Cool School (17 page)

hat . . . what do you want?' you ask nervously.

‘I want you!' he snarls.

At the word ‘you' a whole gang of his friends leaps out from behind trees and telegraph poles and bins. They all have weapons: baseball bats, cricket bats, rocks, flame throwers, .38 revolvers, surface-to air missiles, nuclear bombs, and Paddle-pop sticks.

‘Help!' you scream. But it's too late. They set upon you and smash you into a messy pulp. Next thing you know you're floating on a cloud, looking down on a group of people in a graveyard. They're standing around a hole in the ground. In the hole is a coffin. Everyone's crying.

You recognise your parents, your brother and sister, your last teachers, your neighbours.

‘Such a fine human being,' they sob. ‘Such generosity! Such personality! Such talents!'

‘Used to borrow my tapes without asking,' your brother mutters, but no one except you hears him.

‘Always took the window seat in the car,' your sister mutters. No one hears her either.

‘Such a hard worker,' the adults sob. ‘Such modesty! Such courage! Such a sense of humour!'

‘This is getting boring,' you think. Anyway, you're distracted by a funny ache in your back. You drop your shoulders and wriggle a bit, but it won't go away. You put your hand back and feel your shoulder blades. There's a strange feathery growth there. No, there are two strange feathery growths. As you feel them, they get bigger and bigger. Suddenly you realise what they are. You take an experimental run along the cloud and, sure enough, you find yourself rising easily, lifted by your flapping wings. Above your head comes the sound of harps. You fly up towards them, as the voices of the mourners fade away.

‘Such leadership! Such compassion! Such an angel!'

nough is enough,' you decide, and run straight at the window.

‘Stop!' the Principal cries, but you're determined to make your escape.

You've done a lot of high jumping, so you figure you'll have no trouble leaping through the window. It's only a metre from the floor, and it's open. You get to it, take a big jump and make it easily. Only then do you remember that you're on the third floor. Seems like this is high jumping of a different kind; jumping from something high. You fall with a bloodcurdling scream. It curdles your blood, let alone the people watching from the ground. They politely get out of the way as you crash beside them.

When you awake you're in a hospital bed. Your legs and arms are both in traction, your neck is in a surgical collar, your head is bandaged and your jaw wired. There's a nurse standing there. ‘Well,' she says, ‘how are we today?'

‘I don't know how you are,' you try to say, ‘but I'm a mess.'

Your mouth is so sore the words come out as a mumble.

‘Well,' she says, ‘think positive. Remember if you believe you can do it, you will.'

‘OK,' you think, ‘I believe I can go ice skating in New York City, right now.'

Nothing happens. The nurse leaves the room, but five minutes later she's back again. ‘You've got a visitor,' she announces. You look up, and there's the Principal, standing there unsmiling. Your jaw's still hurting from the two sentences you mumbled at the nurse, so you wait for the Principal to do the talking. But you're nervous. Just how much trouble are you going to be in?

o,' says the Principal, ‘you seem to have a few problems.'

‘Um, mmm, mmm,' you mumble.

‘That's too bad,' he says.

‘Um, mmm.'

‘But it's nothing to the problems you're going to have when you get back to school!' he shouts suddenly.

‘Urgle, gurgle?' you ask, your eyes opening wide in shock.

The Principal speaks softly now, but every word comes whispering through your ears and floats around in your brain.

‘Impersonating a teacher!' he says. ‘Have I got some punishments for you. You will copy out the dictionary twelve times. You will mow the school lawns, using a pair of blunt nail clippers. You will learn volumes one and two of the
Encyclopedia Britannica
off by heart and recite them to the whole school at assembly. Every morning you will clean all the windows of the school from the inside, and every afternoon you will clean them from the outside. I'll teach you to drag the good name of my school through the newspapers,' he hisses. ‘You'll be thirty-five years old before you finish the detentions that I'm going to give you.'

‘You have some more visitors,' the nurse announces, coming back into the room.

Your parents enter, holding bunches of flowers and grapes, and armfuls of books and magazines. It sure is a relief to see them. Your mother notices the Principal standing there.

‘Oh,' she says. ‘I was hoping I'd run into you.'

She hands the Principal a sheet of paper. He takes it.

‘What's this?' he asks.

‘It's a writ,' she says grimly. ‘Claiming half a million dollars from you and the Education Department for inadequate supervision of my child.'

‘Glub, glub,' says the Principal. At least you think that's what he says. Suddenly he sounds like he's the one with a broken jaw. He holds the writ like it's a piece of second-hand toilet paper. But to you it's like a passport out of your troubles. You roll your eyes at your mother and make frantic noises.

‘What is it, dear?' she asks, coming to your bedside and patting your brow. ‘My poor darling diddums, what did the nasty horrid school do to you?'

You wriggle your eyebrows at the Principal.

‘Is half a million not enough?' she asks. ‘Would you like me to make it a million?'

‘No, no!' you cry. ‘Nuffing, nuffing.'

‘Nothing?' she says in amazement, falling backwards. ‘You can't be serious! Nothing?'

But the Principal is looking at you with new hope in his eyes.

‘S'right,' you say as firmly as possible, grinding the words between your teeth. ‘Nuffing.'

The Principal hurries to your bedside.

‘What a fine example to your fellow students!' he says in delight. ‘What a paragon of virtue. What an honour to have you in our school. How would you feel about being school captain?'

‘OK,' you say, after a moment's reflection. After all, there's nothing like a happy ending.

he gives you a sweet smile.

‘Are you comfortable there, dearie?'

‘Yes, sure.'

‘Because I do like my students to be comfortable.'

She goes out for a moment and comes back with a cup of hot chocolate and a portable TV. You lie back and prepare to enjoy yourself.

‘Got any good videos?' you ask.

‘Why certainly, dear.'

You spend the morning watching TV. For lunch you send out for a pizza, and charge it to the school's account. Every half hour the Principal pops her head in. ‘Are you happy?' she asks. ‘Am I doing enough? Anything I can do to improve?'

After a few hours of this you get sick of it and tell her not to bother you again. She disappears, fast. You lie back and pick up the remote control to start another video. Only one little nagging doubt worries you. What are you going to do tomorrow? Just how long can you get away with this? You reach for the white pages and look up the list of schools. It's a nice long list, and every school has a Principal.

Should take you a few months to work your way through that lot. You settle back in your armchair and press the ‘play' button.