Free Obsidian Pebble by Rhys Jones Page A

she does have a reason to be extra upset. Maybe she knows something that you don’t. Maybe that’s why she wants to cuddle you like a stray.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about?” Oz asked, confused.
    Pheeps would have got ten out of ten in a smirking exam at that moment. Oz wanted desperately to demand that she stop talking in riddles, but the moment passed as Badger Breath Boggs appeared behind them and unceremoniously began ushering Oz and the rest of 1C into his class. Pheeps sauntered away, still wearing an annoyingly superior smile on her face.
    â€œI don’t think she’s human,” Ruff said as they got their maths books out.
    It seemed about the right time for Oz to tell them about bumping into Pheeps and her father in town.
    â€œTalk about bad luck,” Ellie said.
    â€œWhere was she going, charm school?” Ruff asked, the corners of his mouth curving into a wry smile.
    â€œShopping,” Oz explained. “She was looking for boots to go with her new everything else. I tell you she’s gone mental. She said to me that I should be careful not to do myself an injury. All I did was put the shopping down.”
    â€œWeird,” Ellie said.
    â€œYeah, and it was the way she said it. She had this sort of sick smile on her face.” Oz shrugged.
    â€œMaybe she’s got a soft spot for you,” Ruff suggested.
    â€œUgh, don’t even joke about that,” Oz said with feeling. “Her dad and mine worked at the university together. I’ve seen her at parties and stuff over the years.”
    â€œThat must have been a bundle of laughs,” Ellie said, unzipping her pencil case.
    â€œWhat was she on about anyway, Arkwright’s secret?” Ruff asked.
    â€œIt’s just her way of winding me up,” Oz said, and realised that he was trying as much to reassure himself as he was Ruff and Ellie. “Like Ruff says, she’s not human.”
    The other two nodded sagely, since it was a pretty accurate description.
    â€œThinks she’s so cool just because she’s got money and no one says anything to her because her mother’s been ill,” Oz muttered.
    Ellie sighed in agreement.
    But Pheeps had seemed so annoyingly confident. What could Miss Arkwright possibly know about him that he didn’t know himself? It didn’t make any sense.
    But Badger Breath Boggs was already writing on the board and they all knew that the sooner they started the better. Badger Breath’s teaching style was old-fashioned and extremely boring. The class would spend one whole lesson copying from the board and listening to Boggs’ droning voice. In the other lesson of the double, they would all try to do problems set by him.
    Oz was always struck at how devoid of colour Boggs was. It was as if he’d decided to live his life in monochrome. His moustache was grey-flecked, his hair (what little he had of it) was silvering, and he even had a constant smattering of grey-cigarette ash on the lapels of his charcoal herringbone jacket. His eyebrows were the only feature in an otherwise sour-looking face that gave any hint of original colouring in that they were dark and bushy. But he moved very quickly for an ancient teacher of almost fifty-eight; someone once said that Badger Breath had been a ballroom dancer in his youth. Oz would always remember that, not because he agreed, but because of what Ruff’s response to that suggestion had been.
    â€œBallroom dancer? More likely the back end of a pantomime horse, if you ask me.”
    For the next ninety minutes, Oz did his best to put Pheeps and Miss Arkwright to the back of his mind and concentrated on getting through maths. For about a lesson and a half, everything went well; at least, it did from Oz’s perspective. Okay, he only understood about a quarter of what was going on, but Badger Breath seemed simply to want to get on with things today and was much less sarcastic than usual. It was