Freaks Out! (5 page)

“'Bout what?”

“That it's all my fault.”

“Dunno how you work that out,” said Jem. “You didn't have anything to do with it.”

“I might have done.”

“How?”

“Well, like… if I'm psychic, or something?”

“
You?
”

Jem did this squirrelly thing that she does, bunching up her mouth as if chewing on nuts. I could see she wasn't impressed.
She
was the one that was psychic, or so she thought. Her and her clonks on the head and big furry monsters. I, on the other hand, was serious.

“I'm really worried,” I said. “I did this horoscope about losing something precious, and now it's gone and happened!”

“You don't know that for sure. You don't even know if it was the one Skye picked.”

“No, but suppose it was?”

“Well, suppose it was,” said Jem. “Depends what you wrote. What
did
you write?”

I frowned, trying to remember. “
A treasured possession will be lost, but do not despair. It will turn up.
” I'd been quite proud of it at the time. I thought
it read like a real proper horoscope such as Crystal Ball might have done.

“I can't see what you're so fussed about,” said Jem. “What's the problem? 'Cording to you, it's going to turn up.”

“But I didn't say
when.
It could be months – it could be years!”

And in the meantime, poor Skye was desperately unhappy all over again.

“You still don't know,” said Jem, “if it was the one she picked. Even if she did, it doesn't mean you're psychic, necessarily. Could just be coincidence.”

“You didn't seem to think it was coincidence when Daisy got clonked on the ankle, or when
one tiny little mouse
ran across your kitchen floor. You even tried saying an ankle was the same as a head!”

“I didn't say it was the
same.
I said it was a head
of sorts
. A
sort of
head. Anyway, you wouldn't let me have it, so why should I let you have yours?”

“We're not in competition,” I said.

“That's not the point. You've got to have proof.”

“I could always try asking Skye. See if it's the one she got.”

“That'd be cheating! Unless you're going to tell me which one you got?”

I said, “The one I got was totally meaningless, if you must know. It was one of yours,” I added, in case she had forgotten.

Jem flushed. “If you're going to be insulting—”

“Oh, look,” I cried, “don't let's quarrel! We've got to think of Skye and how we can help find her gran's pencil for her.”

“Well, if you're so psychic,” said Jem, “I don't reckon it should be any problem.” She cackled. “Just look in your crystal ball!”

While it is true that Jem is one of my very, very, VERY best friends, and I wouldn't want to be disloyal or anything, it has to be said that most of the time she talks absolute twaddle. This is what Mr Hargreaves calls it.

“Twaddle! Absolute twaddle!”

She is quite happy doing it, I don't think she even realises, but it does mean that me and Skye don't always pay very much attention, so that on the rare occasions when she does happen to say
something sensible, or come up with a good idea, it tends to get overlooked. It wasn't till ages later, not till the middle of the night, that it suddenly struck me:
Just look in your crystal ball!

I hadn't taken any notice at the time cos I knew it was just Jem thinking she was being funny. She didn't really believe that I was psychic. But suppose I actually was? I really
might
be able to use my powers to find Skye's missing pencil!

I was so excited I could hardly wait for getting-up time. Mum was quite amazed to find me downstairs in the kitchen, all dressed and ready, without her having to yell at me. I said, “Mum, I know you don't believe in horoscopes, but do you think some people have special powers?”

“How do you mean?” said Mum.

“Well, like when the police call people in to help with murder enquiries, and they go into trances and tell them where the body's buried.”

Mum said, “Ah, but do they?”

“They do on television,” I said.

“They do a lot of things on television. What's all this sudden interest in the supernatural, anyway?”

“I'm just trying to think of a way to help Skye.” I explained to Mum about the special pencil and how nobody could find it. “I was wondering, maybe, if one of us might have psychic powers.”

It had to be me, if it was anyone. Jem had shown
no
traces, despite her ramblings about clonks on the head and big furry monsters. As for Skye, she reckoned, like Mum, that it was all nonsense. So
she
couldn't be psychic. Whereas I kind of had this feeling that I might be.

“If I were you,” said Mum, “I wouldn't go meddling in that sort of thing.”

I pounced, eagerly. “Why not?”

“You never know what it might lead to.”

“Might lead to us finding Skye's pencil!”

“Yes, and it might lead to one of you getting disturbed, or frightened.”

“But, Mum,” I said, “we've got to do
something.
Skye's, like, really upset!”

“In that case, why don't you offer to go and help her have another look? Three pairs of eyes are always better than one.”

I said, “She has looked. She's looked everywhere.”

“It wouldn't hurt to give it another go. I certainly wouldn't start messing around trying to read tea leaves.”

Read tea leaves? What on earth was she talking about?

“It's what people used to do,” said Mum. “Back in the days before tea came in tea bags. You'd make a cup of tea and let the tea leaves settle, then you'd try and read things into them.”

Aha! This sounded promising.

“What sort of things?”

“The usual stuff.
You will meet a tall, dark stranger
, or
go on a long journey
, or
come into a fortune
… that kind of thing.”

I crinkled my nose. I needed to get to the bottom of this!

“How did they do it?”

“Oh, don't ask me! They just called it reading the tea leaves.”

“What, like, they spelled out messages?”

“So it was claimed. Something to do with the patterns they made.”

I frowned, trying to imagine a crowd of tea leaves in a tea cup. Maybe if they were all bunched together it would mean one thing, and if they were scattered it would mean another. But what?

“Don't worry about it,” said Mum. “Nobody took it seriously. Just a few crackpots.”

I thought,
Yes, or those with psychic powers…
I wondered if you could do it with tea bags. Like if you tore a tea bag open and put it into a cup, would it make tea leaves?

I suggested it to Mum, and she said, “No, it wouldn't! It would just waste a tea bag. Don't even think about it.”

But I couldn't stop thinking about it. I was so excited that I rang Jem.

“We've got to get some tea leaves!” I said.

“What for?” said Jem.

“So we can find out where Skye's pencil is. Does your mum have any?”

“What? Tea leaves?”

What else?

“Dunno,” said Jem. “Dunno what they are.”

“Things you make tea with!”

“I thought you made it with tea bags,” said Jem. And then, before I could explode, cos I did
so
want to get on with it, “Oh, I know!” she cried. “You mean tea out of a packet?”

Yessssss!
“Has your mum got any?”

Jem said no, but her nan had. “She says it's the only way you can make a proper cup of tea.”

I said, “But your nan lives miles away!”

“You can get it in the supermarket,” said Jem. “What d'you want it for?”

I told her what Mum had said, about people reading tea leaves. “I'm going to Google it,” I said. “See if I can find out how to do it. Maybe we could
buy a packet on the way home tomorrow and give it a try.”

“I expect it'll only work if one of us is psychic,” said Jem. “But that's all right, cos I think I probably might be.”

I ground my teeth and reminded myself that we were doing this for Skye, not for the honour and glory of having psychic powers.

There was loads on the computer about tea-leaf reading. I found five whole pages telling you how to interpret the signs! There was also a page full of how you had to swirl the cup three times clockwise, and what it meant if bubbles came to the surface, and a lot of other stuff I didn't specially want to know about, so I didn't bother with any of that, I just printed out the five pages of signs.

I had to do it in Mum and Dad's bedroom, where Dad keeps his computer and all his business stuff. If Mum had asked me, I'd have said it was homework, but fortunately she was safely shut away downstairs with one of her ladies, taking up a hem or doing
a fitting. I had this feeling she wouldn't be happy about me and Jem preparing to read tea leaves.

 

“Dunno what she's got against it,” I said as we called into the corner shop next day on our way home from school to buy a packet of tea. “She seems to think it's messing with the supernatural. We'd better do it round your place, just in case, and maybe best not to tell your mum.”

We probably could have told Jem's mum as she isn't at all the sort of person to get fussed, but Jem made up this story about how we wanted to try “real proper tea, like Nan has”. Her mum laughed at that. Jem's mum does a lot of laughing. She is big and jolly and what I call a fun person. She said, “You probably won't notice any difference from ordinary tea bags, but you can make me a cup while you're about it.”

When we'd made it, she laughed some more cos she said we'd done it wrong.

“You're supposed to pour it through a strainer,
not just dump the tea leaves in the cup!”

We couldn't very well explain that we
wanted
tea leaves in the cup.

“It'll be all right,” said Jem. “We'll just let them settle.”

We rushed along the hall to Jem's bedroom.

“Now what do we do?” said Jem. “We don't have to
drink
it, do we?”

I said, “Yuck, no!” I hate tea. “We'll just pour it away and leave the tea leaves.”

Easier said than done! But we were left with a smattering, more in Jem's cup than in mine, which pleased her as it confirmed her belief that she was the one that was psychic.

I said, “Now all we have to do is read the signs. I'll read mine, and you read yours.”

“What are we looking for?” said Jem.

I was tempted to retort that if she was psychic she wouldn't need to ask, but I dug out my list and said, “See if there's anything that looks like one of these.”

We both peered intently into our cups.

“I've got a thing like a bow and arrow,” said Jem.

I said that I had what looked like a dog.

We rushed to consult the list. Bow and arrow wasn't on it. Dog was! If the tea leaves made the shape of a dog, it meant
good friend
, unless it was at the bottom of the cup, in which case it meant
friend needs help.
Mine was kind of, like, halfway, so “Good friend needs help?” I said.

Jem made a sound like a baby elephant trumpeting. She said it wasn't fair. “You already knew what was on the list!”

I assured her that I didn't. “I didn't have time to read it.”

“I bet you had a look!”

I didn't argue with her. I knew she was probably just a bit jealous, cos of bow and arrow not figuring.

“Anyway,” she said, “where's it s'posed to have got us? Hasn't got us anywhere! We still don't know where the pencil is.”

I said, “No, but at least it's proved one of us has
psychic powers.”

I was careful not to say which one, cos I didn't want to upset her. But, I mean,
good friend needs help.
What more proof could you want?

She still went into a huff. “Don't see it proves anything, personally,” she said.

I said, “Maybe it does and maybe it doesn't. What we ought to do is try other things.”

“Like what?”

“Like… well! Crystal ball, like you said.”

I thought that would please her, seeing as it had been her idea, but she just sniffed and said, “Where d'you think you're going to get one of them?”

I said, “I dunno! Make one?”

“Then what?”

“Then we can gaze into it, and if one of us is psychic, we'll see things.”

Jem said, “I think it'd make more sense if we asked Saint Anthony.”

Pardon me? I tried not to let my mouth gape open. You don't expect Jem to know about saints
and all that kind of stuff.

“What would he do?” I said.

“He's the one you pray to for things that have gone missing.”

“What, and he tells you where they are?”

“Dunno if he actually
tells
you. Just helps you find them.”

“Hm.” I was a bit doubtful, cos after all, who was this saint person? I didn't know anything about him! Plus I was really eager to get on with the psychic stuff. Still, if it was what Jem wanted, it seemed only fair to give it a go.

“I s'pose we could try him,” I said.

“I could try him,” said Jem. “You couldn't, cos you're not a Catholic.”

I immediately bristled. “What difference does that make?”

“He's not your saint! He's one of ours.”

“Are you saying he only helps Catholics?”

“N-no. Not exactly. Just that he's more likely to listen to me than he is to you.”

“Don't see why,” I said. “Not as if you ever go to church.”

“I used to! When I was little.”

“You haven't ever since I've known you. I bet it only works if you go regularly.”

“Well, anyway,” said Jem. “Nothing to stop me asking him.”

“I think you ought to make a promise that if he helps us find the pencil, you'll start going to church.
Regularly.
Like you should,” I added.

She didn't care for that. In these quite aggressive tones she said, “Why should I?”

“Cos it's only right,” I said. “You can't expect him to do you a favour if you're not offering him something in return. That's the way it works. Like,
Please God, don't let Mr Hargreaves discover I copied my maths homework and I'll never do it again
, sort of thing.”

I could see the struggle going on in Jem's head. Pleadingly, she said, “Couldn't I just promise to go, like, every now and again? Like on his saint's day. I
could go on his saint's day!”

“
No.
” I was very firm. “If you're going to do it, you've got to do it properly. You have to be prepared to make sacrifices.”

“Why me?” said Jem.

“Cos you're the one that suggested it!”

She sulked for a bit, but there wasn't really very much she could say.

“Are we agreed, then?” I said. “You'll promise to go to church
every single Sunday
?”

Jem waved a hand, impatiently. “Yeah, yeah!”

“So, go on, then. Do it!”

“I can't do it
now
,” said Jem. “I'll do it when I go to bed.”

I imagine that talking to a saint is quite a private sort of thing, so I didn't press her. I said, “OK, so long as you don't forget. I'd better be getting home now, or Mum'll wonder where I am. How long d'you think it'll take?”

“Only a minute or two,” said Jem. “I'm not spending all night on it!”

“No, I meant… how long before we know if he's going to help us?”

“I'm not sure.” Jem pressed a finger to the tip of her nose, making it go all turned-up and piggy. I don't know why she does that. It's like chewing fingernails, which is another thing she does. “Let's ask Mum! She'll know.”

Mrs McClusky was still in the kitchen, mixing something lovely and gooey in a bowl. She is always making lovely gooey things.

Jem said, “Mum, have you ever prayed to Saint Anthony?”

“Ah! Saint Anthony, God bless him. A dear man, to be sure.” Mrs McClusky held out a spoon. “Want a bit of splodge?”

We both greedily opened our mouths.

“Did you ever ask him to find anything for you?”

“I did, yes. My purse, with all my cards in it.”

Politely, I said, “Did he find it?”

“Well, no, I can't say he did. But I'm sure he tried his best.”