Cool School (15 page)

ot likely,' he says. ‘I've got better things to do.' Off he goes, leaving you to face a class that's getting restless.

‘Right,' you say to them. ‘What else do we know about Africa?'

‘My aunt rode there on a bike,' a serious-looking boy in the middle row says.

‘She couldn't do that,' says a red-haired boy at the back. ‘She'd drown.'

‘Are you calling my aunt a liar?' the serious boy shouts. He jumps to his feet and advances on the red-haired boy. Suddenly they grab each other's shirt fronts. They're about three centimetres apart, yelling into each other's faces. You want to jump between them, to break it up, but you want to stay alive, too. Before you can decide what to do, there's a cough from the doorway. You turn around and look. The student who walked out of the room is back, and with him is a middle-aged man wearing spectacles. You know that he's the school Principal. He's got that look about him. You could tell from half a k away that he's either a school principal, a dentist, or a sidecar racer at Saturday night speedways. There are no other choices.

‘What's going on here?' he barks.

You look around urgently, your mind racing, trying to think what to do. A dozen possibilities flash in front of your eyes. You quickly reject the most obvious, like holding the class hostage, detonating a nuclear device, swallowing a proton pill or mooning the Principal.

Soon you're left with only two choices: to face the music or jump out the window. It's a tough call.

e grabs your outstretched leg and with no obvious effort flips you up into the air. You find yourself doing a triple somersault in pike position. As you soar higher and higher you realise you're going to hit the ceiling. A moment later you do so, with a thump that sends plaster falling. Next to you is the big overhead fan, which luckily happens to be turned off. You grab the blades in sheer relief and hang on to them like they're your best friends. ‘Well,' you think, ‘at least I'm safe here, and I can hang on for as long as I need.' You take a look down. The class are staring up at you with great interest. You look for the bully. Yes, there he is. He's walking towards the door.

‘Oh good,' you think, ‘seems like he's had enough and he's leaving.'

But no. He stops next to the door. You realise that he's not planning to leave after all. He puts his hand on something high up on the wall, near the door. It's a switch. It's the switch for the fan. He turns it on. He turns it all the way to the right, to its maximum setting.

‘No!' you scream. Then: ‘No-o-wo-o-wo-o-wo-o-w o - o - w o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - o - oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo' as the fan goes faster and faster. You feel your grip on the blades slipping. Suddenly you go flying off into space. You're travelling at a speed of hundreds of ks an hour. You travel across a crowded shopping mall, where you can hear the voices: ‘Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's Superman! It's a kid who got caught on an overhead fan!' You're competing with helicopters and low-flying aircraft. You fly on forever, until you go into orbit around the Earth. Every three weeks you pass above your home town, and you get a quick look at how everyone's going. But don't worry, life's not too bad. After all, you're famous. You've become a UFO. That's quite some distinction.

ou can't believe you're doing this but, after all, everyone's entitled to one mistake. You just hope you get to live long enough to make some more. The two of you tiptoe towards the crypt. The door is half open, creaking slowly in the breeze. There's a candle burning inside, and you can see a slowly moving shadow on the wall. You feel a terrible coldness that makes your skin tingle. But you can't help yourself: you've got no thoughts of going home now. You just have to know what's going on.

Slowly, ever so slowly, like you can't control it yourself, your hand rises and pushes the door wide open. Inside there's a frightening sight. It's Sam all right, opening the lid of a large old dark coffin. You and your friend stand there in shock. Sam turns and looks at you, showing no surprise at your presence.

‘What . . . what are you doing?' you manage to ask.

Sam smiles at you but the smile makes you shiver even harder.

‘I'm going back to where I belong.'

‘But . . . but who are you?'

‘You don't need to know that.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘I'm going to sleep again, for another thousand years.'

By now Sam has the lid of the coffin open and is climbing inside.

‘But . . . but only this morning you asked me if I would go with you . . .'

‘Yes,' Sam says, now in the coffin and closing the lid. ‘I wanted some company.' The lid is now completely closed and only a muffled voice can be heard, as if from a great distance. ‘I thought you could spend the next ten centuries with me.'

The candle suddenly goes out and a sharp cold wind rushes through the crypt. You and your friend race outside screaming. You sprint all the way home and hide under the bed for the rest of the night.

In the morning you think maybe it's a dream and so you go to school to see if Sam's there. But something very strange has happened. Not only is there no Sam, but no one's ever heard of Sam. And that includes your best friends, who'd had crushes on Sam. But now it's like everyone's memory banks are completely wiped. Why, even your very best friend, who at midnight was in the cemetery with you as you grabbed each other and shook in terror together, seems to have forgotten the whole thing.

Yes, there's only one thing that makes you know for sure that Sam Jarre actually existed. It's that little scrap of paper with seven sinister words on it: ‘Do you want to go with me?'

ou know that going home to bed is the smartest move you've ever made. For once you've done the right thing. You hurry through the deserted streets, your best friend following reluctantly. You keep looking over your shoulder but there's no one else there.

When you get to your house you make an agreement that you won't tell anyone what happened. You whisper a quick goodnight and sneak back into your bedroom. You get in the bed and lie there, trying to sleep.

But you can't. You're still too spooked by what you saw.

As you lie there you search your mind again and again for an explanation for what happened. But there is none.

Next day at school the whole place is buzzing with excitement. It doesn't take long to find out what happened. Sam Jarre got so sick last night at a basketball game that an ambulance had to be called. The last anyone heard, Sam was in hospital, in intensive care.

You're shocked and scared, thinking about the episode in the cemetery. You can't concentrate on schoolwork and at the first chance you sneak off and rush to the hospital.

When you get there, you see Sam's mum. ‘Sam got out of intensive care a couple of hours ago,' she tells you, ‘and yes, visitors are fine.'

You go on up to the ward. Sam's lying there in the bed, looking pale but OK.

‘What happened?' you ask.

‘It was terrible. I got this sudden viral infection, and collapsed. I nearly died. But you know, a crazy thing happened. Somewhere round midnight I thought I had died. I felt myself start to fly away. But then I saw you looking at me kind of weird and I thought, ‘Wait a minute, what am I doing? I don't want to die,' and as soon as I thought that I came back to earth. Don't you think that was funny?'

‘Sure do,' you answer, with a little secret smile.

‘Well,' you think, as you leave the hospital an hour later, ‘that was the strangest thing that'll ever happen in my life.'