Class Six and the Nits of Doom (9 page)

‘I’m not surprised, having to teach you all day,’ said Mrs Punchkin.

Class Six ran all the way to school the next morning, and it was only partly because they wanted to find out what had happened to Rodney now.

‘Can’t wait to get here,’ said the mothers to each other, marvelling. ‘Never seen anything like it.’

‘That Miss Broom must be a wonderful teacher,’ said half of them.

‘Yes,’ replied the other half, very impressed. ‘Although, tell me. What exactly
is
a woggle?’

Jack charged into the playground shouting, ‘I’m growing antennae!’

‘Cool!’ said Anil. His voice was getting back to normal, so now he just sounded like his dad. ‘Can you pick up Radio Gaga?’

‘It’s better than that,’ said Jack. ‘I can pick up League Live Match Updates!’

‘Woooh!’ Anil was deeply impressed. ‘I can’t wait for
my
antennae to grow.’

Winsome came running up.
‘
What are those?
’
she asked, pointing at Jack’s antennae, in a voice like slow gravy.

‘They’re digital!’ boasted Jack. ‘I can get about a hundred different stations, just by pushing my teeth in. It’s brilliant!’

Winsome stared, between fascination and envy.

‘Well, I suppose it’ll be all right as long as I wear my hair in an afro,’ she said musingly.

Emily came trotting across the playground to meet them. ‘Hello,’ she whispered.

‘Has your voice gone bellowy?’

Emily nodded. ‘My mum was going to take me to the doctor, but she couldn’t get an appointment. The receptionist said there’s a lot of it about.’

Serise flounced crossly through the school gate.

‘This is just
so
annoying,’ she said, as she reached them. ‘I wanted to wear my silver sandals today but my toes are such a bright green I had to wear these clumpy old
things instead. Look at them! I mean, they are just
so
last year!’

‘Never mind,’ said Winsome, comfortingly. ‘The green only lasts a few hours. I was lucky, it happened overnight to me and it meant I could read in bed by the light of my own
toes. I’ve never been able to do that before.’

Slacker ambled vastly over to them, munching. His hair was sticking up oddly above his forehead.

‘Your antennae are growing, are they?’ asked Jack.

Slacker smiled, displaying a large wodge of mushed crisp.

‘I can get The Foodie Channel,’ he said happily. ‘It’s fantastic. I mean, cooking—it’s so
easy.
Anyone could do it. Even
I
could do it.
I’m going to make a fudge sundae when I get home tonight. Topped with butterscotch popcorn and pecan brittle. And before that a carrot and peach salad with rocket, drizzled with walnut oil
and decorated with nasturtium flowers. Can’t wait!’

He broke off and frowned.

‘Which is a bit odd, really,’ he went on, thoughtfully. ‘Because I don’t usually go in for fruit and stuff. Hey, where’s Rodney? Is he all right?’

‘Oh, yeah,’ said Anil carelessly. ‘He just jumped up that oak tree, trying to catch a squirrel.’

When Miss Broom entered the classroom that morning she found herself greeted by thirty very excited children.

‘Good MORning Miss BrOOM,’
everyone chanted, not even bothering that they were making enough noise for a Cup Final.

‘What are we going to learn today, Miss Broom?’ asked Anil. ‘Because I’ve always wanted to know about quadratic equations.’

‘No,’ said Jack. ‘Can’t we have PE again, please, Miss?’

‘Yes!’ said everyone. ‘PE! PE is just brilliant!’

Miss Broom looked round at them and beamed. Her orange eyes were reflecting something jumbly which might have been a bed of flowers, though it was probably a rubbish tip.

Actually, those shapes swooping backwards and forwards looked a lot like vultures. Yes. Definitely a rubbish tip.

‘I’m very glad you enjoyed PE, dears,’ said Miss Broom, ‘but we mustn’t forget the National Curriculum, must we.’

Class Six groaned.

‘And that means,’ said Miss Broom, ‘that we need to do some Science.’

There was a moment’s silence.
Science
. Well, even ordinary science could be quite interesting if it involved making bridges, or counting cars.

And as for Miss Broom’s sort of science…

‘What are we going to do, Miss Broom?’ asked Slacker. ‘Because I’ve always wondered how the bubbles get inside doughnuts.’

The vultures in Miss Broom’s eyes did loop-the-loops. ‘Well, I thought we’d do some work on habitats.’

Class Six’s hearts sank.

‘We did habitats in Year One, Miss Broom,’ said Anil.

‘And in Year Two, Miss,’ said Winsome.

‘And in Year Three, Four and Five,’ Serise pointed out.

Miss Broom looked at them fondly. ‘But have you done cockroaches?’

Emily shuddered.

‘Cockroaches?’ she whispered. ‘But they’re huge and black and they’ve got lots of legs. They’re really
scary
.’

‘And they’re filthy, too,’ muttered Serise. ‘I’m not touching one of them. I might catch something.’

‘Ah,’ said Miss Broom happily, ‘but my cockroaches aren’t like that. They’re rather out of the ordinary.’

She went to the big cupboard where Rodney had hidden and opened the door. Class Six looked, and gasped. Instead of a cauldron and a black hat, the cupboard was filled with quite ordinary shelves
stacked with piles of paper and spare pens.

Miss Broom heard the gasp and turned round.

‘Anything the matter, dears?’ she asked.

Everybody shook their heads, and those with trunks shook those, too.

‘Excellent.’

Miss Broom got down a small cardboard box, which was standing on a shelf between some exercise books and a bottle of purple ink, and took it to her desk. She folded down the front of the box,
and Class Six found themselves looking into a tiny theatre. There were red velvet curtains, and even some models of small people on the stage.

And then Class Six heard something. It was quite soft to start with, and quite tinny. But it sounded…well, it
sounded
like Sahara Ice Squirrel’s latest single.

Class Six craned forward to look. Those small figures—they weren’t models after all. They were big black beetles. Four of them. Two were holding guitars, one was sitting at a drum
kit, and the other one seemed to be the vocalist.

They were really playing Sahara Ice Squirrel, too. It was hard to see their tiny little legs moving about the fretboards of the guitars, but that drummer was certainly holding a drumstick in
each of its four hands.

Boom
, went the drum kit.
Boom. Boom snitch tara-diddle, boom snitch tara-diddle boom snitch
…

Drrang drrang drrang dodie drrang diddle POW
went the bass guitar.

Trrang ti todie todie trrang ti todie todie
went the lead guitar.

Class Six found themselves beginning to sway in time to the music. And then they began clicking their fingers and tapping their feet. They couldn’t help it. It was as if the music had tied
strings to their arms and legs, and they just couldn’t keep still.

Serise was the first one to start hand-jiving. Anil gawped at her—where’d she learned to do that?—and then, even more amazingly, Slacker suddenly jumped out of his seat,
shouted ‘
Yeah!
’ and threw himself along the aisle between the tables in a long, cool slide.

The tiny beetle band was getting louder, and as it got louder it got more and more irresistible. Anil’s feet were twitching. At first he thought it was just because under his grey school
socks his toes were as green as grasshoppers, but it was more than that. His toes wanted to move. To jump up and down.

His fingers had caught the itch of the music, too. They were bouncing about on his desk. Anil watched them, amazed and appalled. He had never danced in his life. He saw other people dancing
sometimes, but he never joined in. He didn’t know
how
to join in. He’d always been sure that his knees and elbows would stick out, and his hands and feet would go all dangly, and
he’d look like a complete and utter dork.

But now…

Anil didn’t realise he’d got to his feet until he’d done it. It seemed to happen all by itself. He just found himself doing a high-five with Winsome and discovering that his
legs were stomping about in time with the music.

He looked round, dazed, and found that the whole class was dancing. Jack was on the table doing a sort of moonwalk, and Winsome looked like something off an exercise video.

Even quiet little Emily was twirling round very fast on one pointed toe so that her skirt flared out round her. Anil had never seen anyone doing ballet to Sahara Ice Squirrel before, but it
looked quite cool. But then, even
Rodney
looked quite cool. He was sleek and golden and appeared to be dancing a tango with Miss Broom.

Weird
, Anil thought—and then suddenly discovered that he loved it. He loved it. He
loved
dancing.

The music from the beetle band had got even louder, and now there seemed to be words, as well. Yes, when Anil looked over at Miss Broom’s desk he could see that the vocalist beetle
(cockroach—of course, they were cockroaches) was holding a microphone.

The words had
not
been written by Sahara Ice Squirrel.

And then the rest of the band joined in.

This is mad
, thought Anil, but his elbows were doing some really neat things and it was so brilliant he didn’t want it to stop.

This time Anil found himself joining in with the chorus.
Roach roach roach
, he sang. He
never
sang.

If Winsome danced any faster she was going to take off.

Roach roach roach
, Class Six sang, as they stepped and jumped and twirled.

Anil suddenly realised that he was never going to forget any of this. Never. From now on he was going to be an expert on cockroaches.

Miss Broom and Rodney now seemed to be doing the dance called a rumba.

Anil’s feet were stamping and stamping and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop them.

And then there was a huge crash, and everything stopped.