The Great Brain Robbery Read Online Free PDF

pocket of her blazer.
    ‘I got a card from Wes this morning,’ she said. Frankie’s eyes lit up.
    ‘How is he?’ asked Frankie. ‘Is he coming to visit soon?’ Neet passed Frankie the card. The front showed a picture of a jolly-looking Father Christmas overseeing his
elves as they loaded his sleigh with toys.
    ‘It’s a bit early for Christmas cards, isn’t it?’ said Frankie. ‘It’s only October.’
    ‘Right,’ said Neet. ‘It’s weird. And it doesn’t sound like Wes at all.’ Frankie opened the card and read. ‘Dear Neet and Frankie, I am at my Auntie
Elvira’s. It is raining non-stop. Everything is soaking wet. Hope to see you soon. Wes.’
    Neet was right. It was nothing like Wes’s usual notes and letters. There were no jokes or wacky ideas, only the kind of boring stuff you write when you can’t think of anything to
say.
    ‘It’s like someone else has written it,’ said Frankie, ‘and there is no return address.’
    Frankie frowned and started to reread the card. But he didn’t get very far.
    ‘No playtime for you, Frankie Blewitt!’ Mrs P was blocking his path. ‘You and Timmy are on detention, remember?’

    Frankie hated detention. Who doesn’t? While Neet was outside in the autumn sunshine, he had to sit in the classroom with Timmy Snotbags and write ‘I MUST NOT START
FIGHTS’ one hundred times over.
Urrgh! So unfair!
thought Frankie.
I didn’t start it, Timmy did. I never would have hit him if he hadn’t been such a twazzock, and
anyway . . .
But there was no point arguing. He had been sentenced to spend the lunchbreak at his desk, so he picked up his pencil and got on with it.
    Timmy was in a funny mood. He had been ignoring Frankie all week, but that afternoon he seemed strangely pleasant.
    ‘Could I borrow your spare pencil, Frankie?’ Timmy asked politely.
    ‘Okaaaay,’ Frankie replied, ‘but I’ve only got this green one.’
    ‘That’s perfect,’ said Timmy with a smile. ‘Listen, Frankie,’ he continued in his most grown-up voice, ‘shall we put it all behind us – let bygones be
bygones?’
    Frankie wondered if he had cleaned his ears out properly. But Timmy seemed to be serious.
    ‘Uhh . . . sure, Timmy!’ Frankie smiled, relieved. ‘I’d like that.’
    The boys sat in silence for half an hour, diligently copying out their lines. Frankie had been stuck in detention so many times before that he had perfected a method of writing lines that made
it as quick and painless as possible. He would start by writing ‘I’ over and over again down the margin, followed by ‘MUST’, followed by ‘NOT’, and so on. Try it
next time you’re in detention, it takes half the time, I promise.
    ‘I’ll take them down to Mrs Pinkerton’s office,’ Timmy offered once time was up, handing back Frankie’s pencil.
    ‘Thanks, Timmy,’ Frankie replied. ‘That’s nice of you.’ Timmy smiled a small compressed smile that made his mouth look like a squeezed lemon, snatched
Frankie’s worksheet and hurried out of the classroom.

    Later that afternoon, Frankie was sitting in his Science lesson, designing a gadget for getting spiders out of the bath and dreaming about the trip to Marvella’s, when a
furious Mrs Pinkerton burst into the classroom. Frankie had never seen her so cross. She had turned such an alarming shade of fuchsia it was hard to tell where her jumper ended and her face began.
Uh oh, somebody’s in trouble
, thought Frankie, glad to have got his detention over with.
    ‘Frrrankie BLEWITT!’
    Frankie looked up from his desk, confused.
    ‘I supposed you think this is funny!’
    Mrs Pinkerton slapped a worksheet down in front of him. Sure enough it had Frankie’s name at the top, but underneath it, in his very own bright green pencil were the words: ‘MRS
STINKERTON PICKS HER NOSE AND EATS IT’ written out exactly one hundred times.
    Frankie gasped. ‘I didn’t write that, Mrs Stink— I mean, Pinkerton! Timmy must have switched the