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  ‘Aren’t you going to get out then? Earth to Samuel, Earth to Sam . . .’

  ‘What?’ I said, suddenly coming to my senses and scanning the hill for likely suspects. ‘Oh . . . yeah, OK.’

  ‘You look terrible, Sam. You’ve got great big bags under your eyes.’

  ‘Didn’t sleep much last night,’ I said, semi-hoping that she’d ask me why.

  ‘Tell me about it! When I first met your father, I didn’t sleep for a fortnight.’

  And then I spotted Alex. ‘Sorry, Mum, gotta go.’

  ‘Good luck with your DT project.’

  ‘Good luck with your borderline dyspraxic.’

  The rain hit me like an icy power shower. I grabbed my clarinet from the back seat and set off in hot pursuit. ‘Oi, Lex, wait up.’

  He turned and stared short-sightedly in my direction. But he couldn’t have seen me because a moment later he turned back and started legging it up the hill. And I didn’t blame him. One of the weird customs at our school was that, unless you wanted some serious grief, you could never, ever wear a coat – not even on a geography field trip to Antarctica.

  The good thing about rainy mornings was that there wasn’t such a crush at the gates. People arrived in dribs and drabs and went straight to their tutor bases. That was the last thing I wanted to do. Luckily for me I had wind band first break, so I scuttled over to the music block and dumped my clarinet in the music store, knowing I’d be safe for ten minutes.

  Apart from a couple of kids on their way to private instrumental lessons, it was usually pretty deserted at that time of the morning. The high windows meant that you couldn’t see out onto the playground, and the long, curvy corridor flickered fluorescently twenty four/seven. I often made a special trip to the music block toilets. They were so much cleaner than the ones outside the Community Reception, and they never ran out of paper.

  I locked myself into a graffiti-free cubicle and sat with my head in my hands listening to the distant drone of Miss Hoolyhan’s Buddhist chanting in one of the practice rooms. I was praying no one had seen that website. Or that if they had, they’d have forgotten all about it and when I walked into registration, everything would be back to normal.

  Like that was ever going to happen.

  8.40 a.m.

  It seemed like half of 8SE started squawking the moment I walked through the door. I tried to play along by doing a funny chicken dance, but that only made it worse.

  ‘Ah, Samuel,’ said Miss Stanley, squinting at me through her thick frames and stabbing the register with her trusty ballpoint. ‘You’ve decided to join us then.’

  ‘Oi, Chickenboy,’ shouted Callum Corcoran, ‘show us your giblets!’

  ‘Hey Sam,’ came a voice from the back. ‘Hope you like scrambled eggs.’

  ‘Cor, what a pong,’ said Animal. ‘Can I open a window, Miss? Miss, can I open a window?’

  ‘What is the matter now, Tristram?’ said Miss Stanley, looking like she was on the verge of another migraine.

  ‘It’s Sam Tennant, Miss; he stinks of chicken poo.’

  ‘He gets it off his old lady, Miss,’ said Chelsea. ‘She stinks of chicken poo, too.’

  ‘Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,’ hooted Callum Corcoran. ‘That rhymes, Miss. Chicken poo, too.’

  ‘All right, that’s enough,’ said Miss Stanley. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you this morning. ‘Now go and sit down please, Samuel. I want to talk about the curriculum enrichment programme.’

  I didn’t hear a word she was saying. Dazed and confused as a shell-shock victim, I cowered in front of the whiteboard, waiting for the next volley of abuse, wondering if there was anyone in 8SE who hadn’t seen that website.

  ‘Did you hear me, Samuel?’

  ‘What, Miss?’

  I was used to people laughing with me, but I’d never had them laughing at me before.

  ‘I said go and sit down. What’s the matter with you today?’

  And then I saw that my usual place between Gaz and Alex was taken. Gaz must have moved up one – or the other way round of course. The only seat left was right next to Stephen Allbright, the class freak. I death-marched towards it, making a point of not returning Dimbo’s sickly smile as I sat down beside him.

  ‘Never mind, Dimbo,’ shouted Animal. ‘You’ll get used to the smell.’

  ‘Look, please,’ said Miss Stanley, who was always a bit grouchy on Monday mornings. ‘I don’t want any more of this silly name calling. It’s not funny, OK?’

  But even I couldn’t help noticing the way she transformed into a simpering pussycat the moment the door opened.

  ‘Look, Miss,’ said Chelsea. ‘It’s your boyfriend, Miss.’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Chelsea,’ said Mr Catchpole, his face not quite acquiring the same shade of crimson as Miss Stanley’s. ‘I’ll do the funnies.’

  Miss Stanley took off her glasses. Her voice was about two octaves lower than before. ‘Ah, Mr Catchpole, what can I do for you?

  It was as rare as Halley’s Comet to see the two most miserable teachers in the school smiling simultaneously. ‘I’ve just come to see how many of this bunch of reprobates have remembered their HMS Belfast money.’

  A forest of hands reached for the sky; my heart set off in the opposite direction.

  ‘Well, well,’ said Mr Catchpole, ‘that’s a turn up for the books. I wonder what’s brought about this sudden volte-face.’

  Pete Hughes was usually far too cool to put his hand up. He had the best haircut in Year Eight, a girlfriend in Year Nine, plus which he was probably the only kid in the tutor group (apart from me and Stephen Allbright) who knew what volte-face meant. ‘We saw this really interesting website, Mr Catchpole, Sir.’ He grinned. ‘We all thought that going round an old ship would be as bad as listening to Mr Peel’s band, but now we know we’re really going to see some fun, Sir. Now we’re looking forward to it.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Mr Catchpole, smoothing the lapels of his Marks & Spencer jacket. ‘I’m quite looking forward to it myself. How about you, Miss Stanley?’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Catchpole, can’t wait.’

  It looked like I was the only person in the room who was dreading it. I screwed my eyes tight shut and bit hard on my bottom lip. What were the chances of me making it through to first break without crying? Fat and slim, I’d have said.

  And I was desperately trying to hold it together when another thought hit me thwack between the eyes: Didn’t Pete Hughes once tell me he had his own website? Didn’t Pete Hughes just quote almost directly from Chickenboyz.com? He was certainly cool enough to animate dancing poultry. Supposing it was him – supposing Pete Hughes was The Emperor?

  10.57 a.m.

  Mum and Dad were always telling me that I’d never regret learning a musical instrument. For the first time in my life, I knew exactly what they meant. If Mum hadn’t bullied me into practising every other blue moon, I would have been trying to avoid Callum and his mates in the canteen, or pretending to ignore the chicken noises that followed me everywhere, instead of sitting in the music block rehearsal studio miming to ‘Waterloo’ while the wind band murdered ABBA’s greatest hits. For twenty-five minutes, I was safe. For twenty-five minutes, I knew that The Emperor (whoever he was) couldn’t get at me.

  Miss Hoolyhan drew enormous smiley faces in the air with her baton and sang along to ‘Waterloo’, like one of the joke contestants on X Factor.

  Abby could actually play it too. I think she was like Grade Five or something. Maybe when you were as quiet as she was, playing the clarinet was a good way of avoiding having to talk too much. (That’s the sort of thing Mum would have said anyway.) But who cared why she did it if it meant I didn’t have to play a note? Right at the moment, all I could think about was what on earth The Emperor was going to do next.

  ‘That wasn’t quite right, was it, guys?’ said Miss Hoolyhan charitably. ‘Let’s hear the flutes and maracas from bar one hundred and eight.’

  Right at that moment,
all I wanted to do was curl up into a ball and go to sleep until it was all over.

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘What?’

  Abby took a pink paper tissue from her shoulder bag and smiled sympathetically. I couldn’t help wondering if it was difficult to play with all that junk in your mouth. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘you look like you could do with it.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Come on, Sam,’ she whispered. ‘I know you’re crying. I do it all the time at home. Here, take it.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Having someone being kind to me was the last straw. I’d managed to hold back all morning, but the floodgates had finally opened. ‘Sorry, I . . .’

  Abby put her hand on my shoulder. I was slightly surprised at her non-regulation fingernails. ‘Don’t worry, Sam. I won’t tell anyone – promise.’

  I nodded gratefully and dabbed my eyes with her tissue.

  ‘It’s about that nasty website, isn’t it?’ she said, angrily. ‘I saw it on Friday night.’

  ‘How did you find out about it?’

  ‘Someone texted me. I was expecting a funny video clip or something.’

  ‘Who is he, Abby? Who’s The Emperor?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sam. I don’t think anyone does. But I’ll try and find out for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I think it’s pathetic the way The Emperor’s turned that lot against you. Talk about the herd instinct.’ She leaned towards me. I felt her warm breath in my ear. ‘Promise me you’ll be careful, Sam.’

  I’d never noticed her freckles; all I’d seen before was the brace. ‘Do you think I need to be careful?’

  ‘I hope not, Sam. But if you ever want to talk about it, you can always talk to me.’ She smiled to herself, as if she’d just remembered something funny. ‘Talking is so much better than letting things fester inside, you know. ’

  ‘Right,’ said Miss Hoolyhan, obviously beginning to regret appointing a maracas player with no sense of rhythm, ‘let’s all go from bar one hundred and eight. One, two, three, and . . .’

  And although ninety-nine per cent of me was already worrying about where I was going to hide in second break, a bizarre thought had just popped into the back of my head: If I ever did have a girlfriend (and it was the mother of all ifs, believe me) I’d want her to be a bit like Abby.

  1.28 p.m.

  Two minutes to second break and I couldn’t believe how lucky I’d been. Apart from the occasional squawking sound and Gaz Lulham’s crack about headless chickens, the only thing I’d had to deal with was burned shortbread – and it might have been me who’d set the timer wrong anyway.

  All that was about to change.

  Mr Peel, who had this pathetic fantasy that he was ‘down with the kids’, suddenly broke off from the Peasants’ Revolt and started droning on about The Arctic Monkeys. ‘It’s what I call the democratisation of the media. A band puts a track on the net, yeah, and some faceless suit doesn’t decide if it’s a phat vibe – you do. And that’s the way it should be.’

  ‘Guess what Sam Tennant’s got on his iPod, Sir,’ said Pete Hughes.

  ‘Let’s see now,’ said Mr Peel, stroking his goatee. ‘The Wo mbats . . . Lily Allen . . . Maybe an old warhorse like The Ramones?’

  Pete Hughes smirked triumphantly. ‘Glenn Miller, Sir.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Chelsea. ‘What a loser. No wonder The Emperor hates his guts.’

  Mr Peel looked genuinely concerned. ‘Sorry, Pete, never heard of them. Are they an R ’n’ B combo or what?’

  ‘No, Sir, Glenn Miller, Sir,’ said Pete Hughes. ‘The wartime bandleader, Sir? We did him in music. He wrote ‘In the Mood’? Da da da da da da da da da da da da.’

  Mr Peel looked mightily relieved. ‘Yeah, nice one.’ And despite the fact that I didn’t even like Glenn Miller, he was still chuckling when the bell went. ‘Don’t forget guys,’ he shouted after us as the stampede began, ‘if you want to check out my new demo, just Google “Robot Can-Can Dancers” and follow the links.’

  I made a mad dash for the door, but someone beat me to it. It was Alex. He shot down the humanities corridor like a rat up a drainpipe.

  ‘Hey, Lex, hang on a minute, I really need to talk to you.’

  Just as I was closing in on him, the others burst out of the history room and Pete Hughes started an encore of ‘In the Mood’.

  ‘Come on, Alex, I thought we were mates.’

  ‘Stop following me,’ he hissed. ‘I can’t talk right now. ’

  ‘Then when can you talk? You’ve been avoiding me all day.’

  His ears were practically illuminating the corridor. ‘I dunno . . . sorry . . . gotta go.’

  ‘What’s wrong? What are you scared of?

  But Alex had vanished. He was the one person in the world I thought I could rely on. How wrong can you be?

  ‘Oi, Chickenboy,’ yelled a spiteful voice. ‘Is it true your mum’s such a bitch that your dad ran away to join a freak show?’

  The humanities corridor echoed with their cruel laughter.

  I sprinted out to the courtyard, taking the less popular route round the back of the mobile classrooms, and found a handy vantage point behind the drama studio, from where I could spy on everyone going into the canteen. I couldn’t hear what Pete Hughes was saying to Callum Corcoran and the others, but I guessed from their toothpaste-advert smiles that it was something about me.

  Pete Hughes was the only boy in Year Eight who went for the ‘healthy option’, but even if it did take the dinner grannies a couple of minutes longer to locate the rabbit food, he’d be out of there in no time. There was only one thing for it: I’d have to find somewhere to hide.

  But where? The answer came to me in a flash. Never in my wildest dreams had I imagined myself ending up there. Never in my darkest nightmares had I ever been that desperate.

  1.35 p.m.

  The Homework Club, or Club Nerd as we called it, was the least popular club in the school. There were lots of stupid myths about the Homework Club (the Nerds were building a time machine so they could go back to 1966 and watch the first episode of Star Trek, no one was allowed in without ginger hair and glasses, you had to speak Latin, etc, etc.) but there was certainly an element of truth in the strict code-of-silence thing, because all ten of them looked up from their computer screens the instant I tiptoed through the door.

  I didn’t recognise anyone, not even the teacher, snoozing peacefully beneath The Guardian. I was wondering whether I should pretend to read a book or something when a half-familiar voice made me swing round in horror.

  ‘Hello, Sam.’

  That was all I needed. Stephen Allbright was standing in front of me, Great Modern Chess Openings in one hand, egg sandwich in the other.

  ‘All right, Dimbo?’

  ‘No one calls me that down here. It’s Stephen, or Steve if you like, it’s up to you.’

  ‘Whatever. ’

  ‘Follow me,’ he said, distracted for a moment by a Year Ten girl’s equations. ‘I’m over in the corner, next to the periodic table.’

  ‘No, you’re all right. I think I’ll just stay here.’

  ‘Come on, Sam. I need to talk to you about your . . . predicament.’

  ‘What predicament?’

  Something about the way he rolled his eyes convinced me to follow. He took a plastic container from the top of his monitor and waved it in my face. ‘Egg sandwich?’

  I hardly ever talked to him on the outside, but just for a second I was tempted. ‘Er, no thanks.’

  ‘I know you haven’t been to the canteen. So don’t tell me you’re not hungry. ’

  ‘How did you . . . ?’

  ‘Because I’ve been there, Sam; got the overpriced pencil and rubber from the gift shop. Go on, take it.’

  I bit gratefully into the granary triangle. ‘What do you mean, you’ve been there?’

  ‘You may not remember this, Sam, but I’ve been on the receiving end of that lot in the not so distant past. Th
ere I was, just a regular kid, like you; not popular or anything . . .’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘But someone you wouldn’t mind sharing a sandwich with, someone you’d happily sit next to on the bus. And then we had that maths lesson, do you remember?’

  ‘Er . . . no, not really. ’

  ‘I was stupid,’ he said, taking his face in his hands like that painting, The Scream. ‘I told Mrs Mendoza I could do all the algebra problems in my head. And suddenly I was different. Suddenly everyone started calling me Dimbo. Suddenly no one wanted to know me any more. Even my so called friends deserted me; just like your mate Alex.’

  If only I’d been as convinced as I was trying to sound. ‘Alex has not deserted me.’

  ‘That’s the way it looks from where I’m standing.’

  ‘He’s got . . .’ (I searched for that phrase Mum was always using.) ‘“. . . family issues”, that’s all.’

  ‘You mean he’s scared that if he keeps hanging out with you, this Emperor, or whatever his name is, will start making his life a misery too.’

  ‘Alex is my best friend, he’s not like that.’

  ‘It has been known for best friends to fall out, you know.’

  He was getting on my nerves now. ‘Look, just leave it, OK?’ I said, reaching into my rucksack for a random textbook. ‘I’m trying to do my homework.’

  ‘I’ve seen his crude but effective website, Samuel. And believe me, if you don’t do something about it soon, things could get extremely unpleasant.’

  ‘What can I do?’

  ‘You’ve got to find out who this Emperor is. I could help if you like.’

  ‘No thanks, I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘Don’t make me laugh. You haven’t got the faintest idea about detective work.’

  The fact that he was so obviously right made him even more annoying. ‘Do you mind, I’m trying to read?’

  ‘I mean it, Sam, I want to help.’

  ‘Shut up, Dimbo, I’m not interested, OK?’

  ‘All right.’ He shrugged, reaching for the mouse. ‘But if you change your mind, you know where to find me.’

  I should have bitten his hand off. Dimbo’s prophecy was as accurate as his chemistry homework; something extremely unpleasant was about to happen. But I don’t think even the class genius could have predicted that it involved yours truly being immortalised on film.