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Teacher's Pet
by Morris Gleitzman
Something didn't smell right.
Ginger stopped halfway down Ashmore Street and sniffed the air.
Her nose tingled.
Her insides tightened.
Was it?
She couldn't be sure.
All the normal walking-to-school smells were there. The soft tang of carports warming up in the sun. The faint but exotic fragrance of mums and dads frying breakfast for their kids. The lovely minty aroma of families cleaning their teeth and telling each other jokes and laughing and spraying toothpaste around the bathroom.
Ginger sighed and tried not to feel jealous.
She could still smell something else.
Something not right.
I'm going to ignore it, Ginger decided. I'm not going to let it spoil my day.
She turned her walkman up, headed along the street and concentrated on making up swearwords for her school assignment.
Suddenly Ginger's nose went mental, tingling so hard her eyes watered.
It was.
The smell was exactly what she'd feared.
A cat.
Oh fuguggle, she thought, screwing up her nose.
She sneezed. A big wet sneeze that made her stagger and almost drop both schoolbags and fall off the kerb.
Embarrassed, Ginger squinted around to see if she'd sprayed anyone. Luckily the street was almost deserted. But not quite. A car went past and Ginger was pretty sure it had its windscreen wipers on.
'Sorry,' she said.
A fuguggling cat, she thought as she got ready to sneeze again. That's all I fuguggling need.
It was bad enough Mum and Dad rushing off to a meeting without asking a person if she needed a lift to school. Leaving a person to lug her little sister's left-behind schoolbag. But finding a cat had invaded your one cat-free way to school was enough to make you weep.
Ginger sneezed instead.
It was another big one and it nearly flipped her walkman headphones out of her ears.
She wiped away the sneeze tears and peered up and down the street, trying to see if the cat was a sneaky tabby or a snooty know-it-all Siamese or one of those explosions of fluff that look like they've had gunpowder up their bum.
Nothing.
Not a cat to be seen.
Just a dog.
A big shaggy dog, standing across the street, staring at her.
Ginger stared back.
She could see it wasn't wearing a collar. She always felt sad when she saw dogs like that. Poor mutts without anyone to care for them.
Abandoned.
Forgotten.
Probably a victim of workaholic parents, thought Ginger. She gave the dog a sympathetic smile.
Then she felt several more sneezes starting.
Fuguggling great, she thought. Now I'm allergic to dogs too.
After Ginger finished sneezing, she pulled herself out of the hedge she'd fallen into, slung the schoolbags over her shoulders again and staggered down the street towards school.
Her nose ached.
She hoped the cat was behind her and not hiding up ahead, planning an ambush. She'd read somewhere that repeated sneezing while you're weighed down with two schoolbags could damage your spine.
She glanced across the road.
The dog was walking along on the other side of the street, keeping up with her.
Still staring.
What a weird dog, thought Ginger.
It looked like a cross between a shaggy Eskimo dog and an overgrown cattle dog, except it was black.
Ginger wondered how a stray dog without a family to groom it or give it marrowbone jelly could stay looking so glossy. By spending hours licking its fur, probably, so people wouldn't spot it was a stray and chuck things at it.
(Copyright by Morris Gleitzman)
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