The Dinosaur Thief
‘Well,’ Mrs
Plumb said, ‘a big thanks to Timmy for bringing in his frog, but the annual
bring-your-pet-to-school-day is next
Monday.’
Oh no! Harley Brundle thought, remembering the same day last year
when Susie Slain brought in her poodle, Nancy, who bit Harley’s hand viciously,
drawing lots of blood.
‘My turn!’ Susie snapped as she raced
to the front of the class. After fifteen minutes of talking about her visit to
the Natural History Museum with her “quite rich” father, she bowed, forcing an
applause from the class with her threatening scowl. Then she returned to her
seat, but not before kicking Harley in the foot on the way.
‘Ow!’
‘Of course
you can go now, Harley!’ Mrs Plumb said.
Harley usually hated standing in
front of the class, mainly because of Susie, but today she didn’t mind too much.
‘I’m not really supposed to tell
anyone,’ she began, ‘but this weekend, my Dad and I visited the Brecon Beacons
in our special camper van. Oh, but it wasn’t the Brecon Beacons as you know it
today. No, it was actually sixty-five
million years ago!’
The class sighed.
'It’s true!’ Harley nodded. ‘Herds
of dinosaurs roamed in sun-baked valleys, and there was a great big volcano on
the horizon! One dinosaur even followed us back: a young T.Rex, we think!’
Suddenly, Susie stood up and shouted,
‘She’s just jealous because I visited
the museum and took a real dinosaur bone home with me! She’s always making up
these pathetic fantasies because her
dad can’t afford to take her anywhere! He’s a loser who can’t even invent a paper aeroplane!'
'You
stole a dinosaur bone from the museum?’ Mrs Plumb said, completely aghast.
The class started teasing Harley,
telling her she should bring her dinosaur in on pet day and prove once and for
all that she didn’t tell “tall tales.”
‘I can’t bring a dinosaur to school,’ she said, rolling
her eyes. ‘It’s far too dangerous.’
‘She’s right,’ Susie said, smiling
wickedly. ‘The only meat-eater you’ll see here next Monday is Nancy. And I’ll
see you at lunch, Brundle.’
After school,
Harley was nursing a swollen eye with a bag of frozen peas in the kitchen when
her father popped up from behind the counter, wearing a strange helmet covered
in flashing lights and gizmos.
‘What happened?’ he said, rushing over to her.
‘P.E.,’ she said. ‘How’s Rex?’
‘Well,’ he said nervously, ‘he almost
escaped twice, nearly ate the neighbour’s rottweiler and my hand. I wonder how he’d feel about a collar and a muzzle…’
Suddenly, Harley’s
other eye was wide with excitement. Through the window, she looked out into the
garden, where there sat a kennel big enough for a horse. Inside was dark, but
behind a grid of metal bars she saw two large yellow eyes glistening in the
late afternoon sun. And on the ground, the tip of a thick, scaly green tail was
curled around one of the bars.
‘I wonder
how he feels about poodles,’ she said, smiling.
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