like one!”
“You’re a pig. A PIG. Pig-pig-pig. PIG!”
Freddy swung his right fist at Pete’s nose, but Pete ducked and grabbed him around the waist. They tumbled onto the floor in a tangle of arms and legs, knocking the desk over. Pete’s books went flying. After a short scuffle, Pete sat on top, his fist raised.
“WAIT!” said Freddy.
Pete hesitated, still ready to strike.
Freddy seized the opportunity. “We’re friends, remember?”
Pete got up. “Friends don’t do things like that to friends, Freddy.” He stooped and picked up his books. “Friends stand up for each other, they stick together.”
Freddy got up too. “I …”
“Just go away,” said Pete.
“That was some stunt you pulled in the school hall this morning,” said Miss Green, the new Biology teacher, a bit later as she entered with a stack of books on her arm. She was dark-haired, beautiful and, according to Freddy, smouldering. Pete thought she wore way too many necklaces and bangles, and used too much make-up. He got up to help her with her load. Perhaps he could get parole for good behaviour.
“Was that your skateboard?” she asked. “I’d like to see it, if I may.”
Pete scowled. “Old Sch … Mr Schulz confiscated it.” He carried the books to her desk.
“It must be fun having a magic skateboard.”
The books dropped to the floor. She knew! Pete’s face turned red. He got down on his knees to pick them up.
The silver bangles on her wrists tinkled as she knelt next to him on the carpet. “I can see magic, you know.”
Pete got up and stacked the books on the desk. He knew she was telling the truth. She could see magic – she had the sight! The idea made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.
“A friend made it for me,” he said. “He’s dead now.”
“Mr Humperdinck.”
She knew about Mr Humperdinck!
Pete sat down at his desk and opened his Maths book. “I have to do my homework now,” he said, meaning, Please leave me alone.
Thinking of Mr Humperdinck still caused his chest to ache.
“And I have to run to the office.” She walked to the door. “We must talk some time. We have a lot in common, Pete.”
The next day, Freddy appeared at the window again. Pete ignored him as he climbed over the sill, a large roll of paper in his hand.
“I have a new project,” said Freddy.
Pete stared at his school atlas, where a beetle he had caught in the school yard that morning was navigating the Strait of Hormuz.
“It concerns you,” said Freddy.
Pete scowled. He coaxed the beetle with his pencil to land on the shores of Iran.
Freddy stuck the paper under his friend’s nose. “Want to know what it is?”
“Go away!”
“It starts with an S …”
“Stupid-Stinking-Stinkbug Slime. Leave me alone!”
Freddy unrolled the paper. It was a blueprint of the school building. He buried Pete’s beetle under the boys’ toilets.
“Sss-skateboard,” he said in Pete’s ear. “We’re going to retrieve your skateboard.”
“Where did you get this?” Pete said in awe, his anger forgotten. A plan of the school! All those mysterious and secret places teachers disappeared to when they were off duty had to be on there.
Freddy smiled smugly. “I have some resources.” He poked his finger at the blueprint. “You know this room?”
Pete nodded; he knew it by bitter, painful experience. “It’s Schiz’s office.” The cool white lines on the blue map belied the horror of the space they represented.
“This is not his REAL office,” said Freddy.
“He has another one?” Pete had a fleeting vision of a dark dungeon with flickering candles, and skeletons dangling from the ceiling. “Where is it?”
“This,” said Freddy as he drew an X with his finger on some obscure room on the first floor, “is where he goes when he wants to be alone. His inner sanctum. And he has a storeroom here, full of stuff he confiscated from kids over the years.”
He paused for a moment and moved closer to Pete’s ear. “That’s where he keeps … The Jar.” He barely breathed the last words, as if afraid to say them out loud.
A chill slipped down Pete’s spine. “The Jar?”
“When he catches you chewing gum in his class, he makes you spit it into The Jar and take out somebody else’s to chew.”
Pete shivered. It had to be the most depraved form of punishment he had ever heard of.
“About twenty years ago someone got one of the old pieces that hadn’t been chewed for some time,” continued Freddy. “It was a rock-hard, fossilised ball of spit and chewing gum. The poor kid broke a molar. Schiz got into trouble with the school board, so after that he removed the hardest pieces. But they say he kept them all. He has rows of jars with gum that had become too hard to chew.”
“What for?”
Freddy looked over his shoulder and whispered, “They say he plays with it when he goes off his rocker. It calms him down.”
Then he explained his plan of action, but Pete was too unsettled by the idea of The Jar to pay any attention.
“There is one crucial piece of hardware that we will need,” Freddy eventually concluded. “A dictaphone.”
“I may get one at the bicycle shop,” said Pete, and then he thought of something else: “If we get caught, Schiz’ll have us thrown in jail.”
Freddy shook his head. “I don’t think so. We’ll probably just disappear for ever.”
2
Maggie Kisses a Stranger
The doorbell tinkled and whistled a tune when Pete entered the bicycle shop on the ground floor of Paradise Mansions that evening. It was an old-fashioned copper bell, fastened to the door with a spring.
“The shop is closed for renovations!” someone said from the darkness behind the shelves. “Please close the door on your way out.”
“It’s Pete, you fool!” yelled the doorbell. “How many times do I have to tell you that when I whistle ‘Mary
