Mrs Glock is running up and down our perfectly clean classroom. She’s pretty much in full-scale panic, straightening artworks, polishing the whiteboard. I haven’t
seen her this worked up since I accidentally squashed Sasha Hammond with a mutant hippo-bug. And that was weeks ago.

‘He’s coming!’ our teacher shrieks. ‘He’ll be here any moment!’ She stares wildly around the room. If her carefully pencilled eyebrows climb any higher, they’ll be visible from outer space.

‘Sitting nicely,’ she urges us. ‘Smiles on.’

We’re sitting nicely. Our smiles are on. Even Colin Murphy is smiling, though I can’t decide if smiling-Colin reminds me more of a self-satisfied vampire or a lava
lizard seconds before it bursts into flames. Mrs Glock is even more frantic than usual. Something about the Board of Education scheduling a Special Investigator to visit our school has really hit a nerve.

I’d like to think the investigator is coming because Mrs Glock is in the running for Highest Number of Fire Extinguishers in a Year Six Classroom. Or maybe she’s
being recruited for the next season of I’m a Primary Teacher . . . Get Me Out of Here!

But it’s more likely the Board of Education has got wind of the recent incident with the hippobugamus. Not to mention the other strange happenings at our school. Random explosions. Unexplained blackouts. Fireballs raining from the ceiling. And you know what they say… where there’s smoke, there’s probably some sort of
fire that I unintentionally started…

Continue reading the extract here…

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