Sticky Beak by Morris Gleitzman Page B

tapes of his two-month-old baby crying to keep himself awake while he’s driving.
    As usual Dad had a bit of trouble with a few of the notes, but nobody seemed to mind. Ms Dunning was gazing at him lovingly and everyone else was smiling and some people were tapping their feet, including the mayor.
    I was enjoying it too, until Dad got to the chorus.
    â€˜Your tears are music to my ears,’ sang Dad to Ms Dunning’s midriff, and that’s when my brain must have become heat-affected.
    Suddenly my heart was pounding and I had a strange sick feeling in my guts.
    I turned away.
    And suddenly my feet were sliding and suddenly the Jelly Custard Surprise wasn’t in my hands anymore.
    The bowl still was, but the Jelly Custard Surprise was flying through the air.
    It hit the grille of the big hardware store fan, and then everyone in the hall disappeared into a sort of sticky mist. It was just like when Dad sprays the orchard, except his mist isn’t pink and it hasn’t got bits of custard in it.
    I stood there, stunned, while people shrieked and tried to crawl under the food table.
    The mayor still had his mouth open, but now it was full of jelly.
    Mr Cosgrove was staring down at his suit in horror, looking like a statue that had just been dive-bombed by a large flock of pink and yellow pigeons.
    Darryn Peck was sitting in a Greek salad. I only knew it was him because of the tufts of ginger hair poking up through the sticky pink stuff that covered his face.
    I blew the jelly out of my nose and ran out of the hall and thought about hiding in the stationery cupboard but came in here instead.
    I’d have ended up here anyway because the principal’s office is always where people are taken to be yelled at and expelled and arrested.
    There’s someone at the door now.
    They seem to be having trouble opening it.
    It’s pretty hard getting a grip on a door handle when you’ve got Jelly Custard Surprise running out of your sleeves.
    I’d help them if I wasn’t shaking so much.

 
    The door opened and Mr Fowler came in and it was worse than I’d imagined.
    It wasn’t just his sleeves that were dripping with jelly and custard, it was most of his shirt and all of his shorts and both knees.
    On top of his head, in the middle of his bald patch, were several pieces of pineapple. Ms Dunning always puts crushed pineapple at the bottom of her Jelly Custard Surprise. It’s delicious, but it’s not really a surprise, not to us. I think it was to Mr Fowler though.
    He saw me and just sort of glared at me for a bit.
    I tried to stop shaking so I wouldn’t drip on his carpet so much.
    It was no good. I looked down and saw I was standing in a puddle of passion-fruit topping.
    I made a mental note to write to the Department of Education and explain that it had dripped out of my hair and not out of Mr Fowler’s lunch box.
    Mr Fowler didn’t seem to have noticed.
    He strode over to his desk and wiped his hands on his blotter.
    I waited for him to ring the District Schools Inspector and say, ‘I’ve got a girl here who’s been mute since birth and she came to us from a special school fourteen months ago and I thought she was fitting in OK but she’s just sprayed two hundred people with Jelly Custard Surprise and so obviously she’s not and she’ll have to go back to a special school first thing in the morning’.
    He didn’t.
    He just glared at me some more.
    â€˜I’ve seen some clumsy acts in this school,’ he said, ‘but I think you, Rowena Batts, have just topped the lot.’
    I didn’t reply because my hands were shaking too much to write and Mr Fowler doesn’t understand sign language.
    â€˜I knew it was a mistake having food,’ he continued, starting to rummage through the top drawer of his filing cabinet. ‘That floor was awash with coleslaw from the word go. I nearly slipped over just before you