Naturally, after a night of tossing about before finally falling asleep when the town clock chimed three a.m., I was late for school. The shouting was the first thing that stopped me in my tracks. It was coming from my classroom! Then I figured Miss Lee was putting on some sort of modern play – she often does kooky things like that. Everyone was jumping around like mad fleas. Of course they all stopped dead when I came in.
‘Aw, it’s only Milo,’ Willy Jones shouted and they all went back to yelling and chasing.
‘What’s up?’ I asked Shane.
‘Miss Lee isn’t in,’ he said, offering me a bite of his lunch apple.
‘Not in? Miss Lee not in?’
‘Yep,’ he went on. ‘And her car isn’t outside. She’s been abducted by aliens,’ he cried.
‘That’s a hairy old joke, you nerd,’ I said.
The word ‘hairy’ was scarcely out of my mouth when the door opened and the principal stormed in.
‘And there’s another hairy old joke,’ Shane giggled in my ear, before I slipped into my own desk.
Everyone stopped.
‘You hooligans!’ she bellowed. ‘I could hear you from my office. Miss Lee is – eh – not available, so I’ll be with you for the rest of the day.’
We would all have groaned out loud, but we were too distracted, not so much by Miss Lee being absent, but by our constant fascination with the wobbly hairs above the principal’s upper lip.
Every now and then someone would come to the door, and the principal talked to them in whispers. She looked so worried that she never even asked us to hand up the yawny stuff she gave us to write. It got so that we didn’t even bother to try out the sums or puzzles she dished out on the whiteboard. Instead, we drew mad cartoons and passed them around. And she never even noticed when we sniggered.
‘Do you think Miss Lee has done a runner?’ Shane asked me on the way home. ‘I know I would if I had to teach our class.’
‘Shane,’ I said, laughing. ‘It’s no big deal. My mum says that teaching is such a stressful job that teachers should be able to take the odd day off, to stop them from going mad. Miss Lee is probably at home with her feet up, munching chocolate and watching daytime telly.’
‘Cool,’ said Shane. ‘I think I’ll go for teaching instead of nuclear psychics.’
‘Physics, you nelly,’ I said. ‘Come on, let’s get our bikes.’
It was only when I went home to our empty house (Mum works in a home for the elderly two afternoons a week) that my mind threw up the whole Mister Lewis thing. I had pushed it to the back of my head all day, but now it was back like a giant wart sitting on my nose. How would I get myself out of this mess?
‘Are you ready?’ Shane appeared at my door and his loud bellow broke my thinking. ‘So, where will we go?’ he asked, fastening the shiny red helmet he’d got to match his bike. He was wearing his new rapper T-shirt. ‘Somewhere out of town?’
‘Sure,’ I agreed, putting on my own blue helmet. Anything to avoid thinking about Mister Lewis and our meeting.
‘What about down by the castle and out the road beyond that?’
I shivered. That ‘castle’ word almost caused me to fall down.
‘NO!’ I shouted too loudly. ‘I don’t want to go there.’
‘Why not? You’re always going on about the castle.’
I looked at his beaming face, and I so wanted to tell him everything, but even Shane wouldn’t believe me. He was bound to double up laughing and make me feel even worse. ‘Maybe go in the opposite direction,’ I went on more calmly. ‘Let’s go the old road to the ruined cottages.’
‘OK,’ said Shane. ‘The old road will be fine.’
That’s what’s great about having a pal like Shane. He doesn’t go fussy when things don’t go his way.