THURSDAY

When I went into the kitchen this morning, Mum, Dad and ELLIE were smiling at me. Chloe and Porsche were there and they were smiling too. At first I was worried. Everybody smiling at me like that must mean I’d done something mega bad, right? But no! They were smiling because they were pleased with me! Apparently that can happen too – who knew? Yesterday FIN SPENCER was apparently a model son and brother and best-friends-of-little-sister entertainer.

The only person around that table not smiling was Penelope Fuzzyface. But then she never smiles. I realised that the fact that Chloe and Porsche were still there meant they didn’t go home last night and the sleepover had happened. THANK YOU, DIARY!

Mum thought my change of behaviour was down to the Keep Fit breakfast cereal she’s been making me eat. Parents really know nothing, do they? My good behaviour was down to two very simple things – bribery and a magic diary!

As I was leaving for school I couldn’t resist asking Dad how his mates were last night. Without thinking he just said, ‘Fine, thanks!’

BUSTED! He wasn’t ‘held up at work’ at all. Bet Dad wished he had a magic diary too when he saw Mum’s face! She asked everyone but Dad to ‘Leave the room for a minute’. Which was mum-speak for ‘Stand back, Dad’s gonna die’!

I felt a bit bad for him, but then I remembered that he hadn’t had to sing into a hairbrush three times and be covered in make-up – he deserved everything that was coming to him.

I arrived at school with a smile on my face. Tomorrow BRAD and I would win the talent show and I’d have a phone and on Saturday I would go to see X-WING. All I had to do was keep a low profile until then and the perfect weekend would be coming my way.

But as I walked down the corridor people started to laugh at me. I checked I hadn’t accidentally tucked my trousers into my socks – that’s happened before. But not this time. It had to be something else. I saw BRAD RADLEY by my locker – maybe he knew why people were laughing.

BRAD smiled at me. It wasn’t a nice smile, it was the smile a shark gives you just before it bites your legs off.

It turned out BRAD knew exactly why everybody was laughing at me. He pushed a button on his phone and a video began to play on the screen. When I realised what I was seeing I wanted to crawl into my locker and shut the door forever.

It was a video of me, in full make-up, singing at the top of my voice. What was BRAD playing at? I thought we were friends! He’d sworn that he hadn’t taken any photos.

When I asked him about it he said, ‘I didn’t take any photos, but nobody said anything about videos.’

I needed to get his phone and smash it to pieces. I tried to grab it but BRAD held it high above my head so I couldn’t reach. As I was standing there, hopping up and down like an ant in a tap-dancing contest, JOSH came over, waving his phone at me. He’d got the video too.

he said.

Now I really wanted to live in my locker forever. I didn’t understand. How had JOSH got the video? BRAD grinned as he told me that EVERYONE in my class had the video. If you pushed the buttons on his phone in the right way you could send videos to everyone in the contacts list. And that was just what BRAD had done.

Why did BRAD do it? I thought we were fincredible best mates.

BRAD shook his head at me, when I asked him. He told me he’d never be best mates with a loser like me. Apparently he’d only ever pretended to be my friend so that he’d be close by when I did something embarrassing. Then he’d used it to get his own back for making him look stupid last week. He said he knew it would only be a matter of time, but he’d never imagined I’d do anything quite so ridiculous! Everyone had seen me singing and dancing to or if they hadn’t yet they soon would. I should never have trusted BRAD RADLEY.

School couldn’t end soon enough. I spent break time and lunchtime hiding in the toilets. I thought I’d dodged everybody but I bumped into CLAUDIA RONSON on my way home. She gave me a smile and then turned to her friends and giggled.

PERFECT! She thinks I’m a loser too.

I know exactly what I have to do. I have to leave my school forever and run away to Pluto.

I’m back at home now and I’ve locked myself in my room to write in this diary. I couldn’t face Mum and Dad and ELLIE after the day I’ve had. I guess I just have to hope that people will forget about the video when they see my cool stunt at the talent show tomorrow…

But as I’ve been writing I’ve realised something else. Brad won’t be in my stunt now – not that I’d want him there anyway. I could ask JOSH back, but I know exactly what he’d say.

Gotta go, I need to come up with a way of saving my talent-show act.

I’m back and feeling much better about things because I’ve realised something – I don’t need any help. My stunt is going to be amazing without BRAD or JOSH. Sure, I might not have a live musical accompaniment, but the stunt-jumping should be enough to win the phone. I could play X-WING as a backing track. So I went to find ELLIE to see if she’d watch me practise jumping for a bit, but she was in the middle of a marathon and wouldn’t budge.

I watched a bit of until I realised what I was doing and decided to go and do something more interesting instead – like rearrange my pencil-shavings collection.

When I was getting ready for bed I thought about how I could use this diary to change things. If I could fix it so that BRAD hadn’t come round to my house yesterday then he wouldn’t have got the video footage on his phone … But then I remembered the Fincredible Diary Rules. I can only change things that I do, not what BRAD did. And I can only change things on the day they happen – it’s too late now. But that means I can do something to change what happened today. I should have stood up to BRAD a bit more today. It’s much easier to write that here, in this diary – it’s really hard when he’s standing right in front of you. I should have told him that I was doing something nice for my sister and that there was nothing wrong with that. Quite frankly, he shouldn’t take videos of people without asking anyway – if he’s not careful he’ll go through life with no friends at all. So yes, diary, I wish I’d stood up more to BRAD RADLEY today.

I hope that works, but I’m beginning to realise that this diary has a nasty habit of backfiring on me.