Free Drama Queen by Susannah McFarlane Page A

completely ruined!’
    â€˜Get a grip, Emma. You’re such a drama queen!’ said Bob.
    â€˜I am not!’ Emma screeched rather dramatically.
    â€˜You so are!’ replied Bob. ‘I didn’t touch your diary. Why would I want to?’
    â€˜Because, because...’ Emma couldn’t actually think of a good reason but it didn’t stop her being convinced that it was Bob’s fault. ‘Because you’re a mean brother! Because you did!’
    â€˜I didn’t,’ repeated Bob. ‘Drama queen!’
    â€˜Dad!’ cried Emma.
    â€˜Well, you might be overreacting just a little,’ suggested Dad.
    â€˜Mum!’ Emma looked to her mother pleadingly.‘I’m not being a drama queen, am I?’
    But her mother just smiled. Emma knew what that smile meant. Her mother agreed with the others. She did think Emma was overreacting.
    â€˜Gee whizz, lemonfizz!’ cried Emma. ‘I’m not being unreasonable!’
    And with that, Emma stomped unreasonably out of the kitchen, back up the hall and into her bedroom, slamming the door hard behind her. She heard the plaque with her name on it fall onto the floor and break. Now even grumpier, she threw herself down on to her beanbag and folded her arms tightly across her chest. ‘Why doesn’t anyone understand?’ she fumed to herself. ‘I’m not being unreasonable. It is my special, secret diary and now it is not special anymore. Who wouldn’t get angry about that?’
    But somewhere quite deep down, just for a moment, Emma thought that maybe she might have got a little carried away. Still, Bob shouldn’t have taken her diary. Now that she thought about it,how did Bob find it? It had been so well hidden. No one could have suspected anything was under her beanbag—could they? Then the thought that she may have hidden it badly crossed her mind. Emma felt worse. After all, what sort of secret agent must she be if she couldn’t even hide a diary from her brother?

    Being a secret agent, that was Emma Jacks’ other secret thing. When she wasn’t a schoolgirl, a gymnast and an irritated sister of Bob Jacks, she was Special Agent EJ12, field agent and code-cracker in the under-twelve division of the SHINE agency.
    SHINE was an international agency that helped keep the world safe from the plots of evildoers, particularly those belonging to the SHADOW agency, which was as bad as SHINE was good. SHADOW was constantly launching new schemes that endangered the environment and the world; SHINE was constantly sending its agents out to find and stop SHADOW. SHINE had agents of all ages, all with special talents that they could use to help in the fight against SHADOW. But a secret agency couldn’t simply put an advertisement in the paper or on the Internet for special agents. Instead, they had quieter ways to find clever, good people to work for them. They had found Emma Jacks at an inter-school maths competition.
    Emma loved maths, she loved the way it always made sense and didn’t change, that the answer was always the same answer and you could always find that answer if you found the right clues. And that was why SHINE wanted Emma: they needed code-crackers, people who looked calmly at a problem, patiently found the clues and cracked the code. They then used that decoded message to stop the evil scheme. And as EJ12, Emma was a great agent, in fact one of SHINE’ s best. She always stayed calm and thought things through.
    But Emma Jacks was not doing any of that now.As she sat on her beanbag furiously writing in her dirty diary, she didn’t think anything of her kitten Inky walking off with her hair ribbon. It just made her more annoyed.
    â€˜Oh great,’ she cried. ‘Now everyone is taking my stuff!’
    And she certainly didn’t notice Inky’s dirty paws as the kitten walked out of her bedroom and padded her muddy way down the hallway.



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