The Trouble with Sauce by Bruno Bouchet Read Free Book Online Page B

her away.
    Miranda twitched as she walked. ‘It’s not good enough,’ she muttered. ‘It’s not good enough.’
    Nathaniel and Prune looked at each other. Perhaps Jonty was right. Something had to be done. The students were moving beyond weird to downright scary.

CHAPTER 12
BOTTOM THREE
    With his arms folded, Nathaniel sat in his bedroom, looking at the computer. It was Sunday night. He used to spend Sunday nights studying, looking over his homework and enjoying all the maths equations he had mastered. He loved it when they suddenly made sense to him, but it was weeks since any equations had made sense.
    He didn’t have homework anymore. The teachers never set any. Somehow everyone simply found out what was expected. When it came to learning, classes were just the tip of the iceberg. For the first time he could remember, Nathaniel had nothing to do.
    He sighed, looked around his bedroom and started tapping his hands on the desk. He was feeling … he wasn’t quite sure what it was. He wasn’t tired. He wasn’t hungry. He wasn’t angry or annoyed. What was it?
    He leant back in the chair until he was balanced on the two back legs. He reached out and touched the edge of the desk with one hand to steady himself, then he let go. He tried to maintain his balance with his arms, but he wobbled, leant too far, then tipped right over and crashed onto the floor.
    Downstairs, his mother heard the crash and ran up to his room.
    ‘What on earth are you doing?’ she asked, when she saw him sprawled on the floor, looking at the ceiling. It was most inelegant.
    ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I’m — bored!’
    That was the feeling. For the first time in his life, Nathaniel was bored.
    ‘Oh dear,’ gasped Mrs Bennett and walked out of the room. ‘It’s started.’
    She would have to speak to his father. ‘Bored schoolboy today,’ he always said, ‘graffiti artist tomorrow.’
    Nathaniel stayed on the floor, thinking he had never really looked at his bedroom ceiling properly before. Finally he got to his feet, picked his chair up and sat down again.
    He browsed through a few of his favourite sites, but without anything to research, it was boring. He decided to check his MySpace page and almost fell off his chair again, when he saw that he had a message. Someone had invited him to join the
Mannington Liberation Front.
He visited the group’s page.
    What’s happening at Mannington High?

Everyone working, no one playing, no one

mucking up.

IT’S NOT NORMAL.

IT’S NOT RIGHT.

Where have all the real kids gone?

If you’re worried about what’s happening at

Mannington High, meet after school at the café

in Misery Mall. Don’t bring any student zombies

— anyone who knows the chemical formula for

hidracloric acid will be rejected.
    This had to be Jonty’s work — only he would misspell
hydrochloric.
At first Nathaniel was annoyed that Jonty was being friendly because all his other friends had dropped him. Then he felt a glimmer of satisfaction that Jonty had been reduced to organising a meeting for real in the Misery Mall café, instead of joke meetings.
    His satisfaction ended when the image of Miranda’s face from English class flashed through his mind. She seemed so crazy it sent a shiver down his spine. They had to do something.
    Nathaniel wanted to learn again. He wanted to be top of the class. As much as he resented Jonty forall the old tricks he had pulled, this Mannington Liberation Front was his best bet for finding out what was going on. He also knew exactly what was going to happen in Maths on Monday morning. His worst nightmare was about to come true.
    By the time he’d had breakfast, got to school and arrived at the classroom door, he knew for certain it wasn’t a horrible dream. Monday morning was really happening. He paused outside the room for a moment, leant against the wall, took a depth breath and stepped inside.
    ‘What?’ he said out loud. The desk allocation had already taken place and