Hollow Pike (4 page)

A further snigger broke out.

‘No, Jason Briggs, not
that
kind of love. A place where all pupils respect one another and work together in harmony. There is no room for unkindness, jealousy, prejudice or hate.
Each day I want you to come to this school and ask the question, “Am I trying my hardest and am I being
nice
?”. If you can answer yes to that question then step inside Fulton
High, for you are most welcome here!’

As she nodded her square, grey bob, pupils began to applaud her rousing speech, a fitting start to a new school year.

‘And now to our Thought of the Day . . .’

‘Ignore that crusty old bitch.’ Laura Rigg’s voice poured into Lis’s left ear like liquid velvet. ‘Everyone knows I rule Fulton High. Welcome to my
school.’

Boys

‘So who were the witches?’ asked Mrs Osborne with relish.

Lis knew the answer but she certainly wasn’t going to out herself as someone who read books on the first day at a new school. Surviving registration, assembly and first-period Maths had
left Lis almost drained. She’d politely listened to Harry’s boyfriend troubles over morning break and was now sitting in English, listening to the teacher discuss a play she’d
read years ago. She could barely imagine where she’d find the energy to get through lunch. If her life were a book, she’d call this chapter ‘The Ordeal’.

‘Oh, come on!’ Mrs Osborne moaned, waving her copy of
The Crucible
at them. ‘Didn’t anyone read the book over the summer? Chloe, any ideas?’

‘Erm, that slave woman, Tituba?’ Chloe Wriggley frowned.

The mere mention of ‘tit’ caused Jason Briggs to almost fall off his chair in barely contained giggles.

From the far left of the classroom, doll-like Delilah Bloom raised her arm.

‘Delilah?’

‘There were no witches in Salem.’

‘She’d know!’ someone whispered behind Lis.

‘Go on, Delilah.’

Lis sat up to take notice of the interesting new direction in which the lesson was heading.

‘The whole point of
The Crucible
is that witches, if there were any, posed no threat to the community. The real danger was in the hysteria that took over,’ Delilah
explained.

Mrs Osborne smiled and nodded, although Lis sensed that many in the class were left trailing.

‘Good points, Delilah, thank you. Good to know
someone
did the reading.’ She addressed the whole class, ‘
The Crucible
was a metaphor for the way America treated
suspected communists – a modern witch hunt. Can anyone think of any more recent examples where groups in society may have inspired the same suspicion or fear?’

Fear. Lis knew a thing or two about fear. She thought of her recurring nightmare. Her dreams were always the same, one minute it’d be something totally random like fretting about preparing
a giant Christmas cake, and then, suddenly, without any chance to wake herself, the temperature would plummet and her hands would gradually submerge in the coppery waters of the stream in the wood.
The
here we go again
sensation would kick in, but not until it was far too late and she’d resumed her doomed crawl through the forest, accompanied by the sound of her own screams.

Forcing herself back into the present, Lis focused on meticulously rearranging her brand new stationery. She lined up pointed pencils in length order, sliding her finger along the sharp graphite
tips. She was safe in school where no murderous hands could reach her. She tried to refocus on the lesson – Mrs Osborne was suggesting that Islamophobia and hate crime were modern parallels
of Miller’s witch hunt – and suddenly noticed Delilah observing her from across the room.
Have I gone pale?
The absolute last thing she needed was to become ‘the new girl
who freaks out in English’; that really would take some living down.

Lis took a deep breath. Cool, calm, composed. New Lis™ was back on track. She sat up straight and started taking notes from Mrs Osborne’s lecture.

As the class filed out of English, amidst a flurry of frantic text-message checking, Lis stole an opportunity to put her new social-butterfly wings to the test.

She fell into step alongside Delilah Bloom. ‘I think we can assume we’re the only two people to have read
The Crucible
!’

Delilah smiled a cautious grin, clearly on guard. ‘I think that would be a safe assumption, yes.’

‘Oh, well, maybe they saw the Winona Ryder film,’ Lis suggested with a smile.

‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that version, darling. High camp!’

Lis loved the way Delilah spoke. It was wilfully eccentric, like she was channelling Oscar Wilde or something. ‘Oh, I know, when I was little I wanted to
be
Winona and marry Johnny
Depp. I used to watch
Edward Scissorhands
over and over on video!’

Delilah laughed heartily. ‘Another high quality film. New girl, you have excellent taste!’

Like the Red Sea parting, the throng of pupils at the far end of the corridor separated to make way as Laura Rigg and her acolytes approached.

Delilah casually drew the longest pencil from Lis’s fingers and used it to secure her wild red hair in a knot. ‘You don’t want to be seen talking to me, Lis. It won’t do
you any favours whatsoever.’

Before Lis had a chance to argue, Delilah strutted down the stairs and into fresh air.

Lis was surprised to find herself disappointed at the girl’s departure. Was it that she really liked Delilah, or had she just been dreading lunchtime with the ‘It Girls’?

She didn’t have time to dwell on this as eight skinny, miniskirted legs reached her position in the hall. She smiled as honestly as she could. She knew that half the girls in Year Eleven
would kill to socialise with these pedigree creatures, yet she had a tight knot in her stomach.

‘Hiya, you all right?’ asked Harry, slipping her arm through Lis’s own.

‘Come with us for lunch.’ Laura’s intonation suggested a command rather than a question.

‘Yeah, if that’s cool?’ Lis replied.

‘Totally,’ Laura replied. ‘There are some people you need to meet.’

The weather had finally cleared up and hazy sunshine warmed the concrete outdoor areas of Fulton High, the drying buildings cracking in the heat. Lis was led through several
communal quads full of pupils nibbling on sandwiches and apples. It seemed that each plaza had become territory for a different social clique: one occupied by childlike Year Sevens, another by the
music crowd, balancing on cello cases while tuning guitars. Under a rain shelter, she spotted Delilah’s trio lurking on the outskirts of an obvious ‘geek’ group. With them, but
not with them.

As they left the school buildings behind and started to cross the rugby pitch, heading ever further from the canteen, Lis began to fear that, much like the girls at her old school, these new,
stick-thin friends shunned any form of food during lunch break. Not wanting to say anything, Lis vowed to leave ten minutes to grab a sandwich before the end of break. ‘Where are we
going?’ she ventured.

‘We sit by the trees,’ Nasima stated. ‘The lads should be there by now.’

Oh, joy! She should have known there’d be boys involved. Lis didn’t relish the idea of being ‘fresh meat’.

‘You can smoke in the wood, if you want,’ said Fiona. ‘Teachers sort of walk around, but they never look into the trees.’

Looking over the crumbling boundary wall, the trees in question were actually the edge of Pike Copse which so reminded Lis of the wood in her dreams. It seemed there was to be no getting away
from her nightmare in such a small town.

She could hear the raucous laughter of ‘the lads’ from midway across the pitch. It sounded like the island of donkeys from
Pinocchio.
This didn’t fill her with much
confidence, although many of her closest friends in Bangor had been male so she was willing to give them a chance. The girls sloped down an incline much to the vocal appreciation of the gang
waiting by the trees. Fiona instantly crossed to a tall, thin youth with far too much gel in his hair and launched into a tongue-filled display of affection.

Laura sidled over to Lis and grasped her hand, pulling her down to sit on the grass embankment. ‘Make them come to us, obviously!’ she whispered in her ear.

They didn’t have to wait long for attention. Three young men threw their rugby ball aside and jogged over to where the girls sat.

Laura leaned further in. ‘The one with the earring is Cam. He is so right for you.’

Lis could barely mask the look of horror on her face before the boys reached them.

‘Y’all right, Riggsy?’ asked the one Laura had identified as Cam. He had the broadest shoulders Lis had ever seen on a sixteen-year-old, and the dainty jewelled stud in his ear
did nothing to soften his exterior.

Laura shot Cam her coy smirk. ‘Yeah, I’m good. What’s with the hair?’

He smiled broadly, twisting spikes with his fingers. ‘Just somethin’ new I’m tryin’!’

‘It looks crap,’ Laura retorted before nodding slightly at Lis. ‘This is that new girl I texted you about, Lis.’

He looked Lis up and down before turning back to smile at his mates. ‘She’s mine!’ he said, deliberately loud enough for her to hear. ‘Nice to meet you, Lis. You are a
very sexy lady.’

Lis stifled a laugh. How does one respond to that? ‘OK. Thanks I guess.’

‘I’m also very sexy. We should have sex.’

His mates laughed loudly as they threw themselves down on the grass.

‘Cameron!’ Laura punched him on a bulging arm. ‘Why are you such a sex pest? Can’t you just knock one out in your bathroom like everyone else?’

At that, Lis laughed out loud. Laura was fierce. She handled the boys as if she was one of them and Lis respected that. In fact, there was something quite masculine about Laura. Not physically,
of course, but it was almost as if being queen of the school wasn’t enough, she wanted to be king, too.

‘Why are you so savage all the time, Riggsy?’ Cam demanded.

‘Because you’re so boring and it amuses me!’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Now, try again with my new friend, Lis. She’s not a piece of meat.’

Lis smiled, safe under Laura’s protection. She couldn’t stop staring at her new ally. It was as if Laura perfectly matched her idea of beauty, and when she was with her it made Lis
feel more attractive too.

‘Sorry, Lis. Welcome to Fulton. I’m Cameron and this is Ste and Bobsy. Is that better?’

‘Much better!’ Lis said, shaking his outstretched hand.

As the boys joined their circle, Lis was distracted by a newcomer striding down the slope. The new arrival was tall and slender, and Lis could just make out the curve of firm muscles underneath
his shirt. But it was his face that held her gaze: square jaw and full lips, with ocean blue eyes looking out from beneath heavy, dark brows. Lis had always had a thing for blue eyes with dark
hair. It was somehow otherworldly.

‘That’s Danny Marriott,’ whispered Harry.

Gutted that she’d been well and truly busted, Lis gulped hard and realised her throat had become sandpaper.

Danny was approaching their group.

‘He’s so hot, isn’t he?’ Harry added rhetorically. ‘He didn’t used to be. He was like this big chubby geek and then all of a sudden he became gorgeous and
joined the rugby team. Random!’

‘Oi, Danny-Boy! Sit your arse down!’ demanded Laura.

He smiled and it was so perfect, Lis stopped breathing. He shuffled into the group.

‘How’s it going?’ he threw his rucksack down and sat cross-legged next to Nasima. ‘I can’t stay; I have to do homework for Physics next lesson. I forgot all about
it. Bobsy, have you got your textbook?’

Bobsy started to rummage in his bag as Lis tried not to gawp at Danny.

‘You’re such a geek, Marriott!’ Laura said and grinned. ‘It’s just not sexy.’

‘If I mess up my GCSEs my dad won’t get me the car on my seventeenth, remember?’

‘Oh, yeah, bummer,’ said Bobsy, handing over a dog-eared textbook.

Danny fixed Lis in his turquoise gaze. It was like a Caribbean wave washing over her.

‘Hi, we haven’t met. I’m Danny.’ His voice was canyon deep but so gentle she had to strain to hear him.