The following morning in room 33 at Seabourne County School, Oz’s class, 1C congregated for registration. As usual the room buzzed with a dozen different conversations, some louder than others.
“I went to my brother’s Halloween party,” boasted Tracy Roper to a bored-looking Sandra Ojo. “Me and my friend Zoe were the only ones under fourteen with invites, and I wore this wicked costume and mask which cost loads.”
“Waste of money,” said Lee “Jenks” Jenkins from the back. “Take a look in the mirror, Roper. You could have gone as you are now and won best monster prize, no trouble.”
The small posse of Jenks’ hangers-on clustered around him all sniggered, while Tracy Roper, whose pale skin was as thick as at least two rhinoceri, made eyes to the ceiling and shook her head in exasperation. Oz, sitting with Ellie and Ruff about halfway back under a poster of a rainforest, registered Jenks’ insults only vaguely because he was too busy trying to take in what had happened in Ellie and Ruff’s football game.
“Five-nil,” he said, aghast. “Why didn’t you text me?”
“No credit on my phone,” Ellie mumbled, and Ruff shrugged in agreement. The three of them knew that they could have emailed or Skyped instead, but Oz let it pass. Obviously, they’d needed to just lick their wounds.
“But what happened?”
“We were rubbish,” Ellie said despondently.
“Total cow dung,” Ruff said, turning a page on a well-thumbed gaming magazine someone had lent him that morning.
“And I think our goalie’s got narcoepileprosy,” Ruff explained, shaking his head glumly.
“What?”
“You know, that disease where people fall asleep all the time. He dived the wrong way twice and he scored an own goal when the ball came off the crossbar, hit him smack on the back of the head and went in.”
Oz suppressed a laugh.
“It wasn’t funny, Oz,” Ellie said, clearly not amused.
Oz tried to smother his laughter. But hearing Ruff describe the incompetent goalie was almost as funny as seeing Ellie’s sour expression.
“It’s even worse than you think,” Ellie added, looking distraught.
“Why?” Oz said.
“Jenks scored two. TWO!” she wailed before spitting out her favourite expletive. “Sugar!”
“His head’s so big I’m surprised he got in through the door,” Ruff muttered, drooling over screenshots of Death Planet Hub, which was his favourite Xbox game.
“Oh, no,” Oz said, and quickly glanced at Jenks, who was small in stature but very big in the mouth department and lightning fast on the soccer field. He was obviously reliving some manoeuvre from yesterday’s game and, when he caught Ellie glancing over, took great pleasure in flourishing a red card from his pocket and thrusting it up in the air.
“What’s that all about?” Oz asked.
“I got sent off,” Ellie said, looking suddenly very sheepish.
Oz’s mouth fell open. “What?” he managed to say after a few speechless seconds.
“Bad language,” Ellie said and then quickly added, “We were already four-nil down. But their centre forward is a nasty piece of work and he barged right into Niko, so I told him what I thought of him. I called him a vicious git.”
“But she got the words mixed up a bit,” Ruff said, stifling a grin. “I don’t know what vigous means, but you can guess what the other bit sounded like.”
Oz tried unsuccessfully to stifle another burst of laughter.
“He deserved it,” Ellie said.
“Trouble was, she yelled it out so loudly I’m surprised you didn’t hear it at yours,” Ruff muttered without looking up from his screen.
But this criticism was the final straw for a clearly upset Ellie, who suddenly rounded on Ruff. “Well, at least I cared enough to give him a mouthful. The rest of you just gave up after halftime. I mean, look at you. Just look at you. You can’t even be bothered to stop reading some stupid magazine to tell Oz what actually happened! I hate losing. I just hate it. Of all the teams in the league to get hammered by, the Skullers are the worst. But I honestly don’t think you care. I don’t think you care about anything.” She turned her back on them both and buried her head in her school bag, her mouth a thin gash of anger.
Ruff looked across at Oz, his expression a mixture of confusion and irritation. It looked like he was going to say something, but Oz shook his head and waved his hand out of Ellie’s view as a warning; Ellie really did hate losing more than anyone Oz knew.
He risked another glance to the back. Behind Jenks sat his faithful shadow, Kieron Skinner. Tall and bony, Skinner usually wore a vacant expression and constantly picked at his forever running nose. But this morning he was grinning like a loon and smirking worse than Jenks was.
“So, did you get all your homework done, then?” Oz asked Ruff in an attempt at steering the conversation away from football.
“No. Just about managed to finish stuff for Badger Breath Boggs, that’s all.”
Oz groaned. “We’ve got maths first lesson, haven’t we?”
Ruff slumped in his chair. “Thanks a bundle. I’d almost forgotten about him.”
“Wish I could,” Oz said. “I just hope he doesn’t pick on me today. He has it in for me, I swear.”
“You and half the rest of the class.”
“You mean the bottom half of the rest of the class,” added Oz glumly. “It’s really weird. I used to like maths when I was in junior school. I was even quite good at it.”
Ellie turned back. Her face was still flushed and angry-looking, but it was obvious that she had to respond to what she was hearing. “Oz, Badger Breath doesn’t have it in for you because you’ve suddenly become a maths idiot,” she said.
“No,” Ruff agreed, “he has it in for you ’cos he’s a miserable gonk.”
There was no time for more chat about Boggs. The door to room 33 opened and in breezed Miss Arkwright, 1C’s form tutor. Oz quite liked Miss Arkwright because she was a bit different. She wore smock dresses and gladiator sandals and put “Save the Whales” and rainforest posters up all over room 33. She’d even worn a flower-print headband on a day trip to Techniquest once, and she knew absolutely loads about Xbox games. Okay, so she was a bit dizzy and sometimes forgot to take registration altogether, but 1C could put up with that, no problemo. The one thing that made Oz uncomfortable about Miss Arkwright was how earnest she was. Especially, for some reason, when it came to him.
This Monday morning, however, Miss Arkwright seemed to be on a mission. She took registration in record time—even before the bell went—and told Jenks to sit down or he’d be spending the morning outside Miss Swinson’s office. That shut Jenks up as Miss Swinson, aka the Volcano, was Seabourne County’s deputy headmistress, and she was not the person you wanted to meet on your first day back, or any day, come to think of it. Finally satisfied at having got everyone’s attention, Miss Arkwright stood in front and smiled at them all.
“Now many of you, I’m sure, will have celebrated Halloween. But I wonder how many of you know its real meaning?”
“All Hallow’s Eve, miss?” volunteered Marcus Skyrme, whose arm seemed to be permanently held up in the air whenever a teacher asked a question.
“Yes, indeed, Marcus.” She wrote the word “Samhain” on the board and pointed at it with her felt pen. “Our Celtic ancestors celebrated Samhain, pronounced ‘sow-ein,’ as their New Year’s Eve on October 31, which was then tidied up into All Hallows’ Eve by the Christian church in the eleventh century—”
Jenks’ voice piped up from the back. “Do you believe in ghosts, miss?”
Miss Arkwright frowned. Jenks’ sidetracking tactics were well-known to all the teachers and were usually trodden on unceremoniously, but on this occasion Miss Arkwright decided that it was a fair question.
“I believe that there are more things in the world than can be explained by our common understanding, if that’s what you mean, Lee.”
“Yeah, but what about actual ghosts?” Jenks said, and then added theatrically, “You know, woooooooo.”
Half the class laughed. For one horrible moment, Oz wondered if Jenks knew about what had happened in the orphanage and he glanced warily over at Ellie, who was looking puzzled, too. But then Oz saw Jenks’ mock innocent expression and knew he was simply winding Miss Arkwright up. She cleared her throat to ensure silence before continuing. “Well, literature gives us different interpretations. Some great writers believe that ghosts are the spirits of dead people yet to pass, spirits who are unaware of their deaths. Then there are those who favour the ‘herald’ theory, which suggests that ghosts most often bring messages of comfort to their loved ones to say that they are well and happy, and not to grieve for them. They visit with the express purpose of helping the living cope with their loss.”
“So they’re not always nasty, miss?” asked Tracy Roper.
“Not always. Unless they’re poltergeists, of course. And they can be very nasty, able to move furniture and even harm the living. Because of that, poltergeists are considered by some to be demonic in nature.”
The class had gone very quiet.
“So…” Miss Arkwright beamed, looking slightly alarmed at the effect her explanation was having. “Since this was your first half term with me as your form tutor, I would like you to prepare a short piece of work on what you did over the holidays.”
Everyone groaned. The bell rang and several people stood to go, but Miss Arkwright was having none of it.
“Stay where you are. Just one side of A4. That’s not going to kill you.” Miss Arkwright put her hands on her hips. “I would like a small essay entitled ‘What My Dad and I Did Over Half Term.’ Maybe you went to a football match, or to the cinema. Maybe your dad dressed up as Dracula—anything that you did together. Next time it’ll be you and your mum, but this time, you and your da…”
She stopped abruptly and Oz froze. She was looking right at him. He could feel himself start to redden. It took four long seconds for her to recover enough to say in a slightly faltering voice, “One side of A4, okay? Now, umm…off you go and work hard this half term.”
Oz got up and grabbed his bag, but Miss Arkwright stood right in front of him with her sad, earnest expression and frizzy blond hair. “Not you, Oscar,” she said softly. “Stay for a minute.”
Oz sat back down again. Everyone filed out of the room and as they did, almost everyone turned back to stare at Miss Arkwright pulling up a chair.
“Oscar, I am so sorry,” she said, her big eyes strangely moist.
“It’s okay, miss, really,” Oz said in a voice that he hoped was low enough for just Miss Arkwright to hear.
“I don’t know what I was thinking. Someone said in the staff room that we should get all of year seven to do something constructive, and I thought this would be a good way for me to learn a little more about each of you—”
“Miss, I’m okay. It’s okay.”
Miss Arkwright looked as if she was about to cry. “Yes, but of all the things I could have chosen.” She shook her head.
“I’ll do it anyway. I know what we would have done if my dad was still here, so it won’t be too difficult.”
“Oh, Oscar. How long has it been now?”
“Just over two years, miss.”
Miss Arkwright blew her nose. When she spoke it was muffled through folds of tissue. “You know, if you want to talk at any time, I’m here. If there’s anything I can do…”
Oz thought about it for a minute. What he really wanted Miss Arkwright to do was to treat him like everyone else. To not worry about upsetting him every time she mentioned fathers. But then he stared into her solemn face and saw the look of pity that he’d seen so often in his mother’s and knew he couldn’t say anything—even though he desperately wanted to.
“Yes, miss, I know. I’d better go. Double Badger… maths, miss.” He grabbed his bag and slid out from under Miss Arkwright’s spotlight gaze.
Outside, Ellie and Ruff were waiting for him.
“What did Hippie Arkwright want?” Ruff asked.
“Worried that she’d upset me with the essay title.” Oz sighed.
“Oh.” Ellie frowned. “Not cool.”
“So now everyone else in the class must be thinking that I have been upset by it, even though I didn’t even think about it at all at the time.”
“Miss Arkwright’s good at that,” Ellie said.
“She’s just buzzard mental, like all the teachers here, if you ask me,” Ruff said.
Oz looked at his friend and smiled. Ruff had a knack of summing things up in just the right way. But just as Oz had feared, Miss Arkwright’s attention had not gone unnoticed.
“Oy, Chambers, what’s with the cosy chit-chat?” Jenks demanded, bouncing over like an over-wound jack in the box. “What have you got that the rest of us haven’t, eh?”
“Just shut up, Jenks,” Ellie said.
“No one asked you, Messenger. Come on, Chambers, let us in on your little secret.” Jenks had pushed himself among the three of them. He had a thin, ferret-like face, which he belligerently thrust in front of Oz’s. Behind him Skinner loomed.
“Yeah, little secret,” Skinner said, parrot fashion. He liked nothing better than to repeat whatever he heard Jenks say.
“Weird echo in here, have you noticed?” Ruff said, pretending to look around.
Not one person in year seven was scared of either Jenks or Skinner, but they were like a pair of maddening insects that were persistent and annoying and just wouldn’t go away.
Skinner started chanting. “Secret. Secret. Secr…”
No one realised that a group of year eight pupils had joined them in the corridor until a new voice spoke. It wasn’t loud, but it silenced Skinner in an instant.
“Now, now, ladies, what’s all the fuss?”
Jenks swung around and Oz saw his eyes light up. “Hey, Phillipa. Wassup?”
Jenks held his hand up, waiting for a high five. It hung in the air for a long and embarrassing ten seconds until Pheeps shook her head sadly, at which point Jenks pulled the hand sharply back down to his side.
“What’s all this about secrets?” asked Pheeps calmly. She looked from Jenks to Oz and then Ruff, avoiding Ellie totally.
“Chambers, here, gets special treatment from Hippie Arkwright. We were trying to find out what makes him so special.” Jenks sniggered.
Pheeps smiled and the image that sprang into Oz’s head was that of a wolf cornering its prey. Okay, a very tidy wolf, but a wolf nonetheless. Behind her, three Pheeps clones followed, each of them with perfect hair and uniforms that looked as if they’d been worn for the first time an hour ago. They were collectively known as Pheeps’ creeps, and Oz could never remember what their real names were. But he did know that they had a reputation for being arrogantly unpleasant.
“Arkwright’s got a soft spot for losers,” Pheeps said. “Stray kittens and lost puppies. Which one are you, Chambers?”
“Is Chambers a dog?” Skinner asked, a finger probing his left nostril. “I fancy being a pit bull terrier, myself. That would be a way cool secret.”
Jenks, Ruff and Ellie turned to look at him with expressions of varying incredulity, whilst Pheeps’ creeps all regarded him as if he was something they’d just wiped off the bottoms of their shoes.
“Shut up, Skinner,” Jenks hissed scathingly.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t told them?” Pheeps continued, turning back to Oz as a nasty smile smeared itself over her face.
“Told us what?” Jenks asked.
Oz could feel the flush spreading up from his throat but was powerless to stop it.
“About his situation,” Pheeps continued, almost casually. “About him being half an orphan.”
“Half an orphan?” Skinner frowned.
“Everyone knows that my dad died, if that’s what you mean,” Oz said through gritted teeth. In his peripheral vision he saw Ellie wince.
“That’s right, ’cos Arkwright set us an essay on what we did with our dads over the hol—” A frown of realisation creased Jenks’ forehead and his mouth suddenly stopped working.
“Should be a nice short one for you, then, eh, Chambers?” Pheeps grinned. “But give Hippie Arkwright some credit. Maybe she does have a reason to be extra upset. Maybe she knows something that you don’t. Maybe that’s why she wants to cuddle you like a stray.”
“What are you talking about?” Oz asked, confused.
Pheeps would have got ten out of ten in a smirking exam at that moment. Oz wanted desperately to demand that she stop talking in riddles, but the moment passed as Badger Breath Boggs appeared behind them and unceremoniously began ushering Oz and the rest of 1C into his class. Pheeps sauntered away, still wearing an annoyingly superior smile on her face.
“I don’t think she’s human,” Ruff said as they got their maths books out.
It seemed about the right time for Oz to tell them about bumping into Pheeps and her father in town.
“Talk about bad luck,” Ellie said.
“Where was she going, charm school?” Ruff asked, the corners of his mouth curving into a wry smile.
“Shopping,” Oz explained. “She was looking for boots to go with her new everything else. I tell you she’s gone mental. She said to me that I should be careful not to do myself an injury. All I did was put the shopping down.”
“Weird,” Ellie said.
“Yeah, and it was the way she said it. She had this sort of sick smile on her face.” Oz shrugged.
“Maybe she’s got a soft spot for you,” Ruff suggested.
“Ugh, don’t even joke about that,” Oz said with feeling. “Her dad and mine worked at the university together. I’ve seen her at parties and stuff over the years.”
“That must have been a bundle of laughs,” Ellie said, unzipping her pencil case.
“What was she on about anyway, Arkwright’s secret?” Ruff asked.
“It’s just her way of winding me up,” Oz said, and realised that he was trying as much to reassure himself as he was Ruff and Ellie. “Like Ruff says, she’s not human.”
The other two nodded sagely, since it was a pretty accurate description.
“Thinks she’s so cool just because she’s got money and no one says anything to her because her mother’s been ill,” Oz muttered.
Ellie sighed in agreement.
But Pheeps had seemed so annoyingly confident. What could Miss Arkwright possibly know about him that he didn’t know himself? It didn’t make any sense.
But Badger Breath Boggs was already writing on the board and they all knew that the sooner they started the better. Badger Breath’s teaching style was old-fashioned and extremely boring. The class would spend one whole lesson copying from the board and listening to Boggs’ droning voice. In the other lesson of the double, they would all try to do problems set by him.
Oz was always struck at how devoid of colour Boggs was. It was as if he’d decided to live his life in monochrome. His moustache was grey-flecked, his hair (what little he had of it) was silvering, and he even had a constant smattering of grey-cigarette ash on the lapels of his charcoal herringbone jacket. His eyebrows were the only feature in an otherwise sour-looking face that gave any hint of original colouring in that they were dark and bushy. But he moved very quickly for an ancient teacher of almost fifty-eight; someone once said that Badger Breath had been a ballroom dancer in his youth. Oz would always remember that, not because he agreed, but because of what Ruff’s response to that suggestion had been.
“Ballroom dancer? More likely the back end of a pantomime horse, if you ask me.”
For the next ninety minutes, Oz did his best to put Pheeps and Miss Arkwright to the back of his mind and concentrated on getting through maths. For about a lesson and a half, everything went well; at least, it did from Oz’s perspective. Okay, he only understood about a quarter of what was going on, but Badger Breath seemed simply to want to get on with things today and was much less sarcastic than usual. It was Jenks, inevitably, who managed to change all that. He’d been pea-shooting wet balls of spit-soaked paper at people all morning and missing. But finally he struck lucky and caught Oz on the right earlobe. It was more shock than pain that triggered Oz’s instinctive reaction, which consisted of swivelling around and glaring at an insolent Jenks. Yet that small, sudden movement was all Boggs needed.
Seconds later, Oz felt himself being yanked up by his shirt collar, standing at his desk and staring at the board through a teary haze, trying to decipher the figures and letters that made up the hieroglyphics written there. He wasn’t crying because of the humiliation of being singled out in class, nor because of his frustration at not being able to do the sum. No, the cause of the watering in his eyes was all to do with why Badger Breath had earned his nickname.
“Well?” snarled the maths teacher, his mouth three inches from Oz’s ear. With the snarl came another waft of cheesy halitosis, and Oz felt his eyes well up even more from the stench. The figures on the board swam in front of his eyes, turning them to blurry spider writing.
“Ummm,” Oz dithered.
Boggs withdrew his face, pointed towards the board and yelled, “3y + 34 = 2y + 89 has never, and will never, result in ‘ummm’ as a mathematical answer. Get that into your empty head, Chambers.”
Oz heard Jenks titter and felt his cheeks burn.
Boggs turned in disgust and marched to the front of the class. When he reached the blackboard he pivoted to face the whole of 1C, wearing a sour-faced scowl.
“I’ve seen it all before. Cocky little first years who think they know it all, so sure that you’re all going to change the world.” Boggs shook his head and his face sneered into a nasty imitation of a smile. “Well, let me tell you something, my naïve little friends. The real world isn’t about talent shows and people making idiots of themselves on TV for thirty seconds of fame. None of you are going to wake up with magical powers that will get you all the things you want. Life is not a fantasy film. The truth is that, from now on, it’s a hard slog because bills don’t pay themselves. In just a few short years, you, like everyone else, will have to sell your souls to the banks to borrow money to get a mortgage to buy a house. And that means getting up early and going to work every day even when the weather’s perfect and all you really want to do is go to the beach or toboggan on Marsden Hill.”
Boggs’ face had gone blotchy purple, and little flecks of spit had begun to froth at the corners of his mouth, but he wasn’t finished yet. “I’ve got two years left of my thirty years of commitment to this profession. Murderers get less than I have served here. So, I have no interest whatsoever in soft-soaping you lot, and that means that I will not put up with any nonsense from any of you.”
He turned his bulging glare back on Oz. “Now, some of you may have little or no interest in mathematics, a fact that will no doubt reap huge dividends when it comes to your first examination in four days’ time. But this is a maths lesson, not a zoo. Although, judging by the way some of you behave, that distinction isn’t always as clear-cut as it should be.”
Boggs let out a deep sigh. “Sit down, Chambers, and try and get what little grey matter there is inside that skull of yours to concentrate for more than twenty seconds at a time.”
Oz sat and breathed in cheese and onion-free air, wondering for the hundredth time what it was about Boggs and maths that he found so difficult. He’d loved maths at his old school, and his teacher, Mrs. Evans, had been nice. But this was Seabourne County; here they didn’t do nice. And those that did, like Hippie Arkwright, sometimes tried a bit too hard. But as for Boggs, Oz had an idea that his idea of teaching was to gallop along as fast as possible with the result that anyone who couldn’t match the pace got left behind. But not everyone was a sprinter and Boggs should have known that. There was no excuse for trying to maim people with vile, stinky cheese-breath, either.
“Is the exam on everything we’ve done this half term, sir?” asked Marcus Skyrme, who never had any trouble with maths at all.
“Everything we’ve done this far, including algebraic equations. So it will be to your significant benefit to sit, listen and learn for the remainder of the lesson,” Boggs said, unable to resist another sideways glance at Oz.
The next twenty minutes seemed to take forever, but finally the bell for break rang. However, Badger Breath had to have the last word.
“The exam will start at period three, ten-thirty sharp on Friday, and last one hour. Do not forget. Personally, I can’t wait. Leave your homework on my desk as you exit in an orderly fashion.”
“Sarcy gonk,” Ruff muttered as he, Ellie and Oz filed out in an atmosphere of silent gloom.
“I think I’m going to have to strangle Jenks,” Oz said.
“Join the queue,” Ruff agreed.
“Forget him. He isn’t worth it. By the way, that book on Seabourne’s ancient houses you lent me is quite good,” Ellie said.
“Really? You know who the ghost is, then?” Oz asked.
“No, but I think we need to dig a bit deeper,” Ellie said.
“Okay. This weekend, then? Usual time and place?”
“Buzzard,” Ruff said, shaking his hair from his eyes and giving them his usual grin.
* * *
That afternoon after school, Oz tried finally to get to grips with his English essay before tea. But by half past five, he was getting desperate. It was time to call in the cavalry. He pulled out his phone and sent off a text. A minute later, he got a reply.
“In library marking essays. Feel free to disturb me whenever you like. CJ”
Caleb sat at a table with a pile of papers scattered in front of him and a bottle of water at his elbow.
“So, what’s all this about King Arthur?” Caleb demanded as Oz approached.
“We’ve just done ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ and I’ve got to do two paragraphs on it by tomorrow. I’m a bit stuck.”
“Was there no title?”
“No. We can do what we want. Jenks said he was going to do ‘The Green Knight and other beheadings I’ve enjoyed.’”
“Sounds like a winner,” Caleb said, arching his eyebrows.
“Yeah, but I don’t even know where to start. Miss Arkwright said for us to write about how we felt about the poem.” Oz sighed.
Caleb sat back and made the fingers of both hands into a steeple. “Remind me of the story.”
“Well, this weird green knight challenges the Round Table to a sort of duel and lets anyone have a free hit with an axe, so long as he can give the challenger the same blow in a year and a day. Gawain accepts and chops the Green Knight’s head off. Problem is, the Green Knight picks up his head and walks away. So Gawain has a year and a day to try and sort out the riddle and find out what’s going on before losing his own head.”
“So, what impression did the story leave you with?” Caleb asked.
Oz thought for a minute and then said, “That Gawain was a good bloke but that it was hard being chivalrous all the time, especially with girls chasing him and headless Green Knights after his neck.”
“Self-sacrifice is never an easy road.” Caleb nodded. “We’re all human. We’re all scared of things like pain and death, even Knights of the Round Table.”
Oz nodded, too. It made sense.
“So why don’t you just say that?” Caleb suggested. “You could explore chivalry, and I’m sure I could dig up some stuff on knightly virtues.” His eyes became thoughtful slits. “I think there were five or six. Let’s see—generosity, chastity, courtesy, piety, friendship, and looking good in heavy armour.”
Oz laughed. His eyes strayed to some papers, covered with sketches, on the desk. Caleb called them doodles. Oz called them absolutely brilliant because they were usually very good depictions of whatever had taken Caleb’s fancy to draw.
“Wow, that’s the park from the turret window,” Oz said, tilting his head to see better. “And that’s the panelled wall with all those weird symbols on them.”
Caleb nodded. “After marking essay number five on ‘Eleventh Century Scottish Highland Lore,’ I was becoming comatose. Needed a distraction.”
“They’re amazing,” Oz said. “Where did you learn to draw like that?”
“I didn’t. And they’re just scribbles.” Caleb moved some essay papers over the sketches.
A voice drifted up the stairwell from far below. “Oz! Food.”
“I think I’ve got some prints somewhere of Gawain’s pentagonal shield and the knight picking up his lopped-off head,” Caleb said. “You could do illustrated paragraphs.”
“Cool,” Oz said as he turned to go, but then added, “Oh, if there’s any spag bol left over, I could ask mum to put some on a plate for you and leave it in your fridge.”
“Barter? Now that sounds like a plan,” Caleb said, and allowed his lips to curl into a rare smile.
Oz started for the stairs, but there was something niggling at the back of his mind. Something else he’d been meaning to ask Caleb that had nothing to do with green knights or round tables. He whipped around.
“By the way, something happened at school today.”
Caleb looked up.
“There’s this girl—you know her, actually, Dr. Heeps’ daughter?”
Caleb nodded and a funny little smile flickered at the corner of his mouth. Oz knew that Lorenzo Heeps was something to do with the Dean’s office at the university. He also knew that his dad had smiled indulgently just like Caleb had whenever Heeps’ name was mentioned.
“Anyway,” Oz went on, “I’m not exactly on her Christmas card list, but she said something today…she said that maybe Miss Arkwright, my form tutor, was being extra nice to me because she knew something about me. Some sort of secret.”
“Oh?” Caleb said.
“Yeah, I just wondered if there was anything…you know, if you’d heard anything…at the university, I mean…I was wondering if it had anything to do with Dad.”
“Your dad? Why your dad?”
Oz squirmed. This wasn’t coming out the way he meant it to. “I don’t know why,” he explained weakly, “it was just the way she said it after Jenks had explained that Miss Arkwright had gone all soppy on me for setting an essay on dads.”
“I see,” Caleb said, and muttered, “Typical. She sounds like her father’s daughter, all right.”
“Pardon?”
“From what little I know of her, Phillipa Heeps is a bit too self-possessed for her own good, Oz. I wouldn’t worry too much about her if I were you.”
Oz nodded. It was good advice, but was that a slightly awkward look he was seeing in Caleb’s face? He hesitated, and a little knot of silence grew.
“Anyway, look, I’d better get on,” Caleb said, suddenly becoming very interested in his marking again.
“Okay. Well, if you hear anything…”
“I’ll keep my ear to the ground, Oz.” Caleb kept his eyes downcast and there was not even the fleeting ghost of a smile on his lips this time.
Oz mumbled thanks, turned and ran down the stairs, trying to work out what he’d said that had made Caleb look so uncomfortable. Was it the fact that Pheeps was Dr. Heeps’ daughter and Caleb didn’t like discussing colleagues? Or was there something else, something he wasn’t quite getting? It troubled him only as far as the kitchen. Once there, the delicious smell of his mum’s spaghetti bolognese miraculously pushed all thoughts of Pheeps and Caleb’s odd reaction right out of his mind.
* * *
They stayed out of his mind for the next couple of days because there were other things to think about. He did as much research as he could in the library, but there didn’t seem to be anything about female ghosts appearing to the owners of Penwurt, nor terrifying orphanage children. In between reaching up to the heavy books on the topmost shelves, Oz did his best to get to grips with algebra, but it was an uphill struggle. And when Friday came, the test was even worse than Oz had feared it would be.
The way that Badger Breath had taught them to solve equations just didn’t make any sense to him, and instead of going through the paper doing what he could, he got well and truly stuck on two questions early on. Before he knew it, Badger Breath was bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet at the front of the class, announcing that there were five minutes left.
Frantically, Oz turned the page to look at the other questions, but by then his brain was frazzled. He went back to the one he was stuck on. It looked simple enough: solve the simultaneous equation 3x + 2y = 8, 3x - y = 5. But for the life of him he couldn’t remember if you had to add the x’s together or take them away or multiply everything by 2. In the end, he gave up and sat back, flushed in the cheeks from knowing that he had only attempted three questions and had at least one of those wrong.
Badger Breath came round to collect the papers. He did so in complete silence until he came to Oz, where he lingered, unable to resist turning the sparsely covered paper over in his hands and smiling vindictively.
“All that revision clearly paying off, eh, Chambers?”
Oz didn’t rise to the bait. Besides, even from three feet away, fear of a waft of halitosis-laden breath ensured that Oz flinched involuntarily and went into breath-holding mode. Mistaking Oz’s lack of response to his question as pure ignorance, Badger Breath shook his head and walked on.