by Lil Chase
But lockers 61–70 aren’t here with the others. The numbers lead off to a little enclave round the corner from the lunch room. I run back there, ducking and weaving through the hoards like a rugby player. The bell rings for the start of the next lesson, but it will take me one second to shove my stuff away and then I can go.
My heart sinks as I finally get to my locker. My mum once took me to Jimi Hendrix’s grave in Paris and this locker has about the same amount of graffiti. People have scratched hearts into the blue paint and written all over it. There’s things like:
‘What happened to you?’
‘Where’d you go?’
‘We miss you.’
And,
‘It turns out we all have secrets.’
I put in the code. The door doesn’t open. I try again. Oh no, please don’t say they’ve given me the wrong combination! I look around to ask someone to help, but everyone has gone to their next class. Reading the code once more, I carefully dial in the right numbers. Then I use all my strength to pull the door open.
It’s worked!
Argh!
Thousands of little pieces of paper come pouring out and I have to slam the door shut to stop a real mess. Lucky I have ninja-quick reactions. Is my locker the school’s rubbish bin?
My quick response wasn’t quite quick enough to stop about forty bits of paper falling around my feet. I scoop them all up and see that each one has something handwritten on it. One of them says:
That’s really sad. Who wrote this? I pick up another one and see the handwriting’s completely different.
Is this a message for me? I must teach her the lipgloss pep talk.
I have to help this person, let them know that there is nothing wrong with being gay.
But not now: now I have to get to English before I miss it completely.
I text Frankie:
My locker doubles as a trash can!
She texts back:
Whoa! Severe funding cuts!
Finally, all done. Congratulations to me. Oh, there’s one more piece of paper that’s fluttered further away. I pick it up and read it. It’s written in purple ink, and there’s a star instead of a dot over one of the i’s.
I feel sick.
Chapter 3
Someone has started a hate campaign against me. It’s like St Cecilia’s all over again! They passed that note, then came straight to my locker and put this message in here. Did they want me to find it?
But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that I am ‘tragically uncool’.
I hear a gasp from behind me and hide the note behind my back.
‘What do you think you’re doing?!’
A girl emerges from the darkness of the corridor.
‘I …’ Once she steps closer I see that it’s the goth girl, and she’s carrying her enormous backpack. ‘I’m cleaning out this locker,’ I tell her.
‘You can’t. That’s sacrilege. Do you know how many people care about this locker and what it represents?’
From the way her painted eyebrows dance up and down her forehead I can see she’s genuinely angry with me.
‘This locker represents a place for me to put my stuff,’ I tell her.
‘We all have baggage we need to offload,’ she says, ‘or else we’ll go mad.’
I wonder if the ‘going mad’ ship has already sailed for this girl. ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘I’ve been dragging this stuff with me and it’s been making me insane. Not to mention the pain in my shoulders.’
‘These things can weigh us down, can’t they?’ she says with a nod.
‘Exactly,’ I nod back, motioning to her backpack that looks like it weighs over a ton. ‘Like books and a PE kit.’
‘Bottling up your secrets is unhealthy –’ She pauses and frowns at me. ‘What did you say? What’s this got to do with PE?’
‘What did you say?’ I ask. ‘What’s this got to do with secrets?’
She pokes her head forward and looks at me as if I have problems speaking English. ‘You do know what this is?’ she asks, pointing to my locker.
‘This. Is. My. Locker,’ I explain, and slowly, just in case she has learning difficulties or something.
‘This isn’t your locker,’ she says. ‘It’s locker 62.’
‘Yes, locker 62 … my locker.’ I wave the printout the receptionist gave me.
Goth girl’s mouth drops wide open and her eyes look like heavily made-up saucers. She grabs the slip from me and reads it, but she still looks doubtful. ‘Prove it,’ she says.
I dial in the code and open and shut the door quickly so no more paper falls out.
‘I’m speechless,’ she says. ‘Which is possibly a first.’ She shakes her head slowly. Then, slightly more agitated. ‘Have you read any?’
I’m sensing from her reaction that something huge has just happened, but I have no idea what. ‘What’s going on?’ I ask.
The girl touches my locker like it’s a precious artefact. ‘Years ago,’ she says, ‘like years and years ago, there was this girl, right?’
‘Riiiiight,’ I reply.
‘Her name was Hillary Randle and she was the head girl: beautiful, popular, clever, totally hot boyfriend who was also smart and destined for the big time.’
‘I’m jealous.’
‘That’s the thing – everyone was jealous of her. She had a perfect life.’
‘So where is she now?’ I ask. ‘Prime Minister? Supermodel? Owner of a multimillion-pound company?’
‘One day she just disappeared. No one knows where she went or why or if she’s alive or dead. The police came and emptied her locker and they said they found a note in it.’
‘Suicide?!’ I don’t like the idea of having the suicide locker.
Goth girl shrugs. ‘Don’t know. They never found her.’
This is interesting. What happened to Hillary Randle?
‘Since then,’ the girl grabs my arm to make a dramatic story out of this, ‘the school thought it would be too weird to use her locker so they just kept it locked. Now everyone writes down their deepest darkests and slips them through.’ She points at the vents at the top. ‘Like as a way to stop the same thing that happened to Hillary Randle happening to us.’
‘Sooooo,’ I say, trying to understand, ‘you’re telling me that there is a secret on every single piece of paper in here.’
She nods slowly.
‘A secret belonging to someone in this school?’
She nods again, then pokes me in the chest. ‘And you get to read them.’
I take a deep breath. This is quite a lot to take in on a first day.
‘If knowledge is power,’ she says, ‘you’ve just become the most powerful girl in school!’
Whoa. I can’t decide if this is a good thing or absolutely hideous.
Chapter 4
‘Sorry, Miss Draper,’ says the goth girl as she walks into the classroom just ahead of me.
‘Yes, sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m new and I got lost.’
‘Not a problem – Maya, isn’t it?’ Miss Draper asks. She’s my English teacher and she looks really nice. Which is great, as English is my favourite subject and I don’t think I could handle anything heavy after the morning I’ve had. ‘You have no such excuse, Zeba,’ Miss Draper says to goth girl as she sits down. ‘Maya, why don’t you take a seat over there next to Luke?’
She points to a space next to the boy in the army jacket with the stubble. He’s huge and quite scary. He stares at me and I wish I could sit next to anyone else.
Karmella winks at me as I walk past. Hopefully ditching me wasn’t bullying after all, just some initiation ritual, and now they’ll let me into their group.
I’m hit by a smell of washing powder as I sit down next to the gigantic Luke.
‘Let’s get started, shall we?’ says Miss Draper. ‘Ten points if anyone can name a poet and a poem they’ve written.’
I stick up my hand really quickly. No one else has stuck up their hand.
>
‘Maya?’
‘Robert Frost, “Fire and Ice”.’ I stand up to recite the poem.
‘Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire …’
I tail off because everyone is looking at me openmouthed. I sit back down, feeling like I’m in an aquarium surrounded by goldfish.
‘Er,’ I finish up, ‘I’ve forgotten the rest.’
Miss Draper chuckles. ‘I just asked for the name and title, but that’s very good, Maya.’
From the way everyone is smirking at me, it doesn’t feel very good.
‘Turn to page 118,’ says Miss Draper. ‘I’d like you to compare the two poems there, working with the person next to you.’
I turn to the scary boy. ‘Hi. I’m Maya,’ I say to him. ‘Pleased to meet you … Luke, isn’t it?’
He doesn’t say anything and I don’t know what to do. This is the first boy I have ever spoken to since … since forever, I think. I have no brothers. I’ve been at a girls’ school all my life. The only male I speak to properly is Grandpa, and he’s losing his marbles. Saying ‘Hi’ to the amazingly gorgeous Ben Sands is about as far as I’ve got with the opposite sex.
I pull the book towards me, turn to the right page and pretend to read the poems. The class starts talking quietly.
Finally he says, ‘So, poetry, eh?’
‘Yeah,’ I say.
‘What’s so great about poetry?’ he asks.
‘Poetry?’ I repeat. ‘Ummm. Do you really want to know?’
‘I really want to know,’ he says with a nod.
I’m not very familiar with boys, but this boy is especially weird. He has auburn hair that might be red if the light was right. We’re both sitting, but I can tell if he was standing he would tower over me by a good foot or more. He’s wearing a green army jacket, and it’s totally against the school rules to wear jackets in class, but the teachers must be too scared to tell him to take it off. I don’t blame them.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘poetry allows us to express ourselves in a way that forces people to think about the meaning. Take Robert Frost, for example: he doesn’t use loads of long words, but that doesn’t mean his poems are mediocre.’
Luke mouths the word mediocre to himself.
I push past it. ‘He writes about, like, building a wall or something – and because of …’ Luke looks at me really strangely. ‘What?’ I ask.
I am about to pull out my hand mirror and check for make-up malfunctions when he says, ‘You know you’re weird, don’t you?’
But I’m trying so hard! I’ve always suspected I was weird. It took the girls at St Cecilia’s eight years to find this out and mock me for it. How come he’s discovered it in five minutes? ‘Weird in what way?’
‘I dunno,’ he says with a shrug. ‘You’re just weird.’
‘You can’t accuse a person of being weird,’ I say, ‘then not tell them how to cure themselves.’
‘I didn’t accuse,’ he says. ‘And I wouldn’t want you to cure yourself.’
‘Oh.’ How am I supposed to respond to that?
‘I quite like it,’ he says.
‘Oh,’ I say again. Turns out when it comes to boys I can only manage one syllable at a time or else a deluge of drivel comes out. ‘Thanks.’
‘You’re welcome,’ he says. There’s a pause as neither of us really knows what to say. Everyone else round the room is pretending to talk poetry but really talking about anything else. I risk a glance over at Karmella, who’s throwing her blonde ringlets back and laughing at something the amazingly gorgeous Ben Sands is saying. God, I wish I could be more beautiful and confident like her. Then no one would think I was weird, everyone would think I was cool, no one would pass notes about me in class, and I would never be bullied again.
‘You don’t want to be like her,’ says Luke.
Is this boy a mind reader? ‘Why not?’
‘She’s boring.’
I say nothing. She doesn’t look boring to me, she looks like a person who has a life eighty-eight times more interesting than mine.
‘But if you did want to be like her, can I give you some advice?’
I whip my head round fast. ‘Yes, please, anything!’
Luke laughs. He’s caught me out. ‘In this school, it helps if you don’t care too much about stuff.’
Leaning back in my chair to appear relaxed, I say, ‘Oh, right. OK. Tell me more … but only if, you know … if you want to. I’m not bothered.’
He laughs again. ‘If people find out what you really care about, they can use it against you.’
I know all about that already.
‘Even the people you think are your mates will take your secrets, twist them up and turn them into daggers to stab you in the back with. So if you have any, keep them to yourself.’
‘I don’t have any!’ I protest, throwing up my hands to show I’m not holding a gun or concealing a sixth finger or anything. ‘Mates, or secrets.’
‘You seem like a nice girl,’ he says, ‘but you must have lived long enough to build up a secret or two.’
I gulp. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I say.
Truth is, he’s right. I have a few secrets …
‘Right. Well. I’m just telling you. As a friend.’
‘Thanks.’
I think I just made my first friend in Mount Selwyn.
What’s weird is that my first friend appears to be a boy.
Chapter 5
Can’t wait to see you later, Beffs. You won’t believe
what’s happened!
Frankie texts right back.
Will be at yours in about an hour x x
Tomorrow is another day and all that. But first I have to sort out the mess of today; I’m going to go down to my locker, clean off the graffiti, then throw all the papers away.
I look around and everywhere is quiet and empty. It’s been twenty-five minutes since the bell went for the end of school and already the place is deserted. I open a few random doors and eventually find the caretaker’s cupboard. I borrow a bucket, sponge, cleaning stuff and bin-bags and head to locker 62.
When I get there, the goth girl is waiting for me.
‘Hi,’ she says, her black-rimmed eyes staring. ‘I didn’t introduce myself properly earlier. I’m Manar Sakina Adiba Khan,’ she says, holding out her hand. ‘But you can call me Zeba: your local 24/7 goth.’ She says the last bit with an Elizabethan flourish and a bow, and I’m now certain that this girl isn’t my path to coolness.
‘I’m Maya.’
‘I know,’ she says. ‘You made quite an entrance today.’
I cringe. ‘Oh god, I fell on my bum in front of that gorgeous boy – Ben Sands. It was hideous, wasn’t it?’
‘I’m not going to lie to you …’
We have a little laugh, and it makes me feel better about the whole thing.
‘Have you read any of the secrets?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I tell her, and squeeze the secret about me being ‘tragically uncool’ in my hand, not willing to divulge the exact, extreme levels of the hideousness of my first day. ‘There are too many.’
‘I could help you if you like,’ she offers.
‘Help me chuck them?’
‘Don’t do that!’ says Zeba, and throws herself forward, grabbing my hand. ‘Don’t you see what a unique opportunity this is?! We could learn so much about everyone in the school. And that would help us …’
She doesn’t say it, but I think she’s thinking it would help us become popular. It’s a good idea.
‘OK,’ I say. ‘We can take them to my house. My best friend Frankie is coming over too. She’ll join in.’
‘Great!’ says Zeba. ‘We’ll be a force to be reckoned with, like Charlie’s Angels or X-Men or something.’
‘Whatever you say.’
I pass her the roll of bin bags and we rip off one each. Zeba seems to hold her breath as she
waits for me to open the locker. The papers pour out on to the floor and this time I let them.
‘Wow!’ says Zeba.
I crouch on the floor and start shovelling them into my bag. ‘If you’re going to help, help.’
Zeba kneels on the floor beside me and starts scooping the secrets into her bag until finally we’ve got them all packed in. She stands up and pushes the papers down so she can tie the bin bag shut.
Zeba seems so eager to look at the secrets that she might explode. I’ll clean off the front of the locker another time.
‘Let’s go,’ I say. ‘My flat isn’t far.’
We drop the cleaning stuff back into the cupboard on our way out of the building then we walk out into the playground, each of us with a school bag on our back and carrying a bin bag full of secrets. It’s the middle of October but it’s not that cold.
‘Are you into Valentine Death Pact?’ she asks.
A death pact on my first day?! ‘I don’t think it’s come to that, has it?’
‘No!’ she says, laughs and bashes me with the bin bag. ‘They are the most amazing band. A lot of the time I sit in the dark and listen to them on repeat.’
‘Oh,’ I say. She’s weirder than I thought.
‘How long have you been in Greenford?’ she asks.
‘Not long. We’ve moved back closer to my gran and grandpa. Just while my mum sorts herself out.’
‘Well, it’s not the best, but there’s a Laser Quest that’s just opened up on the high street.’
I raise my eyebrows. Laser Quest might be fun, but I’m not sure how it fits into becoming cool and popular.
Zeba looks at me. ‘So,’ she whispers, ‘I saw you in class.’
‘I landed on the floor next to you. I was pretty hard to miss.’
‘No, in English class,’ she says. ‘You might not realize it, but your daredevil stunt wasn’t the most daring thing you did today.’
‘It wasn’t?’
‘No,’ she says, ‘you sat next to Lucas Marino.’
‘Luke?’ I say, thinking back to the stubbly giant I talked poetry with. ‘So?’
‘Lucas Marino is the school bully!’