The next day at school, George couldn’t stop thinking about the wonders he had seen at Eric’s house. Enormous clouds and outer space and flying rocks! Cosmos, the world’s most powerful computer! And they all lived next door to him, George, the boy whose parents wouldn’t even let him have an ordinary computer in the house. The excitement was almost too much to bear, especially now that George was sitting once more at his very boring desk in the classroom.
He doodled on the schoolbook in front of him with his colored pencils, trying to sketch Eric’s amazing computer—the one that could make a window from thin air, and through that window show you the birth and death of a star. But even though George could see it perfectly in his mind, his hand found it difficult to draw a picture that looked anything like what he had seen. It was very annoying. He had to keep crossing parts out and drawing them again, until the whole page looked like one giant squiggle.
“Ow!” he exclaimed suddenly as a missile made of a scrunched-up ball of paper hit him on the back of the head.
“Ah, George,” said Dr. Reeper, his teacher. “So, you are with us this afternoon after all. How nice.”
George looked up with a start. Dr. Reeper was standing right over him, staring down through his really smeared glasses. There was a large blue ink stain on his jacket, which reminded George of the shape of an exploding star.
“Do you have anything to say to the class?” said Dr. Reeper, peering down at George’s notebook, which George hastily tried to cover. “Other than ‘Ow!’ the only word I’ve heard you say today?”
“No, not really,” said George in a strangled, high-pitched voice.
“You wouldn’t like to say, ‘Dear Doctor Reeper, here is the homework I spent all weekend slaving over’?”
“Um, well . . . ,” said George, embarrassed.
“Or, ‘Doctor Reeper, I’ve listened carefully to every word you’ve ever said in class, written them all down, added my own comments, and here is my project, with which you will be extremely pleased’?”
“Uh . . . ,” muttered George, wondering how to get out of this one.
“Of course you wouldn’t,” said Dr. Reeper heavily. “After all, I’m just the teacher, and I stand here all day saying things for my own amusement and fun, with no hope that anyone will ever gain anything of value from my attempts to educate them.”
“I do listen,” protested George, who was now feeling guilty.
“Don’t try and flatter me,” said Dr. Reeper rather wildly. “It won’t work.” He whipped around sharply. “And give me that!” He shot across the classroom so fast he was almost a blur of speed and snatched a cell phone from a boy sitting at the back.
Dr. Reeper might wear tweed jackets and speak like a man from a century ago, but his pupils were so scared of him, they never tricked him the way they did teachers who were foolish enough to try and befriend them. He was a new teacher and he hadn’t been at the school long, but even on his first day he had quelled a whole room full of students into silence just by staring at them. There was nothing modern or touchy-feely or cozy about Dr. Reeper, with the result that his classrooms were always orderly, his homework came in on time, and even the slouchy rebel boys sat up straight and fell quiet when he walked into the room.
The kids called him “Greeper,” a nickname that came from the sign on his office door, which read DR. G. REEPER. Or “Greeper the Creeper” because of his mysterious habit of appearing without warning in far-flung corners of the school. There would be a gentle swoosh of thick-soled shoes and a faint smell of old tobacco, and before anyone knew it, Greeper would be bearing down on whatever secret mischief was brewing, rubbing his scarred hands with delight. No one knew how he had managed to cover both hands in red, scaly, painful-looking burn marks. And no one would ever dare ask.
“Perhaps, George,” said Greeper, pocketing the cell phone he had just confiscated, “you would care to enlighten the class as to what the artwork you have been working on this morning represents?”
“It’s, well, it’s . . . ,” whispered George, feeling his ears become hot and pink.
“Speak up, boy, speak up!” ordered Greeper. “We’re all curious to know quite what this”—he held up George’s drawing of Cosmos so the whole class could see—“is meant to be! Aren’t we, class?”
The other children snickered, delighted that Greeper was picking on someone who wasn’t them.
At that moment George really hated Greeper. He hated him so much he completely forgot his fear of shame or humiliation in front of the other pupils. Unfortunately he also forgot his promise to Eric.
“It’s a very special computer, actually,” he said in a loud voice, “which can show you what’s happening in the Universe. It belongs to my friend Eric.” He fixed Greeper with a very blue stare, his eyes determined under his tufts of dark red hair. “There are amazing things in outer space, just flying around all the time, like planets and stars and gold and stuff.” George was making the last part up—Eric hadn’t said anything about gold in outer space.
For the first time since George had been in Greeper’s class, his teacher seemed lost for words. He just stood there, holding George’s book in his hands, his jaw falling open as he looked at George in wonder.
“So it does work, after all,” he half whispered to George. “And you’ve seen it. That’s amazing . . .” A moment later it seemed as though Greeper were waking from a dream. He snapped George’s book shut, handed it back to him, and walked to the front of the class.
“Now,” said Greeper loudly, “given today’s behavior, I’m going to assign one hundred lines. I want you to write neatly and clearly in your books: I will not send text messages in Doctor Reeper’s class because I am too busy listening to all the interesting things he has to say. One hundred times, please, and anyone who hasn’t finished by the time the bell rings can stay behind. Very good, get on with it.”
There was an angry muttering from the classroom. George’s classmates had been looking forward to seeing him being taken to pieces by the teacher, and instead, they’d all been punished for something quite different, and George had mostly been let off the hook.
“But, sir, that’s not fair,” whined a boy at the back.
“Neither is life,” said Greeper happily. “As that is one of the most useful lessons I could possibly teach you, I feel proud that you’ve understood it already. Carry on, class.” With that, he sat down at his desk, got out a book that was full of complicated equations, and starting flicking through the pages, nodding to himself wisely as he did so.
George felt a ruler being jabbed into his back.
“This is all your fault,” hissed Ringo, the class bully, who was sitting behind him.
“Silence!” thundered Greeper, without even looking up from his book. “Anyone who speaks will do two hundred lines instead.”
His hand whizzing across the page, George finished the one hundred lines in his neat writing just as the bell rang for the end of class. Carefully he tore out the page with the picture of Cosmos on it and folded it up, tucking it into a back pants pocket before dropping his book on Greeper’s desk. But George hadn’t taken even two steps down the hall before Greeper caught up with him and barred his way.
“George,” said Greeper very seriously, “this computer is real, isn’t it? You’ve seen it, haven’t you?” The look in his eyes was frightening.
“I was just, um, making it up,” said George quickly, trying to wriggle away. He wished he hadn’t said anything at all to Greeper.
“Where is it, George?” asked his teacher, speaking slowly and quietly. “It’s very important that you tell me where this amazing computer lives.”
“There is no computer,” said George, managing to duck under Greeper’s arm. “It doesn’t exist—I just imagined it, that’s all.”
Greeper drew back and looked at George thoughtfully. “Be careful, George,” he said in a scarily quiet voice. “Be very careful.” With that, he walked away.