The Greenwich Interplanetary Society

  ***

  The next morning, Stella grabbed her school bag from her room as usual, but didn’t notice that the orange figure was inside until she pulled out her maths book in class and she found it fixed onto the front cover. It was stuck face down, arms and legs stretched out like a starfish.

  Her maths teacher was called Mrs Jenkins, and it was an unfortunate fact that her face had an unhappy knack of turning a bright puce whenever she got upset. She was painfully aware that some classes would deliberately wind her up just to see the brilliant flush of pink stretch up to her hair. It was because of this that she was always on the lookout for bad behaviour.

  “No toys in class, Stella Mayweather. You know the rules. Put it away,” Mrs Jenkins told Stella, once she had noticed Helix’s dog toy.

  “Yes, Miss,” Stella replied, trying to prize the jellied man off her book.

  For some reason it was stuck fast. Her struggle started a ripple of laughter through the class, and Mrs Jenkins’s face started to glow pink.

  “I said put it away!”

  Mrs Jenkins reached over and tried to peel the toy off the book. There was a loud rip as the book cover tore away. She held the little orange man in the air as the cardboard cover suddenly came unstuck and fluttered to the floor. There was another burst of laughter from the class.

  “That is school property,” Mrs Jenkins squeaked, her face almost purple now. “Detention for you, girl, and I’m confiscating this – this thing.”

  But the orange man had stuck itself to Mrs Jenkins’s hand, and she frantically shook her arm to try and unloose it. With a mighty heave, the toy was thrown from her hand and sailed through the air like an orange snowball, landing with a splat on Mrs Jenkins’s whiteboard. It stuck there throughout the rest of the lesson, its gum-like eyes staring into the distance. A flustered Mrs Jenkins told the class to copy out times tables in silence, whilst she fanned her face back to a rosy pink with the cover of Stella’s maths book.

  Stella was late getting out of school because of her detention, and Helix complained of the wait because the ice on the pavement had made his paws cold.

  “It’s your fault for putting your toy in my bag,” she told him.

  Helix denied putting anything in her bag, and they both were moody with each other all the way home. It didn’t help Stella’s grumpiness that she was sure that Tom was following her again. She tried darting into doorways and peering behind her, but couldn’t actually catch him at it. When she got home, her mum told her off for getting a detention and then, after dinner, sat her down at the table to do the homework that she hadn’t done the night before.

  Stella stomped up to her room, furious with her mum, Helix, Mrs Jenkins and the unfairness of life in general. She slumped onto her bed with a huff and spotted another jelly toy lying on the floor, except this one was the colour of lemon curd. She chucked it straight in the bin.