Free Class Six and the Nits of Doom by Sally Prue Page B

again.
    ‘It might not mean I’m going to be a gorilla, though,’ said Jack, thoughtfully. ‘I might just be turning into a chimpanzee. I wouldn’t mind that so much.’
    ‘But what should we do?’ asked Serise. ‘Do we call for help and get taken to prison for murdering our teacher, or do we let one of us be eaten by a leopard?’
    ‘Bags not me to be eaten,’ said Anil, quickly. ‘I’m too bony. Rodney might eat me and still be hungry. It’d be much better to let him eat someone fatter.
Hey,’ he went on, brightening, ‘we could say he ate Miss Broom, too!’
    ‘Good thinking,’ said Serise, who was as skinny as a broomstick herself.
    Slacker Punchkin began shaking his head. ‘Well, I think that’s a totally rubbish—’ Then he twitched, and his antennae started to flash alternate red and green.
    Slacker put a meaty hand up to one of them. ‘Hang on,’ he said. ‘I think I’m getting a new radio station.’
    There was a blood-curdling snarl behind them and everyone leapt several centimetres into the air. Rodney was on all fours, now. He seemed to have grown lots of new sharp teeth. A line of
glistening spit was hanging down to the floor from one of them.
    Slacker was pushing his front teeth into his gums one by one.
    ‘I can hear wailing,’ he reported.
    ‘You’re picking up my brain waves,’ quavered Emily, who was as pale and shivery as a blancmange in an earthquake.
    ‘Or mine,’ admitted Winsome. ‘I keep trying to think what to do, but my head’s just full of wailing.’
    Class Six looked at each other.
    ‘Even Rodney looks as if he can hear it,’ said Anil, because Rodney was batting at his ear with a hand which was halfway to being a paw.
    Slacker frowned. He was screwing up his face as if he was listening really carefully.
    ‘Everyone shut up a minute,’ he said. ‘I think I nearly got it in tune just then. I think… Hang on!’ He switched to twisting his chin, and began to look more
confident.
    ‘That’s it,’ he said. ‘It’s on FM, not digital. It’s someone saying something.’
    Jack began to twist his chin, too. ‘You’re right. It’s a voice, a long way away. I think it’s saying…’
    ‘What?’ said everyone. ‘What’s it saying?’
    Jack looked round at them all.
    ‘
Ball the chits
,’ he said.

Serise rolled her eyes.
    ‘Oh you idiot!’ she said. ‘You moron! You utter and complete cretin! Just what is
ball the chits
supposed to mean?’
    ‘Well,’ said Jack, ‘I suppose we have to find the…er…chits, and then, er…’
    ‘Give me strength!’ said Serise, despairingly.
    ‘Where’s my dictionary?’ asked Winsome. She got it from her drawer and flicked urgently through the pages. ‘Chit… chit… no, it’s not here. It goes
straight from chisel to chivalry.’
    Slacker put his hand thoughtfully to his chin—and then suddenly stood up straight.
    ‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘I’ve just accidentally tuned the station in properly. Jack heard it wrong. That wasn’t
ball the chits
we picked up on our
antennae, that was
ball the NITS!
’
    ‘
Ball the nits!
’ proclaimed Jack. ‘Hurray! We’ve got it! Er…how can anyone ball a nit?’
    Rodney was almost completely a leopard now. He was crouching on the floor by Miss Broom’s desk, warm and velvet-furred and dangerous. Only his glowing antennae, and the fact that he was
wearing trousers and an orange sweatshirt, gave away the fact that he was not a real leopard.
    Slacker put his hand up to his chin again.
    ‘I can still hear it,’ he said. ‘
Ball the nits
. Again and again. At least, I think…’
    Rodney’s eyes were glowing like the fires at the centre of the earth.
    He stretched out a long arm, and his muscles moved smoothly under his beautiful fur. Each heavy paw looked as if it could knock someone’s head off.
    Class Six had put all the tables between them and Rodney, but it was no use. Rodney crouched for a moment, with only the twitching of the black tips of his