Jake Cake: The Werewolf Teacher

by Michael Broad

  Michael Broad spent much of his childhood gazing out of the window imagining he was somewhere more interesting.

  Now he’s a grown-up Michael still spends a lot of time gazing out of the window imagining he’s somewhere more interesting – but now he writes and illustrates books as well.

  Some of them are picture books, like Broken Bird and The Little Star Who Wished.

  Books by Michael Broad

  JAKE CAKE AND THE ROBOT DINNER LADY

  JAKE CAKE AND THE WEREWOLF TEACHER

  MICHAEL BROAD

  PUFFIN

  This book is dedicated to my friend John

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

  Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

  Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

  Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India

  Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Mairangi Bay, Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL England

  penguin.com

  Published 2007

  7

  Copyright © Michael Broad, 2007

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN: 978-0-14-194559-0

  A Werewolf

  A Monster

  And a Mummy

  The trouble started when I fell asleep in Mrs Beady’s maths class, which to begin with wasn’t completely my fault because maths is really boring and if it was more interesting I probably would’ve stayed awake.

  I was having a very nice dream about not being in a maths class when Mrs Beady prodded me with her special ‘prodding’ ruler and I nearly fell off my chair.

  ‘Are we keeping you awake, Mr Cake?’ she said, and sang it like a rhyme, which was even worse because the rest of the class started giggling. Everyone always makes fun of my name. They call me Carrot Cake, Jaffa Cake, Cup Cake and just about any other kind of cake you can think of. My mum even calls me Angel Cake!

  She thinks it’s cute, but it’s just really embarrassing.

  Mrs Beady was looming over me and I didn’t know what to say because everyone was watching, so I said, ‘I wasn’t asleep, I was just resting my eyelids.’ Which is something my dad says when he falls asleep in front of the TV.

  The other kids started laughing but Mrs Beady didn’t even crack a smile. I don’t think she has a very good sense of humour, which is probably because she’s a maths teacher. I know if I was a maths teacher I wouldn’t smile either.

  Mrs Beady was cross and made me stay behind after school to write ‘I must not fall asleep in class when I could be learning lots of wonderful things’ one hundred times! And when I started writing ‘I must not fall asleep in class when I could be learning lots of wonderful things’ Mrs Beady had the cheek to FALL ASLEEP at her desk!

  I’m not the fastest writer in the whole wide world so by the time I finished it was already getting dark outside and my teacher was snoring like a tractor. I crept up to her desk and prodded Mrs Beady with her special ‘prodding’ ruler.

  She snuffled awake and nearly fell off her chair, which is only fair because that’s how I felt when she prodded me.

  ‘Finished!’ I said cheerily before she could realize what had happened. Mrs Beady ignored the pages I was waving and started looking around in a panic.

  ‘What time is it?’ she gasped. I said it was 5 p.m., and that 5 p.m. is very late for a kid to still be at school, especially in winter when it gets dark so early. I also said I’d definitely learned my lesson and would never ever fall asleep in class again. Teachers love to hear stuff like that

  because it makes them think they’re in charge, even when they’re not.

  But Mrs Beady wasn’t listening. She was staring at the open diary on her desk. Across the page were the words

  ‘GET HOME BEFORE SUNSET AND BUY LOTS OF RAW STEAK!’ scribbled in big red letters.

  Mrs Beady looked out of the window at the big full moon shining in the sky. Her eyes grew very wide and then she started scratching behind her ear the way dogs do when they have fleas.

  I was trying to remember whether Mrs Beady’s eyes had always been bright yellow when, quick as a flash, she jumped up from her seat and shooed me towards the door with my coat and scarf.

  ‘Off you go then! Well done! Don’t do it again!’ she trilled.

  Mrs Beady seemed in a really big hurry to get rid of me, which was fine by me. I didn’t want to hang around in school any longer than I needed to.

  I put on my coat and scarf and was just about to leave when I realized I was still holding the hundred lines that Mrs Beady hadn’t even bothered to look at. I turned round – just in time to see my teacher disappear into the art cupboard. She slammed the door behind her and lots of banging and clanging and crashing started coming from inside.

  Something weird was definitely going on.

  I told myself I needed to hand over my lines, but really I was being nosy and wanted to know what my maths teacher was up to.

  ‘Is everything OK, Mrs Beady?’ I called, knocking on the cupboard door.

  The banging and clanging and crashing stopped and Mrs Beady made a loud grunting sound, which to be honest could have been a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.

  ‘Do you want to check my lines before I go home?’ I added, listening carefully with my ear against the door.

  Mrs Beady was silent for a moment and then said, ‘OoooooooowwwwwwW!’ in a very loud voice, which I took to mean, ‘Yes, dear boy, I would love to see the hundred lines you worked so hard on.’

  So I took a deep breath and opened the art-cupboard door.

  At first I thought Mrs Beady had been eaten by a GREAT BIG WOLF! Until I noticed the GREAT BIG WOLF was wearing Mrs Beady’s dress and glasses and shoes.

  In Little Red Riding Hood the wolf went around wearing a nightdress and bonnet after eating the girl’s granny, but that’s just a story. This was so much stranger because it was real, and I needed to work out what was going on. And I needed to work it out fast because the GREAT BIG WOLF was staring right at me with its big yellow eyes.

  ‘Mrs Beady, you’ve turned into a WOLF!’ I said, having put two and two together, which I suppose is maths, so Mrs Beady would have been very pleased if she were not already busy being a great big werewolf.

  My maths teacher was a GREAT BIG WEREWOLF! Mrs Beady snatched the pages from my hand, chewed them up

  with her big wolf teeth, swallowed them and then dribbled all over my shoes. She grinned at me in a mischievous wolfy way and t
hen leapt over my head and bolted through the classroom door.

  At this point you would probably expect me to run screaming all the way home (and it was tempting because I was a bit scared), but I’d never seen a werewolf before and I wanted to see what it was going to do next.

  So I ran after Mrs Beady.

  It was easy to see where she’d gone because there was a trail of frothy drool all along the corridor. But it was pretty spooky because everyone had gone home and the school was completely empty. When I finally caught up with Mrs Beady she was in the canteen.

  The whole place looked like it had been turned upside down and Mrs Beady was in the middle of the room eating cold burgers and cold chips and cold spaghetti off the floor. I was beginning to enjoy Mrs Beady as a werewolf; she was definitely a lot more fun than Mrs Beady as a boring old maths teacher.

  So I decided to keep her.

  While she was busy licking the floor with her big wolf tongue I tied my scarf round her furry neck to use as a lead.

  ‘You’re coming home with me, OK, Mrs Beady?’ I said, pulling the stubborn animal away from the food and back down the corridor. She didn’t want to leave the burgers behind so I had to drag my maths teacher most of the way with her bottom sliding along the polished wooden floors.

  When we eventually got outside Mrs Beady started acting up and became a bit difficult to manage. She kept chasing the wheels of cars and buses and bicycles. In fact she tried to chase anything that moved and it took all of my strength to stop her getting away. I had to pull her all the way down the high street and all the time she kept jumping up at people, trying to lick them on the face and eat their shopping – which definitely isn’t proper behaviour for a teacher.

  There were lots of screams from passers-by, and this was a lot of fun because EVERYONE got out of our way.

  I even saw some kids from school who said my new dog was the coolest thing they’d ever seen and stopped to pet her. They hugged her neck and scratched her head and rubbed her belly. It made me laugh to imagine what they would say if they knew it was old Mrs Beady they were making such a fuss over!

  When we eventually got home Mum and Dad were watching TV in the living room, so I took Mrs Beady in to meet them.

  ‘What on earth are you doing with that great big ugly dog!’ Mum screamed, lifting her legs up in case Mrs Beady might want to gnaw on her ankles.

  ‘This is Mrs Beady,’ I said. ‘She’s turned into a werewolf. Can I keep her?’

  ‘I’ve told you before about bringing stray dogs home. Now get rid of that ugly brute this instant!’ Mum said, looking very angry. Mrs Beady made a low rumbling growl and Mum quickly sat back in her chair.

  ‘It’s not a stray dog,’ I pleaded. ‘It really is Mrs Beady. She turned into a werewolf in the art cupboard at school! Honestly!’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you,’ said Mum. ‘DON’T MAKE UP STORIES OR YOUR NOSE WILL GROW LONG!’

  ‘But, Mum…’

  ‘You heard your mother,’ said Dad. Although he didn’t look up so he may

  have been resting his eyelids. Dad doesn’t usually get involved in family arguments. He just agrees with Mum when she gives him a look, and Mum was definitely giving him a look.

  I knew the discussion was over and that I was in big trouble, but I couldn’t send Mrs Beady

  out into the cold dark night all on her own. So I sneaked her up to my room.

  Sneaking a GREAT BIG WEREWOLF up to your room is much more difficult than it sounds. It involved lots of shoving and nudging and growling – until two yellow wolf eyes set their sights on our cat Fatty who was dozing at the top of the stairs.

  Fatty hissed and puffed up like a giant pompom when he saw my new pet.

  Then he scarpered, quickly followed by Mrs Beady who took off like a rocket, dragging me behind her.

  I bumped up every stair along the way and all I could think was that Mum would definitely come to investigate all the racket.

  Fatty managed to escape into one of his hiding places, leaving a very confused werewolf behind. And while she was busy trying to work it out I bundled Mrs Beady into my room.

  There aren’t many places to hide a GREAT BIG WEREWOLF in my room, but when I heard Mum running up the stairs after me I had to think fast, so I shoved Mrs Beady into the wardrobe.

  Mum came in and gave me a stern talking-to about making so much noise and bringing stray dogs home and making up silly stories that aren’t true.

  I kept quiet and hoped Mrs Beady would do the same until Mum went back downstairs. Suddenly the wardrobe door creaked open and I could see Mrs Beady grinning at me with a pair of my pants on her head. She looked so funny it made me laugh.

  Mum didn’t look round to see the big-grinning-wolf-with-pants-on-its-head.

  Instead she got very annoyed at my laughing and said I would have to stay in my room until I could take things seriously.

  It’s a good thing Mum left when she did, because that’s when the HOWLING started!

  But it wasn’t Mrs Beady howling, although she did seem quite excited. It was coming from the garden. I looked out of the window and saw yet another werewolf sitting on the lawn, and this one was even bigger than my one.

  For a moment I considered swapping them over, or even having two werewolves, but I decided it wouldn’t be fair on Mrs Beady. Besides, she was already becoming a bit too much of a handful.

  ‘Sorry, we already have a werewolf here, thank you,’ I said, and was about to close the window when the werewolf answered back!

  ‘Is your werewolf’s name Agatha Beady by any chance?’ he said in a very polite voice. Before I could answer, Mrs Beady sprang from her hiding place, bringing the whole contents of the wardrobe with her. ‘Is that you, George?’ she called out, rolling around in the pile of clothes. ‘That’s my husband, George,’ she said, grinning up at me with her big wolf teeth.

  I don’t know if I was more surprised that Mrs Beady the werewolf could talk, or that the other werewolf had jumped from the garden and into my room in one huge leap, landing none too gently on the carpet.

  It was then that something really horrible happened. Something so horrible and terrible I find it difficult to write down the words.

  Mr and Mrs Beady started SNIFFING BOTTOMS!!!

  ‘EXCUSE ME!’ I shouted, covering my eyes. ‘WOULD YOU MIND NOT SNIFFING BOTTOMS IN MY ROOM, PLEASE!’ They did seem very happy to see each other though. It was actually quite romantic, in a werewolfy kind of way.

  I was wondering to myself if I could somehow keep them both when I heard Mum’s heavy footsteps charging up the stairs again and I panicked. The werewolves heard it too because they stopped sniffing bottoms and their ears pricked up.

  ‘I think it’s time to go, dear,’ said Mr Beady, nodding goodbye to me before jumping back through the window into the night.

  Mrs Beady leapt after him and paused at the window sill.

  ‘Goodbye, Jake Cake, and thank you for the hundred lines. They really were rather delicious!’ she said, licking her lips. And then Mrs Beady was gone too.

  I was left with no werewolves, no explanation for all the commotion or for the great big mess in my room, and a very angry Mum who wanted answers.

  But I wasn’t going to risk telling the truth again.

  Mum made me go to bed early that night, after tidying my room and promising not to bring any more stray dogs home, or make up stories that aren’t true.

  As Mum closed my window an eerie HOWLING could be heard in the distance. She looked up at the full moon and then eyed me suspiciously. She paused for a moment, frowned, then she quickly drew the curtains and went downstairs.

  Mrs Beady wasn’t at school the next day so we had a supply teacher instead. I made sure I stayed awake during her class, because Mrs Beady’s replacement REALLY looked like trouble!

  Every time Mum and Dad go out together I always get a big long lecture about behaving myself for the babysitter.

  ‘… and when we get home I d
on’t want to hear any made-up stories

  about grannies from outer space or any other such nonsense,’ Mum said, eyeing me fiercely as she pulled on her coat.

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ I said, even though I didn’t make up the granny from outer space. She was real, but I’ll tell you about her another time.

  ‘… because you know what will happen if you make up stories, don’t you?’ she added sternly.

  ‘My nose will grow long,’ I mumbled.

  ‘Exactly!’ she said as the doorbell rang.

  The new babysitter was a tall, clumsy girl with pigtails and glasses. She struggled through the door with a huge pile of books and a big, heavy schoolbag.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Cake,’ she panted.

  ‘Hello, Sally,’ Mum said, frowning at the bag. ‘Are you moving in with us?’

  ‘Oh, this is just my homework,’ Sally laughed. ‘I thought I would study when Jake goes to bed. I hope that’s OK?’