Colleen had eaten almost an entire kingdom of
leprechauns, and four shrunken humans too. She would put her mind to work on
how to catch the ones who had fled into the underground tunnels too small for
her to access. She wondered if she should have attacked the tunnels with the
shovel, but eventually thought that it might have damaged her potential food.
As it was, she had invalidated their invisibility with food colouring and
swallowed well over half of them. She had subsequently decided that her
sabbatical was over, and returned to teaching at the school.
One day after school, Connor was about to walk
home, when Edith Kelson walked up and put her hand on his shoulder.
“Hi Connor!” she said, “How would you like to hang
out with me on a little adventure, this afternoon?”
“Sure,” said Connor, “Like a date?”
“Not exactly that, but it’ll be fun. You know how
Miss Balfour went away on that sabbatical?”
“Yes, she was gone for months.”
“She’s a bit of an inventor as well as a science
and English teacher. Don’t you ever wonder if she’s got any inventions stashed
away in the science lab?”
“I guess she could have, especially if she used the
school’s equipment for some of her research,” said Connor.
“Well why don’t we sneak into the lab and have a
look?”
“But the doors to the lab are locked until she
opens them to start classes.”
“I know, but I just had her for science in last
period. I sat in the back row, behind everyone else, so that nobody could see
me. While she was writing on the blackboard, I turned the window handle just
enough to unlock it without it showing. She’s in a staff meeting now, so all we
have to do is climb up the tree outside and sneak in through the window.”
Connor was thinking about it all the time that
Edith had been talking. He could show her that spending time with him could be
fun too. He knew that she had a boyfriend, but she had come to him, and maybe
even left her boyfriend by now. It was possible that she’d only made the
invitation because she needed someone from her own school, which her boyfriend
was not. Or maybe she had been thinking about him since he first asked her out.
“Sure, it sounds like fun,” he said, remembering
her initial reason given for declining him.
Either way, he wuld show her that he knew how to
have fun.
They walked around to the tree, checked that nobody
was looking, and were soon out of sight within its branches. Edith reached the
window first and climbed in, and then stood on the classroom floor to help
Connor through the window. They searched the laboratory cupboards methodically,
as fast as they could, but found nothing. Connor was looking in her desk.
“Look what I found in her handbag,” said Edith,
“She must have been coming back here after the meeting. That means we’ve got
less than half an hour left. I wonder what it does.”
Edith pressed a button and a beam of light came
from the device in her hand and reduced a chair and desk to tiny size.