Cool School

by John Marsden

  All season long you can hardly wait till the weekends. All season long you sit there with your eyes glued on the team. And all season long they keep winning. The only time they lose is when your parents make you go visit Grandma one Sunday afternoon. They get thrashed that weekend, like you knew they would. It’s uncanny.

  On the day of the Grand Final you persuade Alex to come with you. It’s your first date. But as the match goes on, Alex gets more and more irritated. It’s because you sit there with your eyes glued to the game, of course. You can understand how annoying it must be but you daren’t take your eyes off the ground. It’s such a tight match; never more than a couple of points in it. With seconds to go, and Norths a point in front, the Norths’ full-back fouls a Magpies’ player. The whistle blasts for a free kick, then the full-time siren goes. The player in the black-and-white jumper lines up the ball. The crowd is howling. They’re all on their feet. You have to stand on your seat just to be able to see. This kick will determine the match and the premiership. And just at that moment Alex grabs you and wrestles you back down to your seat. ‘What . . . what . . . what?’ you stammer. ‘I didn’t come out with you just to watch football,’ Alex whispers in your ear. ‘Kiss me now or you’ll never see me again.’

  nfortunately it’s been a hot afternoon. Even more unfortunately the sun streams in through the windows directly opposite the lockers. Most unfortunately of all, when you get to your locker you see a small brown waterfall slowly cascading down the front of the steel doors. You open your locker door and the waterfall turns into a flood. Your friends gather around in stunned silence. There’s only one thing to do. There are no more choices to be made here. You reach into your schoolbag and pull out half a packet of marshmallows that you’d been saving for a special occasion. You hand each of your friends a marshmallow and a straw.

  ‘OK,’ you say sadly. ‘The hot chocolates are on me.’

  m, look, maybe I made a mistake,’ you say weakly. ‘In fact the more I think about it, the more I’m sure I got it a bit wrong.’

  ‘Yes’ says the Principal. ‘I’m sure you did. I think you’ll find Cedric was just wanting to show you his collection of pressed flowers.’

  You nod frantically and give Cedric a nervous smile. He stares back. If looks can kill then you just got terminal cancer.

  ‘Well,’ you say, backing away towards the door. ‘Guess I’d better be moving along. Don’t want to miss any more school. Ha ha ha. It’s been very nice. Thank you so much.’

  And out the door you go. You scuttle straight to your locker and open it with trembling hands. But a moment later Cedric is there beside you. His huge hand grips your wrist and his pale eyes stare into yours.

  You stare back for about two and a half minutes and in all that time he doesn’t blink once. It makes your eyes water to look at him.

  ‘You haven’t seen my flowers yet,’ he says.

  ‘Uh, no,’ you agree.

  ‘Behind the canteen, at lunchtime,’ he says. ‘Be there.’ He releases your hand and you count your fingers carefully. Four, and one thumb.

  What a relief.

  Lunchtime comes and, with a sinking feeling, you walk towards the canteen.

  You don’t want to go, but you know you have no choice. Taking smaller and smaller steps you go around the side of the canteen. And there he is, as large as the Titanic, as ugly as a heavy metal band, as frightening as a retired footballer. You stop in your tracks. You’re not sure how to handle this. It feels dangerous, really dangerous!

  t’s too much trouble to resist, so gradually you let your eyes close.

  Her voice sounds like it’s coming from far away now, like she’s talking to you through a wall.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes ma’am.’

  ‘Good,’ she purrs. ‘Listen closely. From now on you are going to be my eyes and ears in this school. Every time you see someone breaking a rule, every time you hear of someone saying or doing the wrong thing, you will go to the nearest teacher or to me and tell us all about it. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes ma’am.’

  ‘Good,’ she says again. ‘I want to know everything that goes on, everything. No matter what happens, you will report it. Now say, “I understand and I obey.”’

  ‘I understand and I obey,’ you repeat slowly.

  ‘All right,’ she snaps her fingers and your eyes suddenly open. There she is, standing in front of you. ‘Such a sweet little old lady,’ you think. ‘So kind and helpful.’

  ‘Off you go now,’ she says merrily. ‘Off you go to class. Oh, and . . . have a nice day.’

  ‘Thank you,’ you mumble, and you shuffle outside. You pull out your timetable and study it. You’re not sure where you’re meant to be. Is it time for Science or PE?

  he rips the knitting needle out of the books and comes at you again. You heave the jar of jelly beans at her and unluckily miss by a centimetre. She chases you around the desk, but at least this means you’ve now got a clear path to the door. You race towards it, forgetting that it’s locked. But just as you get there it crashes down from the other side, ripping right off its hinges. A crowd of police officers comes rushing in. They grab the Principal and, after a fierce struggle, manage to handcuff her. But behind them, standing in the doorway watching, is . . . the Principal! How can this be? In complete shock you gaze from one to the other. They’re identical! Two women of the same age, dressed in similar clothes, but impossible to tell apart.

  As you stand there, too stunned to speak, the one in the doorway smiles at you.

  ‘I can see what a surprise this is to you,’ she says. ‘As you can now see, there’s a perfectly simple explanation. We are identical twins. Unfortunately Myrtle has suffered from a severe psychopathic delusion for some years now and has been confined. But this morning she escaped and managed to find her way here and bluff her way into my office. I hope she hasn’t done you any harm. She does become quite violent at times.’

  As the Principal speaks, Myrtle is led past, her mad eyes staring at no one and nothing.

  ‘There, you see,’ says the Principal, ‘she’s gone now. You’re quite safe. Why don’t you come in and . . . have a nice cup of herbal tea.’

  ou hesitate, then the man and the woman suddenly start crossing the road, walking quickly towards you.

  ‘Run,’ a kid yells. ‘They’re coppers.’

  Everyone scatters. You find yourself pounding along the road with three other kids. You run flat out for five minutes. At last the four of you stop, panting and laughing.

  ‘Hey, you make a pretty funny teacher,’ one kid says to you.

  ‘Oh well,’ you say, ‘it was good while it lasted.’

  ‘We’re near my place,’ another kid says. ‘Anyone want to watch a video? We’ve got Honey, I Ate the Kids.’

  It sounds good to you, and off you go with your new friends. There’ll be time enough tomorrow to worry about school.

  ot likely,’ he says. ‘I’ve got better things to do.’ Off he goes, leaving you to face a class that’s getting restless.

  ‘Right,’ you say to them. ‘What else do we know about Africa?’

  ‘My aunt rode there on a bike,’ a serious-looking boy in the middle row says.

  ‘She couldn’t do that,’ says a red-haired boy at the back. ‘She’d drown.’

  ‘Are you calling my aunt a liar?’ the serious boy shouts. He jumps to his feet and advances on the red-haired boy. Suddenly they grab each other’s shirt fronts. They’re about three centimetres apart, yelling into each other’s faces. You want to jump between them, to break it up, but you want to stay alive, too. Before you can decide what to do, there’s a cough from the doorway. You turn around and look. The student who walked out of the room is back, and with him is a middle-aged man wearing spectacles. You know that he’s the school Principal. He’s got that look about him. You could tell from half a k away that he’s either a school principal, a dentist, or a sidecar racer at Saturday night spee
dways. There are no other choices.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ he barks.

  You look around urgently, your mind racing, trying to think what to do. A dozen possibilities flash in front of your eyes. You quickly reject the most obvious, like holding the class hostage, detonating a nuclear device, swallowing a proton pill or mooning the Principal.

  Soon you’re left with only two choices: to face the music or jump out the window. It’s a tough call.

  e grabs your outstretched leg and with no obvious effort flips you up into the air. You find yourself doing a triple somersault in pike position. As you soar higher and higher you realise you’re going to hit the ceiling. A moment later you do so, with a thump that sends plaster falling. Next to you is the big overhead fan, which luckily happens to be turned off. You grab the blades in sheer relief and hang on to them like they’re your best friends. ‘Well,’ you think, ‘at least I’m safe here, and I can hang on for as long as I need.’ You take a look down. The class are staring up at you with great interest. You look for the bully. Yes, there he is. He’s walking towards the door.

  ‘Oh good,’ you think, ‘seems like he’s had enough and he’s leaving.’

  But no. He stops next to the door. You realise that he’s not planning to leave after all. He puts his hand on something high up on the wall, near the door. It’s a switch. It’s the switch for the fan. He turns it on. He turns it all the way to the right, to its maximum setting.

  ‘No!’ you scream. Then: ‘No-o-wo-o-wo-o-wo-o-w o - o - w o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo’ as the fan goes faster and faster. You feel your grip on the blades slipping. Suddenly you go flying off into space. You’re travelling at a speed of hundreds of ks an hour. You travel across a crowded shopping mall, where you can hear the voices: ‘Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman! It’s a kid who got caught on an overhead fan!’ You’re competing with helicopters and low-flying aircraft. You fly on forever, until you go into orbit around the Earth. Every three weeks you pass above your home town, and you get a quick look at how everyone’s going. But don’t worry, life’s not too bad. After all, you’re famous. You’ve become a UFO. That’s quite some distinction.

  ou can’t believe you’re doing this but, after all, everyone’s entitled to one mistake. You just hope you get to live long enough to make some more. The two of you tiptoe towards the crypt. The door is half open, creaking slowly in the breeze. There’s a candle burning inside, and you can see a slowly moving shadow on the wall. You feel a terrible coldness that makes your skin tingle. But you can’t help yourself: you’ve got no thoughts of going home now. You just have to know what’s going on.

  Slowly, ever so slowly, like you can’t control it yourself, your hand rises and pushes the door wide open. Inside there’s a frightening sight. It’s Sam all right, opening the lid of a large old dark coffin. You and your friend stand there in shock. Sam turns and looks at you, showing no surprise at your presence.

  ‘What . . . what are you doing?’ you manage to ask.

  Sam smiles at you but the smile makes you shiver even harder.

  ‘I’m going back to where I belong.’

  ‘But . . . but who are you?’

  ‘You don’t need to know that.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to sleep again, for another thousand years.’

  By now Sam has the lid of the coffin open and is climbing inside.

  ‘But . . . but only this morning you asked me if I would go with you . . .’

  ‘Yes,’ Sam says, now in the coffin and closing the lid. ‘I wanted some company.’ The lid is now completely closed and only a muffled voice can be heard, as if from a great distance. ‘I thought you could spend the next ten centuries with me.’

  The candle suddenly goes out and a sharp cold wind rushes through the crypt. You and your friend race outside screaming. You sprint all the way home and hide under the bed for the rest of the night.

  In the morning you think maybe it’s a dream and so you go to school to see if Sam’s there. But something very strange has happened. Not only is there no Sam, but no one’s ever heard of Sam. And that includes your best friends, who’d had crushes on Sam. But now it’s like everyone’s memory banks are completely wiped. Why, even your very best friend, who at midnight was in the cemetery with you as you grabbed each other and shook in terror together, seems to have forgotten the whole thing.

  Yes, there’s only one thing that makes you know for sure that Sam Jarre actually existed. It’s that little scrap of paper with seven sinister words on it: ‘Do you want to go with me?’

  ou know that going home to bed is the smartest move you’ve ever made. For once you’ve done the right thing. You hurry through the deserted streets, your best friend following reluctantly. You keep looking over your shoulder but there’s no one else there.

  When you get to your house you make an agreement that you won’t tell anyone what happened. You whisper a quick goodnight and sneak back into your bedroom. You get in the bed and lie there, trying to sleep.

  But you can’t. You’re still too spooked by what you saw.

  As you lie there you search your mind again and again for an explanation for what happened. But there is none.

  Next day at school the whole place is buzzing with excitement. It doesn’t take long to find out what happened. Sam Jarre got so sick last night at a basketball game that an ambulance had to be called. The last anyone heard, Sam was in hospital, in intensive care.

  You’re shocked and scared, thinking about the episode in the cemetery. You can’t concentrate on schoolwork and at the first chance you sneak off and rush to the hospital.

  When you get there, you see Sam’s mum. ‘Sam got out of intensive care a couple of hours ago,’ she tells you, ‘and yes, visitors are fine.’

  You go on up to the ward. Sam’s lying there in the bed, looking pale but OK.

  ‘What happened?’ you ask.

  ‘It was terrible. I got this sudden viral infection, and collapsed. I nearly died. But you know, a crazy thing happened. Somewhere round midnight I thought I had died. I felt myself start to fly away. But then I saw you looking at me kind of weird and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, what am I doing? I don’t want to die,’ and as soon as I thought that I came back to earth. Don’t you think that was funny?’

  ‘Sure do,’ you answer, with a little secret smile.

  ‘Well,’ you think, as you leave the hospital an hour later, ‘that was the strangest thing that’ll ever happen in my life.’

  o your relief the fire seems to have gone out at last. The lockers have been reduced to ashes and there’s still some smoke hanging around, but the danger is over.

  Well, one danger is over. There’s another that simply won’t go away.

  Coming in the door at the end of the corridor is the caveman himself, looking as mean and ugly as ever. He looks at the remains of the lockers and gives a satisfied smile.

  ‘Lighting fires in your locker,’ he grunts. ‘You’re going to be in a lot of trouble.’

  You almost have to agree with him. There seems to be no way out of this. You stand there looking at the smoking ruins. A moment later a teacher appears at the other end of the corridor. She’s a tall woman with glasses and she gazes at the wreck of the lockers with no expression on her face. You try hard to think of something to say that’ll get you out of trouble, without dobbing in the big thug standing next to you. You know if you dob him in he’ll kill you. But the teacher speaks first.

  ‘Who has done this thing?’ she asks.

  You try to speak but the words stick in your throat. Then you realise that the walking gargoyle next to you has his finger firmly pointed at you. Seems like he doesn’t mind dobbing people in.

  Before you can get your finger pointing back at him the teacher has pounced on you.

  ‘Oh you poor poor thing,’ she says. ‘How unhappy and disturbed you must be to
commit such an act. You must have had a terrible childhood. Tell me, how often did your parents beat you?’

  ‘Every day,’ you say, thinking fast. ‘And twice on Sundays.’

  ‘And there must be so many other unhappy experiences,’ she says sympathetically.

  ‘Um,’ you say, desperately scanning your mind. ‘My goldfish died when I was three.’

  You don’t mention the fact that it died because you cleaned it with Mr Sheen.

  The lady gives a cry of triumph. ‘Come with me,’ she says, ‘to my office. I’m the school psychologist. I’ll give you some chocolate biscuits and you can tell me all about it.’ She leads you away, muttering about a man called Fraud or Freud or something.

  You smile sweetly back at your defeated enemy. Already you can taste those chocolate biscuits.

  ou wrestle Alex off, shouting, ‘No, no, the team needs me!’ Alex walks slowly away. But you don’t care. Well you do a bit, but you’re the complete football fan: nothing means more to you than Norths winning this match. There’s a huge roar from the crowd and you leap back up onto the seat, stepping on your meat pie and knocking over your can of soft drink. For a moment you can’t work out what happened. The players are shaking hands; half the crowd is cheering and the other half have their heads in their hands. And you realise the sad truth.

  During your brief moment with Alex, the player had his kick and scored the goal. Norths have lost the premiership and it’s all your fault.

  Sadly you pick up your team scarf and walk away. It’s terrible. You feel like a real loser.

  You get outside the ground and to your amazement, there’s Alex, leaning against a tree and watching you. You rush over there. ‘I’m sorry,’ you say, ‘but they needed all the help I could give them.’

  Alex shrugs. ‘I don’t know about that. But I figure there’s five months to go before the next football season, and that gives me five months to persuade you that there are some things in life more important than footie.’