The Ministry of SUITs Read Online Free Page B

Jack.
    David untucked his head from the ball he had curled himself into. He looked rather like a tortoise wearing a school uniform. “I could ask you the same thing.”
    â€œWell, you could,” agreed Jack, “but it wouldn’t make any sense.”
    David unfurled an arm and pointed at the girl he had run into. For the first time Jack really looked at her. It was Trudy Emerson.
    Trudy was about the same height as Jack and was in the same year. She had fair hair, which would have been shoulder length if she didn’t always have it pulled back into a tight ponytail. Half a dozen strands of hair at the front were dyed red and had a tendency to fall across her face, obscuring her dark blue eyes.
    But Jack wasn’t worried about how she looked. He was worried about her reputation. A reputation that had led her to gain the nickname “Moody Trudy.” In Trudy’s first year at the school she had already broken several records for detentions, general tellings-off, and suspensions.
    What made Trudy really terrifying was that she did all this completely by herself. Most of the bad kids hung around in gangs. By themselves they would have been too scared to break the rules. But nothing seemed to scare Trudy. She didn’t break rules. She shattered them into little, tiny pieces, jumped on the pieces, and then dropped them around a “no littering” sign. Quite possibly hoping that a passing squirrel would try and eat a piece of the rules and then choke.
    Jack looked at Trudy and smiled. “Sorry about David; he’s just…”
    Trudy said nothing. She just stared.
    â€œWe’ll just be…”
    Trudy continued staring.
    Jack noticed that a group of kids from his class were walking past and heading into the assembly hall. This was very confusing. Assembly should already have been over. It wasn’t that Jack stopped being afraid of Trudy at that moment. It was just that his sense of curiosity needed to know what was going on. If curiosity had been an airborne virus, any cats within a five-hundred-foot radius of Jack would have dropped dead.
    â€œWhy is everyone going into the hall?” asked Jack. “Shouldn’t assembly be over for the day?”
    Trudy stopped staring and snorted. “They’re having a special assembly,” she snapped. “Some stupid company coming to sponsor the school or something. Give us free stuff.”
    Trudy’s fists were curling into balls. If Jack had been a normal boy, he would have thanked Trudy for her time, wished her well in future endeavors, and run away in the opposite direction. However, his curiosity gland was pumping madly. 15
    â€œWhy would you be angry about someone giving us stuff? Isn’t it good getting stuff?”
    Trudy spoke through gritted teeth. “We have P.E. this morning. I was going to use the assembly hall for my gymnastics.”
    â€œOh. Right.”
    Jack had heard about Trudy’s gymnastic ability. When they had first started at the school people were amazed at her ability to tumble, somersault, and spring. There had been talk about her joining one of the senior gymnastics teams. She had been so good that a shelf of the trophy cabinet had been cleared out and dusted down in anticipation of the medals she would win.
    But although Trudy was great at individual gymnastics, teamwork clearly wasn’t her forte. Trudy’s ability to work as part of a team was somewhat compromised by the fact that she didn’t talk about clothes, boys, and bands all the time. Millicent, the leader of the popular girls, had sensed weakness in Trudy and had made fun of her mercilessly.
    Then one day, when Trudy was meant to catch Millicent coming out of a back flip, she had just wandered away. “There was no one to catch Millicent,” the P.E. teacher had screeched at her.
    Trudy had shrugged. “The floor caught her, didn’t it?”
    The floor had caught Millicent, but it had