Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11 Charlie knew he only had a matter of moments before Ms Fyre returned with help. He had to think fast. He had no time to dwell on the extraordinary feeling of being a snake. No time to appreciate his new long, lithe muscular body. His brain was being overloaded with a barrage of new information. Every time his forked tongue flickered out of his mouth he could taste the smell of Ms Fyre's sweat lingering in the room, and he could feel through his stomach the receding footsteps of the head teacher sprinting down the corridor. He slithered around the carpeted floor of the office, trying to find a suitable escape hole. Nothing. He arched his head up and spied something that made

his snake heart burst with hope: an air vent high up in the corner of the room. He zigzagged across the room, and began stretching his long body to try to reach the vent. As much as he could stretch, though, he couldn't quite get there. Well, then, I'll just have to go the long way around, Charlie thought. He slithered over to the bookcase and zipped up the shelves all the way to the top. He could feel the vibrations of more footsteps, lots of them, pounding down the corridor towards the office. The teachers were coming, and at top speed. From the top of the bookcase he was able to slide over to the curtain rail and then along it. From there he might just be able to reach the air vent. He heard the sound of a key in the door and loud voices outside clamouring to get in. Charlie stretched his long body across the corner of the room, and his head was just able to reach the air vent. His tongue flickered involuntarily– he could taste dust and spiders and stale air. He started sliding into the blackness. He felt Ms Fyre's door crash open and footsteps tumble in to the office just as the end of his tail

disappeared into the vent. 'Find it!' 'Where is it?' 'Are you absolutely sure it was a snake, Ms Fyre?' The voices echoed behind Charlie as he slid through the dark shaft that linked the office to– well, Charlie actually had no idea where he was going. All he knew and cared about was that he was free from the office. And didn't need a wee. He also knew that he really did NOT want to change back while he was still in the shaft. That would be beyond awful. The consequences of suddenly expanding into a full-size Charlie in a space that certainly couldn't fit a full-size Charlie would be very messy indeed. So he slithered as fast as he could down the tiny passage, until he came to the next vent. He could smell it was a toilet even before he poked his head through the grille. He slid straight through the gap into a brightly lit, and fortunately empty, toilet. He slithered straight down the wall into an empty cubicle, and tried to take stock of his situation. If he could just wait it out, he would change back to Charlie and everything would be OK. He couldn't wait to tell the others: Flora was right. She was

absolutely right about everything– him changing was related to stress. She should definitely be a scientist, Charlie thought. And he couldn't wait to tell Flora about his latest adventure, changing into a snake and escaping from the rampaging teachers. She might, Charlie hoped, think that he had been rather brave. But first he had to change back. And as long as nobody came into the toilet, Charlie thought, he'd be fine. Charlie really shouldn't have thought that last thought.

Because, obviously, approximately one nanosecond after he thought it, the toilet door opened and to Charlie's horror a bunch of girls stampeded in, chattering and giggling. He was in the girls' toilet! If he had a hand or a forehead, he would have slapped the latter with the former.fn1 He tried to groan, and immediately discovered that when a snake attempts to groan it comes out as a long hiss. Now, if you want to silence a group of loud, chattering girls in a school toilet, pretty much the quickest way to do it is to: 1. Be a snake, and 2. Hiss loudly from one of the toilet cubicles. And that's exactly what happened– the girls immediately froze in stunned silence. Then, in unison, they all turned their heads to the cubicle from which the hiss had come. Slowly, ever so slowly, all holding their breath, the girls edged their way to the cubicle door. The bravest, a girl called Molly (who would one day become the first person to climb Mount Everest while carrying a miniature llama strapped to her back– do NOT ask why), stepped towards the door. With just the briefest moment of hesitation she placed one hand on the door, and pushed it open.

And there, coiled on the floor of the toilet, was to their utter horror a spectacular two-metre-long reticulated python. Or Charlie the Snake as we know him. The silence broke with the sound of four girls screaming at the very top of their voices, which, as everybody knows, is the loudest sound on the planet. The vibration of the scream hit Charlie like a high- speed brick wall, if brick walls could travel at high speed (and we should all be glad they can't). It sent him into a frenzied panic, and he began twisting and writhing, which made the girls scream even louder. And through the cloud of panic he realized there was only one way out. Charlie took a deep breath and slid over the edge of the toilet bowl and down into the water. Yes– down into the wee-wee water. And he started swimming as fast as he could down the toilet and through the U- bend and then into the pipes. As he swam he decided that he would probably leave this part of the story out when telling Mohsen, Wogan and Flora about his time as a snake. I mean, there's no need for them to know all the details, he thought as he swam past a small poo.