by Ann Bryant
“I know it all seems strange and new at the moment,” smiled Miss Carol, “but it’ll only take a few days for you to feel as though you’ve been here for ever!” She finished up by saying, “And, girls, you all know where my flat is from the tour. Now remember, if ever anything is worrying you, or if you simply feel like chatting to someone, you mustn’t hesitate to come along and see me. Matron will always be in her room on the third floor, and Miss Fosbrook’s room is on the first floor, so you can talk to them too if you want.”
“Matron!” Georgie said under her breath. “You’re joking.”
Fortunately Miss Carol can’t have heard. “Any questions?” she asked, smiling round. Then, when no one spoke, she glanced at her watch and said we had forty-five minutes till bedtime.
“Let’s watch telly,” said Georgie.
But pictures of Buddy kept flashing through my mind. “I think I might go and see my rabbit actually.”
“I’ll come too,” Mia immediately said.
The sun was very low in a beautiful pink sky and everything felt so still and quiet outside after the bustle and noise of Hazeldean. Porgy and Bess whistled and wriggled as Mia cuddled them, while Buddy sat like a warm heavy cushion in my arms. As we put them back in their hutches Mia asked me if I thought I was going to like it at Silver Spires.
I was just going to say “I think so”, when my head was flooded with snippets of what people had said earlier on about Mum and The Fast Lane. I’d thought I’d be able to simply tell a lie about Mum’s job and then get on with my life without any trouble, but now I was realizing that it wasn’t quite as easy as that. The Fast Lane was on every Friday night, and people would talk about it during the rest of the week too. I’d have to be on my guard the whole time to make sure nothing slipped out that gave my secret away. Was I going to like it at Silver Spires?
“I hope so,” I said in a small voice.
Chapter Four
On Monday evening Naomi and I were sitting at the table in the upstairs common room with Jess, talking about all that had happened during our first proper school day at Silver Spires. Anyone from Year Seven right through to Year Eleven can use either of the common rooms, but most people prefer the main common room on the ground floor. The upstairs one’s an L-shaped room and from the other part of the L we could hear the DVD that some older girls were watching as they drank hot chocolate and chatted. Jess was busy drawing a picture of Naomi, while I was leafing through old magazines, studying the fashions.
“Is it nearly done, Jess?” asked Naomi, fidgeting a bit.
Jess frowned and chewed at her thumbnail. “I can’t get your eyes right.”
Naomi tried to hide a sigh and went back to our conversation. “What was your best bit of the day, Katy?”
“Not sure. Probably…art.”
“Art was totally cool!” said Jess. “I can’t wait till after-school clubs start. I hope there are loads of arty ones.”
“The history teacher’s nice, isn’t she?” said Naomi, thoughtfully.
I nodded. “I don’t think I’ve done the prep very well, though. It’s so weird having fixed times for prep and supper and everything, isn’t it?”
“I can’t get used to calling it prep instead of homework,” said Naomi.
Jess must have decided to give up on her drawing. She pushed it across to Naomi. “It’s not much good. I’ll try again tomorrow.”
“Not much good? It’s brilliant!” I squeaked, as Lydia came into the room.
Naomi gasped and slid the picture across the table so Lydia could see it. “Isn’t Jess clever?”
Lydia hardly glanced at it. “I’m not that interested in art.” Then she reached her hand out to Naomi. “Come and see the e-mail my sister’s sent me. It’s so funny.”
I got up too because Naomi and I had already decided to e-mail our parents once Jess had finished the picture.
“All the other computers are taken, actually,” Lydia said to me.
“I don’t mind waiting,” I said.
When we got to the computer room, though, there wasn’t a soul in sight, which made me wonder whether Lydia had just made it up about the computers all being taken, to try and put me off coming along. It was obvious from the way she always talked directly to Naomi that she wasn’t interested in being friends with the rest of us. I told myself that I didn’t care, but if I was honest I couldn’t help feeling anxious that she might be trying to take Naomi away from our lovely Amethyst team.
I spent the next fifteen minutes typing away as fast as I could, telling Mum and Dad my news…all about my dorm and the names of my dormies, about how nervous I’d felt at the start of every lesson and how anxious I’d felt when I’d gone to the loo between lessons and then got lost in the main building and had to walk into French late. Mam’zelle Clemence hadn’t minded at all though. She was just worried about me being worried. We have to call her Mam’zelle, instead of Miss, I wrote, as it’s the proper French pronunciation of Mademoiselle. She’s my favourite teacher, so far, partly because of her trendy clothes and her lovely jewellery. In fact, she’s made me feel inspired to design my own jewellery now, and there’s a girl in my dorm called Jess who’s going to see if she can actually make a brooch I’m designing, out of shiny paper and stuff from the art room. I went on to tell Mum and Dad how we’re allowed to use the kitchen in Hazeldean for drinks and how cosy the dorm is, how Buddy seems to have settled in, and how odd it felt waking up in a strange room with five girls I was only just getting to know.
Then I really wanted to tell them all about Naomi being a princess and us lot keeping it a secret and how I was still managing to keep my own secret. And I wanted to ask Mum how the filming was going, but Lydia was hovering just behind me and I had the feeling she might be reading over my shoulder, so I decided to save all that for a phone call, and just put, I hope that everything is going really well in America, Mum, and I can’t wait to hear from you soon. Trillions of love, Katy.
“Can we see what your dorm looks like, Lydia?” Naomi asked.
“It’s nothing special, but I can show you my stuff,” Lydia replied.
While I was sending the e-mail, my phone bleeped with a message and I saw it said Mum on the screen.
Thinkin bout u on day1! Bet its gr8. Luvu loads. Mum X
I tapped in my reply as we walked downstairs on our way to see Lydia’s dorm. Just emailed u. Gd so far. Nice dorm n friends. Keepin secret still! LUL. K X
There were six beds in Opal but the room looked somehow neater than ours, partly because there weren’t any recesses or sloping ceilings so it was a plain rectangle, and partly because everyone’s desks were tidier and no one had left any clothes spilling out of half-open drawers, or on the floor. Two girls were on their laptops and another was reading on her bed. They all said hi to us and then carried on with what they were doing. Lydia jerked her head at one of the girls at her desk and mouthed the word “Boring” to Naomi, then pointed to a bed with a bright purple duvet covered in silver roses and pink hearts.
“This is my bed. And look…” She opened a drawer and pulled out a little cellophane bag with a ribbon round the top and flowers all over it. “Six Belgian choccies!”
“You’re not allowed food in the dorms,” said the girl who was reading, staring at Lydia with wide, accusing eyes.
“Well the food won’t be here much longer!” replied Lydia. She rolled her eyes at Naomi as though it was pathetic to take any notice of rules like that. “Come on, let’s go, you two.” And as we walked along the corridor towards the big common room she divided the chocolates out between the three of us.
“The girls in my dorm get on my nerves,” said Lydia. She turned to Naomi and her eyes gleamed. “I can’t wait till I get to swap in with you.”
I didn’t like this kind of talk. I wanted to keep the Amethyst team together. “All our dormies are really nice,” I quickly said.
Then Naomi looked at her watch. “It’s ten to nine, you guys. We’d better go and get r
eady for bed.”
Lydia sighed noisily as she stomped off. “It’s stupidly early. I never go to bed before eleven at home.”
The following afternoon it was athletics. Grace had been counting the minutes since breakfast that morning so it was no surprise that she was changed and ready before anyone else. “I don’t want to waste a single second,” she said, jogging on the spot and grinning round.
“Someone looks very fit!” said Mrs. Mellor, the PE teacher. “Do you do lots of running, Grace?”
Grace nodded. “I love it. Can I show you something?” We all stopped getting ready to see what she was pulling out of her pocket. “It’s a stopwatch with a built-in speedometer and pedometer and milometer so you can check your speed at any time, and also tell how many steps you’ve taken and what distance you’ve run.”
“What a fabulous little gadget!” said Mrs. Mellor. “My stopwatch seems very ordinary compared to that!”
Georgie groaned. “How can you be so keen, Grace?” she said, making her shoulders go all droopy. I noticed that she and Jess had only got as far as taking off their shoes and socks and were sitting on the floor with their legs stretched out, comparing the lengths of their toes. I saw Naomi watching them too and when our eyes met a second later we both cracked up.
Lydia was standing in front of the mirror brushing her hair back but she swung round, holding her ponytail, at the sound of our laughter. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing worth talking about,” I said. “The moment’s gone.”
She let her hair drop and put her hands on her waist. “Tell me anyway.”
I saw Naomi hiding a sigh. “Just Georgie and Jess comparing toes in a world of their own,” she explained.
“Thank you,” said Lydia, sounding very prim and proper. She reminded me of a teacher, the way she gave Naomi a nice smile for being the good girl who’d answered her question and flashed me an evil look in the mirror for being the naughty one. I tried not to care, but it was becoming more and more obvious that Lydia didn’t like me, and I suppose that’s because of Naomi and me getting on so well together.
Down on the athletics field the first thing we had to do was run round it twice while Mrs. Mellor timed us. In no time at all Grace had gone ahead of everyone, running like a gazelle. Naomi and Lydia and a few others weren’t far behind, while the rest of us followed in a bit of a bunch.
“Wait for me, you guys,” moaned Georgie, from the back.
Mum and I had been jogging together quite a bit in the summer holidays and I was trying to remember what she’d told me about breathing. Gradually my legs started to feel stronger and my stride seemed to get longer because I was settling into a rhythm. Ahead of me I could see Lydia beginning to lag behind Naomi and by the time I started the second lap I’d caught up with Lydia. I was about to overtake her when I realized she was completely puffed out and had gone rather red in the face.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah…I’m fine.” She straightened up a bit but I could tell she was struggling. “I’m just…taking my time…on purpose. It’s bad for you…to run too fast…when you haven’t been training…you know.”
It sounded like she was criticizing me but I couldn’t be bothered to tell her I’d been running with Mum. I just kept my eye on Grace, who’d nearly finished the two laps, and on Naomi, who wasn’t that far behind her.
“Come on, Katy!” yelled Naomi from the finishing line a moment later. “You’re doing really well!”
Grace was doing leg stretches but she stopped doing them to watch me running. “Keep it up!” she called, jumping up and down. And that made me put on a spurt.
Then Naomi held her arms out wide and stood there grinning her head off. “Go Katy!”
I went flying into her and we hugged each other, then fell over and laughed our heads off. Mrs. Mellor tutted a bit and rolled her eyes as we got up but I could tell she was pleased with the way we’d both run. After that she was busy ticking off everyone’s names on her chart and writing their timings in for them because there were quite a few girls all finishing at once, including Lydia, who was throwing a disapproving look in my direction.
“I hope you get that grass stain off your shirt okay, Naomi,” she said.
I just ignored her. Nothing was going to spoil my enjoyment of the afternoon.
That evening we talked about what good fun the PE lesson had been. We were in the LC, which is what we’ve started to call the L-shaped common room, and I was trying to design a new PE outfit, because Georgie insisted that the tracksuit we have to wear makes her feel fat, and feeling fat slows her down.
“I’d probably run faster than any of you if I was wearing the right thing,” she said, nearly going cross-eyed as she tried to examine her hair for split ends.
We all laughed except Lydia, whose eyes were on the door. “Where’s Naomi got to?” she asked no one in particular.
“She’ll be here in a few minutes,” I told her.
Lydia’s eyes flashed at me. “Yes, but where is she?”
“I don’t know. She said she wanted to be on her own for a while.”
“Well I’m going to find her. She might be lonely.”
Lydia was really annoying me. I know what it feels like to want to be on your own. “I’m sure she’s okay, honestly.”
And at that moment Naomi walked in.
Lydia jumped up. “Are you all right?”
Naomi nodded and smiled. “I like being on my own sometimes, that’s all.”
“I know what you mean,” said Lydia. “Sometimes it’s good to just get away, isn’t it?”
This time Naomi gave her a really big smile as though she was pleased that Lydia understood.
Then Georgie spoke out and I couldn’t help feeling pleased. “That’s not what you just said, Lydia!”
“I only wanted to check she was okay,” Lydia threw back at her. Then her arm went round Naomi’s shoulder. “Let’s go and look at that website we were talking about.” She guided Naomi towards the door and I got anxious again that she was just trying to take Naomi away from the rest of us. Especially me.
I was more and more convinced that Lydia was only being friendly with Naomi because she was a princess and that Naomi might get hurt if the friendship wasn’t genuine, and I didn’t want that to happen because Naomi’s so nice. I felt as though I’d just eaten a huge meal that weighed me down so I could hardly move.
Only the weight wasn’t food, it was sadness.
Chapter Five
That first week at Silver Spires went by really quickly, so there was absolutely no time to worry about my secret because of concentrating so hard on making sure I was in the right place at the right time. The teachers were mostly very kind though, and let us off if we turned up late for lessons. It’s so easy to get lost at Silver Spires because it’s such a vast school with loads of different buildings for all the different subjects. Plus, there’s the boarding houses and the sports fields and tennis courts and swimming pool complex. It’s like a whole kingdom by itself.
When Friday arrived I suddenly remembered it was The Fast Lane in the evening and I couldn’t help imagining what it would be like in the common room later with everyone talking about Lee Brook, and I broke into a sweat even though there was no way anyone could possibly guess I had any connection with Cally Jamieson. All I had to do was make sure I didn’t blurt out something that would give it away, then everything would be fine.
Mum had told me in an e-mail about the filming of the new opening to the show. She said it was the very last thing to be filmed and the cast had got a bad case of the giggles and hadn’t been able to stop laughing, so the director had made them do it again and again. Mum said it was mainly her fault because the more she tried to stop laughing, the more she couldn’t. It wasn’t even funny after a while, she’d written, but giggles just kept sprouting out of me, and in the end the director went on filming even though I was laughing my head off and my ribs were aching, because he’d suddenly had the i
dea that it would work if we kept the laughter in. And it does! Wait till you see it, Kates!
So now I was worrying that I might laugh too hard, knowing that Mum wasn’t acting at all, and Lydia would turn her withering look on me and say, You are soooo immature, Katy. I knew that’s what she thought of me because once when Georgie and I had been giggling hysterically at a joke I’d been telling, Lydia had stood there with the straightest face on earth and said it was the kind of joke that her seven-year-old brother told.
After breakfast we all went to see if the list for after-school clubs was up. They were due to start the following week, and personally I was dying to find out if there was a fashion club or anything like that.
“Gym club and running!” said Grace, jumping up and down. “Whoa! Cool! I’m going to go down to the field after school today and do some training.”
“And music, rock climbing, cookery, chess, ballet…” Mia read out. “There are so many great clubs!”
“You can even go riding on Saturdays!” said Georgie. “Not that you’d ever catch me on a horse!”
“Art!” added Jess, stabbing the noticeboard. “Cool.”
“What clubs are you doing, Naomi?” Lydia asked.
“Er…debating, I think.”
“Yes, me too,” said Lydia quickly.
Unfortunately there wasn’t anything like a fashion club for Year Sevens, so I wasn’t sure what to go for, but Mia decided on music club.
“Drama! Brill!” said Georgie. “Although really there ought to be a chill club,” she went on, “where you can just sit about and chill.”
And all through the day she kept on bringing it up.
“Don’t you think we’re overworked at this place?” she said after double maths. “My idea for a chill club would definitely catch on.”
“You ought to suggest it, Georgie,” I told her, laughing.