Free Poppy's Garden by Holly Webb Page A

by and caught them, that was all.
    “Get back against the walls!” Emily hissed. “I can hear them coming.”
    Maya darted to the windows, pulling the wooden shutters over to shut out some of the brightness in the room. Only thin beams of sunlight poured in now, dancing like spotlights, and Poppy nodded gratefully as Maya pressed herself against the wall with the others.
    “Don’t be stupid, Elspeth.” Ali sounded angry, and a little bit frightened. She’d never heard her sound frightened before, Poppy realised. Angry, but not scared, not even when Izzy had accidentally pulled her into a canal. Ali’s voice had gone all thin and sharp. “It isn’t real.”
    “It is!” Elspeth gasped. “I want to go home. We shouldn’t have started any of it. I hate it!”
    Emily nodded fiercely at Poppy, who shook out the scarf in the dimly lit doorway, letting it swirl and flicker like the ghost she’d seen dancing on the water in her dream.
    Outside in the passageway, someone screamed, and then there was a scuffling, and racing feet, and Ali and the others were gone.

SEVEN
    “I’m really nervous now,” Poppy muttered as Mr Finlay shepherded his pupils across the grass towards a big white tent. “The ghost story was stopping me being nervous, but now I think I might be sick.”
    “You won’t,” Emily told her. “Mrs Angel would kill you.”
    “Now I feel worse!” Poppy hissed.
    “Oh look, there’s Ali. Wow, look at Elspeth,” Izzy muttered. “I think she actually has been sick. She’s gone a really weird colour.”
    Poppy glanced sideways. Elspeth looked terrible – greyish white, with red eyes. She felt guilty for a minute, and then remembered the shadow spell. “It’s her own fault,” she muttered.
    “It is,” Izzy said firmly. “They shouldn’t have done it to you first. About time someone got their own back, I say.”
    Poppy nodded. Ali had bullied Izzy for years. She’d done really horrible things to her, and Lucy and Elspeth had gone along with it. They deserved to be miserable for a bit.
And it probably won’t last
, she added to herself with a sigh.
    “Come on, Poppy. You have to be up at the front with the other designers.” Mr Finlay hustled her forward, and Poppy just had time to make a panicked face at Izzy and the others.
    There was a small group of children up at the front, definitely neater-looking than most of the others, as though the staff who came with them had made them tidy themselves up for the announcement. Poppy’s mum had made her put on her nicest school skirt and the least paint-stained of her jumpers this morning, but some of these children looked as though they’d just been ironed. Poppy smoothed her skirt down and tried not to feel scruffy, and then giggled to herself. It probably wasn’t helpful for a garden designer to be neat. They ought to have muddy fingernails, and leaves all over their clothes. Besides, Cam Morris looked a lot scruffier than she did, Poppy realised, as he bounded on to the little platform. The knees of his jeans actually were muddy. They’d seen him in the distance while they were eating their lunch, and he’dbeen crouching down to look at something in one of the flowerbeds. He’d probably started off the day neat and tidy for the ceremony too…
    “Hello, all of you!” Cam Morris strode up and down the platform enthusiastically as he talked, and some of the girls closest squashed themselves back towards Poppy. He did look as though he was going to fall off if he wasn’t careful. “This is such an exciting day! Today we get to find out which one of the wonderful schools we’re going to be working with to build a fantastic new school garden. There were some brilliant designs. I’d like to build all of them, they were so imaginative. But we have to pick just one from this area. So – are you ready for the big announcement?”
    Everyone cheered, and he beamed down at them.
    “OK! I’ve got an envelope, somewhere…” He started to pat