St Grizzle's School for Girls, Goats and Random Boys

by Karen McCombie

  I take a step into the room and she glances up at me through dark-rimmed glasses.

  “Who are you?” she asks, tugging one side of her neat brown bob behind her ear.

  I’m surprised, but I’m not rude. So I shyly introduce myself.

  “I’m Dani. But I’m not staying,” I tell her.

  “Oh, I’m Yaz,” replies the girl. “I’m not staying either. My dad’s coming for me.”

  “Really?” I say, edging closer. Great – someone else at this stupid school seems to be normal. We might be the only two.

  “Oh, yes,” says Yaz, nodding over at the suitcase propped up against the wall, with a straw hat perched on top of it. “In the meantime, I do extra maths during the sillier classes.”

  Hurray! Till Mum rescues me, maybe this one sane and sensible person could be my friend, even if she’s some mad maths fan.

  Unless Yaz is leaving any minute, of course…

  “When exactly is your dad picking you up?” I ask, feeling a tickle of disappointment in my chest as I glance at her all-packed-and-ready luggage.

  “Any time now,” she says very definitely. “I emailed him as soon as St Grizelda’s went weird, and told him to come and get me.”

  Er, it doesn’t sound as if Yaz’s dad is in much of a hurry to rescue his daughter, since St Grizzle’s went ‘weird’ a couple of months ago, according to Swan.

  Hmmm … it seems as if Yaz might not be quite as sane and sensible as I thought.

  “So,” I say, changing the subject, “who was the lady chasing the goat?”

  “That’s Mrs Hedges, the cook and housekeeper,” says Yaz. “She’s from the village and she’s worked here forever – but she’s not staying either. She hates the changes the head teacher’s made. She says it’s more like a zoo than a school nowadays and as soon as she finds another job, she’s off.”

  At that moment, my barely charged phone gives a cheerful Ding-a-ling-a-ling! as a text pings through.

  “I … I’d better get this,” I say hurriedly, turning away.

  Is it Mum?

  Nope, but it’s nearly as good.

  And so I give my gran an update.

  A one-word update.

  The clock tick-tocks on the empty Fungi dorm wall.

  It’s three thirty on Monday afternoon and back home – for the first time in forever – Arch will be leaving school and walking home WITHOUT ME.

  Hopefully, that won’t be the case for too long.

  Hopefully Mum will be sorting something out – whatever that something might be – while I’m hiding up here.

  OK, so I’m not so much hiding, as pretending to be sick…

  This morning, after I’d met Yaz – and her ever-ready suitcase – in the dining room, I realized I needed a Cunning Plan. One that would let me be on my own and away from all the crazy till Mum came back to rescue me.

  I was just on my way to reluctantly rejoin the circus skills class when – ping! – inspiration struck.

  So instead of heading for the open back door, I bolted for the girls’ loos, where I turned on the hot tap and splashed warm water on my face.

  Only then did I return to the garden, where I launched into some TOTALLY EXCELLENT ACTING.

  “I … I think I have a fever!” I told Lulu, who immediately got off the unicycle she was riding and felt my clammy forehead.

  “Oh dear,” she said, frowning in concern.

  “AND a tummy ache,” I added.

  “Oh, that’s not good,” Lulu said with a shake of her head.

  “And I think I might have the collywobbles, too,” I said, then wished I hadn’t, since I couldn’t remember if they were an actual thing or not. Luckily Lulu was completely taken in.

  “You DEFINITELY need to get to bed straight away. Here!” she said, and pulled out my Own Personal Dorm Key from the pocket of her jeans.

  Yesss!

  So, here I am, hours later, not ill at all and very happily on my own.

  I have cheered myself up by watching mine and Arch’s mini-movies on YouTube a whole bunch of times.

  And I’ve entertained myself by making a new mini-movie, too. In it, the T rex is holding a large tissue in one of his tiny front paws, and staring mournfully out of the Fungi dorm window.

  I used a stop-frame animation app on my phone to film him dabbing his eyes, which took a while, cos the tissue kept getting caught in his pointy little teeth and ripping.

  After mulling it over, I decided not to do a voice-over or sound effects for my mini-movie. I just put up the word ‘Homesick…’ in this wobbly sort of font and then let it fade out. It looks pretty good. Let’s see how many views THIS gets on YouTube…

  *Click*

  POST!

  I know Arch won’t give me a ‘like’ for a while – he goes to his trumpet lesson after school on a Monday. But that’s OK; I feel a bit better, a bit more like me, just by making one of our films. And it’s passed the time while I wait to hear back from either Mum OR Granny Viv.

  “Do you think I should try phoning them?” I ask my T rex, going over to join him at the window.

  It’s only when I’m there that I see something odd coming from the woods that circle the back lawn.

  Smoke.

  SMOKE!

  Great grey plumes of it are drifting and noodling above the treetops.

  There’s a FIRE?!

  And now that I push open the window, I can hear the strangest jumble of noises; bangs, crashes and high-pitched evil cackling.

  And that’s not all.

  A scream?

  Eek! What’s going on?

  For a second, I’m as still as my T rex, frozen with panic, not sure what to do.

  I mean, if I called the Emergency Services, what would I say?

  THEM: Emergency Services, how can I help you?

  ME: Well, I’d like to report a possible fire-breathing dragon attack…

  Instead, armed only with my T rex (kind of useful as a club, I hope), I rush out of the dorm, hurtle downstairs two steps at a time and nearly tumble over Twinkle at the bottom of the staircase, where she’s happily tearing off more leaves from the ever-decreasing pot plant.

  “Hello!” I call out desperately. “HELLO?!”

  A whole lot of silence answers me.

  Where IS everyone?

  Wait – Toshio should be in the school office! He’s the receptionist – he’ll know what to do…

  I hurtle over to the hatch – and see Toshio inside, smiling at his screen, his huge silver headphones blocking out my yelps.

  In fact, he’s so engrossed in whatever game he’s playing on his iPad that a few frantic, arm-waving seconds pass before he even notices me.

  “Ah, hi!” he says, finally relieving himself of his gaming stuff and getting up to bow to me. “Yes, please?”

  “Something’s on fire out there,” I say urgently, pointing in the direction of the back door. “And I can hear banging and shouting!”

  Toshio tries to follow what I’m saying and keep smiling politely, too.

  “Ah, yes. Bang, bang!” Toshio beams and seems to be doing a mime of chopping something.

  So what would I say to the Emergency Services now? I think there might be an axe murderer outside, as WELL as a rampaging dragon?

  And then I hear the soft tip-tap of footsteps and a “Shh!”.

  Turning my head sharply, I see the triplets tiptoeing out of the dining room, with bright light from the open back door haloing around their braided hair.

  They look like they’ve been Up To Something. It’s not hard to figure that out, since Triplet One is shushing the others, while Triplet Two is shoving something rustly up the T-shirt of Triplet Three…

  Oh, but now I think they’ve somehow sensed that they’ve been caught in the act and all three turn to stare at me with their almost black eyes in three identical, unsmiling faces.

  You know, I feel like someone’s signed me up for a part in a scary, starey horror movie and forgotten to tell me.
>
  Then – whoa! – the triplets do something even more scary that staring. They SMILE!

  And each strange smile reveals a chipped front tooth, just like mine…

  “Uh, how did you all end up doing that exact same thing?” I ask, crossing the hallway towards them and pointing to my own wonky tooth.

  The triplets say nothing. They just each reach up with their index fingers … and rub a smudge of black off what turns out to be perfectly perfect teeth.

  Huh?

  They FAKED chipped front teeth … to mimic me? Why would they do that?

  Not that I get a chance to ask. In the blink of an eye – and another rustle – the three girls are gone, disappearing out of the back door and running across the lawn towards the woods…

  TRING-A-LING, A-LING-A-LING!

  The merry sound of an ice-cream van makes me jump.

  It doesn’t bother Toshio, though, because he’s already sitting down and plugged back into cyberspace.

  TRING-A-LING, A-LING-A-LING!

  The ice-cream van ringtone – it’s Arch FaceTiming me. I fumble my phone out of my back pocket.

  “Hey, Dani!” says my best friend. “Just waiting for my trumpet teacher and thought I’d call you. How’s it going?”

  Oh, it’s so good to see Arch’s goofy face and stupid baseball cap.

  “Insane!” I hiss.

  “Yeah?” Arch replies enthusiastically, thinking I’m being super complimentary about St Grizzle’s.

  “No – you don’t understand,” I say, dying for him to get just how nuts this place really is. “Check this out…”

  I turn my phone round and point it at the foot of the grand staircase.

  “Whoa! The school’s got a pet goat?” I hear Arch say. “How cool is that!”

  “That’s Twinkle, but she’s not the main problem,” I say, hurriedly walking past her and heading towards the open back door. “It’s the students. And the staff. And the lessons. I mean, get this – you know what our first class was this morning? Circus skills!”

  Stepping out on to the sunshiny back lawn, I notice that all the equipment – except for the trapeze swing, now safely tied to a tree – has been packed away somewhere. Or maybe it’s been eaten by the rampaging, fire-breathing dragon that’s on the loose.

  “No way!” I hear Arch gasp. “You didn’t tell me they did stuff like that at your new school!”

  “That’s cos I didn’t know they did. And yeah, normally, something like circus skills would be amazing, but that’s not the point,” I snap, realizing Arch definitely isn’t getting it. “Look, there’s something seriously weird about this school. Can you hear that?”

  I might be a bit frustrated, but I’m still glad Arch is here with me. Even if his head is only about four centimetres wide at the moment, it’s as if he’s right by my side. The company of my best friend is making me braver with every step.

  “What am I supposed to be hearing?” he asks.

  “Shush and listen,” I tell him.

  Sure enough, the din and clang of bangs and crashes is getting louder the closer we get to … whatever we’re getting close to.

  So is the evil laughter, occasional shrieks and the hiss and crackle of fire.

  I stop and hide behind a particularly chunky oak tree and peer round it, clutching the T rex close to me with one hand while holding my phone close to my face with the other. This way, me and Arch are cheek-to-cheek, and he can see whatever I’m seeing.

  “What is this, Dani?” I hear him whisper in my ear.

  To be honest, I’m not sure, but it’s as if we’ve dived into the pages of a storybook. One of those fairy-tale books that are more full of trolls and warty-faced witches than pretty princesses and happy endings.

  There’s a huge bonfire in the clearing in front of me. It’s so smoky that I can’t make out anything properly, apart from a few (hazy) people huddled around it. And behind the bonfire and the huddlers is a tiny wooden cottage – like something out of Hansel and Gretel – that appears to be balanced halfway up a tree that’s as twisted and gnarled as the one me and Arch are hiding behind. And here’s the freakiest thing; small creatures are scrambling over or clinging to the cottage and—

  I almost jump out of my skin and drop Arch with a clatter.

  Bizarrely, no one around the campfire seems that bothered about who’s screaming or why, I realize, as I fall to my knees and frantically scrabble about in the undergrowth for my phone and my best friend.

  It’s then that I know I’ve been spotted.

  Out of nowhere, I’m being pelted withsoft somethings that thump and plumpf off my head and arms.

  “Arch!” I call out in desperation, at the same time holding up the T rex and using it as a fairly useless shield.

  “Dani! What’s going on?” I hear him call out in concern.

  Aha! I spot the phone and snatch Arch up to me, our worried eyes meeting.

  “I don’t kno— OOOMMMFF!”

  A squashy something lands directly in my open mouth. All I can hear is Arch’s sniggers, and a nearby voice screech…

  “BULLSEYE!”

  No, no, no, NO!

  I thought I could outrun them but my hair is caught on something – a branch? – and now they’re right behind me and…

  My bad dream is suddenly banished by a very loud, very unexpected sound.

  “Good morning, good MORNING!”

  I sit bolt upright in my bed in the dorm at St Grizzle’s as some cheesy, chirpy song blasts me awake.

  Only I can’t get ALL the way upright because a goat is attached to my left plait.

  “Gerroff!” I say, trying to shoo Twinkle away.

  Twinkle does NOT gerroff.

  “Oi, heel!” my dorm-mate calls over.

  Twinkle lets go and trit-trots obediently over to Swan, who is already up, dressed and towel-drying her long hair.

  “Good morning, good morning to YOOOOOOOU!” the loud voice trills some more.

  Where on earth is it coming from?

  “Lulu’s idea of a great start to the day,” says Swan, nodding her head up towards the speaker above the door, which is belting out a relentlessly cheerful, old-fashioned musical number, sung – embarrassingly – by our own head teacher. “So, did you sleep OK?”

  “Mmm…” I mumble, running a hand through my messy bed-head fringe.

  Truth is, I didn’t sleep well. I tossed and turned all night in this strange, echoing room. I must’ve fallen asleep at some point, only to end up having that horrible dream just now, where I was being chased through the woods by an army of goblins and a giant fire-breathing penguin.

  And another truth is, there were no goblins or fire-breathing anythings in the woods yesterday. How was I to know that Monday afternoons were always tree-house building class, followed by a barbecue around the campfire?

  “You know, you should’ve stuck around after tea,” Swan carries on. “Mademoiselle Fabienne got her guitar out. We all sat in a circle and the little ones sang along. It was kind of fun.”

  “Mmm…” I mumble again. I wasn’t exactly in the mood for fun after being attacked by triplets armed with a bag of stolen marshmallows from the kitchen (see – I knew they were Up To Something!).

  And I wasn’t in the mood for fun after everyone burst out laughing at the sight of me with a pink marshmallow wedged unexpectedly in my mouth. Including Arch, who got me in such a huff that I switched my phone off.

  Of course, Lulu lectured the triplets about…

  a) raiding the sweets from the kitchen in the first place, and

  b) using me as target practice.

  She made them say sorry (they didn’t LOOK very sorry, just starey).

  Then Zed rolled up beside me and silently held up a burger, hot off the barbecue, like that would make me feel better.

  But sometimes sorries and snacks just aren’t enough.

  Cross and mortified, I told Lulu that I still felt sickly around the edges and mooched back to the dorm with my b
urger. I switched my phone back on and discovered that MUM HAD TRIED TO CALL ME while it was off, to let me know that she had to go to an Extremely Important evening lecture on How to Lasso a Penguin or something and wouldn’t be able to speak to me till today.

  AARGH!

  I did manage to talk to Granny Viv for a little bit, which was pretty AARGH! too in its own way, since she seemed to be convinced that St Grizzle’s sounded fun, fun, fun and not annoying, annoying, annoying. Me and Granny Viv have always been so close, so why can’t she get how weird-and-not-wonderful it is for me here? I felt so let down by her that I didn’t even get around to asking how her sickly friend was doing in wherever-she-was.

  As for Arch, I spent the rest of the evening ignoring his texts and messages, since I was still Extremely Grumpy with him for sniggering at me. He even put a mini-movie up on YouTube of himself with a hand-drawn sign saying “I am an idiot”. It made me grin, but I still gave it a thumbs down, just to make him suffer.

  “Oh, here we go,” Swan says suddenly, staring up at the speaker as the song comes to an end. “Get ready for the greetings.”

  I don’t know what Swan means exactly but wait for whatever comes next, which could be anything knowing this place.

  “Well, hello and happy Tuesday morning to the NEWTS!” Lulu’s voice booms out, and I hear muffled roars of “Good morning, LULU!” coming from the dorm across the hall. One of the roarers will be Blossom, who was to blame for the screams I heard yesterday. Before I left the campfire I saw an older woman all dressed in purple – Miss Amethyst? – yanking a hammer out of Blossom’s hand and wrapping large plasters around several of her fingers.

  “Good morning, CONKERS!”

  The four ten-year-olds who make up that class are at the other end of the corridor, so I don’t hear their shouts back. I don’t suppose semi-sensible Yaz will join in with this goofiness anyway.