in your next detention, I suggest you get to work immediately.”
George bit his lip, aware that he would have more detentions piled on him if he retorted. He threw Hall the dirtiest look I’d ever seen before turning back to the condoms and picking one out.
“Interested in those, are you, Playman?” Hall snapped. I jumped. I was still watching George, unable to take my eyes off the sickly sight that was his job for the next half-hour, but now I remembered where I was.
“No,” I said, tearing my gaze away and looking up at him.
“That’s just as well, because I don’t have any spare boxes,” said Hall. My stomach fell; if that was the only reason, he would probably make me help George. “But since I’ve never seen you behaving the way Tuck was, I expect you wouldn’t even understand the function of those items. Perhaps you would do well to observe him.”
My face was burning with embarrassment and rage. Normally Peter would laugh if someone (namely the twins) said something like that, but even he looked furious this time.
“Both of you will write lines,” said Hall, turning to the blackboard and beginning to write.
“I … will … show … respect … and … adoration … to … my … teachers … at … all … times,” Peter read as Hall wrote. “You’ve gotta be joking. ‘Adoration’?”
“You will both write that 150 times,” said Hall cruelly. “Naval, Time, I have a different line for you two.”
He moved across to the other side of the board and began to write. ‘I will not use knowledge gained during classes against my teachers.’
“Now get going,” he said to them, before turning back to me and Peter, who hadn’t moved. “What are you two waiting for, someone to blow a whistle?”
We looked at each other and moved towards the desks. As long as we were stuck here, we didn’t have anything better to do.
“Oh no, Playman,” said Hall, stopping me in my tracks. “You sit there.” He indicated the chair next to George. “And you can sit there.” He pointed Peter towards a chair right in the middle of the room, nowhere near anyone else.
It went quiet after that, and I began writing my lines. A few times, against my will, my eyes left the paper and went sideways. I felt sincerely sorry for George’s position; he looked as though he was going to be sick. Peter, Justin and Tulip were busy writing, barely looking up. Harry and Simon were merely reading, but within minutes they began reading and discussing the newspaper articles aloud for the rest of us to hear. It made things more interesting.
“That will do, you two,” said Hall sharply after Harry made an amusing comment that caused the room to erupt into laughter. “Work quietly.”
“You can’t stop us,” Harry said to Hall. “If we go quiet, you won’t know what we’re doing. And I can assure you it won’t be what you want. At least this way you know what we’re up to.”
Hall contemplated this argument for a moment before saying, “Very well, that’s a good point. Just make sure you keep it serious. No funny business in the summaries.”
A few minutes later, Belinda returned with a box of paper, which she dumped beside the trolley from which the twins were taking newspapers. She then made a B-line for George, but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw what he was doing. She stared at him and the box of condoms, several of which were now on the desk as they’d been deemed clean, then she rounded on Hall.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing, making him do that?” she shouted. “How do you think you’ll get away with this?”
“How do you think you’ll stop me?” Hall asked calmly. “An extra detention for you, Pensinger. Now sit in that seat beside Playman and write that (he pointed at the line he’d given Justin and Tulip) 150 times. Go on, get to it.”
But Belinda didn’t move. She stared at him furiously for a moment, before turning back to George, who was silently begging her to do something. They looked at each other hopelessly until Hall’s voice interrupted their musings.
“Get going, or it’ll be yet another detention for both of you. I’ll see to it that you, Pensinger, will receive an even more gruesome task than Tuck next time.”
Finally they both shrugged and Belinda turned away sadly, going to sit with Peter. I felt hopeless for both of them. If I had more guts myself, I’d help George sort through the condoms, but if I didn’t have to touch them myself, I didn’t want to.
My hand automatically went to my pocket and around the Light Crystal, which I carried everywhere with me. It was a manifestation of good, and a bit of goodness was due right about now. I unfolded the hankies from around it and touched the surface with a finger. It wasn’t until this point that I’d even thought about what I was doing; my mind was still full of thoughts about where those condoms had been in past years, and I just hoped that George wouldn’t throw up before the end of the detention, because I was sure that Hall would make either him or Belinda (or me) clean it up. I just wished there was something I could do to make it easier for him…
Then I jumped. The crystal had gone warm in my hand for a moment. What had that been about? I felt it again, and it was back to normal. I quickly took my hand out of my pocket, making sure the crystal was covered by the hankies again, and continued writing my lines, sweating slightly.
“Well this guy makes it sound as though he was right to say that,” Harry was saying to the room at large. “Which is ridiculous.”
“Of course it is,” said Simon. “But what does he know?”
“Well, he’s a journo—”
“An uneducated journo,” said Simon.
“Right,” said Harry. “Right on the money, old chap. That’s my summary of this article.”
‘I will show respect and adoration to my teachers at all times.’ ‘I will show respect and adoration to my teachers at all times.’ I was getting heartily sick of writing it, but I was only up to forty-seven and I still had over one hundred to go before I would be allowed to leave. Curse that bastard of a teacher! Without thinking, I glanced across at George and his box of wonders. The pile of Hall’s happy memories on the desk had grown considerably since the last time I had looked, and I noticed that George was merely picking them up, looking at them and tossing them to the side. He appeared much more comfortable now, as if he’d settled into the work and knew exactly what he was doing.
“No dirty ones left, eh?” I hissed out of the side of my mouth so that Hall wouldn’t notice.
“No,” he whispered mysteriously. “It looked worse than it really is. I bet they were all his and he’s just never had anyone to use them with.”
I sniggered at the thought but broke off when I noticed that he had also snuck a few into his pockets. I looked away in disgust; as far as I was concerned, they should never be used, even if they were clean.
“They did look bad,” I said, remembering how they had all looked in there and wondering how it could possibly…
Then I realised! A connection had formed in my mind between the moment George had started throwing condoms aside and the moment when the Light Crystal had gone warm in my hand. I’d been thinking about what I could possibly do to help him when that had happened. Could it possibly be that the condoms had cleaned themselves through some sort of magic from the crystal? I knew nothing about what the Light Crystal did, except that it was good, so I supposed it may have been possible. I made a mental note to get on the Internet next chance I got and do some research into the Light Crystal, assuming there was any information to find.
“Why are you taking them, though?” I asked, my stomach twisting at the thought of second-hand condoms.
“They’ve never been used,” he said quietly.