Neighbours Read Free Page B

microwaves.
    Dickie was in the same class as Betty Flood and, when he wasn’t stealing other kids’ dinner money, he used to sit behind her and pull her hair and call her names.
    The only Flood child who didn’t go to the wizard school was Betty. To try to make her less wizardy, Mordonna sent Betty to the normal school a few streets away. Betty would have preferred to go to the same school as her brothersand sisters. Normal people, if you could call Dickie Dent and all the other dumb kids in her class ‘normal’, were so dull and boring and stupid and ugly. None of them could see in the dark or even make a pencil move without using their hands, or in Dickie’s case, his nose.
    When she had started school, Betty decided that no matter how many lessons her parents made her take, she would stay different. Not that she had any choice in the matter. Boring facts went in her left ear and rushed out of the right one as quickly as they could. Betty couldn’t even learn her nine times table. This was not because she was stupid, but because Betty knew that these things aren’t important.
    â€˜You’re a witch, you are,’ Dickie hissed at Betty when the teacher wasn’t looking.
    â€˜You needn’t think that saying nice things like that is going to make me like you,’ said Betty, and she made six huge pimples swell up on his forehead.

    â€˜Miss, Miss,’ Dickie cried, ‘she’s made me come out in spots.’
    â€˜Dickie Dent, don’t be such a stupid little boy,’ said the teacher. ‘People can’t give you spots.’
    Betty put on her best sweet little girl face, which always made the teacher want to cuddle her. Then she made Dickie’s six spots burst and run down his face.

    â€˜Miss, Miss, look what she done,’ Dickie cried.
    The teacher got so angry she made Dickie stay in during break and she wrote an angry letter to his parents – which was a waste of time really, because neither of them could read.
    Betty would probably have stood out less if she had eaten ordinary school dinners instead of pickled lizards and toads’ knees. She did try eating the school meat pies and turkey twizzlers once, but it only made her throw up.
    â€˜You’re weird, you,’ the other kids said to her, but Betty thought that was a compliment.
    â€˜Why’s that, then?’ said Betty, looking all innocent. She knew she was ten times brighter than any of the other kids would ever be and that she could get them every single time.
    â€˜Eating lizards and frogs, that’s gross, that is,’ they said.
    â€˜See your burgers?’
    â€˜Yeah?’
    â€˜This is what they’re made of,’ said Betty, and a huge smelly pile of gross animal bits appeared on the table. ‘Look: cows’ bottoms and eyelids, sheep’s nostrils and chicken beaks and chemicals and scum.’
    Then the children all felt that retching thing in their throats where you try really hard not to throw up, but know that nothing will stop it – and they did, all over the floor.
    â€˜Oh, look,’ said Betty. ‘Your sick looks exactly like your lunch.’
    Which made the kids throw up again.
    â€˜You are all so dumb,’ said Betty, and for good measure gave every child three big uncomfortable angry purple pimples on their bottoms, so no matterhow they sat down, it hurt. She gave Dickie an extra couple just to keep him on his toes – which of course it did, because it hurt too much to sit down.
    â€˜See,’ she added. ‘All that dreadful food gives you spots too.’

Lots of people hate their jobs. It’s a part of their lives that is necessary to make money to buy food and houses and clothes. While they’re at work they dream of the time when they won’t be at work, when they’ll be with their loved ones having a life. They dream of their hobbies, which are often like work, except people enjoy them.
    Some