At Archimedes High, a bizarre new chemistry teacher turns an ordinary Tuesday into chaos when his rubber duck assistant escapes and a glowing purple letter appears.
Nothing exciting had ever happened at Archimedes High School. At least, nothing exciting enough to survive more than a week in the gossip chain. There had been the pink bicycle incident with the headmaster, of course, but even that had long since been reduced to a story people told in a bored voice during lunch.
So when Tuesday began the usual way, with the bell ringing, breakfast rolls hidden under desks, and half the class pretending to understand algebra, nobody expected the day to become memorable before first period was over.
Then the new chemistry teacher walked in.
His name was Professor Eugene Wymyslek, and he looked like he had been assembled from whatever was left at the bottom of a wardrobe and the back of a cleaning cupboard. His hair stuck up in every direction at once. His jacket was too short in the sleeves and too long everywhere else. He set his briefcase on the desk, looked over the room through slightly crooked glasses, and said, in a voice far too cheerful for a chemistry lab,
"Good morning. Today we begin with a non-obvious reaction. This is Kazik. He is my assistant. Please do not provoke him."
From his briefcase, he produced a rubber duck.
For a full second, the classroom forgot how to breathe. Michal and Lena, who sat by the third window and had perfected the art of silent laughing, stared at each other with the same expression: absolute disbelief, already turning into trouble. The professor seemed not to notice. He marched to the table, poured a flask of pink liquid into a beaker, placed Kazik in the middle of it, and said, as if announcing homework,
"Now we observe."
Kazik twitched.
Nobody moved. Then the duck gave a sharp little wobble, as if something inside it had just decided to wake up. The professor frowned, reached into his jacket, and pulled out a packet of sugar.
Before anyone could ask why a chemistry teacher was carrying sugar in his pocket, he tipped in a spoonful.
The flask exploded into a shower of confetti.
Paper bits rained over the desks, into hair, sleeves, open notebooks, and one very unfortunate lunchbox. Lena choked on a laugh. Michal ducked under his desk just in time to avoid being hit in the eye by a bright green triangle. Professor Wymyslek stared into the fizzing beaker as if this were a perfectly ordinary result.
"Interesting," he muttered.
Then Kazik shot off the table.
The rubber duck skidded across the floor, slipped under the door, and vanished into the corridor at a speed that made no sense at all. The whole class froze again, this time because the duck had clearly not been meant to do that.
A moment later, there was a dull thud at the window.
A pigeon had crashed into the glass and dropped a narrow purple letter onto the sill. It shimmered faintly, as if it were still warm. The professor went very still. Michal and Lena leaned forward at the same time.
The envelope buzzed.
And somewhere out in the corridor, something made a wet, angry squeaking sound.