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  Published by Lemonfizz Media and Scholastic Australia in 2010. Text, design and illustrations copyright © Lemonfizz Media 2010.

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Did you miss Book 1?

  Book 3 coming in April 2010

  Book 4 coming in April 2010

  Back Cover Material

  The school gym was really buzzing that afternoon. The music was blaring and the girls were laughing, but there was still a lot of hard work being done. Everyone wanted to do their best at the state competition, just weeks away.

  Emma Jacks really wanted to do her best but right now she was standing on the beam, stressing.

  Emma couldn’t do it. She wanted to do it. She thought she really should be able to do it. And everyone else seemed to be doing it, which made things worse—a lot worse. But no matter how hard she tried, Emma could not do the high jumps on the balance beam.

  Every time she tried, she seemed to chicken out and do a tiny jump instead. So tiny her coach could hardly see it. And if she couldn’t do the high jump, there was no way she would do well in the state comps.

  ‘Come on Em, you can do it,’ said Hannah, one of the girls in Emma’s squad and also one of her best friends. ‘You jump high all the time when we’re just messing around. Just don’t think about it so much.’

  ‘How can I not think about it, Hannah!’ Emma replied. ‘It’s the one part of the routine I never get right and our comps are about to start. If I can’t get the high jumps right, I’ll let the whole team down.’

  Lauren, who was Emma and Hannah’s coach, had been listening to the girls talk.

  ‘Hannah’s right, Emma. You just need to believe in yourself a bit more. We all do. Come on, what’s the worst thing that can happen?’ she asked, and then answered her own question. ‘You fall off.’

  ‘Yes, but then I lose big points!’ said Emma. Having just missed out on a medal last year, she really wanted one this time, for herself and the team. But that was never going to happen if she fell off—or if she didn’t do the jump.

  ‘But if you don’t even try the jumps, you won’t get any points anyway,’ said Lauren. ‘Think about the jump, not the falling off. You know you can do this but you think yourself out of it. In fact Em, maybe don’t think at all. Just trust yourself and do it.’

  Don’t think. That was hard for Emma. She loved thinking. She thought about things all the time. Even as Hannah and Lauren were talking to her now, she was thinking how her friend’s name was spelt exactly the same backwards as forwards: H-A-N-N-A-H, like E-V-E and R-A-D-A-R and R-A-C-E-C-A-R and her favourite, Y-O B-A-N-A-N-A B-O-Y.

  ‘Emma, are you still with us?’ laughed Lauren.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ said Emma. ‘I was just thinking about’

  ‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh,’ cried Hannah, waving her arms in the air. ‘Just do the jump!’

  ‘Okay, okay!’ said Emma. ‘Don’t think it, just do it.’

  It was Emma’s turn on the beam. She took a deep breath, presented, with her arms stretched up and out, and then started her routine. As always, she talked herself through it.

  Jump off the bounce board and onto the beam. Do the squat and hold—one, two, three seconds. Keep your legs over the beam. That was hard! Okay, high left kick to the front, high right kick to the front, keep upper body in and present. Not bad! High left kick to the back, both hands up in the air, put the left leg back...

  Emma was halfway through and so far, so good. She spun around at the end of the beam.

  Okay, it’s jump time. Big split jump to the right, big split jump to the left. Don’t think about it. Do it!

  But just as she was thinking about not thinking, Emma felt her muscles tighten and her mouth go dry. She could feel herself starting to panic.

  Don’t panic. Just do what you can and finish the routine. Stay on the beam, don’t fall off, stay on the beam!

  She did the first split jump to the right—not a big one but she was still on the beam. Then she did the split jump to the left, which was even smaller than the first one, but at least she had stayed on the beam.

  Almost done! Handstand, pretty good I think, now turn on both feet and run to the end of the beam. Dismount and stick the landing. Present with a big smile!

  It was over. It wasn’t great, but it was over.

  ‘Nice jump,’ smirked Nema. ‘That was a jump, wasn’t it?’

  Nema was one of the girls in Emma’s gym squad but she was definitely not one of Emma’s best friends—at least, not anymore. The two girls used to be friendly but now Nema seemed more interested in her hair, which she flicked a lot, and being randomly mean to people. Emma didn’t bother answering.

  ‘Hmmm, good kicks and great dismount,’ said Lauren. ‘But where were the jumps? I know you can do it, Emma. Just go for it. Next time I want to see really big jumps, even if you fall off the beam. In fact, I want you to fall off!’

  Emma groaned. She knew she couldn’t avoid the jumps next time. Lauren would make sure of it.

  Now it was Nema’s turn. She presented with a flourish, flew onto the beam and completed the routine without a single mistake. She even threw in a new trick from the next level.

  ‘Perfect, Nema!’ Lauren clapped.

  Nema turned and beamed at Lauren. ‘Thanks coach,’ she said, and then with a sideways look to Emma added, ‘I really love jumping!’

  ‘I really love jumping,’ Emma repeated quietly in a high-pitched voice. A perfect routine from little Miss Perfect, she thought. Little Miss Mean Perfect! But then it was Hannah’s turn and her attention turned back to her friend.

  Hannah almost skipped through her routine. She did two fabulous split jumps but then fell off the beam as she balanced for the handstand. As quick as a flash, Hannah got back on, did a brilliant handstand, ran down the beam and ended with a perfect dismount.

  ‘Good work, Hannah,’ said Lauren. ‘Just settle yourself after the jumps before going on to the handstand.’

  ‘No probs,’ said Hannah, cheerfully.

  Why didn’t Hannah mind about falling
off? Why didn’t Hannah mind about anything? And why didn’t Nema have anything to mind about?

  It would be Emma’s turn again soon. There was only one thing she could think of that would get her out of doing her routine again—a mission alert for EJ12!

  Emma was an average ten-year-old girl. She went to school, which she liked, most of the time. She had a family that she liked, most of the time—but not always all at the same time. Life went on pretty much as normal—sometimes really good, sometimes a little bad, sometimes a bit nothing.

  Emma’s favourite colour was blue—aqua actually. Emma liked to be exact about these things and there were some awful shades of blue around. She also liked purple and orange, but not together. She liked apples, pears, mandarins and grapes but she did not like bananas or grapefruit. She did like banana milkshakes though, but thought that banana and chocolate milkshakes were much, much better. Emma liked chocolate. Correction: she loved it. Correction: she adored it. In fact, there was not much Emma would not do for chocolate. Luckily she also loved swimming, basketball and gymnastics!

  When she was not eating chocolate or playing sport, Emma loved emailing her friends, irritating her brother, drawing and reading about animals. Actually, Emma loved animals even more than she loved chocolate.

  She also liked maths. Emma didn’t care that some people thought it was a bit nerdy. She just liked the way you could count on maths. She liked the way the numbers made up patterns and how you could usually tell what was coming next. But most of all, Emma liked numbers because they made sense, they didn’t give you mean surprises, and you could rely on them.

  Doing maths was relaxing for Emma. It wasn’t that she didn’t find it hard sometimes, because she did, it was just that she liked sorting out the problem, she liked making things make sense. One plus one was two. It was always two—it didn’t just sometimes decide to be three or maybe four and then say ‘only joking, two really’. Five times five had to be twenty-five, not 467 or 34,589! It would be twenty-five tomorrow and the next day and all the days to infinity. It didn’t matter what you were wearing or whether you invited it to a sleepover or not, it would always be twenty-five. Emma wished that some of the girls at school could be that reliable.

  It was actually maths that started it all—‘all’ being the one thing that was not so average about ten-year-old Emma Jacks. Emma was a secret agent. She was EJ12, a field agent and code-cracker in the under-twelve division of SHINE, a secret agency that protected the world from evil-doers.

  Emma was selected to join SHINE when she won a primary school maths contest. SHINE needed clever thinkers, especially people who loved maths, and didn’t seem to mind if they were still in primary school. SHINE needed agents to help them crack the codes and thwart the missions of evil agencies like SHADOW. SHINE tried to defeat SHADOW by intercepting their secret messages and foiling their dastardly plans.

  In some ways, Emma would have been just as happy simply cracking the enemy codes and letting some other field agent go on the missions, but that was not how it worked. SHINE had a motto (quite a lot of mottoes actually), ‘If you crack the code, you take the load.’ So Emma, or EJ12, or just EJ, as she was called when she was on duty, would be sent on missions all over the world.

  When she was EJ12, Emma seemed to be able to do incredible things. She could scale high walls, fly hang-gliders and skate across glaciers. She remained calm under pressure and always seemed to know what to do in a crisis. In fact, she seemed to be able to do things that would completely freak Emma Jacks out—why was that? Was it the special equipment SHINE supplied? Emma wasn’t sure but she often wished EJ12 could sometimes go to school instead of her and she wished EJ12 could be the one who had to do gym comps!

  Emma pulled her mobile phone out of her gym bag. She flipped open the screen, hoping for a message. Nothing. It was a very cool phone though, a cross between a game console and a phone, with lots of applications. Many of the apps were top-secret, hiding behind the normal ones on the screen. When SHINE wanted Emma for a mission, her phone would vibrate and the screen would flash aqua. (You could select your own alert colour and Emma had, of course, chosen her favourite.) But right now the phone wasn’t doing anything. It was most definitely, unfortunately, doing nothing at all.

  Well, at least she had a mobile phone now, even if it wasn’t flashing. At first, Emma’s parents had been firmly against letting her have one.

  ‘You don’t really need a mobile, do you Em?’ her mum had said. ‘Why can’t you just use the home phone?’

  Use the home phone? Really, was she serious? Emma loved her mum, but she did wonder about her parents sometimes. Why did they think that mobile phones were just for calling people? What about music, photos, text messages, apps and joining the twenty-first century.

  Suddenly there it was—saved by the flash! (A nice aqua flash.) Mission alert! Excellent, thought Emma. No more no-jumps today!

  ‘Sorry Lauren, I’ve got to leave early,’ said Emma, grinning at Hannah as she headed towards the door.

  ‘But you’ll miss your next turn on the beam,’ said Lauren.

  ‘Oh, what a pity but sorry, can’t help it, got to go,’ called Emma as she grabbed her bag and rushed out of the gym.

  Not for the first time a mission alert from SHINE had saved Emma’s day!

  Emma ran to girls’ toilet block, quickly checked that no one was there and turned on the hand-dryers. The noise of the hand-dryers would be important in hiding the noise of what was going to happen next.

  Emma did often wonder why she had to report in to SHINE in the girls’ toilets. It was not really what she had imagined during her secret-agent training. She was sure there were more secret, spy-like and glamorous ways to start a mission than sitting on a toilet—but perhaps that was the point. Who would ever suspect a top-secret international mission was getting underway in the girls’ toilet block?

  Emma went to the last cubicle on the right. With one more quick glance around the toilet block, she closed and locked the door. She dropped her gym bag, put down the toilet seat, sat down and flipped open the toilet-roll holder. If you didn’t know what you were looking for, you would never notice a small electronic socket on the side of the holder. Emma pushed her mobile phone into the socket and waited. There was a beep, then Emma entered her pin code and removed her phone. Another beep and then a message flashed up on her phone screen.

  EJ picked up her gym bag, grabbed the edge of the toilet seat and counted to three. On three, the wall behind the toilet spun around, with the toilet and EJ still attached. EJ slipped off the toilet seat and onto a waiting beanbag. A protective shield lowered itself down and clicked into place over the beanbag. She was at the top of a giant tunnel slide. It was the SHINE Mission Tube. EJ typed ‘go’ into her phone...

  EJ loved this bit. For the next two minutes she had the best giant slide ride of her life as she whizzed around the corners and down the straights of the SHINE underground tube network.

  The tube was the secret transport system of the SHINE agency. It carried its agents from their home tube to different SHINE locations, including SHINE HQ where agents were briefed for their missions.

  She finally came to a halt at a small platform with a keypad. The shield flipped back. She keyed in her pin code and waited for the security check. This changed every time she started a mission. Sometimes it was fingerprints, sometimes an eye scan, sometimes hair samples. You never knew what it would be—and neither would anyone trying to break into the SHINE network.

  ‘Please sing the first line of the national anthem,’ requested a digital voice. Great, thought EJ. Voice recognition. She didn’t mind singing in the shower but that was about it. She cleared her throat and sang.

  ‘Louder, please,’ requested the digital voice. Thank goodness no one is listening, thought Emma, feeling her cheeks blush. She took a deep breath then belted out the line again.

  ‘Slightly out of tune, but agent identity confirmed. Please drop in, EJ12!’

  T
here was a beep and the floor seemed to fall away as EJ dropped down into a small chamber. The beanbag was perfect for a soft landing.

  EJ was now in the Code Room, a small chamber with nothing in it except a table, a chair and a clear plastic tube coming from the ceiling directly above her. There was a whizzing sound and suddenly a small capsule popped out of the tube and onto EJ’s lap. It was the first code.

  Whenever SHINE intercepted an enemy message, they despatched it to one of their agents for decoding—the faster the better. That was another reason why SHINE had the underground tube network—it got the code to the agent quickly. SHINE could connect their network to the best location for each agent, which in EJ’s case was the school toilets. Hmmm, perhaps she could convince them to have a second location.

  In the Code Room, EJ opened the capsule and took out a small piece of paper and a pen. She always felt a bit nervous opening the enemy message. Would she be able to crack the code? What if she couldn’t? She unfolded the paper—there was nothing there! EJ turned the paper over. The other side was blank too!

  It was unlike SHINE to make a mistake so there had to be something she wasn’t getting. EJ thought hard. If I can’t see the message it must be invisible, she thought. Invisible ... invisible ink? It was worth a go. She searched through the top-secret apps on her mobile phone and then touched one of them on the screen. A small but strong purple light came on—violet actually. EJ scanned the paper with the light and as she did, the message appeared.

  She read carefully.

  EJ laughed out loud. ‘They’re going to have work harder than that,’ she said to herself. ‘This will take no time at all!’ She opened up another app on her phone screen and scrolled down. She knew exactly what she was looking for.