Free The Trouble with Sauce by Bruno Bouchet

Prune and Nathaniel?’
    ‘Nothing. They’re sitting quietly in reception.Soon they’ll pick up the books on the table in front of them and discover they can remember everything they read. They’ll read faster and faster and then they’ll need another a book, but that won’t be enough. They’ll crave learning. They’ll research on the internet, find new things to learn. In no time at all they’ll be as clever as everyone else in the school.’
    ‘No, they won’t.’
    ‘They will and they will have chosen. Chosen to abandon you and let you remain the last stupid, badly behaved, rude, obnoxious child in the entire school. The only one who still needs to be taught and controlled. The only one left to play your idiotic pranks. Kick a ball to yourself. Jonty Nofriends, playing all alone, like a mouse in a cage.’ Mr Foster spoke louder and louder until he was shouting. Then he stood up.
    ‘All that time you’ve spent trying to be “cool” like your mate Boris will have been a complete waste. He doesn’t want to know you. You’re nobody to him. Then all the time you’ve spent trying to be “nice” to Nathaniel and Prune, trying to make them forget all the dreadful things you’ve done to them.’ He walked around his desk and Jonty backed away to the door, as the principal prowled towards him, snarling his words.
    ‘Desperate for friends, aren’t you, Jonty? You always have to have a little gang around you. Well,not anymore. The entire school is one big gang and you’re not in it!’ He prodded Jonty’s chest with every word. His finger jabbed at the same spot over and over again and it hurt.
    ‘No!’ Jonty cried out. He didn’t want to be alone. He didn’t want to have no friends. He couldn’t stand being on his own.
    ‘You’ll be in a separate class on your own, all day every day. You’ll be captain of the soccer team. In fact you’ll be the
whole
team, because no one else in the school WILL PLAY WITH YOU — NO ONE!’
    Jonty was pressed up against the door. He could feel Mr Foster’s breath on his face as he shouted at him. It was like standing in a hot summer wind.
    ‘It’s not true,’ Jonty whispered, as tears sprung into his eyes. ‘It’s not true.’ He wanted to shut out everything Mr Foster was saying. He wanted it to not be true, but deep down he was terrified that Nathaniel and Prune would change, too, and he would be left all alone. It was as if Mr Foster knew exactly what his worst nightmare was. He didn’t want to be alone. He wanted to have friends, but they were all being taken away from him.
    Mr Foster pressed his face even closer. Jonty could feel his bushy eyebrows touching his forehead.
    ‘It
is
true,’ he snarled, determined to bend Jonty to his will.
    ‘Please,’ begged Jonty, ‘I don’t want to be the only one.’
    ‘But I want you to be. I want you to suffer.’
    ‘Why?’ Jonty said. ‘Why me?’
    ‘I need to have one student to punish in my perfect school and I’ve chosen you.’
    Jonty could feel tears running down his cheeks. He had been so scared he hadn’t even noticed he was crying. ‘Please stop,’ he said. ‘What do you want from me?’
    ‘Don’t like being bullied,’ Mr Foster continued, ‘do you?’
    ‘No — stop — I’ll do anything!’
    ‘Anything?’ That was the word he’d been waiting to hear.
    ‘Yes,’ Jonty said. He wanted this to be over. It didn’t matter what happened — just as long as this unbearable moment was over.
    ‘Take this!’ Mr Foster drew one of the green pills out of his pocket and held it between his finger and thumb. Jonty looked at it. In an instant he knew this was the way Mr Foster had been making everyone behave. He knew exactly what would happen if he swallowed that pill, but right then, he didn’t care. All he wanted to do was get out.
    He couldn’t stand it — the shouting, the breath, the eyebrows, the thought of being alone. If only he could get out of this office. He couldn’t breathe.He