Read Class Six and the Nits of Doom for Free Online Page B

down.
    ‘I can spell anything at all!’ he shouted. ‘Anything! I can even spell… I can spell… I can even spell
DIARRHOEA
!’
    And then he stopped jumping about quite suddenly and looked a bit puzzled for a moment. And then he put up his hand to his head and he began to scratch and scratch and scratch.

‘I don’t know what it is, but it itches like mad,’ said Jack.
    ‘You’ll have to sit at the back of the class and hope Miss Broom doesn’t notice you,’ said Winsome, despairingly.
    ‘A fat lot of good that’s going to do,’ muttered Serise. ‘Jack’s gone and caught Rodney’s lurgy, that’s what’s happened. And if it’s that
catching then we’ll
all
be getting it!’
    Anil hunched his shoulders.
    ‘We’re going to die, then,’ he said.
    ‘Nooooo!’ shrieked nearly everyone. ‘
I don’t want to die!
’
    But Winsome drew herself up bravely.
    ‘We don’t know what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget that Anil’s always looking on the bad side. Remember the time he said Mr Wolfe had
grown a tail? And that turned out not to be true.’
    ‘You don’t know that,’ said Anil. ‘He probably keeps it tucked down inside his trousers.’
    ‘Or the time Anil said that when he went to the seaside he saw Mrs Elwig swimming in the sea with a pod of killer whales? And then when we got back to school there Mrs Elwig was, as
usual.’
    ‘Sitting in her wheelchair smelling of fish,’ muttered Anil. ‘With a rug over her legs, singing songs about sailors, and hardly ever bothering to breathe.’
    Winsome waved all that away.
    ‘And as for Rodney,’ she said, ‘we’d have heard if he’d dropped dead. You know what grown ups are like, they’d have been talking about nothing else. Rodney
will be—’
    ‘Over there!’ screeched Jack, pointing.
    And there he was, just getting out of his mum’s car.
    ‘But…that can’t be Rodney,’ said Emily. ‘That’s someone with black hair.’
    They watched Rodney walk through the school gate. When he got closer they could see that his hair wasn’t really black—it had purple and green glossy streaks, like a magpie’s
back.
    There was something else a bit odd about him, too, but it took Class Six a while to work out what it was.
    ‘Your nose has got bigger!’ said Emily, in horror. ‘It’s…it’s…’
    ‘It looks a bit like a trunk,’ said Serise.
    It was only a very small trunk, but there was no doubt about it.
    ‘Yes,’ said Rodney. ‘My mum took me to the doctor’s, but he says it’s nothing to worry about.’
    ‘Well, at least your voice is back to normal,’ said Winsome. ‘Perhaps all these other symptoms will go away by themselves too.’
    Rodney shrugged.
    ‘It is quite odd, though,’ he told them. ‘Because my toes have gone bright green. And when I sneeze…’
    As he said it his trunk began to twitch and his face got redder and redder. Class Six all screamed, and they were throwing themselves sideways when it happened. There was a sound like someone
punching a sack of flour, and Rodney sneezed.
    Inwards.
    His trunk shrunk until it was the size of a surprised caterpillar, and his belly ballooned outwards. There was a whole series of small explosions as the buttons on his shirt popped off.
    One other thing happened, too. His ears shot out from the sides of his head as they were if on elastic—and then they whizzed back into place again with a sharp and painful snap.
    Class Six got up slowly from where they’d thrown themselves out of the way of Rodney’s sneeze.
    ‘Well, at least if Rodney’s sneezes are going inwards then he isn’t going to give us anything nasty,’ said Winsome.
    ‘But he already has!’ squeaked Emily. ‘Look at Jack. He keeps scratching and scratching, and that’s what Rodney was doing yesterday.’
    Jack shrugged, and scratched some more.
    ‘I’ve only got an itchy head,’ he said. ‘It’s probably a case of galloping dandruff or something. Or nits.’
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