Class Six and the Nits of Doom (11 page)

The leopard would have landed in the middle of the whole struggling panicking mass of children if it hadn’t been for his trousers. Rodney’s waistband got caught up round a table leg
and he ended up crashing down with a great snarling and cracking of table tops and fluttering of pieces of paper.

Nearly everyone was too busy trying to disentangle their arms and legs from everybody else’s to think about anything but GETTING AWAY FROM THE LEOPARD, but Slacker had bumped his chin on
Anil’s head and he was almost too dazed to move.

‘Ball the chits,’ he muttered, blearily. ‘Ball the nits…’

He suddenly sat up straight. And then he said ‘Nits!’ in a sharp, loud voice.

Then he said it again, even louder. ‘
Nits!
’

‘Oh flip, now Slacker’s gone bonkers,’ said Anil, crawling under one of the least smashed of the tables. ‘What’s he keep calling out
nits
for?’

Winsome frowned.

‘Calling…’ she began, and then her eyes flashed with realisation. ‘That’s what it was. Not
ball the nits,
it was
call the nits
!’ She turned to
the rest of the class. ‘Quick!’ she shouted. ‘It’s our only chance. Call the nits!’

Class Six didn’t waste any time arguing. There was a big leopard loose in the classroom, and it had nearly managed to kick its way out of its trousers.

‘Nits!’ they called.

‘NITS!!’ they bellowed.

‘
NITS!!!
’

Jack felt it first—a sharp tickle behind his ear. Then Winsome’s elbow twitched sharply for no reason at all. Serise’s foot lifted itself up and began waggling about as if she
were trying to kick her shoe off.

Suddenly all the class were twitching and shivering as strange wiggly feelings ran through them from their toes to their belly buttons and right up to the ends of their eyelashes.

The Rodney-leopard gave a great angry snarl, but then there was a
crack!
as if the floor had split in two, and a brilliant flash which meant that all anyone could see for several seconds
were floaty orange blobs.

When the blobs faded, Class Six saw that a big-bosomed figure with sandy hair had appeared at the front of the classroom.

Miss Broom looked round the classroom at the heap of bewildered children, and all the wrecked tables and chairs.

‘Good gracious,’ she said. ‘Great moonbeams above.’

And she put her hands behind her ears and flipped them three times.

At once all the splinters and odd pieces of wood from the tables and chairs jumped about, did various somersaults, and slotted themselves neatly back together again. Anil had to duck pretty
sharply to avoid being bashed on the ear by a chair back, but in less than a minute Class Six found themselves somewhere that looked like a classroom again, and not like the scene of an earthquake
with a bit of car-crash thrown in.

‘And now,’ said Miss Broom, turning to Class Six, ‘what about all of
you
?’

And Class Six, terrified, knew that any moment now a real live genuine witch was going to find out…

‘Great unicycling unicorns!’ said Miss Broom, as a snarl alerted her to the fact that there was a half-boy half-leopard crouching on the floor. ‘I know that vacant look and
that slack jaw. Why, it’s Rodney, isn’t it?’

No one answered. Miss Broom cast a sharp glance round the room.

‘Yes, it’s Rodney turned into a leopard,’ Miss Broom went on. ‘How odd. And inconvenient. And dangerous.’

She glanced round again, and everyone hurriedly looked away, trying to make themselves invisible again.

It didn’t work, of course. Class Six had been getting less invisible ever since the day they were born, and now, adorned with fluorescent antennae, fur and wobbly trunks, they would have
stood out at a Science Fiction convention.

‘Great icicles of Snark,’ said Miss Broom. ‘How utterly terrible. I’d no idea what a simple nit infestation could do to human children. I mean, your symptoms are bad
enough, but those witch-nits have set up such nasty brain-waves in your poor human heads that they actually sent me most of the way to Timbuktu. You’ve no idea what a shock it was for me to
find myself in the Sahara desert. I’m not sure the camels will ever get over the surprise.’

Miss Broom looked round at them all again.

‘This is highly dangerous,’ she said.

‘Yes!’ said Emily. ‘Rodney wants to eat us!’

‘I can see that,’ said Miss Broom. ‘But that’s not the worst of it. Now, all of you, listen to me. A witch-nit infestation obviously does all sorts of strange things to
humans.’

‘It gives you green toes,’ said Anil.

‘And purple fluff in your belly button,’ said Slacker Punchkin.

‘And even worse, they seem to make your veins clog up so in the end they will stop working altogether,’ finished up Miss Broom, sadly.

Everyone gasped.

‘But that would kill us!’ said Winsome, aghast.

‘They
are
nits of doom!’ said Anil.

‘I don’t want to die,’ Emily said, very quickly. ‘I don’t want to die! I want to grow up and wear high heels and worry if my handbag’s the right
shape!’

‘Handbags?’ echoed Serise, outraged. ‘Blow handbags! This is just
so
unfair. This means I’ll never get to start a weapons factory or become president of the
universe.’

Winsome nodded sadly.

‘Or be a doctor,’ she said.

‘Or drive a car!’

‘Or be a model!’

‘Or have my own horse!’

‘Or a restaurant!’

‘Or a huge train lay-out!’

Miss Broom shook her head sorrowfully.

‘I suppose I must have left the cupboard door unlocked,’ she said. ‘And someone tried my hat on. That must have been Rodney, mustn’t it, as he’s the most
changed.’

Jack spoke up. ‘Will we
all
turn into animals first?’

‘My dear Class Six,’ said Miss Broom. ‘Turn into animals? Die all over the place? Great turnips of Tresco, I hope not! But you must all be very brave and clever. The really
hugely important thing is that you
mustn’t scratch
. You see, all the nits have come out of your pores, now you’ve called them, and they’re sitting on your skin. But if you
scratch or move suddenly you’ll frighten them and they’ll go back in and refuse to come out again. So
don’t scratch
. All right?’

At once Class Six’s skins begin to shiver and itch.

And itch and itch and itch.

Class Six clenched their fists and screwed up their faces and tried as hard as they could not to scratch, even though they had little tickles and prickles and creepy feelings as if spiders were
running about all over them.

‘I’ve just got to scratch,’ said Jack desperately.

‘Don’t!’ said Winsome.

‘I must!’ said Anil. ‘I feel as if I’ve got earwigs in my ears.’

‘Don’t!’ said Winsome.

‘It’s no good,’ gasped Serise. ‘We’re all going to die!’

‘I can’t stand it!’ squeaked Emily. ‘I’ve got to scratch, I’ve got to—’

‘Great bananas of Bongo!’ exclaimed Miss Broom. ‘My dear Class Six, what am I?’

Class Six blinked at her.

‘Winsome,’ Miss Broom said. ‘You tell them. What am I?’

Winsome frowned with concentration, holding her hands together to stop herself scratching. ‘You’re a…a…a…
ditch
, Miss Broom.’

Miss Broom laughed a strange mad laugh that raised the fur on the back of all their necks.

‘Nearly right,’ she said. ‘I’m a
witch
. That’s what I am, a witch, a witch, a WITCH! That means, amongst other things, that I’m the best teacher in the
world. I can take you down to the centre of the earth to see the continents floating along on their oceans of molten rock. I can take you up in an invisible balloon to watch the comets screaming
through the sky. I can show you the secrets of the gnome-finch, the way you make ear wax, and how the hippo cleans its teeth.’

Anil sighed and sat down on his hands.

‘That all sounds so brilliant,’ he said longingly. ‘I wish…I do wish I
wasn’t
going to die. I’d love to learn all that stuff.’

‘You haven’t got time just to tell us about the ear wax, have you?’ asked Winsome wistfully.

‘I’m afraid not,’ said Miss Broom. ‘Because this is really much too serious. In fact, I think you had all better sit at your tables.’

Numbly, Class Six did as they were told.

‘Now,’ said Miss Broom sweetly.

And she began to dance.

It was an old-fashioned sort of dance. It looked the sort of thing a cannibal might do round a cauldron; or perhaps like the dance a bear might do who was celebrating finding an enormous hive
full of honey.

Class Six watched her, and even though Miss Broom looked really funny they didn’t feel like laughing at all.

‘Look!
’ shouted Serise.

There was a thing like a tiny white rugby ball flying through the air towards the front of the classroom.

‘There’s another one!’ cried Slacker.

They were everywhere now, a whole blizzard of tiny white capsules, streaming through the air and heading for…

Miss Broom shivered happily and patted gently at her springy sandy hair.

‘Lovely,’ she murmured, as Class Six gaped in horror. ‘Beautiful. There’s nothing like a community of nice active witch-nits charging round one’s veins to perk up
one’s magic. But only if one is a witch, it seems. Otherwise I’m afraid these nits really are agents of doom.’

There was a kerfuffle at the front of the classroom and Rodney’s head and pink bare shoulders popped up behind Miss Broom’s desk. He gazed round at everyone, screamed, and ducked
down again.

Slacker put up a huge hand to feel for his antennae. They weren’t there.

‘I can’t pick up Foodie FM any more,’ he said. ‘Blow it! There was going to be a recipe for blackberry and ginger crumble on the half hour.’

‘My arms have got shorter,’ whispered Jack, as if he could hardly believe it.

‘And my trunk,’ said someone.

‘And my chest isn’t hairy any more.’

‘But of course,’ said Miss Broom. ‘Well, I couldn’t let my whole class drop dead, could I? People would have noticed. Your parents might have been upset. Complained,
even. Especially if you’d all turned into leopards first.’

‘So do you mean…we’re cured?’ asked Winsome, hardly able to believe it.

‘Of course!’ said Miss Broom. ‘Well, you’re back to normal, anyway. Yes, just as you were before, except for being a little older and possibly just a tiny bit wiser. And
as for the nits, snacking on your odd non-witchy brainwaves has perked them up no end. Yes, I can feel them fizzing away inside my brain like sherbet.’

‘You mean you’ve got all our nits
on your own head
?’ Serise said.

‘That’s right. They’re a great help. I’m not sure what I’d do without them. Probably be rather evil, I should imagine.’

Class Six looked at each other.

‘So…
aren’t
you evil, then, Miss Broom?’ asked Anil, at last, politely.

‘I mean, we know you’ve been really nice so far,’ said Winsome. ‘Teaching us our tables and all that. And PE was fantastic. But…’

Miss Broom seemed rather offended. ‘Really!’ she said. ‘Do I
look
evil?’

Class Six looked at each other some more.

‘Not really,’ said Winsome at last.

‘Not
really
?’

‘It’s just that the things we see in your eyes are a bit frightening sometimes,’ explained Anil. ‘You know, all those ruined temples and pterodactyls and screaming ghosts
and stuff.’

‘And the skeletons,’ said someone, feelingly.

Miss Broom put her hands up to her face in dismay. ‘Skeletons?’ she echoed.

‘And hands with huge claws,’ said Emily. ‘Wearing black nail varnish.’

Miss Broom clutched at her sandy hair in horror.

‘Oh
no
!’ she said. ‘That’s just
terrible
! Oh my dears, you poor things. Just a moment, will you?’

She turned her back on the class, and seemed to be trying to take her eyes out.

‘There!’ she said, turning back. ‘Better?’

Class Six stared at Miss Broom’s eyes. They could still clearly see the pictures floating across them.

‘Silver flying horses,’ said Emily, in wonder.

‘And pink teddy bears,’ said Serise, in some distaste. ‘Yuk, where on earth did they get those tartan waistcoats from?’

Miss Broom heaved a sigh of relief.

‘Thank heavens for that,’ she said. ‘You know, I
thought
I wasn’t seeing as well as I should have been. Just think, I must have been wearing my contact lenses
inside out for a whole week. Ooh yes, I can see much better now.’

Behind her Rodney stood up. He was fully clothed and not even slightly a leopard. He walked carefully round Miss Broom’s desk and back to his seat.

Class Six sighed. The sight of those teddy bears had made them feel much calmer. Happier, too. As if having a witch for a teacher might be quite fun. Incredible fun.

Absolutely
stupendous
fun.

‘Hey, Rodney,’ said Slacker Punchkin, as Rodney settled himself down. ‘I bet you’ve changed your mind now.’