A Trip to the Head5

It showed that she’d given me my third demerit in a week, which was an automatic trip to the Headmaster’s office. Her brown eyes went large. “Oh!” she said. “I see you’ve been a naughty boy, Barkley. Better go right in. The Head’s not here but you can wait in his office.” She gave the note back to me with a sympathetic smile. I gulped and nodded, my hand trembling shamefully as I grabbed the piece of paper. My face burning, I turned away quickly and started down the long corridor to the Head’s office. His door was at the far end, nearly twenty feet away. “Headmaster Grimm” the sign on the door read. I’d only been inside once before, not long after arriving at school, and that time I’d gotten a stern lecture and six strokes with the slipper across the seat of my shorts. Even now my bum tingled at the memory.