Monkey Bars and Rubber Ducks Read Online Free Page B

are meant to be stuck to.’
    Copper Pie sighed. ‘I was in the loo, all right’
    OK, I got it. He hadn’t been anywhere else. He’d been in the loo all the time, doing you-know-what. He wouldn’t be any good as a spy or a special agent or whatever if he had to spend ten minutes in the bogs in the middle of a covert operation. I winked at Bee. She got it too. I know because she made a ‘yuck’ shape with her mouth.
    ‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Bee. ‘What matters is that Jonno helped Big Jim, without getting caught. My turn tomorrow.’
    Something about the way Bee said it made me wonder if she was looking forward to bunking off. Weird girl.

Leavers’ Week
    I was last to the Tribehouse for the Wednesday meeting because Mum was trying out a new recipe and it took longer than she thought. I don’t know why she bothered. No one ate much of it, not even her. She says we need to vary our diet. I completely disagree. Varying means adding strangely shaped vegetables in different colours and changing the meat bit into something unrecognisable. The good thing is Mum always gives up with her ideas after a few days and we go back to normal. I said that to Amy, my know-all big sister, and she said Mum feels guilty about spending so much time at work and so every so often she makes a big effort to be a better mum. Flo, my know-all small sister, said she thought Mum would be a better mum if she gave up work and just looked after us. I can’t think of anything worse. If she only had us to think about, she’d always be fussing about something. Flo said she’d have more time to make cakes. See, that was all she was really interested in -cakes, not Mum.
    ‘What took you, Keener?’ said Fifty. He held out his fist and we all rapped knuckles. It’s the fist of friendship. We’re meant to start all our meetings with it, but sometimes we forget and sometimes we do it twice. It’s a random rule, which is fine, because we make the rules, so we can break the rules. (Except the one that says no one can join Tribe, and no one can leave.)
    ‘I got held up by some evil slurry dished up by my mum.’
    Fifty laughed, which was nice. No one usually laughs at anything I say.
    At last! We’re all here. Now, do you realise it’s school camp next week?’ said Bee.
    ‘It can’t be,’ I said. We had the letter ages ago, but I didn’t remember the date we were going.’ No one’s said anything.’
    ‘Same,’ said Fifty.
    ‘It is,’ said Bee. ‘It’s the week before half-term. I heard the other class talking so I checked on the calendar.’
    Another thing for me to worry about, I thought. I won’t like the food. I won’t like the activities. I don’t want to spend all day every day with no escape from Callum and I’ll miss my hammock.
    Fifty didn’t want to go either. He’s too small to do all the climbing and survival stuff – the girls manage better than Fifty. And he can’t take Probably Rose, his baby sister.
    ‘But what about Big Jim? Who’s gonna look after him when we’re away?’ said Copper Pie. I hadn’t thought of that. It was Fifty’s turn on Monday and that meant he was going to get away with it because we’d be at camp. So unfair. I looked over at Fifty. He was grinning. He’d worked it out too.
    ‘Maybe he’ll be much better by Monday,’ said Bee.
    ‘Let’s decide at the weekend,’ said Fifty. ‘If he still needs help, maybe we could ask . . . Amy?’ Fifty obviously doesn’t know my sister that well. She’s back together with spotty-face boyfriend so she’s too busy snogging to get an old man’s lunch.
    ‘Maybe,’ I said, because I didn’t really want to talk about Big Jim.
    ‘What exactly do we do at camp?’ asked Jonno.
    ‘We’re in teams and we build bridges and do an assault course and canoe and have a campfire and sleep in a tent,’ said Bee. ‘Things like that.’
    I reckoned she wasn’t as keen as she sounded. Bee sleeptalks and sleepwalks which is not ideal on camp –