From then on, there were no lessons as such, apart from in Mr Keogh's class. Mr Keogh believed kids could have stars in their eyes and stil do sums. But he did change the questions to panto-related ones:
"Zoe, if you arrive at school at 9am and there's a special rehearsal at 12 noon, how many hours is that?"
"Ben, if there are four servants at the palace wearing blue, and three wearing red, how many servants is that?"
Cal loved being the lazy sneaky servant, especially when Mrs Beauchamp told him she had a tap dance for him. He was worried because he couldn't dance, but all he had to do was sit in a big armchair with his arms behind his head, and let his feet tap dance. It was to a very very old song called Lazybones that had been a hit for a man called Bling Crosby back in the days when everybody was poor and there were workhouses. (Cal had worked this out for himself but he couldn't quite work out why anybody wanted to be called Bling.)
Instead of being strict in her drawing class, Ms Chao let the kids draw pictures from 'Cinderella'. She almost had them dancing on the desks in glee when she told them the best drawing would be picked out and the design would be used in the show. Robyn did a very glamorous ball gown for Cinderella, and it won. Robyn's prize was a box of cereal bars, which Ms Chao said were New Trisious.
But although the kids' panto needed lots of hard work, it was nothing compared to the Teachers' panto. The kids almost weed themselves in glee at Mr Fairhead in his dress and make-up for Queen Charliana. Ethan fell in love all over again with Ms Chao as Fairy Galactica. But that was nothing towards the excitement Lofty and Cal felt on seeing Mrs Beauchamp and Miss Freeman in their costumes for Prince Constantine and Princess Seraphina.
Although Lofty was falling in love with somebody else, too. He had the biggest man crush on Mr Keogh. He knew men could get married to other men, even though there were some bad mean people called Homey Phobics who wanted to get that stopped. Lofty was really confused. He was cured a little bit of his man crush when he saw Mr Keogh dressed in his Nutty Neville costume. But not much.