The Case of the Exploding Loo (9 page)

Alfred Hitchcock

I don’t like that one. Without scruples to tell us the right things to do, people would be murdering, stealing and talking with their mouths full all over the place.

Ms Grimm leads us past glass doors showing book-lined classrooms and whiteboards covered in equations. We march along yet more turquoise corridors where open doors reveal smaller, cosier rooms
equipped with tablet computers, Smart Boards and the latest gadgets. At the end of a final walkway we reach the dormitory block: girls on the ground floor, boys on the floor above, staff up at the
top.

There’s a huge sitting room next to the girls’ dorms on the ground floor. It’s a Know-All’s paradise: sleek, modern and full of computing equipment. I count fifteen
laptops and nine games consoles hooked up to plasma screens. The tables are piled high with gadgets and techy magazines.

Ms Grimm stops just inside the door and rests her hands on Porter’s shoulders. She’s scarier than a sabre-toothed spider, but the gesture reminds me of pre-explosion Mum and makes my
throat scratchy. She introduces me to the other Remarkable Students and everyone mumbles a quick “hello”.

Ms Grimm seizes the opportunity for a motivational speech. “As you all know, you’ve been selected as the brightest young people in this area. Your only limits are those you place on
yourself. We are here to help you remove these limits and achieve your full potential. I am so confident of what my school can achieve, I even enrolled my son.”

She sounds so much like Porter’s impression that I start to laugh. Unfortunately, the noise that comes out of my mouth sounds more like a donkey being strangled. Ms Grimm glares at me and
I chew through my cheeks trying to keep my face straight. Porter comes to my rescue, slapping me on the back and telling everyone I must be choking with excitement at the thought of achieving my
full potential.

Ms Grimm reduces her glare to half-power.

“I didn’t know you had a son, Ms Grimm,” I say afterwards, as the other girls escape to the dormitory.

Porter stiffens. Interesting.

Ms Grimm puts a bony arm around his shoulder. “Porter, meet Hawkins. Hawkins, meet my son, Porter.”

“Oh, we’ve already met. I just didn’t realise he was your son.”

The Grimm Reaper’s bulgy eyes bulge further. Porter steps on my toe. Hard. So he doesn’t want his mother to know he came to see us? Even more interesting.

“We were sitting next to each other on the bus,” I explain. “We had a fascinating conversation about portable toilets.”

Porter’s shoulders relax. Ms Grimm turns away, losing interest. With a grateful smile, Porter heads for the stairs. I pick up my bags and carry them through to the dormitory.

It’s a big room – ten beds on one side, ten on the other. Behind the headboard of each bed is a small cubicle containing a desk, a chest of drawers and a wardrobe. I poke the
mattress. Nice and firm. Shame about the turquoise duvet cover.

I’d expected a room full of teenage girls to be plastered with pictures of half-naked, floppy-haired boy celebrities I’m supposed to recognise. To my relief, the dorm walls are
covered in astronomy charts and Higgs boson posters. Einstein smiles down from several of my dorm-mates’ walls.

Ms Grimm’s school is clearly doing well. Every cubicle is occupied.

Except mine.

“Has this bed always been empty?” I ask the girl beside me.

Her eyes flit around the room as though they’re tracking a distressed moth. She doesn’t answer.

I remember Holly’s advice about not firing questions at people until we’ve built a rapport. I’m not sure what a rapport is, but I try a smile. It feels wonky.

I plough on. “Hello, my name’s Noelle. What’s yours?”

“Aisha,” the girl says softly.

That went well. What am I supposed to say next?
Archimedes!
This is a social minefield. What’s wrong with asking questions anyway?

“So Aisha, has this bed always been empty?”

Aisha points to a piece of A4 paper stuck on the wall behind me.

“‘Do not indulge in idle chit-chat’,” Aisha says. “Golden Rule number four.”

“I like rule number five best.”

The Great Leader clearly needs help with the Golden Rules template.

“Would you like to discuss Einstein’s Theory of Relativity instead?” Aisha asks politely.

“Er. Not right now. Maybe later. So who’s this Great Leader?”

“Do not question the Great Leader. Golden Rule number three.”

“I’m not questioning the Great Leader. I’m questioning
you
about the Great Leader. That’s different.”

Aisha looks like she’s about to cry.

“Forget it.” I retreat into the cubicle and hang up my clothes. So much for rapport.

“Her name was Gemma.” Aisha’s whisper carries through a small hole in the back of the wardrobe. “The girl here before you. Gemma Gold. They say she went home last week.
But her comfort blanket’s still here and she can’t sleep without it.”

“Do you think—?”

A bell rings in the distance and Aisha flees, leaving me staring at the grubby bit of blue cloth tied round my bed frame. Is this the comfort blanket she was talking about? Ugh. If it’s a
clue, it’s a heavily sucked one.

So who
is
this Great Leader? Is that what Ms Grimm calls herself here? I look at the Golden Rules poster.

I don’t like number one: Shake off your limits.

Limits, like scruples, are a good thing. I tried to explain this to Vigil-Aunty when we got pulled over for speeding. If the traffic police couldn’t punish her for breaking the speed limit
then they’d have to follow her around until she caused a proper accident (which was inevitable given the way she was driving). I think Vigil-Aunty got the point – we haven’t been
pulled over since. Although, come to think of it, she hasn’t given me a lift since.

What worries me is that if someone with no limits has kidnapped Dad, there’s no saying what they might do to him.

“What is
this
?” Ms Grimm stands in front of my bed, holding my defaced LOSERS’ routine between her thumb and forefinger as if it might carry
something contagious. Uh-oh.

The other girls flee the dorm to begin morning exercises.

“It’s my, um, routine sheet.”

“Your ‘um routine sheet’?”

I nod, my body tense.

“Think you’re a comedian, Hawkins?” Ms Grimm asks.

I hate questions with no good answers. “Not sure.”

“You think this is funny?” Ms Grimm reads from the sheet in a voice that would kill any joke. “‘Run up and down stairs five times because exercise enhances brain function
by increasing blood flow to the brain . . .
if it doesn’t kill you first
.’ Is that funny?”

“No.” Not any more. “Sorry.”

“You will be. If you don’t want to run up and down the stairs five times, let’s see how you feel about doing it twenty times.”

“Twenty?” She must be joking.

I look at her face. She’s not joking. Twenty trips up those huge staircases? On these puny legs?

The first trip up and down isn’t too bad, but then everything blurs into a long run of “Owww!” and “I-can’t-breathe!”

Somewhere around the fourteenth run up and down, I have to swerve to avoid a girl who staggers out of a room on the top floor. A woman in a nurse’s uniform grabs her and drags her back
into the room. The girl doesn’t look like a LOSERS’ student. Her hair’s all over the place and she’s wearing pyjamas in the middle of the day.

I wonder for a moment if she might have been a clue, but decide she’s just a sick person in need of a good hairbrush. Either that or an illusion caused by too much exercise.

“Stop!” Ms Grimm barks from the bottom of the stairwell five minutes later.

“Willingly.” I collapse, wheezing.

“The Great Leader has requested an audience with you, later this week.” Ms Grimm is breathing heavily. I don’t know why. It’s not like
she’s
been pounding
up and down the stairs. “You are a lucky, lucky girl. Such a wonderful man.”

A man? So Ms Grimm isn’t the Great Leader. I look at her closely. Is she dribbling? The pupils of her eyes are huge and her face is sweaty. I flick through the unusual facial expressions
stored in my memory and decide she’s over-excited.

During breakfast, I’m so busy trying to picture a man who could make Ms Grimm dribble that I accidentally eat a herring. As the salty tail brushes my tonsils, yesterday’s fish
reappear in my throat and it’s a struggle not to empty my stomach all over the dining table.

I can still taste herring in Chess Hour. I let Remarkable Student Aisha win because I can’t bear the thought of her crying through Maths Hour when I feel this sick. The sickness fades
slightly when Ms Grimm announces we’re having double Maths instead of Music. After yesterday’s scree-chathon, violins have shot up to second place (below fish) in my list of Things I
Hate Most in the Whole World.

Ms Grimm hands out turquoise iPods during today’s maths test. I immediately think of Mum’s Curry in a Hurry freebie.

I put in the earphones. The music helps me focus and the test answers come easily as I whizz through the paper. Behind me, one Remarkable Student rushes out of the room with a
nosebleed and another complains of a headache and has to be taken to the nurse.

Is this what people mean by exam nerves? For
Fermat’s
sake, it’s only a maths test.

We return the iPods and mark our own papers under the watchful eye of Mr Kumar (Maths Teacher). I can’t stop staring at him.