When Emma Hall's school announces that it's going to stage a production of Samson & Delilah, Emma feels slightly sick - being up on stage in front of everybody really isn't her style. It's much more the kind of thing that Emma knows her best friend, Kate, would be brilliant at (Kate is brilliant at everything and in fact if she weren't so nice, they definitely wouldn't be friends ). But something inside Emma is niggling her, making her want to be up there treading the boards and smelling the grease paint with everyone else (she has a sneaking suspicion it's something to do with genes inherited from her very over-the-top mother - dramatic sigh ) the particularly un-glamorous and please-let-the-ground-swallow-me-up role of Third Donkey Losing the lead to her best mate, Emma can just about handle but when she starts to lose Kate to a boy (honestly ) Emma feels very rejected. When her other friends are completely unsympathetic (Nicky busy gleefully tormenting the younger kids and Peter starting to act very strangely around her these days) Emma wonders how on earth she is going to survive this year - let alone as third donkey