Playschool Read Free Page B

burn,she spun round in a blur of sparks and fire before hurling it with an almighty scream. It knocked three players to the ground, smashed through the lavatory window and threw Orkward Warlock down into the toilet bowl with such force that the entire thing shattered, leaving him sitting in a pool of water with the wooden toilet seat around his neck like a huge collar.

    â€˜Goatface pig bottom!!’ he screamed through his pain as the ball shot back through the window towards the opposite side of the field. For as long ashe could remember, Orkward Warlock had hated the Floods. Every day there was something else they did that made him hate them more.
    Merlinmary’s throw shot through all three goals before hovering just out of reach in one of the corners of the playing pit while the gristleball regained its strength. Her score was forty-one points, though when it was later discovered what had happened to Orkward Warlock another twenty-seven points and a gold star were added – seven for hitting Orkward and a special referee’s bonus of twenty for smashing the toilet, which no one had ever done before. The fact that he had been the source of Merlinmary getting anothet twenty-seven points made Orkward hate the Floods even more.
    The game ended when the gristleball ran out of energy. It collapsed in the corner panting for breath until Radius Leg gave it a drink of water and summoned the ballworm to take it back to its nest.
    The highest score ever for a single throw had been four years before, when Valla Flood, in his final game before leaving school, had thrown thegristleball through his own goal with such force that it had thrown Radius Leg against the wall and broken nine of his ribs before bouncing back across the field seventeen times through all three goals and finally hitting Radius Leg a second time, breaking both of his legs. The score was one hundred and eighty-seven points, more than double the previous record. It had earned Valla a lifetime honour award, fifty out of ten and a whole bucket of gold stars.
    â€˜They don’t make gristle like that any more,’ Radius Leg would say proudly, stroking his scars as he remembered that wonderful day.

Orkward Warlock hated everyone. He hated his parents. He hated his sister Primrose, who was disgustingly nice, and he hated all the other relations he assumed he had but had never met. He hated his teachers and every other person he knew or read about or saw on TV. Sometimes, for practice, he even hated himself, and pretty well everyone hated him too.
    But Orkward Warlock had one hate that was deeper than all his other hates. It was so dark and deep that it had no end, like the lake in Scotland where the Loch Ness Monster lives. This hate was bigger than all Orkward’s other hates added together and multiplied by twelve plus seven.
    The thing that Orkward Warlock hated more than anything in the whole universe was the Floods.
    Orkward Warlock was one of the twenty-seven boarders at Quicklime’s. The boarders were usually children who lived too far away to be able to come to school by bus each day. The fleet of wizard buses that took the children to and from school covered the entire globe. There was even one very small witch – Felicia McThursday – who came from a lighthouse on a remote rock fifty kilometres past Iceland. The children who boarded at Quicklime’s came from even further away, from other galaxies and parallel universes.
    All except Orkward. He was the only boarder who actually came from Earth, and he was a boarder because his parents couldn’t stand to have him at home, not even during the holidays. He had spent every single day of his life since the age of three days at Quicklime’s. In the holidays, when everyone, including his sister Primrose and most of the teachers, went home, Orkward stayed behind with Matron, Doorlock the handyman, George Shrub themandrake gardener and Narled, a strange creature, half man,