Agatha Parrot and the Floating Head (8 page)

She was making some funny little ‘mmm' and ‘ar' noises, but then she went ‘ooooh!'

Miss P looked down again, checked some more results, then went ‘oooh!' and this time she looked up and gave the Other Martha a long stare. Eventually she got up and started to walk across the room towards her. I had to stop her, so I jumped up to get a new book from the shelf which blocked her way.

‘Sorry,' I said. ‘Is everything all right?'

‘Martha doesn't seem herself today,' said Miss Pingle. ‘Her handwriting looks different.'

‘Is that a problem?' I asked.

‘No, not really,' said Miss Pingle. ‘But she's also got top marks in all the tests.'

‘That can only be because you're such a good teacher,' I said, but it didn't seem to work this time.

‘Thank you,' said Miss Pingle. ‘But if she's so good at tests, how come she's so bad at reading?'

‘Reading?'

‘She's been looking at that book for the whole lesson and she hasn't realised it's
upside down
!'

Oh no!
How stupid was that? But then Ivy put her hand up. ‘I'm reading mine upside down too,' she said. ‘It's the new fashion.'

‘Me too!' giggled Ellie. She was
really getting into this.

‘Tee moo,' said Bianca. ‘I mean me too.'

By the time Miss Pingle looked round the class, all the girls had sneakily turned their books upside down and even some of the boys had joined in. Of course most teachers might have got a bit strange at this point, but when you spend your Sunday evenings deciding what colour hair to have for the next week
like Miss Pingle does, a few upside down books isn't going to rattle you. Miss P just went back to her table.

‘You're mad,' she said as she sat down and doodled a few more ticks and crosses in our books. ‘All of you. Mad mad mad.'

Big respect for Miss Pingle. She'll go far that one.

A
t lunchtime the Other Martha decided to sit with us in the hall ha ha, of course she didn't have a lot of choice actually did she? The good bit was that Ellie passed her half a sandwich and sat there with her hand in the air waiting for
Martha to take it.

‘What are you doing?' asked Ivy.

‘Oops, sorry!' said Ellie and she blushed red. ‘Martha always helps me finish my lunch. It's just habit.'

‘You'd have been a bit freaked if she had taken it!' laughed Ivy.

While the others were finishing, I went off to see if the real Martha had arrived. She wasn't in reception so I checked all the toilets, but she wasn't there either, so I went out to find
the others in the playground. They were all back on the bench with the Other Martha between them, but Gwendoline Tutt had decided to try to squeeze herself on too. She had her bully friend Olivia with her, although she isn't really a friend, they just hang out together because nobody else likes them.

‘There's no room,' said Ivy hugging the Other Martha to stop her falling off.

‘You lot think you're so clever because you're going on this trip, don't you?' sneered Gwendoline.

‘Just leave us alone, can't you?' said Ellie which was pretty brave for her.

‘Ooh, look who's bossing us around now!' said Gwendoline. ‘Why should we do what you say?'

‘Yeah, why should we?' laughed Olivia and she grabbed Ivy's arm and tried to pull her off the bench.
Ivy went a bit hyper waving all her arms and legs and everything so Olivia backed off and grabbed Bianca's coat instead, but Bianca slapped her hand away
YO!
GOOD ONE BIANCA. Then Olivia ducked down and grabbed Martha's foot, only it wasn't the foot, it was the shoe tied to the trouser leg. Olivia thought she was pulling Martha off the bench but the shoe came away in her hand and she fell
backwards and landed with a bump on her bottom
ha ha!

‘Get up!'
ordered Gwendoline crossly.

‘But her foot came off,' gasped Olivia.

‘Let me see that,' said Gwendoline and she snatched the shoe from her. I came running up from behind them and tried to snatch it back but Gwendoline saw me and ran off and there's no way I can catch her because she's got long skinny legs like a giraffe.

That left Olivia staring at our Other Martha who had a foot missing and a bit of newspaper poking out of her trouser leg. ‘That's not Martha, is it?' she asked. And then before anyone could say anything she ran off shouting ‘I'm telling Gwendoline!'

Miss Pingle was just coming out to ring the bell for the end of lunchtime so the only thing we could do was get the Other Martha
back into class as fast as we could. Obviously all the other kids would know about her by the time lessons started. I just had to hope that the real Martha would turn up before the teachers found out. Hope hope hope.

B
y the time we got back into the classroom, even the boys knew what was going on. They were having a laugh but were keeping it secret because they wanted to go and see the mummies just as much as we did. Most of us were still wearing our coats including the Other Martha
with her bright spotted hood. The good news was that Miss P had pulled the blinds down so it was a bit darker and it hid the balloon face better. What was even better was that Miss P was having another go with the electronic white board.

‘Settle down everybody,' said Miss Pingle. ‘This afternoon we're going to do some work on the Tudors.'

Wicked! We like the Tudors because they did lots of chopping off
heads and things. It's a shame you can't book them to do parties. These days the Queen is only allowed to wave a bit when she goes out, so she must be a bit fed up even if she does charge £1000000000 to come to your church hall with a disco.

Anyway, Miss P pushed a button on her laptop and sure enough a big title came up on the screen saying
The Tudors
. We all gave her a little round of applause because she's
rubbish at computers and it probably took her all night to get it right. She smiled and said, ‘The first Tudor king was
Henry the Seventh
in 1485.' My my, how jolly interesting. ‘Now then, can anybody tell me who this is?' She clicked the mouse button.

‘
Henry the Eighth!
' we all shouted. We like him because he had six wives which is pretty good going for a big fatty who wore tights.

‘Correct!' Miss Pingle was
starting to relax, and that's when the best bit happened. She clicked the mouse again. ‘Can anybody tell me who
this
is?'