Excerpt from THE SEVENTEEN SECRETS OF THE KARMA CLUB
by Karen McCombie
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So that was Miss Lennard’s secret.
Nell and I swapped wide-eyed gazes and telepathically knew we had to back away silently and unseen out of the café fast, so we could . . .
a) plan the Ninth Secret of the Karma Club, and
b) not get caught giggling over poor Miss Lennard’s semi-tragic secret . . .
We were in a James Bond movie. We were casing the casino, nervously waiting for the coast to be clear, so we could plant the bomb and rid the world of the Bad Guys.
Nah . . .
I mean, yes, it was a nerve-racking and tense situation, but it wasn’t so much a James Bond movie as the corridor outside the school staffroom. And we weren’t casing a casino but eyeing up the door to the staffroom, and more importantly, the teachers’ pigeonholes that were just inside the staffroom door, stuffed with random bits of post and visible every time a teacher went in and out.
And it wasn’t so much a bomb we wanted to plant as a piece of fruit.
“Hello, girls!” said Mr. Greene, one of the youngish art department teachers, as he strode by us and into the staffroom.
“Hello!” we both squeaked, suddenly pretending we were busy looking at a message on my phone and not lurking with intent at all. No way.
Was this it? Our chance? Nope . . . Mrs. Mehta from the geography department was just on her way out. She hovered for a second – a second where the staffroom door slowly, tantalizingly swung closed – and rifled around in her folder of papers.
Me and Nell, we carried on pretending to check out my phone message, till Mrs. Mehta set off and we could relax (and wait) again.
“So do you think she chucked her fiancé, or the other way round?” asked Nell, now polishing the red shiny apple with the bottom of her black and yellow striped tie.
“The other way round, definitely!” I whispered, though currently there wasn’t anyone around but us. It was sunny outside, and the occasional teacher aside, no one particularly fancied mooching about in the dull corridors on such a nice day. “If she’d chucked him, Miss Lennard would feel guilty, but relieved and happy. If he chucked her, then she’d be miserable and spend her time staring out windows.”
That was my theory, at least, which made sense, considering that twenty minutes ago, we’d spotted Miss Lennard in the café so earnestly scouring the “Lonely Hearts” dating section of the local paper, and, more importantly, circling a couple of possibilities with her red pen.
Her engagement ring had been really pretty, I suddenly remembered. Kind of ornate, kind of antique-looking. Though now there was only a white, bare line where she’d once worn it.
“Or maybe he did something so bad she had to chuck him?” Nell suggested, tossing the apple in the air and catching it again, which made the brown label we’d tied to the stalk flutter in the air. “Hey – I just thought of something that could make this message even better!”
Just after we’d rushed out of the café, we’d nipped in and bought the label from Mrs. Patel (who’d tried to read upside down what Nell was writing on it in her gold pen as I paid).
“What?” I asked now, as Nell caught the apple again in one hand and rifled around for something in her pocket with the other.
“Well, I was thinking: why does the message have to be anonymous?”
“Because our good deeds are always meant to be a secret?” I suggested, wondering what Nell was getting at.
“Yeah, but just for fun, why don’t we put someone’s name on it? Someone cute . . . like that Mr. Greene?”
Nell looked really excited by this dumb idea. She even had her gold pen out, ready to add some more lettering (and mischief) to the label.
“Because he didn’t write the message!” I pointed out urgently, imagining a horribly embarrassing scenario where Miss Lennard got the wrong idea entirely about the cute-ish art teacher.
“Yeah, but Glen didn’t write that letter to Mr. Patel either, and that worked out all right!” Nell insisted.
“But that was different!” I replied, not explaining myself very well, simply because I was feeling slightly panicked. That little grey-cloud bad-karma niggle was back and making itself felt inside my chest, and apart from that, time was running out. The afternoon bell was about to go, and me and Nell had set ourselves a mission that might be impossible to do . . .
Or maybe not.
From The Seventeen Secrets of the Karma Club. Copyright © 2008 by Karen McCombie. All rights reserved.
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