The Trouble with Sauce (3 page)

‘That was awesome!’ Mike punched Boris on the shoulder. ‘Haven’t laughed so much in years!’

‘I couldn’t believe they fell for it.’ Boris laughed.

‘Yeah, amazing,’ Jonty added. He waited for Boris to acknowledge that it had been his idea in the first place. He didn’t. It didn’t really matter. It had been Jonty’s idea, but they had created the MySpace interest groups together and sent the notifications out — so they’d both had a share in the stunt.

As they were thinking about what they’d do next, a major problem appeared. The crowd of students started to move off and in the distance there was Henry the Octopus, the guy whose ball Jonty had kicked through the science lab window. He was looking for trouble and he had his mates with him.

‘We’re stuck,’ Boris muttered. The only way out of the mall was past Henry and his gang.

‘Quick! The two-dollar shop,’ Jonty said. ‘We’ll hide there till they go away.’

The three of them bolted inside.

‘Are you planning to buy something?’ the shop owner shouted after them. ‘This isn’t a playground, you know!’

Ignoring him, they charged down the aisle to the left and hid at the end by the children’s toys.

‘Get down,’ hissed Jonty.

The three of them ducked down, sure that they were well hidden.

‘Did they see us?’ Boris asked.

‘Dunno,’ said Mike. ‘Maybe.’

Crouching as low as they could, they waited.

‘I wish this was a real hammer.’ Boris took a plastic toy off the shelf.

‘How much do you think it is?’ Mike whispered. The other two clapped their hands over their mouths and pressed their lips together. Their favourite game in the shop was taking something up to the counter and asking how much it was. The answer was always two dollars. Whoever took the most things up and asked the price without bursting out laughing was the winner.

The last thing they needed now was a fit of the giggles. Suddenly they heard someone in the next aisle.

‘This shop’s pathetic. What are we doing here?’ The giggling stopped. It was Henry the Octopus.

‘Those Year 7 brats. I saw them come in here.’ That was one of his mates.

After that — nothing. No words; no movement. Jonty and his friends waited and waited, but still couldn’t hear anything. Had Henry walked out?

Jonty looked at his friends. ‘I’ll go and check,’ he mouthed at them. Boris nodded.

Jonty crawled on his hands and knees to the end of the aisle and to the next corner. He peeped around and jerked his head straight back, but it was too late. Henry the Octopus was waiting for him. His arm shot out and grabbed Jonty’s collar. One of the other boys yanked his tie around and held it out like a leash for Henry to take.

‘Good boy!’ Henry said and dragged him along the aisle to the art products. Henry’s mates pounced and pinned Jonty to the ground.

‘Ooh, pretty!’ Henry announced and tipped a giant bottle of two-dollar pink glitter all over Jonty’s thick brown hair.

‘Good little doggy!’ Henry rubbed the glitter hard into Jonty’s scalp, but Jonty didn’t move or speak. He could probably have fought them off, but it wasn’t worth it. Besides, the longer they focussed on him, the better chance Boris and Mike had of
escaping. Jonty hoped they’d had the sense to sneak out of the shop while all this was going on.

‘Walkies!’ Henry tugged at Jonty’s tie and made him walk over to the counter on his hands and knees.

‘Hey, you kids, I’ve called Centre Security. Get out of my shop now!’ The owner glowered at Henry and held his phone up.

‘What are
they
going to do?’ Henry sneered.

‘They’ll throw you out for a start and break some bones while they’re at it, I hope!’

The big boys looked at each other. It wasn’t worth the risk.

‘C’mon!’ Henry shoved Jonty against the shelf and ran outside, followed by his mates.

Once he was sure Henry had gone, Jonty stood up. He shook his head and sent a shower of glitter everywhere. He was sore and covered in scratches, but Boris and Mike had managed to escape. That was something, anyway.

He shuffled over to the exit.

‘Hey, you better pay for that glitter!’ The owner came out from behind the counter and stopped him.

‘But —’

‘No
buts!
Your school is a disgrace. You’re like animals, you kids. You’ve got no discipline. Someone’s going to pay for that glitter and you’re the only one left.’

Jonty shrugged. ‘How much?’ he asked with a sly smile.

The owner scowled and snatched the two-dollar coin from his hand.

Jonty walked out of the store and back towards the mall entrance, shaking his head to get rid of all the glitter. Most of the kids had gone home now, so at least no one would see him with this pink stuff in his hair.

But as he walked past the café, one person did see him. The man who had been sitting right down the back. When Prune and Nathaniel left, he had moved forward to get a better view of the two-dollar shop.

And he had seen everything that went on. He knew exactly what was going to happen, after he did the usual monitoring of his students on MySpace. Mr Foster, the Mannington High principal, always liked to know what they were up to.

He took his glasses off and stroked the long hair of his eyebrows. Year 7 were playing up. Their behaviour was atrocious and they could well be the worst Year 7 Mannington High had ever seen.

He put his glasses back on and smiled. ‘Perfect,’ he said to himself. ‘Absolutely perfect.’

The teachers stood with their arms folded, waiting for the principal to walk in and start their staff meeting. It was Friday and they were exhausted. Through the windows they could hear the sounds of the children as they arrived for school. Already there was screaming, crying and arguing and it was getting louder. In the staffroom there was the repeated sound of tutting — the teachers were fed up. The behavior in this school wasn’t good enough.

Suddenly there was a loud smash and those near the window jumped and covered their heads as a rugby ball flew in and glass shot everywhere.

‘Ibrahim Patel, report to the staffroom at morning break. I saw you, I know it was you!’ one of the teachers shouted out of the broken window.

‘This is too much,’ said Ms Brown, the English teacher. ‘It never ends.’ Everyone agreed.

‘On the contrary, the end is nigh!’ the principal
said in a quiet voice that made them all jump. He had entered the room while they were busy with the ball. Mr Foster was not a big man. He was probably the shortest member of staff. His thin grey hair was brushed across the top of his head from left to right and his long wiry grey eyebrows made everyone who saw him ache to pick up a pair of scissors. They stuck out the top of his steel framed glasses and sometimes they even hung in front of them.

He moved to the middle of room. ‘I believe there are some complaints,’ he said, looking around. Something about Mr Foster made his colleagues uncomfortable.

‘I’ve sat on more drawing pins in the past two weeks than I can remember.’ Ms Brown began the complaining. ‘And when I turned on the projector in English yesterday, there was this disgusting picture of Mr Woffinden and me doing, well — ‘

‘We weren’t actually doing anything. It was Photoshopped,’ Mr Woffinden added quickly. ‘I know, because there’s a video of it on YouTube and it’s had 3000 hits!’

‘Quite creative,’ Mr Foster muttered to himself. ‘Shocking!’ he said loudly. ‘Quite shocking.’

Then the complaints really started coming.

‘Mrs Johnson, who lives across the street from the school, has complained again. Her garden keeps disappearing. This time when she was out, her entire
front lawn was removed and placed on the road. She drove her car over her own lawn.’

‘I had a fight involving six boys and one girl that lasted throughout my geography class. They only stopped when I threatened to call the police.’

‘My whiteboard fell off the wall because they’d removed the screws.’

‘The First 15 rugby team put a nail on the crossbar of the goalposts and hung me on it by my collar. I was there for two hours!’

‘Someone set a lighted bunsen burner on my trousers as I bent down to pick up a broken test tube,’ Mr Needham complained. ‘I have very uncomfortable burns on my bottom.’

One teacher after another poured out their complaints about the students’ bad behaviour.

‘There’s no discipline!’

Mr Foster listened, rubbing his chin with one hand and nodding. He swallowed hard. If there was one thing he hated, it was whingeing teachers. ‘I hear your concerns,’ he said.

‘But what are you going to do about them?’ someone asked.

‘Bring back corporal punishment!’ someone else suggested. ‘A good caning would sort them out!’

A few teachers agreed.

‘Violence isn’t the answer,’ Ms Brown said. ‘We need to understand why they’re being bad.’

‘Forget the soft approach!’ said the Sports teacher.

Suddenly they were all talking about whether hitting the children would solve the school’s problems. Soon everyone was making suggestions and arguing over the best way to get the students to behave.

‘If I may …’ Mr Foster tried to speak, but no one was listening.

‘Silence!’ Mr Croxall shouted above the din. He hated noise and untidiness in the staffroom as much as in the classroom. If he had his way, the teachers would be standing in a row on chalk circles, lined up in order of their classes’ marks. He held himself upright. His back still hurt, but he was not going to complain. Staff should take responsibility for discipline in their own classrooms and they should show a bit more self-discipline.

The teachers fell silent and turned to face the principal.

‘Thank you, Mr Croxall.’ Mr Foster smiled at him, then continued. ‘I want you to know that steps have been taken to address this situation.’

‘What does that actually mean?’ Mr Woffinden was not impressed.

‘A plan is in place and I am confident of the results,’ Mr Foster replied.

‘What plan? What steps?’ Ms Brown said.

‘What exactly are you going to do?’ several teachers demanded.

Mr Foster smiled so broadly his eyes almost disappeared under his enormous eyebrows. ‘If any student misbehaves, send them straight to my office,’ he said. ‘That is all you have to do.’

‘That’s it? You think we can stop these hoons with a quick
go-to-the-principal’s-office?’
Mr Needham scoffed.

‘Believe me,’ said Mr Foster, ‘nothing will be more effective than a few minutes in my office.’

The teachers rolled their eyes, but he seemed quite sure.

‘Send them to me.’ He laughed. ‘Send them all to me.’

Jonty, Boris and the whole class were waiting for Mr Croxall to arrive for Maths. The staff meeting had run over time and made him late. Everyone checked that their desk legs were within the chalk circles, then they began whispering, talking. Soon everyone was chatting away and getting louder and louder. Even Nathaniel had trouble sitting quietly. The only one who didn’t make any noise was Prune. She had a pack of fortune-telling cards and was using them to predict when Mr Croxall would walk into the room. It wasn’t working very well, because she didn’t know what most of the cards meant.

Jonty looked at his mate Boris. He had that smile on. This was going to be a chance for some fun.

‘I’ll stand guard. You see if you can find anything to get Croxall on The List!’ Jonty said and shot over to the door.

Boris charged up to Mr Croxall’s desk. The drawer was locked, but that didn’t stop him. He pulled out a penknife.

‘No!’ Jonty hissed from the door, as Boris forced the drawer open.

Jonty grew nervous. If Croxall came back now, he would erupt. He glanced down the corridor and then back at Boris. The look of glee on Boris’s face told Jonty that he had struck gold. He pulled two items out of the drawer. One was a pair of grungy men’s underpants. They were big, baggy and grey. The class hooted as Boris tossed them into the air.

The other item was Croxall’s USB stick. It was what he kept their class positions on. Boris plugged it into the teacher’s laptop so he could change everyone’s place for next Monday. When he scanned through the folders he saw something better, much much better. He waved Jonty into the classroom.

‘You’ll get caught!’ Jonty said, but the smile on Boris’s face showed that was exactly what he wanted.

‘Sit down!’ Boris commanded in his best Croxall voice. Jonty took his seat as the rest of the class fell silent.

The projector flicked into life as Boris loaded one of the files he had found on the USB stick. As the words appeared on the screen, Anastasia gasped and leapt for her phone. Nathaniel put his head in his
hands, determined not to read it. Prune read and smiled to herself. She thought it was lovely.

The words were a poem. Boris had discovered a folder full of love poetry that Mr Croxall had written to his wife.

‘I thought his wife died!’ Anastasia mouthed at Miranda.

Boris ran round to the front of the desk, picked up the undies and pulled them on over his pants.

‘Pay attention, class.’ He cleared his throat and began to read out the poem in the deepest, sternest voice he could find.

Jonty stared straight ahead. Who would have thought Croxall could write such gooey love poetry?

The class was so rapt in Boris’s reading that nobody noticed the door open. Mr Croxall stood there with his hands on his hips and his jaw clenched. He
saw his poem on the screen and his underpants on Boris Brockman. The pain from his fall on Monday shot through his back. He had always prided himself on never needing any help to control a class, but this was too much. He fought to stay in control.

‘Sir, he didn’t mean anything …’ Jonty tried to defend his friend. Now Boris was staring at Croxall and waiting for a tear to roll down the teacher’s cheek. It didn’t.

‘Brockman, I think you better go to the principal’s office,’ Mr Croxall said quietly and slowly. Now would be as good a time as ever to see what sort of punishment the principal had in store.

Boris didn’t take his eyes off him, but stood there, quite still.

‘Now, Brockman,’ Mr Croxall said.

Boris sighed and headed for the door — he’d been foiled again. There weren’t going to be any tears, because Croxall was as tough as old boots.

Mr Croxall closed down the file on the screen. ‘I believe it is time for fractions,’ he said.

As the rest of the class turned to their work, Prune sat there horrified at the card on her desk, convinced that she had caused a disaster. She didn’t like Boris one bit, but she was scared that she had unleashed powerful forces by turning over
The Tower.
It was the most terrible and most destructive card in the pack.