Charlie Bone and the Library of Fantasy
Chapter Two: First Day Back
Charlie sighed as a boy called out, yet again, "Here he comes, little boy blue, off to Bloor's, like a posh cockatoo!"
It was getting really old but it was still embarrassing.
Charlie had tried everything to flatten his hair and make it easier to brush – all types of gel, peanut butter, olive oil, shampoo and conditioner – it just wouldn't work!
"Hey Charlie!" Fidelio called to Charlie as Charlie boarded the bus.
Fidelio patted the seat next to him and Charlie took it, gratefully.
Fidelio had grown quite a bit taller, and so had Charlie. Apart from that, they didn't seem to have changed much in appearance
Fidelio smelt the air.
"Um…Charlie…Why do you smell like peanut butter?"
Charlie sighed. It was going to be a long day.
He grumbled about how he tried using it to flatten his hair.
Fidelio roared with laughter.
"You use peanut butter to help get gum out of your hair, not for flattening it!"
"It's not that funny" Charlie mumbled.
"Preach that to the choir." Fidelio said, his laughter becoming soft chuckles.
They soon arrived at school and were surrounded by a sea of green, purple and blue.
They started walking, trying to get through the crowds.
On their way, they met up with their friends.
"Hi!" Emma and Olivia chorused, running up to the two music boys.
Emma's blonde hair seemed to glow. It had grown quite a bit over the holidays. Her cheeks seemed quite pink. Olivia stood out like a sore thumb. Her hair was a vibrant pink with a few purple strands.
Gabriel, Tancred and Lysander also ran up to them. Lysander and Tancred had grown even taller. They had to have been over six foot. Tancred's hair had grown naturally spiky, instead of gelled. Lysander was grinning and his teeth were very white; they clearly had been bleached. Gabriel had grown a tiny bit and was looking unusually happy.
Gabriel grinned, "Guess what guys? Rita's given birth!"
"Again?" Lysander's eyes widened.
"Yep!"
"Poor Billy," Tancred muttered, "When he was in your gerbil house, he probably had to listen to the gerbils talking about making babies!"
There were a few soft chuckles at this and a few pitiful faces for poor Billy.
"How do gerbils make babies anyway?" Fidelio joked, not really interested in the answer.
"Well, it's very simple, the method they go about it is - " Gabriel started, taking Fidelio seriously.
"Oh look at the time!"
"We're almost at the halls!"
"We better be quiet!"
They all gabbled excuses and edged away from Gabriel, just in case he continued his gerbil speech.
Later
Charlie, Gabriel and Fidelio went outside and sat down under a tree, grumpily.
"What's with the long faces?" Tancred, Lysander, Emma and Olivia sat down with them.
"It is the first day back and they've already told us we've got a test to study for!"
"Ooh, that's tough." Tancred scratched the back of his neck.
"What subject?" Emma asked.
"English." Gabriel answered.
"Did the teacher tell you three what it's on?" Lysander asked.
"Yeah; fairytales." Charlie answered.
"Well, that's not so bad." Olivia reasoned.
"No, I guess it's not seeing as we know them all off by heart and therefore we don't really need to study for them. It's still annoying though that we already have a test coming up!" Fidelio said.
They all sighed.
"Hey, can we go to the library? I want to borrow a book – I won't be long, I already know what I'm going to borrow." Emma asked.
Everyone nodded and they promptly went to the library.
While Emma was borrowing the book, the rest of the group was browsing through the shelves. Charlie spotted a pile of books that were next to a book bag that looked exactly like Manfred's.
Charlie observed the books in the pile. There was Harry Potter 4 and all the classical fairytale books – Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Sleeping Beauty, Goldilocks and the three Bears – as well as Shrek, a not-so-classical fairytale.
The others saw Charlie fingering the books.
"Hey Charlie, what're you looking at?"
He showedthem the books. Everyone sniggered.
Who would've thought Manfred, the intimidating, hypnotizing, evil teaching assistant, would spend his spare time reading classical fairytales that ended with the characters living happily ever after? Or reading a funny-to-most-people, modern fairytale like Shrek? Did he actually have a bit of a sense of humour? What about Harry Potter? They would've thought Manfred would hate Harry Potter books, being Manfred. Or any fantasy, fictional book at that!
All of a sudden, a weird looking symbol appeared from nowhere and fell onto the books.
"What's that?" Tancred asked, everyone staring at the weird looking symbol.
Charlie rubbed his eyes.
"I saw that in a dream!"
"A dream? What happened in the dream?" Lysander asked.
Everyone stared at him.
"What? He might have forseen something - or seen something that was actually happening at the time! My mum said that all of the Red King's children, on very, VERYrare occasions, like once or twice in a lifetime, they coulddo that when sleeping!" Lysander explained.
Everyone turned back to Charlie.
"Well, in the dream I had, Ezekiel and Manfred and my three great-aunts, of course, were doing some sort of experiment or trying to make something. There was a pile of objects and this was one of the objects. The experiment didn't end up working -"
"I bet old Ezekiel wasn't too pleased with that" Tancred murmured.
"Except this object was missing from the pile after the experiment."
They all stared at the object. They felt almost hypnotised by it...except minus the dizzyness. They felt like something was pulling them towards it.
Lysander, Gabriel, Tancred, Olivia, Charlie and Fidelio all grabbed a bit of the symbol at once, not fully aware of what they were doing.
They all started to glow gold. They shrieked, realising what was happening.
Emma had finished borrowing the book and had come over. She saw them all glowing. She ran towards them.
Once she reached them, Emma cried out and grabbed on, too, trying to tear it away from the boys.
"Stop!" She cried, "Let go!"
But they found they couldn't let go. Emma started to glow too.
"What's happening?" The boys plus Olivia panicked.
"This is a magical teleporting symbol! It's going to teleport us!" Emma cried.
"How do you know?" They yelled at her - not because they were mad, just because they were panicking and weren't too keen on the idea of teleporting to who-knows-where.
"I read a little bit about it in one of my aunt's books!"
"Where are we going to be teleported to?" Fidelio asked, as pale as a sheet.
"I have no clue! I only saw the picture of this and read only a few sentences!"
All of a sudden, they all felt a strange sensation of floating. The symbol tinkled and the next thing they knew, they were being sucked into a swirling vortex.
