Read Online The Monkeyface Chronicles by Richard Scarsbrook - Free Book Online Page B

always just quietly slipped away, thinking, better them than me .
    She dips another handful of cold, dangly fries into the jar of orange goop. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like some?”
    â€œOkay, maybe one.” The stuff sticks in my throat like a ball of phlegm. “Mmmm. Thanks.”
    I hear giggling behind us. It’s the Little Colour Girls.
    â€œAw, look!” coos Lara Lavender. “Adeline has a boyfriend !”
    â€œWhat a cute couple!” Carrie Green exclaims.
    â€œA match made in Heaven!” Caitlin Black adds.
    They skip away, tittering like chickadees. “Oh, no!” she says. “ Now we’re in for it.” Adeline’s Bible Stories for Children book slips from under her arm and falls in the snow.
    â€œHey,” I say, “they can’t be nearly as bad as Grum and Grunt, and we beat them yesterday, right?”
    Adeline’s eyes widen, an effect that is amplified dramatically by the lenses of her glasses. “Oh, they are as bad as Graham and Grant. Worse , in fact.”
    She starts talking in that machinegun-fire way of hers. “At least all the teachers know those guys are jerks, they’ve just been afraid to do anything about it because Graham and Grant’s dad is their boss. But the Little Colour Girls? They’re the definition of wolves in sheep’s clothing. They’ve got everyone fooled. They giggle like little goo-goo dolls and bat their long eyelashes and draw little hearts on their test papers with ‘ I love school’ written in them, and they leave expensive treats from their mothers’ shops on the teachers’ desks with fancy little cards that say things like ‘ Thanks for being the BESTEST Teacher EVER!!!!’ and all the teachers think that they’re just the sweetest little things. They’re just as mean as Graham and Grant, but sneakier . And that makes them worse.”
    She squeezes the top of her snack bag closed and folds her arms together tightly across her chest. “A couple of weeks ago, the three of them caught up with me on the way home from school. I thought they were going to start calling me Fat-a-line, or ask me if I got my clothes at Frumps ‘R’ Us . That’s the kind of thing they do, so if I tell on them, they can just bat their eyelashes and claim that I must have misunderstood what they said, and then the teacher gets down on me for trying to get them in trouble. But they didn’t make fun of me at all. In fact, Lara told me that she and Carrie and Caitlin had been discussing it, and that they thought maybe they should let me join the Little Colour Girls, since my last name is Brown.
    â€œI suspected they were setting me up, since they’re always torturing me, like giving me cards with hippos and pigs printed on them on Valentine’s Day, or handing me fashion and dieting magazines during library class. So I told them, ‘Thanks for the offer, but I really doubt that you want me to join your group.’ But then the next day at school there was a beautiful card, an official invitation to join the Little Colour Girls for my initiation ceremony.”
    â€œInitiation ceremony?”
    â€œI was worried about that, too, but they assured me that it would be ‘great fun’ — we would just dress up in some fancy clothes, drink some tea and eat some bon-bons, and then there would be a ceremony where I would ‘welcomed into the sisterhood.’ They sounded so sincere about it. So, I pretended to be sick so I could skip my Friday night Bible study group, and I snuck out to meet them at Lara’s house, which is like Buckingham Palace compared to the shack we live in. Sure enough, there were teacups and candles and little china plates full of candies everywhere, and the three of them were all dressed up in fancy satin dresses, and of course Lara’s was lavender, Carrie’s was green, and Caitlin’s was black, just like