Class Six and the Nits of Doom (5 page)

Anil frowned. ‘You know, I think Serise is right. Rodney
must
have caught something when he was in the cupboard. Perhaps a spider bit him, or he breathed in some poison dust, or
some cauldron gloop got on his fingers and he didn’t wash his hands before lunch.’

Serise scowled at Rodney.

‘
Did
you wash your hands before lunch?’ she demanded.

Rodney opened his mouth, remembered about the library book, and shook his head.

‘So what can we do?’ asked Jack. ‘What can we do? Miss Broom will be here any minute, and
what can we do
?’

‘You’ll have to answer for him,’ said Anil.

‘Me?’ asked Jack, appalled.

‘Yes. You sit next to him. Whenever Miss Broom asks Rodney a question, you’ll have to sort of lean over and say the answer.’

‘But she’ll see my lips moving,’ objected Jack. ‘All I can say without my lips moving is
gottle o’ geer
!’

‘Well then, everyone in front of Rodney and Jack will have to sway sideways so Miss Broom can’t see their lips. OK? But try to do it naturally, so Miss Broom doesn’t notice
anything odd.’

Everyone looked at each other. None of them looked happy.

‘Or,’ said Anil, ‘if anyone’s got a better idea…’

But no-one had.

The afternoon was torture.

‘Rodney?’ asked Miss Broom. ‘What’s your middle name, please, dear? I can’t quite read what it says in the register.’

Class Six swayed gently towards the middle of the room and Anil dug Jack in the ribs.

‘Er…horsemeat!’ blurted out Jack, mad with fright.

Jack wasn’t as stupid as Rodney, but sometimes he got close.

Miss Broom frowned and peered at the register.

‘Really?’ she said. ‘I think I must need some new glasses. It looks more like
Cedric
to me.’

‘Rodney?’ asked Miss Broom, a bit later, when Class Six were learning about Healthy Eating. ‘What’s
your
favourite sort of fruit, dear?’

Class Six relaxed a little. That was a question anyone could answer. Jack only had to say
apple,
like nearly everybody else.

‘Er…conkers!’ said Jack, white with panic.

Luckily Miss Broom laughed, but Class Six nearly exploded from sheer tension.

‘Rodney, dear!’ Miss Broom asked soon afterwards. ‘What do
you
eat for breakfast?’

Class Six crossed their fingers as they swayed gently across in front of Rodney and Jack.

‘Florn cakes!’ said Jack, his tongue in a tangle of terror.

Serise rolled her eyes as Miss Broom looked at Rodney in surprise.

‘
Florn
cakes?’ she echoed. ‘How interesting. And delicious. But you know,
I
thought the only way to get to Florn was on a broomstick.’

‘Phew!’ said Winsome, when Class Six finally tottered out into the playground. ‘Home time. We made it!’

Emily was white and shaking.

‘All those monkeys were really scary,’ she said.

‘Nice bananas, though,’ said Slacker with satisfaction.

‘But what are we going to do about Rodney?’ demanded Serise. ‘Jack can’t keep answering for Rodney for a whole school year. He was rubbish enough at it for one
afternoon.’

Winsome sighed. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Miss Broom will notice before long.’

Everyone looked at Rodney, who was shambling along looking clumsy and confused. Well, at least that was normal.

Anil put his head on one side.

‘I don’t think he’s looking quite such an odd colour,’ he said. ‘He went really bright plum purple when we were having story time, but he’s a softer sort of
shade, now. More like a mouldy potato.’

‘Perhaps he’s getting better,’ said Winsome, hopefully. ‘Rodney, try not to talk to anyone, all right? When your mum asks you if you’ve had a good day at school,
just grunt a bit. And then by tomorrow you might be feeling better.’

Rodney nodded, scratching his head.

‘And that’s all we can do, is it?’ asked Serise scornfully. ‘Hope he gets better?’

Winsome shrugged. ‘Well, people do usually get better from most things,’ she pointed out. ‘Whatever Rodney’s caught, it’ll probably wear off.’

Serise snorted.

‘What Rodney’s got is a dose of magic,’ she said. ‘And I doubt very much that a good night’s sleep is going to have much effect on that!’

And she turned and walked off.

‘So,’ said Winsome’s mum, when she got home from work. ‘How was your first day in Class Six, Winsome?’

Winsome thought about it.

‘Exciting,’ she said.

‘Well, education
is
exciting. What did you study?’

‘Oh, quite a lot of things,’ said Winsome. ‘Times tables, to start with. I can even do sums like fifteen times twenty-nine now. In my head.’

Winsome’s mum beamed proudly. ‘Wonderful! If you carry on like that you’ll get right to the top, girl, just where you should be.’

The top of what? Winsome wondered. She’d always hoped she might get to be a doctor, but now it looked as if she might end up being something quite different. Like a rat. Or a
toadstool.

‘And Miss Broom?’ went on Mrs Lee. ‘How is she?’

Winsome opened her mouth to tell her. But then she only said, ‘She’s pretty exciting, too.’

Slacker Punchkin’s family didn’t really talk to each other much. Their mouths were usually too full. But Slacker’s very big sister Violet did stop chewing for
a moment to ask, ‘How was Miss Broom?’

Slacker shifted his vast shoulders in a shrug. There was no need to say anything. Violet was two years older than he was: she must know all about Miss Broom. So why oh why oh why hadn’t
she
told
him?

Ah yes. Of course.

‘A bit pointy-hatted,’ he mumbled, through a cream cake.

Violet nodded with perfect understanding. ‘Algernon still around?’ she asked.

He nodded back, glumly.

‘Hmm,’ said Violet. ‘Well, you’ll probably be all right. Just so long as you’re careful. As long as you’re
very
careful.’

Slacker reached out for another cream cake. He needed to keep his strength up, and his wits about him, too.

He was going to be very very
very
careful.

Serise’s little brother and sister wanted to hear all about her first day with Miss Broom.

Serise thought about telling them about it—but the last thing she wanted was Floriss and Morris waking up screaming in the middle of the night, so she just told them Miss Broom was a bit
like a godmother from a fairy tale.

‘Aaah,’ said Serise’s mum fondly, when Serise had gone to bed. ‘Serise is such a lovely little girl. So kind to her little brother and sister.’

Serise’s dad hadn’t noticed many signs of Serise being kind to anyone.

But he was even more scared of his wife than he was of Serise, so he didn’t say anything at all.

Emily
did
wake up screaming, so she spent the rest of the night with her mum.

Rodney’s mum and dad both worked late on a Monday, so he had his supper at Mrs Giddings’ house. Mrs Giddings was all right, but luckily Mr Giddings hated anyone
talking while the telly was on.

That was why neither of them realised that Rodney’s voice had gone as deep as a giant’s burp.

When Rodney took his socks off that night he discovered that his toes had turned green, too.

The worst thing, though, was that his head was still itching and itching and
itching.

Anil spent the evening on the internet. He discovered eighty-seven different ways to get rid of witches, but some of them were impossible (where on earth could you get
unicorn’s horn?) and some were certainly illegal. Worse than that, some of them were extremely risky.

It took him ages to get to sleep.

Jack went to his gran’s house on a Monday. She was doing her judo exercises, as usual, so he helped himself to a biscuit and watched TV.

‘So, how was it?’ asked Gran, when she had finished beating up invisible villains. ‘Miss Broom all right, is she?’

‘Awesome,’ said Jack. And then stopped and listened to what he’d just said. He’d meant to say aw
ful,
but it had come out wrong.

He tried again.

‘Awful,’ (yes, he could say it!)

Except that somehow his voice had carried on all by itself: ‘—ly good,’ he said.

Gran looked surprised. Jack liked lots of things—fighting Gran at judo, football, trains, and spaghetti bolognese—but she had never known him be very enthusiastic about school
before.

It wasn’t even as if he
looked
enthusiastic. His face had gone bright red, as if he was being strangled by an invisible snake.

‘Miss Broom,’ he went on, hoarsely, as if the words were tying knots round his tonsils. ‘She’s…a…wer…wer…
washing machine
!’

‘A what?’

Jack tried again.

‘She’s a…a…a
witchetty-grub
! A
weeble-dooly
! A… a…a…
wurlitzer
!’

Gran looked impressed.

‘Amazing, the words they teach you at school, nowadays,’ she said. ‘But you be careful, boy: too much knowledge can melt your brains like jelly fritters, you know.’

By that time Jack had a strong feeling as if his nose was about to explode, so he gave up, exhausted.

Jack had never been clever, but three things were clear to him. Firstly, Miss Broom
was
a witch. Secondly, as he couldn’t tell anyone, he couldn’t get anyone to help him.

And thirdly, unless he used what few brains he had really carefully he was going to end up in deep, deep trouble.

The next morning Class Six gathered in the bright cold of the playground. Most of the children looked as if they hadn’t got much sleep, but Anil seemed rather pleased
with himself.

‘I bet my brother five pounds I could do any times sum he gave me in my head within five seconds,’ he said.

Jack’s mouth fell open.

‘Brilliant,’ he breathed. ‘Hey, I can’t wait to try that on my dad!’

Anil shook his head.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘Look, no offence, Jack, right, but you’re quite stupid, aren’t you?’

‘Yeah,’ agreed Jack. ‘So what?’

‘So, no-one will believe you can do difficult sums in your head in a million years,’ Anil said. ‘You should ask for more a lot more than a fiver. Ask for twenty!’

Jack’s eyes bulged.

‘
Twenty pounds?
’

‘Yeah. Stands to reason.’

Serise narrowed her eyes calculatingly. ‘I think I might ask my mum for a horse.’

‘But…you don’t like horses,’ said Winsome.

‘Hmm, that’s true,’ admitted Serise. ‘Perhaps a pair of over-the-knee boots, then. Or a new jacket. Or…’

Slacker ambled up munching a cake.

‘My big sister told me to be careful with Miss Broom,’ he said. ‘So I’ve decided the best thing is to maintain a low profile.’

Anil looked up at the mountain that was Slacker Punchkin.

‘Well, that’s not going to be very easy,’ he said. ‘You’ve got a profile like Mount Everest. And that’s when you’re lying down.’

Winsome looked at her watch. ‘Rodney’s not here yet.’

Jack went to the gate and looked both ways along the road. ‘There’s no sign of him.’

Emily turned pale.

‘Perhaps he’s got worse,’ she said. ‘Perhaps they’ve taken him to hospital!’

‘Perhaps he’s scratched his head so much that his skin’s worn through and he’s got blood trickling all down his face,’ said Jack.

‘Ew!’ said Serise.

Emily’s face went even paler.

‘Perhaps he’s dead,’ she whispered.

But Anil shook his head. ‘There can’t be anything much wrong with him,’ he said. ‘I mean, look over there at those mums. They’re just talking to each other about
quite boring things, aren’t they? If Rodney had anything serious they’d be yacking and yacking and yacking.’

‘That’s true,’ said Slacker Punchkin. ‘Whenever anyone drops dead my gran can’t wait to tell everyone about it.’ Slacker put on a cracked old-lady voice:
‘“
Have you heard Clint Gherkin’s died?
” She always knows all about it even if it’s someone in another country that no-one’s ever heard of.’