Casper Candlewacks in the Attack of the Brainiacs! (3 page)

“But who
are
the Brewster brothers?”

A look of fear sketched itself across Snivel's face. “Well, they're b-big, and they r-run the place…”

“Like Mayor Rattsbulge,” said Lamp.

“…and they'll t-take your l-lunch money…”

“So will Mayor Rattsbulge,” said Lamp.

“…and there's f-f-four of them.”

“Like Mayor Rattsbulge,” said Lamp. “Except there's only one of him.”

“THERE 'E IS!” Four enormous brutes with
shaved heads and tiny foreheads, their sleeves rolled up to reveal hairy, tree-trunk arms, shoved through the crowd straight towards Snivel.

Anemonie spun round, opened her mouth, realised they were twice her size and closed it again.

“Brewster brothers?” whispered Casper.

“Yep.” Snivel was trembling. “And… erm… unless you want to b-be a r-rugby ball, you should r-really r-r-r—”

Casper guessed the rest of the word and dashed off across the playground, followed by Snivel and the rest of the terrified class, some screaming, some whimpering, one sneezing. (Ted Treadington was allergic to playgrounds.) Lamp considered becoming a rugby ball for a second, but then decided he preferred football, so he galumphed along behind.

“They're huge!” shouted Casper as he ran down a plasticky-smelling corridor beside Snivel. “What have they got against you?”

“Erm…” Snivel had quite small legs so he had to run twice as fast. “You all f-first years?”

“Yeah. But what about—”

“M-me too. We've got geography.”

Casper groaned.

Teresa Louncher tripped over a Mind the Step sign and clattered to the floor. Casper picked her up, but she was crying too hard to carry on, so he hid her in a locker and promised to find her at break.

“It's j-just up here.” Snivel guided them to the left into an identical corridor, up some stairs, through a heavy door and into a dull classroom with maps plastered all over the walls and ceiling.

The children collapsed into seats and caught
their breath. It looked like the Brewster brothers hadn't followed. In fact, given that there were quite a few children flying past their window and that they were on the second floor, Casper felt quite sure they were still outside.

“I don't like big boys' school any more,” huffed Lamp. “Can we go home now?”

Snivel was nervously watching through the glass of the classroom door.

“They knew you, Snivel,” said Casper, clutching the stitch in his side.

“Y-yeah…” muttered Snivel.

“But it's only the first day. How did that happen so fast?”

Nervously, Snivel stuck out his pale little hand. “N-name's S-s-snivel. S-snivel B-brewster. I've n-never shaken h-hands before.”

“They're your brothers?” Casper shook his head. “But you're so…”

“S-small?”

“Well, no. But I mean, compared to them.”

“I know. I'm the r-runt.”

The door burst open and everyone screamed, which made the skinny woman standing in the
doorway scream even higher and cower behind her register. After a few tense moments she peeked out, saw no monsters and squeaked with relief. She had long brown hair and a mousy face that squeezed to a tip at her chin.

“Sorry. Hello, class; sorry.” The woman tiptoed to the teacher's desk and sat low in the spinny chair, hiding as much of herself as she could behind a small stack of books.

“There you are, Lady!” shouted Lamp, bouncing up and down and pointing at the shivering stack of books. “I found you. Is it my turn to hide now?”

Casper grabbed Lamp just as he made for the nearest loose floorboard. “Come on, Lamp, time to sit down.” They found their way to some desks at the front.

The woman spoke quietly, to the floor rather
than the class. “Sorry… erm… my name's Miss Valenteen. I'm your geography teacher. If that's OK. Sorry.” She opened the register with shaking fingers and called the first few names. “Daryl Ablebody?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Margarine Bannister?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Anemonie Blight?”

“Hmph.”

Casper glanced around for Anemonie, confused as to why she wasn't terrorising Miss Valenteen already. This was the sort of teacher she'd usually eat for breakfast. (Not literally, of course. Anemonie's breakfast was a bowl of Sickly-Pops with pink food colouring in the milk.) There she was, sitting at the back of the class with crossed
arms and the sulkiest face since the village shop ran out of pink food colouring.

Miss Valenteen had stopped at the next name, her mouth too scared even to say the words. “Snivel,” – her teeth chattered – “Snivel B-brewster?”

“Y-yes, miss.”

Her eyes darted to Snivel. She frowned. “You're the new Brewster boy?”

“Y-yes.”

“Oh, thank goodness for that.” Miss Valenteen's shoulders sagged, her head dropped back, her mouth broke into a broad grin. “Well, that's OK, then. I thought you were another of those ghastly Brewster brothers. But look at you! You couldn't hurt a fly! Right, then.” She stood up, swept aside her book barrier and carried on as relieved as the fly currently buzzing round Snivel Brewster's
head. “Casper Candlewacks?”

“Yes, miss.”

Without the threat of a Brewster, Miss Valenteen continued the lesson a new woman. She sang the rest of the register and then tangoed round the classroom handing out textbooks.

As Casper watched poor Snivel set out his hand-me-down pencils next to his hand-me-down pencil sharpener, he felt a pang of pity. Imagine having to follow in the footsteps of the Brewster brothers. Your legs would get achy just trying to keep up, for starters.

Miss Valenteen clapped her hands. “OK, class, we'll start with a geography test.”

“Oh no,” moaned Lamp, “I don't even know where geography
is
.”

“Question one: what's the capital of Mongolia?”

Lamp's hand shot up.

“Yes?”

“Ulaanbaatar, miss. Population of just over a million, lying one thousand, three hundred and ten metres above sea level.”

“Well… yes!” said Miss Valenteen. “One point to you.”

There was a long pause, broken by a
donk
noise as Casper's jaw hit the ground.

Lamp looked shocked, and quite rightly. He touched his lips with a doubting finger. Had those words really just come out of his mouth?

Miss Valenteen continued. “Question two: where is Brazil, and why?”

Lamp's hand was the first up again. “The eastern side of South America, miss. It's there because of continental drift caused by plate tectonics.”

“Right again! Two points to you.”

Lamp gazed at Casper in open-mouthed glee. “Did you see me do that?” he gasped. Lamp had never got more than one point on a test before (and that was in art when the task was ‘Draw your best impression of an ink splodge').

The lesson went on, Lamp's hand carried on shooting up and up, collecting points like a reckless driver in a speed-camera factory. The rest of the class didn't stand a chance. Soon Casper's mind drifted to the evening that lay ahead – opening night at The Battered Cod, two hundred demanding diners and a whole heap of washing-up. What if his dad blew up another oven? What if Cuddles threw another tantrum? What if Mayor Rattsbulge ate another table? The possibilities were too horrifying to consider.

Just as Lamp secured his forty-third point by solving the famine problem in Africa, the door slammed open and four burly young men, muscles stacked up to their chins, stomped through.

“LUNCH MUNNY!” shouted the biggest one.

The Brewster brothers had arrived.

All round Casper the terrified children hid behind their hands. Miss Valenteen dived under her desk with a squeal.

“S-stay calm,” whispered Snivel. “If you don't m-move, they c-can't see you.”

The Brewsters tromped round the classroom, collecting loose change in a bucket. Lamp proudly presented his Brewster an egg and found it stuffed into his mouth (which was fine by him).

“The b-biggest one's Bash,” whispered Snivel. “Then there's Spit, Clobber and P-pinchnurse.”

Casper frowned. “Pinchnurse?”

“W-we're named after the first fing we do after we're born. I s-snivelled. P-pinchnurse pinched a nurse.”

A Brewster, with one fat caterpillar of an
eyebrow, stopped at Snivel's table. “Lunch munny.”

“Clobber, it's m-me.”

“You what?” A glimmer of recognition crossed Clobber's eyebrow. “Pocket munny.”

As Snivel emptied his pockets, a shadow loomed over Casper's desk, the fetid stench of hot-tuna breath filling his nostrils.

“Lunch munny.”

Trembling, Casper looked up. The biggest Brewster of all, the one Casper guessed was Bash, towered above him, his toothless grin and shrunken forehead punctuating a face that looked almost entirely like a bruised potato.

“I…” trembled Casper, “I d-don't have any.”

Bash leant even closer. “Lunch munny,” he whispered, the tuna stink singeing Casper's nose-hairs.

“I promise, I don't have any! I've already given it to her.” Casper pointed at Anemonie and was relieved to find the biggest Brewster's eyes searching for the point's target.

“He's lying! Don't listen to hURRK—” Anemonie Blight was lifted upside down by a bushy-nose-haired Brewster and shaken around by her feet, loosening all the cash hidden in the lining of her blazer. Then she was dumped in a corner with all the other empties.

Bash scowled at Casper. “Tomorrah, you bring dubble.”

Casper nodded vigorously.

The brute pointed to his eyes and then Casper's eyes and then to his own fist, which meant something vaguely threatening and dangerous, but Casper wasn't quite sure what.

After the whole class had been done and Miss Valenteen had written out a cheque, Bash thanked everybody for their time and led his brothers away to the next classroom.

“S-sorry,” said Snivel. “You d-don't want to m-make Bash angry.”

Casper smiled weakly. “I'll try not to. How have you lasted this long?”

“Q-quite a lot of h-hiding.”

The lesson continued as before, except that
Miss Valenteen was back to her shaky self. Lamp racked up goodness-knows-how-many points, a gold star and the Nobel Prize for Literature, while Casper and the rest of the class looked on agape.

When the bell rang, the kids skittered out of the room and down the corridor, peeping round each corner for Brewsters.

“How d'you do that back there, Lamp?” asked Casper.

Lamp shrugged. “Dunno. I think I was just lucky.”

“You can't have just been lucky seventy-six times in a row!”

“Seventy-seven, actually.”

Next lesson was music, where Lamp played a faultless rendition of Beethoven's First Piano
Concerto on a tiny xylophone.

At lunch, Snivel was recruited by his brothers for a cricket match (he played the stumps). Casper and Lamp watched at the boundary, wincing every time one of the Brewsters was bowled out. Casper tried to recite The Battered Cod's menu to Lamp from memory, but it got really tiring really fast after Lamp starting reciting it back to Casper in Latin.

In English, Lamp finished the grammar worksheet before Mr Falstaff could hand it out, and then in religious studies, he disproved three religions only to create four more.

 

The bus home was a sombre affair for everyone apart from Lamp. His blazer was covered in gold stars, so he was pretending to be the night sky.

“Look, Casper! This is Ursa Minor, and that's the Big Dipper.” He marked out the shapes of the constellations with an excited finger. “And this is the Swallowing Donkey, and this one doesn't have a name yet, so I'll call it Trevor.”

Halfway home, Casper remembered that Teresa Louncher was still stuck in that locker. He swore he'd remember to let her out tomorrow.

On the back seat, Anemonie nibbled her fingernails and growled at anybody who came too close. She'd never been anything but Queen of the Classroom before (except once, when she declared herself Holy Empress of the Playground and got Ted Treadington to build her a temple out of lunchboxes). But now she was nothing more than a lowly peasant at the Court of Lord Brewster. That sort of thing stung.

“Can I come round?” asked Lamp. “I can't remember where I left my house.”

“Not tonight. We're doing the grand opening of The Battered Cod. You coming?”

“Will there be food?”

“It's a restaurant. Of course there'll be food.”

“Because I love it when there's food.”