It was half past five and Isis’s mum was now beginning to worry about her daughter. She should have been back at home by now and she wasn’t answering her phone. She tried calling the school but there was no answer there either. The truth was, Isis was at Samantha’s house, and she was having so much fun that she forgot to call her mum.

 

Samantha had decided to become a millionaire by the time she was fourteen. Her plan was simple. She was going to star in her own YouTube vlog and rake in loads of money. Everyone knows that YouTube vloggers are rolling in free cash. So far, she had published 12 videos, she had 7 subscribers, and she had made 20p. It wasn’t as easy as she had hoped. As she mulled things over, she arrived at the logical conclusion that her videos might be more fun and more importantly, would surely generate a faster financial return if she included some of her friends.

 

Samantha held up her phone, looked into the camera, and said:

 

“Hey guys, Sammy here! This is video number 13. My friends Isabel and Isis are here, and they are both up for the fun person challenge. Stick around for loads of laughs!”

 

She pointed the phone at her friends. Isis had changed into some of Samantha’s clothes that were too tight and too short. She giggled. Isabel pouted.

 

“First off, we are going to play ‘Big Grin’, in which Isis and Isabel are going to give us two lovely big smiles from ear to ear and hold them for 15 seconds.”

 

It sounded easy, but actually grinning into the camera for 15 seconds was surprisingly hard, especially as Isis knew how insane she must look. Isabel didn’t seem to find it at all difficult.

 

“Well done you two, you both looked like perfect idiots,” chirped Samantha.

 

“Oh no, anything but perfect!” exclaimed Isis.

 

Samantha did not respond as she didn’t do ad-libbing and was sticking to the script: “Next we are going to play a personal favourite of mine – Chubby bunny,” She declared.

 

Isis and Isabel had to stuff their faces with marshmallows until their cheeks were full and the soft sweets were popping out of their mouths. When they were totally, grossly over stuffed, they had to say ‘Chubby Bunny’.

 

“Murr wurr, wurr,” they both said idiotically, and Samantha laughed hysterically.

 

“Ok you two, those were the easy tests. Now for Trial By Water Torture. Take your places!”

 

The two challengers sat opposite each other, and drank water from large pint glasses – only they kept the water in their mouths so that their cheeks were puffed out like Chubby Bunnies. Samantha danced around the room, pulled faces, and tickled them until at last Isis could stand it no more. She laughed and spluttered water all over Isabel who shrieked and spat water back at Isis. Both girls were dripping wet. Samantha was in fits of laughter.

 

“How do you feel?” she said pointing the camera at Isabel: “It’s cool to drool,” replied her friend. Then she asked the same question to Isis. She said out loud what she was actually thinking:

 

“I might be dripping wet, but I hope everyone can see that I’m just a normal person.”

 

“Well not quite!” replied Isabel with a laugh.

 

“Yeah, I don’t think our friend Isis will ever be normal,” added Samantha looking into the camera. “Even when she’s trying to make an idiot of herself, she comes out as too perfect to be true.”

 

“Hey!” shouted Isis. “Who says I’m perfect?”

 

“Everyone does,” said Isabel and Samantha simultaneously.

 

Half a minute later the whole house shook with the sound of Isis slamming the front door behind her. She ran down to the bus stop and found that she did not have any money and had to walk home. When she got home, her mother flung her arms around her and said:

 

“Darling, we were so worried. I was about to call the police to report you missing.”

 

And Isis, fighting back the tears, stomped up to her room.

 

Samantha’s video came out later that night. She changed the intro to say “Hello everyone. Today we are going to meet two people from my class. One is my best friend Isabel, and the other is Isis, otherwise known as Miss Perfect Pants, who is so desperate to be cool that she’s agreed to come onto my show and be humiliated. Boy, this is going to be fun!”

 

By Saturday morning it had been viewed 100 times. Then it went viral. By Sunday night the views were up to half a million. By Monday morning a million people around the world had viewed Isis’s ritual humiliation and Samantha had decided to buy a new top-of-the-range phone and a connected watch to go with it, just for starters.

 

Isis stayed in her room all day. It was the first time she had missed school since she had chicken pox aged four and a half. On Tuesday, her mother made her go in. The first person she saw was Desdemonia, who said:

 

“Hey Isis, let’s set up a Latin channel on YouTube and make loads of money.”

 

“No thanks,” said Isis. Some of the boys actually thought she looked pretty good on the video, but Isis never got to hear about that. She ran up to Katie and said:

 

“Please Katie.. I don’t want to be normal, it’s so humiliating. Make me perfect again? I just want to be the real me.”

 

And Katie looked surprised and said: “But Isis, I never did put a magic spell on you. I couldn’t find one that had been verified as safe. You know, a responsible witch only puts a spell on a person if she can be sure that she can reverse it. I couldn’t be sure, so I didn’t do the spell.”

 

“But why didn’t you tell me?’ asked Isis.

 

“Well you were managing to act stupid without the help of magic.”

 

“Oh Katie,” said Isis. “I think I tried a bit too hard to be normal, don’t you?”

 

“Well yes I do,” agreed Katie. “And if you are going back to being perfect, I’m glad, because you were always the perfect friend, and besides, the world needs a few people who aren’t perfectly normal.”

 

And the two friends, both totally abnormal in their own different ways, hugged each other.

And that was the story of Katie and No More Miss Perfect. Bertie would like to thank everyone who wrote in with loads of wonderful ideas for Katie plots after the last story. Storynory listeners really are a creative and imaginative lot, and we love the fact that our characters live and breathe for you. It was Nisha Abbey who suggested:

 

How about Isis is tired of being miss perfect of the seventh grade, so she asks Katie for help? Katie’s not sure about It but she does the spell anyway. Then Isis stops paying that much attention to her work and perfect self, and gets into trouble more often.