Pep Squad (17 page)

After a few minutes the plane levelled off.

‘We're at our cruising altitude. Get ready,' said Ms Pimsleur through the PA system.

Still seated, the sophisters strapped themselves to their transition-year partners' harnesses. Jess felt Orla check and tighten all her straps.

Lieutenant Parry stood up and released the door. The wind was quite strong and took Jess by surprise.

‘Sorry – I should have warned you about that,' yelled Orla.

‘First pair, Matt and Evan, get ready to go,' said Lieutenant Parry.

Matt and Evan stood up and shuffled over to the door. Lieutenant Parry double-checked Matt's harness before giving them the go ahead.

The light went green.

Evan put his arms around Matt's chest and stepped out of the plane. The pair disappeared.

‘Next, Lauren and Monica.'

Lauren and Monica shuffled over, had their straps checked and waited for the green light.

‘Go!' said Lieutenant Parry.

They stepped out of the plane and disappeared.

‘Ben and Howard.'

As Ben stood up, his face turned green and he made a spewing face.

‘Hold it in,' said Howard.

Ben took a deep breath and steeled himself.

‘You're supposed to be the twin who can handle heights,' yelled Jess, just loud enough for Ben to hear.

‘You OK, Ben?' asked Lieutenant Parry as he double-checked Ben's harness.

Ben nodded.

‘If you do need to spew, point your head up.'

‘OK,' muttered Ben weakly.

The light went green and Howard shuffled forward until they were out of the plane.

‘Jess and Orla,' said Lieutenant Parry.

Jess and Orla shuffled to the door.

Jess glanced down and felt her breakfast make a bid for staying up in the plane while Lieutenant Parry checked her straps.

The light went green.

‘Let's go,' said Orla, making Jess step out of the aircraft into nothingness. They spun in the air as they dropped away from the plane. The absence of the noisy engines was a relief. Then the sound of whistling wind built up and Jess felt the flesh on her cheeks billow in the breeze caused by their descent, as her arms and legs were blown back behind her.

Suddenly there was a sharp tug as the parachute deployed, jerking them into an upright position.

‘Are you OK?' asked Orla.

Jess had almost forgotten she was there.

‘Yeah. This is great!' exclaimed Jess, looking at the distant ground below them.

‘You can see the abbey over there,' said Orla, pointing right.

For a moment the scene reminded Jess of her Google Maps search for Theruse Abbey all those months ago. At the time she had no idea how much her life would change in less than a year.

‘We've got about a minute to go,' said Orla. ‘When we get close to landing, pull your legs right up like you're going to sit on the ground.'

Jess looked back down. When they were free falling they'd been so high that they didn't seem to be getting any closer to the earth, but now the ground was approaching quite quickly.

‘Legs up – legs up – legs up!' shouted Orla.

Jess pulled her legs up just in time, feeling Orla's knees pummel one thigh then the other as she landed.

‘You can stand up now,' said Orla, staggering slightly under Jess's weight. ‘How was that?'

‘Great!' said Jess, looking up at the other parachutes still on their descent with a slight pang of jealousy as Orla unclipped her.

‘Now for the not-so-fun bit,' said Orla, ‘packing up the parachute.'

Jess was helping Orla repackage the 'chute when suddenly there was a scream. Jess recognised the voice and a shiver ran down her spine.

‘Em!' yelled Jess, running towards a black and yellow parachute that still had some of its form as it came to rest on the ground.

Emily was lying facedown on the ground, her knee twisted at an awkward angle. Niamh was lying on top of her, trying to unbuckle the harness.

Jess rolled them over and Emily shrieked in pain.

‘Em,' said Jess.

‘This hurts,' cried Emily. ‘This really, really hurts.'

Jess had never seen Emily cry before. It was unsettling to say the least to see her normally self-assured roommate sobbing.

‘Go get a teacher,' Jess yelled at Orla while she held her friend's hand.

Signora Enigmistica was there in seconds. She took one look at Emily and whipped out her phone.

‘We need an ambulance,' she said, dialling.

She gave the address of the airfield to the operator.

Emily started to panic.

‘It's OK, Emily,' soothed Signora Enigmistica. ‘You'll get medical help faster this way than if I flew you to hospital by helicopter myself.'

She turned to Jess.

‘I'm sorry, Jess, but only one person gets to ride in the ambulance with her, and according to protocol it should be a teacher.'

‘Can I stay with her until then?' asked Jess.

‘Of course,' said Signora Enigmistica.

Lieutenant Parry arrived with a cold pack, which he asked Jess to hold in place on Emily's rapidly swelling knee, then the teachers cleared the field of cadets and parachutes. A short while later Jess heard an ambulance siren approaching. By then Emily had gone into shock.

The paramedics raced towards them and tried to examine Emily.

‘I can't get any sense out of her,' one said to the other. ‘Get the morphine. Can someone else tell me exactly what happened?'

A tearful Niamh tried to explain, but she was so upset that the second paramedic ended up treating her for shock while the first one injected Emily with morphine.

Within a few minutes Emily was in the ambulance, giggling.

‘See you at school.' Jess waved as the doors closed on Emily.

Jess was too worried about Emily to concentrate on any homework that afternoon. She, the twins and most of the transition years and sophisters had gathered in the foyer of the abbey, waiting for the teachers to return from the hospital, with or without Emily.

Shortly after three o'clock, Signora Enigmistica's black Ferrari pulled into the car park.

The students ran out to mob Signora Enigmistica and Lieutenant Parry as they stepped out.

‘Her knee's dislocated,' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘She'll need surgery but she should make a full recovery.'

Niamh was most concerned.

‘I feel so bad,' she said.

‘It wasn't your fault,' said Jess. ‘That knee's been a bit weak since she hurt it duneboarding.'

‘At least she'll enjoy the sleep-ins while she gets to skip Fitness Training,' said Matt.

‘Sleep-ins?' said Lieutenant Parry. ‘No way. Emily will need to do lots of physiotherapy to get her knee back in action, as well as making up for the classes she'll miss while lazing around in hospital. Speaking of which, don't any of you have homework to do?'

‘He's right,' murmured Evan as the cadets made their way back to their dorms. ‘I broke my arm last year and I still had to get up at 6:15 for physio. Then my first proper day back they did a pop quiz and I got in trouble for not beating my previous time. It totally sucked.'

Jess went into her dorm and flopped onto her bed. The room seemed strangely empty. Although she and Emily got on like a house on fire, Jess normally cherished the moments of solitude she got on the rare occasions she had the room to herself. Now the absence of Emily made it feel suffocating and Jess had to get out.

She wrenched the door open and walked straight into Aidan.

‘I was just coming to see if you were up for tutoring this afternoon,' he said, holding up a packet of Gummi Bears.

‘Sure,' said Jess.

Aidan raised an eyebrow at her.

‘
Dang ran
,' she repeated in Chinese.

‘Your pronunciation's getting much better,' Aidan said as they headed for the back stairs. ‘I would have known what that was even without the English translation first.'

When they opened the door, a crowd had gathered.

‘What's going on?' said Jess, running down the steps.

Three figures were squaring off in the middle of the crowd.

‘Just saying,' growled Krivan.

‘Maybe you'd like to keep your opinions to yourself,' said Matt.

‘Maybe you'd like to join your friend in hospital,' bellowed Krivan, hurling himself towards Matt.

But before he could reach Matt, Ben side-tackled Krivan, throwing him to the ground.

Krivan rolled on top of Ben and drew his fist back, but Matt barrelled into him and pinned him in a half nelson.

‘Break it up,' said Lieutenant Parry, appearing out of nowhere and hauling the boys to their feet. ‘I don't know what started this, but all three of you can explain it to Principal Metsen. Now.'

Lieutenant Parry herded the boys back into the abbey.

‘What'd we miss?' asked Aidan.

‘We could waste time speculating on it now or wait for the full report at dinner,' said Jess. ‘There's a spare seat at our table.'

‘There might be three spare seats depending on what sort of mood Metsen's in,' said Aidan.

As it turned out, the boys made it to dinner.

Ben and Matt looked from Jess to Aidan and back again.

‘This is just too weird,' said Matt. ‘You've got to at least talk with a South African accent.'

‘
Eish brah
,' said Aidan.

‘Sounds good enough to me,' said Ben.

‘So? What was all that with Krivan?' asked Jess.

‘The limp cabbage dissed the ROACH,' said Ben.

‘What language is he speaking?' Aidan asked.

‘Herr Klug gave Ben the ROACH to work on as a special project,' explained Jess. ‘Ben made all these fabulous improvements. But what's that got to do with Krivan?'

‘His dad apparently heard about it and gave him grief for being upstaged,' said Ben. ‘Since he can't beat me on an intellectual level, he sank to insults and then violence.'

‘And let's face it, mate, he's been waiting for an excuse to crack you one all year,' said Matt.

‘The way I remember it, he went for you first,' said Ben. ‘Why was that?'

Matt smiled.

‘I guess he's jealous of me and Svetlana.'

Jess and Ben stopped eating and looked at Matt.

‘So you're …?'

‘Getting closer,' said Matt, grinning.

‘Don't you think you should be focusing on something other than girls this close to exams?' said Aidan.

‘That's rich coming from you,' said Ben.

‘Ben!' said Jess.

‘That's OK, I can take a hint,' said Aidan, shoving in his final forkful of food and taking his tray back to the servery.

‘Did Krivan smack you one in the head?' said Jess angrily. ‘Aidan and I are just friends.'

‘Sure,' said Ben, grabbing his tray and stalking off.

Jess looked at Matt.

‘What can I say?' said Matt. ‘Benny's a sore loser too.'

It was a very subdued group in Lieutenant Parry's office that Sunday afternoon. At first Jess was glad to see Ben, as he hadn't shown up for breakfast or lunch, but when his grouchiness became apparent she began to wish he'd skipped mentor group as well.

Their mood didn't escape the lieutenant. ‘You're a cheerful bunch this afternoon,' he said. ‘Tell you what, how about I get a pass for you guys to go visit Emily later?'

Jess perked up immediately but Ben maintained his surliness.

‘Alright. What's going on?' said Lieutenant Parry, leaning back in his chair and eyeballing each of them.

Jess, worried that he might withdraw the offer to visit Emily if nobody spoke up soon, said, ‘Ben's imagining things that aren't there and getting his knickers in a knot over nothing.'

‘Care to comment, Ben?' asked the lieutenant.

‘No,' said Ben, not meeting anyone's eye.

‘OK, guys,' said Lieutenant Parry, almost sighing. ‘We're getting to the pointy end of the year. People are getting injured, stress levels are sky rocketing, otherwise level-headed kids are lashing out … It happens every year. The thing I need you guys to do is remember to work as a team. You've been a great support to each other all year. Don't stuff it up now, especially with work experience just around the corner. Can you do that for me, Jess?'