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Mesoamericans. Without the offerings of hearts, the sun would not rise, the rains would not come, and the world would be lost to chaos and darkness. And without
Oz
, said the irrational beast that ravened in the school’s subconscious, there would be equally terrible consequences. There would be a Ragnarok, the war at the end of time, and all kinds of bad shit would go down. That kind of thing.
    Everyone knew that Shankley wanted the Drama Queens gone. The money and the power had put them out of his control. They needed to be destroyed. So far he hadn’t had a good enough reason to close them down, but the death of the stick insects was just the pretext he needed.
    And now I realized I was stuck in a web that a black widow would have been proud of. Funt and Bosola were sure to put the word around that I was the main suspect for the killing. The Shank had set this all up so that he couldn’t lose. Either I found the perp, and he’d get the credit for solving the crime, or I failed, which would give him the excuse he wanted to fatally weaken the Queens by nixing the play. And nobody would blame him for zapping
The Oz
; it’d be me the Queens tied upside-down on the school gates, wearing nothing but a tutu and a feather boa, with a big “Q” drawn on my chest in pink lipstick.
    Well, so far, the Queens and I hadn’t had much to do with each other, but that was going to change.
    First, though, I needed something to go on. A clue. And that meant returning to the crime scene.

CHAPTER SIX
CSI
    THE toilets at lunchtime weren’t quite as civilized as they were during lessons. The cubicles were all occupied. Some held Year Seven midgets, sobbing for their mothers. In some, grim rites were being performed: the ancient tortures of dunking and flushing. Others contained clandestine scoffers of the forbidden digestive biscuit or Mars bar. One cubicle had smoke pluming over it, although whether it was a furtive fag, or some kid setting himself on fire rather than face the school lunch, I couldn’t say. Perhaps some of the cubicles were even being used for the purposes for which they were designed.
    But my business wasn’t with the cubicles, or the sad wretches they contained. Nor was it with the urinals – although I did briefly want to push a kid’s face into the stinking bowl when I saw him spit his gum in there.
    No, this wasn’t the time for random acts of vigilantism. I was here because I remembered that metallic rattle, which meant that something had been dumped in the bin at the end of the row of sinks. I went straight to it and picked through the paper towels newly deposited there.
    “Hey, psycho-boy, lost your pills?”
    I looked up, but still fished around with my left hand. A couple of kids from my year loomed over me. Steve Wilson was one of the cool kids, if by cool you meant vain, shallow and asinine. His hair was greased into a quiff, and his tie-knot was the size of a baby’s head. His friend was called Gamble or Grimble or some such, and he looked the same, with the minor handicap of a spray of acne like a meteor shower across his cheeks.
    “I’m looking for your soul. I heard I could find it in the trash.”
    Wilson stared at me with a perplexed expression on his handsome, dumb face. “What the hell does that mean? If it’s supposed to be funny, then it’s not, and if it’s supposed to be clever, then it’s not. But if supposed to be lame, then you hit the jackpot.”
    Grimble or Gamble or whatever laughed through his nose, squirting a little snot.
    On consideration, I thought Wilson was probably right. But I didn’t care, because my fingers touched something hard and thin and long at the bottom of the bin. I reached round, found another and pulled them both out.
    “What you got there, weirdo?” said Wilson, though this time there was genuine interest in his voice.
    “Text me and I’ll let you know,” I replied as I walked out, hiding what I’d found under my blazer.
    “You haven’t even got