CHERUB: The Sleepwalker - Robert Muchamore Page 0,52
and even if they couldn’t make it stick he’d never get promoted.’
Kerry had her bum on the service counter – another breach of the rules. ‘He’d better be scared of me,’ she grinned. ‘If he ever touches me again, I won’t bop his head against the microwave, I’ll stick it inside and give him eight hundred watts.’
James was smiling his head off. ‘I love this,’ he said. ‘You guys don’t know Kerry, but she’s always a good girl. This is totally unlike her. It’s like that episode of The Simpsons where Lisa goes bad and starts smoking and tells Miss Hoover to shove it.’
‘I’m not that perfect, James,’ Kerry protested. ‘The way you carry on sometimes, you’d think I didn’t even fart.’
James wanted to joust some more, but he couldn’t take the argument with Kerry any further without using examples of stuff that had happened on campus and he couldn’t do that while Gemma and Harold were around.
James noticed that his ex had been a lot chattier on the bus that morning and with her boyfriend Bruce away on a mission and her best friend Gabrielle spending most of her time with her boyfriend Michael, he suspected Kerry was lonely. She might even be up for an illicit snog if he tried his luck …
But a warning claxon went off in James’ head the instant he thought this. There were lots of good reasons why he shouldn’t try getting off with Kerry again: when they were together their relationship always lurched from one train wreck to the next, he now had a completely cool relationship with Dana and Kerry was now Bruce Norris’ girlfriend. Not only was Bruce one of James’ best friends, he was a martial arts expert who would shatter the spine of anyone who touched his girl while he was away on a mission.
Against all this solid reasoning was one undeniable fact: there had been chemistry between James and Kerry since the first day they met. James loved Dana, but that did nothing to alter the tingle down his back every time Kerry smiled in the way he liked, or got her pouty look when things didn’t go her way. He could never put his finger on exactly what it was Kerry had, but she had it in spades.
*
Growing up on CHERUB campus, Jake knew that you got thirty laps for late homework, washing-up duty for back-chatting a teacher and punishments you didn’t even want to think about if you were caught doing something more serious. But he’d never been inside a London comprehensive and it was a big shock.
Kids sat on the desks and carried on talking when the teacher told his class to sit down for morning registration. People belched out loud and lobbed litter out of the windows. When they got to first lesson, Jake sat near Fahim but didn’t start talking because he’d been trained not to act pushy.
It took the teacher ten minutes to get the class to settle down, then another ten taking a register and listening to excuses as to why nobody had done their homework. When he got around to handing out exercise books and a worksheet, half the kids either didn’t have pens or claimed not to have pens, and then a bunch of nutters started swinging from the curtains at the back of the room, at which point the teacher went red and started screaming.
Twenty minutes into the lesson, Jake realised that he’d left his timetable in the form room and had no clue what subject was being taught. Then a bunch of Year-Ten girls started battering someone in the corridor outside and Jake’s class threw stuff around and went mental while the teacher stepped out to deal with the girls.
‘It’s a lunatic asylum,’ Jake told Lauren, when he met up with her in the main lobby at morning break. ‘How the hell can anyone be expected to learn anything?’
Lauren laughed as she offered Jake half of her Twix bar. ‘Nobody does learn anything. This school has the worst exam results in the borough and almost the worst in the country.’
Jake grinned guiltily. ‘It’s kind of fun, actually.’
‘Yeah, Jake. Unless you’re like the boy in my class who turned up to second period practically crying ’cos two hard cases kicked him in the nuts and pissed on his bag.’
‘No way,’ Jake gasped.
‘Yes way,’ Lauren said. ‘Remember, the kids in your class have just moved from primary school. They’re angelic compared to my lot.’