Part of his plastic key had snapped inside the lock, so Robin couldn’t claim he’d found the door unlocked. But there was no obvious evidence that he’d hacked the school database, so he still hoped to get away with that.
‘I was curious to see if my key would work,’ Robin told Mr Barclay, hoping his softest tone and being one of the smallest kids in the school would help his case. ‘I saw an article online, about a burglar who broke into houses by photographing the key and using the picture to make a digital file for a 3D printer. I just wanted to see if I could do the same.’
Barclay sat at his desk, with suspicious eyes and a stain from a leaky pen on his shirt pocket.
‘Then you came in with that girl, so I went to climb out the window and –’
‘You expect me to believe you didn’t break in to my office to steal?’ Barclay growled, then gave a derisory snort.
‘I’ve been in this office before,’ Robin said, glancing around at all the dust and junk. ‘What is there to steal?’
Mr Barclay reared up. Robin gripped the sides of his chair, expecting to get a blast for being cheeky. But the teacher had to concede there was nothing in the office worth stealing.
‘This key you made is ingenious,’ Barclay grudgingly admitted. ‘You’re a clever boy, Robin. I wish you’d channel as much effort into school work as you put into crazy schemes and messing around with Alan Adale.’
‘Yes, sir,’ Robin said obediently.
‘Your father is on his way. We’ll discuss your punishments when he arrives.’
Oh God … Robin thought.
Robin’s dad, Ardagh Hood, was a small man with a big beard, about a billion times less intimidating than Mr Barclay.
But while Robin’s dad was never scary, he had a quiet way of looking sad and disappointed when you did something bad. A few hours of sighs and wounded huffing sounds were usually enough to make Robin feel guilty and wish he had the kind of dad who screamed and shouted and got it over with.
‘Robin is excluded from school for four days,’ Mr Barclay told Ardagh, half an hour later. ‘I want to see a two-thousand-word essay about what Robin has done wrong and what he plans to do to improve his behaviour. He’ll be on after-school litter patrol for the next half-term. And I’ve called a locksmith to replace my damaged lock, so you can expect a bill for that too.’
Ardagh nodded and spoke softly. ‘Mr Barclay, of course. I’m more than happy to pay for any damage my son has caused.’
‘Can I type the essay on a computer?’ Robin asked.
Mr Barclay cracked a mean smile. ‘By hand. In your best handwriting, and I expect excellent spelling and grammar.’
Robin had never written anything half that length before, and felt daunted. He imagined jumping on the desk, defiantly kicking over the stacked files, telling Mr Barclay where to stick his essay and making a heroic leap out the window to freedom.
But he just nodded sourly and said, ‘Yes, sir.’
‘OK, mister, let’s go,’ Robin’s dad said, sounding so weary it was like he was the one with two thousand words to write.
Robin didn’t think Wednesday afternoon could get worse, but somehow it did.
Leaving Mr Barclay’s office coincided with the change of lessons. The hallways heaved with students, and they bumped into loads of kids from Robin’s year at the bottom of the main stairs. His face turned red as they pulled faces and teased.
‘Here’s the bad boy!’
‘Naughty, naughty, Robina!’
And, ‘Fallen out of any windows lately, dumbass?’
Then four alpha-male thugs – the kind of guys you never wanted to stand near in a locker room – started on his dad. Ardagh made an easy target, since his turquoise jelly shoes repaired with plumber’s tape, cut-off denim shorts and tie-dyed short-sleeve shirt were a first-degree crime against fashion.
‘How come your dad’s a hippie, Robin?’ one jeered.
A guy shook his head. ‘Nah, he’s Jesus.’
‘Too short for Jesus. He’s a garden gnome.’
And rock bottom finally came with white-teethed smiles and mean laughs from Tiffany, Bethany and Stephanie. Three popular girls who looked at Robin the way they’d look at gum stuck to their shoe, on the rare occasions when they deemed it worth looking at him at all.
Ardagh saw his son squirming and placed a hand on the back of his neck.
‘Rise above it,’ he said airily. ‘Always be the better person.’
Dad is a hippie, Robin thought, as he jerked and pushed the hand away.
‘Dad, don’t touch me,’ he snapped angrily. ‘Could you be any more embarrassing?’