earth to stop spinning. “Thank you,” he said at last.
“I’m Jerome,” said the man. ‘I’m the caretaker here at the school.”
“Ngiyabonga, baba,” said Zed.
Jerome helped him to his feet, throwing another look up the embankment. “That one is no good,” he said, shaking his head.
Zed nodded, testing his limbs to see if anything was missing.
“I saw him,” said Jerome. “That night.”
Zed looked up sharply. “What night?”
“Saturday night,” said Jerome, mopping his brow with his sleeve. “Before the fire.” He nodded in the direction of the caretaker’s rooms. “It was dark, but I saw him. Outside the gates. I knew then there was trouble.”
“Do you think it was him who started the fire?’
Jerome didn’t answer, but his face seemed to darken.
“There has been trouble at this school,” he said. ‘There is something bad at this school. I could feel it. And when the fire came – I wasn’t surprised.”
Zed felt that same shiver pass through him that he’d felt earlier.
Zed left by the bottom gate and walked the long way home. He bundled his grass-stained shirt into the back of the cupboard where his mom might not find it for a while, and brushed his teeth, then brushed them again, but he could still taste grass and sand. His whole body ached. He was too tired even to go to the garage and read more comics.
There was a rattle against his window. Katey was balancing on the fence outside, throwing pebbles. She jumped down and landed neatly in his yard, like Catwoman. She should be the superhero, he thought glumly. She’d be much better than me.
“Hey, Katey,” he said.
“Zed! Why aren’t you dressed?”
“For what?”
“You haven’t forgotten the circus tonight, right?”
The circus!
For weeks they’d been looking forward to Buckman’s New-Worlde Circus. It wasn’t the usual kind of circus, with animals and trapezes and that sort of thing. Richard Finucchio had heard that there were bearded ladies and people who could swallow red-hot coals and Carvella, the world’s fattest woman.
His mom had given permission, and Katey’s folks were going to drop them off and pick them up, and Zed had been as excited about it as anyone. But now he just felt tired and sore, and he wanted to be alone to think about what had happened, and think about the fire at the school, and Daniel Dundee, and he wanted to think about being a superhero …
“Zed! You’re not thinking about flaking out of it, are you? I need someone to go with me!”
“What about Ulric Chilvers?” said Zed. “He’d go with you.”
“I don’t want to go with him,” said Katey. “I want to go with you.”
After reading
| 4. | Why do you think that Katey giggles – something she never does – when she first meets Ulric? |
| 5. | Zed appears to be losing confidence in his own superhero status. Why? Which super-powers does he not have so far? |
| 6. | What history is there between Zed and Daniel Dundee? |
| 7. | What does Zed learn about Bighton School from Jerome, the caretaker? Does this surprise you or not? |
| 8. | What is different about Buckman’s New-Worlde Circus? |
| 9. | What makes Zed say that Katey should go to the circus with Ulric Chilvers instead of him? |
| 10. | Write down an example of onomatopoeia from the first page of this chapter. |
| 11. | What does the expression “he couldn’t put his finger on it” mean? |
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