‘You keep watch,’ Robin told Alan, as he stepped into Mr Barclay’s office. ‘If anyone comes, bang on the door.’
‘There’s only one exit,’ Alan said warily. ‘The doors we came through.’
‘It’s only the second floor,’ Robin explained. ‘I can go out of the window.’
‘What’s my excuse for hanging out here, if someone asks?’
Robin sighed. ‘Standing in a corridor isn’t a crime. We talked this thorough already. Stop being a panic pants and let me work …’
Robin shook his head as he closed the office door. Recruiting Alan to be his lookout probably wasn’t worth the earache, because if this went like the test run Robin did at home the night before, he’d get the job done in under eight minutes.
First Robin secured his emergency escape route, by grabbing two finger hooks and opening the rotting sash window. This let in fresh air, along with noise from older kids playing soccer in the courtyard below.
Barclay’s office was a landfill site. Stacks of fat folders, dust-caked family photos, a musical No. 1 Uncle cookie jar with a smashed lid, and a wall clock that told the wrong time. The smell was a mix of Gazelle for Men body spray, a dandruff-speckled tracksuit top and the brie-and-tomato baguette mouldering in the bin.
After jiggling the mouse to make sure the desktop computer wasn’t already switched on, Robin reached underneath the table and pushed the main power switch. He twisted back and forth in the office chair as the ancient Dell booted up.
‘How much longer?’ Alan asked, leaning in anxiously.
‘I just got here,’ Robin growled. ‘Buzz off.’
The screen asked Robin for a staff ID and password.
Staff IDs were super-easy to find: they were written on the message boxes outside the staffroom, where kids could drop stuff like late homework or permission slips.
Barclay’s password had made a meatier challenge, but Robin had captured it by installing a keylogger program on a laptop in his classroom. This small piece of software ran in secret, recording every keystroke made on the computer and sending a text file to Robin in a daily email.
After typing 4071 and K1LLa11Year7s, Robin waited for the Windows desktop to appear, then opened Locksley High’s pupil database.
Robin had Mr Barclay’s system password, but didn’t need it because it had been autosaved. He’d also downloaded a demo version of the database software the school used, so the screen felt familiar as he hit the search tab and typed ALAN ADALE.
Alan’s grin and mighty afro popped up on screen, with a line of file tabs down one side. Robin clicked Reports and selected the one that was due to be emailed to parents when term ended in a few days.
After clicking yes on a dialogue box that asked if he wanted to edit the report, Robin scrolled down to Maths. He changed Alan’s grade from a D to a B– and the teacher’s comment from Awkward and disruptive, to Tries hard and makes a good contribution.
Next, Robin opened his own report. Besides being a computer whizz, he liked climbing and archery and his dad had promised him a box of pricey-but-accurate carbon-core arrows if he got a B or better in every subject on his end-of-year report.
Robin was smart, so although he got bored and mucked around a lot, he wasn’t surprised to see he’d gotten As for Maths, Computer Studies and Combined Science, and B or B– for everything else except Spanish.
Locksley High’s Spanish teacher, Mrs Fabregas, always picked on him (at least in Robin’s opinion). One time Robin even wound up in a screaming row, after she sent him to the behaviour unit when at least four other kids were behaving worse than he was.
As Robin changed Mrs Fabregas’s C– to the B that would earn him arrows, Alan thumped hard on the door.
‘Barclay’s coming, with some girl!’ he yelled. ‘I’m outta here!’
‘Are you sure?’ Robin shouted back, but Alan had bolted.
Robin frantically changed Mrs Fabregas’s Disrespectful and childish to A very enjoyable pupil to teach, before hitting save all changes. Rather than go through a lengthy software shutdown, Robin leaned under the desk and yanked out the power cord.
As he grabbed his backpack off the peeling carpet tiles, Robin could hear a gobby girl outside the door. Mr Barclay was showing her zero sympathy.
‘You do not fight in my lunch room!’ he was shouting. ‘You will wait in my office until I am ready to deal with you.’
‘Axel threw potato at me first!’ the girl complained. ‘Why should I wait in your office? This is a total stitch-up!’
After a quick check to make sure he’d left nothing behind, Robin put one foot on top of the radiator beneath the open window and leaned way out onto the ledge.
As an experienced climber, Robin was confident about swinging his legs off the ledge and sliding down a drainpipe into the school courtyard. But he hadn’t expected the pair of wood pigeons perched on brickwork just below.
Startled by Robin’s head looming above them, the birds launched into the air. Robin instinctively rolled away from the flapping wings, but lost his grip and slid forward at the same time. His pack caught on the underside of the raised window, but when he reached behind to grab the frame and steady himself the rotting wood crumbled in his hand.
Panic slowed everything down. Robin looked over the ledge at a six-metre head-first plunge into concrete. He grasped for the window again, as the weight of textbooks in his backpack pulled his shiny nylon shorts further over the ledge.
But then – mercifully – he stopped sliding, and felt his sneaker snag on something.
The good news was that the loop of Robin’s double-knotted shoelace had caught on the control valve on top of the radiator.
The bad news was that his bodyweight was stretching his sneaker and his heel was slowly sliding out at the back …