Harriet Bright in a Pickle (2 page)

‘I'M SPEAKING TO YOU …
FATTY!
'

Paul Picklebottom just had a way of saying that word.

He shouted the first syllable
FAT
and hissed the second through his teeth
T
T
Y
, like air escaping from a tyre.

Harriet Bright thought
FATTY
sounded square and solid. Just the shape she saw when she looked at her reflection in the window of Joyanne's Fashions on High Street.

Mrs Glossia, her teacher, said there was a special name for words that sound like the thing they are: ONOMATOPOEIA.

Harriet Bright thought there were lots of words like this. Such as
plump
(round and juicy),
(stuffed with pastries and meat pies) and
(dollops of thick custard and cream).

Harriet Bright's mother said that she had puppy fat.

‘You'll grow out of it,' she promised.

Harriet Bright had read that snakes shed their scaly skins when they got too big for them. She wondered when she would grow out of her lumpy skin.

She could hang it in the wardrobe.

For emergencies.

Like if she burnt herself rescuing a cat trapped in a house on fire.

 

Or she could use it later.

When her skin got old and tired.

She knew what was coming next.

HARRIET BRIGHT

WHAT A SIGHT!

LEGS LIKE JELLY

WITH A
BIG

WOBBLY

BELLY

Snigger. Snigger.

Paul Picklebottom had taken months to come up with that. And all he could think of to rhyme with jelly was … BELLY!

Harriet Bright scoffed. He had no imagination. Not like her.

Mrs Glossia said that Harriet Bright's poetry was very ‘individual'. She particularly liked Harriet Bright's space poem:

When I'm in space I feel so alone and I am very sorry you cannot telephone.

I miss the movies and there aren't any shops

and my friend is a giant called Cyclops.

Harriet Bright is going to be a poet when she grows up.

‘HEY!
FATTY BONANZA.'

As soon as Paul Picklebottom is out of her life.

Harriet Bright closed her eyes tight.

Her mother said that if you wished really hard for something and then counted to ten, it might just happen!

Weasels and sneezels and snails on toast

turn Paul Picklebottom into a

g h o s t.

1   2   3   4   5   6   –

‘Fatty bom-bO-
LA
-TA

You look like a chip-O-
LA
-TA.'

Harriet Bright opened her eyes. Paul Picklebottom was laughing and pointing at her.

Maybe wishing only works in the morning, thought Harriet Bright.

Mrs Glossia said that morning was definitely the best time to think because your brain was fresh.

Harriet Bright had seen pictures of a brain in a book. It looked like a tangle of raw sausages.

Paul Picklebottom must have thought so too. He had snatched the book from her hands. ‘Hey, sausage brain,' he had snorted. ‘Your brain would be good for breakfast! With lots of onions on the side.'

Harriet Bright wondered why short distances sometimes seemed so long.

She could see her yellow house with the red roof and the green fence, but her feet seemed to be moving extra slowly. Almost as if she hardly weighed a thing.

Mrs Glossia had told them all about gravity last Tuesday. She'd said that gravity kept everybody on the ground.

Not like in

Harriet Bright imagined she was one of the first astronauts to land on the moon.

The moon was cold and silent. She stared at the blue Earth below.

Millions of people watched on TV as Neil Armstrong – the most famous man in space – the
first
man to walk on the moon – held the door of the spacecraft open for her.

Harriet Bright was going to be the

FIRST    CHILD    GIRL

NINE-YEAR-OLD POET

TO WALK ON THE MOON.

Her body was a big balloon, light and
in her spacesuit as she took slow-motion steps across the bumpy ground.

Harriet Bright was just about to speak to the
WORLD
(she had written a special poem for the occasion) when –

‘PUDDING FACE! TRY
THIS
ON FOR SIZE
.'

A chocolate-iced doughnut with a huge bite out of it hit her on the head.