Free Freaks Out! by Jean Ure Page B

touches any of her things, and I knew if I asked her she’d only yell at me to keep my hands off. Plus she might let on to Mum, just to be mean, like, “Frankie’s trying to tell fortunes with your mixing bowl!” Then Mum would get all fussed and bothered about me messing with the supernatural, and I couldn’t do it anyway without Angel’s shawl and her crystal necklace. I knew Mum would say I ought to ask first, but it wasn’t like I was going to muck anything up. I was just going to borrow stuff, and put it straight back. Angel wouldn’t ever need to find out. Even if she did, and went berserk, which she almost certainly would, it was a small price to pay for helping one of my best friends.
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    Next morning, Mum and Dad went off shopping.Mum asked me if I’d like to go with them. She seemed somewhat surprised when I said I had things to do. She knows I adore shopping!
    â€œNot more homework?” she said.
    I told her that it was. Cos I mean it was; sort of. It certainly wasn’t stuff that I could do at school. Dad said, “This is a turn-up for the books!” Meaning, I think , that it was somewhat unusual, not to say practically unheard of, for me to choose homework over shopping, but Mum told him not to tease.
    â€œWe should be encouraging her. Good for you, Frankie! Angel, do you want a lift into town?”
    I held my breath. It would be just like Angel to have fallen out with all her friends and to stay sulking on her own indoors. I’m surprised she ever has any friends since she is so bad-tempered, though strangely enough there are some people who actually seem to like her. Maybe she doesn’t yell at them the way she does at me.
    Anyway, to my relief, she came skittering downstairs screeching at the top of her voicethat she was coming, she was coming. “Don’t go without me!” She was all dressed up in bright purple leggings and knee-length boots with heels about two metres high, which was why she was skittering. She looked like the leaning tower of Pisa in a high wind.
    A few minutes later I heard the car doors slam and the engine start up. Hooray! I had the place to myself. Well, apart from Tom, but he doesn’t count. He was up in his room playing on the computer, and even if he came down he wouldn’t be interested in what I was doing. He might give one of his grunts, like “Hm?” to acknowledge my presence; but then again, if his head was filled with computer stuff, he mightn’t even do that. I don’t think he really notices other people.
    Determined to be businesslike, I consulted my list: sphere – crystal – incense – scarf. First off, I cleaned the kitchen table. Then I took down Mum’s big glass mixing bowl and washed it and dried it and polished it till it sparkled. I didn’t want to givethe spirits any excuse to feel I wasn’t treating them with proper respect.
    Next I tiptoed up the stairs and into Angel’s room for her crystal necklace and her shawl. I was careful to make a note not only of which drawer she kept the shawl in, but whereabouts in the drawer she kept it, so that I could put it back in exactly the right place. Like the necklace. Under the bracelet with the red stones, on top of the butterfly hair slide. She’d know immediately if anything was even just a centimetre away from where it ought to be. She is totally obsessive.
    Lastly, I rooted about in the kitchen cupboard in search of a stinky candle. Got it!
    I put the necklace in the bowl, lit the candle, draped my head in the shawl and settled down to wait. Rags settled down with me, his front legs sprawled across a chair, his eyes firmly fixed on me and the mixing bowl.
    We waited and waited, but nothing seemed to be happening. Surely something ought to happen?I’d thought a mist was meant to form. Then when you asked your question, shapes would appear and you had to interpret them. Like, maybe, what I was