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Trouble, and a Daring Plan

The problem with a magic skateboard was that it could get you into serious trouble. Pete learned this the hard way. Flying across the school hall during Monday morning assembly in front of almost a thousand kids and all the teachers, wasn’t the problem. People didn’t believe their eyes when something magical happened anyway. But crashing into the flower arrangement on the stage was another matter altogether. There was the hard evidence of the broken vase, Miss Peach’s wet dress, and the flowers all over the teachers. While no one was sure just how Pete managed to crash into the flowers, they sure knew that he had. It was a fact. An indisputable, incontrovertible, certain fact.

And because of that fact, Pete landed on the red carpet in old Schiz, the headmaster’s, office. Schiz exploded like a cloud of sludge fart. He confiscated Pete’s skateboard and threatened to have him kicked out of school. So what if most of the school board members regarded Pete as a hero for exposing that man Greenback as a bank robber and a murderer? As far as he was concerned, Pete was the biggest criminal of them all. Birds of a feather, and so on, and so on. So Pete had to sit in the library every day after school for the rest of the term or until Schiz could convince the school board to expel him.

Of course, it had been all Freddy’s fault.

Freddy was Pete’s best friend. He was also a genius, and his hobby of the day was psychology. On Friday morning during break, he had explained his latest project to Pete. It had something to do with manipulating people by controlling their minds. As usual, Pete didn’t really listen to his friend’s ramblings, which would explain why he had walked into the trap with his eyes wide open.

On Monday morning, as they filed into the school hall, Freddy said, “I’m going to hypnotise you.”

Pete carried his skateboard in his left hand, hoping that no one would notice it in the crowd. He hadn’t had time to put it in his locker before the bell rang. He glanced at the Maths teacher who stood at the door of the hall. If they were caught talking, there would be trouble.

“No you’re not. And shut up, Brophy’s eyeing us,” he whispered.

“You’re getting sleepy,” said Freddy.

Pete sat down on the cold wooden floor next to Ralph Sommers. “I’m not!”

Brophy craned his neck in their direction. “Silence over there!”

“You’re getting sleepy. Your eyelids are getting heavier and heavier,” said Freddy and sat down next to Pete.

“Who’s talking over there?” said Brophy, his tone menacing.

“You’re falling asleep … Sleep … Sleep …” Freddy chanted softly in Pete’s ear, speaking without moving his lips, like a ventriloquist.

Brophy pointed his cane right at Pete. His heart missed a beat.

“Ralph Sommers!”

Poor Ralphie started to shake. He stood up.

“Are you talking?”

Ralph shook his head vehemently.

Brophy motioned with his cane. “Well, shut your mouth and sit down!”

“You’re asleep now …” Freddy said in a soft, singsong voice.

Pete tightened his jaw. “I’m not.”

The hall was packed to capacity with children, but they managed to squeeze some more in. One of the senior girls started to play the school anthem on the piano. The teachers marched onto the stage and sat down.

“You are asleep, and will do whatever I tell you …”

Pete tried to ignore Freddy. Freddy was going to get it during break, even if they were best friends.

“You will obey my every command …”

Schiz started his usual monotonous Monday morning speech.

“If I tell you to walk on fire, you will obey me …”

“I won’t,” said Pete. His eye caught Brophy’s; he was sure the Algebra teacher had seen him talking.

“If I tell you to kiss a Sumo wrestler, you will obey me …”

“Get lost!”

“If I tell you to suck a roundworm, you will do it …”

“Shut up!”

This time, Brophy did see him, and started moving towards them waving his cane. Pete could feel the blood draining into his butt.

“You will do as I say,” said Freddy.

Brophy was moving closer, picking his way carefully among the seated children.

Pete grasped his skateboard in both hands. He shook his head and mouthed the word NO!

Freddy came in for the kill. “You will sit right where you are. You will NOT fly on your skateboard to escape Brophy!”

Brophy was behind them, and reached down to grab Pete by his unruly red hair.

“NO!” Pete rocketed right across the hall and into the flower arrangement on the stage.

That afternoon Pete sat sulking in the school library. He couldn’t even begin to think how he would survive four whole weeks of detention.

Something moved by the window. It was Freddy. He pulled a face at Pete. Pete tried to ignore him, and pretended to do his homework.

Freddy knocked on the window. “Open up!”

Pete wrote GET LOST! on the back page of his Maths book and flashed it at Freddy.

Freddy knocked again, and the latch of the window came loose. He opened it and climbed in. Pete studied a smudge on the page of his Algebra book.

“I brought you something,” said Freddy, offering a lollipop.

Pete’s green eyes flashed dangerously. He pushed his Maths book in Freddy’s face. “Can’t you read?”

Freddy turned slightly pink, all the way down to the roots of his brush-cut blond hair. “Look, I’m sorry. I … It was an experiment in psychology.”

“Sorry is too late, you miserable … psychologist! I got four weeks’ detention because of your idiotic experiment!”

“I said I was sorry!”

“You know what?” said Pete. “You are a stupid, selfish, psychologist pig!”

Freddy lifted his fist. “Say that again, and I’ll give you a flat nose 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.”