Head Kid by David Baddiel

Author:David Baddiel [David Baddiel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2018-08-16T16:00:00+00:00

“That is illegal!” shouted Ryan.

“Well, the Devilishly Hot Chilli Explosion certainly should be. Sorry about the toilet, by the way.”

“I’ll call the police!”

“And tell them what?”

Ryan went very red in the face. He squeezed up his fists.

“THAT YOU’RE A VERY, VERY BAD BOY!” he shouted.

“Hm,” said Mr Carter. “Well, I don’t know if a Year Six boy phoning nine-nine-nine and saying his head teacher is a very, very bad boy would actually constitute wasting police time, but I wouldn’t like to try it, personally. Anyway, point is, I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know when we are going to body-swap back. But I do know that right now, being you, being the head teacher of this school, I’m having – how can I put this? – a laugh. And one of the things that’s really making it a laugh is how much everything I’m doing annoys you.”

Ryan seemed about to burst with frustration. He shut his eyes and shook his head violently, as if he had a mad twitch. “But you’re destroying the school!” he shouted. “You heard those inspectors! If you carry on like this, Bracket Wood won’t just get Inadequate, it’ll get an Emergency Closure notice! And then how will you feel?”

Mr Carter took this in. He frowned as if tasting the idea. Then he said: “Unbelievably …”

“Yes?”

“… proud.”

“What?”

“Well, as you said earlier, Mr C, I’m the naughtiest boy in the school. And I’m proud of being the naughtiest boy in the school. But how proud will I be when I get the school closed down? That will be the naughtiest thing a naughty boy has ever achieved at any school ever!”

Ryan stared at him. “Is this really who you are, Ryan Ward? A boy who thinks only about himself? What about all the other pupils at this school? Hasn’t it ever occurred to you to think about what they might be feeling?”

Mr Carter laughed and shook his head. “Oh, Mr C! You’re in my body. You’re hanging out with my friends and my classmates. But you’ve still got no idea, have you, what schoolchildren of my age want. Do you? Because I promise you, every single pupil at this school will be overjoyed about the school closing down!”

For a moment, after saying this, Mr Carter felt as if he was going to laugh. Not in a friendly way – in a mad, super-villain-in-a-Marvel-or-Bond-film way. That is, it felt as if he’d given the speech that proved he was surely going to win, even if that meant things were going to turn out badly for most of the world. Even if he was, in other words, the baddie.

Within Mr Carter’s body, therefore, something stopped Ryan laughing like this.

Hang on, he thought, am I the baddie?

All this was knocking about in Mr Carter’s head, which was of course Ryan’s head really, or at least Ryan’s mind, when he was shaken out of it by a noise like a tiny sob. He looked over.

Behind the glass of the office door, he could see, standing there, Dionna Baxter.

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