Mr Gavin, the first principal of the school, had inherited a huge amount of gold from a long-lost uncle. The strange thing was, rather than bank the gold, he hid it somewhere inside the school. But, as fate would have it, he died of a heart attack in his final year as principal without telling anyone where the gold was. For more than a hundred years, the students at Milford Junior School had tried to find the treasure. The kids still talked about it all the time but the teachers thought it was all a joke. I didn’t think it was a joke, and I wanted Gavin’s Gold just as much as anybody else.

  I stopped chewing my apple and looked at Jimmy, shocked.

  ‘Really? Do you really think you found it?’ I asked.

  ‘I swear!’ he puffed. ‘The detention room . . . under the carpet . . . I think it’s there!’

  I liked Jimmy Webb. He was in my class, Year Four. He was a friendly and likeable boy, but he had the unfortunate knack of getting into trouble all the time. He meant well and had a good heart, but poor old Jimmy was one of the few regular visitors to the detention room.

  ‘You could be rich,’ I said, taking another bite of my apple.

  ‘I know!’ he burst. ‘So rich!’

  I could not believe my luck. Was it possible that after all these years, I had the chance to get Gavin’s Gold? I had to find out more, and a plan started forming in my head. With Jimmy’s help, it may just work.

  ‘You had better be careful,’ I said thoughtfully.

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jimmy suspiciously.

  ‘Well, if you have really found Gavin’s Gold, you don’t want the whole school to know. Make sure you only tell people you can trust.’

  He nodded in silent agreement before turning and running off.

  ‘See you back in class!’ I called out after him.

  Jimmy’s words stayed with me during morning tea. I wandered around the playground, thinking hard. Not only was my head spinning with the news of Gavin’s Gold, but Jimmy had reminded me that I had to go to the detention room at lunch. I hated that room.

  The detention room was in the oldest building in the school. It stood by itself at the edge of the playground. Its brown, weathered walls mocked any student who dared go near it. Nobody enjoyed going there. Why would they? If you were silly enough to get a detention, it was absolute torture. There were no chairs or desks in the room and so you simply had to sit on the dirty, worn carpet. There was nothing to do but stare at the grimy, old walls. Minutes seemed to last hours in that room. All the kids, and even the teachers, had grown to dislike the building more than anything else at Milford Junior School.

  Today was different, though. Today, I would go to the detention room with something else on my mind – Gavin’s Gold. The bell sounded and I headed back to class.

  As soon as I entered the room, I saw Jimmy talking excitedly to his best friend, Dean Dallas. I walked over to him and tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Be careful,’ I reminded him. ‘Not the whole school. Just the people you trust.’

  The sound of the lunch bell filled the air. The time had come. Here was my chance to get Gavin’s Gold. Feeling happy with my plan, I quickly made my way to the detention room and sat down on the old, stained carpet. The room smelled musty and the bare walls towered above me. But, today they didn’t seem so bad. As I looked at them with fresh eyes, they seemed to glisten like Gavin’s Gold might. I had treasure on my mind.

  A Year Two boy, Tommy Smith, suddenly poked his head through the door and looked at me, seeing if it was safe to come in. I nodded to him and he sat down nervously on the carpet next to me.

  ‘What did you do to get a detention?’ I whispered.

  He looked anxiously around the frightful room before whispering back, ‘Didn’t do my homework. Third time in a row.’

  We sat in silence, two lonely figures in the centre of the disgusting room. Lunch seemed to be dragging on for a lifetime. You could almost hear time passing. I could see why the students at Milford Junior School were so well behaved. Nobody in their right mind would want to spend their lunchtime – or any time – in here.

  My thoughts turned again to Gavin’s Gold. What if Jimmy had really found out where the treasure was stored? Had he uncovered the great mystery? He had mentioned the carpet. Could it be here, hidden somewhere beneath me? I decided to look at the floor carefully, determined to find a clue.

  It was towards the end of lunch that I eventually saw it. Near the front of the room, a single unravelled thread of carpet was poking up. The carpet was worn around the thread and it looked as though someone had been picking at it. I waited impatiently for the final lunch bell to sound before making my move.

  The bell eventually rang and Tommy leaped to his feet and dashed outside. He clearly did not want to hang around. I crept to the front of the room, eager to take a closer look at the carpet. I pulled the thread by the end, unravelling it some more, before picking at a couple of bits of carpet around it. I wedged my smallest finger into a tiny hole that had formed around the base of the thread, and tore it open.

  ‘That’s it!’ I exclaimed. My words echoed around the empty detention room. I had to tell Jimmy.

  Jimmy buzzed with excitement when I told him later that afternoon. The class was doing a writing test.

  ‘I knew it!’ he whispered excitedly, trying not to draw attention to himself. ‘I knew it was there. I can’t believe you saw it, too!’

  A couple of students were looking at us, so Jimmy lowered his voice.

  ‘I have to get in there today . . . after school.’

  ‘No can do,’ I replied. ‘It’s locked all day and all night. It is only ever open at lunch.’

  ‘But . . . but . . . it could be worth millions,’ he stammered. ‘Billions . . . trillions . . . gazillions!’

  I shook my head. ‘It will have to wait, Jimmy. The only way to get into the room is to get a detention. And who wants to do that?’

  ‘I do,’ said Susan Poach. She had been listening in the whole time.

  Susan Poach, with her freckles and ponytail, was the worst person to find out. Her nickname was Motormouth and she was famous for spreading secrets. Worst of all, she seemed to know everybody in the school and everybody in the school seemed to know her. It would be impossible to keep Gavin’s Gold a secret now. Susan gave a mean smile and immediately turned to the girl next to her, whispering into her ear.

  The next morning, the playground was buzzing. Everybody was talking about Gavin’s Gold. Motormouth Susan had made sure of that. The students had gathered around the detention room and were chatting excitedly. One student was even standing at the door, peering through the keyhole expectantly.

  Mr Mallet, the Year Six teacher, was on playground duty. He was one of the strictest teachers in the school, and he stepped in to break up the crowd.

  ‘What’s this about?’ he spluttered, stepping between the students and the building. ‘Stop this nonsense! What’s going on?’

  ‘You look like a banana peel, sir! That’s what’s going on!’ blurted out Derrick Barnes, a boy in Mallet’s class.

  Mr Mallet’s jaw dropped. He could not believe what he had just heard.

  ‘EXCUSE ME, BARNES?!’ he bellowed.

  ‘You look like a big, fat, banana peel, sir!’ teased Derrick again. ‘You heard me. A big, fat, banana peel!’

  Mr Mallet looked furious. You could almost see the anger steam coming out of his ears.

  Derrick pretended to peel a banana and pointed to the teacher. ‘Banana peel,’ he said again, this time poking his tongue out.

  ‘DETENTION, BARNES!’ roared Mr Mallet, looking frightfully angry.

  Derrick Barnes’s face spread into a cunning grin, though he tried to hide it. ‘Excellent,’ he said under his breath. He rubbed his hands together and looked at the detention room.

  The gathering of students was shocked at Derrick’s behaviour, but they knew what he was up to. He wanted to get into the detention room before anybody else. He was prepared to get into big trouble for the rich reward. The students looked around at each other and everybody was thinking the same thing – how to get a detention.

  The bell rang and the students headed back to class. Nobody knew just how crazy things were about to get!

  Year Six was the first year to be put on detention. It only took them ten minutes. As soon as the morning lessons had started, Mr Mallet, who was still in a horrible mood, was already snapping and yelling at his students. All it took was the class to burst into song, singing ‘Mallet wears nappies, Mallet is a baby – Mallet wears nappies, Mallet is a baby’ before the cranky teacher put the whole lot of them on detention.

  The other Year Six class soon heard the news. Not wanting to miss out on the chance to find Gavin’s Gold, they quickly put their teacher to the test. They started jumping up onto the desks, acting like wild monkeys. They put their hands under their arms and made ridiculous monkey noises, poking their tongues out at the poor teacher. Moments later, they had their reward – a whole class detention.

  Year Three followed shortly after. The students in that class thought it would be a good idea to rip up their maths books. Bits of torn-up paper with numbers were soon flying across the classroom in a huge paper fight. It made it look like it had been snowing. Their teacher was shocked at the outrageous behaviour and had no hesitation in putting them all in detention. The Year Three students later said that it was the best way to do it. Not only did they get their precious detention, they got out of maths that day, too.

  My class received detention during morning tea. Spurred on by the Years Three and Six stories, and not wanting to miss out on the chance for gold, the Year Four kids turned the playground into a battlefield of food. It was an edible war zone. Each student, armed with their morning tea, got involved in the largest food fight our school had ever seen. There were apple grenades and orange bombs, machine guns of grapes, booby traps of soft cheese and bullets of biscuits. It was a fun way to get into a lot of trouble.

  The teachers looked shaken at the end of morning tea. Never in the history of the school had there been such naughty behaviour. The students were out of control and nobody knew what to do.

  Shortly after the morning tea break, the Year Five teacher’s voice suddenly echoed down the corridor and drifted into our classroom.

  ‘HOW DARE YOU! THE CLASSROOM IS NOT A BATHROOM! MR LAWLER’S OFFICE! NOW!’

  One of the Year Five boys trudged past our room on his way to the principal’s office. He was smiling and muttering to himself, something about ‘liquid gold’ and ‘worth it’. He ended up with a whole week of lunchtime detentions.

  The Year Five teacher had become so upset that she then placed the rest of the class on detention for working too quietly. Go figure!

  The youngest students were the last to go, but their detention was by far the most spectacular.

  The Kindergarten, Year One and Year Two teachers had taken their classes to the art room for some painting. They were to be doing Christmas art.

  After listening carefully to the instructions, the students returned to their desks, ready to paint. However, painting their blank pieces of paper was the last thing on their minds. Armed with thick brushes and bright colours, they began to paint their desks as if they were blank canvases. The horrified teachers yelled at them to stop, but the children kept painting. They quickly finished painting their desks and then moved on to their chairs. Soon, they were painting the walls and floor. The art room was turning into an artwork. The teachers’ desks were next, but what followed was the naughtiest of all. The teachers themselves were the target for a paint makeover. The screaming adults were quickly covered from head to toe in thick, sticky paint. The little kids giggled and laughed as they attacked the poor teachers with their paintbrushes.

  The noise soon drew the attention of the school principal, Mr Lawler, who burst into the room and collapsed from shock. Needless to say, the giant Picasso piece earned every single student a detention.

  Lunch was now minutes away, and each student at Milford Junior School would soon be heading for the detention room. Their goal was accomplished and the only thing left to do was to find Gavin’s Gold.

  As soon as the first lunch bell sounded, I walked slowly to my bag and took out my lunch. Hundreds of crazed students were scrambling around me, each wanting to be the first to the detention room.

  I sat on a seat outside my classroom and ate my sandwich, watching the race. There was no rush. I knew the treasure would be mine. A couple of slower Kindergarten kids bustled past, heading for the detention room. I picked up my drink bottle, took a big sip and looked at my watch. Five more minutes would do the trick.

  As I walked across the playground to the detention room, the scene before me was extraordinary. Deafening screams of excitement filled the air. Students were tearing at the outside of the detention room with their bare hands, trying to pry open the wooden panels that lined the building.

  Students of all ages were running in and out of the main door, screaming and yelling instructions at each other. Bits of carpet were being tossed through the open windows. I heard a loud crash inside and then some cheering. A large floorboard was dragged outside by a couple of boys in Year Six.

  I took a few small steps closer to the building. A group of girls in my class were kicking at the outside walls, smashing holes in the thin, wooden panels, desperately looking for Gavin’s Gold.

  I strolled casually into the doorway and looked inside. The room was a complete mess. It was like a shipwreck on dry ground that had also been hit by a bomb. Two bombs. Fifty bombs! Students were crawling over the floor, tearing at the carpet, ripping up greedy tufts of it with their bare hands. In an area where the carpet had been stripped, floorboards were showing.

  In another part of the room, a couple of older students were kneeling around a gaping hole in the floor, thrusting their hands inside and feeling for any sign of the treasure. Some Year Three students had kicked holes in one of the walls and were busily throwing the rubbish out through the windows. On the far side of the room, the younger students were jumping up and down, trying to make yet another hole in the floor. I took a deep breath. Now was the time to act.

  ‘STOP RIGHT NOW!’

  The students suddenly froze and looked at me, horrified.

  ‘OUTSIDE! ALL OF YOU!’ I yelled at the top of my voice.

  I pointed to the door.

  A look of shock swept over the students’ faces. Nobody dared move. They looked around the room, realising how much trouble they were in. Every single student in the school had destroyed the old detention room.

  A Kindergarten girl was the first to break the frozen scene. She ran up to me, hugging my leg.

  ‘I’m sowwy, Mr Saunders,’ she cried. ‘Please don’t tell my mummy and daddy.’

  A Year Three boy soon joined her.

  ‘I’m so sorry, sir,’ he said, offering his hand. ‘It’ll never happen again, I promise. Please don’t get me into more trouble.’

  ‘All of you outside, now!’ I yelled again, pointing to the door.

  One by one, the students tiptoed past me, aiming to avoid any more trouble. The room slowly emptied.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Saunders,’ said the girls in my class as they walked sadly past.

  Jimmy Webb was the last one to leave the detention room. He stopped at the door and looked at me with big, watery eyes.

  ‘Mr Saunders . . . I . . . errr . . . well . . . I . . .’

  ‘Outside!’ I reminded him.

  With the whole school lined up in the playground, I voiced my disappointment.

  ‘I am shocked and horrified,’ I said, walking along the long row of frightened students. ‘You have all behaved terribly. Poorly. Shockingly. Each and every one of you is on detention again tomorrow. And you are going to fix this mess!’

  A few days later, Mr Lawler stood at the front of the staffroom with a glass of orange juice in his hand. It was the last day of school and the students had all gone home. It was the final meeting for us teachers before we got out for the summer.

  ‘What a strange end to the year it was,’ he said, taking a sip from his glass. ‘I’ve never seen such bad behaviour from our students. I have no idea what could possibly have gotten into them. But still, a tradition is a tradition, and a prize is a prize. Mr Saunders, please come and accept your award.’

  I walked proudly to the front of the staffroom and took a large, golden trophy from Mr Lawler. He shook my hand and turned to the other teachers, saying, ‘Congratulations, Mr Saunders, winner of giving out the most detentions this year. The trophy is yours. You won it fair and square.’

  The other teachers clapped. It was the first time I had won Gavin’s Gold.

  The clearing couldn’t be far off. Olivia was certain of it. Her life depended on it.

  She had been hacking for hours, cutting her way through the densest of forests, studying the map and following a steady southeast direction on her compass.

  She had come this way before, though things had been different then. The path had been less wild. With time, she discovered, things had gotten worse.

  Today, in the heat of the sun, she struggled forward, the knife slashing ahead of her, inching its way towards the precious clearing.

  Olivia paused for a drink, greedily taking in the final drops from her canteen.

  Her heart sank. It was now empty. It was as hollow as the void in her stomach. She needed food and water and she needed them now. She needed the clearing. She had to make it.

  Olivia’s hopes were refuelled by a sound; a gentle whirring, teasing her ahead; the soft hums of a motor. She pushed on, always heading southeast.

  Finally, when exhaustion and fatigue were at their most dangerous, she stumbled into a section of the landscape where the trees were sparse. She knew she was close.

  Olivia mustered her strength and made one last burst, desperately slicing the few remaining vines. She was through. She had made it.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7