The Girl Who Wasn't There (3 page)

“What? Seen your ghost again?” asks Clem, wandering into the bathroom and frowning at me.

She's not looking like my super-sleek sis right now; she's in her first-thing-in-the-morning disguise of Fuzzy Grouch Monster. She might be addicted to high-street fashion and hair straighteners for vast chunks of the day, but pre-breakfast she's this sour-faced blur with hair like knitting gone wrong and a dressing gown that's so faded it's hard to guess what colour the dots on it started out as (it used to be Mum's).

“What?” I ask, blinking at her as I come out of my fug of panicky thoughts.

There is no ghost. There's only some dumb art project that I must have brushed by on Saturday as I went to follow Dad out of the art room. And when I brushed past it, it rattled, which rattled
me
.

What's really real, though, is that it's Monday, it's 8.25 a.m., and – unlike my sister with her almost part-time sixth-form timetable – I have to be in school in five minutes. My new school. With new people. Who I don't know and who don't know me. I won't know where my classrooms are and I won't know who to ask to show me.

“I'm talking about your
face
, Maisie – it's as if you've seen a ghost. It's like this!” Clem says, then does something with her own face that makes it look like a zombie who's just seen a horror movie.

“No, it's not!” I snap back, then get up from my perch on the edge of the bath where I've been sitting as I brush my teeth.

Gazing at myself in the mirror above the sink, I realize I
do
look pale, as if my skin hasn't seen sunshine for a very long time, or like a vampire sucked my blood in the night. And I guess there is a hint of complete and total panic about my eyes.

“Look, I know you're nervous about today, Maisie, and yeah, it'll be weird for the first hour or whatever,” says Clem, twisting the shower knob on. “But you've just got to get on with it and get over yourself.”

So
that's
Clem's kind, thoughtful advice as I head out to my first day at Nightingale School? Gee, thanks.

It makes me think of one of Mum's notebook instructions:
Look out for each other, all three of you.

I mean, if telling me to get over myself is an example of Clem looking out for me, then I'm doomed…

“Well?”

“Well, what?” I say, turning away from the mirror image of the scared girl in her new school uniform.

“Well, can I have some space, please?” says Clem, shooing me out of the bathroom.

I turn to go, and only realize I'm still holding my toothbrush once the door slams shut behind me and the bolt clunks to lock it.

It's all right for Clem, I grump to myself as I pad downstairs. She has most of the same friends now in sixth form as she had in nursery. She's never had to change schools. She's never had the experience of being shunned by her best mates, and treated like she's a little bit worse than toxic by everyone in her class…

I grab my bag, take a deep breath and get ready for my walk to school, which will take all my tattered courage and exactly seventy-six steps door to door (I did a trial run yesterday, in the still of Sunday morning).

Here we go… I open the side door that leads directly into the packed playground, where I see girls streaming through the big main gates, laughing, chatting, arms linked. There are so, so many of them, but I guess it's the same as my last school: eight form classes in each year group.

Maybe it's just an optical illusion; the playground seems packed because there're no boys to break up the sea of navy-dressed girls.

Will it be strange being at a school with no boys, I wonder?

The positive side to it is the maths: eight classes times thirty-girls-to-a-class equals two hundred and forty students in my year. Out of those two hundred and forty, surely I'll find
one
friend at least?

But right this second it's hard to be positive and think of potential friend equations, 'cause my first-day panic is rising like the temperature in a toaster and I feel like something inside is about to pop.

“Walk,” I whisper an order to myself.

Five steps: my heart is beating so frantically it's as if there's a ticking time bomb in my ribcage.

Ten steps: I try to remind myself how I felt on Saturday morning when we unlocked the creaking front door to our new home. The giddy feeling of freedom from my old life, thanks to this shiny new start…

Fifteen steps: I give up on recapturing the giddy feeling and just try not to throw up with nerves.

“Hey, you're looking great!” Dad calls out to me, making a few nearby girls turn their heads to see who the new site manager is talking to. I can tell from their gazes that they don't share his opinion. A pale-faced, scared girl in a slightly-too-big blazer does not look great. Except to her dad, I guess.

“Don't know about that,” I reply, trying to conjure up a half-convincing smile for him.

“So, are we all good?” he asks, his blue eyes staring into my brown ones, willing me to be OK.

I look at him in his khaki workshirt and jeans, a stray traffic cone under his arm, left over from the line he's just set up outside the school gates to dissuade cars from dropping off students where they shouldn't.

If I wasn't feeling sick, I'd probably make a joke about the traffic cone being his new hat, and if he wasn't busy on his first day, he'd probably put it on, at a jaunty angle.

“Mm-hm,” I mumble, not able to answer him in a whole sentence, since my fake smile is about to go wobbly. And even if I'm
normally
good with what Dad says, there's always an exception to a rule, isn't there?

“It won't be as bad as you think, Maisie. I bet you'll come out buzzing at the end of the day, and have a bunch of new friends straightaway!”

“Mm-hm,” I mumble again, then turn to go, aiming myself towards the stern double doors of the main entrance, feeling less like plain Maisie Mills and more like I'm Mary, Queen of Scots, heading for the looming executioner and the chopping block.

Though I'm actually heading for the school office, which I know – thanks to Saturday's guided tour of the empty building – is just inside the open doors, to the right.

“Yes?” says a white-haired woman on the other side of the varnished dark wood counter.

It's the sort of moment where you don't know whether your voice will work and whether you'll remember your own name.

“Um, hello,” I thankfully manage to squeak. “I'm Maisie Mills. I'm starting today in Year Eight.”

“Ah, Maisie Mills… Maisie Mills…” the woman says, an edge of something uncertain in her voice. “Can you hold on just a second?”

She trots off in her clicky-clacky kitten-heel shoes and talks to a larger woman at a desk, whose dark, braided hair has hints of grey woven in it. The two ladies have some sort of animated but very hushed conversation which involves sideways glances at me. In other words, they are in a total flap 'cause I've turned up. This is making me feel less than fantastic.

“Sorry, my love,” says the bigger lady of the two – the one with the braided hair – while handing me a map of the school and a timetable. “We
have
been expecting you, but there's been a slight problem. Still, nothing for you to worry about; just follow me!”

And so I follow, up stairs, down corridors, listening to what the woman is saying, while wishing I was like Hansel and Gretel and had white pebbles to leave behind me as a trail, so I can find my way out of this school maze later.

What the braided-haired lady has been telling me includes this… Her name is Mahalia, and the other lady in the office is June, and I have to come see them if I have any problems.

My new form tutor is called Mrs Watson.

She has done a detailed transition plan for me.

Mrs Watson is off sick today.

No one can find the detailed transition plan.

Turns out,
that's
my main problem today, and it doesn't seem like either Mahalia or June can help with it…

“So here we are, my love!” says Mahalia, standing in front of a door and rapping on it.

She opens it before the teacher inside has even said “Come in!”, so my first class of the day, the week, the rest of my school life kicks off with a teacher glowering at me.

And don't even
mention
the twenty-nine girls' faces staring blankly.

Excuse me while I run away…

 

You know what?

What Dad said first thing today, about school not being so bad, how I'd come out buzzing, how I'd make a bunch of friends straightaway?

Well, it was.

I didn't.

I double didn't.

“You said it yourself, Maisie: if your form teacher hadn't been off ill today, it would've been OK,” says Dad, putting down his fork and patting my hand.

The patting doesn't do much to reassure me. I feel like there's a heavy black fog in my head, trying to block out the sharp, uncomfortable flashbacks I'm having of the day. Right now I'm picturing the glowering maths teacher, who did at least stop glowering once she realized Mahalia had interrupted her lesson for a good reason (if you can call
me
a good reason).

But she seemed as flustered as the office ladies had been when I first turned up. She pointed at a spare seat, and got someone to pass me back a workbook to write in. I sat for the entire lesson hearing nothing, understanding nothing in my panic.

It got much better after that –
not
.

Seems that the teachers at Nightingale are super-strict about filing in and out of class silently, so no one talked to me at the end of that first lesson. Though why would they even have wanted to? I'd been so excited at the idea of starting over, but until I was sitting there in that first class, it hadn't occurred to me that all the girls would probably be tight friends anyway – the last thing they'd want was some newbie like me trying to muscle my way into their cliques.

So when the end-of-lesson bell went, I pretended to rummage in my bag for something. A couple of girls stared back over their shoulders, but I hovered some more, letting everyone drift away to their next classes, while I figured my own way using the timetable and map.

And that was the pattern of the day. Being last one into class; being last one out; keeping my head down and wandering round clutching my crumpled map.

Of course, that pattern was broken up nicely with break time (spent it in a cubicle in the girls' loos) and lunchtime (couldn't face it and snuck home).

As first days go, it could only have got worse if a stray asteroid had crashed into the school.

Mind you, that might have been a blessing in disguise and put me out of my misery…

“Hi, I'm home – if you can call it that!” Clem calls out, barging in with a slam of the front door and a thud of her bag full of textbooks.

“Hi, honey! Thought you were coming home for tea?” Dad shouts back in a friendly-but-making-a-point way.

“Fancied hanging out at Bea's,” Clem replies casually, plonking down on to a chair and plucking a meatball out of the spaghetti on Dad's plate.

“Yours is in the microwave,” says Dad. “And didn't you have your phone on you?”

“Huh?” Clem answers, and we realize she still has her earphones in and can only semi-hear what Dad's saying.

“Never mind,” he says, giving up before there's a fight and an atmosphere. Or maybe it's because he's got me and my blue mood to deal with and can't be doing with a Clem huff on top of it.

“Uh-oh. You've got your zombie face on again, Maisie!” says my sister, suddenly staring straight at me. “Bad day at Planet School, then?”

“Pretty much,” I reply, using my fork to swirl my spaghetti into uneaten spirals on my plate.

“Yeah, so? What happened?” she asks, in a distracted way that makes me feel like my lousy day will either amuse or bore her.

“It just wasn't great,” I say, not wanting to see her roll her eyes at my woes. “Going to the loo – back in a minute.”

The loo thing is an excuse to get away from Clem's half-hearted interrogation, Dad's hangdog expression of disappointment, and the pile of food I'm not going to eat.

Instead I go into my room, still stacked with boxes yet to be unpacked, and rest my forehead on the cool of the windowpane.

Urgh, I feel so achingly
sad
…

Not just because my first day was confusing and worrying.

But also because it's dawned on me today that despite Mum's scribbled hope, I can't rely on Clem to look out for me
ever
, and despite his best intentions, Dad just isn't able to look out for me all the time either.

I mean, he couldn't do it when all that stuff happened with Saffy and Lilah and Jasneet, could he? No matter what Dad said, my head teacher believed
them
, not me; three against one.