by Natasha West
‘Yeah, the assembly’ Jamie added, for further authenticity.
‘I thought we booked you for next week?’ the woman said.
Jamie turned to Max and said ‘Billy! You didn’t put the wrong date down again, did you?’
Max slapped his hand to his forehead, like the dunce Jamie was painting him as.
‘I’m so sorry, Jane. Let me just check the schedule’ he said and took out his phone, pretending to scroll. ‘Yeah, I’ve got today. My bad, everyone! So I guess we’ll just-’
‘Actually, we have assembly every Monday. I don’t see why we can’t just squeeze you in today. I’d hate to see you have a wasted trip’ the teacher said.
Everyone looked round as they tried to come up with a reason that they couldn’t do whatever the hell they were supposed to do in this assembly right this minute. But they’d just told the lie that they’d thought it was today and that they were ready to go. What reason could be found now?
‘I’m Mrs Foyle, the headmistress, by the way. Why don’t you all follow me in and we’ll get you set up.’
Jamie, Max and Molly dutifully trooped after her as she led them into the school, their eyes downcast.
In the bright, airy hall of Milcroft Comprehensive, about three hundred bored kids were sat in row after bored row, talking, laughing, arguing or some combination of the three, while they waited for assembly to start.
‘Settle down everyone!’ Mrs Foyle cried to the packed hall from the stage. Kids from eleven to eighteen dutifully began to wrap up their conversations and turned their eyes to the front.
Behind Mrs Foyle, on three hastily grabbed school chairs, sat Jamie, Molly and Max. They kept shooting each other looks, trying to figure a way out of the seventh circle of hell they’d wandered into.
‘Now, today we have some special guests who are going to do a performance that’s going to instruct us about a very important topic. The…’ she stopped, put her hand over the mic and turned to the trio and asked quietly ‘I’m sorry, what’s the name of your theatre troupe? It’s slipped my mind.’
‘The Quick Snack Players’ Molly heard herself say. Max suppressed a small snort of laughter and Jamie merely fixed a grin on her face and stuck her thumbs up at Mrs Foyle. Mrs Foyle, to her credit, did not show her confusion at the odd name of the group. She simply nodded as though it were completely normal and turned back to the hall.
‘The ‘Quick Snack Players’ will be doing a performance on a problem that has been known to touch our school. Theft!’
Jamie felt a small jolt of adrenaline shoot through her body at the word. She turned to Max to see what his reaction was to the subject they’d just been told to improvise an edifying play on, but he looked nothing less than thoroughly amused. She wanted to kick him in the nuts. This was not remotely funny.
Molly, on the other hand, had an entirely different look on her face, one that Jamie couldn’t interpret.
‘So, if we can all pay attention, our guests will do a small performance on the consequences of thievery, after which will be a Q and A, so that we can all have a frank discussion on the subject. Anyone making noise will be sent out immediately’ she warned and added ‘And I’m talking to you, Patrick McElroy.’
A large, older boy with a shaved head who was sat in the second row, presumably the infamous Patrick McElroy, gave a ‘Who me?’ look, as though he were a choir boy who’d simply fallen in with a bad crowd and would be indebted to Mrs Foyle forever if she’d grant him the benefit of the doubt.
But Jamie had known plenty of Patrick’s in her day. She could smell the trouble on him a mile away.
‘Right, so please could everyone give a warm welcome to ‘The Quick Snack Players’ Mrs Foyle finished and turned to give a nod to her performers. Jamie was rooted to the spot as the kids clapped with little enthusiasm. She knew she was supposed to get up and do something now, but she was buggered if she knew what.
But Molly abruptly stood and approached the front of the stage, a strange confidence in her step. Because, luckily for Jamie and Max, she knew what she was going to do the moment Mrs Foyle announced the subject. It had come to her with ease.
She stopped at the edge of the stage and waited for Mrs Foyle to step down off the stage, joining the other teachers who stood at the side of the hall. And she was ready.
‘I work at a Mini-Mart. I work long hours and the pay is average’ she announced to the hall. ‘I’m just a normal girl, trying to make a living. And then one day, two people walk into my shop and pull out a gun.’
She turned around on that and gave Jamie and Max a nod. Jamie didn’t understand what was happening but Max jumped up immediately, knowing precisely what Molly wanted him to do. He made his fingers into a gun shape and shouted aggressively, and a little too loudly, ‘Put ‘em up!’
Jamie, now up to speed, rolled her eyes as Molly stuck her hands in the air and said in terrified tones, ‘Please don’t kill me!’ Jamie was struck by the injustice of the depiction. This wasn’t what had happened at all!
She stood up and joined Max, adding in the politest tone possible ‘We don’t want to hurt you. We just need what’s in your till. Please be so kind as to make this simple for everyone and remember that this robbery will most likely be covered by your insurance.’
Molly turned to her, realising that she was trying to undercut the dramatic situation she’d just gone to pains to set up, and said in a pantomime tone ‘But there is nothing in the till! Please, don’t murder me. I have several children who will surely be turned out into the snow if you kill their Mother!’
Jamie narrowed her eyes at Molly and said irritably ‘Miss, do not fret. We are merely poor people, such as yourself, trying to pay the bills and keep our heads above water. We have no desire to make any orphans. Alright?’
Molly’s hands dropped ever so slightly as she asked, her tone antagonistic ‘So why do you have a gun?’
Max, who thought that was a reasonable point, replied ‘Because we were hoping to frighten the shit out of you.’
A ripple of gasps and giggles went through the hall, the kids delighted to hear an obscenity dropped in such an official capacity. Mrs Foyle, who’d been thinking that this performance was a tad on the nose and that she probably wasn’t going to be asking these people back, was especially unhappy about The Brown Word. She wondered if she should just shut this down right now. But Molly wasn’t finished.
‘Sir!’ she cried out to Max, dropping to her knees and holding out her hands in dramatic entreaty, ‘You’ve achieved your end. I fear for my life, truly! I will give you what little I have, if only you’ll swear never to do this again. Please, give up your life of crime. It’s not too late!’
Mrs Foyle, still wavering on the issue of allowing this to continue, decided to let it run a bit longer. She was beginning to wonder how it was going to end. Although she would have to ask later why they kept speaking in this bizarre Dickensian manner.
But before Max could reply to Molly’s plea, Jamie decided she should be the one to address the request to mend her ways.
‘Look, Miss. It’s all well and good telling us to change. But how do you actually expect us to do it? Will you help us with our CVs? Give us references? Assist us in filling out loads of application forms? No. You just expect us to magically change the way things work. Well, it’s not that simple! So maybe you should consider the socio-economic whatever’s that lead people into the criminal life. And then tell us to give it up!’
Patrick McElroy, who’d been watching this weird play and thinking it was pretty bad, decided that the hot blonde had a valid point. He yelled out ‘Yeah! You tell ‘em, Sexy!’
Mrs Foyle was on him in moments, picking her way through the rows of chairs, grabbing him by the arm and yanking him out of his seat. Patrick shouted ‘I’ve got rights! Me civil liberties are being fucked over!’ at Mrs Foyle and at the captivated crowd, as he was dragged from his chair.
Onstage, the play paused for the ejection. But as they watched P
atrick being wrenched from the hall, he seemed to ‘trip’ over a smaller kid, a boy who fell from his chair with a clatter. A closer look at the embarrassed boy and Jamie realised who he was. The amateur warlock.
Henry, who’d been trying to understand why on earth Molly was performing a re-enactment of last night’s robbery at his school (and with the people who’d held her up, no less) had decided to assume that maybe the robbers had been thrown in the slammer last night and that this was some sort of community service thing. It was odd but it was the only thing that made a lick of sense. He was still trying to understand how it had been arranged so quickly when Patrick McElroy had used his expulsion from the room to disguise his intentional knocking of Henry off his chair. Henry was embarrassed but not surprised. It was classic Patrick.
But as he sat on the floor, trying to cover his blushing cheeks, he noticed that the blonde robber on the stage was gaping at him. And then she was joined by Molly. They were staring at him in a way he didn’t remotely like. They looked quite angry. Even weirder, they were clearly angry with him. What on earth had he done wrong in all this?
He could possibly understand the blonde girl being pissed off with him. He’d thwarted her crime with his bravery. But Molly? What was her problem? Maybe she hadn’t seemed too thrilled with him last night, but that was no reason to be giving him the icy glare she was directing his way.
And, it had to be asked again, why the hell were they together doing bad theatre? Shouldn’t two of them be in prison and the third recovering from shock? Not stinking up the stage of his school?
Mrs Foyle, who had now thrown Patrick out amidst a chorus of boos, came back in. ‘Go ahead!’ she instructed the actors.
Molly managed to wrench her attention back from Henry, remembering Jamie’s last line.
‘If you want to find someone to blame for your crimes, you can always find a scape goat. Lots of people have problems but they don’t hold up Mini-marts. What have you got to say to that?!’
Jamie knew they were only supposed to be playing for time until they could find the little sod who’d stuck them together, and technically, they’d managed it. He was mere feet away.
But she couldn’t simply stomp off the stage, grab him and take him somewhere quiet where he could fix what he’d done. That could only lead one way. To the school calling the police, to report the weird theatre troupe who’d absconded with one of the student’s mid-production.
Right now, Jamie’s only crime was terrible acting. She didn’t want to make it any worse. Not if she and Max were currently wanted for robbery and abduction, as she suspected was the case. No, she’d have to see this thing through. And wrap it up in haste. So, even though it just about killed her, she took the quickest route possible. She gave in.
‘You know what? You’re right’ she said to Molly. Molly’s eyebrow raised, waiting for the punchline. But Jamie only said ‘I give up. I’ll do my time and come out of prison, my debt to society repaid. Then I’ll become a changed woman, a solid citizen. Like your good self’ she added mockingly.
Molly was disappointed. She’d kind of been enjoying herself. It wasn’t the play. It was the arguing she’d gotten invested in. And then Jamie had caved way too easily. But once Molly had remembered why she was actually stood on the stage in the first place, she knew why Jamie had acquiesced so easily. All she could do now was bite her tongue, fighting the urge to question Jamie any further on her alleged ‘changed woman’ status.
Max realised it was time to rap this whole shit-show up and turned to the teenagers, saying ‘So, yeah. That’s the end. Any questions?’
After a confused question and answer session that Jamie, Max and Molly barely scraped through (a girl with a nose ring asking ‘I don’t get it. Why were you being Victorians?), Mrs Foyle finished up the assembly and released the kids.
Jamie was ready to get the hell out of the assembly hall but before she could take a step in the direction of the exit, Mrs Foyle was in front of her.
‘Well’ Mrs Foyle said. ‘That was… interesting.’
Max went to stand next to Jamie, ready to back her up if she was going to get a talking to about their dodgy show. Molly, who’d spotted Henry dashing quickly out among the hoard, had no intention of letting him slip through her fingers. She went after him, leaving the Jenson siblings to deal with Mrs Foyle. But in her haste, she’d forgotten the very reason she was after him. As she got twenty feet from Jamie, she was given a reminder.
Mrs Foyle had just begun to ask ‘So, do you get much work?’ when Jamie suddenly fell over sideways and shot along the wooden floor. Molly, her fingers just managing to caress the double doors before she lost contact, a supernatural tug throwing her backwards, fell squarely on her arse.
‘I’m gonna feel that tomorrow’ she muttered bitterly to herself, standing and rubbing her sore posterior.
Across the room, Jamie was sitting up. ‘Idiot!’ she hissed to Molly, who retorted with an insolent shrug.
Mrs Foyle rushed over to Jamie, putting out a hand to help her up. ‘Are you alright?’ she asked, concerned.
‘Yeah, I’m fine’ Jamie replied. ‘You didn’t happen to have these floors waxed recently, did you?’ she said, trying to cover.
‘We did get it done at the weekend, but I wouldn’t imagine… That was quite a fall! I’ve never seen anyone taken down by a waxing like that’ Mrs Foyle sputtered, somewhat worried about Jamie’s implication of the school’s liability for the fall.
‘Guess I’m just a clumsy bitch’ Jamie said, distracted. The boy was getting away! ‘But I’d better go and get checked out.’
‘Yeah’ Max added ‘She might be concussed! Better get her to the hozzie.’
Jamie and Max ran over to where Molly waited at the door and the three of them escaped from the hall and from their short careers as the Quick Snack Theatre Group. Mrs Foyle watched the strange threesome leave, wandering if it was too late to call up the bank and cancel their fee.
Seven
Henry was standing behind the bike sheds, peeping out. He’d seen Molly come after him with a purpose that had scared him witless. A few days ago, the idea of Molly Kaminski running to him would have been a fantasy. But there had been a look in her eyes that told him she wasn’t coming to kiss him.
So now he was standing behind the bike sheds, in the empty playground, wondering what had happened to Molly. She hadn’t been that far behind him and then somehow, he’d managed to lose her.
He’d dashed out of the hall and past the classroom he was supposed to go into, Molly hot on his heels. In his panic, he’d imagined that Molly knew that he was headed for Integrated Humanities and he’d zipped right past it. It wasn’t the craziest idea. She’d tracked him to his school. Who knew how much she knew about his schedule?
But now there was no sign of her. Henry wasn’t sure what to do next. Now he’d escaped the school, he was starting to feel like he might have overreacted. Maybe she hadn’t been looking for him at all? Perhaps there had been someone standing just behind him, and that person was the one Molly had been giving the evil eye to? And like a fool, he was hiding out in the playground. No one was even looking for him, probably. And his absence in class was probably going to get him in trouble.
He sighed and stepped out from behind the sheds.
‘Got ya!’ a voice cried and he turned to see the blonde girl had him by the hood of his coat. He tried to clamber out of it, but by the time he’d escaped both sleeves, Molly and the male robber were standing in front of him. He was trapped in a triangle of people.
‘Don’t even think of running again’ Molly said. They’d been dashing about the school, looking all over for this kid and then they’d walked out of the side of the building to see him creep out from behind a bike shed.
‘What do you want?’ Henry asked.
Molly and Jamie exchanged a look and then Jamie turned back to the kid. ‘Don’t mess around. You know what we want. Undo what you did.’
‘What did I do?�
� Henry asked, puzzled.
‘You cursed us, nobhead!’ Jamie said, angrily. This whole thing was close to being over and she’d had enough of messing around. She wasn’t in the mood to play games with the boy.
‘I didn’t!’ Henry said, his training as a teenager meaning that he automatically maintained plausible deniability for any and all accusations. Then he realised what he’d actually just heard. ‘Wait, what do you mean?’
Max saw his sister’s hands turn to fists, her knuckles going white with frustration and he decided he’d better interject. Things were getting a bit too heated. His sister probably wasn’t really going to thump this boy in the face. But better safe than sorry. Maybe the boy just needed a man-to-man chat?