Princess Incognito 5

N.J. Humphreys

Description

When a terrifying new PE teacher, Mr Biggspitt, insists he's going to prepare the students for school sports day, Sabrina and her friends are not really bothered. But a distracted Sabrina accidentally wins the running trial and Mr Biggspitt is convinced that he has a star in the making. This is a real problem for a secret princess still trying to hide her identity. To make things worse, Mr Biggspitt picks Sabrina and Liam for the elite team, but not her other friends, Charlie and Awful Agatha. Meanwhile, Uncle Ernie reveals a family tragedy that breaks her trust. Why does everyone in her life seem to be betraying her? Feeling lost and confused, Sabrina turns to Mr Biggspitt for help, which leaves her with an impossible choice. She has the skills to win the school sports day, but does she want to lose her friends along the way? The AuthorN.J. Humphreys is Singapore's best-selling author with 26 titles to his name. Writing as Neil Humphreys, his The Hunt for the Green Boomerang (2016) and the Abbie Rose and the Magic Suitcase are illustrated children's eco-adventures, the latter about a smart, feisty girl on a mission series to save endangered animals. He is currently working on the animated TV series of Abbie Rose with an international broadcaster. His works on Singapore - from Notes from an Even Smaller Island (2001) to Saving a Sexier Island: Notes from an Old Singapore (2015) - are among the most popular titles in the past decade. His book Be My Baby (2008) chronicled his journey to parenthood and was his first international bestseller. He is also author of the thrillers: Marina Bay Sins (2014), Rich Kill Poor Kill (2016) and Bloody Foreigners (2021), as well as the football novels Match Fixer (2010) and Premier Leech (2011).

Informations

• Publié par: Marshall Cavendish International
• Date de parution: 28 octobre 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789815009729
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

2022 Neil Humphreys and Marshall Cavendish International (Asia) Private Limited
Published by Marshall Cavendish Editions
An imprint of Marshall Cavendish International

All rights reserved
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National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Name(s): Humphreys, Neil.
Title: Running out of friends / by N.J. Humphreys.
Other Title(s): Princess incognito.
Description: Singapore : Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2022
Identifier(s): e-ISBN: 978 981 5009 72 9
Subject(s): LCSH: Princesses--Juvenile fiction. | Friendship--Juvenile fiction.
Classification: DDC S823--dc23
Printed in Singapore
Cover art and all illustrations by Cheng Puay Koon
For parents - always be there
AN UPDATE ON ME AND MY BIG FAT LIE
Children cannot keep secrets. We cannot keep a secret to save our lives. But I m different. My stupid life literally depends on me keeping a secret.
I am a princess. Or, to be totally hon0est, I used to be a princess until some idiots decided that my royal family wasn t wanted anymore.
The idiots are actually called politicians. To me, they are still idiots.
Being the only daughter of King Halbutt and Queen Beverly of Mulakating, I was Princess Sabrina Valence and future queen of the people. But the people and the politicians decided to have a civil war instead, which really sucks.
In movies, civil wars are for superheroes to have punch-ups. In real life, civil wars kill real people. So my parents sent me away to a secret location, which is the first secret I must keep.
My second secret is Ernie Parslowe. He s supposed to be a distant relative and an old handyman who does nothing except snooze in his horrible armchair and snore and fart at the same time.
He s actually a Royal Handyman, a private bodyguard trained in all kinds of special skills to keep his princess incognito safe. He s also trained me in special skills like aikido and taekwondo.
But he does snore and fart at the same time.
He s also getting slower and sicker with old age, but we choose not to talk about that stuff.
Thanks to Uncle Ernie s so-called cover story , I am now his niece, Sabrina Parslowe. My parents are working overseas and I am living in the world s ugliest housing estate. Everything is concrete and rusty.
The only thing that is fresh and new is the dog poo on the pavement.
That is my third secret. I have to remember that I m a poor kid who lives in a lousy house and goes to the worst school. This is the easiest secret to keep because the last bit is true.
Awful Agatha would make any school seem terrible. She s the biggest bully in town. Her hobbies are chewing gum, stealing food and booting people she doesn t like up the backside.
She doesn t really like anyone. She boots a lot of people up the backside.
Weirdly, though, she likes me, because she shares one of my secrets. We both have dark family stuff that we try not to think about.
Luckily, Awful Agatha is not my only friend. I have boy friends too. Hang on. I need to make that last sentence clearer. I have boy friends , not boyfriends. That would be gross. They are just friends who are boys. But they are always competing for my attention, which drives me crazy.
Charlie is brave, but short. Liam is taller, but a show-off. Liam loves sports because he s fast and skilful. Charlie hates sport and prefers to read detective maths puzzle books. Awful Agatha is actually really physical, but she doesn t like any kind of sporting exercise because she s always hungry. Her parents do not feed her that much.
So I m not looking forward to today s PE lesson. Apparently, the old Cannibal is going to make a big announcement. She s our headmistress. Her real name is Miss Cannington, which sounds a bit like cannibal . Plus, I think she d like to rip out Awful Agatha s tongue.
The only thing I like about our PE lessons is the running. When I run, I escape. I don t have to talk. I don t have to worry about sharing secrets. I can just be me, the real me.
In fact, there are only two occasions where I can just be me-when I m running and when I m writing this journal. This is a secret diary of an 11-year-old princess trying to keep all her secrets without going insane.
This is a true story about a fake life.
This is my chance to let everything out and not hold anything back-just like when I m running.
In fact, I ve changed my mind. I am looking forward to today s PE lesson now. All I have to do is ignore Charlie s complaining, Liam s boasting and Awful Agatha s bullying and just run in the sunshine.
After all, it s only a PE lesson.
And a PE lesson is not exactly going to change my life, is it?
CHAPTER ONE
Miss Cannington was already sweating buckets. She had those soggy rings under her armpits. The old Cannibal was melting in the sunshine. Her makeup ran down her cheeks. She looked like a squashed orange.
You may be wondering why I m standing in the playground before your PE lesson, she said.
None of us had been wondering. We were too busy watching her rub sweaty lipstick across her face.
You need a new PE teacher, she said.
We all gasped. Our headmistress was fair and kind, but she was no PE teacher. She once tripped over a rug in her office.
Besides, PE lessons were already rubbish at our school. Most schools had proper pitches and running tracks. We had a lump of concrete with weeds poking through the cracks. Our school was also a dumping ground for the worst teachers. We got stuck with the teachers who couldn t get a job anywhere else, like our old PE teacher Mr Raydons.
We all know what happened to poor Mr Raydons, said the old Cannibal, shaking her head. A ball of sweat trickled down her forehead and stopped at the end of the nose, sticking to her nostril like a bogey.
There was no need to do that to the poor man s whistle, she continued.
The children around me giggled.
Stop that laughing immediately, said our headmistress. He loved his whistle.
I nudged Charlie in the ribs. What whistle?
It happened before you arrived, he whispered. Awful Agatha stole his whistle and kept making fart noises with it.
Is that all?
Nah. She also filled his whistle with tomato ketchup, said Liam, sitting beside Charlie on the concrete. Mr Raydons blew the whistle and the ketchup splattered across his face.
It was a nightmare, said Charlie. Mr Raydons was covered in ketchup and Awful Agatha asked if he had any French fries.
Our headmistress did one of those fake coughs to make us shut up.
As I was saying, Mr Raydons has decided not to return to our school after a certain person made his life a misery.
The old Cannibal s wide eyes peered through her glasses, obviously looking for Awful Agatha s snarling face. But Awful Agatha hated PE, hated getting up early and hated sweating. There was no chance of her turning up on time for a PE lesson in the hot sun.
And naturally, she isn t here, muttered our headmistress. Still, I am delighted to inform you that after several temporary teachers, we have finally found a permanent replacement. Would you please stand and welcome Mr Biggspitt.
The class burst out laughing.
The old Cannibal looked at the giggling children sitting on the boiling concrete and put her hands on her hips.
Now, look, we need to show some maturity in this school. What is it with you lot and a teacher s surname? We had this before with Miss Shufflebottom.
We roared with laughter now. She was making it worse for herself.
It s just a name, OK? It s an old, traditional English name. In fact, there s a lot of history behind the name. Maybe you could ask him about the history of Biggspitt.
When the old Cannibal saw Charlie clutching his sides and Liam keeling over, she realised that this was probably not a good idea.
No, don t ask about the history of Biggspitt, she said. OK then, let s give a special warm welcome to Mr Mr your new PE teacher!
As soon as he appeared, the laughter stopped.
A giant stood before us. He cast a shadow across the entire class and seemed to block out the sun. He wasn t just tall. He was wide. He had huge bumps on his arms and legs, as if he had swallowed loads of tennis balls. Those bumps were his muscles, and he was full of them.
His body looked like it was going to burst out of his PE vest and shorts. He had a whistle on a necklace, but even Awful Agatha would think twice about trying to steal it. His hands were big enough to crush coconuts. His thighs actually looked like coconuts.
His short, cropped hair made him seem more like an army general than a teacher. When he smiled, the veins on his neck wriggled around like huge worms trying to escape. He could ve been