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glasses annoyingly.
    ‘Err … hang on, Kelly, I’m just looking for my planner.’
    ‘It’s on your chair, Miss.’ Kelly sighed, rolled her eyes and folded her arms.
    Grabbing the planner as if it were the last lifeboat on the
Titanic
, Sarah flicked to today’s date.
Phew, yes that was it, the Blitz!
    ‘Right, Year 9, listen up—’
    ‘Why do you always say listen up?’ interrupted Danny, again. ‘It’s stupid. Why not listen down, or listen across, or lis—’
    ‘Danny, just be quiet! Also get your book and pen out, everyone else is ready,’ Sarah snapped, wishing the little shithead far away.
    Danny made no move to comply; instead, he rocked on his chair and grinned nastily. ‘I think you’ll find, Miss, that there are at least three other people who haven’t got their books or pens out.’
    Sarah glanced around and noticed that these three were the members of Danny’s crew.
    ‘And, anyway, what’s the point in getting our books out when we have no idea what the hell we’re supposed to be doing, eh?’
    Sarah folded her arms and fixed Danny with a hard stare. ‘Right, Danny, you’ve just got your name on the board for being so rude. And today, everyone, we are going to be looking at the Blitz.’
    She turned to write Danny’s name and the title on the board, only to be stopped by a barrage of Jelly Tots pattering across her back. She whirled round, glaring at the now silent class.
    ‘Was that you, Danny?’ she asked quietly, feeling her heart rate start to climb steadily up the scale.
    ‘Me?’ His lips peeled back from his teeth in a vicious snarl. ‘Why is it always me?
    ‘Good, question, Danny!’ Sarah threw back.
    ‘You got no proof!’
    ‘Well, I was in the middle of writing
your
name on the board, so we have a motive.’
    ‘Well, you’re wrong. For your information, it wasn’t me it was her!’ Danny stood up and pointed at Kelly.
    ‘Kelly? I very much doubt …’
    ‘Yeah, it was smelly Kelly, with the big fat belly!’
    A number of things happened next. Danny’s gang howled with laughter and banged their fists on the desk, Kelly howled with misery and threw a book at Danny, and Sarah felt herself teetering on the brink of insanity.
    ‘Stop that and sit down! Danny, you are in detention, I’m writing to your parents, and move to the front of the room where I can keep an eye on you. Kelly, put that bottle of water down. If you squirt it at him, you’ll be in trouble, too.’
    Sarah put her hands on her head and watched the ensuing mayhem. Nobody took a blind bit of notice and Kelly drenched Danny with the water. Danny changed his expression from evil snarl to terminator mode and began climbing over the desks towards a cowering Kelly.
    To Sarah, the whole grisly floorshow seemed to be happening in slow motion. One last plan to stem the tide of anarchy in the classroom suddenly entered her head.
    ‘Right! That’s it! I’m going to get Mr Lockyear from down the corridor!’
    The head teacher only taught one lesson a week, and lucky for her, this was the day he taught, just three classrooms down from hers.
Thank God for Mr Lockyear!
Sarah rushed for the door, opened it, but instead of stepping into the corridor, she stepped into a place that looked like a picture in the World War Two textbook she’d had open on her desk.
    Sarah stopped in her tracks. Open-mouthed, she gaped at her surroundings. She was in a street in the middle of a city. Everywhere was silent. People in wartime clothes with gas masks slung across their shoulders shopped, cycled, jumped on and off trams and generally went about their business. They called to each other and chatted, but she was deaf to their voices. It was as if Sarah were watching from behind triple glazing.
    Shock released her momentarily, and she whipped round to the door, but both the door and the classroom had disappeared.
    CRACK! A noise exploded inside her head like a firework in a dustbin. Sarah fell to her knees, holding her ears.