Just Tricking! (18 page)

Danny is just standing there laughing. Poor guy. He still thinks he's invisible.

Mrs Wharton wheels around.

‘Just what do you think you're doing?' she says to him.

‘Who?' he says.

‘You!' she says, going red in the face.

‘But you can't see me,' says Danny. ‘I'm invisible!'

‘Invisible? Well, we'll see about that!' she says.

She reaches out, grabs his ear and twists it at least 360 degrees – and then – judging by the expression on Danny's face – another 360 degrees after that.

Danny drops to his knees in pain.

‘Oww! Oww! Let go!' he says.

‘There,' she says. ‘Feeling a little more visible now?'

I must admit I'm rather enjoying the spectacle. After all, Danny had no qualms about getting me into trouble.

Mrs Wharton lets go of his ear.

‘Now,' she says, looking from Danny to me, ‘both of you pack up your books, and get straight to the principal's office! And consider yourselves banned from the library for the rest of the year.'

Both of us? The rest of the year? Great. There goes my history assignment. And my English wide reading. And my social studies research. How could Danny be so dumb?

I gather up my books. There's no use arguing.

Mrs Wharton escorts us to the door and slams it behind us.

‘Danny,' I say, turning to face him, ‘you are a prize drongo. Did you really think . . .'

But I don't finish my question. Danny's not there.

‘Dan? Where are you?'

I hear a giggle and then a tremendous belch in my right ear. It's so loud it almost ruptures my ear-drum.

I spin around.

‘Danny?'

But there's no sign of him – no visible sign anyway – just the sound of his crazy laughter echoing down the empty corridor.

The principal can wait. I'm going straight to sick bay.

I'm feeling a little faint myself.

unday afternoon.

Jen's Christmas cards are sitting on the table. All fifty thousand of them in three big stacks. The envelopes aren't sealed, so I figure that means she wants me to open them and have a look.

I open the top envelope. The card has a picture of a big jolly Santa's face on it.

The message on the inside reads: Dear Kerrie, wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, love Jen.

Very original . . . not!

The second card has exactly the same picture on it.

And inside Jen has written exactly the same greeting: Dear Sandra, wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, love Jen.

She has written the same thing on every card. The only bit that changes is the name of the person she's sending it to.

There's only one thing to do.

I grab some liquid paper, a black texta and set to work.

I don't have much time. Jen will be wanting to catch the six o'clock post.

On the first card I draw heavy dark eyebrows over Santa's twinkling eyes. He's not looking quite so jolly now.

But still, it's not enough. I draw a scar running from the corner of his right eye to the corner of his mouth. I black out one of his front teeth and give him a black eye. And just for fun I add a couple of Frankenstein bolts to each side of his neck. That's better. Completely psycho.

Now for the greeting on the inside. Merry Christmas? I don't think so. I change the M on
Merry
to a T, cross out the Y and add
IBLE to the end. And a happy new year? Not if I replace the H on
Happy
with CR. Much nicer . . . A TerrIBLE Christmas and a CRappy New Year.

I go through the rest of the cards, changing the greetings and adding eyebrows, scars, moustaches, nose-rings, eyebrow-rings, tattoos, antennae and Martian ears to the Santas. By the time I'm finished, no two Santas are alike. The only thing they have in common is that if you saw any of them coming towards you on the street, you'd turn and run the other way.

I put each card carefully back into its envelope so it doesn't look like they've been messed with.

And – as if brightening up her Christmas cards isn't enough – I even take the trouble to find Jen and ask her if she'd like me to run them down to the postbox for her.

She asks me if I'm feeling all right.

I tell her that Christmas is a time for giving and that doing things for her makes me happy.

She accuses me of sucking up because it's Christmas.

If only she knew . . .

The postbox is over the other side of the hill.

There are so many cards I almost get repetitive strain injury putting them in the box. But at last they're all posted.

I'm feeling pretty happy with myself.

Jen's friends all think they're
so
sophisticated. I can just imagine the looks on their faces when they see their mutant Santas. They'll think Jen has lost her mind. Maybe they'll kick her out of the gang for being so childish. That would be excellent. Then maybe she could get some new friends. Some nice ones.

And then an awful thought occurs to me.

What if Jen's friends retaliate? What if they start sending cards back to her wishing
her
a terrible Christmas – or worse? I wouldn't put it past them.

It's not going to take Jen long to figure out that I had something to do with it.

And then she'll punish me by giving me a horrible present – or even worse – no present at all.

Maybe this joke wasn't such a great idea . . .

I have to get those cards back out of the box!

Luckily, the postbox has a parcel handle. Being Christmas time, the box will probably be so full that Jen's cards will be right on top. Getting them back is going to be easy.

I pull the handle towards me and slide my arm into the parcel slot. Standing on the tips of my toes, I ease the handle away from me and try to curl my arm down into the box. But it doesn't work. My arm is jammed against the back of the parcel chute. My fingers are nowhere near the letters. There must be a better way.

I could get a fishing line with a hook on the end of it and try fishing them out. No, that would take too long.