by Ann Bryant
“You lucky thing!” said Georgie. “Why don’t I have tennis coaching so I get out of prep?” She frowned. “Oh yes, because I hate tennis. I knew there was some reason.”
And while the others were laughing away, I sat there with a fake smile on my face, worrying about what I’d do in prep without Grace to ask for help, and worse, how embarrassing it was going to be when the results of the reading test came out.
It wasn’t till I was outside on my own, looking for materials for my art installation at the building site behind the tennis courts, that I managed to forget about the reading test, and my mind became instantly flooded with more ideas for the art exhibition.
“Have you lost something?” asked one of the builders, seeing me bending down over a pile of wood shavings that I thought would make wicked hair for my installation people. My idea of what they would look like was getting stronger and stronger and I’d talked about it with Grace and the others, and they thought it was great.
“No, it’s okay, I was just wondering…er…is it okay if I take a few wood shavings for something I’m doing in art?”
He grinned. “Sounds interesting. Yeah, course! All that stuff there is rubbish. It’ll be swept away or burned or whatever when we’ve finished, so help yourself.”
I nodded, suddenly happy, as I spotted some rolled-up wire netting that would make a brilliant skirt. Maybe I’d have four really different people – a man, a woman, a boy and a girl. They could be a family. A skirt made out of wire netting for the woman would be wicked. I could decorate some stiff card and put it behind the netting so it looked more like material.
The builder was back at work and the concrete mixer was churning away now, so I knew I’d have to shout to make myself heard.
“Er, excuse me, but am I allowed any of that wire netting?”
He came towards me with his hand cupped behind his ear as if to say, Speak up! so I repeated my question, then crossed my fingers firmly when I saw him looking doubtfully at the thick roll.
“Well, that’s not exactly leftovers, you see…”
I felt instantly embarrassed. “It’s okay, I was only wondering… It doesn’t matter…” And I quickly gathered up my wood shavings and set off back to Hazeldean before he could say anything else.
Later, when the rest of us had met up after supper and Grace was at tennis, I showed the others the wood shavings. I’d found a black bin liner to put them in and I told my friends how I planned to keep them under my bed, along with anything else I found to add to my collection of materials. But then Katy made me think again.
“Matron will probably say you’re not allowed to store those kinds of things in the dorm, Jess. Why don’t you take it to the art store?”
“Yes, but people might look inside and think what a great idea Jess has got, to collect bits from the building site, and they might copy her,” said Mia.
Mia was right. I’m not exactly a secretive person, but I am quite private about my art, especially when I’m creating it. I just have to be on my own to concentrate properly. Also, the art exhibition was becoming more and more important to me and it was true I felt as though I kind of owned my idea now. I wouldn’t like it if anyone copied it.
“We’d better go to prep,” said Naomi. “Why don’t you leave it under your bed just for now?”
“Or what about that room down in the basement where our trunks and empty cases are stored?” said Katy. “I don’t think anyone goes down there during term time.”
So while the others went ahead to the room where we do prep, I rushed downstairs. The basement felt cold and a bit spooky, but in a funny sort of way I quite liked the atmosphere, especially when I imagined people from Victorian times living down here when Hazeldean was an ordinary house. There would have been servants living below stairs in those days. I could just picture all the wealthy important people above, having a party, while the servants rushed about cooking and cleaning and polishing glasses and setting tables.
I was deep into my daydream by the time I came to the storeroom, but I snapped straight back into the real world when I tried the handle and found the door was locked.
“Oh no!” I said crossly to the empty corridor. “Where am I going to keep my stuff?”
After talking to Katy and the others, I’d realized there was no way I could fit everything under my bed after all. I’d need such a lot of materials for four life-size figures. But, hang on a sec, maybe as I gradually got more stuff, the others could store some of it for me. As long as we didn’t have more than, say, a bin liner full each, and as long as we pushed them as far under our beds as they’d go, surely Miss Carol and the other staff wouldn’t even notice them.
I looked at my watch. I was already five minutes late for prep and I really needed that time to get through my work. I was about to rush off when I spotted a door I’d never noticed before, just along from the baggage room, and I wondered whether it might lead to a suitable storage place for my art materials. There was a plaque on the door, and other, longer words on a sign underneath. The first word seemed to be full of consonants. I stared at it for a few seconds, but there was no way I could work it out and anyway I was making myself even later for prep, so I just went ahead and tried the handle. The door wasn’t locked and I stepped inside, reminding myself for a moment of the princess in Sleeping Beauty when she explored the palace on her fifteenth birthday and came across all sorts of rooms she’d never seen before.
This room was a real mess, with great lumps of plaster hanging off one of the walls and lying around on the floor, and wallpaper peeling off the other walls. That would be useful. I could paste wallpaper strips and turn them into papier mâché to make the shirt for the father of my family of figures.
But then my eye roamed over the floor. Right in the middle of the room, a dust sheet was covering something large and roundish in shape and I just knew that this was going to turn out to be treasure, because from under one corner of the dust sheet something was glinting. What was it? I crept forwards and bent down so I could see it properly. And there it was – a sparkling piece of cut glass in a little teardrop shape. I gasped. It was so beautiful.
Very carefully, I drew back the dust sheet, and there before my eyes was an old chandelier, lying in pieces. Hundreds of little crystal teardrops still clung to the metal framework, some of them firmly bedded in, twinkling and glistening, some hanging by glimmering threads, and others were scattered or lying in clusters on the floor, dusty and dull. Instantly, the idea that had been hovering somewhere in my head came rushing to the front of my mind. We all see with two eyes, yet what we see is so, so different. And right now I could imagine my whole art installation, my family of four people with their angular metal bodies and glinting, teardrop eyes.
Yes!
It was impossible to concentrate on my maths prep. My maths is almost as bad as my English, but today my attention was worse than ever, wandering from the different sorts of triangles with all their varying degrees to the beautiful picture in my head of that chandelier. I slipped my hand into my pocket to feel the cold pieces of cut glass I’d gathered up in a rush just a few moments before, and felt a lovely thrill at the thought of what I’d found. What a piece of luck that Katy had suggested the baggage room as a storage place for my materials, or I’d never have come across the chandelier. But for all I knew I might have been even luckier than that. The chandelier was in so many pieces that it was probably going to be chucked out. I might have come across it just in time. I hugged my magical discovery to myself and made a decision to keep it a secret.
It was true, I’d already told Grace and the others about my metal people, but it would be so cool to keep this final finishing touch to myself. Then they’d get a big surprise when they saw the beautiful sparkling eyes set into the metal. And that got me anxious again. Where exactly was I going to create my figures? I’d got over the problem of where to store the materials, because my friends were quite happy to let me use the space under their beds, but I hadn’t given a thought t
o actually making the artwork. I needed quite a big space, but somewhere private. Then later I could transfer the finished product to the best place for displaying it. We’re allowed to place our art anywhere we want on the premises on the judging day of the exhibition, and I couldn’t wait to find the perfect spot for my figures. Mr. Cary had already explained that Brian Hodgson, the judge, would be spending the whole day here on the Friday before half-term, and he’d be looking all around the school premises because the older students especially weren’t limiting themselves to just hanging stuff in the art block.
I tried to pull my attention back to my maths prep but it was no good. I had to think of a place where I could work on my piece. There wasn’t a single private place at Silver Spires and I felt my spirits sinking and sinking. But then something amazingly obvious popped into my head.
The secret garden. That’s where I could work. Of course!
The following day after lunch I took a good look round the various places where building work was going on. It was frustrating when I kept coming across bits of scrap metal that were either too thick or too wide or too heavy, or there simply wasn’t enough of any one type, because I didn’t want my figures to be made of all different metals. I wanted them to look the same. That was the whole point of what my piece was about – that on the outside we’re all the same (or at least our differences aren’t important), but it’s on the inside, where we keep our points of view and our emotions all hidden away and unseen, that we’re all so different.
After school I made my way to the secret garden. It was Naomi who first discovered the garden, when she was trying to get away from the world one day. It’s on the very edge of the Silver Spires boundary, way beyond the athletics field, and you just suddenly come across it behind a hedge. It’s weird, because we’ve never seen anyone tending the plants or weeding in there and yet it usually looks cared for. It’s true that the weeds grow taller and the patches of grass get longer throughout the term, but then the next term when we arrive back at school it all looks neat and tidy. We’ve often been tempted to ask Miss Carol about it, but the reason we don’t is because we’re scared that she might tell us it’s strictly out of bounds and then we’d never be able to go there again.
Of the six of us, Naomi is the one who most likes to spend time on her own, then I’m next. Sometimes she and I go to the garden together, but we’ve got a kind of pact that we don’t talk while we’re there, unless we both want to.
To get to the garden you have to go quite near to Pets’ Place, and that’s where I saw Mia beckoning me over. She’s got two guinea pigs called Porgy and Bess, and she often goes to give them a cuddle after school, or sometimes to clean out their cage. But Mia knows I’m not really into pets, so it seemed a bit weird that she was calling me over.
Even when I was a little girl I didn’t want an animal that lived in a cage, because it just seemed too cruel to me. Mum once said that Ben and I could have a puppy or a kitten, but when she told us it would have to go into kennels or the cattery whenever we went on holiday, I said I didn’t want one. I couldn’t bear the thought of a poor little pet not understanding why it had suddenly been taken to live in a strange place with nothing and no one familiar around it.
When I got closer I could see that Mia was quite excited about something. “Come in here, Jess!” she said, her eyes sparkling.
I followed her into the shed where the pets are kept in winter and my eyes fell on a big coil of wire in the corner.
“Hey, cool!” I breathed. “What do you suppose it’s used for?”
“I think it’s the stuff they make trellises with – you know, for plants to climb up walls. But is it the right thickness for your metal people?”
I grabbed a handful and twisted several strands round each other. “I could put quite a few lengths together. I might even plait it.” Then I realized something and my voice fell flat. “Oh, I’m just kind of assuming I can take it, aren’t I? But obviously I can’t.”
“All right, girls?”
We both turned at the sound of Tony’s voice. I think his proper job title is Silver Spires Site Manager, but anyway, he always locks up the shed at night-times.
“Oh hi, Tony! We were just wondering what this wire is used for?”
“Surplus to requirements, I think you’d call that,” he said, as he opened a large cupboard in the corner of the shed and started poking about in it.
“Surplus to requirements?” I repeated, with a careful question mark in my voice, wondering if I’d understood correctly, and crossing my fingers that I had.
“Yep, we don’t need that any more. It was for making garden trellises, but we’ve been using the thin green stuff instead. Much more natural looking. And actually we’re changing to wooden trellises now, anyway.”
“So…” The little light was crouching inside me, ready to leap into a bright flame. “…could I possibly have some of it?”
“You can take the lot as far as I’m concerned. What do you want it for anyway?”
“To make something for the art exhibition.”
“Nice one! Glad you can put it to good use. Don’t like to see waste, myself.”
“Oh thank you, Tony!”
“Any time!” He grinned, pulling something out of the cupboard, then headed off towards the rubbish dump.
I thanked Mia for spotting the wire in the first place, then rushed over to the secret garden and stood in the middle of the lawn for a few minutes, just staring into space and imagining myself working on my figures. Where could I leave them when I’d finished, though? I couldn’t go lugging them back to Hazeldean, and anyway only the coiled-up wire would fit under our beds. Once I’d shaped it into the figures, they’d never fit.
Just behind the back of the garden hedge was a line of trees. I squeezed myself between the trees and the hedge and decided this would be the perfect place. I would cover my figures with bin liners and tuck them in that narrow space. They’d be safe and perfectly private there.
So everything was almost ready. I’d hidden the chandelier teardrops at the very back of one of the drawers built into my bed unit, and I’d got some bubble wrap that a teacher said I could have because it had been hanging around in a cupboard for ages. I’d decided that all my figures should look the same, with bubble wrap representing clothes. I just needed to get some more of it from somewhere or other. Georgie was begging to be allowed to pop all the bubbles, and I’d told her yes, with pleasure, because I thought it would hang better if it was flat. After that, I planned to paint it in a different colour for each figure. All I had to do now was bring my materials out here and then I could get started.
Magic.
I couldn’t wait.
Chapter Five
I woke up the next day to golden sunlight streaming through the window, and felt a lovely connection to the secret garden, like a rope tugging me towards my new creation. But then a cloud passed by the window and sent a shadow sliding over my bright world. It was English first period with Mr. Reeves.
I’d managed to forget about that the previous evening when I’d been occupied with twisting and plaiting together long lengths of wire. I couldn’t forget it now though. First period was just too close, and I couldn’t bear the thought that we might be getting our test results.
Breakfast was a horrible anxious time for me and I could feel Grace giving me sideways glances.
“Are you okay, Jess?” she asked in the end, her forehead wrinkled in a frown.
I tried to smile brightly. “Yes, sorry. I was in a world of my own.”
“I could tell… Only it seemed like a different kind of world from usual.”
“No, no. Same old world!” I laughed. I didn’t want Grace to know I was worrying or she’d try to get me to talk, and there was no way I could admit to anyone, not even Grace, that I was much worse than she imagined – in fact completely useless – at reading and writing. I was so ashamed of myself.
I swallowed hard and started a little chant ins
ide my head that I kept on coming back to right up until I walked into the English room.
Please don’t say anything about the test. Please don’t say anything about the test…
But as I passed Mr. Reeves’s desk to find a place to sit in the middle of the room, I knew my silent chanting had been pointless. The booklets lay in a pile in front of him with the papers tucked inside. I sighed and sat down heavily. Then, when we were all seated, Mr. Reeves stood up as though he was about to make a speech.
“The reading test has flagged up problems in some areas for one or two people,” he said. I was glad to hear the word “two”. At least I wasn’t the only one, but my heart still raced away, and I knew I was going pink. I’ve got the kind of pale skin that goes with my auburn hair and green eyes, and I hate it when I feel embarrassed because my cheeks finish up bright red. “Sara Wynn-Jones, Frankie Pierson and Jessica Roud, you three will need to go and see Miss Cardwell in the Learning Support department. We’ll start with you, Jessica, if you’d like to make your way over there…and the other two can go next time.” I stood up on quavery legs, wishing I hadn’t tied my hair back so it would swing in a thick curtain over my face and cover up the deep red of my cheeks as I scurried to the door. “The rest of you, turn to page fifty-four of your poetry books.”
So this was it. Sara and Frankie obviously didn’t have such terrible problems as me, because apparently I needed a whole session with Miss Cardwell whereas it sounded like the other two were sharing a session next time. Being in the bottom set for English, I’d always known I was one of the very worst readers in Year Seven, but, somehow, having it confirmed in front of the whole class made me feel even more of a failure. By the time I’d reached the Learning Support department, I was close to tears.
“Come in, Jessica!” came Miss Cardwell’s cheerful voice. I’d never actually heard her speak before, only seen her from time to time around the school, but it didn’t surprise me that her voice was so cheerful because she always wore a big friendly smile. I think she’s the assistant housemistress at Willowhaven House, but it might be Oakley – I’m not sure.