Muddle and Win Read Online Free Page A

something else, but she’d stopped for you and had got the something else done afterwards. She’d stop for anybody. Even for ex-Cassiemen who thought she might be able to get them back in with Cassie. (Some hope.)
    And she never lost it.
    Ever.
    Though it’s true that lately things had been changing a little, without Sally or anyone really noticing.
    For example, her relationship with her alarm clock wasn’t so good any more. Back in her first year at the school it had been her best friend. But over time, morning after morning, it had become more of an ‘Oh – you again?’ Soon it would descend through those same stages of PainToothgrindingly IrritatingFormally Dumped that every Cassieman came to know. (Except that with Sally the process would take months. A Cassieman could get the lot in five minutes: LovePainTIFD!)
    And then there was  . . .
    ‘Oi! Sally! YOUR BOYFRIEND’S WAVING AT YOU!’
     . . . There was Billie, her non-identical twin sister, who right at this moment was walking no more than six feet behind her and
still
felt she had to sound off like a passenger ferry in fog. Sally looked round. (So did half the street.) But it turned out that the ‘boyfriend’ wasn’t Stevie, and it wasn’t Mac either. Too bad. Stevie and Mac were both ex-Cassiemen that Sally thought were actually quite nice.
    It was Charlie B, waving from the bus stop forty metres down Garrick Way. And now Sally had to choose between 1) not waving back at Charlie, and 2) letting every one of the four hundred schoolchildren, teachers, parents, motorists, pedestrians and pensioners within earshot of Billie think that Charlie B was indeed her boyfriend.
    She chose 2) and waved back.
    Charlie grinned, waved enthusiastically and then turned to his mates, who pounced on him at once about his suddenly discovered love life. Sally shrugged. They’d do their worst, but hey. Boys were no good at rumour.
    ‘I don’t see why you don’t dump him,’ complained Billie, trailing behind her down Darlington Row.
    ‘He’s not mine to dump,’ said Sally.
    ‘He’s
fat
! He
gorges
on chips. He eats the batter off the cod and leaves the fish! Cod are nearly
extinct
!’
    ‘They’re not extinct. They’re overfished. Hi, Mr Granger.’
    Mr Granger was one of Darlington Row’s army of pensioners. He was doddering along the pavement in the wake of his ancient terrier, which he had probably found mummified in the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh at the turn of some century or other, and which hadn’t got any younger since. Mr Granger wore baggy leather shorts and knee-length socks and a hat that he touched when he spoke.
    ‘Hello, hello!’ he said, touching his hat. ‘Going home from school?’
    ‘No, we’ve just landed from Mars,’ said Billie, deadpan.
    ‘That’s right, Mr Granger,’ said Sally, meaning school, not Mars.
    ‘Jolly good!’
    ‘Darling Charlie!’ fluted Billie in a high voice, pursuing Sally on down the pavement. ‘That’s you. “Darling Charlie!” He’s a balloon! A great big squelching turnip! He doesn’t walk so much as waddle! I hope you wipe your lips after you kiss him because they’ll be all smeary with grease!’
    ‘I showed him how to multiply fractions. He didn’t get it. Now he does.’
    ‘Oh,
fractions
! Is that what you call it? You should
show
him how to do a bleep test or two!’
    ‘He can’t help his shape,’ said Sally, waving again as the number 86 bus roared past them with Charlie B at the window.
    ‘He could try,’ muttered Billie.
    Sally knew Charlie could try harder than he did. But she also knew he wasn’t going to. He got quite a lot from the other kids about it and he still wasn’t going to, so it wouldn’t make anything better if she got at him as well.
    Besides, bleep tests, which she had once enjoyed, were now on much the same curve as her alarm clock. That was another thing that was changing for Sally.
    The number 86 receded down Darlington Row, bearing with it the face that