Poppy couldn’t resist having a little poke around the bottle.

Her bedroom at home was perfectly comfortable, but a little boring. Sometimes, when she couldn’t sleep, Poppy would imagine what her perfect bedroom would look like. Then she would drift to sleep, pretending she was in that room.

Well, the inside of the bottle looked exactly like her dream bedroom!

The floor was covered with a thick, soft green carpet, dotted with flowers. In the middle of the room was a huge bed, covered with colourful satin cushions. Draped over the bed was a sky-blue canopy, decorated with twinkling silver stars and moons. There was also a bookshelf shaped like a wave that was stocked with Poppy’s favourite books and magazines. And one of Poppy’s very favourite songs was playing, although Poppy couldn’t tell where the music was coming from.

Just then, there was a puff of purple smoke and Lexie appeared. ‘So?’ she said, looking around. ‘What do you think?’

‘I love it!’ said Poppy. ‘It’s exactly how I would design my perfect bedroom.’

‘Well of course it is,’ replied Lexie. ‘This is your bottle, after all.’

‘My bottle?’ said Poppy, surprised. ‘But you popped out of it.’

‘I was just delivering it to you,’ explained Lexie. ‘You get your own personal bottle, so you can decorate it however you like.’

Once she knew this was her bottle, Poppy really wanted to have a better look around, but Lexie wouldn’t let her.

‘We have to get to the training centre,’ Lexie said.

‘How do we get there?’ asked Poppy.

Lexie smiled and produced what looked like a small, rusty teapot. ‘With this,’ she replied.

‘With an old teapot?’ said Poppy, surprised.

‘It’s not a teapot,’ corrected Lexie. ‘It’s a Location Lamp. Genies use them to get around. This one might look a little beaten up, but that just means that the lamp has been in use for centuries and is very reliable. I’ll show you how it works.’

Then Lexie twisted the lamp’s lid. Instantly, a plume of pinkish smoke curled out of the spout and began forming into curly, smoky letters. Lexie started flicking the words around with her hand, like she was searching for something. ‘Training centre, training centre,’ she muttered.

‘Can I help?’ asked Poppy politely.

‘Thanks, but it’s pretty complicated,’ said Lexie.

Then something odd happened. Two of the smoky words separated themselves from the jumble of letters hovering above the lamp and zoomed over to Poppy! She looked at the words in surprise:

Training Centre

‘Um, excuse me, Lexie,’ said Poppy. ‘Is this what you’re looking for?’

Lexie stared at the words in Poppy’s hand. ‘Where did you find them?’ she asked, clearly astonished.

‘I didn’t,’ said Poppy with a shrug. ‘They found me.’

Lexie didn’t look cross exactly, but for a moment she had a very strange expression on her face. Then she touched the words like a button. ‘Let’s go then. Oh, and get ready,’ she warned. ‘This can be a wild ride.’

As Lexie finished speaking, everything went dark. Then the floor dropped away and Poppy once again found herself whooshing along through blackness, wondering how much weirder this day could possibly get.

Her mind insisted that this was all a dream. But if it IS a dream then I’ll wake up soon enough, she reminded herself. So I may as well just go with it and see what happens!

Lexie and Poppy twisted and looped through the air. Then, just when Poppy thought she wouldn’t survive another second of it, the ride came to an abrupt stop. And Poppy promptly fell flat on her face!

How embarrassing, thought Poppy, jumping to her feet and dusting herself off. I hope no-one saw that. But she was out of luck. Lexie was standing beside her looking calm and unruffled, and behind Lexie was a group of three kids – two girls and a boy, who all looked about twelve years old. The kids were all staring at Poppy like she was the weirdest thing they’d ever seen.

‘What? Haven’t you ever seen someone fall over?’ said Poppy, putting her hands on her hips. ‘If you pay me a dollar I’ll do it again!’

Everyone laughed. The fair-haired girl near the front of the group smiled apologetically.

‘Sorry for staring,’ she said, sticking her hand out for Poppy to shake. ‘I’m Rose. Don’t feel dumb about falling over. We all did exactly the same thing. I guess we’re all new to this genie stuff.’

Poppy instantly felt less cross. This girl seemed nice.

‘Hang on, I didn’t fall,’ corrected a darkhaired boy. ‘Which probably means I’m a super-genie or something.’

Poppy scrutinised the boy through narrowed eyes. He was wearing a grubby old football jumper, beaten-up jeans and scruffy runners. He looked like the kind of boy that girls at Poppy’s school always had crushes on, although Poppy could never see why.

‘A super-doofus, more likely,’ she said under her breath.

Rose and the other girl laughed.

The boy glared at Poppy. ‘What did you say?’ he demanded.

But just then Lexie clapped her hands. ‘Hey, enough chat. You’ve got plenty of time to get to know each other,’ she said. ‘Find a seat and we’ll start.’

Poppy looked around. Lexie had called this place the training centre, which sounded like a school. But this place didn’t look like a school. The room had the same curved walls as her bedroom bottle. It didn’t smell like a school either – it smelt like hot toast with jam. And there were no tables and chairs to be seen, just big, soft cushions and luxurious Persian carpets.

‘Are we meant to sit on the cushions?’ wondered Poppy out loud.

‘Well, duh, of course!’ said the boy in the football jumper. ‘You didn’t think genies would have normal desks, did you?’

‘I have no idea,’ retorted Poppy, plonking herself down on an emerald green cushion. ‘That’s why I’m here – to learn stuff. Why are you here, if you’re already such an expert?’

The boy opened his mouth to reply, but to Poppy’s delight Lexie spoke before he got a chance.

‘I want you all to picture yourselves this morning,’ Lexie said. ‘What you felt like. How you looked. Who you thought you were.’

Everyone nodded.

‘Now forget all of it,’ said Lexie. ‘You’re not that person anymore. Today you’ve all become trainee genies. You are different from your family and friends. You are out of the ordinary. In fact, you are extraordinary.’

Poppy felt a little shiver of excitement when Lexie said that. It was pretty cool having someone say that she wasn’t ordinary.

But Lexie’s next words brought Poppy back to earth.

‘Of course you’re all a long way off being fully-fledged genies,’ she said. ‘You might not be normal humans – or normies, as we call them – but none of you are capable of granting wishes yet. You’re somewhere in between. In the Genie Realm we call you guys tweenie genies. And if you don’t listen to me, and do what I say, you won’t ever get past this stage,’ she added sternly. ‘It’s very rare for every tweenie in a class to graduate. The odds are that at least one of you will fail.’

Everyone looked shocked. It wasn’t a nice thing to hear. To make it even worse, the boy with the football jumper smirked at Poppy.

‘She’s talking about you!’ he whispered. ‘Because you’re more like a teeny weeny than a tweenie genie.’

Poppy rolled her eyes and turned away, but inside she was seething. How rude! Sure, she wasn’t tall, but she definitely wasn’t teeny weeny.

I’ll show that boy! she decided. And I’ll show Lexie, too. I’m going to be the best tweenie genie anyone has ever seen!