Early Present

"Wake up!”

Turning in his heavily wrapped-around bed sheets and blankets, Tom Brown rubbed his orange eyes blearily, blinking at the bright light shining in his face from the dorm hallway. Then he glanced at the glowing red numbers on the clock. 1:00 AM. Blinking his eyes again, he moaned. “Too early.”

The headmaster shook him then kicked the foot of his bedpost.

His roommate lurched up with a start. Grabbing the wall and the desk next to the head of his bed, his sleep-filled eyes set on the headmaster standing furiously over him. He uttered, “Oh” and dropped back to his pillow, snoring again in seconds.

“You made that mess in my office, and you are going to clean it up! Now!”

Lifting his head, Tom opened one eye again. “What? Are you kidding? I’ve been sleeping.”

“Don’t give me any of that nonsense!” the headmaster shouted as someone larger yanked his covers off of him. “Only you could have done it! Everything is overturned, including my desk.”

 “Why in the world would I do something like that at one in the morning?” Tom moaned, running his fingers through his mussed up platinum blonde hair. He sat up straighter though, meeting the headmaster’s glare on him.

“For the same reason you did it last week! To bug me! Now fix it!”

But Tom flopped back to his bed, moaning again that it was too early. He would have nodded back off to sleep again if the thuggish janitor had not jerked him off by his feet then dragged him into the hall.

Tom stared up at the ceiling, wincing at the fluorescent light blinding him overhead. The janitor dragged him by the ankles right behind the headmaster towards the stairwell.

“Mr. Ferrar, you will accompany Mr. Brown to the office, and you will not let him leave until it is entirely put to right again.” She trotted ahead with brisk hard steps.

Accompany? Tom stared at the repeating hole pattered tiles overhead, feeling the cold tile slide against his back before they entered to the stairs, musing over the possibility of being dragged the entire way. The idea of thump, thumping down the steps forced a grunt of chagrin into him, and by his little wings, Tom fluttered with enough loft off his back to be a foot in the air.

“OK!” Tom said with a kick to get out of the janitor’s hold before they got any farther, freeing his ankles. He fluttered over their heads into the stairwell and landed barefoot on the stairs between them, casting both the janitor and the headmaster the dirtiest of glares. “I’ll clean the office! But for the record, I wasn’t the one who messed it up.”

He then stomped the rest of the way down, passing the headmaster. She followed him wordlessly. The janitor emitted a few curses though, muttering, “Those invisible imps or you, it’s all the same.”

Tom stopped, turning on the last step with another foul look. “I’ll have you know, it isn’t the same. I don’t control them. They just do favors for me from time to time.

“Besides,” he said while continuing on, “It’s Halloween. Imps can act on their own on Halloween without any prompting from me.”

But upon reaching the second floor, Tom could see exactly the damage those little imps had caused. Unlike the previous times Tom had messed around with the headmaster’s personal territory, he could see from the far hallway heaps of papers spilling out the door like a mudslide, sprawled in mounds inside the room, knee-deep. Tom choked with a lurching halt, staring at it. Then he glanced to the headmaster who had stopped also, folding her arms as a grim-yet-satisfied look spread on her thin lips.

“I don’t recall you having that much paperwork,” he murmured.

“I don’t.” And she marched on, turning the corner towards to her bedroom. “You have until morning to get it sorted out and neat. Otherwise you will have a month of detentions.”

Swaying, his knees felt weak as he stared at the load. Tom contemplated telling the imps to just set her office on fire. However, even imps slept at one in the morning, and the only ones he could see in that hall were groggy and eye-rubbing, casting dirty looks at the janitor, the headmaster, and the most at Tom—all of them irritated that they had to tag along when they also wanted to sleep. Imps rarely went on their own, especially when the ones they usually tempted were unconscious.

“Get going.” The janitor pushed Tom in the back.

Groaning, Tom staggered forward, his little wings flapping to keep him upright.

All Kinds of Troublemakers

“Tom.”

*Groan*

“Tom.” Someone poked Tom in the head with the eraser end of a pencil.

Tom lifted his arm from over face where he had been blocking out the light, groaning with the slightest look off the bench in the hallway across from the headmaster’s office where he had collapsed. Blurrily, his gaze set on Troy Meecham who stared down at him, another classmate peering cautiously over Troy’s shoulder.

“Why are you sleeping here? Wouldn’t your bed have been more comfortable?” Troy asked. He was in a self-made Halloween costume as a race car driver, his dark hair sticking

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 21.09.2011
ISBN: 978-3-7368-4018-8

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