Soul Stealer by Martin Booth Page B

her attention his way.
    In class Scrotton was clumsy. He was continually restless, tapped his fingers on the desktop and jiggled his foot. His attention
     span seemed to last little more than aminute. When he wrote in his exercise book, he held his cheap plastic ballpoint pen between his second and third fingers instead
     of his index finger and thumb, writing with his hand curved and arched around with the pen pointing in towards him. His writing
     was scrawling and he stuck his tongue out when faced with a difficult question, licking his lips and frowning, reminding Pip
     of an iguana. She also noticed he frequently put one of his hands inside his shirt to scratch his stomach.
    Close up, his skin was sallow and there were spots with large blackheads in them on the back of his neck. His filthy fingernails
     were long, as thick as horn and split in places, more like claws than ordinary fingernails. The lines of his palms were ingrained
     with dirt. The skin behind his ears was flaky and gray. His clothes were disheveled, his unpolished leather shoes scuffed,
     a line of dried mud along the edge of the soles.
    Pip also noticed he had very few of the kinds of possessions the other pupils owned. He did not have a mobile phone nor even
     wear a wristwatch. His pencil case was just an old wooden cigar box held shut with a perished rubber band, the words
Cuba Corona
printed on the lid. His calculator was an old solar-powered Casio, the casing held together with peeling tape.
    All the while Pip was, as Tim put it,
on Scrotton’s case,
Sebastian decided to discover what he could about Yoland. As the head of chemistry was teaching a double-period senior-school
     class in the chemistry laboratory until lunch break, Sebastian reasoned he was very unlikely to come out of his laboratory
     and so, waiting until the school had settled down to the timetable, heexcused himself from the class they were in and headed for the staffroom.
    Knocking lightly on the door, Sebastian entered without waiting for a response. Inside, three or four teachers were sitting
     around a large table, marking exercise books. Another lounged in a battered chair, reading a newspaper, a mug of tea balanced
     on the arm.
    Against a long wall stood a rank of large wooden pigeonholes, each bearing a name card in a tarnished brass holder. Sebastian
     walked calmly across to them, soon finding Yoland’s. He was about to start looking in it when the teacher reading the paper
     put it down and said, “What do you think you’re doing, boy?”
    Sebastian had to think fast and, casting a quick glance at the pigeonhole next to Yoland’s, read the label on it.
    “Miss Williams asked me to get a book for her,” he said.
    “Next one over,” the teacher replied, “and don’t just barge in. Wait at the door.” He resumed reading his newspaper.
    “Thank you, sir,” Sebastian replied, yet he continued to look in Yoland’s pigeonhole.
    There was nothing of interest in it: some Year Eight answer sheets, a few textbooks, a box of pencils and markers and some
     teaching notes and printed examination papers.
    At lunch break, Pip bought Sebastian a pack of tuna and cucumber sandwiches and a carton of orange juice. Sebastian bit into
     the sandwich, chewed briefly upon it and swallowed: then he reached over and read the label on the packet.
    “What is tuna?” he asked.
    “A large fish,” Pip told him.
    “And cucumber?”
    “A sort of vegetable,” Tim replied after a moment’s thought, “but keep your voice down. You’ll be branded a weirdo if you
     don’t know what a cucumber is.”
    “Do you like it?” Pip inquired.
    Sebastian considered for a moment and began, “It has a most piquant…”
    “It’s wicked,” Tim interrupted.
    Sebastian smiled and replied, “It’s cool.”
    At that moment, Yoland appeared in the dining hall carrying the Year Eight answer sheets Sebastian had seen in the pigeonhole.
     At his arrival, the hubbub died down a little only to