And we were all SHOCKED, because Mary ate LIVE MICE (which is horrible!) and that meant that she kind of WAS a vampire.
And that’s when we realised why there were mice loose in our school. Mary’s dinner had escaped!
When we got to school the next day, all of the DANGER! KEEP OUT! signs were gone, and we were allowed to go back to our old classroom again.
I was pleased that the signs were down because that meant that we didn’t have to share a classroom with 6B any more, and it also meant that the mice must be gone. And I hoped that they’d been found and adopted, like Mary had. And that they hadn’t been given to Scary Mary for her tea!
At break time, we all went to The Den to do a new plan. Jodi had brought all of her glitter pens, and she’d even brought the pink one, which she only brings out on really, really special occasions, like this. And Zach had printed out the photo he had taken. And Maisie had brought a frame from her house.
Once we were finished, Jodi said, “What do you think?”
And I said that I thought it was probably the most beautiful picture I had ever seen, even though it WAS a photo of a scary-looking giant snake with “MARY” written in glitter on it.
Then when we were leaving The Den, we saw MR MURPHY! And he was wearing JEANS and a beaded NECKLACE and he was RUNNING along the corridor, and he had the BIGGEST TEDDY I’VE EVER SEEN!
So we followed him. And he ran right into our classroom and picked Miss Jones up off her seat and gave her a big hug! And she looked SHOCKED. And we all knew it was because she was probably wondering why Mr Murphy was here instead of being all the way in India.
And I was just about to ask Mr Murphy if he was coming back to be our Head Teacher again, and if we could please see the giant teddy, when Miss Jones gave Mr Murphy a BIG KISS!
And Zach started cheering and clapping, even though it was disgusting, and that’s when Miss Jones laughed, and then she picked up the giant teddy and sat it on her desk. And we all laughed and ran away.
We ran all the way to Mr Graves’s office, because we were too excited to walk, because of the giant teddy and also because we couldn’t WAIT to show Mr Graves what we’d made for him!
And when we got there we were also too excited to knock, so we just kind of all rushed in.
Mr Graves was sitting at his desk. And when he saw us he smiled a bit and said, “Oh, hello!” And he said it in a way that I knew meant he was trying to sound cheerful, but that he wasn’t really feeling very cheerful because he missed Mary.
So we all walked up to his desk and gave him the picture of Mary in the frame. And he looked VERY surprised. And it was probably because he wasn’t expecting to ever see Mary ever again and also because he didn’t know that we had sneaked back into his office again at lunchtime and used Zach’s mobile phone to take a picture of Mary.
Then Mr Graves smiled loads and said, “Thank you. This is very special.” And I didn’t think that his lips looked anything like worms any more. They looked a bit like normal lips, but not completely.
And then Mr Graves took down the scary cape picture and put the picture that WE’D made up on the wall!
And then the bell went so I said, “Good day, Mr Graves.”
And Mr Graves laughed a bit and said, “Good day, Izzy.”
And it was brilliant.
Acknowledgements
A big THANK YOU to Thomas for bringing Izzy and the gang to life. You are fantastic!
Thanks also to the amazing Kirsty, brilliant Nicola, and all of the very fabulous team at Nosy Crow.
And (of course) thanks to my husband, Andy, who likes to remind me that HE helped come up with the “vampire thing” on the train that day.
Copyright
For Kirsty Stansfield. You ROCK!
MY HEAD TEACHER IS A VAMPIRE RAT
First published in the UK in 2015 by Nosy Crow Ltd
The Crow’s Nest, 10a Lant Street
London SE1 1QR, UK
This ebook edition first published in 2015
Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and / or registered trademarks of Nosy Crow Ltd
Text copyright © Pamela Butchart, 2015
Cover and interior illustrations © Thomas Flintham, 2015
The rights of Pamela Butchart and Thomas Flintham to be identified as author and illustrator of this work have been asserted by them under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictiously. Any resemblence to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978 0 85763 290 6
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