Free The Trouble with Sauce by Bruno Bouchet Page A

opened his mouth and Mr Foster dropped the pill in.
    ‘Good boy,’ he said. ‘Now go and join your friends.’
    He strolled over to the windows and looked down over his school. So he had done it. Finally done it. The entire school would have the most brilliant minds in the world. Now he could move onto the best part of the lot — getting rid of teachers altogether.

CHAPTER 16
WAITING IN RECEPTION
    Jonty found Nathaniel and Prune sitting side by side and staring straight ahead. He wondered if they would even notice him. Slowly they turned their heads to look. Nathaniel stood up first, then Prune did. Without saying a thing, they walked out of reception and towards the playground. Jonty followed them. His mind raced at the thought of the pill that Mr Foster had made him take and the effect it might already be having.
    Outside, Prune and Nathaniel looked around to check that no one was watching, especially from the windows in the principal’s office. Then they opened their hands slowly. Each of them was holding a little green pill. Nathaniel had chosen not to take his and Prune had spat hers out the second she had left the office. They were waiting for Jonty to do the same.
    He opened his hands, but there was no pill in either of them.
    Nathaniel looked into Jonty’s eyes, horrified at what he had done.
    ‘No!’ gasped Prune.
    Jonty was shocked about what had happened to him. His cheeks were still wet from his tears and he hoped they hadn’t noticed that he’d been crying. He felt terrible. Prune and Nathaniel had both resisted; neither of them had taken the pill. He was weak and pathetic.
    ‘Jonty, you didn’t, you couldn’t — not you!’ Nathaniel was scared. It was bad enough facing a whole school that had fallen for it, but if Jonty was one of them too, he didn’t know what they would do. Prune had both hands clasped over her mouth. Of all of them, Jonty was the last one she had expected to take it.
    Jonty stared at them for a second, summoning the courage to be the big strong friend they thought he was. He took in a deep breath through his nose, filled his mouth with saliva, lifted his head up and spat his pill out as far as he could.
    ‘Got you!’ he said, but he couldn’t laugh. He wanted to make a joke of it, to hide how scared he had been, but it didn’t work. ‘He was so foul,’ he said. ‘He shouted and screamed and prodded …’ He swallowed hard. He didn’t want to cry again.
    ‘Oh, Jonty!’ Prune said and burst into tears.
    Nathaniel recounted what had happened to him and then Prune told her story.
    ‘It was like he knew exactly what to do to make us take it,’ said Prune. ‘I used a psychic force field to protect myself. You two probably did, too, without realising it. Something stopped us all from taking the pills.’
    ‘I suppose so,’ said Jonty. ‘Anyway, we didn’t take them and that’s what matters. And now, thanks to you two, we’ve got evidence to prove what he’s doing!’
    He pointed to their pills.
    ‘I came so close to taking mine,’ Nathaniel admitted. ‘But my mind posed the question — what is the point of being brilliant if the whole world is the same?’
    ‘You wouldn’t be the same,’ Prune said. ‘If the pills make someone like Boris Brockman megaintelligent, just think what they’d do to
your
brain!’
    ‘His brain’d probably start controlling time or something!’ said Jonty.
    ‘Don’t tempt me!’ Nathaniel grinned, holding the pill to his lips.
    The lunchtime bell went. Soon the students were all lining up neatly at the canteen. Each one of them bought an item of food, squeezed their sauce onto it and moved on. Jonty shuddered. It was all too creepy and there was way too much tomatosauce. He hated tomato sauce — always had, always would.
    He didn’t remember people eating so much of it before. They were always too busy throwing it at each other to be bothered with eating it.
    ‘We need to get out of here,’ Jonty said, ‘and we need