The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg Read Online Free Page A

witness my red-faced embarrassment—why did it have to be Noah?
    Face on fire, I hurled a full-on, force-ten, mega-mean scowl in the enemy’s direction. Instead of scuttling back to his hole like he was supposed to, Noah swung himself up onto the round-yard fence. Then, still grinning, he settled down, legs swinging, sunglasses perched on his nose—all the better to watch the circus.
    Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
    “Come on Chiana, stop playing games, and wipe that muck off your arm,” Kate ordered, handing me an old sack that smelt like it had been used to wipe down a family of wet dogs. “I’m not here to give you flying lessons, you know. Next time, grab the saddle or the horse’s mane and pull yourself on.”
    Now she tells me…
    On the second try, I grabbed at handfuls of Shakespeare’s stringy moth-eaten mane, praying the hair wouldn’t come out in my hands. With a final weight-lifter’s push from Kate, I heaved myself into the saddle and held on so tightly every knuckle went white, pink, blue and then back to white again.
    “Off you go.” Kate clipped a lunge line onto Shakespeare’s bridle and walked to the middle of the ring. “A couple of circles at a trot will do to start with.”
    A couple of circles of ‘staying on’ would do to start with.
    I glanced first at Tayla, who gave me the thumbs-up sign, then at Noah who sat talking into his mobile phone. Probably discussing children’s rights with the Prime Minister of Australia.
    Okay—this was it. Time to ‘face my fears’, as Tayla’s self-help books would say. I took a deep breath and clenched my teeth so hard it’s a wonder they didn’t develop hairline cracks and slowly crumble. Then, letting my deep breath out in a whoosh, I patted the hairy neck in front of me and politely asked Shakespeare to go.
    Nothing happened.
    In fact, I’d known rocks that were more active than the Ghost of Christmas Past who was snoring beneath me.
    “No, that’s not how you do it,” growled Kate, flicking her long black lunging whip in the direction of the horse’s rear end. “Garn, get up you lazy old fox.”
    With a grumpy glare and a half-hearted kick in Kate’s direction, Shakespeare set off around the sandy ring at a ragged trot.
    A trot that jarred every bone in my body.
    A trot that made my teeth rattle like jellybeans in a jar.
    A trot that threatened to shake off any body-part that wasn’t screwed on tight.
    “Good girl!” yelled my instructor, her dazzling grin set like cement. “Now see if you can rise up and down to the trot. Count in time. One-two. Up-down. One-two. Up-down.”
    “I c-c-c-can’t.”
    My teeth rattled and clanked together, a cacophony of noise inside my head. Whenever Shakespeare went up—I hit the saddle with a loud thwack.
    “Yes you can,’ Kate insisted. “And look as though you’re enjoying yourself, dear.”
    She had to be kidding…
    “Now Cha, when I say up—put your weight in the stirrups and stand up. When I say down—sit softly in the saddle again. Okay?”
    “C-c-can w-w-we s-s-stop n-n-now?”
    If I bounced around much longer the corn-flakes I’d eaten for breakfast would be decorating Shakespeare’s mane, like tinsel.
    “Concentrate, dear. Up, down. Up, down. Up, down.”
    “Ouch! I b-b-bit my t-t-tongue!”
    “Up, down. Up, down.
    “I’ll n-never e-ever—” I gasped. “Hey, I got that one right!”
    “Good girl. Keep going. That’s the way. Easy, isn’t it?”
    And it was. I could stand in the stirrups then sit down again in perfect time to Shakespeare’s trot. It was cool. It was amazing. It was fun.
    Up, down. Up, down.
    A grin spread across my face. The buzz of success galloped with a crazy beat through my bloodstream and kept time with the rhythm of the trot. I leant forward to pat Shakespeare on the neck, missed his neck and somehow, not sure how, did a slow slithering somersault and hit the ground.
    Kaaaaa…thud !
    This was followed by a long agonizing breathy silence. I peered up from