Jack Strong and the Red Giant

Chapter One: School's Out

The boy slammed the front door shut and ran up the stairs. He went straight into the bathroom, locked the door and looked into the small mirror by the sink.

It was worse than he feared.

There were swishes and squiggles of red, black, blue, green and orange marker pen all over his face.

He panicked.

Not wanting to be seen like this by his mum and dad he turned on the taps and frantically began to rub his face with a large, yellow sponge. It took almost twenty minutes of feverish scrubbing to remove every last mark.

After he finished dabbing himself with a towel, he walked across the landing, entered his small, sparsely decorated bedroom and slouched down upon the bed.

He had lost another pen fight.

It was supposed to be one against one, yet as soon as he said he wanted to fight there were five or six boys holding him down, scribbling and scrawling all over his face. He kept shouting at them to stop, but they just laughed and giggled, their pens thrusting and jabbing.

He looked into the mirror one last time. After putting on a change of clothes, he wiped his blue eyes dry, neatened his short brown hair, checked his face again for pen marks and left his bedroom.

The smell of food was now emanating from the kitchen and wafting under his bedroom door. Better get this over with, he thought, trudging down the steep flight of stairs into the kitchen.

"How was school today, Jack?" asked his Mum as she spooned a dollop of lumpy mashed potatoes onto his plate.

He shrugged.

"Now come on Jack," said his Dad. "Be nice to your Mum. She's been cooking the tea for ages. The least you could do is tell her how your day went."

"It was okay, I suppose," he said, dejectedly stabbing away at a charred sausage.

"Doesn't sound like it," said his Mum. "You may hate school now, but when you get older you'll look back and see that it was the best time of your life. Trust me."

Jack grunted.

"Now Jack," said his dad, "what have I said about... Hey, what's that on your face?"

"What?" asked Jack, his face reddening.

"That," said his dad, reaching over a pan of soggy-looking carrots and pointing at a green streak on his chin.

"Oh, it's nothing," said Jack, his face brighter than ever.

"It doesn't look like nothing. Jack is it happening again? Be honest with me."

"Is what happening again?" asked Jack, his face now like a beetroot.

"You know full well what I mean."

"Oh... no... it's nothing. Don't worry about it. Me and my friends were just messing about. That's all."

"Promise?"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," said Jack trying to avoid eye contact with his dad.

"Because if it has started again, me and your mum wouldn't mind. You know that don't you? It's not your fault these things happen. You needn't feel guilty about it."

"Sure, I know that," said Jack, staring into the vacuum of his plate.

"All it would take is one phone call. I rather like that new headmaster of yours. I'm sure he'd put a stop to it once and for all."