CHERUB: Dark Sun - Robert Muchamore Page 0,1

the chicks wild.’

‘No accounting for female tastes,’ Zhang said. ‘The meat-heads they go out with…’

‘Just because Amy blew you out twice,’ George grinned, as he strolled towards the window.

‘Oh and you’re such a stud,’ Zhang replied.

George stood on the chair by the window and leaned out to cool off in the breeze. He heard a distinctive laugh in the playground below and looked straight down.

George turned back inside. ‘Zhang!’ he yelled eagerly. ‘Gimme that coleslaw. My sister’s standing right under this window.’

Greg and Zhang rushed over, dragging chairs behind them.

‘Nice,’ Zhang grinned, as the three boys leaned out and stared down into the sunny playground. ‘Your sister’s so fit.’

‘Eww,’ George shuddered. ‘You wouldn’t fancy her if you’d seen her in the bath, shaving her hairy-arsed legs.’

‘Face facts,’ Greg said, shaking his head. ‘If Sophie was anything other than your fifteen-year-old sister you’d be perving at her the same as everyone else.’

‘It’s personality that counts,’ George noted. ‘And she’s a grade-one pain in the butthole.’

‘You know what I don’t get?’ Greg said, looking across at Zhang. ‘How does George, with his Twiglet arms and legs, get to have a total babe for a sister?’

‘Shut up,’ George ordered.

Greg and Zhang did shut up. Not because George had told them, but because he’d popped the lid off Zhang’s tub of eight-month-old coleslaw.

‘That’s so rank,’ Greg moaned.

‘It’s bubbling,’ George said, trying not to breathe. ‘The tub is actually warm!’

‘Lob it then,’ Zhang said impatiently. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Greg looked across and saw doubt all over George’s face.

‘Do it,’ Zhang urged. ‘Remember: Sophie lent her ex-boyfriend half your PSP games and you never got ’em back.’

George shook his head and moved to put the lid back on the pot. ‘Better not. If my old lady found out she’d make a misery of my whole summer holidays.’

‘You chicken!’ Zhang tutted. ‘I knew you’d bottle it.’

As George lined up the lid to pop it back on, Zhang reached over and batted his arm. The coleslaw shot up out of George’s hand. He tried catching it but the pot glanced off his fingertips and headed for the ground.

Greg looked down and got a surprise: Sophie and her gaggle of mates had scattered to avoid a football rifling across from the adjacent Astroturf.

‘Watch where you’re kicking that, you knob!’ Sophie shouted.

George, Zhang and Greg watched open mouthed as a bare-chested Year-Ten boy charged in to grab the football. The tension made it feel like slow motion: Sophie and her friends moving away, the coleslaw pot spinning in the air and the beefy Year Ten running in to retrieve the ball.

‘Zhang you idiot!’ George gasped.

The tub of rancid coleslaw hit the Year Ten’s neck as he scooped the football off the concrete. The brown mass erupted, spattering down his bare back and up as far as the top of his shaven head.

Upstairs, the three boys dived away from the window, but in his haste George forgot to duck and whacked the back of his head on the frame.

‘You moron!’ George shouted to Zhang, as he jumped down off the chair. ‘That was Thomas Moran. If he finds us we’re dead.’

‘Who’s Thomas Moran when he’s out shopping?’ Greg asked.

George anxiously rubbed the bump on the back of his head. ‘Just one of the hardest kids in Year Ten, that’s all. Him and his mates are all rugby players. Big rugby players.’

‘Maybe they didn’t see us,’ Greg suggested. ‘They might not even know what window it was thrown from.’

Zhang crept up to the window and peeked out. ‘They saw us!’ he gasped, before ducking back down. ‘Sophie and all her mates are pointing up. Moran and another big dude are sprinting towards the main entrance.’

George was waving his bandy arms around, working himself into a complete state. ‘Why did you hit my arm you idiot? Those guys aren’t gonna take prisoners. If they catch us, they’ll kick our heads in.’

Greg swept his backpack off his desk and headed for the door. ‘Less panic, more running,’ he suggested.

‘This is so bad,’ George shuddered.

As Zhang belted outside into the corridor Greg grabbed George by his collar and yanked him towards the door.

‘Calm down, you’ll be OK,’ Greg said. ‘But we’ve got to start running, now.’

By the time George and Greg got out into the hallway, Zhang had already made it to the main staircase, thirty metres away. He’d hoped to get down to the first floor and hide out in a classroom there, but he had no chance because the two big Year