The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie (50 page)

Bindy is my best buddy and one day I hope she'll let me kiss her.

A SUPERNOVA BRAIN WITH THESE GORGEOUS MAGENTA EYES.

Well, she is so Much more complicated, interesting and original than I ever realised! And therefore it's a good lesson for Me. I look forward to knowing her further.

Bindy is very forgiving, and she has a lot of kind of like happiness and love hidden inside her. And she was brave how she used to wear her hair up funny, but Bindy, you may as well keep wearing it out now, ok, cos it looks good like that.

 

 

Bindy Mackenzie

 

I think you are a determined, compassionate, funny, imaginative and kind-hearted person. I think we are lucky to know you.

Bindy, you are STILL so SMART!!! And you still have HUGE words in your head, and that's even though you had chronic arsenic poisoning and acute arsine poisoning!

Bindy Mackenzie talks like a horse & I hope she never stops.

I am extremely grateful to everybody at Pan Macmillan, especially Anna McFarlane and Brianne Tunnicliffe, for their insight and acuity; Mel Feddersen for the wonderful cover and Liz Seymour for the superb design; to my agent, Tara Wynne; to Nicola Moriarty, Sean Moriarty, Fiona Ostric, Katrina Harrington, Steve Menasse, Jane Roberts and Jack Llewellyn, who all shared stories about school with me; and to Frances and Naomi Roberts for Cincinnati information. Thanks, most of all, to my parents, who are nothing like Bindy's parents; to my sister Liane, who wanted to know more about Bindy in the first place; and to Colin McAdam, who was there for me and Bindy, at every single page.

Several texts and articles on poisons were useful in writing this book, among them: John Harris Trestrail, III,
Criminal Poisoning
(Humana Press Inc, 2000–2001); Peter Macinnis,
Poisons: From Hemlock to Botox and the Killer Bean of Calabar
(Arcade Publishing, 2004); Carol Turkington,
The Poisons and Antidotes Sourcebook
(2nd edition, Checkmark Books, 1999); Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, ‘Public Health Statement for Arsenic' (September, 2000); M.Amini, M.D., Arsenic Poisoning: Not very Common but Treatable', (Vol. 3, No. 2, SEMJ, 2002).

Try based her ‘intelligence theory' (very loosely) on the theories of David G. Lazear in his
Seven Ways of Knowing: Teaching for Multiple Intelligences
(IRI/Skylight Publishing, Inc, 1991), and Bindy used the
Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
(Oxford University Press, 2002) to look up ‘cin' words. She was also slowly poisoned by
Our Deportment
(John H. Young, Pennsylvania Publishing Co, 1881) and
Twentieth Century Etiquette
(Annie Randall White, 1900).

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