Archie's Unbelievably Freaky Week (4 page)

She was swaying slightly on her feet and then her eyes closed and she crashed to the floor.

‘The good news,’ said Mr Gunn, an hour later when he returned to the classroom, ‘is that the men from the council have taken away the spider, and that Miss Humber is going to be fine. They’ve given her injections to help with the pain and they say, in a day or two, she’ll be able to move her arms and legs again quite normally.’

He smiled as he looked around the class. ‘I think we all know what a brave thing it was that she did, and the last thing she told me in the ambulance, before her jaw became paralysed, was that she hoped you would all finish off the fruit salad you were making. She wanted me to remind you that a fruit salad keeps us all healthy and happy!’

So the class finished making the fruit salad, and perhaps the only person who was
not
happy at the end of the day was Archie’s
mother
, who couldn’t understand why there were strawberry stains all down the back of his shirt.

‘What on earth do you
do
in that school?’ she demanded, as she carried his shirt off to the kitchen to put it in the wash.

‘Honestly! I don’t believe it, Archie!’

ON WEDNESDAY, ARCHIE’S
class had another new teacher. This one was called Miss Henley, and she was young and very beautiful.

But although she was young and beautiful, you could tell Miss Henley was not a
happy
person. There was a deep sadness in her eyes that came out in the way she spoke, and in the way she taught her class.

In art, for instance, she asked them to draw a picture of what it might be like to be the only person left alive after a nuclear war. In maths, she set them problems like, ‘If there are fifty people in your street and ninety percent of them die of bird-flu, how many will be left?’ And for their literacy homework, Miss Henley
said
she wanted everyone to write about how it felt to lose someone they loved.

‘Maybe you’ve had a pet that died,’ she said, ‘or a grandparent who passed away, or a best friend who moved to another country so that you never saw them again . . .’ She paused to lend a hankie to two girls who were already crying. ‘We’ve all had experiences like this,’ she continued. ‘I myself once lost someone I loved very much and . . . I want you to describe how unhappy that sort of thing can make you feel.’

Archie was not looking forward to this homework. It was all right for Cyd – she could write about her father who was away in the
army
and whom she hadn’t seen for months – but he couldn’t think of anything to write about himself.

‘I can’t remember losing anyone,’ he said, as he and Cyd collected their coats and bags at the end of school.

‘Seriously?’ Cyd was understandably surprised. ‘I’d have thought, with all the odd things happening to you, that you lost someone almost every week.’

‘No one I really cared about,’ said Archie. His face furrowed in thought. ‘I had a pet ant once that—’

But he never got to say what happened to the ant, because at that moment Cyd discovered she’d forgotten her reading book and they had to go back up to the classroom to get it.

The classroom was empty when they got there but, as Cyd collected her book, they heard a strange noise coming from the stockroom cupboard. When they went to see
what
it was, they found Miss Henley inside, sitting on a pile of dictionaries, gazing at a photograph and crying quietly.

‘Miss Henley?’ said Archie. ‘Are you OK?’

‘Oh yes! Yes, I’m fine!’ Miss Henley blew her nose on a tissue and smiled at him through her tears. ‘Don’t mind me, I’m just . . .’ She put the photo back in her bag. ‘Is there something you need?’

‘I forgot my reading book,’ said Cyd. ‘Are you
sure
you’re OK?’

Miss Henley repeated that she was, and the two children turned to leave. Unfortunately the stockroom door had swung shut behind them when they went in and when Archie tried to open it, the handle came off in his hand.

‘I suppose this is one of the “odd” things that are always happening to you,’ said Miss Henley. ‘Mr Gunn warned me about that this morning. Well, let’s see what we can do!’

There are several ways you can try to get out of a small room when the handle has come off the door and in the next half-hour, Archie, Cyd and Miss Henley tried all of them. They tried fitting the handle back on the door. They
tried
shouting and screaming for help. Miss Henley even tried bashing the door down with a fire extinguisher, but nothing worked.

‘I’m afraid we’ll just have to wait,’ she said, sitting back down on her pile of dictionaries. ‘Someone will come and rescue us eventually.’

‘You think so?’ asked Archie.

‘I’m sure of it!’ said Miss Henley, confidently. ‘Tomorrow morning, when the other children get here—’

‘Tomorrow morning!’ interrupted Cyd. ‘You mean we could be stuck here all night?’

‘It’s not that bad,’ said Miss Henley. ‘We’ll manage.’ She gestured to the shelves around her. ‘At least we’ve got plenty to read, so we can—’

There was a
plink
sound and the bulb in the ceiling went out, plunging the room into darkness.

‘Don’t panic!’ said Miss Henley. ‘I’ve got a box of matches in my bag!’

A moment later there was a scratching
sound
and Miss Henley’s face appeared above a small yellow flame.

‘Now,’ she said, ‘I seem to remember seeing some candles in here . . .’

Archie climbed up onto a shelf to get down the box of candles, which were left over from a project Miss Jensen had been doing on steam power. Just as he reached them, however, the match Miss Henley was holding burned down to the point where it was singeing her fingers and she dropped it.

It fell, still alight, into her handbag which, as well as being full of paper tissues, contained a leaking bottle of nail varnish.

Nail varnish, in case you didn’t know, is highly inflammable.

There was a
whoompf
noise as Miss Henley’s bag burst into flames, and a brief moment of panic while Miss Henley tried to stamp out the fire with her feet and Archie tried to beat it out with his coat, before Cyd picked up the fire extinguisher and sprayed the bag with foam.

Some minutes later, by the light of a candle, they were able to review the situation. There were black marks on the wall, Archie’s coat was badly scorched, and there was a puddle of foam on the floor, but the only real damage seemed to be to Miss Henley’s bag, most of which had been burned away.