Valoura Karuna and the Cake Stall Kerfuffle

By Yeshe Thubten

Valoura Karuna isn't your average kid. For a start she doesn't go to school. Instead she stays at home playing computer games and eating yummy vegan food. Oh and reading her detective handbook. Valoura knows she is a good detective and has solved many cases such as proving her brother to be a massive dork (which let’s face it, wasn't hard). When the money from her mum's bake sale goes missing, it's up to Valoura to prove 'whodunnit'. Thing is, she already knows who did and she will do anything to stop the nasty Lamb siblings and save her nutty family and friends from this 'cake stall kerfuffle'.
Has Valoura's sour sister gone mad? And why does her Aunt Stacey seem to despise Valoura so much? Also why is Gilbert the dog up-chucking on her bed?
This book is for anyone who dares to be themselves and also who like pets. Oh and cake.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Yeshe Thubten
• Release date: May 16, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311075581

Yeshe Thubten

Yeshe likes to read, meditate, watch science fiction TV shows, have a laugh with her friends but she can not for the life of her get the hang of crocheting. She will be happy when that goes out of fashion.If you liked Valoura Karuna and the Cake Stall Kerfuffle let her know! Email Yeshe at [e-mail]:3

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Valoura Karuna and the Cake Stall Kerfuffle

By Yeshe Thubten

Copyright 2014 Yeshe Thubten

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

For Lily

Chapter 1

Muffled sounds filter in through the warm, soft cocoon. I squiggle and squirm deeper into my hidey hole, and wiggle my toes in a sleepy kind of way.

‘Oh, I really don’t want to get up!’ I groan into my doona cocoon.

‘Ooof!’ A heavy blow hits my tummy which makes it impossible to pretend I am a butterfly any longer.

‘Gilbert, you are an evil evil dog from the land of evil’, I grumble as I throw off my doona and glare at the sandy coloured, big dog now curling up to sleep at my feet. ‘Valoura, do you want food?’ comes a shout from somewhere in the distance. Instead of replying I jump up and run to my desk to examine my ant farm, feeling very excited and holding my breath with anticipation. I can see tiny larvae wriggling about and can’t help but let out a giggle at the cute likkle wormy things.

Then I take off, speeding out the door, I fling myself at the staircase, and slide all the way down the dark oak banister until I hit the faded blue tiles at the bottom. I do this every morning. It’s quicker that way. But waiting there is my sister Celia with a plate of pancakes. Smash! Food is airborne; Celia hits the extensive collection of boots, coats, umbrellas, dog leads, filthy toys and a cassowary shaped canister situated near the front door. And me? I sail past shooting Celia a cheeky grin – that is until I hit something tall, lumpy and grumpy.

‘Why must I put up with constantly being assaulted by you Valoura Karuna?’ Aunt Stacey spits as she lifts herself from under my crumpled body.

(Just in time) the door bell rings, it is loud and shrill like a cockatoo with its tail caught in a chainsaw and Bastian, my little brother races to answer it. We hear ‘it’s Billy’, the slam of the door and the rattle of a scooter on the path outside.

‘ Well, that’s Bas off for the day,’ I sing happily, Bastian is never home much, which suits me fine as sometimes he can be a pain in the… you know what I mean. Poor Celia is still stranded on the island of our doorway debris so I help her get to her feet and head off to get my cleaning supplies.

Why would an eleven year old girl need cleaning supplies?

Because I am always, always in a kerfuffle.

*****

I love the word kerfuffle, don’t you? Kerfuffle, it’s just one of those words that just fluffs off your tongue in a warm flumphy kind of way. I actually like words a lot. I like the ones that mean the same as the sound they make – I think they’re called onomatopoeia. And I like nonsense words that mean a lot to some people (like kids) and mean nothing to others. I also like words that help to understand what a person is thinking and feeling because sometimes those things can be hard to pin down. Like a waify wafty ghost.

I finish scrubbing up what looks like it would have been a tasty breaky and then slide into the dining room on my socky feet. Our old floorboards are awesome for ‘socksliding’ a sport that Bas and I compete in regularly. Celia is too ‘mature’ to participate.

A gaggle of people are crammed around our big wooden dining table in various stages of eating. The telly is on with some smarmy weather guy talking about El Nino and rain that is like cats and wombats, yes wombats *roll eyes* and my mum is repairing the kettle. She loves to fix stuff. Bits of our 1990’s sunbeam are scattered all over one end of the table. Celia arrives back from changing her clothes; she has a quirky look of her own of skinny jeans and a jumper covered with multicoloured baubles that she knitted herself. But with bare feet and short, unbrushed hair, she still had that unmistaken haughty look of a teenager in a bad mood.

I quickly look down at my breakfast which now consists of toast and homemade lime marmalade, thanks to my pancakes meeting their doom by my own hands - or rather it was my left elbow that did most of the damage. I try to avoid Celia’s death stare, don’t want to set her off which is not hard to do these days. Celia does start ranting at me so my mum just rolls her eyes and mouths the words ‘it’s the hormones’ at me.

Aunt Stacey is on her mobile, yattering away loudly to some poor person about ‘the blasted idiot’ who rammed her with their trolley at the supermarket. I secretly roll my eyes into my cup of tea and turn to mum.

My mum is one in a million. Not really what you’d expect a mum to be. In short, my mum is a space cadet. She always looks like she dresses in the dark and is constantly muttering to herself about all the things she has to do. Today her bright orange hair is pulled up into a messy bun, she has a pencil behind her left ear and her freckly face is screwed up in intense concentration as she fiddles with the heating element from the jug. Her tongue is ever so slightly peeking out of the right corner of her mouth. I can’t help but roll my eyes again – but in a more chuckle-y, friendly way.

‘What are you up to today mummy-o?’

‘Hmmmm?’

‘mum!’

‘yeeeeeesss?’

‘hello, earth to mum, I wave my hand in front of that freckly face and say slightly loudly and slowly, ‘What-are-you-doing-to-day?’

‘Oh ummmm,’ Beattie puts her screwdriver down,’ I’m doing the cake stall!’ It was like she suddenly remembered who she is, where she is and what day it is!

‘I simply don’t know why you can’t call it a bake sale mother, you know, like everyone else?’ Comes – unsurprisingly - Celia’s exasperated ramble.

‘Because we aren’t living in America dear’, comes mum’s simple reply.

‘Can I help?’ I ask. I know that because it is Saturday my nemesis, Aunt Stacey will be home from work, and I am determined not to spend the day at home with her.

‘Of course sweetie, actually it’s late we better pack up’.

My brother and sister and me are lucky enough to be homeschooled – or at least that’s what Billy Bilberry, Bastian’s best mate thinks anyway. He has to go to Groaning Grammar down the road, but us Karuna’s get to spend every day doing what we like, whether it be swimming in the creek, making Lego towers of doom on the kitchen floor or snuggling up with a book in the house library on a rainy day, often with Gilbert the dog or Spazzy the cat on our laps. Celia had considered going to school when she turned high school age, but one day of bossy, stressed out teachers and bored kids who talked about nothing but texting and Lady Ga Ga was enough for Celia to come home to her knitting and her homemade chemistry lab in the garden shed.

But not everyone thinks we are lucky.

Aunt Stacey, or as I like to call her ’Aunt Bossy’, ‘Aunt Cranky Pants’ or ‘The Evil Witch Queen’, is one. She came to live with my family after her divorce from her husband a year ago. According to mum, at the time Aunt Bossy was cracking up and talking about running off to New Zealand to become a chicken farmer. Good riddance I say. But Aunt Stacey is not chicken farming material. She is a business woman in the city, which means she is always busy and thinks she is very important. In fact every single thing Aunt Stacey says is fact, don’t you know – even if it is completely untrue. And one of those things was that homeschooled kids are lazy and stupid and should be shipped off to school.

But mum explained after one such tirade, ‘Stacey went to school and thinks because she had to suffer thirteen years inside, everybody else should too’.

Mum doesn’t think so. Mum is happier having us kids at home, in our big crumbling colonial* house with a massive garden, on the outskirts of a small country town. At least this way she knows her kids will actually learn something worthwhile; like how to cook a roast potato or how to mend a lawn mower.

*Colonial means that our house is old, like really really really really….oh, you get what I mean.

It‘s taking a while to get the car packed for the cake stall (‘bake sale!’). I guess it would have been a faster affair if I hadn’t packed the car keys in the box of tablecloths that were shoved into the middle of our old yellow station wagon with piles of plates on top. But Bas and Billy have just arrived back from the creek and Billy is small enough to scramble inside and pull them out with his long fingers.

There isn’t enough room for everyone, so me, Billy and Bas decide to ride into town. Billy has to borrow Celia’s scooter (she wont be too happy when she finds out, lol!) and I ride my bright blue