily. “With that drawing? Maybe if it wasn’t a picture of Hedake herself snogging the horriblest teacher who ever lived, but with my name on that, I’ve had it. She’ll probably hang, draw and quarter me, not just make me do a detention on the most important day of my life.”

The others tried to cheer me up about it.

“Your gran probably won’t get past the first round,” Chloe said. “Maybe it would be a waste of time going anyway.”

“Yeah, do they have a fastest-finger-first thingy like on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” asked Dinah.

I forgot that Dinah and Chloe had never seen the show because it’s from the USA and Grandma’s one will be the first ever to be shown in the UK. Mum and Grandma Clump have been talking about nothing else for weeks and they’ve been sent a tape of the American show, so I knew all about it. I launched into a description.

“It has loads of rounds. It’s called SWOPPITT OR DROPPIT! This smarmy guy Micky Swoppitt is the compere and he’s going to do the British version too because he wants to enjoy our fab ‘old traditions’. He thinks we all wear Union Jacks and have cream teas with the Queen. All the contestants have to sit around nodding and smiling as if they don’t care whether they win or not, while Micky Swoppitt asks them cosy questions about their families and jobs and pets. Then, just when they’re really relaxed, everyone shouts ‘SWOPPITT OR DROPPIT!’ And Tricky Micky makes them do five things very fast, testing all their senses.”

“What do you mean?”

“They have to touch something and guess, you know, if it’s spaghetti or intestines.”

“Yuk. Do you mind?” said Chloe, who was munching at her usual vast amount of sweets and turning a pale shade of green.

“They have listening stuff, smelling stuff and seeing stuff and, er, I forget … What’s the fifth sense?”

“Taste,” said Chloe, thoughtfully licking the remains of a Toffee Twister off her cheek.

“But won’t your gran be at a disadvantage? Because of her age?”

“Yes, of course she will! That’s why she needs my support. And I need her to win so I can buy my Dream Pony. She’s promised.”

“But you can’t REALLY have a PONY,” said Chloe, as if she’d only just cottoned on to the fact that I was serious. “You’ve nowhere to keep it.”

“You sound just like Mum,” I said.

I didn’t want to tell her that I hadn’t really talked it over with Mum. I was convinced that as long as we had the money everything would be OK. “Anyway, stables won’t be a problem,” I went on. Dinah’s dad is best mates with old Whippett. You know, that guy who looks like a boomerang and owns the racing stud and the riding school. He says they’ll keep it for free as long as I let them use it as a riding pony sometimes.

“Oh, I see. You two have got it all planned. You don’t need me,” huffed Chloe.

“Shut up, Chloe,” said Dinah, giving her a playful poke in the ribs. “You know it’s been Trixie’s dream since she was seven. Now there’s a real chance of it coming true! Don’t make her feel bad about it.”

Appealing to Chloe’s kind side always works. This is because she doesn’t have an unkind side. “Do your folks know that’s what you’re planning?” was all she said.

“Um, not exactly,” I admitted. “Last time I mentioned it they weren’t too keen.” (This was what is called the Understatement of the Century.) “But they’ll be fine about it when they know I can keep him at the riding stables,” I added with what probably looked like confidence.

Chloe looked at me sideways, but she just said, “Let’s go to yours for tea. We can plot how to uncover the Dread Drawing Culprit.”