Darcy Dolphin is a Little Bit Magic!. Sam Watkins

      Mum laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, Darcy. Now go and get Coral up or you’ll both be late for school – Diddy! Don’t put prawnflakes in your blowhole!’

      Honestly, Mum doesn’t understand how serious the situation is – just like Steve’s mum in Zombie Crabs!

      In class, Miss Carp had an announcement. ‘Now, I thought it would be an idea if we put on a little talent show at the end of the visit. I want you to work with your pen pals on a five-minute act for the show. Working together – that’s the important thing!’

      I turned to Coral, who was making a pebble tower on her desk from pebbles she’d picked up on the way to school.

      ‘Any ideas?’ I asked.

      Coral shrugged. ‘I dunno.’

      Persevere, Darcy, I said to myself. ‘I know – we could do a dance?’

      ‘I don’t like dancing,’ Coral said, reaching up to put another pebble on the tower. Something snapped inside me.

      ‘Why are you so crabby?!’ I shouted. I pushed the tower and all the pebbles came tumbling down.

      I felt bad as soon as I’d done it. ‘I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to do that. I just really want to be friends!’

      I started trying to rebuild the tower, but Miss Carp had seen what happened and put me on Whale Cleaning Duty as a punishment. This means having to de-barnacle Walter the School Whale. Walter is lovely, but getting the cheeky barnacles off him is the worst job, and they call you rude names like ‘stinking scurvy-ridden slimehead’.

      Word(s) of the Day: Stinking scurvy-ridden slimehead

      A slimehead is a type of fish. I’m not exactly sure what ‘scurvy-ridden’ means, but it must be rude because the barnacles laughed themselves silly.