Class Six and the Nits of Doom Read Online Free Page A

luckily they seemed to like the light even less than Rodney did, and they
quickly wound all the bits of cobweb into balls, stuck their knitting needles under their arms, and scuttled back into the cupboard.
    ‘Quick!’ said Emily, doing a little jig of terror. ‘I can hear her footsteps. Oh,
quick
!’
    Slacker pushed Rodney into the nearest chair, and all the rest of the class threw themselves into their places. Some of them even remembered to start coughing again. When Miss Broom arrived with
a tray full of beakers they were all red in the face and breathing hard.
    Miss Broom viewed them all, still puzzled, as she began to hand out the beakers of water.
    ‘You all must have some sort of an allergy to…er…to my special methods,’ she said, as she went round the classroom. ‘Perhaps I shall have to stop using them for
the time being.’
    Class Six sipped their glasses of water and felt very relieved. Miss Broom was going to stop doing magic for a while, and Rodney had been rescued from the cupboard. They were safe.
    For the moment.
     
    There must have been something itchy in the witch’s cupboard, though, because Rodney had started scratching and scratching and scratching at his head.

Class Six were so weak with relief that they didn’t even have the strength to fight to be first in the queue at lunch time.
    The children from the other classes stared at Class Six curiously, but none of them dared come up to ask any questions. They all knew about Miss Broom. Every year, Class Six was the best-behaved
class in the whole school—and everyone knew why.
    It was terror. Sheer, utter terror.
    Unless, of course, it was something even worse…
    Class Six stood quietly in line, as dull as cows, grateful simply to be still alive, and the only person who wasn’t completely shattered was Rodney Wright. The sleep in the cupboard seemed
to have perked him up, because he was quite lively. He kept squiggling and scratching. And scratching. And scratching.
    ‘What was it like in the cupboard?’ asked Emily timidly, when they were all sitting down and trying to summon up the energy to eat.
    Rodney scratched his head.
    ‘Smelly,’ he said. ‘And dark. I was a bit worried at first because the luminous grasshoppers had huge teeth, but they left me alone so it was all right.’
    ‘Grasshoppers?’ echoed Anil.
    ‘Yeah. They were all sort of oily green and purple. But it was OK, they just sat quietly on their shelf and carried on playing backgammon.’
    ‘I would have screamed and screamed and screamed,’ said Emily, with a shiver. ‘To be locked up with magic grasshoppers…’
    Rodney scratched his head again.
    ‘There’s no such thing as magic,’ he said.
    Everyone in Class Six took in a deep breath to say
WHAT?????
But then they just sighed and started eating their dinners. Rodney had always been really stupid. It wasn’t that he
couldn’t read or write or add up or stuff, it was more that it never occurred to him that he might be wrong. Not even the fact that Miss Broom had orange eyes that showed pictures of skulls
and vampire bats had made the slightest difference to his belief that there was no such thing as witches.
    ‘The only
scary
thing,’ Rodney went on, talking through a mouthful of lettuce, ‘was when Miss Broom’s hat fell down over my head. It smelled of compost and ferret
poo.’
    ‘Yuk!’ said Jack.
    ‘Ew!’ said Serise. ‘That is really
disgusting
. I mean, even if Miss Broom
is
a watch she could still keep her clothes clean, couldn’t—’
    Serise broke off as she realised that the others were all staring at her. ‘What?’ she snapped.
    ‘What did you just say, Serise?’ asked Winsome quietly.
    Serise scowled. ‘I said, that even if Miss Broom
is
a watch, then at least—hey, what are you lot looking at?’
    ‘She said
watch
!’ squawked Jack, pointing a wavering finger. ‘She said Miss Broom is a
watch
!’
    ‘No, I didn’t!’ snapped Serise. ‘Don’t be silly. I said