Alice in Time by Penelope Bush Read Free Book Online

invite
everyone
except you and me – even the people she despises. So if they actually all turn up to her party she’ll be really fed up.’
    She’s got a point, and I smile at the thought of Sasha having to entertain all the greasy-haired geeks at her oh so cool party. She’s obviously hoping that they won’t go. By the time Mrs Draycott comes in to take the register, I’m feeling a lot better.
    The first lesson is double art so the whole form traipses off to the art room. Usually I enjoy art, although I’m not particularly good at it. Art is Imogen’s favourite subject and she is brilliant at drawing, but then her mum is an artist, so she’s at an advantage there. When we arrive, Mrs Burton isn’t there so Sasha starts going on about her party in a loud voice, trying to wind me up.
    I wander over to the still life which we’ve been working on for the last few weeks. We’re supposed to be doing it in different styles and at the moment I’m trying to do it in a Cubist style and it’s not working very well. The still life has been setup on a board in the corner and is beginning to look a bit sad. The apples are a tad wrinkly and the shiny teapot is beginning to lose its shine. I’m about to pick the whole thing up and carry it to the table in the middle when Sasha shouts out.
    ‘Hey, look, everybody.’ She’s over by Mrs Burton’s desk, waving a piece of paper. ‘It looks like Burty isn’t coming in today. She’s left this for the cover assistant. It says we’re to get on with what we’ve been doing.’ She fakes an enormous yawn, screws the paper up into a ball and throws it in the bin. Oh, great. That means that for the next two hours Sasha is planning on winding up the class cover assistant and nobody will get any work done. Already Sasha’s behaviour has got everyone excited and the class is really rowdy now.
    Beside me Imogen sighs.
    The door opens and the cover assistant walks in. Everybody sees her, but we all pretend that we haven’t. She’s not like the usual assistants. For a start, she’s a lot older and very efficient-looking. She looks more like a headmistress than our own headmistress. ‘My name is Miss Shears,’ she bellows.
    Even a half-blind two-year-old could tell that this is not a woman to mess with, but then Sasha doesn’t seem to have as much intelligence as a two-year-old because she’s still giggling away in the corner with her friends.
    ‘Right. Enough. Silence!’ Miss Shears’s voice gets gradually louder with each word. ‘Why aren’t you getting on with your work?’
    Now we’re all madly getting out our drawing boards and paper, except Sasha, of course. She’s tipping her chair back andfiling her nails. ‘Mrs Burton didn’t leave us any,’ she says with a smirk.
    Miss Shears’s eyes narrow and she glances towards the bin. I just know that she’s going to find the instructions and that Sasha will never own up to throwing them away and that the whole class will be in detention.
    But I’m wrong; instead she strides over to where Sasha is sitting and puts her patent-leather shoe on the chair strut, bringing the chair down with a jolt. Even this doesn’t knock any sense into Sasha, although she does look as though she’s about to complain, and then thinks better of it. After all, Miss Shears hasn’t actually touched her, thank God, or we would never hear the end of it.
    ‘Right, I shall just have to think of something for you to do, then.’ She picks up a spare chair and places it on the desk in the middle of the room where I was going to put the still life. ‘I’d like you all to draw this.’
    Everybody groans, even Imogen, and some people glare accusingly at Sasha. Art is usually fun. Mrs Burton believes in us expressing ourselves and there’s no such thing as ‘going wrong’. If you tipped a pot of paint over your work by accident she’d just smile and say, ‘Incorporate it into the design.’
    This chair thing is a nightmare. It’s torture. I