Class Six and the Nits of Doom (8 page)

Now Anil’s skull had changed to something like ripply glass, and inside there was a grey thing like a giant curled-up prawn. There were lots of tiny bits of forked lightning flicking
through it, and just sometimes, like a cloud, you could see the shape of a football, or a laptop, or a stuffed rabbit.

And then Miss Broom gave a sharp I-thought-so sniff and Anil was back to normal, except for being a bit pale and cross-eyed.

‘I see,’ said Miss Broom. ‘This is very clever of you, my dears, but really, you mustn’t worry. Why, you should be delighted and overjoyed. Just think, you’ve got a
teacher who’s a witch. That’s wonderful. Magical. Remember all those boring lessons where you’ve sat there trying to learn the capital of Outer Mongolia, or when Richard the Third
died, or how to use capital letters? Why, with a small spell, I can make it so you never make a mistake with capital letters again. I can make it so you never forget about Ulan Bator, or what
happened in 1485. Yes, being a witch is the best thing ever. Being a witch means I can do anything at all! Anything I like!’

Class Six sank as far as they could get behind their desks.

Miss Broom could do anything she liked?

Yes. That was what they were all afraid of.

‘What have you stuck on your face?’ demanded Rodney’s gran irritably that evening. ‘You look like something from outer space!’

Rodney looked at himself in the mirror. He had antennae with scarlet pom-poms on the ends growing out of his forehead. Gran was right. He
did
look like something from outer space.

‘That’s funny,’ he said. ‘I can’t remember ever going in a space ship. I suppose it must have been ages ago, when I was too young to remember.’

‘And stop making your eyes spin round in circles!’ snapped Gran. ‘It’s enough to put me off my tea.’

‘Is it?’ asked Rodney, brightening. ‘So can I eat your piece of cake, then?’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Gran.

‘My mum put gunky stuff all over my head last night to get rid of the nits,’ Jack reported glumly in the playground the next morning. ‘It stank like anything.
And
then
my mum didn’t find any nits in the comb afterwards, so it was all a waste of time.’

‘These nits are bound to be immune to ordinary nit-gunk,’ said Winsome.

‘They’re probably immune to everything,’ said Anil, who was looking as if he hadn’t slept much.

‘Yes,’ sighed Jack. ‘It’d probably take a nuclear explosion to wipe out these wer-wer-wer—oh blast it, these
whatever
nits.’

Serise was giving Anil a suspicious look.

‘Your voice is beginning to sound a bit deep,’ she said. ‘You haven’t caught it too, have you?’

‘No I
haven’t
!
’
snapped Anil—but his voice boomed on the last word like an owl in an oil drum and made everyone jump.

‘Oh all right, all right,’ he went on, crossly. ‘Last night I sounded as if I’d got a man-sized frog in my throat, but I haven’t got nits, any more than Jack has. I
combed through my hair three times over a sheet of paper and not one single nit fell out.’

‘Well, whatever it is, you can keep away from me,’ said Serise. ‘I don’t want them, thank you very much.’

Emily looked round anxiously.

‘Where’s Rodney?’ she asked. ‘Do you think his mum’s taken him back to the doctor’s?’

‘No, it’s all right,’ said Slacker Punchkin. ‘He’s gone to check himself out in the loos.’

‘Why?’ asked Anil, sharply. ‘What’s happened to him now?’

Slacker shrugged. ‘Nothing really bad.’

‘What’s happened to him?’
asked Anil again, his voice booming round the playground like an anguished tuba.

‘Well, apparently he grew antennae last night, but they’ve mostly gone, now. The thing is…’

‘He’s coming out!’ gasped Winsome.

And, sure enough, there was Rodney coming out of the school building.

At least, it was someone wearing Rodney’s coat. And carrying Rodney’s bag. But…

Serise gulped.

‘No,’ she muttered. ‘Not that. Please. Anything.
Anything
but that!’

Beside him, Anil went the colour of vanilla fudge.

Because Rodney had come out in huge brown spots.

Rodney slunk across the playground in long powerful strides. When he got closer the others could see that his face had gone all velvety and golden.

‘Are you growing hair all over?’ asked Jack.

‘Well, you do as you get older,’ said Rodney.

‘Men are hairy,’ pointed out Anil. ‘They aren’t furry with big brown spots.’

Rodney shrugged. ‘I suppose I must be special, then.’

Miss Broom didn’t seem to notice that the person who answered to Rodney’s name in the register had a developed an all-over coat of shining velvet fur.

That wasn’t all that had changed about Rodney, either. It was difficult to pin down exactly what else was different, but suddenly Rodney was almost…graceful.

At least his trunk had shrunk overnight until all that was left was a thing like a peach-flavour wine gum, so that was something. ‘I expect he’ll be back to normal soon,’ said
Anil, as bravely as he could. He was speaking in a whisper that fooled no-one. ‘I mean, his
voice
went back, didn’t it. By tomorrow he’ll probably be completely all
right.’

‘Unless he’s dead,’ put in Serise, spitefully.

And then she reached up and scratched her head hard.

Class Six had PE that morning. They trudged grimly into the hall—all except for Rodney, who showed a surprising tendency to pounce on people’s shoe laces. But Miss
Broom was so busy unwinding the ropes and pulling out the vaulting horse that she didn’t notice.

Miss Broom dusted off her hands and turned to the class.

‘Now, Class Six,’ she said, ‘I think we’ll start with a short warm-up. All of you place yourselves so you can’t touch the person next to you.’

Class Six were as spread out as they could be anyway, but they shuffled quietly sideways, trying not to meet Miss Broom’s eyes. They were reflecting swooping pterodactyls at that moment,
though, and it was hard to look away.

‘Good. Now, I want you all to copy me. Ready?
One! Two! A one two three!
’

Class Six did their best to follow Miss Broom. To start with she held up one hand up like a policeman trying to stop traffic, and then she wound her other hand round in the air like someone
twirling a sparkler.

Three little stamps with the left foot, then hop onto the right. Repeat twice. Waddle forward seven steps with the toes turned outwards, point your elbows forward as far as you could, twitch
your mouth right–left–right–centre and then left again.

Hop up and down on the left foot while chanting after Miss Broom:

The last bit wasn’t anything to do with Miss Broom. The last bit was the screech everyone made when the floor got suddenly lighter under their feet and they found themselves shooting
upwards, away from the polished parquet tiles.

Class Six came to a stop about half a metre up, and all you could hear after the echo of the scream had died away was the soft thudding of people’s gym shoes falling down to the floor.

‘That’s right, dears,’ said Miss Broom, smiling round at them. ‘Do kick your shoes off. We don’t want them falling down and hurting anyone, do we?’

Class Six stared at each other. They all had pale faces and a hanging-from-a-coathanger look. Everyone’s hair, affected by Miss Broom’s spell, was standing on end, so that they
looked like toilet brushes.

Miss Broom looked round with great satisfaction.

‘Excellent,’ she said. ‘Now. Right arm up in the air, everyone and then,
scoop
downwards. That’s it. Now the other arm. Good. Good. Watch where you’re going,
Slacker, dear!’

And Class Six were having their first ever flying lesson.

It was scary for about twenty seconds, until they worked out how to stop themselves rolling giddily round and round. And then they got the hang of scooping themselves along, and suddenly they
were having the most fun they’d ever had, including that time in Year Two when Mr Holiday spilled glue all down his trousers.

The whole room was filled with great big grins, and children swooping through the air going
wheeeeee!

Miss Broom sat herself down on a window sill and began to drink a cup of tea that had appeared from somewhere or other, and Class Six did every flying experiment they could think of. What they
couldn’t
do was land—when you got to within about half a metre of the floor the air went all thick, like sponge cake, and you sort of bounced back off it. It was the same with
the ceiling and the walls. All in all, it was like being on a huge bouncy castle where you never came down to earth.

Only better. Much, much better.

Emily found she could use one of the curtain rods as a barre for aerial ballet, and some of the boys discovered that they could use the vaulting horse to do the sort of somersaults and spins
that would have won them Olympic gold medals in no time flat. Winsome flew determined, fast circuits of the room, and Slacker lay back on the air and managed to find a way to rock himself gently
from side to side just as if he were in a hammock.

Serise and some of the other girls raced each other in slaloms through the gym ropes, moving as easily as a shoal of fish.

It was brilliant. It was tremendous. It was wonderful. It was out of this…

Miss Broom stood up, threw her cup and saucer over her shoulder, where it vanished, and beamed round at them all.

‘Standing up straight, now, all of you,’ she said. ‘I’m afraid it’s time to go back to class.’

At once everyone in Class Six felt an odd feeling in their insides as if something had been punctured. And they began to sink. Down and down and down…

The floor felt very hard under their feet.

‘Now, find your gym shoes, please,’ said Miss Broom. ‘We’ve got to go across the playground.’

The children’s arms and legs felt heavy. Pulling on their gym shoes was really hard work.

‘Yes, flying is very tiring, at first,’ said Miss Broom, as if she had read their minds. ‘You’ve been using muscles that have never been used in that way before. But
you’ll soon get used to it. Now, line up, all of you!’

Rodney ended up next to Winsome.

‘Do you still believe there’s no such thing as wer-wer-wer?’ she asked him, grinning like a watermelon. ‘As a…you know! As a pointy-hatted magic lady?’

Rodney looked surprised to be asked.

‘Of course there isn’t.’ He frowned so his forehead wrinkled into channels of golden velvet skin, and his green eyes glowed. His teeth were looking pretty pointy, too.
‘Everybody knows that.’

Winsome was used to Rodney, of course. But this time she was so astonished that she could only stand and watch him as he prowled back to class.

Just about everyone in Class Six was scratching, now. They’d given up trying to hide it. And when they answered
Good afterNOON Miss
BrOOM
at afternoon registration, there was a definite hollowness to their voices which they were sure Miss Broom must notice. But she didn’t.

‘Are you getting a sore throat, darling?’ asked Emily’s mum, at home time.

‘No,’ said Emily. ‘I think I’ve caught a special sort of really terrible nit.’

Emily’s mum laughed.

‘Sounds like me when I married your dad,’ she said.

‘But it can’t really be nits, Slacker,’ said Mrs Punchkin. ‘Nits don’t make your voice sound throaty.’

Slacker made a great effort. ‘They do if you’ve caught them from a wer-wer-wer-
wombat
.’

‘You could well be right, love,’ agreed Mrs Punchkin. ‘But I don’t think we’ve got any wombats round here at the moment, luckily.’

Slacker clenched his great fists and tried again.

‘Miss Broom’s a wreck!’
he said, all in a rush.