The school was empty. Jack and Poppy stopped at the gate and stared.
“There’s nobody,” Jack said.
Poppy looked and couldn’t understand what she was seeing. The sports ground, the basketball courts, the place where the kids kept their scooters. It was all empty. There was no-one anywhere. The whole school was deserted! It was like everyone had just, well, vanished. Puff! Gone!
After a couple of minutes, Poppy managed to speak. “Jack,” she stammered, “no-one’s here. Where are they all?” Jack didn’t know. He asked Had he and Poppy come too early. By accident. Was it still breakfast time? But Poppy checked the time on her phone and said, No. If anything they’d come a couple of minutes late.
“But all our friends,” Jack said. “All the teachers. What’s happened?”
Well, Poppy was just as bamboozled as Jack. She said maybe everyone was inside, in the classrooms so they went across the wide, lonely playground and opened a door. Empty.
Then they noticed all over the desks someone had thrown white dust and big handfuls of building rubbish. The chairs were scattered and crooked and higgely piggely. Pictures and posters had been ripped off the walls and tossed onto the floor. Jack looked up. “Poppy!” he stammered. “The roof!” Now Poppy saw it. Or, rather, didn’t see it. Because the roof wasn’t there. It had gone. “Someone’s taken it!” Jack gulped. Poppy said, “Jack, it’s been eviscerated!” Jack said he didn’t know about that, but it seemed to him like the insides had been ripped out by a tornado.
And sure enough the roof had been lifted off and thrown away somewhere far out of sight. All that was left was a big hole with the morning sun beginning to shine down into the empty classroom.
Poppy said it was like a giant had pulled the roof off the walls. Rip! Jack thought a tornado had gone through and wrenched the roof away with a roar and a tearing sound.
Just then the door at the other end of the classroom slowly began to creak and slide open. Poppy felt a flush of fear and grabbed Jack’s arm. He was looking now too. But as the door opened fully they both sagged in relief. It was their teacher! She was covered in white dust, her hair was all tangled, in one hand she was holding her glasses, both shoes were missing. The three of them just stood and stared at each other.
Finally their teacher spoke. “Hello, you two,” she said. “This is quite a mess, isn’t it.” And she walked through the jumble of desks and gave Jack and Poppy a big reassuring hug. “Quite a mess, but everything’s alright.”
Poppy and Jack gave her a squeeze and they all stepped out into the playground. Their teacher dusted herself down, put on her glasses, said she would go and look for her shoes in a minute, and they sat down on a bench.
Jack and Poppy were totally confused. “What happened?” Jack asked. And Poppy said, “Where’s everyone? Are they all OK?” And their teacher grinned and said she didn’t know how it happened, but suddenly there had been this noise (“Really loud. Unbelievably loud.”) the roof had been popped off, dust and bits of wood and plaster had swirled everywhere, and then it was all quiet. And no roof.
“All the kids are OK,” she said. “We’re all at the back. Come and see them and in a minute the headmaster’ll be here. He’s finding another room for us to go to.”
Everyone jumped and yelled and shouted when Jack and Poppy came around to the other side of the classroom and they hugged and smiled and greeted everyone. Then the headmaster came and every quietened down and turned to see what he would say.
Bad news. There were no other classrooms for them. Actually, he said, the whole school had been wrecked and there weren’t enough spare classrooms in the whole town for them.
“Oh no,” Poppy groaned. And Jack said, “But we’ve got to have a classroom. We like coming to school.”
“I know you do,” the headmaster said. And their teacher nodded. “But unless you can find another room, there can’t be any school lessons. Until the school gets fixed.”
Well, the kids could hardly believe it. One on the girls said they could make her home into a classroom. She said, “Our front room is pretty big.” But the teacher had been to that home, and she shook her head. “Too small, sorry,” she told everyone. The boy with the new red bike thought his dad would lend them the back of his paint shop. “There’s a space there under the veranda,” he said. But the headmaster said something about ‘industrial safety’ and that wasn’t going to work either.
Everyone began talking and suggesting places and speaking to their mums and dads on the phone. But in spite of all their ideas and thinking hard no-one could think of another place that would work. They had lost their classroom and their school!
A quiet descended on the group. The kids huddled together. Someone began to sniffle and cry a little. The boys put their hands in their pockets and looked at the ground. No-one was smiling. The girls were grim-faced and serious.
Then Poppy’s eyes lit up. She looked around. A wide smile began to creep slowly across her face. “I think I’ve got a place,” she said.
Everyone spun around and looked at her. Jack said, “Where?” And Poppy said, “It’s a perfect place. It’s safe. It’s big, It’s beautiful. And it’s available. We could go their right now.”
Their teacher said, “Well, let’s go! Where is this place?”
Poppy was now beaming her biggest smile ever. She winked at Jack, then said in a big loud voice. “The hill. We can go and have our classes on the hill!”
And they did.
Dad was washing the car as Jack and Poppy came racing through the gate and tried to explain what was happening. “Woah!” dad said grinning and laughing. “Slow down. Tell me one at time. The roof’s gone? Can’t. Roofs don’t disappear.”
But this one had. And next the kid’s in the wrecked school arrived and began walking past the gate in a long line, along the footpath, towards the hill. Then the teacher and the headmaster passed. They were carrying laptops and cases of books and papers and talking on their phones to parents. The teacher gave Jack and Poppy’s dad a big grin and a wave and disappeared around the corner, heading for the hill. More and more kids were streaming past now, all in a long long line, making for the hill.
Mrs Threadbare had seen all this and she came out to stand at her gate, by her letterbox with the weeds growing underneath. “My, my,” she said to Dad. “This has never happened before. I’ll tell you what we should do. We should feed these kids!” And they did. Dad brought out a big plate of freshly baked muffins. Mrs Threadbare opened her big handbag and began handing out lollipops; every kid got one as they filed past.
But now the whole class was on the hillside, marching up. Jack and Poppy led the way. They knew exactly the best place for an outdoor classroom. And soon everyone arrived. The ground was flat, it was covered in long soft grass and a row of bushes along one side kept the wind away. Everyone sat down. The teacher and the headmaster arranged the laptops and the books and the papers. The kids grinned and made themselves comfortable. The boy with the father in the paint shop said in a loud voice, “Please teach us now.” And the teacher stood up, looked at everyone and began the lesson!
It was amazing. The outdoor lessons were interesting and relevant. Everyone wanted to learn. Their whole day went so fast! And as they all trooped off down the hill at 3 o’clock they said it was the best ever!
That’s what Jack and Poppy said to Mum when they’d waved goodbye at their gate to all the kids, and walked into the kitchen. Mum could hardly believe what they were telling her, but by this time Dad had driven to the school and seen how the roof had been ripped off and he told Mum he’d seen the teacher and the headmaster taking the kids up onto the hill. It was unbelievable, but it had happened.
Mum said, “You really wanted to learn. Wow! Imagine that.” Then she turned to Dad and said, “That reminds me of Jesus’ disciples.” Dad looked puzzled and said, “What are you thinking of, dear?” And Jack said, “I think I might know. Is it the time the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray?” And mum beamed and said, that was exactly what she was thinking. “You kids were just like that. Wanting to learn.” And Dad smiled and said, “That’s good, kids. You’ve remembered some of those Bible stories we read you!”
And Poppy said, “Of course, Dad!” And mum laughed and said they were clever kids. But they were also probably a little hungry. In which case she had something that would help them. And she opened the oven. Muffins!