The Great Brain Robbery Read Online Free

speak to you, he won’t let us come over to his house to play.’ Dave was so embarrassed he couldn’t even look Frankie in the
eye. ‘I’m really sorry, Frankie, but he’s got a Mechanimal racetrack you know, and . . .’
    ‘I know,’ Frankie replied sadly as the two boys shuffled guiltily away.
    Frankie felt like a walking dustbin. He had never been so miserable. He thought about his best friends, Neet and Wes. He hadn’t seen them for so long he’d almost forgotten what it
was like to have friends. Frankie sighed and pushed his hands deep into his empty pockets. Had Wes stopped writing because he didn’t want to be friends either? And what about Neet? Would she
still be his pal when she came back to school?
    He heard some whoops and cheers coming from near the climbing frame. A crowd of children was hopping up and down as Timmy, prince of the playground, let them take turns with his new
remote-controlled Mechanicopter. Frankie turned around and trudged back across the playground, his heart sinking all the way down to the bottom of his wellies.

    ‘Oh dear, you look glum,’ said Eddie, the moment Frankie walked through the door that evening. ‘Whatever is the matter?’
    Alphonsine clasped Frankie’s face between her hands and studied him carefully.
    ‘You is right, Eddie,’ said Alphonsine. ‘A face like a soggy pancake. What is the bother, little cabbage?’
    ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Frankie, trying to sound cheerful. ‘I’m just tired.’ But Alfie and Eddie were far too old and far too wise to believe him. They sat him down on
the sofa and made him a cup of hot chocolate while Colette gave his cheek a friendly lick.
    ‘Spill the peas, Frankie,’ smiled Alphonsine. So Frankie spilled all the peas he had. He told them about the teasing and the fight and Timmy Snodgrass and feeling like a walking
dustbin. As he let all the words come tumbling out, Alphonsine nodded her grey head and patted him gently on the knee.
    ‘Don’t you worry, little cabbage,’ she said kindly. ‘You don’t need this Timmy What’s-his-face.’
    ‘Snodgrass,’ Frankie sighed.
    ‘Exactly,’ said Alphonsine. ‘You do not need this Timmy Snotgrass.’
    Frankie giggled. ‘
Snod
grass.’
    ‘But zat is what I said!’ grinned Alphonsine. ‘Zis Timmy Snottypants is not a proper friend.’ Frankie spluttered with laughter. ‘Is that not right,
Eddie?’
    ‘That’s right,’ said Eddie. ‘Proper friends don’t behave like that, do they, Colette?’ Colette yelped and gave Frankie another lick on the cheek.
    ‘Proper friends,’ Alphonsine continued, raising one finger in the air, ‘is not like toys. You do not pick zem up and put zem down and get bored with zem. You do not swap zem or
take zem to the dump when they get old. No! A proper friend is for life, not just for Christmas!’
    ‘But . . . I don’t have
any
friends,’ said Frankie. ‘Nobody wants to be my friend any more.’
    ‘Nonsenses,’ Alphonsine replied, squeezing his shoulders tightly. ‘We is all your friends, is we not?’ Eddie and Colette nodded vigorously. ‘And we think you is
fine and dandy as you are.’
    Frankie looked around at the three kind, smiling faces. For that moment he felt as warm and safe as a bird in a nest.

    By the time Frankie went to bed that night, he was so tired a brass band couldn’t have kept him awake. So at first he couldn’t work out whether what he saw was just
an effect of his exhausted imagination.
    It was at that time of the night when sleepers sink into the darkest depths of slumber. It was just at the moment when Frankie touched the bottom of the dark, watery world of dreams, that he had
the oddest sensation. He felt a strange pressure on his chest and his ears filled with an uncomfortable electrical crackling. Opening his eyes wide, he saw that his bedroom was bathed in a weird
blue light. Perched on his chest, looking straight at him with swivelling mechanical eyes, was his Gadget the Rabbit,