Free Obsidian Pebble by Rhys Jones Page B

Jenks, inevitably, who managed to change all that. He’d been pea-shooting wet balls of spit-soaked paper at people all morning and missing. But finally he struck lucky and caught Oz on the right earlobe. It was more shock than pain that triggered Oz’s instinctive reaction, which consisted of swivelling around and glaring at an insolent Jenks. Yet that small, sudden movement was all Boggs needed.
    Seconds later, Oz felt himself being yanked up by his shirt collar, standing at his desk and staring at the board through a teary haze, trying to decipher the figures and letters that made up the hieroglyphics written there. He wasn’t crying because of the humiliation of being singled out in class, nor because of his frustration at not being able to do the sum. No, the cause of the watering in his eyes was all to do with why Badger Breath had earned his nickname.
    â€œWell?” snarled the maths teacher, his mouth three inches from Oz’s ear. With the snarl came another waft of cheesy halitosis, and Oz felt his eyes well up even more from the stench. The figures on the board swam in front of his eyes, turning them to blurry spider writing.
    â€œUmmm,” Oz dithered.
    Boggs withdrew his face, pointed towards the board and yelled, “3y + 34 = 2y + 89 has never, and will never, result in ‘ummm’ as a mathematical answer. Get that into your empty head, Chambers.”
    Oz heard Jenks titter and felt his cheeks burn.
    Boggs turned in disgust and marched to the front of the class. When he reached the blackboard he pivoted to face the whole of 1C, wearing a sour-faced scowl.
    â€œI’ve seen it all before. Cocky little first years who think they know it all, so sure that you’re all going to change the world.” Boggs shook his head and his face sneered into a nasty imitation of a smile. “Well, let me tell you something, my naïve little friends. The real world isn’t about talent shows and people making idiots of themselves on TV for thirty seconds of fame. None of you are going to wake up with magical powers that will get you all the things you want. Life is not a fantasy film. The truth is that, from now on, it’s a hard slog because bills don’t pay themselves. In just a few short years, you, like everyone else, will have to sell your souls to the banks to borrow money to get a mortgage to buy a house. And that means getting up early and going to work every day even when the weather’s perfect and all you really want to do is go to the beach or toboggan on Marsden Hill.”
    Boggs’ face had gone blotchy purple, and little flecks of spit had begun to froth at the corners of his mouth, but he wasn’t finished yet. “I’ve got two years left of my thirty years of commitment to this profession. Murderers get less than I have served here. So, I have no interest whatsoever in soft-soaping you lot, and that means that I will not put up with any nonsense from any of you.”
    He turned his bulging glare back on Oz. “Now, some of you may have little or no interest in mathematics, a fact that will no doubt reap huge dividends when it comes to your first examination in four days’ time. But this is a maths lesson, not a zoo. Although, judging by the way some of you behave, that distinction isn’t always as clear-cut as it should be.”
    Boggs let out a deep sigh. “Sit down, Chambers, and try and get what little grey matter there is inside that skull of yours to concentrate for more than twenty seconds at a time.”
    Oz sat and breathed in cheese and onion-free air, wondering for the hundredth time what it was about Boggs and maths that he found so difficult. He’d loved maths at his old school, and his teacher, Mrs. Evans, had been nice. But this was Seabourne County; here they didn’t do nice. And those that did, like Hippie Arkwright, sometimes tried a bit too hard. But as for Boggs, Oz had an idea that his idea of