12 A Spillage

12 A Spillage As usual, Peanut woke up at 6.59 a.m., exactly one minute before her alarm went off. She sat up, stretched, swung her legs out from underneath the duvet and perched herself on the edge of the bed. As she rubbed her eyes, she remembered the argument with Mum the previous evening and felt her shoulders slump. Then she thought about the beautiful pencil, and her spirits lifted slightly. She glanced up at her drawing from the previous evening. When she saw it, she could not believe her eyes. ' What? No. How?' The flower that she had drawn... had wilted. It was now an illustration of a dead flower in a vase.

A thousand thoughts went through her head at the same time. 'Someone must have broken into my room in the night and changed it!' 'Maybe I'm still asleep and this is a dream. 'Maybe I imagined the whole thing.' 'Maybe that is what I drew last night after all. Am I going crazy?' Aaaaarrrrrgggggh!' She leaped from the bed and grabbed the piece of paper. As she pulled it from the wall, something even more incredible happened: the vase in the picture fell over and smashed. It actually smashed. And what's more, a small puddle of water was spreading across the drawing. There were even some splash marks on her Fantastic Four postcard. Peanut suddenly felt a bit strange. The blood drained from her face and everything started to turn white. She felt very dizzy. She lay back on the bed and closed her eyes. A little while later, she opened them, sat up and once again looked at the drawing which was now lying on the

bed next to her. It showed several shards of broken china floating in small puddles of water, and a rather sorry-looking flower lying among them. 'What is going on?' she gasped. The bedroom door burst open. Peanut! Someone called Rockwell arrived five minutes ago,' said Mum. ' He says you arranged to walk to school together. You, meanwhile, have been ignoring me for the past half an hour. You must have overslept. Now get dressed as quickly as you can and I'll give you some fruit to eat on the way to school. ' Your new friend seems nice, by the way. He's not my friend,' Peanut muttered as she leaped off the bed and started pulling on her school uniform. 'We're just studying together. She ran to the bathroom, brushed her teeth, skidded back into her bedroom, opened the wooden box, released the false base, grabbed the pencil, put it in her blazer pocket and thundered down the stairs. 'Sorry,' she said to Rockwell, who was standing in the hallway. 'I overslept. Just grabbing an apple.'