Ratburger Read online

  “You are my guardian angel!” she whispered before placing him carefully back in her breast pocket.

  Zoe suddenly realised Tina and her gang might be following her, so without looking back, she quickened her pace. The stroll became a stride and the stride became a sprint and before she knew it she was sitting breathless in her History class, which was presided over by Miss Midge. As the History teacher was an exceptionally short lady, she had inevitably been given the nickname ‘Miss Midget’, or more simply ‘Midget’.

  The teacher always wore knee-high leather boots with heels that made her look even shorter than she actually was. However, what Miss Midge lacked in height she made up for in ferocity. Her teeth would not have been out of place in the mouth of a crocodile.She bared these teeth whenever a pupil displeased her, which was often. Kids didn’t have to do much to infuriate her, even an involuntary sneeze or a cough could result in a monstrous snarl from the terrifying but tiny teacher.

  “You are late,” growled Miss Midge.

  “Sorry, Miss Midget,” said Zoe, without thinking.

  Oh no.

  There were a few chuckles from her classmates, but mainly gasps. Zoe was so used to calling the History teacher ‘Miss Midget’ behind her back that she had done it to her face by mistake!

  “What did you say?” demanded Miss Midge.

  “I said ‘sorry, Miss Midge’,” spluttered Zoe. The sweat that had sprung up on her run from the girls’ toilets was now teeming out of her pores. Zoe looked like she had been caught in a vicious thunderstorm. Armitage was squirming too, probably because the blazer pocket that had become his home was suddenly damp with warm sweat. It must be like a sauna in there! Surreptitiously, Zoe reached a hand up to her breast and patted gently to calm her little friend.

  “One more piece of misconduct from you,” said Miss Midge, “and you will not just be out of this classroom, you will be out of the school.”

  Zoe gulped. She had only just started at big school, and she wasn’t used to getting into trouble. She had never done anything wrong at her little school, and even the thought of doing something wrong frightened her.

  “Now, back to the lesson. Today you are going to learn more about... the Black Death!” pronounced Miss Midge, as she scrawled the words as high as she could reach on the board, which was actually the bottom.

  Writing on the board was a real problem for Miss Midge, in fact. Sometimes she would order a child to get down on the classroom floor on their hands and knees.

  The miniature teacher would then climb on top of them, so she could reach high enough to wipe the board clean of the previous teacher’s scribbling. For very high scribblings from very tall teachers you simply stacked up more children.

  The Black Death was not on the school history syllabus, but Miss Midge taught it anyway. Legend had it that one year all of her class failed their exam because instead of teaching them about Queen Victoria she spent a whole year relishing the gruesome details of the medieval torture of being hanged, drawn and quartered. Miss Midge would refuse to teach anything but the most grisly passages of history: beheadings, flogging, burning at the stake. The teacher would grin and bare her crocodile teeth at the mention of anything cruel and brutal and barbaric.

  In fact, this term Miss Midge had been going on non-stop about the Black Death. It was her absolute obsession. Unsurprising really, as this was one of the darkest periods in human history, when in the fourteenth century 100 million people died from a terrifying infectious disease. Victims would be covered in giant boils, vomit blood, and die. The cause, they had learned in the previous lesson, was nothing more than a fleabite.

  “Boils the size of apples! Imagine that. Vomiting until all that was left to sick up was your own blood! They couldn’t dig the graves fast enough! Wonderful stuff!”

  The children stared at Miss Midge, open-mouthed with terror. At that moment the headmaster Mr Grave entered the classroom without knocking, his long coat flapping behind him like a cape. The naughty kids at the back of the class who had been texting throughout the lesson quickly hid their mobile phones under the desk.

  “Ah, Mr Grave, to what do I owe the pleasure?” said Miss Midge, smiling. “Is it about the talent show?”

  Zoe had long since suspected that Miss Midge had a soft spot for the headmaster. Only that morning, Zoe had passed a poster in the corridor for the end-of-term talent show that Miss Midge was putting on. The poster was of course placed very low down on the wall, really at knee height for most pupils. It seemed very out of character for Miss Midge to organise something so fun, and Zoe wondered if she had only done it to impress the headmaster. It was well known that Mr Grave, despite his scary vampire appearance, was a great lover of school plays and the like.

  “Good morning, Miss Midget, I mean Miss Midge…” Even Mr Grave couldn’t stop himself!

  The History teacher’s smile dropped.

  “I am afraid it isn’t about the talent show, though I am grateful to you for putting it on.”

  Miss Midge beamed again.

  “No,” boomed Mr Grave. “It’s something much more serious I’m afraid.”

  Miss Midge’s smile dropped once more.

  “You see,” said the headmaster, “the caretaker has found a... a... dropping in the girls’ toilets.”

  ll the kids in the class started sniggering when the headmaster used the word ‘dropping’, except Zoe.

  “Someone did a poo on the toilet floor, sir?!” asked one of the boys, laughing.

  “Not a human dropping! An animal one!” shouted the headmaster. “Mr Bunsen, the head of Science, is studying it now to find out what animal it is from. But we suspect it to be some kind of rodent…”

  Armitage wriggled, and Zoe gulped. A rogue dropping must have plopped out unnoticed on to the toilet floor.

  Stay very, very still, Armitage, thought Zoe.

  Unfortunately, Armitage was not a mind-reader.

  “If any pupil considers it acceptable to bring a pet into this school, let me tell you it is forbidden. Strictly forbidden!” pronounced the headmaster from the front of the class.

  It was funny seeing the two teachers stand next to each other for a moment, such was the height difference.

  “Any pupil found smuggling an animal of any kind into school will be instantly suspended. That is all!” With that, he turned and left the room.

  “Masterful! Goodbye, Mr Grave…!” called Miss Midge after him. She watched him go, wistfully. Then she turned back to her pupils. “Right, you heard Colin, I mean Mr Grave. It is forbidden to bring pets into school.”

  The kids all looked around at each other and started whispering.

  “Bring a pet into school?” Zoe could hear them saying to each other. “Who would be so stupid?”

  Zoe sat as still as she could, staring forward in silence.

  “SILENCE!” snarled Miss Midge, and there was silence. “It is not an opportunity to talk! Now let’s get back to the lesson. The Black Death.” She underlined those three words on the board.

  “So, how did the incredibly deadly disease travel all the way from China to Europe? Anybody?” asked the teacher without turning around. She was one of those teachers who asked questions but didn’t wait for answers. So, a millisecond after posing the question, she herself answered it.

  “Nobody? Rats brought the fatal disease. Rats, on board merchant ships.”

  Zoe couldn’t feel Armitage squirming around any more, and breathed a sigh of relief. He must have gone to sleep.

  “But it wasn’t the rats’ fault, was it?” blurted out Zoe, without putting her hand up. She couldn’t believe her little friend’s great great great great great great great grandparents could be responsible for such incredible suffering. Armitage was far too sweet to hurt a soul.

  Miss Midge spun round on her heels (which despite being high still didn’t make her even of medium height). “Did you speak, child?” she whispered, as if she was a witch incanting a spell.

  “Y
es, yes…” spluttered Zoe, now beginning to wish she had kept her mouth shut after all. “Forgive me, but I just wanted to say, Miss Midge, that you shouldn’t really blame the rats for this terrible disease, as it wasn’t their fault. It was the fleas catching a free ride on their backs that are really to blame…”

  All the kids in the class were now looking at Zoe in disbelief. Despite this being a rough school, and teachers often having to leave with nervous breakdowns, no one ever interrupted Miss Midge, especially not to spring to the defence of rats.

  The classroom fell deathly silent. Zoe looked around. Every pair of eyes in the room was now glaring at her. Most of the girls looked disgusted, and most of the boys were laughing.

  Then, suddenly, Zoe felt like she had a tremendous itchy itch on her head. Quite the itchiest itchy itch that had ever itched. It was, in a word, itchtastic.

  What on earth is that…? she wondered.

  “Zoe?” sneered Miss Midge, now staring intently at exactly the place where Zoe had the itch on her head.

  “Yes, Miss?” asked Zoe, perfectly innocently.

  “You have a rat on your head…”

  hat is the worst thing that could ever happen to you at school?

  When you arrive in the morning, you walk through the playground and realise you forgot to put on any clothes except your school tie?

  In an exam you become so nervous about getting the answers right and your stomach churns up so badly that your bum explodes?

  During a football match you run around kissing all your team-mates after you have scored a goal, only to be told by the PE teacher that it was, in fact, an own goal?

  You trace your family tree in a History class and you find out you are related to your headmaster?

  You have a sneezing fit in front of the head teacher and cover them head to toe in snot?

  It’s fancy dress day at school but you get the date wrong and you spend the entire day dressed up as Lady Gaga?

  You are playing Hamlet in William Shakespeare’s play at school and halfway through the ‘To be or not to be…’ speech your Auntie rushes up from the audience, spits on a tissue and wipes your face with it?

  You take off your trainers after games and the smell of mouldy cheese is so bad the entire school has to be closed down for a week to be de-fumigated?

  At lunchtime in the dining hall you overdose on baked beans and you do a blow-off that lasts all afternoon?

  You smuggle a rat into school in your blazer and it climbs up and sits on your head during a lesson?

  Any of those would be enough to get you added to the list of infamous pupils – those famous for all the wrong reasons. With the ‘rat on head’ incident, Zoe was about to be on the list of shame for ever.

  “You have a rat on your head,” repeated Miss Midge.

  “Oh, do I, Miss?” said Zoe, mock-innocently.

  “Don’t worry,” said Miss Midge. “Sit very still, and we’ll call for the caretaker. I’m sure he can kill it.”

  “Kill it! No!” Zoe reached on to her head and lifted the rodent over her now-even-more-wiry mess of red hair and held it in front of her. Children around her got up from their seats and backed away from her.

  “Zoe... do you know this rat?” said Miss Midge, suspiciously.

  “Um... no,” said Zoe.

  At this point, Armitage ran up her arm and climbed into her breast pocket.

  Zoe looked down at him. “Er…”

  “Did that rat just climb into your pocket?”

  “No,” said Zoe, ridiculously.

  “It is clear,” said Miss Midge, “that this filthy beast is your pet.”

  “Armitage is not a filthy beast!”

  “Armitage?” said Miss Midge. “Why on earth is he called that?!”

  “Oh, it’s a long story, Miss. Look, he’s safely in my pocket now. Please continue.”

  The teacher and the rest of the class were so gobsmacked by her casual response, for a moment no one knew what to say or do. The silence was deafening, but it didn’t last.

  “You heard what the headmaster said,” roared Miss Midge. “Instant suspension!”

  “But but but I can explain…”

  “GET OUT! GET OUT OF MY CLASSROOM YOU VILE LITTLE GIRL! AND TAKE THAT DISGUSTING CREATURE WITH YOU!” snarled the teacher.

  Without making eye contact with anyone, Zoe quietly gathered her books and pens and put them in her plastic bag. She pushed her chair back and it squealed against the shiny floor.

  “Excuse me,” said Zoe to no one in particular. As quietly as she could, she made her way to the door. She put her hand on the handle—

  “I SAID ‘INSTANT SUSPENSION’!” yelled Miss Midge. “I DON’T WANT TO SEE YOU UNTIL THE END OF TERM!”

  “Um… Bub-bye then,” said Zoe, not sure of what else to say.

  She opened the classroom door slowly, and closed it quietly behind her. Behind the frosted glass in the corridor she could see thirty distorted little faces press themselves up against it to watch her go.

  There was a pause.

  Then there was an enormous eruption of laughter, as the little girl made her way along the hall. Miss Midge yelled at them, “SILENCE!”

  With everyone still in class, the school felt strangely tranquil. All Zoe could hear were her own little footsteps echoing along the corridor, and the flapping of the rogue sole of her shoe. For a moment the drama of what had only just taken place seemed extremely distant, as if it had all happened in someone else’s lifetime. School had never felt so eerily empty before, it was like this was a dream.

  Yet if this was the calm after the storm, it wasn’t to last long. The bell rang for lunch break, and like a dam bursting the classroom doors in the long corridor flung open and a blast of schoolchildren spurted out. Zoe quickened her pace. She knew the news of her having a rat on her head in History class would spread like the plague itself. Zoe had to get out of school, and fast…

  oon Zoe noticed she was running, but her short little legs were no match for the older, taller kids, who were soon barging past her so they could be first in the queue at the burger van to stuff their faces at lunch.

  Zoe shielded Armitage with her hand. She had been knocked to the ground in the school corridor so many times before. At last she made it out into the relative safety of the playground. She kept her head down, hoping not to be recognised.

  However, there was only one way out of the playground on to the main road. Every day there was the same grimy beaten-up burger van parked outside, which had ‘Burt’s Burgers’ emblazoned across it. Even though the food from the van was horrible, the school dinners were even more nauseating, so most of the kids took the least worst option and queued up outside the van for their lunch.

  Burt was as unsavoury as the burgers he served. The self-styled ‘chef’ always wore the same filthy striped top and grease-encrusted jeans, which he wore low below his giant belly. Over the top hung a bloody overall. The man’s hands were always filthy, and his thick mop of hair was covered in flakes of dandruff the size of Rice Krispies. Even his dandruff had dandruff. The flakes would drop into the deep-fat fryer causing it to hiss and spurt whenever he leaned over it. Burt would sniff constantly, like a pig snuffling in mud. No one had ever seen his eyes, as he always wore the same pitch-black, wraparound sunglasses. His false teeth rattled in his mouth whenever he spoke, causing him to whistle involuntarily. School legend had it that they had once fallen out of his mouth into a bap.

  Burt’s burger van didn’t offer much of a menu:

  And there were no restaurant stars awarded as yet. The food was just about edible if you were absolutely starving. You had to pay an extra 5p for a squirt of ketchup, though it didn’t look or taste much like ketchup; it was brown and had little black bits in it. If you complained, Burt would shrug and mutter breathlessly, “It’s my own special recipe, my dears.”

  To Zoe’s horror, Tina Trotts was already there, right at the front of the queue. If she hadn’t been bunking off her les
son anyway, she would surely have intimidated her way to the front.

  Spotting her, Zoe put her head down even further, so that all she could see was the tarmac. But her head wasn’t far enough down to go unrecognised.

  “RAT-GIRL!” shouted Tina. Zoe popped her head up to see the long line of kids all looking at her. Some of her classmates were now in the queue as well, and all started pointing and laughing.

  Soon it seemed like the whole of the school was laughing at her.

  “HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA !!!!!!!!!

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

  Never had laughter sounded so cold. Zoe looked up for a moment. Hundreds of little eyes stared at her, but it was the figure of Burt, hunched over in his van, whose face she was drawn to. His nose was twitching, and a large gloop of slobbering saliva fell from the corner of his mouth into Tina’s bap...

  Zoe couldn’t go home.

  Her stepmother would be at the flat watching daytime TV, smoking fags and stuffing her face with prawn cocktail crisps. If Zoe told her why she had been suspended, there was no way she would be able to keep Armitage. Most likely Sheila would instantly exterminate him. With her big heavy foot. Zoe would have to peel him off the sole of her stepmother’s furry pink slipper.

  Quickly, Zoe considered her options:

  1) Go on the run with Armitage and hold up banks like Bonnie & Clyde and go out in a blaze of glory.

  2) Both have plastic surgery and then go and live in South America where no one would know them.

  3) Tell her dad and stepmother that it was ‘Adopt-a-Rodent’ week at school and there was absolutely nothing to worry about.