Etienne went on talking about the concert and suggested that we should all dress in white. Then Marcel turned up, looking shaken. He stared at us wide-eyed with distress, as though some great danger was lying in wait for him.

“You know what?” he asked.

“No.”

“SOMEONE has hidden the toilet paper again!”

Naturally I put on a shocked face.

“It’s been a while since that happened!” I said. “I wonder who on earth it could be…”

“I bet it’s a girl,” said Marcel. “Only a girl would do something as mean as that!”

“Tough times ahead!”

“There’s a risk of impaction!” I said, to impress everyone.

“What?”

“Impaction. Faecal impaction, in fact!”

“What’s that?”

“Why don’t you look it up in the dictionary, under the letter F. And the letter I.”

I didn’t say anything more because just at that moment, a snowball smashed into my nose. It hurt like hell, as if I’d been hit by a stone. Drops of blood began to splatter onto the snow. I immediately noticed the big bloke laughing near the snowmen: a guy from Year Ten who strutted about everywhere as though he was proud of his small, squashed-looking thug’s face. I hadn’t let him join The Rattletraps, and ever since then he’d held a grudge and was out to get me at any opportunity. He’d been sniffing around me in the corridors and the playground for a while, but I’d always managed to keep my head down and my fists stuffed deep in my pockets.

All at once it became crystal clear to me that he was responsible for the snowmen. I’d had good reason to suspect him right from the start. Now there was no doubt about it. I thought about going straight off to find Lucky Luke, but when he added insult to injury by yelling out some not very nice stuff about Marie and me, I saw red. It was like instantaneous global warming. I hurtled across the playground, spraying drops of blood like Hansel and Gretel scattering breadcrumbs. My fingers were tingling like they used to when I was younger and went to boxing classes.