Gracie Faltrain Takes Control by Cath Crowley Page A

it’s taken him a long time to get there. Don’t mess with that.’
    Mum’s wrong. Martin is still lost at sea; he’s just so good at treading water these days it looks like he’s swimming. And if I’m the only one who can see that then I have to do something. Because that storm is coming, and if all I do is wave at Martin from the shore, he’ll drown. Friends don’t sit on the sand and let that happen. Not real friends, anyway.

13
    Love sucks. Just ask Romeo and Juliet. Or me.
Jane Iranian
    Jane’s acting less and less like a real friend at the moment. It’s been five days since I emailed and she still hasn’t replied. She didn’t call me after the game. I want to ring her and yell, ‘Don’t you care about me anymore?’ And I would. But Gracie Faltrain knows a thing or two about dignity.
    We’re in stand-off mode. It’s happened with other friends. You’re close for ages, so close you could spin off the secrets from their diary like a Frisbee. Then gradually, one of you disappears into the distance like a bad throw. They only call twice a week. And then once. And then not at all.
    I never thought that would happen with Jane. If you’d asked me a month ago I would have told you it was impossible. I’d have bet my life on it. I know everything about her. She wears pyjamas with little bears on them. When she was a kid she was scared of the dark and had to sleep with her bunny lamp on. I know she liked Matty Fletcher in Year 4 and punched him in the face when no one was looking because he didn’t like her. You just don’t give someone that sort of information on yourself and then walk away.
    I stare at the phone. Ring. Ring. Ring.
    â€˜What are you doing, Gracie?’ Mum asks.
    Testing the strength of my telepathic powers over long distances to make my best friend need me again. ‘Nothing,’ I answer, and pack my bag ready for school.
    The only way out of stand-off mode is for the person who’s walking away to realise what they’re missing. I have to give Jane some time to be Gracie Faltrainless. She’ll see what she’s missing. She’ll come running back.
    In the meantime, I have Alyce. ‘Come inside for a minute,’
    I say when she arrives. ‘I want to try to straighten your hair.’ ‘Gracie, I sort of like my hair the way it is.’ ‘But don’t you want to love it?’ ‘Well. . .’ ‘Exactly. Now sit tight for a minute.’ Or sixty. Or a hundred.
    Alyce could solve the world’s energy problems with the static electricity coming from her head.
    â€˜Does it look any better?’ she asks after about fifteen minutes. Better than what? Better than if you’d stuck your finger in a power point? ‘It definitely looks shinier.’
    â€˜You know, technically it’s not shinier because it’s straighter. It’s just that the light reflects off it more easily now that there’s a flat surface.’
    â€˜Alyce, one day your brain is going to explode,’ I say, and push her out the door.
    â€˜You look really pretty,’ I whisper at the start of class.
    â€˜Flemming will love it.’ ‘Keep your voice down. I told you, I don’t like him.’ ‘Right. You don’t like him. You love him.’
    â€˜Shhh, Gracie.’
    I’m too busy teasing her to notice what’s going on around me. Big mistake. School is a dangerous place for people like Alyce. I should have known to keep an eye out for enemies, especially enemy number one: Annabelle Orion. It’s the end of period two by the time I realise she’s been listening to us. And by then it’s way too late to do anything about it.
    Alyce and I are sitting next to Flemming in English. We’ve teamed up to work on poetry. Every group gets a different topic and together we have to write a poem and read it to the class. ‘Remember, it