Fashion Fraud (2 page)

Elle and Emma were in Emma's bedroom after school. Most of Emma's clothes were on the bed and a whole bag of Elle's clothes were scattered over the floor. The girls were furiously trying things on, taking things off, trying them on again.

‘There are some cool things here!' cried Elle. ‘We can swap things around, and then you do your thing and we'll look awesome!'

‘Really? You think so, Elles?' asked Emma, who wasn't so sure. ‘But Nema will make a point of telling everyone that they're not new.'

‘Maybe, but you don't normally worry about what Nema says.'

‘I know but now there's Laila too. It's like having two Nemas! And maybe
they're
right and
we're
wrong. Maybe my outfits
are
weird. Maybe we'll look silly and just embarrass ourselves in front of everyone—again.'

Then the bedroom door opened and Emma's mum poked her head around the door. ‘Having fun, girls?' she asked.

‘Sort of,' said Emma. ‘Mum, are you really sure that I can't have a new dress for the dance party?'

‘Yes, Emma, I am really, completely sure,' replied her mum in a voice Emma knew not to argue with. Her mum's voice softened as she continued. ‘Come on, Em, you have lots of nice clothes and you have a flair for putting things together. I bet you could make a really groovy combination of gear for the party!'

Elle laughed.

‘Groovy? Gear?' groaned Emma. ‘Mum! No one says groovy gear!'

‘I do,' said Emma's mum, sniffing slightly. ‘Perhaps you could start a new trend?'

‘I don't think that's a good idea,' said Emma. She could imagine the fun Nema and Laila would have with ‘groovy gear'. She also felt her mum had gone off the topic. ‘All the other girls are getting new dresses.'

‘All?' asked Emma's mum, her eyebrows raised. ‘Elle, are you getting a new dress?'

‘No,' said Elle looking apologetically at Emma. ‘But I'd like one.'

‘Is Hannah getting a new dress?' continued Emma's mum.

‘Um, no, I don't think so but maybe …' Em's voice trailed off.

‘Do you want to know what I think?' said Emma's mum. She didn't wait for the girls to reply. ‘I think you're worrying about what some silly girls at school might say.'

Emma and Elle looked at each other. Had Emma's mum been listening?

‘Mums know stuff, you know,' she went on. ‘And we remember mean girls. When I was at school there was a girl in my class, her name was Thea, and she thought she was the boss of everyone. She would tell people what to do, what to say, what to wear.'

‘Sounds just like Nema,' groaned Emma.

‘But you know what?' said Emma's mum. ‘In the end, everyone just stopped listening so Thea stopped doing it.'

‘Nema doesn't show any sign of stopping,' said Elle glumly.

‘Well, you just have to ignore her anyway. Follow your instincts, be yourselves, not what some silly girl says you should be, and you'll have a ball. And remember,' she added as she closed the door behind her, ‘things are always better with a tidy room.'

‘Thanks, Mum!' groaned Emma. But she had listened to what she had said, not so much the bit about the room, but the other bit. It was just that sometimes it was easier to give in and go with things.

‘Come on,' said Elle. ‘Your mum's right. Let's dress
our
way!'

So Emma and Elle started to try on clothes again, mixing and matching, even mismatching, different pieces. They
were
having a ball and they forgot all about new dresses and Nema and Laila.

Emma took a pink skirt that she had and sewed a white singlet onto the top. She cut out a heart and glued it onto the singlet. She looked at it critically: it needed something wrapped around the waist to hide the sewing marks. She spotted a blue ribbon; did she dare do it again? She put on the dress and tied on the ribbon and turned around to show Elle.

‘Wow! How did you do that?' cried Elle. ‘That looks so cool! It looks like the one Jemma E. wore on
High School Dance Party,
only better!'

Emma blushed. ‘It's not that good, Elle. And I'm worried about the ribbon. Maybe it's not the right colour.'

‘I think it's amazing!' cried Elle. ‘You have to wear that! It's so cool and it's so you! Now you have to help me!'

And then they were off again, ferreting around in their clothes, trying things on, and looking for something fabulous for Elle to wear. Everything seemed okay and Emma started to look forward to the party again. But back at school the next day, it didn't take long for her confidence to waver.

The girls had finished netball practice. Emma, Hannah, Isi and Elle were all in the A-team, the St Cree Wildcats, and they worked hard at practice to make sure they stayed there. They were playing the B-team in a practice match and when Ms Tenga blew the whistle they were exhausted and more than a little sweaty.

Nema and Laila were in the B-team and not at all happy about it. When the A-team girls came up to shake hands after the match, Nema refused.

‘Ew!' she exclaimed. ‘Talk about a smell. No thank you!'

‘At least we know how to shake hands,' said a voice behind Emma. It was Eve. She was in the A-team as goal attack. Because Eve was new to the school, Emma was only just starting to get to know her and thought she seemed nice. Now she really wanted to know her better: anyone who stood up to Nema had to be good!

‘It's only a practice match,' hissed Laila.

‘Well, you need the practice,' said Eve.

The other girls laughed. It was rude of Nema and Laila not to shake hands.

‘It's only stupid netball,' snapped Nema, rounding on Emma, Hannah, Isi and Elle. It had become ‘stupid' netball when Nema didn't make the A-team. ‘You all think you are so smart in the A-team but you will be in the D-team of fashion at the party. D for disaster!'

‘No we won't,' said Elle, hotly. ‘You should see what Emma's made!'

‘You made a dress?' said Nema. ‘Another experiment?'

‘No, it is so cool,' Elle went on. ‘It's this singlet …'

Emma knew Elle was trying to help but she was sort of making things worse.

‘Elle, it's okay I think maybe I'll wear …'

‘I think it sounds really cool,' said Eve. ‘I wish I could do that.'

‘I think Emma will be a famous designer one day,' said Isi enthusiastically.

‘Whatever,' interrupted Nema. ‘You know it's a dance party, Emz.'

Emma hated it when Nema called her that, pretending to be her friend.

Nema gave a sickly smile. ‘It's not a craft party. I think …'

Arrrrggghhh! Emma couldn't stand another day of Nema going on and on at everyone, deciding who should do what, what was ‘cool', who was ‘cool'.

 

Piinngg!

 

Emma's phone flashed indigo.

Thank goodness!
she thought.
Saved by the mission alert!

Emma looked across to Isi, wondering if
SHINE
would call IJ12 as well. She hoped so; it had been fun going on a mission with a friend. Isi checked her phone but shook her head at Emma.

The bell went and everyone headed back towards the classrooms. Everyone except Emma, who went in the other direction, towards the girls' toilets. From there she could access the
SHINE
Mission Tube that would take her to
SHINE HQ
.

‘Where are you going?' demanded Nema.

‘Just to the toilet,' replied Emma.

‘You'll get into trouble. The bell's gone.'

‘Oh, Nema,' cried Emma, ‘mind your own business!' Turning away, she continued to the toilets, not noticing Nema talking to one of the teachers.

‘Emma Jacks, shouldn't you be going to class?' came a sharp voice. It was Ms Black.

Emma turned around quickly. ‘Yes, um I am, but I was just going to the toilet,' answered Emma.

‘You should have thought of that earlier,' said Ms Black. ‘There's no time now. Go back to class please or I'll …'

‘Oh there you are, Ms Black.' It was Ms Tenga. ‘Have you got a few moments? I just need a quick word. It won't take long.' Before Ms Black had a chance to protest, Ms Tenga took her by the arm. ‘Excuse us, Emma, and do hurry, won't you?'

‘Of course,' said Emma, breathing a sigh of relief and dashing off. Moments later, she pushed open the door to the girls' toilets. She checked to see if she was alone and, once she had confirmed that she was, walked to the last cubicle on the right, went in and locked the door behind her. Emma sat on the toilet seat and took out her phone, inserting it into a tiny, almost unnoticeable, socket on the side of the toilet roll holder. The phone clicked in and a message flashed on to her screen.

EJ took her phone out of the socket and held on to the sides of the toilet seat as the back wall of the cubicle swung around. EJ dropped onto a beanbag and pushed off down a long slide, the
SHINE
Mission Tube. EJ whizzed around for nearly ten minutes before coming to a stop at a platform she knew well, the
SHINE
Code Room. It was here that agents from the code-cracking division cracked first-release codes, the codes that often started a mission. But first, they had to pass an agent identity test. EJ stood in front of a small screen awaiting her instructions. The screen flashed and a digital voice spoke.

‘Please remove your right shoe and sock. Stand back. Foot disc ejecting.'

This is a new one,
thought Emma as she took off her shoe and sock, wishing the Mission Alert had come after they had changed from netball practice.
But then again,
she thought,
a machine won't be able to smell.

‘Place foot on disc for foot odour recognition.'

That's embarrassing!
thought Emma.

‘Smellier than originally recorded but foot odour confirmed. Enter Code Room, Agent EJ12.'

The door to the Code Room opened and EJ walked over to the chair and table in the centre of the small white-painted room. EJ looked up at the tube coming from the ceiling and waited for the message to drop down. A moment later a long, thin, rectangular cardboard box with a piece of paper wrapped around it dropped out of the tube and onto the desk.

EJ unwrapped the paper and read the message on it.

‘Decode what?' Emma asked herself. She looked at the box. It was black with beautiful white swirls on the side. EJ opened it to find a cake inside, a chocolate éclair to be exact, a pastry sandwich with cream in the middle and chocolate on top. Eying the delicious-looking éclair, she shut the lid and examined the box again, this time noticing writing among the swirls.

EJ knew what both of those things meant. ‘M.O.' stood for Madame Ombre, world-famous chocolate chef and sometime
SHADOW
agent, and ‘First comes chocolate' was her motto. Madame Ombre would do pretty much anything in her search for the perfect chocolate cake. EJ had come across Madame Ombre once before, when the chef was delivering a new secret communications system to
SHADOW
agents via batches of cupcakes. EJ had stopped her but Madame Ombre had escaped back to France where she had focussed on her baking, opening Salon du Chocolat, a chain of chocolate bakeries and cafés.
SHINE
must think the éclair was important, but how? Could Madame Ombre be working for
SHADOW
again? EJ took out the éclair and the cream oozed out the side and onto the table. EJ swiped the cream with her finger and then, without thinking, licked her finger.

‘Mmmmm, delicious!' she said. She picked up the éclair and looked at it upside down, from the side, from the top. She poked it and the pastry flaked and fell onto the table. EJ ate some of the flakes and the buttery pastry melted in her mouth. Before she knew it, EJ had taken a bite from one end of the éclair. As she did, her teeth hit something hard inside it.

‘Interesting,' said EJ. She took off the top pastry and, as she spread the cream out with her hand, she saw a long plastic container. EJ took the tube and licked off the cream. Inside the container she found a piece of paper. She took the paper out and unrolled it, flattening it on the desk. On it was a row of little pictures and letters.

The pictures reminded EJ of something she had used when she was first learning to read, where there were pictures rather than words. It looked like this might be the same sort of thing. EJ took out her pencil and, without thinking, took another bite from the éclair.

Hmm the hearts,
she thought.
Could be ‘heart', could be ‘love'. And the next picture is of the moon. Hold on, the ‘-o' and ‘+a' is the clue. Take an ‘o' from ‘moon' and add an ‘a' to the end and you get ‘mona'. Hey, ‘Mona' is a girl's name. The next picture is a bike but I change the ‘b' to an ‘l' and that makes ‘like'. So far the message is
… EJ wrote it down.

EJ went on to the next picture, taking another bite of the éclair.
The next one is easy, it's a ‘tower' but what is the one after that? Something with a ‘u' in the word because the ‘u' is going to be replaced with an ‘a'.

‘Bullet!' cried EJ. ‘It's a bullet and if I swap the “u” with an “a”, it makes “ballet”. And now the last picture, it looks like a spanner and a hammer but that's not one word and neither word has an “l” in it.'

This is harder,
she thought, tapping her fingers on the table.
It must mean something else.
EJ kept tapping her fingers, staring at the picture. Then something flashed into her mind. ‘Got it!' she cried. ‘They're “tools”! And I take off the “ls” and that makes “too”. She wrote down the message, looked at it and decided to cross out ‘hearts' because ‘love' seemed to go better with ‘like'.

EJ had to admit that had been almost fun—and delicious—but when she looked down, she realised that she had eaten almost all the éclair.

How many other agents eat their messages?
wondered EJ.
And what does the message mean? Who is Mona? What about ballet? And who loves and likes them? And, even more importantly, did Madame Ombre send the message or receive it? And why?

EJ rolled the paper back into the container and placed it into what was left of the éclair before putting the box in the tube where it was immediately sucked up and away. It would go to the Operations Room where A1, head of
SHINE
, would be waiting for it—and for EJ12.