Beardy McCreedy spotted me as I was looking for Stinky in the corridor. The bell had just rung for the end of lunch and the exam was only seconds away.
‘Wrong direction, boy!’ he boomed at me as I spun round, desperately hunting for my hamster. ‘Not trying to escape this test by any chance, are we?’
After Ty Hackett had stomped off, muttering dark threats against me and my furry lunch, I’d searched the entire field and inside the school too, but Stinky was nowhere to be found.
And now McCreedy was marching me into class.
The desks were in single file. I walked to a free one at the back of the room, feeling worried sick about Stinky. Not to mention the exam.
Beardy handed out the tests face down, making sure I was the last. Then he inspected my hands and emptied my pencil case. Finally he looked inside my ears, to make sure I wasn’t wearing earphones. Finding nothing suspicious, he barked, ‘Begin!’
When I flipped my test paper over, I could hardly bear to look.
And when I did, this was how the exam looked to me:
I chewed my pen. I scratched my head. I looked around the room.
The clock was ticking. McCreedy had given up staring at me and was now having a sneaky read of the Racing Post. All the other kids were concentrating on the questions, except Stuey Jones at the desk nearest the door, who was fidgeting and wriggling in his seat. Then I saw something else move. I had to clamp my mouth shut to stop a gasp escaping.
It’s hard to blend in when you’re in a maths exam and you’re small and furry.
I looked at McCreedy, who was still studying the newspaper. Then I looked around the class again and saw that everyone was still staring at their tests. So I nodded my head to Stinky, to mean, ‘Now!’
He darted from the door to the first desk, where Stuey Jones was still fidgeting, his right foot bouncing up and down like it was on a spring. Stinky swerved, only a centimetre from being squashed under a size-eight shoe, and scurried towards me, shimmying around bags and feet, and weaving between table and chair legs. By the time he skidded to a stop under my desk, both of us were a bit breathless.
I leaned forward to scoop him up, but before my hand reached the floor, McCreedy had leaped out of his chair.
‘Boy!’ he yelled. ‘Benjamin Jinks!’ Everyone turned to look at me. ‘What on earth are you doing?’
I straightened up.
‘I dropped something, sir,’ I said.
Which was a very stupid thing to say, because of course everyone in the room turned to look at the floor under my desk.
At first I couldn’t bring myself to look. Then, reassured by the blank faces of the other kids, I peeked down.
No hamsters. Nothing.
Phew.
And then everyone went back to what they were doing. Apart from McCreedy, who was still scowling at me suspiciously.
But all I could think was – Where on earth is Stinky? One second he was there on the floor, the next he’d vanished. Where could he be?
It wasn’t long before I had the answer.
