Читать книгу A Super Weird! Mystery: Danger at Donut Diner - Jim Smith - Страница 9

‘Do I like mysteries?’ said Melvin. ‘Didn’t you ask me that already?’

‘I dunno, did I?’ said Rhubarb, stuffing her hand into her rucksack and pulling out a few sheets of folded-in-half paper that’d been stapled together into a homemade newspaper.

‘Ta da!’ said Rhubarb. ‘All the latest Donut Island mysteries, hot off the press every Friday morning!’

‘What is it?’ asked Melvin, even though it was pretty obvious.

‘It’s my newspaper, stupid!’ said Rhubarb.

Melvin peered at the hand-drawn headline on the front page. This is what it said:

The Mystery Of The Cat That Disappeared In Mysterious Circumstances

Rhubarb scratched her bum. ‘Ooh that’s a good one,’ she said. ‘There was this cat right, and it went missing . . .’

‘What happened?’ said Melvin.

Rhubarb leaned forwards, dialling the volume on her voice down to a three. ‘Turns out,’ she whispered, ‘the cat’d gone for a really long walk.’

‘That’s it?’ said Melvin.

‘There’s even better ones than that,’ said Rhubarb, flicking to another page.

The headline on this one said:

‘Okay I admit it, that’s pretty weird,’ said Melvin. ‘So what happened?’

‘The granny hadn’t got stuck at all,’ smiled Rhubarb. ‘All she’d done was pop to the loo. Meanwhile, her husband decided she’d been sucked into the picture frame on the mantelpiece.’

‘Well that makes sense,’ said Melvin.

Rhubarb turned to a different page. This one read:

The Curious Incident Of The Murdered Hamster

‘Let me guess,’ Melvin said. ‘It died of old age?’

‘Ooh, you’re good,’ said Rhubarb.

‘I think I’m going off mysteries,’ said Melvin.

‘But mysteries are the best!’ said Rhubarb. ‘Tell you what, we’re having a Daily Donut meeting at mine after school. Why don’t you come along?’

‘Let me check my diary,’ said Melvin, as they walked up to the gates of Donut Juniors.

‘Follow me,’ said Rhubarb, leading Melvin into the school and down a long hallway lined with yellow metal lockers. She pushed a door open into a classroom and walked straight up to the front row.

Rhubarb plonked her bum down in a chair next to a bendy-looking boy with straight black hair and glasses.

‘Melvin, this is Yoshi Fujikawa,’ she said. ‘Yoshi works with me on The Daily Donut. He wrote that dead hamster story I showed you.’

Yoshi, who was scribbling something in a notepad, stopped writing and smiled at Melvin. ‘Took a lot out of me, that one,’ he said, pushing his glasses up his nose. ‘I’m working on a similarly disturbing piece as we speak.’

‘Oh yeah?’ said Melvin, not holding out much hope for it, after what he’d read earlier.

‘Yeah, somebody dropped a slice of cucumber on the floor in the canteen last Friday,’ he said. ‘But nobody knows who . . .’

‘Okay,’ said Melvin. ‘Hey Rhubarb, are there any cool kids in this school?’

Just then, the door opened and a really old-looking boy with a moustache walked in. ‘Evening, gang,’ he boomed in a deep voice, and Melvin realised he wasn’t a boy, he was their teacher.

‘Look who’s here, Sir,’ said Rhubarb, pointing at Melvin.

‘Is it Monday morning already?’ gasped the teacher, glancing at his watch. ‘Last time I looked it was Friday afternoon. Oh well, in that case you must be the new kid. Very nice to meet you, Melvin Pebble. I’m Mr Thursday!’

Melvin pretended to laugh at Mr Thursday’s joke. ‘Nice to meet you, Sir,’ he said, looking round the room.

Sitting on the other side of the aisle, in the back row, were three cool-looking kids. ‘Hey, who are they?’ whispered Melvin to Rhubarb, and she rolled her eyes.

‘Hector Frisbee, Dirk Measles and Marjorie Pinecone,’ she said.

‘They call themselves The Cool Doods,’ said Yoshi, scribbling the words down in his notepad and holding it up so Melvin could see the stupid way they spelled ‘Dudes’.