Since I got a few, but good reviews of the first chapter, I thought I´d give it another shot...
Willy´s birthday, part II (or: "Snowball fights and drawing pins")
Willy hurried up to his room. It was amazing how fast he could run up the stairs without making a sound. He practically flew over the steps. Back in his grey- coloured room, he collected his school bag and made sure he hadn´t forgot any of his homework. Then he put the new toothbrush in one of the desk drawers and ran back downstairs. His father hadn´t left the kitchen yet and for some reason Willy thought he´d better leave before Wilbur caught sight of him. He quickly put on his winter boots, the thick jacket, scarf and gloves. For a brief second he considered calling good bye. Wilbur had after all being very firm on the point that one should always be polite and say "good morning". Maybe he´d get angry if Willy didn´t say anything? But on the other hand, if he were still upset about the cake issue, he would surely only become even angrier if he´d have to talk to Willy again at the moment. In the end Willy chose the first option and rushed out of the door.
He blessed the sunlight that met his eyes. It was a wonderful morning. The sky was brightly blue and and the heavy layers of snow made the streets glitter. The town had awoken and now everybody were on their way to their jobs or schools. Willy´s school were located on the other side of the town so on his way there he had to pass a lot of different shops and squares. First there was the bakery, that was owned by a nice, fat man named Mr. Baker. There were also a small café and a shop in the same building where he sold fresh bread, cookies and cakes. A wonderful smell of fresh bread, cinnamon and vanilla always surrounded the whole place, especially in the mornings when everything had just left the oven, ready to be sold during the day. Willy breathed it in and a warm feeling of pleasure filled his cold body right to the bone. Through the windows he could just manage to get a glimpse of some of the very big, beautifully decorated cakes and he sadly wished he could have one. Then he hurried on and the shop next to the bakery was a barber shop, which Willy actually was rather interested in too. Not that he ever needed to go there, but simply because of the barber´s peculiar name. He was a tall, slim man with grim eyes and his name was the very suitable Mr. Todd. Willy would have given anything in the world to find out the man´s first name. He hoped it to be "Sweeney" but that would just be too good to be true. He went on and passed a supermarket, the bank, a couple of restaurants, his favourite clothing store where everything was colourful and of course he wasn´t allowed to buy anything simply because of that. Though once he had sneaked in and bought a pair of bright red gloves. He thought they would be a nice variation from his usual, black ones. But his father had found them and very firmly said that they weren´t "appropriate" enough. And that had been the end of Willy´s only coloured garments.
Further on he came to pass another favourite store: the small art shop, located in a street corner, where he usually bought his paints. The owner was a friendly, neat woman named Mrs. Violet Green, and she was rather fond of Willy and occasionally offered him discounts whenever he came to buy anything. Then there was another interesting place; the music shop. It was small and dark but contained an unexpected treasure of amazing sounds and different instruments. Willy had been in there a couple of times, but never dared to buy anything, not even the smallest harmonica. He had an idea about Wilbur not appreciating music in any form. It was always very quiet at home, except at those times when Willy happened to hear the ferocious sound of the dental drill and screaming patients when Wilbur tended to them in his most preferred way. Dental drills and painful screams combined - that was Wilbur´s kind of music.
Willy ran across the big square in the middle of the town. There was a big, old gothic church, towering over the rest of the town and nearby was the pompous city hall, and next to the city hall, in another very old building of victorian architecture, was the library, where Willy liked to spend his afternoons whenever he could.
Not far from school there was also a small, but notorius candy shop. It was known to be one of the best candy shops in town; you could find all chocolates, lollipops and jelly beans of the finest quality in there, but its owner were none else than the terrifying Miss Evilina Rothole; an ugly, malodorous woman of middle age with greasy, half grey hair, dirty fingernails and evil, sharp eyes that could easily scare any any child away from her candy with just one gaze. Her big, fat and lousy bulldog always slept around the corner as well, ready to attack if you ever dared to try and steal anything from the shop. To the children in town, buying candy from her had become something of a game. If you had the guts to do it, or even stole something and got away with it, then you´d be treated like a hero in school for a week.
Willy had never put as much as a foot in there.
The school itself was a dark, imposing building with a big, round clock ticking on the high front wall, above the entrance. It was twenty past eight, which meant that the bell would ring in no less than ten minutes. Many children were playing in the snow outside. Willy happened to be caught in a snowball fight as he passed by and he felt the ice cold snowball melting against the back of his head. He quickly bent down to make a snowball of his own to get his revenge. He threw it away and hit a boy straight in the face. The boy stopped and gasped.
"Not in the face!" he cried out angrily but Willy just giggled and thought that his victim reminded him a bit of Santa Claus. Beside from being all white in the face, he was dressed in a red jacket and had a quite chubby figure. Before anyone got a chance to hit him with another snowball, Willy ran away and hurried up the steps to front door and pushed it open. It wasn´t much warmer inside so everyone kept their jackets on for as long as possible. In the classrooms, outwear was strictly forbidden. A few of the good-hearted, more empathic teachers weren´t really that hard on it, though. Willy´s teacher wasn´t one of them. He followed the long corridor all the way to his classroom and there he slumped down against the wall, waiting in silence. The first lesson was going to be English and he made sure he had got the right books with him. He was just about to close the bag when he heard a familiar voice in front of him:
"There you are! What are you doing here?"
Willy looked up and saw Terrence, a taller, thin boy of the same age as himself. His shoes and trousers were all covered in mud and melting snow dripped from his jacket, resulting in a small puddle around his feet.
"Why are you sitting here all alone? You missed the snowball fight!" Terrence went on.
"No, I didn´t", Willy said honestly. Terrence raised an eyebrow in surprise.
"You didn´t? But I didn´t see you!" he said.
Willy smiled a little, showing his too big, milky white teeth.
"I hit Martin in the face", he said, a bit slyly.
"In the face? But you´re not supposed to hit in the face!" Terrence objected.
"I know that", Willy admitted quietly, the grin still on his face. "But it was fun."
Suddenly, Terrence caught sight of the English books lying in Willy´s lap, and he let out a groan of misery.
"Oh, I forgot! We´ve got English test today! And I haven´t even read about the stuff once! Have you?"
"Not really", Willy said in a flippant tone, much lower than Terrence´s. "But I usually get all A´s in English anyway."
"You´re right…"
Terrence let out another groan before he slumped down against the opposite wall. His long legs outstretched so that they almost reached across the floor.
"Happy birthday, by the way", he said. "I almost forgot that too. Sorry."
Willy snorted.
"Yeah, thanks", he said, sounding bored at the subject.
"How old are you now then?" Terrence teased and a broad grin came across his face. "Three?"
Willy grimaced but didn´t say anything.
"What did you get then?" Terrence asked eagerly.
Willy looked up at him with a puzzled expression on his face.
"What I have got?" he said, confused.
Terrence laughed.
"Presents, stupid!" he cried. "Didn´t you get anything?"
"Oh", Willy finally realized what Terrence was talking about. "Er, yes. I got five pounds."
Terrence frowned in surprise.
"That´s all?"
Willy didn´t get a chance to answer, because now the other pupils were storming along the corridor and the rest of Willy´s classmates gathered around the door, all laughing and chattering loudly, until their teacher, Miss. Pepper, stomped towards them. Her heavy steps echoed between the walls. Immediately everyone stopped talking and it went absolutely quiet. A big boy called Sam had pushed himself against the spot where Willy sat so that he wasn´t able to get up. It was too crowded and when Miss Pepper opened the door and allowed her young students inside, Willy were the last one to go in. When he stumbled over the threshold he got a disapproval look from Miss Pepper´s piercing eyes and some of the girls giggled slightly. Sam looked rather pleased too, where he sat in the corner of the room. Willy´s desk were in the second row to the right, and he tiptoed to his chair and sat down.
"Good morning, children", greeted Miss Pepper´s stern voice as she approached the master´s desk to collect a bunch of papers. "As you know, we´ll start with an English test this morning and I certainly do hope that you´ve done your homework or this will probably be very difficult for you."
She showed off a spiteful smirk and Terrence looked almost terrified at her last words. Miss Pepper started to hand out the tests, then she looked at her wristwatch and said:
"You´ve got one hour from now. Please, start."
Willy carefully began to read through the test like the rest of the class. There were three pages and it didn´t seem very difficult at all, Willy thought to himself. He began to write. About five minutes later he heard some quiet, nervous giggles all around him and he looked up to see what was going on but couldn´t see anything out of the ordinary. Miss Pepper had the shape of a large fridge and she paced back and forth in front of the blackboard with her hawkish, dangerous eyes fixed upon the children. At one moment, when she was looking in Willy´s opposite direction, Terrence, who was sitting right behind Willy, leant forward and whispered:
"Someone´s put a drawing pin on Pepper´s chair!"
Willy´s eyes widened in terror. The person who dared to play such a prank on Miss Pepper, must be out of his (or her) wits. Although Willy had a good idea of who it might be. And now Miss Pepper was finally approaching her chair! All of the children held their breath. Miss Pepper sat down and then…
She startled (and the children did the same) and then her face slowly seemed to swell up and it turned red like a tomato. The second thereafter she jumped highly into the air and when her colossal weight hit the floor again with a loud thud, she almost made Willy (who was small for his age) jump out of his chair too. She gave up a terrible, shrill cry and then she started to jump around on the floor in no smoother way than an elephant kid, grasping her huge backside with both hands. It looked a bit like some sort of strange war dance. In the corner, Sam and his friend Peter hid their faces in their hands, giggling uncontrollably. If Miss Pepper were ever to find out who the guilty one was, that student would be done for, they all knew that. Some of them wore amused grins on their faces but some of the others didn´t even dare to move a muscle. Willy stared like mesmerized at the remarkable spectacle taking place front of him and the corners of his mouth began to twitch nervously. Then, when he just couldn´t stand it any longer, he burst into peals of high-pitched, twittering laughter that filled the whole classroom. Instantly everyone, including Sam and Peter, turned quiet and stared at him like he had just been condemned. Not until a minute later or so, he felt the deadly gazes upon him and immediately turned quiet. But it was too late. Miss Pepper´s eyes were fixed upon him, eyes that could have been capable of brutal murder. She seemed to have got rid of most of the drawing pins from her backside (because as it happened, it was more than one) and it didn´t look like she felt any pain anymore whatsoever. Now she gave the same impression as a hungry, angry lion.
"Young Mr. Wonka", she snarled, showing her ugly teeth as she slowly approached him. Her voice was worryingly calm. "Could you please tell me which one of you all, little brutes, who is impudent enough to put these drawing pins on my chair?"
Willy gulped. He knew who it was for sure, but the words again seemed to get stuck in his throat. His eyes darted around the room, looking for an eventual escape without success.
"I… I…" he began in a very small voice, but then Miss Pepper all of sudden lunged forward over his desk, gripped him by the ear and dragged him to his feet. For a moment, Willy almost thought that the ear was going to come off.
"Aaa-aouch!It wasn´t me! It wasn´t me!" he cried out in pain.
"WELL? Who was it then?" spat Miss Pepper and her grip tightened around Willy´s tiny ear. The saliva rained over Willy´s face.
"Sam of course!" Willy cried.
It was always Sam. Followed by Peter.
Miss Pepper stared at him suspiciously. She didn´t seem entirely convinced.
"You´re trying to put the blame on someone else, aren´t you? You little twit!" She snapped and Willy tried to shook his head in protest but her grip was too firm.
"It´s always Sam", he whimpered. "Have I ever done something like that? It´s stupid!"
"About that you are most certainly right", snarled Miss Pepper threateningly. Then she let out a grunt, gave Willy a rough shaking before she finally let go of him and stomped towards Sam instead, snorting like a rhinoceros. Sam, who had been watching Willy´s roasting with great pleasure, now turned pale. Miss Pepper gripped him by the ear and then marched him out of the classroom in heavy strides. Sam glared at Willy as they passed by, but Willy didn´t care. He slumped back into his chair and let out a deep sigh of relief, but he was a little too quick.
"Willy! You´ll get two hours detention this afternoon!" Miss Pepper´s voice called from outside the classroom and Willy slumped even lower into the chair. In the corner behind him, Peter smiled. Terrence leaned forward again and whispered:
"Willy, would you like to go to my house when, er… when you´ve finished detention? You gotta do something fun on your birthday!"
"It´s not my birthday", Willy muttered irritably. The girl sitting in front of him heard him and started to snigger slightly. Then she whispered something to another girl sitting beside her and they both burst into twittering laughter. The second girl turned around. She was pretty big for her age and her name was Nancy.
"Oh, Willy, didn´t you get a birthday this year either? Poor you", she teased and everyone laughed, including Terrence. Willy only rolled his eyes in annoyance. How did it come that the one birthday that hardly ever occured, were the one that everyone always remembered? It was quite weird when you thought about it.
"Oh, shut up, you twerps", Willy snapped resentfully in a low voice, but nobody seemed to hear him. He grimaced and as they didn´t go on with the teasing this time, he turned his attention to the English test again. Everybody else had nearly forgotten about it by now. He continued writing his answers, trying to comfort himself by the thought that he at least would get some high points.
