Free The Day the Ear Fell Off by T.M. Alexander Page A

for myself.’
    ‘I know,’ said Jonno. ‘How about we do all three?’
    ‘That’s nuts. We can’t attack them, talk to them and eat cake with them at the same time,’ said Fifty.
    ‘We could. It doesn’t matter if it’s cakes, chat or squirting with water and bombarding with potatoes, as long as it stops them singing songs about us.’
    ‘He’s got a point.’ Bee looked round at the rest of us.
    ‘Sounds good to me. I’ll be a good team player and follow Captain Jonno’s orders.’ Copper Pie saluted at Jonno and stamped his foot.
    ‘Me too,’ I said. Glad that I wasn’t going to be sent down the alley waving a cowboy gun with only Copper ‘The Maniac’ Pie by my side.
    ‘Same,’ said Fifty.
    ‘Since when have I been Captain?’ said Jonno. ‘Since when has there even been a captain?’
    He looked really cross. We all looked at each other. We’d obviously done something wrong, but weren’t sure what.
    He carried on. ‘I thought all Tribers were equal. That’s what you said, Keener.’
    There was a delay in my brain transmitters so Fifty spoke for me. ‘I think Copper Pie just called you Captain because you’re the one who has good ideas.’
    ‘No, I’m not.’ Jonno shook his head. ‘My idea about herds was rubbish. Bee said so.’
    I’m sure the others felt every bit as confused as I did. I’d have loved someone to call me Captain. What was going on?
    ‘Well, it was rubbish, but your idea to put everything together isn’t,’ said Bee. ‘It’s clever.’
    ‘You don’t get it, do you? Firstly, it’s no good having ideas if you don’t have anyone else to have them with. Secondly, ideas just pop up. Anyone can have them. I only
had my idea because you all had yours. Thirdly, you don’t know me. You only met me four days ago. You don’t know that without you, I wouldn’t dare do anything.’
    He looked a bit odd. Not Jonno-like at all. Smaller . . .
    ‘But you invaded our territory and didn’t budge even when we all stood against you. You dared to do that,’ said Fifty.
    ‘Only because I had to.’ His bottom lip was sticking out a tiny bit. Flo’s does that when she doesn’t get her own way (and so does Fifty’s sometimes).
    ‘What d’you mean?’ said Copper Pie.
    ‘Let’s just say I wouldn’t recommend moving to a new school when everyone’s already made their friends. The only kids who ever want to be friends with a new boy are the
weirdos who’ve never had a friend because they’re seriously strange. Trust me, I’m an expert. So you either stick it out on your own and wait for someone to notice you’re
human or you do it my way – work out which of the kids couldn’t care less whether there’s a new kid or not because they’ve already got friends. They’re the
normal ones. That’s why I chose you lot, because you didn’t need any more friends.’
    It was quite hard to follow. He chose to be friends with the people who didn’t want to be friends with him, because the ones who want to be friends with a new boy are saddos with no
friends.
    I worked it out just in time to hear the last bit of Jonno’s speech.
    ‘I don’t want to be Captain . I’m just happy not to be Jonnono-friends.’ He sighed.
    (Can you believe that on his first day Jonno looked round the classroom and chose us to be friends with? That made me feel pretty good.)
    ‘Jonno, you’ve offended us now,’ said Bee in an upset voice with eyes to go with it.
    Poor Jonno. All he’d done was admit he wanted us to be friends and now Bee was angry . . .
    ‘How dare you call us normal!’ She smiled an enormous magazine-cover smile and gave his arm a squeeze and we all started to laugh. It wasn’t really that funny but we were all
relieved that she was only teasing.
    TRIBERS’ EMBARRASSING MOMENTS
    KEENER: Fell asleep sucking his thumb on the way back from a school trip to the museum.
    BEE: Put her hand up in assembly to ask Mr Morris a question and accidentally called him