Free Davina Dupree Catches a Crook by SK Sheridan

Monday, 1 st March
    Diary!
    Arabella has just told me some REALLY exciting news: we’re going to have our first lesson with Dr Adam Aardvark today! #Famous explorer, #can’t wait to meet him. Apparently our old geography teacher, Mr Fossil, has gone off to conduct some research on endangered animals for a month, so Mrs Fairchild has drafted Dr Aardvark in as a replacement. BRILLIANT headmistress.com . #I love my school.
    Me and Arabella have both got brand new geography folders because it’s SUCH a special occasion, (neither of us have met a famous explorer before), mine has black and white zebra stripes all over it and Arabella’s is covered in gold and black tiger zig zags, very animal print.com .
    I haven’t actually
met
Dr Aardvark yet but I already know what he looks like because of all the films and magazines he’s been in. He seems
extremely
clever, with big, bushy, white eyebrows and a beard to match, a huge, bald forehead and pale, clever blue eyes. Arabella thinks he looks about sixty years old but I think he might be even older than that, maybe about SEVENTY! To be honest, I’m surprised he’s lasted so long and hasn’t been eaten by a lion or bitten by a snake or stung by a jellyfish during one of his exotic travels. Dangerous job.com . #Don’t think I could do it.
    Before he left, Mr Fossil gave us each a book about Dr Aardvark and his travels. My favourite chapter was the one where he talks about living with chimpanzees for a year in the middle of a jungle, learning how to grunt, pick ticks out of a chimpanzee’s back and peel a banana with one hand. What a legend! Mega epic.com .
    More exciting news is that we’ve made some new friends, Angel Anderson and Diya Gala, who’ve moved into the dorm next door to ours. They used to live in the part of Egmont where girls from Rubies House sleep, but that bit of the school is being repainted so they’ve moved next to us Sapphires girls! TOTALLY groovy.com . They have totally opposite personalities, Angel is very chatty, has short hair and keeps getting told off for calling out in class. Diya is very serious, has long, swishy black hair and is one of the cleverest in our year. I think Arabella might be the
absolute
cleverest but I’m not sure. The one thing Angel and Diya both love is animals – they both want to be vets when they grow up so they can’t wait to meet Dr Aardvark and ask him loads of animally questions.
    Right, I must go now, Diary, because I haven’t had breakfast yet and I’m absolutely starving – Arabella says Marcel’s making cinnamon pancakes today so I’d better run before the other pupils eat them all! Yumsters.com !
Tuesday, 2 nd March
    Wow, Diary!
    Seriously, wow, wow and triple wowzers, that’s all I can say.
    We had our first lesson with Dr Aardvark this morning, and what a lesson it was! Talk about getting our attention. When we filed into the large geography room, (that has a massive globe hanging from the ceiling which actually LIGHTS UP and SPINS ROUND when the lights are turned off, #SO cool, #wish we had one in our dorm), Dr Aardvark was perched on the teacher’s desk with a GIGANTIC snake round his neck, his shock of white hair wobbling wildly above his tanned, leathery face. His sharp, minty-blue eyes bulge out a bit making him look permanently surprised and a bit standoffish. Typically, Cleo and Clarice – the most maddening girls in the school – screamed and ran out when they saw it, #wimps, but the rest of us were FASCINATED.
    ‘Can I touch it, Dr Aardvark?’ I said, going closer to him. My cheeks turned really hot, which was a bit embarrassing.
    ‘Yes, yes of course,’ Dr Aardvark said in a loud, confident voice. ‘Toxic won’t bite or even try to strangle you, she’s had her rat for the week.’ I gingerly put out my hand and stroked the snake’s brown and green patterned scales, expecting them to feel slimy. Instead, they were dry and felt like smooth leather.
    ‘Toxic?’ Arabella said, coming