Free Miss Understood by James Roy Page A

was totally cool.
    ‘Watch this,’ she said. Then she went over to the security door. ‘Helloo,’ she said, in a low, spooky voice. ‘We’ve been ex- pect- ing you.’
    ‘You have?’ said the blonde lady who’d been shaking the door. Then she turned to her friend – a younger, thinner lady with short red hair – and said, ‘Did you make an appoint–’
    ‘Oh no!’ Jenni interrupted. ‘We were expecting you because of the prophets. Oh yes, they foretold your coming, and now the preparations are almost . . . complete.’
    ‘Preparations?’ the red-haired lady said, and she and her friend looked at each other with a scared kind of expression. ‘What . . . preparations?’
    ‘Oh, that’s not for you to worry about,’ Jenni said, still in her spooky voice. Then she unlatched the security door and swung it open. It kind of creaked, which felt like totally the right sound for the situation. ‘Please come in – the high priestess awaits you in . . . the crypt.’
    ‘Um . . .’ the blonde lady said, shuffling her papers. ‘I’m not sure if we’ve got the right . . .’
    Her friend looked as if she’d just eaten something disgusting. ‘Yeah, I don’t know. Look, is this house part of HomeFest?’
    Suddenly Jenni’s voice was normal again, and all chirpy. ‘HomeFest? Oh no, the house next door is the last display house. This one is the home of . . . the Adams family!’
    The ladies rolled their eyes at one another, at exactly the same time, which looked a lot weirder than it sounds.
    ‘Come on,’ said the blonde one. ‘Let’s go back and take another look at the one with the mezzanine atrium.’
    ‘Okay,’ said the other. But then she tipped her head over to one side so she could see past me and Jenni into our entryway. ‘Still, this looks quite –’
    ‘Not display,’ Jenni said. ‘This one not display. Bye now.’ And she closed the door.
    ‘That was awesome!’ I said. Then we did a bit of a ring-a-rosie around our entryway, laughing like crazy kids about Jenni’s high priestess story. ‘Where did you get the idea for that?’
    Jenni gave me this big shrug. ‘I don’t know. My head just collects stupid stuff, I guess.’
    ‘It was really clever,’ I said. ‘Especially the bit about the Adams family.’
    ‘I know, right?’
    The rest of the day we kept doing the voice, and talking about the high priestess in the crypt. I don’t know if it sounds all that funny to you, hearing about it like this, but we thought it was, and a couple of times Jenni started laughing so hard that I thought she was going to stop breathing.
    When Jenni’s mum came to pick her up later that afternoon, she and my mum had to have a cup of tea (of course), but me and Jenni didn’t really mind, because we weren’t even sure when we’d get to see one another again, especially since we still hadn’t managed to think of a place for me to do the volunteer thing to tell Mr Hilder about.
    After half an hour or more, my mum and Jenni’s mum had finally had enough tea and done enough laughing and talking about people I didn’t know, and we all went out the front to say goodbye. As Jenni and her mum pipped their horn and drove off, a taxi stopped out the front of Miss Huntley’s house. Then, when it drove away, there was Miss Huntley, standing beside her letter box. I guess she must have forgotten that it was Saturday, and that the mail doesn’t get delivered on the weekend.
    ‘Afternoon, Ivy,’ Mum called out, and Miss Huntley turned slowly, looking around to see who was calling her name.
    ‘Oh, hello there, Denise,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit chilly, isn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, it’s definitely getting cooler,’ Mum replied. ‘Did you have a good day?’
    ‘Oh, you know how it is. Quite busy, I suppose.’
    ‘You’re doing good work,’ Mum said.
    ‘Thank you, dear. I do wonder if I’m getting a little old for it, though. All those boxes to sort through, trays of cutlery to lift, that kind of thing.