2: Quiet
August 2011
George pushed off the side of the pool again and tried to swim as far as possible before surfacing. He messed up one of his kicks and got out of sequence, forcing him to surface and gasp a breath, trying to get him rhythm back.
"Knight, if I see your head above the surface one more time on this length you'll be cleaning the changing rooms for a month!" the swimming instructor, a bulky black-shirt who everyone called French, bawled as George started his strokes again. It was an empty threat; it would need a miracle for George to stay underwater for almost an entire length when his muscles were already killing him from two hours of intense swimming practice. He dived under again and resolved to keep going until the last possible second so he could avoid a gruelling hour scraping the tiles in the changing rooms.
When he did finally take another breath, French had moved onto another victim, so George was off the hook. It was the last of ten timed lengths of the campus swimming pool and anyone who finished outside the time limit ran a lap for every second they were behind. George was already exhausted and was convinced he was outside the limit, but every second counted, so he pushed through the pain and concentrated on his strokes until his fingers finally bumped into the edge, stopping the electronic timer. He took a few gasping breaths and trod water until he had the strength to haul himself out.
"Passable," French said as George pushed his sodden hair back and looked over at the timing board. He'd squeaked by with less than two seconds to go, but he didn't care. No laps was no laps, so he just gave French a cocky smile as he strolled towards the boys' changing rooms, looking forward to a soak in the bath back in his room and then an evening of PlayStation and no homework.
"Looks like you just made it," George's friend Ralph said, handing George a towel. Both lads were stocky and had good endurance, but Ralph had hit his first growth spurt of puberty and was already four inches taller than George, which meant that he'd finished almost thirty seconds faster.
"Barely," George replied, wiping his face. "French is a total nutcase, my muscles are gonna be wrecked tomorrow morning."
Ralph just laughed. "Looks like someone needs an intensive fitness course rather than all-night Gran Turismo."
George didn't bother to reply, dropping his towel on the bench and heading for the showers to wash off the chlorine while Ralph chuckled and followed him a few seconds later.
The summer holidays is always a busy period for CHERUB missions, since it's much easier to get invited round to a target's house when their kids are bored with four weeks still go to until September. The downside for the Cherubs left on campus is that it's a quiet period, and when this coincided with the gap between two basic training sessions, the instructors were finding new and imaginative ways to torture the agents they'd been left with. This year it was a two-week intensive swimming course to build fitness, and George's recent spell of maximum chocolate puddings and minimum exercise left him struggling. To make things worse, his best friend Rex was away on an exciting-sounding mission and had missed all of it.
When they made their way out of the swimming complex, Letty was waiting for them. An excellent swimmer who'd finished miles ahead of almost everyone else, she lived opposite George in the main building and took every opportunity to make fun of him, and this was no exception.
"News just in; George Knight confirmed world's worst swimmer," she said, holding her hand in front of her mouth like a microphone. "One thousand laps await him for being a fat slob."
George shook his head. "Two seconds to spare."
Letty looked disappointed. "Ah well, there's always next time."
"I'm so glad these two weeks are over," Ralph said, speaking for the three of them. "I never want to swim anywhere ever again."
"My hair has been a mess since I've had to wash it every day," Letty moaned.
"I don't know what you're on about," George replied, "Your hair is frizzy anyway, so it looks exactly the same."
Letty ran a hand through her curls and shrugged. "You're a boy, you're too dumb to understand."
They walked back to the main building together, where Letty left them and headed for the laundry room.
"Some of us don't have nasty-smelling piles of dirty clothes lying all over their rooms," Letty said. "And I've gotta keep my navy shirts in pristine condition."
Letty had been awarded a navy shirt for a mission in the US and the novelty of being senior to her friends was yet to wear off. George had run out of funny comebacks after a week and now just ignored her.
"See you later," Ralph said half-heartedly to her as he and George waited for the lift. "Any news from Rex?"
"Nah. He says he's doing well and stuff, but nothing really more than last time," George replied. "He's so lucky, missing all of this training stuff."
Ralph nodded and pressed the button for the seventh floor once they were in. "There are rumours of another training exercise to come after this."
George stared at the ceiling. "So long as it doesn't involve swimming, I couldn't care less."
He left Ralph once they got out of the lift and then headed for his room, which was right at the end of the corridor. His end of the corridor was usually lively, but with so many people away on missions it had been subdued recently. George consoled himself with the thought that there would probably be a couple of good parties when everyone got back, as he unlocked his room and chucked his swimming kit straight onto a pile of dirty washing. It would probably sit there and fester for a couple of weeks, but all George wanted to do was relax until it was time for dinner and then stuff his face. Everything else could wait.
He'd hardly even got the PlayStation fired up when there was a knock on his door. He silently bet ten pounds that it would be Letty to wind him up, but when he opened the door it turned out to be Beatrice, a girl he'd been on basic training with. She wasn't very tall and got teased about her height, but she more than made up for it with skill and no boy on campus wanted to come up against her in the dojo.
"George!" she said brightly. "Got a minute?"
"I suppose," George shrugged. "Depends what for."
"In our swimming session this morning, some lippy little red-shirt was mouthing off, making fun of me because I'm in the lower class than the rest of the grey-shirts. I threatened to beat him to a pulp but the instructors got involved and I got two extra lengths, which obviously this kid thought was hilarious."
"How is this any of my concern?" George asked, mind drifting back towards the PlayStation.
"I wanna get him back but I need a hand. Letty doesn't wanna help and you're next best," Beatrice explained.
George shook his head. "No offence Beatrice, but your schemes are terrible. I'm practically guaranteed to get punishment laps when it goes wrong."
"Come on George, we didn't get into trouble that time we got out of double history."
This wasn't exactly true; they had avoided double history and they hadn't been officially punished, but they'd been set extra homework to catch up and George had a suspicion the teacher had deliberately doubled it to punish them. However, Beatrice had been hanging it over his head ever since.
"I'm punishment-free at the moment and the last thing I want is cleaning duty or something," George told her, but the look on Beatrice's face told him she'd had an especially creative idea for revenge and part of him wanted to hear it.
"Let me just explain it. You can back out if you want," Beatrice said firmly, pushing past him into his room. "Trust me."
The plan was simple enough: Beatrice had found a disgustingly mouldy pair of shorts in the changing rooms and was planning to sneak into the red-shirt's room during dinner and hide them at the back of his wardrobe. After a couple of hours in there everything would smell disgusting and red shirts were merciless whenever something embarrassing happened to one of their friends. All George had to do was keep look-out. He didn't really want to be involved, but Beatrice had recently developed a crazy streak and his desire to see it in action outweighed his common sense. When they met up outside the junior block during dinner, Beatrice was holding a carrier bag at arm's length.
"All set?" George asked, doing his best to look casual. He caught a whiff of the bag and almost gagged, causing Beatrice to laugh.
"He's gone and so has his roommate. All you have to do is wait here and if they come back, stall him for a couple of minutes."
George shook his head. "How am I supposed to recognise him? I've no idea who he is."
Beatrice paused, obviously not having thought of this, and George groaned. Her plans were always half-baked and she invariably got punished when it went wrong.
"Listen, give me the shorts and I'll put them in the wardrobe. You keep look-out," George said, tutting. "What's the room number?"
"Eight. His name's Jared something-or-other, so make sure you put it in the right wardrobe," Beatrice replied, handing him the bag. "Hurry up."
George didn't really feel right playing a trick on a little kid, but the red-shirts could be vicious when they wanted to be and he felt it would help make up for all of the snide comments he'd occasionally got from the younger kids.
Room eight was easy to find and the junior rooms didn't lock, so George just pushed the door open. It would have been safer to knock, but he could always claim he was returning something. Nobody was inside, though, so he shut the door behind him and scanned through some piles of exercise books to determine which side belonged to Jared. Being back in the junior block brought back memories of his days as a red-shirt, but he ignored his reminiscing and shoved the carrier bag deep into the back of the cluttered wardrobe and headed out, glad it was a fairly easy job.
"Let's go," he said to Beatrice as he left the junior block. "I'm absolutely starving."
"Thanks George," Beatrice said, pounding her fist into her palm. "Let's see how he likes this little bit of revenge."
George shook his head but laughed. Beatrice was always fun, even if she was sometimes a total nutter, and as they headed for the cafeteria, George realised he'd had more fun than if he'd just sat in front of the TV instead.
The cafeteria was always a laugh, and with the swimming course finally over, practically everyone was in a good mood which just added to the atmosphere. There wasn't a queue since they were late, so George grabbed a tray and loaded up on the best of what was left before sliding into a seat at his usual table with Letty and Ralph.
"Where've you been?" Letty asked through a mouthful of lasagne.
"In the middle of a really tough race on the PlayStation," George replied, using his fork to churn up his own serving of lasagne into a satisfying mulch.
"Boys," Letty tutted as Beatrice sat down beside her. George noticed that Beatrice didn't get questioned, but he ignored it, preferring to concentrate on his dinner.
It wasn't long before a giant hand clapped onto his shoulder. George panicked, thinking it was someone come to drag him off to his handler's office for his part in Beatrice's plan, and in the process of turning round to see who it was he almost knocked over his glass of squash. Disaster was averted by Letty lunging across the table and saving it, slopping only a tiny amount.
George looked up, expecting Kazakov or Pike, but instead he got the friendlier face of his friend Michael, whose huge chest was stretching his black CHERUB t-shirt.
"Scared ya, huh?" Michael laughed.
George shook his head, trying to recover his composure. "Just made me jump, that's all."
"I hear you only just passed the swimming course," Michael grinned, squeezing George's shoulder like a vice. "Sounds to me like you're not in peak condition, so the instructors are putting you on the extra course, another week plus a pass/fail test."
Fifty percent sure it was a wind-up, George tried to act cool. "Yeah, as if," he replied, pushing Michael's hand away, but when he turned back to face everyone at the table, they had deadly serious expressions.
"Didn't they tell you? The whole point was to get your fitness up, so if you're still lacking, there's an extra course," Letty said gravely.
Ralph nodded. "Bad luck, mate. Still, it'll be over in a week."
George could feel anger boiling up and launched into a rant, pounding his fist on the table. "This is ridiculous, I passed the course even if it was close, and even then, the reason I was slow was because I was so knackered from all those extra lengths I'd done earlier, it was nothing to do with my fitness, I'm perfectly fit and if they think I'm gonna-"
He was cut off by a roar of laughter from the others at the table, with Michael laughing loudest.
"Got ya," he grinned, slapping him gently on the cheek. "Knew you'd fall for it."
George could see the funny side and joined in with the laughter as he went back to his dinner. "Screw you guys, I was practically wetting myself…"
"Michael set it up with us while you were gone," Letty explained. "Your reaction was priceless."
"How did Beatrice know?" George asked, waving to Michael as the older agent headed back to his own friends. "She arrived after me."
Beatrice smirked. "I just caught on when he said it and played along. I was sure nobody was stupid enough to fall for it, but you continue to amaze me."