by Sally Prue
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.’
Emily gave a long shaken sigh of relief.
‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘But then, where is Rodney?’
They all thought about it.
‘Wherever he is, he’s missing school,’ said Jack, with a trace of envy.
‘I bet he’s gone to the doctor and got some banana medicine,’ said Slacker, envious too.
And then the bell went and they all trooped in to class.
‘Now all of you stand up, please, Class Six,’ said Miss Broom, after she’d called the register. ‘Good. Now I want everyone to touch their right ear with their left hand. No, their right ear, Jack. That’s it. Now everyone try to touch the ceiling! Stretch! Excellent. And now let’s try running on the spot. Come along! Left-right-left!’
Class Six ran until they felt woken up. Then they ran until they felt full of beans. At the front Miss Broom was running too, her little plump legs in her brown stockings pumping up and down so fast that all you could see was a blur.
‘Jolly good!’ she cried. ‘Faster!’
Class Six ran until they were scarlet in the face and they thought they might be going to explode. Even Slacker pounded away until the classroom windows were rattling in their frames.
‘Marvellous!’ said Miss Broom at last. ‘All right, everybody, you can sit down again now.’
Class Six sank gratefully into their seats, so red in the face they looked like uniformed tomatoes. Though actually, Slacker looked more like a uniformed aubergine.
Miss Broom looked round at them all. Her eyes were sharp as holly prickles. ‘Well, you’re all obviously quite fit,’ she said. ‘That’s good. For a moment I was afraid you might be allergic to my special…er…teaching methods, and that would have spoiled everything.’
Class Six did try to summon up a little weak coughing, but it only managed to sound pathetic and desperate.
Miss Broom waited for the noise to die down, and then she smiled, showing her sharp little pearly teeth.
‘So now,’ she said. ‘I think it’s time to do some spelling.’
And she took a black wand out of her desk drawer.
Class Six sat up and blinked. There was a bell sounding. But…
‘Is that the fire alarm?’ asked Slacker Punchkin groggily.
‘No, no,’ said Miss Broom. ‘That’s the bell for playtime. Off you go, all of you!’
Class Six, very puzzled, stumbled into the playground. They squinted round. The sky was grey, but it still seemed very bright.
‘I think I must have been asleep,’ mumbled Jack.
‘Me too,’ agreed Slacker, yawning like a hippopotamus. ‘Hey, hang on a minute! I was so fast asleep I’ve gone and left my breaktime snack in my backpack. There were three Fatso Bars and two cheese pasties in there! What am I going to do now?’
Winsome was still blinking.
‘But we can’t all have fallen asleep,’ she said. ‘Not unless…’
‘She’s gone and enchanted us, hasn’t she?’ said Serise, outraged.
‘She must have done,’ agreed Anil. ‘There’s no way we’d all have fallen asleep otherwise. So the question is, what’s she done to us?’
Winsome frowned.
‘Does anyone remember anything?’ she said. ‘Because I seem to remember all the books in the reading corner diving off the shelves and then flapping round the classroom.’
‘Yes, I remember that,’ said Emily. ‘And all the letters and pictures fell off the pages as they went, until they were as white as seagulls.’
Slacker grunted.
‘Those letters,’ he said. ‘They tasted of vinegar toffee.’
Jack gasped. ‘You mean you ate them?’
‘Course I did,’ said Slacker. ‘It was better than letting them all dive up my nose, wasn’t it? At least I got to taste them. They were quite rubbery, though.’
‘I could taste them even though they went up my nose,’ admitted Anil. ‘But to me they tasted of peppermint.’
Winsome clutched at her hair. ‘But this is impossible,’ she said. ‘It just must be a dream.’
‘Yeah, and we all dreamed the same thing,’ said Serise, rolling her eyes. ‘That was no dream, Winsome. That was wa-wa-wa-wigglecraft.’
‘I remember, now!’ exclaimed Anil. ‘She got a wand out of her drawer and then she said something about spells.’
‘No, not spells,’ said Jack. ‘Spelling!’
And then Class Six were chattering as fast as they could, remembering the taste of the spiky letters and the sound of the books flapping round the room.
Suddenly Emily gasped.
‘I can spell necessary,’ she announced in amazement.
Everyone stopped chattering and thought about it.
Jack blinked. ‘Hey, when I think about how to spell necessary two little lizards sort of pop up in front of my eyes holding a banner with the word NECESSARY written on it.’
‘Red lizards, wearing green ties?’ asked Slacker.
‘That’s right.
On pogo sticks.’
Class Six all stood and thought, and then Serise let out a small shriek.
‘I can spell anything!’ she said. ‘Even queue!’
‘And meringue,’ said Slacker Punchkin, licking his lips.
Jack began jumping up and down.
‘I can spell anything at all!’ he shouted. ‘Anything! I can even spell… I can spell… I can even spell DIARRHOEA!’
And then he stopped jumping about quite suddenly and looked a bit puzzled for a moment. And then he put up his hand to his head and he began to scratch and scratch and scratch.
‘I don’t know what it is, but it itches like mad,’ said Jack.
‘You’ll have to sit at the back of the class and hope Miss Broom doesn’t notice you,’ said Winsome, despairingly.
‘A fat lot of good that’s going to do,’ muttered Serise. ‘Jack’s gone and caught Rodney’s lurgy, that’s what’s happened. And if it’s that catching then we’ll all be getting it!’
Anil hunched his shoulders.
‘We’re going to die, then,’ he said.
‘Nooooo!’ shrieked nearly everyone. ‘I don’t want to die!’
But Winsome drew herself up bravely.
‘We don’t know what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget that Anil’s always looking on the bad side. Remember the time he said Mr Wolfe had grown a tail? And that turned out not to be true.’
‘You don’t know that,’ said Anil. ‘He probably keeps it tucked down inside his trousers.’
‘Or the time Anil said that when he went to the seaside he saw Mrs Elwig swimming in the sea with a pod of killer whales? And then when we got back to school there Mrs Elwig was, as usual.’
‘Sitting in her wheelchair smelling of fish,’ muttered Anil. ‘With a rug over her legs, singing songs about sailors, and hardly ever bothering to breathe.’
Winsome waved all that away.
‘And as for Rodney,’ she said, ‘we’d have heard if he’d dropped dead. You know what grown ups are like, they’d have been talking about nothing else. Rodney will be—’
‘Over there!’ screeched Jack, pointing.
And there he was, just getting out of his mum’s car.
‘But…that can’t be Rodney,’ said Emily. ‘That’s someone with black hair.’
They watched Rodney walk through the school gate. When he got closer they could see that his hair wasn’t really black—it had purple and green glossy streaks, like a magpie’s back.
There was something else a bit odd about him, too, but it took Class Six a while to work out what it was.
‘Your nose has got bigger!’ said Emily, in horror. ‘It’s…it’s…’
‘It looks a bit like a trunk,’ said Serise.
It was only a very small trunk, but there was no doubt about it.
‘Yes,’ said Rodney. ‘My mum took me to the doctor’s, but he says it’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Well, at least your voice is back to normal,’ said Winsome. ‘Perhaps all these other symptoms will go away by themselves too.’
Rodney shrugged.
‘It is quite odd, though,’ he told them. ‘Because my toes have gone bright green. And when I sneeze…’
As he said it his trunk began to twitch and his face got redder and redder. Class Six all screamed, and they were throwing themselves sideways when it happened. There was a sound like someone punching a sack of flour, and Rodney sneezed.
Inwards.
His trunk shrunk until it was the size of a surprised caterpillar, and his belly ballooned outwards. There was a whole series of small explosions as the buttons on his shirt popped off.
One other thing happened, too. His ears shot out from the sides of his head as they were if on elastic—and then they whizzed back into place again with a sharp and painful snap.
Class Six got up slowly from where they’d thrown themselves out of the way of Rodney’s sneeze.
‘Well, at least if Rodney’s sneezes are going inwards then he isn’t going to give us anything nasty,’ said Winsome.
‘But he already has!’ squeaked Emily. ‘Look at Jack. He keeps scratching and scratching, and that’s what Rodney was doing yesterday.’
Jack shrugged, and scratched some more.
‘I’ve only got an itchy head,’ he said. ‘It’s probably a case of galloping dandruff or something. Or nits.’
Slacker shook his chins. ‘That’s not nits,’ he said. ‘Nits are ordinary, like veruccas and tooth rot. They don’t make your nose get bigger.’
‘They don’t make your toes turn bright green, either,’ said Serise.
‘Ordinary nits don’t,’ agreed Anil. ‘But don’t forget Rodney was wearing Miss Broom’s hat yesterday. Perhaps he caught them from that. Special wer-wer-wer—oh bother it! Special magic nits.’
Class Six exchanged glances.
‘Jack did have his head really close to Rodney’s yesterday when he was answering for him,’ said Winsome. ‘He could have caught them then.’
Jack scratched his head again, and as he did everyone else’s scalps began itching and itching in sympathy. Class Six folded their arms and gritted their teeth and vowed that they weren’t going to start scratching. This tickling was just in their minds. It was. It was.
‘I don’t want to get magic nits!’ whimpered Emily. ‘I don’t!’
Everyone’s shoulders had begun to twitch, now, as the itchiness of their scalps got worse. It felt as if little spiders were crawling through the roots of their hair. As if tiny needles were pricking into the skin. And they just had to…
‘This is terrible,’ said Anil, suddenly. ‘If these are nits then they’re incredibly powerful nits. These are NITS OF DOOM!’
And at last Class Six put their hands up to their heads and began to scratch and scratch and scratch.
As soon as Miss Broom arrived in the classroom she gave out lumps of modelling clay and asked Class Six to write stories. Everyone was so keen not to attract Miss Broom’s attention that they sat as still as statues, apart from the occasional twitch and wriggle to try to soothe away the itching, and wrote like mad.
Writing a story was easier than usual because the lumps of clay squeezed themselves into the shape of everything they wrote about and acted out the story for them.
Ten of Class Six’s stories were about football, seven were about ponies, six were about winning talent shows, six were about bullying and one was about cake.
None of them was anything at all to do with witches or magic of any kind.
‘You’re such good children,’ said Miss Broom, when the bell had gone and Class Six still carried on writing even though their clay figures had rolled themselves back into balls and thrown themselves neatly into the clay bin. ‘But it’s time for lunch now.’
By that time Jack’s nose was beginning to wobble slightly whenever he turned his head and Rodney’s was so long it kept getting in the way when he was trying to eat his pizza.
Class Six edged their chairs as far away from Rodney and Jack as they could, but everyone’s scalps were still itching and it was ever so hard not to scratch all the time.
‘What’s it like, having a trunk?’ asked Anil.
‘All right,’ said Rodney. ‘Except I can tell that this pizza smells of mice and drains.’
‘And burning,’ said Jack—and then clapped his hand to his mouth because his voice had come out in a great huge burp that echoed round like a moose in a drainpipe.
‘Who’s making that row?’ snapped Mrs Barnett from the hatch, crossly brandishing her ladle. ‘Stop it at once or I’ll send for Mrs Elwig!’
Serise went to scratch her head, and then didn’t. The whole class kept bringing their hands up towards their heads and then pretending they just wanted to wave at someone. All the little kids in Class Three kept half-waving back and then looking behind them. They were getting really confused.
Anil put down his knife and fork.
‘This is terrible,’ he said.
‘There’s no getting away from it. We all must have caught it.’
Emily began to cry.
‘I don’t want a trunk!’ she wailed. ‘I don’t want a big burpy voice. I like my toes the colour they are!’
Winsome gave her a hug.
‘It’ll be all right,’ she said bravely. ‘Rodney’s voice is back to normal, so that shows he’s getting better.’
‘But look at his nose!’ said Serise. ‘I bet he can sniff the crumbs off his own chin.’
Rodney looked pleased, and tried it.
‘I can, as well,’ he said proudly. But the crumbs must have irritated the inside of his nose, because it began to wobble and twitch.
‘He’s going to sneeze!’ shouted Jack. ‘Watch out, he’s going to sneeze!’
Everyone tried to get out of the way, but the dining room chairs were so squeezed together that there wasn’t room. Jack tried to duck and ended up dunking the end of his nose in his custard, and Winsome tore off a button when she tried to get under the table.
Slacker and Serise, both wedged in helplessly, each got bashed on the side of the head by one of Rodney’s elastic ears.
Class Six stood in the playground, keeping plenty of distance between them, with their arms folded to stop themselves scratching their heads. The rest of the school were playing happily in the sun, but Class Six didn’t feel like playing at all.
‘But what can we do?’ asked Emily, in despair.
‘If we told our mums they’d get us some nit cream,’ suggested Jack.
Anil shook his head.
‘That’d kill ordinary nits,’ he said. ‘But these…these are different. I mean, they’ve turned Rodney’s toes green, so they must have got deep down into his system. Nit cream won’t help with that.’
Slacker Punchkin heaved a sigh.
‘How can you stop magic?’ he asked.
‘Horseshoes are supposed to work,’ said Emily.
‘Oh, that’s all right, then,’ said Anil. ‘In that case all we have to do is look out for a horse next time we’re at the shops and persuade it to let us borrow some of its footwear.’
