Playschool (4 page)

Lesson: Invisibility
Teacher: Prebender Glorious

Prebender Glorious stood in front of the class with his usual Monday morning thought crashing against the inside of his skull. The thought was:
I wish I was anywhere but here.
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Prebender Glorious taught Invisibility and he taught it very badly. He himself had a habit of
vanishing without any warning and reappearing just as suddenly.
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It was a talent or curse he had been born with, and he had no control over it. Over the years it had brought him a lot of embarrassment, excitement, six months in prison, several million dollars and a string of failed love affairs. Sometimes just bits of him would disappear, which made going to the toilet and eating very difficult or very hilarious, depending on where you were standing.

His students, on the other hand, had mastered invisibility on their first day in the class, and now made his life hell. He sighed and took out the class register to mark everyone off.

‘Portia Appleby?' There was a small pop and one of the students disappeared.

While Prebender Glorious looked around for Portia, Orkward Warlock leaned forward and whispered to Morbid and Silent Flood, ‘You're all going to die.'

The twins ignored him. They were used to Orkward's snide remarks and knew he was all talk.

‘Portia Appleby? Where's Portia?' Prebender Glorious asked.

‘Right here, sir,' said Portia, appearing out of thin air.

‘But I'm not,' said Bypass Noble, vanishing.

‘Now, look, come on, everyone, play fair,' Prebender Glorious pleaded, on the verge of tears.

‘But we're just doing what you've been teaching us,' said Portia and the whole class vanished, except Howard Tiny, who was horribly good and didn't count. Actually he did count, really well, but never got past ninety-nine before someone stuffed something in his mouth, because as well as being horribly good, he was also horribly boring.

‘Oh God, Tiny, why do they always vanish and leave me with you?'

‘I don't know, sir. Would you like me to do some counting?'

‘No, it's all right, thank you,' said Prebender Glorious. ‘You just sit there and practise your invisibility. Try and make your mouth vanish.'

‘Okay, sir. Can I count quietly? It helps me concentrate.'

‘If you must.'

‘One, two, three, four …'

Orkward Warlock could do invisibility but he wasn't very good at it. When you are really good at it, you can see everyone else who is invisible at the same time as you are. Orkward Warlock couldn't. All he could see when the class vanished was Prebender Glorious and Howard Tiny. For all he knew, everyone else had left the room.

‘Going to kill us, are you?' Morbid Flood whispered in his left ear, while Silent blew hot breath in his right. ‘We're really scared,' the voice added. ‘Not!'

Two very large invisible books whacked Orkward on either side of his head. For a split second
he became visible again before collapsing on the floor with his breakfast coming out of his nose.

‘Nose blister scumbags!' he shouted. ‘I really am going to kill you.'

He staggered to his feet and kicked Howard Tiny, who started to cry. Orkward disappeared again before he could get into trouble.

The Monday morning thought beat even harder inside Prebender Glorious's head.

‘Eighty-seven, eighty-eight, eighty-nine …' Howard sobbed.

Something snapped inside Prebender. It was his third rib disappearing. He began to wish he could have a heart attack. It would be less stressful than teaching this lot, but he knew that even if he died he would still have to teach the Invisibility class. Being dead, which several
other teachers were, just meant the school could stop paying your wages. It also looked very good in the school brochure.

‘Ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-sevvv …' said Howard as Orkward Warlock's invisible hand stuffed a sock in his mouth.

There were two words guaranteed to make the students visible again and Prebender Glorious said them.

‘Sports day.'

The entire class reappeared and sat quietly in their seats.

‘As you all know, invisibility is totally absent from sports day,' he began. ‘I mean, have we ever seen any invisible sports? No we haven't, and I for one think that it's very unfair. I petitioned the board of governors. I've even threatened to take the whole thing to the Wizard Rights Commission, and I am delighted to say that this year we will have invisibility on sports days. It will be there for all to not see.'

The class cheered with delight. Maybe they had misjudged poor old Prebender Glorious.

‘What invisible events will there be, sir?' asked Bypass Noble.

‘Throwing the javelin, for one,' said Prebender Glorious.

‘So what exactly will be invisible?' asked Morbid. ‘Us or the javelin?'

‘Both.'

‘Wow. So how will anyone know how far the javelin's gone or even where it's gone?' said Portia Appleby.

‘By the bloodstains on the grass,' Prebender Glorious explained.

‘I like it,' said Orkward Warlock. ‘Can we practise on each other?'

‘No, Orkward, you cannot. Now we will practise our invisible maths for the rest of the lesson.'

Everyone except Howard vanished again but, as the end-of-lesson bell rang, they all reappeared.

‘Right, children, homework …' Prebender Glorious began to say, but they all vanished again. ‘Okay, we'll … we'll skip homework again. Class dismissed.'

At which point the whole class reappeared and ran out of the room, except Howard Tiny, who was lying under his desk going purple as he tried to pull the sock out of his mouth, which would have been a lot easier if his foot hadn't still been inside it. Prebender rolled his eyes and went to help him, the Monday morning thought crashing around his skull with the force of a jackhammer.

From a distance, and especially when he was sitting still, Narled looked exactly like a very old suitcase. Up close you could see he had two little stubby legs at the front, two wheels at the back and a pair of arms. He appeared to have neither eyes, nor ears, nor a mouth. Where his mouth should have been was a wide leather flap that closed with a zip. Everyone assumed that Narled was once a human who had been changed into a suitcase by a spell that had been interrupted or put on him by some particularly cruel wizard, but despite all the teachers' attempts, no amount of magic had been able to undo the spell.

All day long Narled trundled round Quicklime's picking up things. Not just rubbish, but anything
that wasn't nailed down. He scooped it up with one hand, stuck it into his mouth and closed his zip. No one knew where he took all the stuff he collected, but if you left anything lying around for more than a few minutes, Narled would appear and take it away. He seemed to arrive from nowhere, and he had a strange way of being able to give people the slip. He would turn a corner into a dead end, but when you turned after him, he had vanished. There were rumours that he had a vast treasure house somewhere in the valley where he'd stashed all the things he had collected over the past six hundred years, but no one had ever found it.

‘He must have stuff that's worth a fortune,' said Orkward Warlock. ‘Gold and jewels and things that have become really valuable just because they're so old.'

‘Shall I follow him?' said The Toad.

‘Better people than you have tried,' sneered Orkward. ‘In fact, anyone who's tried was better than you, you piece of dehydrated camel snot.'

The Toad worshipped Orkward, no matter how vile he was to him. Just the fact that Orkward spoke to him made The Toad happy. He looked up adoringly at Orkward, which made the boy so angry he did the yellow oozing pimple spell all over The Toad's face. This only made The Toad even happier.

‘Anyway,' said Orkward, ‘we need to work out a way to kill the Floods on sports day.'

‘Poison,' said The Toad.

‘They're wizards, idiot. Poison doesn't work on wizards.'

‘Concrete,' said The Toad.

‘Shut up. Or would you like me to throw something hard and smelly at you?' said Orkward.

‘Ooh yes,' cried The Toad. ‘Can I have the big brick? Please, go on, go on, please, please …'

‘Paper. Get me paper and a pen,' Orkward ordered. ‘We are going to write down every single possible way you can kill a bunch of wizards.'

An hour later the paper looked like this:

‘I know,' said The Toad. ‘You need a big explosion.'

‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!' shouted Orkward, stamping his foot on The Toad's lunch. ‘Actually,' he added, as The Toad licked bits of wasp sandwich off
the bottom of Orkward's shoes, ‘even though you are fifty billion degrees more stupid than a fly-speck, that is a brilliant idea.'

‘I know how to make explosions,' said The Toad. ‘My father owns the biggest firework factory in the world and I know how to make gunpowder. I blew up the toilets when I was in kindy. That's why Professor Throat made me into a toad.'

‘You mean you're a real toad?' said Orkward. ‘I thought you were just a really ugly boy. Yuk, a real toad, that's gross.'

‘Well, I'm not one hundred per cent toad,' said The Toad. ‘Each year I get a bit less toady and a bit more humany, unless I do something really bad again. Now I'm seventy per cent toad. If I'm good for the next seven years I'll be all human again.'

‘You colour-blind septic-tank bog rat,' said Orkward suddenly, and kicked The Toad under the bed. ‘I was sitting on those toilets when you blew them up! I couldn't sit down for two months.'