Paul stood on the canal bank, hands in pockets, watching with amusement as the Police frogmen searched the murky water for the body of his friend. About him, stabbing blue lights pierced the driving rain.

"Clear off, sonny!" an anxious policewoman called from her car. "This is no place for you to loiter. Why aren't you at school?"

"I've been to the dentist. On my way to school now."

"Off you go then!" the officer insisted.

The slim, brown-haired ten year old smiled and set off downhill, pulling his green anorak hood closer about his head to fend off the soaking Devon weather. As he passed through the almost deserted town centre, he shivered as he thought of how cold and wet the Police were going to get - especially the frogmen floundering in the canal.

He could have saved them all that discomfort. He knew that his friend wasn't bobbing around with the fishes at the bottom. But what was the use of saying anything? No one would listen before, when they had tried so hard to explain about the fire.

"One thing's for sure," he told himself out loud. "They can bring in a million searchers and they're still not going to find Michael. I'd want to disappear too if I had bullying parents like his."

He reached the school and hurried onto the streaming playground. At the far side stood the mobile classroom, now rebuilt, where his friends would be shouting their way through a wet playtime.

Suddenly, Paul stopped and tensed, his hair and skin prickling. This dismal morning was exactly like the one a year ago, when the impossible and unbelievable had actually happened.

He stood quietly, listening and remembering, oblivious to the water seeping through his clothes and shoes. Then a wave of singing from a class of younger children pulled him back to the present.

"In and out the windows,

In and out the windows,

In and out the windows,

As we have done before!"

Paul laughed and trotted on. "That's just what Michael's done too," he said aloud. "Good luck, Michael! And don't forget to say hello to Mad Garin and Old Misery Guts for me."

He stared hard at the racing clouds. The wild weather was bringing back vivid memories of how everything had started. He had been looking out of the old classroom window, watching the rain....

"Not another wet playtime," muttered Paul. But he didn't really mind staying in. He was amusing himself by watching what he called storm bubbles, those large, drifting bubbles that sometimes appear on puddles during downpours. It was fascinating to count how many seconds one could last before being popped by a direct hit from a raindrop.

He turned away and looked across to where his teacher was rummaging through the slithering mountain of unmarked exercise books and unfinished paintings on his desk.

"Oh no!" groaned Mr Hawkins. "I've left the videotape for our maths lesson over in the Staff room. I must have it. Mrs Marshall's class is coming to watch it with us in ten minutes."

Paul grinned with satisfaction as he imagined his teacher's mat of red hair turning into a wet sponge and his shoes filling up with playground puddle-water, long before he got to the Staff room.

"I won't be a minute," called Mr Hawkins as he hurried out to the cloakroom and grabbed his raincoat. "Mind you behave this time. Simon! I'm leaving you in charge."

Paul turned back to the window and wiped away the condensation with the sleeve of his Cambridge-blue sweatshirt. Then his best friend Michael came over from the sink, where he had been poking his thumbs up the taps, for a reason only known to himself.

"Did you hear that?" scoffed Michael. "Bossy's been left in charge yet again. I never get picked, do I?"

Paul's grey eyes regarded his somewhat wayward friend with amusement. "Mr Hawkins wasn't going to pick you after what you did yesterday. Serves you right for tying Kate's hair to the door handle."

Michael pretended not to hear. He pressed his short, dark hair against the window and grinned as he watched his teacher make a desperate dash for the main building.

Paul's attention was taken by Helen, who was hanging a very colourful and very runny painting of a parrot over a cupboard door to dry. "That's good," he approved cheerfully as he watched trickles of blue and yellow paint drip into a tray of construction bricks on the floor. "Mr Hawkins will be pleased with that. He said he wanted more birds for our jungle."

"I think we've got too much stuff already," said Helen. "You can't see across the room any more. Still, it brightens up this shabby old dump."

Paul looked around the classroom and smiled. Helen wasn't exaggerating. Their painted paper jungle had grown wildly out of control. He must have wasted hours gazing at the huge, water-colour trees that scrambled up the walls and draped lurid green leaves from the ceiling. And hours more admiring the gaudy birds and butterflies that dangled on black thread and spun slowly in the cold, damp draught from the doorway. But his favourite moment had been when the Headmistress had come fussing in, failed to duck, and got her hair tangled in festoons of tissue-paper orchids.

He spotted Michael's monkey swinging from a branch and giggled as he remembered why it was wearing a pair of bright blue sunglasses.

"It'll need those in the tropical sun, won't it?" Michael had insisted when Mr Hawkins had suggested that it might look a lot more lifelike without them.

"Shut up, the lot of you!" Simon yelled above the rising racket. "Or I'll make sure you're all for it when Mr Hawkins gets back."

"Wasting his breath," said Michael. "Besides, he's making more noise than the rest of us...."

"Oh no!" interrupted Paul. "Here comes Melvin." He pointed to a small, dark-haired figure hurrying towards them, head bent against the rain.

"What does that sneaky little bully want in here?" snapped Michael.

"He's got our register. I bet I can guess what's happened. He's had to stand outside Mrs Price's office yet again. She got fed up with seeing his ugly face - said it made her school look untidy - and sent him out with the registers. Will he get wet!"

"Pity he doesn't drown!" was Michael's unsympathetic reply.

"Look out, everyone! Mal's coming in!" Helen shouted in warning.

Paul always enjoyed hearing the despised boy's nickname. He knew that 'Mal' was short for Malicious Melvin.

Melvin barged his way over to the teacher's desk and returned Michael's hostile stare, before searching through the registers he was carrying.

"If you lot don't stop yelling and running about," Simon shouted again, "I'm going to.... Oh!" he finished in surprise as the classroom lights suddenly went out.

"Oooh!" cried several voices and Michael started to wail like a ghost.

"Nothing to panic about," Simon announced importantly. "It's only another power cut."

But Paul felt strangely uneasy. Without the bright fluorescent lights, their jungle had taken on an almost sinister atmosphere. He started to shiver. Everything felt so exposed and different. Even the air felt different. It was as if the chill gloom outside had invaded their room.

"I'm scared!" wailed a tiny, nervous girl called Joanne.

Paul heard the drip, drip, of rainwater falling from the leaves. Splash! One hit him on the head and ran down his scalp in a cold trickle. He shuddered and moved closer to Michael.

"Something's wrong," he whispered unhappily. "Something very strange is happening. The room feels completely weird...as if...as if the roof had gone!"

"Let me out!" sobbed Joanne as she stumbled towards the door in panic. She blundered frantically through a clump of rain-soaked bushes and then gave a shriek of terror.

"I can't find the door! Help us someone! The jungle's turned real!"

© Ron Karley