‘How can you watch that crap?’ he asked. Felix is sixteen and likes to think he’s way more mature than us.
‘If you don’t want to watch it, buzz off,’ Soph said.
But Felix wouldn’t buzz off. He stood there, working up a tasty gob of contempt, watching as Grady and India met on the way to school. ‘That guy is so totally gay,’ he said, staring at Grady.
‘He is not,’ Soph said. ‘He’s going out with her in real life.’
‘Yeah, right,’ Felix scoffed. ‘In their publicist’s dreams. I bet you anything he’s gay.’
‘Shut up!’ Soph shrieked. ‘We’re trying to watch this!’
Felix put his hands up, happy to have riled her. ‘I’m going, I’m going.’
He disappeared into his bedroom and shut the door.
‘Someone who plays imaginary monsters with friends who don’t even come round to his house is in no position to mock,’ Soph said huffily.
Felix plays an online version of Dungeons and Dragons with people he’s never met. He spends hours in his room listening to angry, depressing rock music played by ugly, smelly guys with long hair and beards. Instead of a dog or a cat or a goldfish he has a huge rat-eating snake for a pet. He’s a tragic case.
With Felix safely out of the way we settled down to watch Summerdale High, and managed to get all the way through it without interruption. After that we devoured another video and half a chocolate cake before talking ourselves to sleep.
When I woke up the house was dark, and it felt unfamiliar, and I realised I was not in my own room. I was on a mattress on the floor. And there was something moving in the bed. Something smooth and cool and heavy was slipping across me. It felt like an arm, although it was oddly flexible, unlike an arm, and sort of scaly –
It was a snake. There was a snake on me.
I screamed so loud I nearly brought the house down. I heard a thump as Soph fell out of bed, and then the light snapped on, and when she saw what was happening she started screaming too.
‘Felix!’ she screamed. ‘Get in here right now!’
It was not, after all, some random anaconda that had slithered in through the bedroom window. It was Felix’s pet python, Barry, who was harmless to humans but lethal to rats and mice, and who normally lived in a large glass tank. Tonight, somehow, the python had managed to get free and was winding itself around my body. I saw its black snaky eyes staring into mine and its blue-black tongue flickered out delicately, almost like it was kissing me. I stared back, half-mesmerised, and for a moment I felt I could sense its thoughts.
Footsteps began to stumble in our direction from the far-flung corners of the house. Felix arrived first, and started to laugh.
‘Get it off her!’ Soph screamed. She was standing on tiptoe on her bed, in a panic. If she could have climbed up the wall, she would have. Soph hated snakes.
‘All right, all right,’ Felix said. ‘Come here, Barry.’
Felix grabbed the snake and tried to drag it off me but the snake was heavy and didn’t much want to be moved.
Soph’s dad appeared, looking sleepy-eyed.
‘It’s trying to strangle her!’ Soph squeaked. ‘Dad, do something!’
‘What in the hell is going on here?’ Soph’s dad said, trying to sound stern despite his embarrassingly saggy pyjamas.
‘Barry must have escaped somehow,’ Felix said. ‘I think he likes you, Melissa.’
Felix was looking at me with a new and loathsome sort of interest. I gave a shudder of revulsion and shoved the snake away from me. ‘Get this thing off me,’ I said.
As if a spell had been broken, the snake immediately seethed off the bed and onto the floor, and the movement of its lithe muscular body was like running water. Felix picked it up, straining a little under the weight, and looped it around his neck.
‘Felix, apologise to Melissa,’ Soph’s dad said.
‘Sorry, Melissa,’ Felix mumbled.
‘I’ve warned you about that bloody snake. If you can’t keep it under control, it’ll have to go.’
‘Ohh, Da-ad,’ Felix moaned.
‘I mean it. Now put it back in its cage – and this time I want you to make sure it can’t get out.’
Felix shuffled away with the snake still winding itself eagerly around him so it could look back at me over Felix’s shoulder with its cold reptilian gaze. Normally when you look into the eyes of a snake, you quickly realise that the snake only recognises three basic categories: food, threat, furniture. If Barry couldn’t eat you, Barry wasn’t interested. But tonight, the snake had looked at me, really looked at me, as if in some strange snakey way it had recognised me. That snake had acted like a dog whose master had just come home after a long absence. The whole thing was very disturbing.
‘Are you all right, Melissa?’ Soph’s dad asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said, although I felt dazed and a little strange.
‘The snake’s harmless, you know. It wouldn’t really have strangled you.’
‘You don’t know that,’ Soph said hotly. ‘You should have seen the way it was climbing over her. It definitely had murder on its mind.’
‘Well, there’s no harm done,’ Soph’s dad said. ‘How about you both try and get some sleep and we’ll talk about it in the morning.’
‘I’m never going to be able to go back to sleep when there are snakes loose in the house,’ Soph said.
Soph’s dad sighed. ‘Felix?’ he called. ‘Is that snake safely locked away?’
‘Yes!’ Felix yelled.
‘It’s safely locked away,’ Soph’s dad said. ‘Now how about we all try and get some sleep?’
Soph’s dad stumped back to bed and we snuggled down in the darkness.
‘I’m so sorry, Meliss,’ Soph said. ‘If it was me I would have just died. I would have had a heart attack on the spot.’
‘I’m not that scared of snakes,’ I said. ‘It just gave me a fright, that’s all.’
‘A fright? It could have killed you!’
‘Yeah, but it didn’t, so . . . ’
We were both silent for a while.
‘What did it feel like?’ Soph asked. ‘When it was crawling on you? Was it slimy?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘It was smooth and slippery, but not slimy.’
I could sense Soph’s shudder in the dark. ‘So disgusting,’ she said.
But disgust was not what I’d felt, and the more I thought about it, the weirder it all began to seem. Because I remembered now that before I woke up with the snake on me, I’d been having a strange, confused but quite exhilarating dream where I was a rich businesswoman or a politician – I was the boss of something, anyway – and in the dream I was about to do something dramatic and revolutionary which would change the world. And even though I was wide awake now I could still feel that sense of anticipation, that thrill, buzzing through me like a chemical, as if the world was about to change and I was going to be a part of it – a big part. And something told me that whatever it was I was going to do, the snake could sense it, the snake could see it, and that was why it had been so eager to seek me out.
But as I lay there in the darkness the vividness of the dream began to fade, my heart slowed back down to its normal speed and the chemicals in my bloodstream fizzed themselves to a standstill. And I told myself that after all it had just been a dream, and the thing with the snake had just been a freaky coincidence. And then I fell asleep again and wasn’t bothered by any more dreams or slithery visitations.
Mr Boris
It was the Monday after Amanda Dean got struck by lightning and I was headed for another week in the salt mines. I had just banged my locker shut and was heading towards my home room when I heard my name called.
‘Melissa!’
I turned, reluctantly. It was Mr Boris, my maths teacher and one of my unfavourite people in the world. Not just because he taught maths – although that definitely wasn’t a selling point – but because he wore brown body shirts which always had sweat stains under the ar
ms, and he kept too many things in the front pockets of his pants so it looked like he had three knobbly pairs of gonads instead of just one, and as if that wasn’t gross enough he drank too much instant coffee and had breath that would kill a house plant at 30 paces.
Ever since the start of the year there’d been this niggle between me and Mr Boris. You know when a teacher just takes against you from the word go? When every time they look at you, you can hear the grinding of teeth and the churning of bile, and you just know they think you’re a waste of valuable and finite resources and that the world would be a better place without you in it? That’s how it was with me and Mr Boris. Once upon a time I think he’d been one of those people who had a pure and bottomless contempt for anyone who didn’t appreciate the wonder and majesty of maths. But that was when he was young and idealistic. Now he just hated anyone who was female, or knew how to enjoy themselves, or was under the age of 21. In fact, I think he hated pretty much everyone with a pulse, but there was a special place in his malice-filled heart for me.
‘What is that you’re wearing on your wrist?’
‘A bracelet.’
‘And what is the school’s policy on jewellery?’
‘I know we’re not supposed to wear obvious jewellery, but the thing is –’
‘And under any normal definition, do you think that bracelet qualifies as obvious jewellery?’
‘Well maybe, but –’
‘Take it off immediately.’
‘I can’t.’
Mr Boris’s brows bunched threateningly. ‘What do you mean you can’t?’
‘The catch is stuck and I can’t get it undone.’
Mr Boris looked at me suspiciously. He thought I was being cheeky. ‘Let me try,’ he said.
Please no. Not the breath. Anything but the breath. ‘My parents have already tried and they couldn’t get it off.’
Mr Boris snapped his fingers impatiently. ‘Now.’
I edged towards him, holding out my arm, and tried not to breathe as he fiddled with my bracelet. I watched him get madder and madder as he jiggled and twiddled and wiggled it. But even with his superior mathematical abilities he couldn’t budge it.
‘Have you tried putting some WD40 on it?’ he asked, spraying me with an eye-wateringly foul gust.
‘WD40, machine oil, soap, butter . . . ’
‘And you tried soaping it off your wrist?’
‘Yep,’ I gasped, trying to breathe through my mouth.
‘Well, all right. You can wear it for today. But if I see you wearing it tomorrow, I’m putting you on detention.’
‘But Mr Boris –’
‘That’s my final warning, Melissa. Now get to class.’
Tuesday rolled around, and I still hadn’t managed to get the bracelet off. I remembered right before I walked into maths that I was marked down for detention if I still had it on, but luckily it was a coolish day and I had my jumper on. I pushed the bracelet up my arm and hid it under my sleeve and managed to live another day.
That night I made a determined effort to get it off.
‘Mum,’ I said. ‘My bracelet won’t come off.’
‘Did you wear it in the pool?’ Mum asked, as she fiddled with the catch.
‘No,’ I said automatically, although I had.
Mum fiddled with it for a bit longer, but the snake’s tail still would not come out of its mouth. ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with it. Maybe your father can fix it.’
‘Sure,’ Dad said. ‘I’ve got some bolt-cutters out in the shed.’
‘Dad!’ I howled, horrified.
Dad just laughed. His idea of a joke.
‘We’ll take you to a jeweller tomorrow,’ Mum said. ‘But it looks like you’re stuck with it for now.’
Wednesday. I wore my jumper in maths again, but the weather was heating up and by the end of the class I was sweating and the heat was making me dizzy.
‘You should get a note from your parents,’ Soph advised. ‘I’ll help you write it.’
I declined this kind offer, but what with one thing and another I forgot to remind Mum about the bracelet after school and then I forgot that I’d forgotten, so another day rolled around and I went to school and it wasn’t until I saw Mr Boris at the other end of the yard that I realised I was in trouble. It was a hot day – so hot I hadn’t even brought my jumper – and I had maths second period. There would be no escaping the wrath of Boris.
‘I told you you should have got a note,’ Soph said.
As I sat through English thinking about the delightful prospect of spending the afternoon on detention, I felt the beginnings of anger stirring in my belly. What did it matter that I was wearing a bracelet to school? It wasn’t bothering anyone, was it? It didn’t stop me from doing my schoolwork. There was little chance of it being caught in machinery in woodwork, since I wasn’t doing woodwork this semester. And it was a bracelet, not a piercing, which meant that there was no chance of it being torn in a gush of blood from my delicate earlobes (or nose or navel or eyebrow, as the case may be). And I was still wearing the rest of the school uniform. So what was the problem?
Look, I get the school uniform thing, okay? It’s all about everybody being equal and nobody being discriminated against because they don’t have expensive clothes, blah blah blah. Fine, sure, whatever. But isn’t there some room in all that inclusiveness for a little bit of individuality? Is there no room for self-expression? Aren’t the teenage years the time when we’re supposed to be exploring our personal identity and working out who we really are? Our teachers are always telling us how important it is to learn how to think for ourselves and take responsibility for our own actions – that is, when they’re not telling us to stick to the timetable, follow the rules and don’t mess with school uniform policy. I don’t actually mind the idea of uniforms (although ours is, of course, disgusting). It’s the hypocrisy I can’t stand.
I entertained myself with thoughts like these all the way through first period, so by the time I got to maths I was well and truly fired up. I still hadn’t evolved a plan for how I was going to handle Mr Boris, but I was sick of hiding my bracelet under a jumper. I was going to walk in there with my head held high and I was going to face him down and there was a good chance that I was going to accuse him of being a vile, petty tyrant and telling him he could put me on detention forever but he would never break my spirit etc etc.
And as I walked down the corridor a strange feeling began to surge inside me, a kind of rushing excitement, as if a storm was coming, or a huge wind was about to sweep me up and send me flying down the hall towards the classroom where I would blast Mr Boris off the face of the earth – bad breath, multiple gonads and all. Shivers ran up and down my spine and I thought I felt a slithery sensation against the skin of my wrist, as if the snake bracelet was moving, and for a moment I remembered that weird triumphant feeling I’d had in the dream, the night Barry the snake came and crawled all over me. A rush of blood surged through my body and then I felt a convulsive jolt, like when you get an electric shock, only it felt like it was happening in reverse, as if the shock was coming out of me, not going into me. I staggered for a moment, feeling faint –
And then the triumphant feeling was gone, and I wasn’t feeling faint or dizzy, and I was walking into maths, and there was Mr Boris in his nastiest brown body shirt. I plonked myself down in my usual seat with my bracelet arm in full view, daring him to notice it while the rest of the class filed in and faffed around, trying to drag out the settling-down part for as long as possible.
‘Turn to page 53,’ Mr Boris said.
I turned to page 53, and suddenly noticed how intensely the green eyes on my bracelet caught the light. I knew they couldn’t be real precious stones – my dad wouldn’t have bought me a bracelet with actual emeralds in it – but they shone with such brilliance it was almost like they were lit from within. For a moment I was mesmerised, and then –
‘Melissa! What did I tell you about that bracelet?’
Mr Boris had noticed. Showtime!
I opened my mouth, ready to speak, and –
The classroom door flew open to reveal the school secretary, panting slightly. ‘Mr Boris, come quick!’
Frowning, Mr Boris followed her out into the corridor. I don’t think we were supposed to hear but the school secretary was much too excited to keep her voice down. She said that Mr Boris’s neighbour had just called to tell him that his house was on fire and the fire department were on their way but if he wanted to save anything he’d better get home quick smart. His wife, the school secretary said, didn’t seem to be home.
Mr Boris put his head back in the door. ‘Sit quietly until the end of the lesson,’ he told us, and then raced off down the corridor.
‘I thought he was going to put me on detention for sure,’ I said, staggered by my lucky reprieve.
‘Can you believe that man has a wife?’ Soph said.
It didn’t occur to me that the fire had anything to do with me.
The Forces of Destruction
The rest of the day passed uneventfully. Mr Boris did not come back to school.
When I got home I put my bathers on and headed for the pool, taking the book I was supposed to be reading for English with me, so that when I got tired of swimming I could read on the li-lo and it would be almost like doing my homework. I dived in and swam a lap of the pool underwater, turned, and swam back – and as I surfaced, gasping for breath, I felt a shadow fall across me. I looked up, expecting it was my brother sneaking out to play some hilarious practical joke on me.
But it wasn’t.
Standing on the pool deck looking down at me was a guy of about twenty, wearing ancient and battered jeans and an equally ancient and battered T-shirt. His hair was brown and shaggy, and his skin was lightly freckled. His feet, I noticed, were bare, and he had surprisingly hairy toes.
‘Hey, Melissa,’ he said, with calm self-assurance. ‘I’m Ben.’
I was so shocked I almost forgot how to swim, but somehow I managed to flounder to the steps and get out of the pool. I grabbed my towel and held it in front of me like a shield.
Melissa, Queen of Evil Page 2