Agatha Parrot and the Mushroom Boy (5 page)

‘But I have to get the remote out,'
said James. ‘And if I cut the cake up Dad will kill me.'

‘He couldn't kill you if it was yours,' I said. James looked puzzled so I had to explain it a bit more. ‘Suppose you actually won the cake tomorrow and brought it home, you could do what you liked with it.'

‘Oh very funny,' said James. ‘How am I supposed to guess the weight?'

Well
DURRR!
There's only
a set of weighing scales in the kitchen cupboard isn't there? He could have put the cake on them . . . but as James didn't think of that, I suggested something really stupid instead.

‘All you need to do is get the cake recipe and then add up all the different bits,' I said.

I was only joking, but before I knew it, James had pulled the tatty old cookbook off the shelf and found the right page.
Ha ha!

‘170 grams of flour, 170 grams of butter, 170 grams of sugar, three eggs . . .' he read.

‘Dad used six eggs,' I told him. ‘So he must have used more than it says of everything.'

‘So instead of three eggs it was six, so how much flour would that be . . .' James got out a pencil and paper. ‘And how much does an egg weigh anyway?'

‘Don't forget the icing,' I said helpfully. ‘And the toppings.'

And then James did something that made me a bit jealous. He made a really loud sad little sighing noise and he didn't sound like a hippopotamus one bit. So it IS possible after all!

I left him in the kitchen scribbling away like mad. To be honest I was wondering if I was being too mean to him, but then again, my head
still hurt where it got bashed by the remote, and thanks to him I still didn't know who'd won
Sing, Wiggle and Shine
. So no, Agatha, you were not being too mean. The boy James had asked for trouble, and he was getting it.
Good.

I
t was after school on Monday and the playground was full of wobbly old tables with wobbly old teachers standing behind them. Me and Tilly and James had just met up with Mum and Dad by the school gates when . . .

‘AGATHA AGATHA AGATHA!'

Ivy came charging over and grabbed my arm and spun me round a few times. She was a bit hyper because she'd had a biscuit from Martha's mum's tea stall, and it had got some of that same yellow icing on it that we'd put on the cake. There's something in those bright colours that makes Ivy turn into . . . well, Ivy really.

‘COME ON!'
she shouted and then went running off round the tables and shouting out what she thought of each one.

The first table Ivy looked at had Mrs Twelvetrees selling her raffle tickets (
‘WOW!'
shouted Ivy). Next to her Miss Barking was selling organic cardigans that she'd
knitted from some weird stuff she grows on her allotment
(‘WOW!')
.

Then there was a chair where you could sit and have your toenails painted by Motley the caretaker
(WOW WOW WOW
TOTALLY AWESOME WOW!')
,
and just along from that, the school receptionist Miss Wizzit was selling ‘nearly new' books which had been rescued when the library had got flooded, and they were still a bit squidgy
(‘WOW!')
.

As you can see, the person who most impressed Judge Ivy was Motley, so he needs a big round of applause clap clap clap
WOW.

‘But that's silly,' said Mum. ‘Who's going to be daft enough to get their toenails painted?'

Motley looked a bit hurt. ‘I'll do you a special offer. How about six toes for the price of five?'

‘Special offer?' said Dad. ‘Ooooh . . .'

In the middle of everything was
a table with a small stool standing on it. The legs of the stool were wrapped in silver tin foil to make it look posh and groovy, and sitting proudly on top was Dad's cake. (‘WOW! EH? WHAT? OH. WOW!' Thank you Ivy for that intelligent contribution.)

Pinned on the front of the stool was a smart little sign:

Guess the weight of the cake 20p

On the table beside it were some old weighing scales out of the school kitchen, and standing next to them was our class teacher Miss Pingle looking very serious. She's the one who keeps dyeing her hair different colours, and on Monday it was a rather fetching shade of police-trousers blue to make herself look more official.

Miss Pingle was in charge of taking the money and writing down
everybody's guesses. She was desperate to do a good job because she's a new teacher and normally she only gets to pour out the orange squash. (By the way, it had taken her eighteen goes just to print the sign out on the computer. Of course she didn't actually tell anybody that, but earlier on me and Martha had found numbers one to seventeen scrunched up in the recycling bin. You can't fool us
ha ha!
)

By now Ivy was starting to calm down a bit and had reached the stage where she had to hug somebody and the nearest somebody was me. It's quite nice for a short time, but you don't need too much of it. Luckily Bianca saw us and came over.

‘Don't worry Agatha,' said Bianca. ‘Ivy can bug me for a hit.'

Eh? But then Bianca took Ivy off me. She must have meant to say ‘
hug
me for a
bit
'.
YO!
Good one
Bianca. Top girl.

Meanwhile James had been standing over by the railings and watching a few people have a guess.

‘675 grams,' said Ivy's mum.

James had a big grin on his face so I went to ask him why. ‘That's way too small!' he told me.

Thank goodness for that. We didn't need Ivy's mum winning the cake. You've just seen what one little biscuit's worth of icing does for Ivy,
so imagine what a whole cake would do. We'd be pulling her off the moon. Wahoo –
GO IVY!
We love Ivy.

‘3,762 grams,' said Bianca's mum.

‘Miles too big!' muttered James happily.

Then we saw Martha pulling an old gentlemen over to see Miss Pingle. ‘This is my grandad,' said Martha. ‘He used to be a baker so he'll know.'

‘That cake will be about 43 ounces,' said Martha's grandad, handing over his 20p.