The Extincts Page 5

  It felt good to be back on my bike again. Before I turned the corner, I glanced back over my shoulder. Prudence hadn’t gotten very far. She was hanging over the fence, staring at the horse. Everyone knows that girls get soppy about ponies, so I didn’t pay much attention. Which is how Prudence saw the unicorn, and I didn’t.

  SIX

  MISS THRIPPS WAS having one of her Whiny Wednesdays. First, she got snotty about me not handing in my homework. Then she caught me drawing in my notebook when I was meant to be doing fractions.

  “I’ve had enough of you, George Drake!” She scrunched up her mouth so it looked like a cat’s bottom, and pointed at the door. “Principal’s office. Now. Go!”

  The principal was on the telephone.

  “You’ll have to wait,” said Miss Gruff, the secretary. “Sit down. Don’t slouch, don’t fidget, don’t wipe your nose on the furniture, don’t make a noise, and don’t touch anything.”

  So I sat and waited. There wasn’t much to do. I looked at the notices on the wall about lost property and healthy dinners and lice. I looked at the third graders’ Ancient Egyptians display. I looked at the “Meet the Staff” wall, with photos of all the teachers smiling as hard as they could, trying to look kind and cozy and as if they didn’t hate children. I was so bored, I even looked in the garbage can. There wasn’t much in it: globs of spat-out chewing gum, a couple of snotty tissues, a pen cap, and yesterday’s paper. Flicking away a gum-glob, I picked up the newspaper. The public bathrooms were still closed.… A pair of stone gryphons had been stolen from outside the Squermington Towers Luxury Hotel and Health Spa.… A competition to grow Squermington’s tallest sunflower.… I turned to the front page.

  SQUERMINGTON WYRM EATS CHAMPION CHIHUAHUA!

  Miss Elsie Spindle was waiting at the bus stop on the corner of Dandelion Drive when her prizewinning Chihuahua, Cheeky Chappie Chimichanga Charlie, escaped from her handbag and ran across the road into Gardenia Gardens. Miss Spindle ran after him, very nearly getting run over by a number 3 bus.

  “I saw Charlie run into the bushes,” said Miss Spindle. “He didn’t come out again. There was something in there—I heard rustling. And there were marks in the grass, as if some gigantic thing had been slithering through it. It was that dreadful Wyrm, I know it was. It’s swallowed my baby!”

  A number of animals have been reported missing recently, leading to suspicions of “pet-napping.” Is the mysterious “pet-napper” actually the Squermington Wyrm? If so, will this rapacious monster really be content with chewing on a Chihuahua, or will it soon be looking for something bigger, something like a—

  “Hello,” said Prudence.

  I crumpled up the newspaper and dropped it back in the garbage can.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Same as you.” She flapped her math book at me. “Sent out. It was harder for me. Miss Thripps kept giving me chances because I’m new.”

  Under a row of neatly written fractions, Prudence had drawn a picture. Dangly earrings, pointy nose, tight little mouth like a cat’s bottom. You couldn’t not see who it was. Miss Thripps. Except Prudence had given her a beard. And hairy legs.

  “That’s not bad,” I admitted. “What’d you want to get sent out for?”

  “To talk to you.” She looked at me sideways. “Did you tell? About the bike?”

  I shook my head. I had my bike back—what was the point of making a fuss? I had more important stuff to worry about. Stuff like where might an escaped basilisk be hiding, and what did it eat, and how did it feel to be turned into stone…?

  “I haven’t told. Yet,” I added, just to leave her a little bit jumpy.

  Prudence scraped a blob of sticky tack off the notice board and fiddled with it.

  “That wasn’t what I wanted to ask you.”

  “What, then?”

  She turned to face me, her eyes all wide and sparkly.

  “At the farm … George, have they got dragons?”

  It sounded silly when you said it out loud. Dragons made sense at Wormestall; not here, in the boring, ordinary real world.

  “What are you going on about? Why would you think that?”

  “Well, there’s this.” She shoved my notebook at me, open at the page I’d been drawing on. It was a not-very-good picture of Tail-Biter.

  “So?” I blustered. “Josh draws spaceships all the time. It doesn’t mean he’s seen one. Anyway, that’s not a dragon. Can’t you tell? You’ll be talking about fairies next!”

  “And,” said Prudence, “I saw the unicorn.”

  “You what?”

  “And I found this when I was walking back through the wood. I’ll show you. Look…”

  She was reaching into her pocket when the door opened and there was the principal, looking down her nose at us.

  “George Drake. You again,” she said, in a voice like frozen vinegar. “And the new girl. You had better come in.”

  * * *

  Prudence got off easy.

  “I’m giving you a chance,” the principal told her, “because you’re new. And because of your Recent Sadness.” I guessed she meant the hippopotamus. “Now go back to class. Not you, George. I haven’t finished with you.”

  By the time she had finished, I had detention.

  Prudence was waiting for me in the corridor.

  “Well?”

  “Detention.” I gave a nearby chair a kick. “And I was going to go to Wormestall after school. I’ll be late. They’ll think I’m not coming.”

  “I could go,” said Prudence. “I could explain…”

  “Explain what?” I was cross with everybody, and especially her because she was nearest. “That I’m stuck in stupid detention and you’re not, and so you’re a Better Person for the job? You don’t fool me, with your no mum and no dad and your Recent Hippopotamus. You’re not being nice. You want to steal my job, that’s all. You’re not just a bike thief. You’re a job thief!”

  “That’s not fair. I didn’t mean…,” began Prudence, but I wasn’t listening. I ran. I legged it past the library and the lockers and the NO RUNNING IN THE HALLWAYS sign, and I left her far behind. Breathless and angry, I was already back in class before I remembered the unicorn. I hadn’t asked, and now I couldn’t. Like it or not, I wasn’t speaking to Prudence.

  * * *

  Miss Thripps was waffling on about it being our class’s turn to do an assembly.

  “As it has just been Saint George’s Day,” she was saying, “I think it would be appropriate to do something on the topic of Saint George and the dragon. A short dramatic presentation. We’ll need a narrator and a princess and at least three people to play the dragon. And, of course, a Saint George…”

  Most of the girls stuck their hands in the air, squealing that they wanted to be the princess. Not Prudence, I noticed.

  “Millie can be the princess,” announced Miss Thripps. Millie always gets to be the princess because she can sit on her own hair.

  “I’ll be Saint George,” said Nathan. “I’ll kill the stupid dragon.” He was doing dragon-killing impressions with his ruler. “I’ll kill it dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.” He stabbed at Alice, who sat in front of him. “Then I’ll cut it up and put it in a pie!”

  “George should be Saint George,” argued Josh. “He’s got the right name.”

  Several people agreed with him. “Yes—let George!”

  “Go on, George,” said Millie bossily. “I don’t want to be rescued by Nathan. Eeuuchh!”

  “Well, George?” asked Miss Thripps. “Do you suppose that, for once in your life, you could manage to be a saint?”

  I opened my mouth, then shut it again. A week ago, I would have been pleased. I don’t usually get important parts when we do plays. I end up being a tree or Third Hedgehog or something. Now I was being offered the starring role. But did I want it?

  In my mind, I could see Mrs. Lind shaking her head at me. Hadn’t I promised to help protect rare creatures? Okay, nobody was expecting me to kill
a real dragon, only a pretend one. Even so …

  “Couldn’t we change it a bit?” I asked, not very hopefully. “So Saint George doesn’t actually kill the dragon? He could give it something to eat, and let it go back to its cave.…”

  “Historically inaccurate!” snapped Miss Thripps. “And a very silly idea! Buck up, George—do you want to be Saint George or not?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I don’t.”

  “Suit yourself!” said Miss Thripps, with a sniff. “If you’re so unwilling to join in, you can be the back end of the dragon. Not even you, George, can make a mess of that!”

  * * *

  Parents were invited to watch the assembly. Mum had to be at the shop and Frank had to be at school, but Harry said she’d come, as it was on her way to class.

  “Will you be dressed up as a tadpole again?” she asked.

  I scowled at her. Our last assembly had been on punctuation. Miss Thripps had made me and Alice dress up as quotation marks.

  “I’m part of a dragon. The end part. Matt’s the head, Fazal’s the middle, and I’m the bum. All you’ll see is my feet. So you might as well not bother.”

  “I wouldn’t miss it. Not for anything,” said Harry.

  * * *

  The dragon costume was made of cardboard boxes, a lot of green paint, and an old green curtain. Matt was the only one who could actually see anything. He had a box over his head, but it had eyeholes. Fazal had to bend over, hidden by the curtain, holding on to Matt’s waist, while I bent over and held on to Fazal, with the dragon’s long green sausage of a tail dragging along behind me. All we could see was a patch of floor and our feet.

  Fazal said it made his back hurt.

  “Stop making a fuss,” ordered Miss Thripps. “You don’t have to get into costume until it’s time for you to come on. Just keep out of sight.”

  We sneaked a look around the doorway as the rest of the school filed into the auditorium and sat on the floor. The parents were allowed to sit in plastic chairs around the edges. I could see Harry. She’d brought popcorn and a drink, as if she were at the movies, and was texting on her phone. Sitting quite near her was Diamond Pye, Prudence’s stepmother, sucking another lollipop. Her hair wasn’t pink today. It was black. She looked bored behind her mirrored sunglasses.

  “I don’t know why she’s here,” said a voice in my ear. It was Prudence, dressed as a village person, with a long skirt on and a scarf tied under her chin. “It’s not as if she’s my mother.”

  At that moment Miss Thripps swooped down on us.

  “Shh!” she hissed. “No talking! We’re about to begin!”

  Josh was the narrator.

  “Welcome,” he announced loudly, “to class 6T’s assembly. I hope you find it interesting.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t that interesting—not until Saint George nearly poked out one of the village people’s eyeballs with his plastic sword. The village person began to cry, all blinky and runny-nosed. Then Saint George knocked off the princess’s jeweled crown.

  “Watch what you’re doing, Nathan, you bonehead!” said Millie, in a not-at-all-princessy voice.

  Behind me I heard Miss Thripps let out a groan.

  “Quickly, boys!” She started shoving Fazal and me under our curtain. “Get out there. At least he’s supposed to kill you!”

  Nathan certainly did his best to kill us. He slashed and whacked and jabbed at us. Matt was blundering about in the dark because his cardboard head had been bashed sideways and he’d lost his eyeholes. He tripped over his own feet, and died before he was meant to. Fazal, holding on to him, went over, too. I let go of Fazal, just in time, but held on to my share of the curtain. Nathan stabbed me. It hurt. Annoyed, I kicked him. He yelled, which was nice, so I kicked him again and he fell over.

  The third graders, sitting cross-legged nearest the action, were in an uproar.

  “The dragon’s bum is killing Saint George!” they squealed. “Yay! Fight! Fight!”

  The stuffy darkness had lightened. Nathan’s slashing and slicing had ripped the curtain. If I tweaked the material until the hole reached one of my eyes, I could see. I could see the parents, looking politely puzzled. I could see Harry, grinning and taking photos with her phone. I could see the principal, clearing her throat and rising to her feet. I could even see all the way to the back of the auditorium, where the big arched windows looked out onto the playground—where, slithering in between the jungle gym and the slide, I could see the tail end of something huge and scaly.…

  Mortifer.

  Nobody else had seen. The audience had their backs to the window, and all the actors were watching Nathan flail around on the floor. Everyone except Prudence. She was staring out at the playground, her eyes wide and bright with excitement.

  Any minute now, the principal was going to do her thank-you-for-coming-now-please-go-away speech. All the parents would stand up and turn around and look out the window and then there would be a massive fuss. The police would come and say that Mortifer was a dangerous animal. Maybe they’d be right, but he was Mrs. Lind’s dangerous animal and she wanted him back.

  “Nathan! Stand up and kill the rest of that dragon!” hissed Miss Thripps. “George! For goodness’ sake, lie down and die! Narrator! Get on with it!”

  “Um, right…,” said Josh. “So the dragon was dead—most of it, anyway—and George became a saint.” Everyone looked at Nathan, who was still rolling around clutching his knee. I hadn’t even kicked him that hard. I was only wearing socks. “And everybody lived happily ever after because there were no more dragons. The End.”

  “Well, that was all very interesting,” said the principal in a hurry. “A very lively performance, I’m sure we all agree. And now, if the parents would like to make their way out…”

  Mothers shuffled on their seats, picking up their handbags. Fathers packed away their cameras. I glanced out the window. The tip of a tail was still visible. There was a grassy area next to the playground. There wasn’t much in it—a pond full of weeds, a broken swing, and some bushes—but there were places for a basilisk to hide. If I could just keep everyone sitting down for a few more minutes …

  “Maybe Saint George killed that dragon,” I said, as loudly and clearly as I could through a mouthful of curtain. “But it wasn’t the only one. What about the Squermington Wyrm?”

  That did it. All eyes turned my way.

  “The Wyrm’s not real. It’s just a stupid story!” called out a boy in fifth grade. “My dad says so.”

  “Your dad’s wrong,” I told him. “The Wyrm’s just as real as you are.”

  “How do you know?” taunted another fifth grader.

  Struggling out of my curtain, I took a deep breath.

  “Because I’ve seen it,” I said.

  There was a moment’s silence, then one of the smallest third graders started to cry. A movement caught the corner of my eye: Prudence, frantically shaking her head at me. She looked scared. I wondered why. It wasn’t the basilisk that had upset her, so what was it? She ducked her head, glancing away from me, toward the audience. A lot of people were smiling; they didn’t believe me. Others were looking shocked, or worried; they weren’t quite sure. And then there was Prudence’s stepmother.

  Diamond Pye wasn’t smiling—and she had stopped looking bored. She had taken her sunglasses off her nose and her lollipop out of her mouth. She was leaning forward in her seat, her eyes drilling into mine as if she was trying to see right through my eyeballs and inside my mind.

  * * *

  Miss Thripps said I was a disruptive element and an attention-seeker.

  “Don’t think you can get away with it,” she huffed. “Just because you come from a broken home.”

  I didn’t know what she meant at first. The only thing that was broken at home was the washing machine. Then I realized she was talking about Dad.

  “We’re not broken,” I said. “We still work. We’ve just got a bit missing.”

  Miss Thripps sq
uished up her lips and told me to go back to the classroom. I was on my way out of the auditorium when fingers closed around my wrist. Long, black fingernails dug into my skin.

  “Hello, boy,” said Diamond Pye.

  It’s rude to stare. But sometimes it’s very difficult not to. Diamond was all in black. Tight black pants. Black shirt. Long black hair piled up on top of her head. Even her lollipop was black. Only her high-heeled boots were silver. Hanging on a silver chain from her neck was the head of a small blackbird. It looked as if it were dripping blood, but the drops were actually crimson crystals, glowing against Diamond’s skin. The bird’s feet hung from her ears, its little crooked claws brushing her neck.

  “You’ve seen the Wyrm.” She licked her lips. “Where is it?”

  I shook my head, trying to pull my hand free. “I don’t know.” Which was true. I glanced out the window; I couldn’t see anything.

  But Mortifer could not be far away. And I didn’t think that anybody who wore bits of dead bird in their ears was the right person to find him.

  “The Wyrm’s a made-up story. Nobody believes it. Not really.”

  Diamond’s grip tightened on my arm. “You said you’d seen it!”

  I shrugged. “Only joking—ouch!”

  Her nails were stabbing my flesh. “Joking? Why would you do that?”

  For once, Miss Thripps came in useful.

  “I’m a Disruptive Attention-Seeker,” I said firmly. “From a Broken Home.”

  Diamond laughed her tinkly wind-chime laugh and let me go.

  “When Prudence lies,” she told me softly, “I always know. And I teach her a lesson. Children need to be taught lessons. It’s good for them. Run along, boy. Run away. I don’t need you. My men are out there, looking for the Wyrm. They’ll find it soon enough. And when they’ve found it, do you know what I’m going to do?”

  I shook my head. Diamond gave her lollipop a delicate little lick and smiled a crocodile smile.

  “I’m going to catch it. And bag it. And stuff it.”