the moment it took Pete to realise that it was a plastic skeleton like the one in the biology classroom, his heart almost stopped.
Freddy did a quick scan of the sofa and the desk, but there was nothing of interest. Stale sandwiches. Empty cool drink cans. Chewing gum wrappers. A toothbrush. Clean? Underwear. In one drawer was a huge file. Freddy opened it. It contained copies of school reports. Every single one of them had a fail mark. Many had remarks scribbled across them in red, like Hooray, serves you right to fail, or Johnny is a lazy no-good who is bound to end up in the poorhouse, or Most useless student I ever had the pleasure of failing.
Behind a door next to the skeleton was a dartboard with a photograph stuck onto it.
“Check this out,” exclaimed Pete, “it’s me!” He pulled a dart from his left eye and two from his forehead.
“Well, this just proves it. Schiz loves you. He adores you. I always knew you were his pet!”
“That’s why I visit him in his office so often.” Pete crossed his index and middle fingers. “We’re like this. Blood brothers.”
Freddy raised his fists. “I should beat you up for being the teacher’s pet!”
“Okay! Monday after school, behind the bicycle shed!”
Pete opened the door, and suddenly both boys were silent, in awe of what they saw in the dim torchlight. It was a huge storeroom with row upon row of shelves, all filled with stuff that Schiz had confiscated from his students over the years. Yo-yos, dingbats, hula hoops, pogo sticks, rollerblades and skateboards. Handheld computer games and cellphones. Tennis balls, golf balls and superballs. There were white mice in bottles of formaldehyde (“Good thing Squeak’s not here,” muttered Pete). And yes, there were jars upon jars filled with lumps of what could only be old chewing gum.
Freddy disappeared among the shelves.
Pete sensed his skateboard’s presence. It was somewhere to his left. He grabbed the skeleton’s hand and shook it. “Goodnight, Rose. We have to fly now!”
“Good evening, Smith!” said Rose behind him. “I should have known that Rat Boy would be involved when a mouse stole my key!”
5
Miss Green and a Toad Named Henry
Pete’s first reaction was to duck and run, but Rose uttered a war cry and swiped his legs from under him with a lightning-fast karate kick. He fell flat on his back. Then she grabbed him by the ears and pulled him to his feet again. “Nobody breaks into my school and gets away with it,” she hissed.
Pete felt as if his ears would be torn from his head as she steered him to the door and down the staircase.
She cackled. “No need to call the police now, I’ll just keep you in the basement until morning. We’ll have some serious fun, you and I!”
In the dark main corridor she suddenly stopped and listened. Pete had heard it too: a soft but distinct plop. Another plop followed, and a moment later plop-plop-plop. Rose let go of Pete’s left ear and they turned their heads towards the sound. There was nothing to be seen, only the broken tiles of the corridor reflecting the faint light that filtered through the dirty windows.
Plop. Something came hopping towards them from a shadow in the corner. It was a toad. A giant monstrosity of a toad with skin like grey putty and warts the size of jawbreakers. For a moment Rose seemed to be somewhat at a loss: She needed to do something about this new intruder in her domain, but she didn’t dare let go of Pete’s right ear for fear of losing her prey.
When the toad hopped even closer, her problem was solved. She aimed a kick at the creature’s immense skull.
But just then Miss Green came charging around the corner, her high-heeled shoes clattering on the tiles. “DON’T!” she shouted, waving her hands.
Rose froze like a statue of a soccer player in action, impossibly balanced on the ball of her left foot, with her right foot millimetres from impact with the toad’s skull. To Pete’s utter amazement, she did not fall over. The toad hopped on as if nothing had happened, oblivious of its close brush with death by steel-tipped biker boot.
Miss Green strode past Pete and grabbed the toad. It was so big that both her hands could not encircle its abdomen.
“Stupid frog! Don’t ever do that again!” she chided, and then she turned to Pete. “Don’t just stand there, help me!”
Pete extracted his right ear from Rose’s grip.
Miss Green thrust the toad in his face. “You carry him.”
He took the cold slimy creature, and she turned and started to walk back the way she had come.
The toad promptly began to inflate itself. Soon it was the shape of a rugby ball, and then it was as round (and as big) as a soccer ball. It floated up like a helium balloon.
The Biology teacher stopped and looked over her shoulder. “You coming?”
When she saw the floating inflated amphibian, she came back and tried to grab it by a hind leg.
It had already floated beyond her reach. Instead she waved her finger at it. “Oh, stop that, H–” For a brief moment she seemed to choke. “Henry! You’re behaving like a spoiled child!”
The toad looked embarrassed. It burped a massive burp that made Pete’s eyes water, deflated to its normal size and hit the ground with a PLOP.
Miss Green picked it up and started walking down the corridor again. “Come!”
“What about Rose?” asked Pete, recovering from the toad’s breath. The caretaker still stood with her boot pointing at the ceiling.
“Leave her.”
Pete touched the immobilised woman. She fell over like a mannequin, her body rigid in the same position.
“But is she okay?” he asked as he followed Miss Green into the Biology classroom.
Miss Green placed the toad in a large glass tank. “She’ll wake in a few hours’ time with a bad headache. Won’t remember a thing about tonight.”
That was a relief.
Or was it? Miss Green was a teacher after all, and would have to report him to Schiz.
“I picked my new toad up at the airport tonight, and brought him to the school immediately. No space for him in my little flat. He’s come all the way from Venezuela.” She took a round-bellied flask from a shelf, filled it with water and placed it on a tripod. Then she lit a Bunsen burner under it. “Coffee?”
Pete nodded. There had to be some way to escape. The lab’s windows were barred and it had only one door. After seeing what she had done to Rose, Pete was sure she would zap him with magic before he could even reach it.
She sat down. “So, that explains my presence here. What’s your excuse?”
The rows of wooden benches, the hamsters and guinea pigs in the cages as well as the snake in the glass tank, the posters
