soaking wet and nearly broke your mum’s neck!”
I said, “So? It still doesn’t make it my fault. Does it?”
Jem giggled again. Skye just hunched a shoulder. I really didn’t know what was wrong with Skye these days. She was behaving very oddly. Not depressed, exactly, but certainly not her usual self. She’s never been what you’d call a bouncy sort of person, but just suddenly she’d stopped being fun.
“Anyway,” I said, “that’s not all. Guess what Crystal Ball wrote for Mum? A bad accident, narrowly averted.”
Jem cackled. She sounded like a hen that’s just laid a square egg. “Living with you, I should think your mum spends her life having bad accidents narrowly averted!”
I decided to ignore the uncouth cackling.
“Seriously,” I said, “it can’t just be coincidence that she got it right for both of us. And both on the same day!”
“What’s my one?” said Jem. “What’s she say for Leo?”
“Leo… Take action now to start de-cluttering.”
“Oh!” Jem gave a high-pitched squeal. “Mum told me only yesterday that my bedroom was too cluttered and I really ought to see if I’d got any stuff we could give to charity.”
Well. So much for her and her silly giggling.
“I reckon that just about proves it,” I said.
“What’s she say for Skye? Read what she says for Skye!”
“Sagittarius… You need to face a fear and conquer it.”
We turned expectantly to Skye.
“I don’t have any fears,” said Skye.
“You must have some,” I said. “Everybody has some.”
“Well, I don’t!” She said it quite angrily. “It’s all rubbish! What have I got to be scared of?”
“Spiders?” said Jem.
“I’m not scared of spiders!”
“I know, I know!” I clapped my hands. “Not getting A+ for her maths homework!”
“And for her French homework!”
“And for geography!”
“And for history!”
Now I was going off into giggles myself. Skye is like the class brain; it would frighten the life out of her if she ever got a B for anything. She once got A-for an essay and it threw her into total depression for a whole week.
“You are such morons,” she said.
I suppose it is not quite fair to laugh at a person, especially if they are one of your best friends, but all the same I do think people should be able to take a joke now and again. I know I can. I am always being laughed at. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Even if it does, I don’t make a big thing of it.
“Where are you going?” said Jem.
“I’m going to school, if that’s all right with you.” Skye flung it at us over her shoulder. “I want to get there on time.”
We watched as she went stalking on ahead of us, her legs, long and spindly, clacking to and fro like a pair of animated chopsticks.
“What’s her problem?” said Jem.
I shook my head. It is a known fact that Skye doesn’t have the hugest sense of humour. Unlike me and Jem, who have been known to giggle ourselves senseless, Skye is a very serious-minded person. But still there was something not right.
I said, “I dunno. In some kind of a mood. Thing is, about horoscopes –” I folded up Crystal Ball and put her back in my bag – “they might just be all made up, but that doesn’t mean they’re rubbish. Loads of what they say actually does come true.”
“This is it,” said Jem. “I remember once my auntie was told she was going to have a shake-up in her career, and the very next day she shook a bottle of tomato ketchup and the top flew off and it went everywhere, all over the place, and look what happened!”
“What?” I said. “What happened?”
“She got a new job!”
“What, because of the tomato ketchup?”
“No, cos she went down the job centre.”
“Because of the ketchup.”
“No. She was going there anyway. The ketchup didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Excuse me?
“Just that she shook it,” said Jem. “Like it said in her horoscope… a shake-up. And then she got a job. See what I mean?”
I nodded slowly. I do sometimes find that I have a bit of difficulty following Jem’s train of thought. She has a brain that hops about all over the place.
“My auntie was really miffed about the ketchup,” she said. “It went all down her blouse, and she couldn’t get it out. You can’t, with ketchup. But if it hadn’t been for that, she might never have got the job. Least, that’s what she told Mum, so I reckon you’re right. There’s got to be something in it.”
That was better. At least I’d got one of them to agree with me.
“Know what?” I said. “We could do horoscopes. We could ask everyone what their star signs are, and then we could make up horoscopes for them, and wait and see if they come true.”
Jem liked that idea. I could tell, already, that her brain was whizzing into overdrive, thinking what sort of things she could make up.
“What about Skye?” she said. “Are we going to tell her?”
I said yes, we had to. She was our friend; we didn’t do things separately. Besides, it might cheer her up. Stop her being so glumpy.
“Even though she thinks it’s rubbish?”
“We’ll tell her it’s just a game,” I said. “After all, it’s not like we’re really expecting things to happen.”
“So long as it is only a game,” said Skye.
I assured her that it was. “Just a bit of fun!”
“So long as that’s all.”
“It is. I just said.”
“Cos I think it’s really stupid, when people take this sort of stuff seriously.”
I
