Casper Candlewacks in Attack of the Brainiacs!

“What were you holding? Give it.”

“Zzzzzz,” snored Lamp. Then he opened one eye and whispered, “Has she gone yet, Casper?”

Anemonie Blight jabbed a few fingernails into Lamp’s side.

“Ouch! I mean… zzz. Oh, bother.” The game was up.

“Give it.” Anemonie reached for a sharp-tipped pencil that she kept behind her ear. “Last warning, Flannigan. This pencil is leaded.”

“Fine. Didn’t want it, anyway.” Lamp withdrew his trembling hand from the pocket clutching one of the boiled eggs.

“An egg?” Anemonie’s face wrinkled with disgust. She swatted the egg at Milly Mollyband, but it missed and struck Milly Mollyband.

Anemonie snarled. “Now, gimme your lunch money.”

“That was my lunch,” said Lamp, staring hungrily at Milly Mollyband’s blazer.

“How ’bout yours, then, Candlewacks?” Anemonie swung the pencil towards Casper.

Casper considered giving Anemonie his egg as well, but he valued not having a pencil sticking out of his face a bit too much for that. The two one-pound coins that he’d brought for lunch weighed heavily in his pocket. Begrudgingly, he handed them over.

“There. Not so hard, was it?” Anemonie smiled her sickly smile and skipped away back down the carriage to play ‘Ding Dong Bell’ on Teresa Louncher’s pigtails.

Casper sighed. Anemonie had been stealing his lunch money for as long as he could remember, but for some reason he thought going to senior school would change things.

One of Teresa’s pigtails landed on his table with a plap. Evidently things hadn’t changed.

“I miss my egg,” moaned Lamp.

“Here. Have mine.” Giving Lamp his egg back cheered him hugely. He sang some jolly songs until he ran out of breath, and then he went blue because he forgot to breathe in again, so Casper had to remind him.

The road bent round and Casper caught his first sight of High Kobb – an ugly mass of grey towers and belching chimneys scarring the beautiful landscape like a scab on a princess.

As the country roads became paved streets, Casper longed to be home again. The endless dusty concrete and nose-to-tail traffic made his heart sink. Luckily he saw no alligators in the gutters and the people walking the streets looked like businessmen, not murderers. But their business might have been murdering people, so Casper didn’t fully relax.

The tractor turned a corner and rolled up through a pair of massive wrought-iron gates, grinding to a halt inside a drab concrete playground full of pupils dressed in black blazers and yellow ties.

“My new kingdom!” screeched Anemonie. “Move outta the way, I’m getting off first.” She barged Ted Treadington aside with a well-placed elbow, and the rest of the kids scurried out of the aisle to let her pass.

Anemonie jumped down the steps and landed with her arms outstretched on the tarmac. “All right, boys and girls, listen up or I’ll spread you on my toast. The name’s Anemonie Blight and I’m in charge here.”

The High Kobb kids ran about, skipping and jumping and paying absolutely no attention.

“I SAID LISTEN!” Anemonie’s face swelled redder.

Casper, Lamp and the bolder Corne-on-the-Kobb kids tiptoed off the carriage and stood behind Anemonie.

Sixteen older kids whooshed past after a football, creating a small hurricane that blew over Milly and Milly Mollyband.

“YOU BOYS. STOP IT! I’M ANEMONIE BLIGHT! I’M ANEMONIE BLIGHT! LISTEN TO ME!”

A scruffy little boy came flying through the air and crunched to the ground at Anemonie’s feet.

Anemonie screamed.

Casper dashed forward and shoved Anemonie out of the way. The boy looked pretty dazed. “Are you OK?”

“Casper,” gasped Lamp, “did you see that? They can fly in big boys’ school!”

The boy had short, shaven hair and a bony little face. His uniform was made of faded baggy hand-me-downs and there was a cut on his lip. He blinked a few times and then his eyes focused on Casper. “I’m f-f-fine. Just playing r-rugby.”

Casper frowned. “Then why were you—”

“I was the b-ball.”

“Oh.”

“Not my f-f-favourite position,” the boy said. “The B-brewster b-brothers chose it.”

“The Brewster brothers?”

“You’re n-not from r-round here, are you?” Wincing, the boy made his way to a standing position. “My name’s S-snivel. I know what you’re finking. S-stupid name.”

“It’s not that stupid,” said Casper. “He’s called Lamp.”

Lamp waved.

“And I’m Casper.” Casper went to shake Snivel’s hand, but he jumped back, terrified. “Don’t worry, I only wanted to shake hands.”

Snivel stared at Casper’s hand. “Yeah, s-s-sorry. I’m n-not used to…”

There was an awkward shuffling while everyone worked out where to put their hands. Casper put his in his pockets and Lamp put his in Casper’s bag, but then Lamp wanted them back and couldn’t remember where he’d left them, so Casper had to take off his bag to find them for him.

All the while at the side of the group, Anemonie was desperately screeching commands at three girls and a skipping rope. The three girls and the skipping rope just laughed and carried on skipping.

“W-what’s wrong with her?” Snivel pointed at Anemonie.

“She’s used to being in charge,” sighed Casper.

“Y-yeah, sh-she’s not got a chance here. Not with the B-b-brewster b-brothers around.”

“But who are the Brewster brothers?”

A look of fear sketched itself across Snivel’s face. “Well, they’re b-big, and they r-run the place…”

“Like Mayor Rattsbulge,” said Lamp.

“…and they’ll t-take your l-lunch money…”

“So will Mayor Rattsbulge,” said Lamp.

“…and there’s f-f-four of them.”

“Like Mayor Rattsbulge,” said Lamp. “Except there’s only one of him.”

“THERE ’E IS!” Four enormous brutes with shaved heads and tiny foreheads, their sleeves rolled up to reveal hairy, tree-trunk arms, shoved through the crowd straight towards Snivel.

Anemonie spun round, opened her mouth, realised they were twice her size and closed it again.

“Brewster brothers?” whispered Casper.

“Yep.” Snivel was trembling. “And… erm… unless you want to b-be a r-rugby ball, you should r-really r-r-r—”

Casper guessed the rest of the word and dashed off across the playground, followed by Snivel and the rest of the terrified class, some screaming, some whimpering, one sneezing. (Ted Treadington was allergic to playgrounds.) Lamp considered becoming a rugby ball for a second, but then decided he preferred football, so he galumphed along behind.

“They’re huge!” shouted Casper as he ran down a plasticky-smelling corridor beside Snivel. “What have they got against you?”

“Erm…” Snivel had quite small legs so he had to run twice as fast. “You all f-first years?”

“Yeah. But what about—”

“M-me too. We’ve got geography.”

Casper groaned.

Teresa Louncher tripped over a Mind the Step sign and clattered to the floor. Casper picked her up, but she was crying too hard to carry on, so he hid her in a locker and promised to find her at break.

“It’s j-just up here.” Snivel guided them to the left into an identical corridor, up some stairs, through a heavy door and into a dull classroom with maps plastered all over the walls and ceiling.

The children collapsed into seats and caught their breath. It looked like the Brewster brothers hadn’t followed. In fact, given that there were quite a few children flying past their window and that they were on the second floor, Casper felt quite sure they were still outside.

“I don’t like big boys’ school any more,” huffed Lamp. “Can we go home now?”

Snivel was nervously watching through the glass of the classroom door.

“They knew you, Snivel,” said Casper, clutching the stitch in his side.

“Y-yeah…” muttered Snivel.

“But it’s only the first day. How did that happen so fast?”

Nervously, Snivel stuck out his pale little hand. “N-name’s S-s-snivel. S-snivel B-brewster. I’ve n-never shaken h-hands before.”

“They’re your brothers?” Casper shook his head. “But you’re so…”

“S-small?”

“Well, no. But I mean, compared to them.”

“I know. I’m the r-runt.”

The door burst open and everyone screamed, which made the skinny woman standing in the doorway scream even higher and cower behind her register. After a few tense moments she peeked out, saw no monsters and squeaked with relief. She had long brown hair and a mousy face that squeezed to a tip at her chin.

“Sorry. Hello, class; sorry.” The woman tiptoed to the teacher’s desk and sat low in the spinny chair, hiding as much of herself as she could behind a small stack of books.

“There you are, Lady!” shouted Lamp, bouncing up and down and pointing at the shivering stack of books. “I found you. Is it my turn to hide now?”

Casper grabbed Lamp just as he made for the nearest loose floorboard. “Come on, Lamp, time to sit down.” They found their way to some desks at the front.

The woman spoke quietly, to the floor rather than the class. “Sorry… erm… my name’s Miss Valenteen. I’m your geography teacher. If that’s OK. Sorry.” She opened the register with shaking fingers and called the first few names. “Daryl Ablebody?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Margarine Bannister?”

“Yes, miss.”

“Anemonie Blight?”

“Hmph.”

Casper glanced around for Anemonie, confused as to why she wasn’t terrorising Miss Valenteen already. This was the sort of teacher she’d usually eat for breakfast. (Not literally, of course. Anemonie’s breakfast was a bowl of Sickly-Pops with pink food colouring in the milk.) There she was, sitting at the back of the class with crossed arms and the sulkiest face since the village shop ran out of pink food colouring.

Miss Valenteen had stopped at the next name, her mouth too scared even to say the words. “Snivel,” – her teeth chattered – “Snivel B-brewster?”

“Y-yes, miss.”

Her eyes darted to Snivel. She frowned. “You’re the new Brewster boy?”

“Y-yes.”

“Oh, thank goodness for that.” Miss Valenteen’s shoulders sagged, her head dropped back, her mouth broke into a broad grin. “Well, that’s OK, then. I thought you were another of those ghastly Brewster brothers. But look at you! You couldn’t hurt a fly! Right, then.” She stood up, swept aside her book barrier and carried on as relieved as the fly currently buzzing round Snivel Brewster’s head. “Casper Candlewacks?”

“Yes, miss.”

Without the threat of a Brewster, Miss Valenteen continued the lesson a new woman. She sang the rest of the register and then tangoed round the classroom handing out textbooks.

As Casper watched poor Snivel set out his hand-me-down pencils next to his hand-me-down pencil sharpener, he felt a pang of pity. Imagine having to follow in the footsteps of the Brewster brothers. Your legs would get achy just trying to keep up, for starters.

Miss Valenteen clapped her hands. “OK, class, we’ll start with a geography test.”

“Oh no,” moaned Lamp, “I don’t even know where geography is.”

“Question one: what’s the capital of Mongolia?”

Lamp’s hand shot up.

“Yes?”

“Ulaanbaatar, miss. Population of just over a million, lying one thousand, three hundred and ten metres above sea level.”

“Well… yes!” said Miss Valenteen. “One point to you.”

There was a long pause, broken by a donk noise as Casper’s jaw hit the ground.

Lamp looked shocked, and quite rightly. He touched his lips with a doubting finger. Had those words really just come out of his mouth?

Miss Valenteen continued. “Question two: where is Brazil, and why?”

Lamp’s hand was the first up again. “The eastern side of South America, miss. It’s there because of continental drift caused by plate tectonics.”

“Right again! Two points to you.”

Lamp gazed at Casper in open-mouthed glee. “Did you see me do that?” he gasped. Lamp had never got more than one point on a test before (and that was in art when the task was ‘Draw your best impression of an ink splodge’).

The lesson went on, Lamp’s hand carried on shooting up and up, collecting points like a reckless driver in a speed-camera factory. The rest of the class didn’t stand a chance. Soon Casper’s mind drifted to the evening that lay ahead – opening night at The Battered Cod, two hundred demanding diners and a whole heap of washing-up. What if his dad blew up another oven? What if Cuddles threw another tantrum? What if Mayor Rattsbulge ate another table? The possibilities were too horrifying to consider.

Just as Lamp secured his forty-third point by solving the famine problem in Africa, the door slammed open and four burly young men, muscles stacked up to their chins, stomped through.

“LUNCH MUNNY!” shouted the biggest one.

The Brewster brothers had arrived.

All round Casper the terrified children hid behind their hands. Miss Valenteen dived under her desk with a squeal.

“S-stay calm,” whispered Snivel. “If you don’t m-move, they c-can’t see you.”

The Brewsters tromped round the classroom, collecting loose change in a bucket. Lamp proudly presented his Brewster an egg and found it stuffed into his mouth (which was fine by him).

“The b-biggest one’s Bash,” whispered Snivel. “Then there’s Spit, Clobber and P-pinchnurse.”

Casper frowned. “Pinchnurse?”

“W-we’re named after the first fing we do after we’re born. I s-snivelled. P-pinchnurse pinched a nurse.”

A Brewster, with one fat caterpillar of an eyebrow, stopped at Snivel’s table. “Lunch munny.”

“Clobber, it’s m-me.”

“You what?” A glimmer of recognition crossed Clobber’s eyebrow. “Pocket munny.”

As Snivel emptied his pockets, a shadow loomed over Casper’s desk, the fetid stench of hot-tuna breath filling his nostrils.

“Lunch munny.”

Trembling, Casper looked up. The biggest Brewster of all, the one Casper guessed was Bash, towered above him, his toothless grin and shrunken forehead punctuating a face that looked almost entirely like a bruised potato.

“I…” trembled Casper, “I d-don’t have any.”

Bash leant even closer. “Lunch munny,” he whispered, the tuna stink singeing Casper’s nose-hairs.

“I promise, I don’t have any! I’ve already given it to her.” Casper pointed at Anemonie and was relieved to find the biggest Brewster’s eyes searching for the point’s target.

“He’s lying! Don’t listen to hURRK—” Anemonie Blight was lifted upside down by a bushy-nose-haired Brewster and shaken around by her feet, loosening all the cash hidden in the lining of her blazer. Then she was dumped in a corner with all the other empties.

Bash scowled at Casper. “Tomorrah, you bring dubble.”

Casper nodded vigorously.

The brute pointed to his eyes and then Casper’s eyes and then to his own fist, which meant something vaguely threatening and dangerous, but Casper wasn’t quite sure what.

After the whole class had been done and Miss Valenteen had written out a cheque, Bash thanked everybody for their time and led his brothers away to the next classroom.

“S-sorry,” said Snivel. “You d-don’t want to m-make Bash angry.”

Casper smiled weakly. “I’ll try not to. How have you lasted this long?”

“Q-quite a lot of h-hiding.”

The lesson continued as before, except that Miss Valenteen was back to her shaky self. Lamp racked up goodness-knows-how-many points, a gold star and the Nobel Prize for Literature, while Casper and the rest of the class looked on agape.

When the bell rang, the kids skittered out of the room and down the corridor, peeping round each corner for Brewsters.

“How d’you do that back there, Lamp?” asked Casper.

Lamp shrugged. “Dunno. I think I was just lucky.”

“You can’t have just been lucky seventy-six times in a row!”

“Seventy-seven, actually.”

Next lesson was music, where Lamp played a faultless rendition of Beethoven’s First Piano Concerto on a tiny xylophone.

At lunch, Snivel was recruited by his brothers for a cricket match (he played the stumps). Casper and Lamp watched at the boundary, wincing every time one of the Brewsters was bowled out. Casper tried to recite The Battered Cod’s menu to Lamp from memory, but it got really tiring really fast after Lamp starting reciting it back to Casper in Latin.

In English, Lamp finished the grammar worksheet before Mr Falstaff could hand it out, and then in religious studies, he disproved three religions only to create four more.

The bus home was a sombre affair for everyone apart from Lamp. His blazer was covered in gold stars, so he was pretending to be the night sky.

“Look, Casper! This is Ursa Minor, and that’s the Big Dipper.” He marked out the shapes of the constellations with an excited finger. “And this is the Swallowing Donkey, and this one doesn’t have a name yet, so I’ll call it Trevor.”

Halfway home, Casper remembered that Teresa Louncher was still stuck in that locker. He swore he’d remember to let her out tomorrow.

On the back seat, Anemonie nibbled her fingernails and growled at anybody who came too close. She’d never been anything but Queen of the Classroom before (except once, when she declared herself Holy Empress of the Playground and got Ted Treadington to build her a temple out of lunchboxes). But now she was nothing more than a lowly peasant at the Court of Lord Brewster. That sort of thing stung.

“Can I come round?” asked Lamp. “I can’t remember where I left my house.”

“Not tonight. We’re doing the grand opening of The Battered Cod. You coming?”

“Will there be food?”

“It’s a restaurant. Of course there’ll be food.”

“Because I love it when there’s food.”

The tractor ground to a halt in Corne-on-the-Kobb’s village square and Sandy Landscape bellowed, “’Ere we are, kiddies, ’ome an’ dry, safe an’ sound, bread an’ drippin’. Don’t leave yer berlongin’s on the bus unless it’s sammiches.” The children tumbled out through the carriage door and scampered off home to cuddle their mummies. Lamp shuffled off with an eager wave, leaving Casper almost alone in the square.

Sitting on the step by the boarded-up cheese shop was that grubby Frenchman Renée, sucking on a tiny grey cigarette.

Casper waved.

“’Allo, boy.” His fat lips curled into a smile. “Are you being ready for… er… ze large evening?”

Casper nodded. The fact that Renée’s cheese shop was opening on the same night as his dad’s restaurant had been a worry, but not for long. The villagers liked cheese, but only when it came in heavy yellow bricks. French cheese, with all its liquid middles and herby crusts and essence de cowshed, would not appeal to the villagers one morsel.

Through the window of The Battered Cod, Casper could see Julius Candlewacks teetering on a ladder, grasping for a massive wonky lampshade that hung just out of reach.

“Better go and help,” grimaced Casper.

“Ah, c’est bon. Say ’allo to your fazzer.”

Casper trotted the rest of the way across the square.

Ting-a-ling.

“Dad?” Casper pushed open the restaurant door, caught the corner of the ladder and sent it toppling over, leaving Julius Candlewacks hanging from the lampshade.

“Help!” Julius flailed his legs about and suddenly realised he was terrified of heights. “I can’t hold on! I’m too young to die!”

“Just jump. It’s not far.”

“It’s miles! I’ll break my legs! Get me a parachute or something.”

“We don’t have a—”

RRRRIPPPP went the lampshade and, along with Julius, it tumbled to the carpet.

Julius checked he was alive, breathed a sigh of relief and then noticed how far the bit of lampshade in his hands was from the rest of the lampshade. “Oh.”

“Sorry, Dad.”

“It’s fine!” He sprang to his feet with forced jollity. “It’s modern. Half a lampshade is the new lampshade. Soon everyone’ll be doing it. Now, plenty to do.” And he tottered off to look at the list of unfinished jobs scribbled all over the Today’s Specials blackboard.

It had just gone four o’clock, which left three hours until opening time.

“How can I help?” asked Casper.

“Right,” Julius read down the list. “You need to connect that oven, peel the spuds, get a new fridge, sweep up the old fridge, label the meat pile and fix the lock on the loo. Got that?”

Casper groaned.

Ting-a-ling.

“Caspy!” Casper’s mother, Amanda Candlewacks, burst through the restaurant door. She had long blonde hair, scratches all over her face and a wriggling baby in a bag slung over one shoulder. “Look at me, Caspy, I’m a real mother!”

“How was your first day with Cuddles?”

“Wonderful! We went to the park, she caught some squirrels, I lost her down the back of the tumble dryer—”

The baby screeched and thrashed about, gnashing its razor-sharp teeth. This was Cuddles, Casper’s sister, the least cuddly baby since Clemmie Answorth adopted a cactus. (The cactus didn’t last long, by the way. It was eaten by Cuddles, along with Clemmie Answorth’s shoes and purse and Don’t Eat my Cactus sign.)

“But I think she might be broken. Can you take a look at her, darling?” Amanda smiled sweetly at Casper.

It didn’t take long to see, or to smell, what was going on. “Mum, her nappy’s full. Like every day. You just need to change her.”

“Change her?” Amanda’s brow furrowed in confusion. “But I like this one.”

“Not all of her, Mum. Just the nappy.”

“How do I do that?”

“I showed you yesterday.”

“But I need to do it today,” she giggled.

Casper sighed and laid Cuddles out on Table 4. His mum wasn’t a quick learner. She wasn’t even a slow learner. As it turned out, Amanda Candlewacks wasn’t a learner at all. What’s more, she was about eleven years late to this ‘mothering’ malarkey, and she couldn’t seem to get the hang of it. But today, with Casper going to school, Amanda was faced with her first full day of unaided mothering.

“All done,” said Casper, fastening the pin extra tightly. “And stop putting her in bags.”