The Trouble with Sauce (9 page)

At lunchtime, under strict supervision, Jonty, Nathaniel and Prune were allowed to join the queue at the school canteen. The yard was as silent as ever, as each student filed past the window, got their food, put sauce on it and kept moving. Like the rest of the school, the kitchen was now run by the students.

‘Are you going to have tomato sauce with your lunch?’ Jonty asked.

‘No, I’m allergic,’ said Nathaniel.

‘It’s not organic,’ said Prune.

‘Sshhh!’ Anastasia, their monitor, told them to be quiet.

Jonty ignored her.

‘I used to hate it,’ said Jonty, ‘but now I love it. I can’t get enough.’

‘Sshhh!’ Anastasia said again.

Jonty pulled a face at his friends, trying to get
them to understand what he was saying. ‘I think Mr Foster REALLY likes tomato sauce, too!’ he said slowly.

‘I imagine so,’ replied Nathaniel. Jonty was acting very strangely.

‘I said
silence!’
barked Anastasia.

The queue moved forward. In a minute, they would be at the front. Jonty had to get them to understand before they reached the window.

He mimed squeezing tomato sauce onto an invisible hot dog, pretended to eat it and then put his hand to his head and shook it, staring straight ahead like a zombie.

Prune shrugged. Nathaniel bit his bottom lip and thought.

The student in front of Jonty in the queue had taken her vegetable pie and was squirting on the tomato sauce. Nathaniel looked at her and then at all the other students silently eating away. No matter what they had ordered: chicken burgers, tofu sandwiches, even fruit salad, they all had tomato sauce on it.

His eyes opened wide, as he realised what Jonty was trying to tell them. There wasn’t a moment to spare. Jonty was planning to act right away. Before he could whisper anything to Prune, it was Jonty’s turn at the counter.

In a second Jonty took a sauce bottle from the counter and squeezed as hard as he could — right into the eyes of the students serving them.

Nathaniel grabbed the other bottle and squeezed it in Anastasia’s face. Prune looked stunned, as if her friends had gone mad. Then it suddenly clicked.

‘Oh, the pills are in the tomato sauce!’ she shouted.

That was why Mr Foster had been in the kitchen and his hands were red. Every day each student put tomato sauce on their food and that was how they got their dose of brain pills. Jonty, Prune and Nathaniel weren’t affected because none of them ate tomato sauce.

‘At last!’ Jonty shouted. ‘Now stand guard!’ He tossed the tomato sauce bottle to Prune and she squirted sauce at anyone who came close.

Jonty leapt over the counter and into the kitchen. The students there were staggering around, blinded by the sauce in their eyes. He had to find the main supply of tomato sauce, and quickly.

‘All speed, my friend,’ Nathaniel called out. ‘We cannot hold them off forever!’

They were squirting as much sauce as they could at the students to keep them back.

Jonty ran up and down the kitchen, searching the shelves. There were big tins of vegetables, loaves
of wholemeal bread and huge tubs of low-fat cottage cheese, but no tomato sauce.

He pulled everything he could off the shelves to see what was behind them. Jars and cans cascaded down around him. A giant jar of strawberry jam smashed onto the floor and spread red goo everywhere. A four-litre bottle of light mayonnaise crashed down too, coating the jam in a layer of creamy white. Jonty pulled the top off a huge round tin, hoping to find the sauce. He pulled so fast that the tin toppled over and a cloud of flour erupted into the air.

‘Hurry!’ shouted Prune. Her sauce bottle had run out. She ripped off the top and flicked what was left at anyone who came near her.

‘I can’t find it!’ Jonty shouted through the cloud of flour.

‘We need more ammunition!’ Nathaniel yelled back.

Jonty ran to the fridge and pulled out a tray of sparkling mineral water cans. On his way he shoved the two servers, who were staggering around trying to wipe sauce out of their eyes and sent them toppling back to the floor.

‘Here,’ Jonty said to Nathaniel, ‘serve up some Coke facials!’

‘But it’s mineral water.’

‘So it’s a healthy facial. Just do it!’

Nathaniel grinned at Jonty’s powdery white face. ‘The number of students taking tomato sauce suggests that there’s a vast amount stored here,’ he said. ‘Look for the largest container there is.’

Jonty turned round. Apart from a huge oil drum sitting on the ground, he had gone through every food container in the place.

Nathaniel shook the cans of water and handed them to Prune, who fired them off at anyone approaching. He glanced over his shoulder at the oil drum.

‘What’s that doing in there?’ he called out.

Jonty looked at him in triumph. That had to be it.

The triumph didn’t last long. Boris and Mike burst through the side door. The fury in their eyes shot through the floury atmosphere as they turned from him to the drum, and let him know that Nathaniel was right. They moved towards it to drag it out of the kitchen.

Jonty leapt at them. He charged at Boris first, pushing him down to the ground. He spun round in the mayonnaise until Jonty kicked him and his body slid across the kitchen floor and slammed into a stack of shelves. Three massive pots fell and clattered down onto his head.

‘Help me!’ Mike called the servers to help him drag the drum over to the door. Jonty had to stop them. He looked for a weapon. All he could see were
three big tins of vegetarian sausages, so he grabbed one and hurled it at Mike.

‘Watch out — incoming!’ he shouted. Mike looked up just in time to see the tin slam into his chest. He staggered back. Jonty fired the other two cans off at the servers and knocked them over yet again.

He enjoyed seeing them all sprawled out on the floor, but he had to act before they got to their feet. The drum was half his height and filled to the lid with the sauce. Jonty could tell it was really heavy. First he tipped it onto its side. Then he bent his knees, breathed in hard, flexed his muscles and tried to lift it up with one arm on either end. He used every bit of his size and strength to move it off the ground, but it slipped. His hands were too greasy.

He took a few quick breaths, wiped his hands on his shirt and —

‘Behind you!’ Prune screamed from outside. Boris had got up and was moving towards him. Without even turning round, Jonty swung his right arm back as hard as he could. It slammed into Boris’s stomach, winding him and sending him crashing to the floor again.

Jonty steeled himself to lift again. He had to do it this time. He had to destroy the tomato sauce for the good of the school. He looked at Boris there on the ground, slipping in mayonnaise and flour. His eyes
were filled with pure hate. Jonty had got used to seeing the hate. It made him ugly. He was so used to it, he had almost forgotten the time when it wasn’t there. Jonty wondered how he could have been best mates with someone who had such spite in his eyes.

‘Jonty, you can do it!’ Nathaniel drew him back to the job at hand.

He breathed, wiped his hands again and gripped either side of the drum tightly. Then he bellowed and lifted as hard as he could. Every muscle in his body strained with the effort. The drum lifted. It was off the ground. He could do it. He would do it for everyone. He raised it further, using his chest to take some of the weight.

He would do it for Nathaniel and Prune.

He took a step forward. He would do it for all the kids in his class.

Another step forward. He would do it for Boris and Mike.

He reached the counter.

He would even do it for Henry the Octopus.

He stood there for a second. It wouldn’t be enough just to roll the drum over the counter: the drum had to burst open so that all the sauce would be lost.

‘Mr Foster’s coming,’ said Nathaniel.

‘Come on, Jonty! I’m sending you all my energy.’ Prune rubbed her hands together and threw her
energy at him. He smiled, feeling the sweat pour down his face.

‘One … Two … Three …!’

He raised the drum above his head like a weightlifter. Then he crouched down and paused for a second. Prune gasped, worried that he was about to topple over.

‘Aa-argh!’ Jonty pushed his arms and legs with all his might and threw the drum as far as he could.

Over the counter, it shot into the air.

Nathaniel’s jaw dropped as it flew right over his head. He could not believe anyone was so strong they could throw it that far. He watched and his open mouth broke into a smile as it crashed to the ground. The force of the crash threw the lid off and tomato sauce exploded out in a flying lake of red.

Mr Foster was standing directly in the line of fire as the sauce hit the air and splattered him. His face, glasses and entire body were drenched in tomato sauce. ‘The sauce!’ he screamed. ‘My students, my perfect students — that was our whole supply!’

For a second no one did anything. Jonty gripped the counter, dizzy with all the effort. Prune stared at Mr Foster covered in sauce. Nathaniel put his hand to his mouth.

‘Quick, the sauce!’ A voice broke the silence.

Like a starting gun, it fired all the students into action. They dived on the liquid. Boris and Mike shot
over the kitchen counter and bounded towards it on all fours. They scooped it up in their hands, smeared it on their mouths and crammed down as much as they could. One boy climbed into the open drum to lick it out. An older girl pulled him away, determined to get the sauce still in there, then she was hauled out by Henry the Octopus. Jonty and his friends watched as the whole of Mannington High was on the ground below them, licking the dirt, desperate to get all the tomato sauce into their mouths.

Mr Foster stood still, unable to see anything through his sauce-covered glasses. Boris watched him with a hunger in his eyes. While the others fought over the stuff on the ground, he had a better idea. He launched himself at Mr Foster, knocked him down and greedily sucked the tomato sauce off his tie. Soon the others followed. Like a pack of dogs at a bone, they took all the sauce off his clothes.

‘Yes, yes — my students, my brilliant students, here!’ Mr Foster said and held up his glasses so they could clean them for him. Hands reached up, snatched the glasses and tore them apart in their hunger. Within ten minutes the lot of it had been licked up. The ground was empty and the oil drum was clean.

Jonty clambered out over the counter. ‘We did it,’ he panted. ‘We did it'. He grinned happily down at his friends.

Prune beamed back. He had never seen such a huge smile on anyone’s face before. ‘You were amazing,’ she said. ‘Superhuman!’

‘You were good.’ Nathaniel didn’t seem so happy. He couldn’t take his eyes off all the students, as they sat around, licking their lips.

‘That was totally mad,’ said Jonty, ‘but it’s over now.’

‘Umm, I think not.’ Nathaniel stared straight ahead. Everything was about to get a whole lot worse.

‘We must remove ourselves from the school immediately,’ Nathaniel said as calmly as he could.

‘But the sauce has all gone!’ Jonty didn’t understand why he was so worried.

The students were lying down, enjoying the feel of the sauce in their stomachs. They didn’t care that their smart new uniforms were covered in stains and their identical haircuts were all messed up.

‘They look like happy cows in a paddock,’ Prune added.

‘They’re not cows,’ said Nathaniel, grabbing his two friends and trying to drag them away. ‘They’re lions. Now come on.’ He bent forward to drag his friends along, but his small body couldn’t move them.

‘Okay, okay, we’re coming!’ Jonty said and followed him.

‘Walk calmly, but quickly,’ said Nathaniel.

They picked their way through all the students and once they were close to the school gate, Nathaniel broke into a run. Jonty had never seen him run so fast. His small legs spun round, driving him forward faster and faster. Jonty could barely keep up. Prune was even slower.

‘Why are we running?’

‘Just do it!’ Nathaniel called over his shoulder. He didn’t stop running until they were at least four streets away from the school.

Panting furiously, he waited for the other two to catch up.

‘You should be in the athletics team,’ said Jonty. ‘What’s the panic?’

Nathaniel took a moment to catch his breath. ‘The pills were all in the tomato sauce, correct?’

‘Yeah, but — ’

‘And that huge drum was probably about three months supply of their brain food.’

‘Yeah, so what?’

‘They have consumed three months supply in ten minutes. If a small portion on a tofu burger supercharges their brains, what do you think that huge overdose will do?’

Prune immediately got out her crystal from her pocket and clutched it to calm herself down. ‘But they were learning-obsessed and horrible before!’

‘Exactly,’ said Nathaniel.

Jonty looked back in the direction of the school and a shiver went down his spine. ‘What do think they’ll do?’ he asked.

‘Well they’re going to be quite demented in their desire to learn everything.’

‘But they already know everything!’ said Prune.

‘Precisely. They will become frustrated, angry and violent,’ said Nathaniel.

Prune and Jonty were grateful for being made to run away from school so fast.

‘There is no way I am going anywhere near that place!’ Prune announced.

‘A very good idea,’ Nathaniel agreed.

‘But we’ve got to prove we were right,’ said Jonty. ‘We have to show someone.’

It was so frustrating. For the second time he thought they had fixed everything, but they had only made it all worse.

‘Sorry, guys — guess I’ve stuffed things up,’ he said.

‘No!’ Nathaniel shook his head. ‘No one knew that they’d scoff down all the sauce. Besides, if they can’t access any more supplies, it will wear off, eventually.’

‘I suppose so.’ Jonty felt a bit better.

‘We will simply avoid the school for a few days
until they’re back to normal.’ Nathaniel made it sounds easy. ‘Agreed?’

‘Agreed,’ the other two said.

For the next three days they acted as normal as they could at home. Each morning they got dressed in their uniforms, had breakfast and set off for school. Then, as soon as they were out of sight, they changed direction and headed into the centre of the city. Each day they went home at four, pretending they had been at school. They took turns to decide their activity for the day.

Nathaniel took them on a tour of the public libraries and the science museum. Prune took them to a woman who cleansed their auras and predicted their futures. She said Nathaniel was going to be a football player and Jonty would design brilliant software and earn a fortune in India. Even Prune admitted that she might have got the boys’ futures mixed up. On the third day Jonty took them to all the stores he knew where you could play Wii free of charge.

When they got thrown out of the last store with Wii on the third day, they discussed whether they should go back to school the following day.

‘I think it’s time we did. We could be missing out on valuable lessons. I don’t wish to be bottom of the
class when everyone else is normal again.’ Nathaniel didn’t like the idea of playing truant, even if they did have the best excuse in the world.

Prune shook her head. ‘Can’t we leave it a few more days, just to make sure? My crystal’s getting really bad energy from this idea.’

Jonty realised they had to time it exactly right. If they went back too early, the students could still be crazy. If they left it too late, they’d be in trouble for staying away. He suggested that in the morning they go to Caplan Street. It was near the school, but too near. It was also on a steep hill that overlooked the grounds.

‘We’ll be able to see the school from that distance. I’ll bring some binoculars and we can check if it’s safe.’