8.30 a.m.–9 a.m.
Barney walked with Rissa to school. He got splashed by the school bus. Everyone on the bus looked out of the window and laughed at him, including Gavin Needle, who shouted, ‘Mind the puddle!’ and laughed as if he’d just told The Best Joke Ever.
9 a.m.–9.30 a.m.
The deputy head, Mr Waffler, broke his own World’s Most Boring Assembly record for the third time in a year, with a talk about the various types of moss he discovered while on holiday in the Lake District.
9.30 a.m.–10.30 a.m.
Maths. (As in, maths.)
10.30 a.m.–11 a.m.
Break. In which a perfectly nice conversation with Rissa was interrupted by Gavin Needle shouting, ‘Is that your girlfriend?’ To which Barney decided to foolishly answer, ‘No,’ for Gavin to shout back, ‘I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to Rissa.’ And Barney was left with nothing to say except, ‘Funny,’ in a rather quiet voice.
11 a.m.–midday
Geography. In which Gavin displayed his usual virtuosity by pulling Barney’s chair back while Mrs Fossil talked about volcanoes.
Midday–1 p.m.
Barney spent lunch hour eating overcooked bolognese and undercooked spaghetti. He chatted to Rissa as she explained some stuff about stars and about how the sun – our closest star – was growing all the time and would one day turn into something called a red giant and destroy the earth. Which would have been interesting if Barney hadn’t felt a different kind of heat – that caused by Miss Whipmire’s glare – burning the back of his neck as she stared at him through the little window in the canteen door.
1 p.m.–2 p.m.
English. During which Mr Waffler waffled about Barney’s poor marks. (‘Such a shame for a boy of such fine imagination.’)
2 p.m.–3 p.m.
IT. In which Gavin and his friends seemed to be planning something, as they visited the catchily-titled website: www.waystogetpeoplecalledbarneywillowin-totrouble.com.
3 p.m.–4 p.m.
French. During which Gavin and his friends were mysteriously absent. At about 3 p.m. Barney went to the toilet. Then, while he was walking along the corridor, the fire alarm went off. Barney turned to see Miss Whipmire glaring at him.
‘You are in big trouble, Barney Willow!’
‘It wasn’t me! You can see I’m nowhere near a fire alarm.’
But ten minutes later, with everyone lined up on the field, Miss Whipmire walked over to Barney Willow and harshly whispered into his ear the three most terrifying words in the universe.
‘My office. Now.’
Miss Whipmire’s Pen Pot
BARNEY COULD SMELL fish. The fish smell seemed to be coming from Miss Whipmire’s desk, but there was nothing on there except a typed letter and a pen pot.
It was a weird-looking pen pot. Black with two holes in it, staring at him like eyes. But not fish eyes.
Miss Whipmire had told him to wait there while she went outside to check something.
He knew when she came back he was going to be in big trouble. And he knew the letter on the desk would tell him how much. He stood up, leaned forward and tried to have a look at the upside-down writing.
But that was as much as he could read before he heard the door behind him. It opened, it closed, the click of the latch sounding as grim as a last nail hammered into a coffin.
Barney shot back down into his seat. He didn’t dare turn round, even though Miss Whipmire stayed behind him for a moment, saying nothing.
He pictured her standing there, watching him with disgust. Her eyes, bulging with evil, staring over her glasses towards the back of his head.
Barney wished he could start the day again, wished that when he had felt Guster’s sandpaper tongue he had pulled the duvet back over his head and just stayed there.
That was the thing with Barney these days.
He did a lot of wishing.
Miss Whipmire walked round the front of her desk and sat down, ready to talk about the fire alarm.
‘So, Barney Willow,’ she said in her crisp, dry voice. ‘Barney Willow, Barney Willow, Barney Willow … always Barney Willow … Now, tell me, why did you set off the fire alarm?’
Barney sat uneasily in his chair. He looked again at the strange pen pot on the desk. ‘I didn’t do it.’
Miss Whipmire took a deep breath and sat perfectly upright in her chair. She was looking cross. But she always did; her mouth a small tight ‘O’, her black hair scraped back so tightly it raised
her thin eyebrows to such a height that the wide, angry eyes beneath them looked like they might roll out onto the desk, knocking off the tiny glasses that sat pointlessly at the end of her nose.
‘You didn’t do it?’ Her voice was ominous. ‘Of course. You never do it, Barney, do you? You never disrupt assembly, or write graffiti in the toilets, or pick fights with Gavin Needle.’
That last lie was too much. Barney couldn’t stop himself objecting. ‘Gavin had put a drawing pin on my seat. As he always does. It’s his idea of a joke. Just like giving me a dead arm as he walks past is his idea of a joke. He’s a bully. He’s always been a bully.’
For a moment Miss Whipmire seemed to be agreeing with him. She certainly didn’t like Gavin Needle. And as Barney spoke her head seemed to nod, and a distant sadness arrived in her eyes. But she soon snapped out of it. She hated Barney – that was clear. Not just because of today and last week, but from all those other times too. For instance:
He had only been at this school for half a year but he had been thrown out of about ten of her assemblies. Once for saying ‘Ow!’ when Gavin had clipped his ear, but all the other times it had been for a noise someone else had made.
Like when Alfie Croker had giggled.
(‘Out, Barney Willow, we do not tolerate giggling in this school!’)
Or when Lottie Lewis, sitting miles away, had sneezed.
(‘Barney Willow, if you refuse to control your nose get out of this hall right now … RIGHT! Now!’)
Or when Mr Waffler made a yawning sound.
(‘Oh, Barney Willow, I’m boring you, am I? Well, perhaps you’d be more interested in detention!’)
He’d once even got in trouble in the playground for reading his favourite book, The Water Babies by Charles Kingsley. (‘Reading at break! How dare you? Come to my office …’)
‘I’m not here to talk about Gavin,’ Miss Whipmire now said. ‘Or drawing pins. I am here to talk about you. What is it? Your problem?’ She smiled wickedly. ‘Missing Daddy?’
Barney felt a surge of anger rise inside, like molten rock. ‘You can’t say that!’
‘Oh, but I just did. And, frankly, I don’t blame him. I think I would have run away if I’d had you as a son.’
‘He didn’t run away.’ Barney felt a tear rising. Closed his eyes, locked it up.
‘Oh, really? So what happened?’
Course, Barney couldn’t answer this. After all, his dad hadn’t been living with Barney at the time. Barney’s parents had divorced a year before, and so his dad lived alone in a flat, seeing
Barney only on Saturdays for outings to the zoo and pizza restaurants which never felt as much fun as they should have been.
Then, last summer, he just vanished.
Zip. Poof. Gone. Not a trace.
Leaving a hole big enough for a million questions but not one single answer.
The police couldn’t solve it.
The Blandford Gazette had run an article displaying his dad’s face with a big question mark.
And Barney’s mum began acting very weirdly, as though someone had just pressed a fast-forward button and made her go at triple-speed.
Oh, and that was when Barney started having the dreams. Sometimes just him and his dad in the pizza restaurant like the one this morning. But other times they’d be nightmares. He’d see his dad screaming in agony, holding a hand over his eye, blood leaking through his fingers.