The Rumour That Knew Tomorrow

For grown-ups

Two predictions seem to come true at a maker day. A third names a friend's decision. Your child works out how, and helps the friend keep it.

What your child practises

• Comparing a source's original words with a later retelling of them
• Putting events and records in order, and seeing what came before what
• Telling an arranged result from a forecast, and an action from a claim about why
• Asking a friend what help they want before giving it

Listen for

Your child naming which detail was there before an event, and which was added after it.

Your part

• Let your child choose the lead and run the Pet's comparisons; read a record aloud if asked
• Ask "what shows that?" and "what can't we know yet?", not "who is the bad one?"
• Jules's choice at the end is Jules's; no ending is the brave one

Take it off the screen

Play Rumour Relay with a fresh case, then make an instruction puzzle together in The Instructions Lab.

Where the facts come from

• Library of Congress: Analyzing Primary Sources
• CASEL: What is SEL?

The Impossible Next Door

Book 1 in this series

• Book 1: The Rumour That Knew Tomorrow (this book)

The paper dragon fills the front of the hall. You painted the scales on its tail: two hundred and twelve.

"Two hundred and twelve," your Pet announces. "I counted. Twice."

Jules pushes a folded card at you. On it, a joke is crossed out so hard the pen went through.

"New opening for the open mic. Not funny. On purpose." Jules tries to grin. "Will you hear it before four? Just you."

"Dragon moves at twelve thirty," says Priya, pressing the programme flat on the board. "I pinned this up yesterday. It's the only thing in this hall running to time."

Theo is under a wing, tightening a clip. Mina is drawing the dragon's snout and hiding the page whenever anyone looks.

By the doors, Ari's Tomorrow Box sits on the welcome desk with two sealed envelopes.

At five to twelve, Ms Vale taps the desk for quiet.

"Some of you missed this yesterday," she says. "On Friday at half past four, Ari handed me three numbered envelopes, sealed. Number one went straight to the library and was opened there. Numbers two and three stayed locked in my event box overnight. I wrote it all down." She lifts the box file. "Number two."

She slits it open and reads the card aloud, then stands it in the little card stand where everyone can see.

Ari says nothing at all. Ari just looks at the clock.

Priya leans in. "Noon's in four minutes. The programme says twelve thirty."

"So it's wrong," says Jules.

"Or," whispers Priya, "it isn't."

At eleven fifty-nine, the dragon has two wings.

At noon, it has none.

Click. Click. Behind the transport screen. Then the transport coordinator and two helpers roll a padded rack past you. On it stand both wings. Whole. Unbroken. Ready to go somewhere.

Theo looks from the rack to the card in its stand. "They weren't moving it until half past."

The coordinator wheels the rack through the side door into the workshop and is gone.

The words on the card have not changed.

Theo pulls a crumpled drawing from his pocket: his own plan of the wing clips. Your Pet hops onto it, and a tiny glowing dragon unfolds out of the paper beside the empty sockets.

"I didn't touch those wings," says Ari, before anyone has asked.

Somebody laughs. Somebody else says, "How did you know?"

Ari smiles. "I don't make these things happen. I just know." Ari taps a paper slip clipped to the side of the box. "Card one said it too. The courtyard, half past ten. I said it yesterday."

Beside you, Jules has gone very still.

"That's my slip," Jules says, too quietly for anyone but you. "I wrote it at ten thirty-five, after storytime went inside."

Priya hasn't heard. "Card one knew the courtyard and the time? That's not a guess. That's a timetable."

Mina's pencil stops moving.

At five past twelve, Ms Vale opens envelope three.

She starts reading in the same brisk voice she used for card two. When she reaches Jules's name, her voice falters.

Before she has finished, Ari pins a small card to the box underneath it.

Heads turn. Not to the box. To Jules.

Ms Vale takes both cards down at once. "This display does not decide what anyone will do," she says, very clearly, to everyone. "These go in my file." And they do.

But the man at the craft table is already whispering to his daughter. Two boys by the doors are grinning at each other.

Jules folds the index card smaller, and smaller, and puts it in a pocket.

Two things need doing before anyone leaves this hall.

Someone should check on Jules, properly, away from the whispering.

And someone should get the exact words of those cards, and the times, before the story of them changes. Stories here change fast. You have just watched one do it.

Priya is already saying, "Records first." Theo is already saying, "Jules first." Mina says nothing, which means she is thinking both.

You can do both. But one has to come first.